Lori: You wrote (in part) : "Between my mom, my students, my father-in-law, and my own "idiot" son (the one with his head up his butt), I want to run away from home on a daily basis. I know that's not something I can do, but I'm sooo tired of being the grownup sometimes."

Oh, my God, can I relate to that! I read your message at the end of a truely crappy day -- one that was supposed to be just DH and I having a relaxed day at home, and instead we ended up driving through several hours of rain to pick up kids (not their fault) and came home to listen to two of them have screaming match, followed by the third one yelling at ME because I don't know RIGHT NOW what I'm going to do about his broken glasses! Tomorrow I have to repair a window that an acquaintance of my older daughter broke (and I'm NOT asking him to pay for it, because I want nothing to do with this particular jerk) as well as my son's accidentally broken glasses, and my car is still in the shop with an intermitant electrical problem -- I can't take it home til they fix it, and they can't make it misbehave in the shop.

This is nothing like dealing with hospitals -- I've been there, too -- but if this relatively minor domestic war zone can make me feel like diving into the nearest vat of Death by Chocolate ice cream, I can only imagine the strain of trying to keep yuor eating together while also dealing with hospitals and the traditional head-up-his-butt son. It sounds to me like you did pretty good.

Hang in there. Together, we'll all get through this.

(And our kids will eventually be fine, too.)

Marie H