My Me Book

When I was in 5th grade attending Cora B. Darling Elementary School, I had an assignment to create a book that displayed my life and outlined my hopes and dreams...or something along those lines. As I read through a written and drawn account of my life, I had to smile and laugh. There was a page entitled "What I Want To do When I Grow Up" and as a child I was unclear of what I wanted as an adult however I did have lofty goals.

"I'm not sure yet, but I think that I want to be a singer, someone who comforts little kids at the hospital if they are scared, or a fashion designer. I want to be a movie star. I want to live in Hollywood or I want to live in Hawaii."

I don't have the heart to tell 5th grade Alysha Miller that she doesn't grow up to be a singer turned movie star with a home in Hollywood and Hawaii. I suppose I can just tell her that she does grow up :)

Back At The Ranch

So I believe that if you pay attention there are always signs to help guide us in our decisions. You just have to be willing to see the signs.

My favorite preschooler gave me a beautiful butterfly dish that holds dips in it and along with the dish came a package of "Back At The Ranch" dip.

I think that is a good enough sign for me :)

Red Light District

Prostitution is the oldest profession

In Amsterdam there is a part of the downtown area that surrounds a beauftiful church full of history. That area is call the Red Light District. Prostitution is legal in Holland and in the RLD sex is everywhere. There are sex shows, porn theatres, condom shops, and sex toy shops. Sex is literally dripping off the stone buildings. I was facinated by the RLD. Here are these women, mostly young, who make their living by selling their bodies. Many of them have husbands and children and working nights for them is much like being a nurse and working the night shift...just part of the job. I really wanted to sit down with some of these girls and ask them about their lives: how is their self esteem?, what is their daily life like?, what do their children think of the profession?, what's the rate of STD and pregnancy...and my list would go on and on.

Human behavior facinates me.

Jiffy Pop

Now I have had several surgeries in my life, but never did I have to don a jiffy pop hat. As we were waiting with my Dad before his surgery he was given a silver shower cap to wear during surgery. He looked liked one of the jiffy pop containers that you put over the stove to cook. It was much needed comic relief during a stressful time :)

So after hours and hours of waiting we finally got to see Jiffy Pop. There were more tubes coming out of him then I could have every imagined. He was flat on his back and the many monitors present were reminders that machines were keeping track of his life. He had an IV coming out of his neck which was hard to see. He knew we were there and his breathing sped up so the sweet nurse continued to remind him to slow down his breathing so they can hopefully removed the ventilator. And less then an hour later they did!

The staff in the CICU was wonderful. They let us see Dad as much as we wanted, no questions asked. My Dad stayed in the CICU a little longer after he as actually discharged from there because as my Dad said it , " There was no room in the inn"...the step down floor was full. So he got the service of the CICU without the cost.

I was so impressed with how the staff at St. Mary's cared for my Dad...they cared as though he was theirs.

A Bypass and a Volcano

So what are the odds that the week before I am supposed to be boarding a plane to Holland two big things happen:

My Dad has to undergo a double bypass

and

A volcano in Iceland shuts down London's Heathrow airport

Seriously, what are the odds?

My Mom called me a week before our trip and informed me that my Dad had failed two stress tests and now is at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, WI awaiting news on his heart. So I think to myself, has the time come where my parents are no longer invincible? The news of my father's condition hit me hard. They discovered that my Dad had two 100% blockages and one 50% blockage. He was scheduled to have a double bypass that coming Monday however when he was discharged from the hospital for the weekend they surgeon informed him that his surgery had been moved to Wednesday. So that Wednesday the Miller family gathered at St. Mary's Hospital. The bishop stopped in right before the surgery and he talked with my Dad and then prayed with us. It was the first time in my life I cried during the Lord's Prayer. They took my Dad in around12:30pm and the next time we saw him he was in recovery in the Cardic ICU and it was 9:30 pm. More to come on that subject...

So on top of all of that a volcano in Iceland decided to start burping and spitting up ash. Now normally this kind of news would not really cross my mind twice, but this fun volcano was putting ash so far up into the air that it was affecting the flight patterns of many airports...one of them being London's Heathrow Airport. The same airport that I was going to be connecting into in a week. So checking the travel news became my new obsession and any news whether good or bad I hung on until any new information came. Finally the day before we flew out Heathrow was at 100% capacity for flying...YEAH!!!!!

It was a very intense last few weeks of April. I never really experienced the saying "In like a lamb out like a lion"...all I have to say is, "Bring it on Simba".