If only one thing could go right..............

I am sure grateful to God that it was this. After such a difficult week, which always makes us feel more nervous when one of Tim's appts. falls around such grim times, we got the wonderful news today that
Tim is still stable. We know when the doc comes in and talks wood flooring with him(he just bought a new
place in Manhattan) that there are no worries and I rummaged through the labwork to see that all is the same
as it was in July. I told Tim before we went in that as long as he was OK, I could let go of all the rest of the
crap we dealt with this week. This is our goal: to keep Tim well, to keep me from getting sick dealing with all
this stress, and to enjoy our days as much as possible while raising our daughter together. Anyone that gets in the way of that goal, and robs us of our happiness, is not on our team. We know that
we have been given a hard road to travel. We also know that we have been blessed and seen miracles happen despite that. We want
to keep on trucking with as much optimism and laughter as we possibly can. And that, my friends, will be my
focus, from this day forward. I'm going to learn to send all the garbage floating around us right to the spam file.

Fallout pending

Thanks for the comments folks. I have been unable to figure out how to go private with this blog and add folks to an "approved list". To be honest, the reason I don't want to is that there is myeloma stuff buried in the content of this blog(mostly older posts while Tim was in treatment) and I feel that if anyone could be helped by anything written here, going private would limit not only that but also the amount of people I could "meet" in blogland who walk the same path as us. Since I am as honest as the day is long, if someone in Tim's family saw things written here, well, it's all true and judging from the stuff they said to us on Sunday, they know nothing about our lives anymore and maybe they need a dose of reality. They were given every opportunity to be involved with us, they either screwed things up for us or backed out because they had more important things to do.With few exceptions, they make no time for Tim or our family, despite his health problem. They were warned that we were not going to continue to take the father's abuse on top of all that we are dealing with. He just kept pushing it. Rules of polite society don't apply to them. There's no place for reality or personal responsibility in their world. They screw up-they look for someone to blame it on. In my mind, you cannot even call yourself a grown-up until you are capable of taking responsibility for your actions and your words. Period.


I've sucked up as much as I could to keep the peace in this family. I hit my limit a long time ago. They do not even have a clue about half the things Tim and I have been through because I wanted to spare his parents the pain of knowing what I knew. Now, the added stress of the family fights is affecting my health and my quality of life too much, as well as those of my husband and daughter. Our sister-in-law has spent close to 30 years pitting the people in this family against each other and nobody sees this for exactly what it is except Tim and I and people outside this family looking in. Well, she got her wish. She succeeded in dividing and conquering and it is really amazing what one toxic person, even one who is not too smart, can cause in a family. There are people lying, twisting facts, backstabbing, tearing others down to try to make themselves feel better about their shortcomings, blaming others for their own behavior. Tim's parents don't even know what the truth is now. Because Tim and I refused to engage in this mess or cry to his parents and defend ourselves, they have half stories from people who twist the truth and now they have put 2 & 2 together and come up with 173. Now, they are all spouting their mouthes off with incorrect information and making judgements based on all this drivel. The sis-in-law ruined a precious day for our family almost 2 years ago and after years of her insults and watching her screw over everyone in this family, we said, "enough" and now we are being blamed for breaking up the family because apparently they don't think we have the right to decide when WE
have had enough. Well, it is our right and none of them are going through what we are. They are all
welcome to play this passive-aggressive game and put up with the insults and let their kids see grandma and grandpa fight even to the point of physical injury on Christmas day. Have at it y'all. Deal us out.
 
Tim's family is a train wreck being driven by the sis-in-law with the father-in-law pushing in the caboose. Well, it looks like Tim has decided us three will take the bus for now on. What a shame that it had to come to this.
 
 
I've probably written these phrases in this blog before but they're worth repeating.
 
"Denise, never argue with someone who is dead wrong. It's a complete waste of time"  my Dad
 
"Argue with an idiot, now you have two" my sister Cathy
 
"When people show you who they are, believe them."  Maya Angelou
 
That last one is a lesson I wish I had learned a long time ago.

It happened

Well, today, my father-in-law finally broke this camel's back.
We went up there to see family friends who were up from NC and with a few beers in him, he decided to
insult me AGAIN in front of people. As a matter of fact, he's done it in front of this man before. Both I and Timmy have warned him that we'd had enough of the insults and nastiness. I grabbed my purse, told him he really needed to learn to shut his mouth and stormed out. Thus began a family fight with
my kid crying in the car, and me going back and forth into the house trying to get Tim out of there as I had one of Liv's friends being dropped off at my house for a youth group outing I was taking them to. I knew this
was bound to happen sooner or later and get this. Somehow my father-in-law got it into his head that I told
off the neighbor for the firework incident back in July and now we're not on speaking terms. Hmmm. I never said a word to them. Tim did and it was all settled. As a matter of fact, the neighbor was just over my house
yesterday to ask if I wanted to buy a raffle ticket for the fire dept. We all get along just fine. My f-i-l tells me that I am stupid because
I was not on speaking terms with someone. It was said with a whole lot of venom and accusation, believe me.  I thought he was talking about the s-i-l thing. He claims no, that
he was talking about the neighbor. Either way, I said that was none of his business anyway. So it all blew up.
Tim told him he had totally wrong information and that what he just accused me of, NEVER happened. Tim's sister was there crying and yelling and apparently, despite what the s-i-l and f-i-l have done, and the fact that my f-i-l has lost most of their friends because they've all had it with his mouth, and everyone can't believe what the s-i-l did to us, Tim's sis said WE are breaking up
the family because we don't suck it up. She says the s-i-l has done things to her too but she deals with it for the sake of the family. I said, you are not living our life and what she did to us was totally different from your experiences. Tim said, "WHY DO WE HVE TO DEAL WITH HER CRAP AT ALL?" He told them, "I don't even know how long I have on this earth and I have to put up with that!!" What a mess. It's far too long to get all into but I always knew this was going to happen and
that my poor kid would wind up with a front row seat. They just don't get it. I told his dad, "your behavior
does not reflect on me. You think your insults make ME look bad, when I have 3 of your friends tell me that they can't believe how you speak to me?!" He tried to say he
was kidding but just like the s-i-l, he wasn't. You should have heard the tone in his voice. Passive aggression is still aggression, they just don't want to be held responsible for it when someone calls them out. Everyone knows he's not kidding. He's just miserable and makes everyone around him miserable too. He and the sis-in-law have the same problem and they think they can just go through life getting all this stuff off their chest but DON'T DARE say anything to them.  Anyway, I am thinking of taking this blog private. I hesitate to do this
because the people I know in the MM blogland mean the world to me and I do not want to lose touch with any of you. So PLEASE if I do take this private, put in a request or however it's done. I will set up access to
all those I can, if that's how it works, but I hope that I will not lose contact with any of you. As I've said in the past, I don't share my blog with our families. It's my place to vent without feeling the need to explain myself. But just in case any of them have stumbled upon it, I may need to go the private route. Ugh what a disaster. Some people never learn. And the biggest sin of all, is that my husband, and our family, has been let down by almost everyone in his family time and time again since his cancer diagnosis and you would think that it would be just the opposite and they would be there for him, and us.
I tell you, with all honesty, that it is a disappointment that I don't think we will ever recover from.
Just in time for the holidays. Yippee!

De-cluttering at its best

We've just done 2 days of yard selling. It went well. My older sister came and brought a truckload of
items and we made about $700.00. And if you saw how reasonable our prices were, then
you would know we moved a lot of clutter to get to that amount. For now, I packed what is left on my porch and after all the work
of getting it down from the attic and up from the basement, I may do 1 more day of this, weather permitting,
this coming Friday.  I got a real "leg up" on cleaning out that spare room and I am on my
way to making it a cozy office so MAYBE I can be better about my filing and paperwork instead of making
things so much harder on myself by not being organized. I've really been bad about letting things get away from me around here. I feel like I'm always overwhelmed with paperwork and such and I just dread some
of these tasks so much that I procrastinate. I did look up that flylady.com that Christina mentioned on my
last post and I am definitely going to start using that site to help me out. I really do need to do the baby steps method that she talks about since my free time is so fragmented and I seem so darn A.D.D.-ish these days.
I believe, without any doubt, that it is hard to relax and clear your head in a cluttered environment and I think
I'm ready to become a minimalist for this very reason. We really need so little but we surround ourselves with so darn much. Getting rid of things is much more my angle these days. Now if I could just get the 2 cr** collectors I live with to get on board. Oh and on a totally different subject, there is a man that owns
a stationary store in my town. Everytime I go in there, he looks like he just lost his best friend. I've never seen anyone radiate misery more than this man. So, I struck up a conversation with him after he got off the telephone in an irritated manner. After a few innocent conversation starters, I said, "you're not very happy, are you?" At this point, keeping in mind I live in Jersey, I thought this guy might tell me right off, but he said, "No, I'm not happy. The things customers do and say around here gets to me and I'm just not one to shake it off. I hate what I do but I'm stuck here." I said, "no, you're not, don't say that to yourself. You can find a whole new career if you want and as long as you have your health, nothing stands in your way. And besides, that's their issues. It's not your fault people are impatient and rude." He nodded and we taked about living in this area. Then,he told me about his mother's cancer. I told him about Tim's. Then he told me that a woman he met in Amsterdam and became great friends with, was attacked by a man who stabbed her 10 times. She lived but is paralyzed from the waste down. Then, there was this little girl dying of brain cancer in the next town. Her story had been in the papers. Turns out this was his good friend's daughter and the first baby he had ever held. His friend came into the store a few weeks ago to tell him she had died. This man's friends were all dealing with such tragedies and this guy too was in a bad place. He really had a lot to be sad about.
I told him that I know of similar cancer stories about kids and I don't know how you recover from that, as a parent, but I told this guy that he has to stop carrying all this around on his back. He has to be grateful for whatever is going good in his life, (his mom is fine now) and carry on. I told him that I don't know how but my husband goes to work each day with a smile and he has cancer. I'm not trying to minimize anyone's troubles but I do tell people, if you have your health, you have the world by the "you know whats." Everything else is fixable and changeable if you're miserable about it. Not easily maybe, but do-able. And SMILE for Pete sake!!! He told me he was going to Paris and I think he hoped this vacation would help him get his groove back. I know where this guy is. We live in a difficult area. If you've read my blog awhile, then
you know I get sick of living here, a lot. But, just when I've really had my fill, someone pops up and does something nice for me and restores my faith. I don't claim I did anything earth moving for this guy, but I hope
our talk had some effect, even if just showing him that even a stranger gives a hoot that he is sad. He thanked me and I wished him a good vacation. If you're living with cancer within your home, then you probably know the feeling of watching people kind of throw their lives away when they have SO much going
for them. I remember whining about my job years ago. Now, I wish that my biggest problem was a jerky boss. I didn't know what real problems were. I do now. And somehow, I smile and get on with it. It may not always be this way, but I'm trying to be a positive influence on those around me instead of bringing them down. It is just too exhausting and depressing to walk around thinking about everything that is
wrong all the time. I try to enjoy the things that are going good. And today was a good day, starting off with
watching Liv's soccer team win another game(they're undefeated). Liv has scored in every game and I just love watching kids' sports. My sisters and parents were here today and we laughed our fool heads off on the front porch on a gorgeous fall day. Small blip. Mom got bit by a bee but the good thing was that it had just landed on my dad's..............um.............."situation" and I warned him just in time so although it then flew over and bit mom when he shooed it away, at least I spared Dad a swollen, stinging situation on his "situation." Always these little silver linings. ;o)

Help I am drowning in a sea of STUFF

Well, it's that time again. Time for the yard sale. I have been wanting to turn my spare room into an office
for years and it simply must be done now. First, I have to clear out the cr**. I have a hard time doing this job. I keep stopping in frustration. There is just too much stuff crammed into our house. I start getting angry
at all the wasted money (things our daughter just HAD to have and then never wore or played with) as well
as my husband's inability to let go of things.( I can EBAY those Evel Knievel things and make some money) We've got antiques he bought saying he would refinish them and he never did . We have boxes of  old Car and Driver and 4-Wheeler magazines. There is just no way of organizing the sheer volume of things we have into this house. Yesterday, Tim snottily told me, "I don't want anything to do with this sale. You're on your own, I'm busy." I said, "well, aren't you a delight?" I guess it's a darn good thing for him that I don't ever say I can't be bothered doing anything for him, he's on his own. I set him straight but really feel like getting rid of all his junk clogging up our basement, attic, & spare room. You don't want to be involved, fine, I will decide what belongings of yours stay or go. How's that?!  He knows I would never do that but boy, sometimes my conscience really gets in the way of progress!  Being sentimental is one thing
but there comes a time that you have to let go. I wish sometimes that I could be like those people who throw
everything out. I just think it's so wasteful when someone can use it. I've got clothes of Olivia's that have tags on them still and toys she never played with. I think it's a waste putting clothes in the charity bins because
they never get picked up so they get ruined by mold and varmints and why throw perfectly good toys in the trash. In this economy, buying these things for a buck or two is a big help to some families. You literally cannot give the stuff away. I've tried. Organizations will not take toys because people unload trash on them instead of clean, usable toys and games. Day care places, family aid places, none of them take anything. What a shame. So it's back to work sorting and pricing for me. That's the easy part, it's the climbing up and down 2 flights of stairs with asthma that is getting me. Oh, to be young and fit again and have great
lung capacity. Wouldn't that be luverly?

Are we all mediums?

Today, I was excited to go to a lecture given by a "medium." Actually, he admitted he's an extra large.BA-DUM-BUM. True to form, Olivia woke up in the wee hours with what seemed to be the stomach bug. AARRRGGGHHHH! I missed a rare talk and Q & A by Tim's doc because of this same thing some time ago. That kid has timing. Anyway,
she felt fine ever since that 4 am spewing session and this library was only 2 miles from home. I asked if
she felt well enough for me to go and she said yes. With the phone on vibrate, and sneaking in a text or 2, I went and I am SOOOOO glad. The newspaper printed the wrong time so unfortunately, we had to wait a half hour to start for those who had the right time, but I struck up a conversation with the guy and that made the wait worthwhile. He is very nice. I have had a lot of things happen in my life that were a bit, how shall we say, psychic, weird, unexplained, spooky, crazy....take your pick.   But some of them are just too much to consider coincidence. As it turns out, this guy wrote several books about ghosts in Cape May and started the trolley ghost tours of that town. I've gone to Cape May since I was a young kid. I've toured or seen these old estates that he showed on his slides. I've seen his books in stores down in Cape May and bought one today that he signed. For those of you who are not familiar, Cape May is the oldest seashore resort in the USA. Most of the buildings there are from the 1700's. There was a huge fire that wiped out a lot of the ones on the main drag and so a lot of them are from the 1800's too, when that was rebuilt. It is located at the southeastern tip of NJ and a popular family getaway down "the shore." We love it there and go every year. We even re-did our house to look victorian due to our love of that era and Cape May. Turns out this guy is even friends with the woman who owned and painted our favorite place down there and inspired the colors we used on our house. Small world. It was really interesting listening to him today. His name is Craig McManus. He has a website of the same name.  It also made me think A LOT about the odd things that have happened to me in my life because they happen just as he described they happen to him. I know I am not a medium for sure, but I have had many weird experiences that lead me to believe I'm just slightly sensitive to things of this sort, or crazy. I have the typical things that a lot of people have, and he mentioned. You think of someone you haven't seen or heard from in a long time and the phone rings seconds later and it's them. Or you bump into them the night after you had a dream about them. I've had many dreams come true the next day or week. I've gotten into a habit of telling Tim things sometimes so that if/when it comes true, well, I don't know, it's kinda like documenting it to myself. Way back, when I was friendly with Tim's sister-in-law, she was pregnant with her third child. After 2 boys, she wanted a girl badly but did not find out ahead of time what she was having. Just before her due date, I had
a very vivid dream that she had a girl(not such a feat, it is a 50/50 shot) but I dreamed the baby had a head full of the brightest hue of auburn hair. I called Lee-Ann the next morning and told her about my dream. She just laughed. She and Tim's brother are blondes and both of their boys were born with blonde hair.She said,"I hope you're right about the girl part but there's no way we'd ever have a kid with auburn hair." Well, darned if that baby was not born a few days later with a mass of the exact, vibrant shade of auburn hair in my dream. There is NOBODY in their families who has auburn, or even red, hair. Meg eventually turned blonde but that was some crazy thing. Then there was the time I stayed at a friend's bed and breakfast in Mass. Our first trip there, we stayed on the 3rd floor. I kept telling Tim there was a ghost or something on that floor. One time, I was alone in the hall and got a strong whiff of perfume. Another day, I could not even bring myself to walk up the stairs to my room alone because I felt this presence was standing right at the top of the stairs looking down at me. I felt someone around me everytime I went up there. It was years later that our friends told us that they had several psychics/mediums stay there over the years and tell them they had a ghost on that floor and our friend's cat refused to go on that level of the inn the whole time they lived there.This guy today said that many times ghosts are on top floors as they tend to stay away from where the living people are all the time. Another crazy thing that happened was when Tim's grandmother died. She was going in for what we thought was going to be an hour long surgery. She was 94 so her age made it dangerous, though it was not supposed to be that risky. Tim and I were very close to her. She was scheduled to have surgery at 5 pm. Tim was getting home from work about 2 and we planned to go to the hospital then and wait with her. That morning, I had a vet appt. with Sophie and my sister was coming with me to help. Sophie hated the vet and was strong as an ox. I was running late and had a 10 am appt. Lori was here and it was past time to leave, but for some reason, I had this overwhelming feeling that I had to call Grandma. I felt like something was not letting me walk out the door until I did. I thought, "oh this is ridiculous, I'm late!" but I could not stop the feeling. So I grabbed the phone and called. I told her Tim and I would be there later to wait with her. The last thing I said to her was, "we love you." I hung up and ran off to the vet. Turns out, 10 or 15 minutes after I called, they took her to surgery. She did not survive it. I was the last person to speak to her alive. Later, when Tim got home, I had not heard anything. There were complications and the surgery took hours. I had this feeling she was about to pass over and we raced to the hospital. We got there just when a doctor came out to say her heart had taken on a bad rhythm and a few minutes later, the surgeon came out to say she was gone.
My heart went into such a tachycardia right then, I thought I would be next. What an awful day that was. Just a few months before Tim was dx'ed with MM, his sis-in-law went to a psychic.The person was right on about a bunch of things, even named a lot of her dead relatives, and then told her, "tell Tim that Lois says hello." Lois is Tim's grandmother. I didn't know this until after his grandmother died but Lois is Timothy's grandmother in the bible too.
When Tim's other grandmother died, she was staying in Oregon with Tim's aunt for 6 months. She stayed 6 months with Tim's mom and dad, and then went to her other daughter for half the year. One day, I felt sick quite suddenly. Then this overwhelming feeling of dread came over me. Then she popped into my mind. Tim came home from work and I told him that I thought something was wrong with Grandma. It turns out, at the  time this feeling came over me, including the time difference, she fell ill and they had to rush her to the hospital. She died shortly afterward from the illness that overtook her that day. I spoke to his aunt and she said that was the exact time it happened. Very strange. This guy today said that someone's passing can definitely make you more sensitive to this type of thing. He feels we have our loved ones around us all the time guiding us. I wish I could feel that more but he says that if you open yourself up to it, you can become more aware of it. Not surprisingly, there were mostly women there today. I said, "I'll bet that's common with your talks" and he said definitely and that men can be less open to things like this. I've met more women than men who get these gut feelings and little visions but then again, maybe men do just as much but are not prone to speak of it much. I met this guy once whose wife is pretty psychic and his standard answer to it is, "you're all witches!"  Just wish I had the guts to sport that bumper sticker that says, "my other ride is a broom." I saw this great idea for one on facebook the other day. It said, "Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet him."  Anyway, any of y'all have any psychic stories? Right now, I think I see a chocolate bar in my future. ;o)

The art of functional denial

A few years ago, a man whose son has neuroblastoma posted a question on the MM listserv I read, and
I have followed this man's blog about his son and family ever since. Now, while our situation seems like a
nightmare, I don't for a second think it comes close to the pain of having a child with an incurable cancer.
I remember, very vividly, the day Olivia was rushed to an emergency sonagram at 3 y.o. to rule out a mass  on her kidney when she started urinating blood. I BEGGED God to spare her and if one of us had to have cancer, make it me and not her.
I do find myself in a bit of a similar position as this man though, in that his child has defied the odds and had a very long stable period, as Tim has as well. We are both in a holding pattern and trying to live as normally as possible despite cancer looming in our lives. He blogged about his really tough past weekend. His dog is dying of cancer and another boy with NB has died. It's so hard not to think about
what lay ahead for his child and family when these reminders come punching through. I spoke to my therapist recently about Tim's attitude as well as my own and she used the phrase, "functional denial." She went on to say that we all know we're going to die someday, but
there is a part of us that doesn't truly believe it or think it will happen for SO long, that we're able to avoid thinking about it enough to go about our merry way.When you have cancer, and one that is not cured at a high rate, one way to deal with it is to use denial to get through the day. As a spouse, this is what I do and Tim relies on it heavily. You have to function so you try to forget what is happening.  I "put off" thinking about it.I cling mightily to the things that are positive and try to force the negatives from my thoughts. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect science. There are constant reminders of what is really going on in your life. Oct., being breast cancer awareness month, is a biggie. Seeing others with cancer do poorly, hits way too close to home. My therapist just tells me I "can't go there" when I start thinking of what our future might hold. It's impossible not to sometimes. I've thought a lot about why I do this. I guess the real reason is obvious, Fear. But I also think that you feel you are preparing yourself in some way. The problem with that is it's delusional. There is no way to prepare for what you don't know. There is no way to prepare for losing someone. And, as you go through these horrific scenerios in your head of what the end might be like, you are making yourself live through the grief and misery of something that is NOT happening now and indeed may not happen anywhere's close to what you are imagining. As one MM wife said once, "there will be plenty of time for weeping and wailing later."  There is a time for everything. We have to try not to grieve for a person who is alive. As a caregiver, I've got to do my best to live each moment with as much joy as I can possibly muster for as long as I can for Tim's sake, Olivia's and my own. I remind myself, "don't borrow grief from the future." Or to quote my sister again, "jump off that bridge when you get to it."
There's a Bon Jovi song that goes, "it's my life, it's now or never, I ain't gonna live forever, I just wanna live while I'm alive." And as far as dying goes, I won't pretend that I know what Tim thinks and feels in those dark moments. I've had plenty of bad health scares in my life but it's not nearly the same as what he is dealing with. There are a few things that give me a modicum of peace when I think about dying. I had an uncle who died of a massive heart attack as my aunt was pulling into a hospital parking lot with him. She ran in the ER door screaming for help and went to the car and did CPR until they were able to "paddle" him back to life. He made her promise NEVER to have him revived again no matter what. He said, "the dying was the easy part, it was the coming back that was so hard." Now please don't think I am making light of this in any way, but he is the only person I know personally who has died and come back and I will never forget that he said that.
Also, there was the time I saw a woman on Oprah who was dying of breast cancer. She was making videos for her daughter to watch as she got older and came to certain milestones in her life. She told her about boys,make-up and everything she wanted to tell her, on those tapes, before she died. She said that the best thing that had happened to her was that she had gone into cardiac arrest at one point in her journey and had been revived. She had seen the other side and now lived with absolutely no fear of dying. She knew she'd be OK and her kid and husband would be too. She was actually grateful it had happened because it totally changed how she was able to live the rest of her time here. She was at peace and not afraid. What a blessing to have no fear  . After Tim was diagnosed, I found myself reading up on things like this. I was reading anything I could get my hands on about dealing with tragedy and, yes, even dying. It didn't help much but I did read one book  that made an impact on me. "Embraced by the Light." It was a short book about a woman who had died, for quite a bit of time too, and come back to life. Her doctor, if I recall, even wrote something for this book because he had never witnessed someone be gone for that long and come back. It was a documented case and not just a momentary thing. She wrote about her experience and I found it pretty helpful to read. I wonder sometimes why God would allow people to be so fearful of death. I mean, really, it can be so overwhelming and really keep us from living fully at times. Maybe we're not supposed to be and it's just us, but it sure seems like it would have all been designed a bit better if we were not supposed to be afraid. The only answer I have ever come up with that makes even the slightest bit of sense to me is that if we were not, we would not value our life as much and see it for the gift that it is meant to be. If we all knew, without any doubt, how marvelous it was to be in Heaven, we'd probably off ourselves at the first sign of difficulty here on earth. The not knowing is where faith comes in. We're asked to believe without proof. It is my own personal belief though that there are some people who really are mediums. I'm not talking about those 1-800 number deals. I mean people who really do have this ability, some having been studied and tested. I think God put them here to remind us of what he promised. That dying is not the end. I'm actually going to a lecture on Friday that will be given by a medium. As always, I'm a bit skeptical, but we'll see if he seems legit. Anyhow, sorry for the serious subject matter. Reading this man's blog always makes me ask those "why" questions and then try harder to live for today. If he and his family can do it, I've got no excuse not to.

Animals in church and a multi blog hello.

First I want to say, in case any of these folks stop by, that I am having computer problems again and there are several blogs that I cannot leave comments on. Being the computer illiterate that I am, I don't have a clue
why this happens but want these messages to get through somehow. SEAN, I want you to know I am praying for you and will be sending lots of thoughts your way as you have your allo. I included yours and Paula's name, along with some others, as I often do, in our church prayers today and a church full of devout Lutherans prayed for you all today. Deb. I have been keeping up with your blog. I'm glad to hear your strength is coming back. Sorry
I haven't been able to comment with any words of support. There are a few others I'm having trouble with so if you haven't heard from me, it's this darned computer stuff again. I'm still following along.
Speaking of church, the little Episcopal church on the corner had their annual blessing of the animals service today. Usually, they just have this outdoors and bless the animals one by one after a brief little service. Today, they invited a bunch of animal rescue places and other vendors to set up tables and made it a whole afternoon "paws fest." We took Lacey and spent a bit of time there. Then they had the service INSIDE the church. I thought, "you're kidding, right?!" Nope, there were bulldogs sitting on pews and cats and even a huge tortoise named Soupy, who lives at our town pet store, came to get blessed.
There had to be close to 200 people there and dogs everywhere. A fight even broke out in the main aisle
as the pets formed 2 lines to be blessed by the pastors. One siberian husky started howling/singing when the
opening song was sung. It was CRAZY. But the best part is the woman who walked in with the duck. She
sat right down front and the pastor had a hard time keeping from laughing as you heard QUAAAACK, quack, quack, quack, QUAAAAACK, quack, quack while he did the service. SO damn funny. Between all the pups she met and the treats that were handed out, Lacey had a ball. I wish that I'd brought my video camera. It was surreal to see this church just packed with animals. I'm sure glad I was not on the clean-up crew.