Mamacita says:  What a week!

I do think it’s pretty rude for entire clans to hold a family reunion in a hospital waiting room.  And when they take it upon themselves to rearrange the furniture so all the “good” chairs are in their area, that’s even ruder.  Ruder still is when none of them know how to speak in an “inside voice.”

Seriously, though, I think it’s wonderful for families to rally together and support someone who is having major surgery.  However, I think it would be much more considerate to have everyone who isn’t immediate family wait downstairs or out in the main lobby.  Anywhere but the cardiac ward waiting room.  Tonight there was no room at all for me or my MIL, and I saw a couple of very elderly people just standing around in the hallway because there wasn’t a single vacant chair in either of the two cardiac family rooms because one family had brought along the entire clan and they took up every single chair.  That’s just not fair, folks.  Let’s all try to be more considerate, what say?

It’s Quotation Saturday already?  Wow.

1.  A hick town is one where there is no place to go where you shouldn’t be.  –Alexander Woolcott

2.  Intellect in its efforts to explain Love got stuck in the mud like an ass.  Love alone could explain love and loving.  –Rumi

3.  It is taken for granted that by lunchtime the average man has been so beaten down by life that he will believe anything.  –Christopher Morley

4.  To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites.  –Robert A. Heinlein

5.  Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.  –D.H. Lawrence

6.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.  –Helen Keller

7.  Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.  –Martin Luther King Jr.

8.  To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.  –Emily Dickinson

9.  Never part without loving words to think of during your absence.  It may be that you will not meet again in life.  –Jean Paul Richter

10.  We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.  –Sam Kern

11.  To change one’s life:  1.  start immediately; 2.  do it flamboyantly, 3.  no exceptions.  –William James

12.  Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself.  He who has a contempt for poetry cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.  –William Hazlitt

13.  Poetry. . . should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance.  –Keats

14.  Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.  –Les Brown

15.  I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetite of the brute may survive.  –Cicero

16.  Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.  –Arthur Helps

17.  Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action.  –T. Roosevelt

18.  Every sinner should be vouchsafed at future, as every saint has had a past.  –S.R. Krishna

19.  Solitude is to the mind what fasting is to the body:  fatal if it is too prolonged, and yet necessary.  –Vauvenorgues

20.  . . . observation of life shows one that solemn people are generally humbugs.  –Bertrand Russell

21.  With lies you can get ahead in life, but you can never turn back.  –Old Russian Proverb

22.  I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled.  Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value.  Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.  –Boris Pasternak

23.  Life is a jest, and all things show it.  I thought so once, but now I know it.  –John Gay

24.  He gave her a look you could have poured on a waffle.  –Ring Lardner

25.  Every system should allow loopholes and exceptions, for it it does not, it will in the end crush all that is best in man.  –Bertrand Russell

26.  The saddest moment in a person’s life comes but once.  –Unknown

27.  If at first you don’t succeed, try again.  Then quit; no use being a damn fool about it.  –W.C. Fields

28.  Any man may make a mistake, but none but a fool will continue in it.  –Cicero

29.  . . . satisfied with being merely part of the number of mankind, without distinguishing themselves from amonst them.  –Richard Steele

30.  Music is the soundtrack of your life.  –Dick Clark

31.  Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into, the mind.  –S.T. Coleridge

32.  In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.  –Carl Sandburg

33.  Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.  –Soren Kierkegaard

34.  The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists.  The poet merely enjoys existence.  –Wallace Stevens

35.  If peace cannot be maintained with honour, it is no longer peace. –John Russell

36.  Most people tend to perform the actions that require least effort, to think the thoughts that are easiest, to feel the emotions that are most vulgarly commonplace, to give the rein to desires that are most nearly animal.  –Aldous Huxley

37.  Peace is not a relationship of nations.  It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul.  Lasting peace can come only to a peaceful people.  –Nehru

38.  If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.  –Mother Teresa

39.  When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.  –Peter Marshall

40.  I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of silence and happening, and get some sense, for a moment, that we are full of paradise without knowing it.  –Thomas Merton

41.  For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.  –Unknown

42.  I always think of nature as a great spectacle, somewhat resembling the opera.  –Bernard De Fontenelle

43.  Nostalgia is to have a deep longing for a place you wouldn’t move back to.  –Unknown

44.  “Now” is the dwelling place of God Himself.  –Thomas R. Kelly

45.  We do what we must, and call it by the best names.  –Emerson

46.  Only free men can negotiate.  Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.  –Nelson Mandela

47.  When the need is highest, God is nighest.  –Yiddish proverb

48.  Obstinacy and vehemency in opinion are the surest proofs of stupidity.  –Bruce Barton

49.  If a woman looks at her watch, it is a sure sign that someone is in the way.  –Shelley Bradley

50.  Certitude is not the test of certainty.  We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.  –Oliver Wendell Holmes

#41 is something I remind myself of several times a day.

There are no words, my own or those of others far smarter than I, that could come even close to expressing my thanks to all of you lovely people for your words of support and your kind thoughts and prayers.  All I can say is, simply,

Thank you.