Hmm, odd news. My wife's uncle had a heart attack last night. That's not the odd part, though. My Mom-in-law, who is currently teaching art at the international school in Ghana, is flying in for this afternoon. This means a few things in particular for me:

1. The heart attack was evidently far more serious than we were told, and

2. My Mom-in-law will be staying with us for the entirety of my fall break (next week).

Ugh. I feel so conflicted. Of course, I am deeply concerned about my wife's uncle. He is a great man, and I shudder to imagine what he's going through right now. Still, there is a part of me that also feels an acute loss for the time my wife and I might have had this next week if the heart attack never happened. We had a bed-n-breakfast planned along with some general time out and about together that we haven't had since law school began. Additionally, we'll have to miss the opera tomorrow night, which I was looking forward to.

All of my family is in good health, so these sorts of feelings are new to me. I'm filled with self-loathing about my selfish thoughts, and it bothers me mostly because I can't help but feel a little short changed.

Maybe it's partly a law school thing. I mean, I've had jobs where time off was difficult to acquire, but this isn't the same. Here, I feel that I absolutely can not leave for today or tomorrow. The decision to not be there, right now, with my wife at the hospital and picking up her Mom... that was a decision I made because I couldn't not go to class or miss a day of finishing my LARC paper.

It's an awful thing to make such choices.