No Liquor in Pennsylvania Homeland

Michael often begrudgingly watches my TV shows with me, but there are a couple he truly enjoys.  Homeland is one of those.  And his mother shares our enthusiasm for it, as well.  So I wish someone had been here to take a picture of the three of us huddled around my iPad as we watched it tonight!

It felt really good to relax and, since it is such an engrossing show, I think it took Michael's mind off the operation for almost an hour.  He thinks about his procedure constantly and should Mari Ann or I shift our focus, he reminds us that we are here for him... we're not on vacation.  I can't imagine what's happening in his head, both literally and figuratively.  I've just been trying to distract him from it whenever I can.

We stepped foot in our first hospital today: Presby (short for Presbyterian).  A shuttle runs every hour between Family House Shadyside and the hospitals.  Although it was only a 15-minute ride, we opted to go an hour early so we could get acclamated once we arrived.  They seem to do things differently here: since we arrived early, Michael got in early for both his CT scan and MRI.  Of course, we don't know anything else yet; we finally meet the doctor (we hope) tomorrow.

Tonight, we took Mari Ann to a yarn shop, then picked up a couple things at the liquor store, the grocery store and Target.  Funny story... at Costco yesterday, I asked if they had beer and wine.  The worker looked at me like I was insane and said, "No, this is Pennsylvania."  He must have then noticed my Jayhawks sweatshirt and realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore, because he suddenly became very nice trying to direct me somewhere, even though he warned me that it was a Sunday.

We all have things that make us happy.  We got back tonight and I had my Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper, Mari Ann had her Hershey Kisses, and Michael had his Candy Cane Oreos.

Here are some more pictures of Family House, exterior shots this time.  And about a block away, between here and Wendy's, is a nice little... plaza, courtyard, park-thingie with a monument to WWII veterans from this area... "ward", I think it read.  And Michael said not to post it, but of course that means I had to include a pic of his arm prior to his two tests today.