Do please send thoughts and prayers to my in-laws' in-laws. Mark's sister's brother-in-law passed away unexpectedly on Christmas Eve. :( He was supposed to sing for a service on Christmas Eve night, but never arrived. His brother (not my brother-in-law, but another sibling) went to investigate and found him. I don't know any more details than that. We'll be going to the funeral on Wednesday morning. It's such a shame.

And to think I was aggravated over breaking a glass this afternoon. I never break things, and I happened to really like the pair of drinking glasses we used every day. I break things so rarely that I really got miffed when I cracked the glass. Needless to say, I've gotten my reminder that there are far more significant things to worry about than a drinking glass. Sigh.

Speaking of significant things, I have my specialist's appointment set for January 5. My doc had wanted me to go between Christmas and New Year, but the specialist he wants me to see is away during that week. Note to self: don't get sick during the freaking holiday season. I'm still a bit rattled to think that I came this-close to a hospital admission. Normally, problems show up in "mild" and "moderate" forms before we reach "severe", but the former two levels came and went undetected. The only reason I'm sitting in my living room right now, and not in a medical facility, is that the doc didn't want to see me spend Christmas as an inpatient, and in all honesty I didn't want to spend my holiday hospitalized, either. I do have my list of symptoms that, should any of them show up, I'm to head to the ER. So far, so good, knock on wood.

It's very enlightening to look back over the past few months and understand WHY I've been battling severe fatigue. I'd interpret a Mass and then come home and sleep for an entire afternoon. Or after a busy weekend, I'd be totally wiped on Monday and sleep a lot of the day. I blamed it on the bouts with insomnia, about which I've griped on my blog more than once, but apparently that wasn't the entire picture.

So I'm taking iron pills now and focusing on bolstering the meds with dietary changes like eating red meat, leafy greens, etc. Fortunately, I like the iron-rich healthy-food choices that are out there.

But the specialist appointment is to help figure out WHY things got so out-of-hand in the first place. That's what I'm not happy about... the underlying causes could be any of a wide range of reasons, some of which are easily fixed and some of which are extremely serious. Here's hoping it falls into the category of "easily fixed".

Oh, well. On a lighter note, the Nook that Mark got me for Christmas did, in fact, arrive in time for the holiday. So I loaded about 30 books onto it that I got several months ago from eReader.com, a B&N subsidiary whose books are compatible with the Nook. Then I used the Nook itself to order about 9 more books that I wanted from Barnes and Noble. So yeah, I'm having a grand time with this. :)

Hey, I don't want to land in a hospital any time soon, but if I do, at least I have reading material to spare. ;)

That's pretty much all the news that's fit to print. I hope everyone reading this had a wonderful Christmas!