5/20/2003 10:04:31 AM|||Amy|||"For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
- W.B. Yeats

This weekend Husband and I took the kids to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. We hadn't seen it since it was finished, and we thought it was time to get out of the house and make the drive into Oklahoma City. So, we packed up the kids, and headed out on to the big open road.

We drove straight up 75 until we realized about 40 miles into Oklahoma that maybe we were on the wrong road. Luckily, we realized this just as we came across a McDonald's (where we had lunch) that happened to be at the crossroads of 75 and a major east-west highway. We drove to the west, and eventually found the road which deposited us into the downtown area of OKC. After a few minutes of frantically searching for a potty, we walked into the stunning display of memory and grief of the monument. It is beautiful, and sad. Between the moments I was chasing after the kids trying to keep them off the grass and out of the reflecting pool, I was in tears. Husband took a bunch of pictures. Maybe if I can ever get around to figuring out how to post them on this site, I will.

As we were driving out of Oklahoma City, my mother called me on my cell phone to say that my brother had just called her and announced that he is getting married on June 14th. I'm glad that he has finally found the right person to settle down with - even if this whole marriage thing is going a little too quickly. I need months to prepare for something like this, not a few weeks! Still, this isn't all about me - as much as I would like to think it is.

Then, yesterday, the mother of a little boy Bear goes to school with called me to set up a playdate for last night. I asked Husband to pick Bear up from school early, and get him cleaned up and fed before I got home. So, after doing this and leaving Bear with my parents, Husband and Monkey came and picked me up at work. On the way home we were rear-ended. We had to stop suddenly for a car which swerved in front of us, and, of course, we were the first car hit in a three car pile up. We are keeping an eye on Monkey today to make sure she's okay. We weren't hit that hard, but you never know what even the slightest jar might do.

I took Bear to his playdate and had a lovely conversation with his friend's mother. I am so glad to have finally hooked up with them.

Last night, apparently, there was a big storm. My father drove to Oklahoma for a work-related thing right in the smack dab middle of it. The storm was enough to knock out our power for two hours this morning. When the power finally came back on, so did the television and it was switched on to the Texas Cable News station. The very first story I heard was this one. The three people killed were a postdoc in the lab of my department's chairman, his wife and her mother. I looked to see if I could find a picture of the postdoc online, but I didn't see one. His two year old baby was in the car, but was rescued by a passerby just before the car exploded. The baby has two broken legs and is in critical condition (I heard) at the Children's hospital in this complex. This is the second time in a year that something tragic has happened to one of the people in my department. Last year a 32 year old research assistant died of heart failure in one of the elevators in the building. Her husband was trying to get her to another hospital nearby when she collapsed and couldn't be revived.

That's all the news I have from the last couple of days. It's enough for me to want to go home and be with my children. |||94635967|||