My dear friend (and ex) Mike is going to be on TV! There's a new show on Discovery, starting this week, called Oddities. He described it as Antiques Roadshow for lunatics. They go visit people who have weird stuff and talk about it, basically. And man, does Mike have lots of weird stuff. He doesn't know when his episode will air, but the show sounds cool, so keep an eye out for my wacky ex and his soon-to-be-famous shrunken head!

I hate to keep skipping out and then come back in here and ask for ~ma, but. I was just about to call my SiL to tell her that I bought my plane tickets to come up to NY from 11/13-11/19 to see them, and she called me. My brother had been doing great, and was supposed to get out of the hospital tomorrow, but he's in emergency surgery right now, because he's bleeding in his brain.

I don't even know. I don't even know who to call. My friend C., whose daughter is twelve weeks old, reminded me that all of this has happened since her baby has been born. Twelve weeks ago he was working, and climbing mountains.

Anything you've got, please. I'm just so scared.

Thanks, everyone, so much. It means a great deal. My brother pulled through the surgery, but the clot was large, and pretty deep in his brain. He's on a ventilator, and they've put him in a medically-induced coma for a couple of days, so that he won't move around. They won't know the extent of the brain damage until he comes out of the coma, but it seems likely that there will be at least some.

I just spoke with my SiL, and they just did a C-T scan, but they won't have the results for a couple of hours. She said that she doesn't see any reason for me to come up right away as opposed to next week, but I'm going to keep checking with her. It's a fine line between being helpful to her, and being a burden on her, since she's already surrounded by her son, mother, and brothers and sisters and extended family up there. I don't want her to feel like I'm someone else she has to take care of.

Anyway, I was up most of the night, and so I'm taking the day off to rest. I'm going back to bed, but thanks to everyone for the ~ma, and so much ~ma in return to those that need it.

Dad is safely back from Afghanistan. Thanks for the ~ma.

Update: They took bro off meds yesterday, he didn't wake up. So now he's just in a regular, non-medically induced coma. They put him on a feeding tube. I assume they wouldn't have taken that step if they thought there was no hope, so I'm trying to hang onto whatever optimism I've got left. Also, they found some more clots in his thigh, and they put some sort of screen in to prevent them from going to his heart.

I spoke with my SiL, and she said not to push my visit up. She's hanging out at the hospital all day, and they're only letting her in to see him for a few minutes at a time. So I'm going up on Saturday, still.

Thanks so much to all of you for your ~ma, for emailing me, for feeding me, everything. I'm going to be going an even darker shade of gray for the next little while.

Also, today is my nephew's 30th birthday. My heart just breaks for him, in so many ways.

Way random request ...

Em is WAY into Barbies right now, despite my best efforts. She has a mix of the old body style and the new body style Barbies. If anyone here has any Barbie items or clothes from children that aren't using them anymore and said children would like to part with them, I'm more than happy to pay for items as well as shipping.

Thanks so much!!

I'd like to request some ~ma for my dad and my stepmom's family. My step-grandfather passed away on Friday of mesothelioma. While this has been expected for a while, 'it's always sudden.' Also, even though I acquired Brian when I was 16, I was closer to him than I was to either of my biological grandparents.

The holidays are going to be rough.

I would also like to request some ~ma for my mom's boyfriend Ray. He just had a stroke today and is in hospital.

If any of our librarian types have access to Kirkus, can you check and see if STARS was actually reviewed? I just got a Google Alert on it, but can't access it because I'm not a subscriber.

A little safe and successful surgery ~ma for my Dad, if you could. Operation Remove Giant Kidney Stone kicks off at 7am, PST.