Diary of a LAN Manager

"I don't have time to be sick. There's just too much going on right now." How many times do we say that? How many times do we ignore the warning signs - Slow! Yield! Warning! - until we hit the big red STOP! or else? We tend to pay attention to that one - most of us, anyway. So my stomach hurt. So what. According to the ads on TV, I should just take a dose of Pepto and I'd be right as rain by morning. I ignored it. Worked through it. Popped Tylenol and blamed it on stress or maybe bad chicken. I was fine. It was Memorial Day, and I was GOING to feel better! Saturday I couldn't cough without crying. It occurred to me that it hurt this bad when my appendix was near the rupture point - but it was gone, and the pain was on my left. There's really nothing over there to hurt like this, right? I was trying to tough my way through another day when my mother called. It was bad news - my aunt Mildred had passed away during the night, after fighting breast cancer an

A brief discussion of the rights of grandparents.... with apologies for those whom this might offend. My friend Mike has a lovely little grandchild. His granddaughter was born to his son and his son's live-in (they opted not to marry so as not to mess up her college funding). Subsequently, the two decided they didn't want to spend the rest of their lives together, so the son began proceedings to establish legal parental rights. This process has not gone well, and the girl's mother also wants to block Mike and his wife from access to the child. So off to court they go - and I can't say that I blame them. They want what's best for this child, and the mom isn't quite meeting their standards. But I'm not blameless in this discussion either. My children had three sets of grandparents, so to speak. My husband's parents, my mother, and my father and his wife and family. Out of respect to my mother, and because I never quite repaired the relationship with my fat