Nine Lives

My mom has the weirdest life of anyone I've ever met. Like the time that a bus was driving erratically, so she chased it down, realized the driver was having a heart attack, and started CPR before taking the only passenger, a lonely Mexican teenager, home for Thanksgiving dinner. Lately her weird luck has been bad for her. Within the last two weeks, she has had a tumor removed, been attacked by hornets on her bad, newly operated arm, pulled a hamstring and was ordered to stay down for six weeks (which she obviously refused to do), and then last night was the kicker.

She filled up a glass of water to take a drink, left for 2 minutes to turn out the lights, and then grabbed her water to drink as she walked to bed. As soon as she picked up the glass, she felt a prick on her tongue and then reached up and pulled something out of her mouth. She turned on the lights, and saw that it was a yellowsack spider that had bitten her tongue. Her tongue swelled and her throat started to close up, but she refused to go to the doctor because "they have seen me too often lately."

Anyone else would have been beaten down by now, but not her. Early this morning she drove 3 hours to work on a sprinkler project in southern Utah in the home where she grew up - post-cancer operation, swollen arm, pulled hamstring, puffy tongue and all. To her working one-armed, one-legged, and waiting a few days for the skin on her tongue to just turn black and fall off seems like a reasonable plan of action.