As I mentioned in yesterday's entry, Mom found out she needs eye surgery. Her vision is already poor, and in order to keep it from getting worse, she's been instructed by her doctor to get hold of the surgeon and make an appointment to correct the latest condition, which they can't really identify. It's been called a macular hole, or a tear, or a wrinkle. I guess they'll find out when they go in. (It's not macular degeneration, by the way.)

Mom put off calling the surgeon's office until the last minute. She's been resisting the idea of this operation until she found out Thursday that it was her only option (other than to do nothing). She almost put off calling until Monday, but she finally dropped the dime Friday afternoon, and they knew who she was and were expecting her call.

To top it off with a bit of serendipity, she's going to have the operation next Wednesday morning, because the doctor had a cancellation! So the two weeks of excruciating recuperation will start right away (it's an outpatient procedure), and be over, if all goes as promised, by Valentine's Day.

They told her that people who live alone and have no help are able to cope with the effects of the operation, but it would be easier to have someone at least look in on her. Easier! As if we would let her go through this alone.

I'm sure her friends will be around with cookies and casseroles as well, but Suzanne and I have already worked out a schedule where she won't be alone for long, at least in the early days. In fact, we figured out how this was going to work long before Mom talked herself into having the surgery.

Now, the Boss doesn't yet know what's happening here, but it won't be a problem. He gets all tender and soft-hearted whenever I talk about Mom and the family and how close we all are.

I think it's because his own family situation is (to put it kindly) difficult. He has three daughters, all of whom are close to each other but distant from both their parents, except when they need something. His son and ex-wife don't acknowledge each other's existence; Tim didn't even invite his mother to his wedding (which was cancelled at the last minute anyway, but that's another story).

And the ex-wife hates the Boss's current girlfriend, to the point of real meanness (she's threatened to stalk her). The Boss and Julie have been together eight years, and that relationship started long after the divorce, so it's not like she's the one who broke up a happy home. Which, obviously, was never happy, at least never in the memory of anyone who's ever talked to me about it.

The point of all this pointless gossip is that the Boss idealizes the family situation I'm lucky enough to find myself in. He's always asking after Mom, and he knows she's been having problems recently. He's never denied me time off for anything to do with the family, and in fact he's encouraged me to take time to do whatever needs to be done. So I'm not worried on that score, not at all.

Besides, Suzanne's doing most of the hard stuff. She works half-days as a preschool teacher, so her afternoons are "free" in the sense that she doesn't usually have to be in any specific place at any given time. ("Not free" in the sense that she has a family of her own, and a house and yard and friends and lots of other demands on her time, much more than I have.) So she can go by after work and stay until I can get there in the afternoon.

And it's well known that I take as long as I want to run my errands every morning. I've tried to let all the people I deal with know that they can't expect to find me in the office between ten and noon. I don't take the whole two hours, usually, but I try not to leave before ten and I try to be back by noon. I'll just extend those hours as necessary as long as Mom needs someone around.

It also helps (me) that the operation will happen on the last day of January, the deadline day for all the payroll tax returns and such. All I'll have left after that is preparing the yearend financial statement worksheets for the accountant. I sort of promised the Boss that I'd have them in early February, but I usually don't get them done until some time in March, and that could happen again this year. That's just the way it'll have to be.

And it's quite possible that the update schedule for the journal will get more erratic for a time. It might be a good time to subscribe to the notify list, although all the oblique threats and dire warnings I've tried in the past haven't exactly swelled the membership. So really, don't bother. Keep doing what you're doing. Whatever, it's no skin off.

Super Bowl prediction: A football game will take place Sunday in Tampa. That's as far as I'm willing to go, after getting both conference championship games exactly wrong.

They want us Californians to watch the game in groups, which is probably how most people will watch it anyway. Not to save power, but to centralize the source of nachos, beer and buffalo wings. So, come on over and watch it with me. I'll be home (working) all day. (Better bring snacks, though.)

I'm more worried about the electricity going out during Survivor than during the game. Although I'm curious to see who CBS got to buy up all that pricey Super Bowl commercial time, now that the dot-coms have bailed.

It was another damp, drab, dreary day in Santa Rosa yesterday, although without the excitement we had earlier this week. This time it was just mostly rain. But late in the afternoon, the sun found its way through some folds in the clouds, giving us the promise of a calmer, clearer (warmer?) weekend.

It was raining while this picture was taken. I was standing in the back yard looking southeast toward Rohnert Park. If you look closely and use a lot of imagination, you can barely see the arc of a rainbow. Well, I can.