If you think I flunk tests, you should meet my friend, Linda, she flunked out of hospice...she's my hero.

It's never good to get a call from your doctors office on a Sunday and it is usually never good to flunk lab tests.....unless it's me. Rhonda, the nurse in charge of the LymphoStat-B drug trials at my Rheumatologist's, called this afternoon to let me know that I had been accepted into the test group. Apparently I flunked enough of my lab tests to show that my lupus is active enough to be included. I am going to go to Tulsa on Tuesday to take the first treatment. Ironically, yesterday I had one of the best days in a long time. So good, that I called my mom to tell her I was feeling normal, that gave her a chuckle. Normal is such a subjective term and boy can we be subjective in my family.

RJ's first day in Iowa, "Where the he** am I? I went to sleep in Oklahoma!"

35hrs 51min 23sec...Okay, maybe I've noticed how long my favorite firstborn daughter, grandson and son-in-law have been gone. I can't go cold turkey, we talked 4 times today and have exchanged picture messages on our cell phones. Of course then I had to talk to my mom and sister each time to update them and I forwarded the picture messages on to everyone I could think of.

Empty nest is a bummer and I still have a chick at home. By the time my favorite youngest daughter leaves for college next year, I will have been a mom with a child at home for 24 years. That is more than half my lifetime. Actually, I think I have done pretty well, no big crying jags, but I did make my husband change the channel on the tv when he stopped channel surfing to watch Cold Mountain. It was at the part where soldiers raided a farm and pulled a young mother and her baby out of the house and laid the baby on the ground in the cold with out a blanket to die. THAT was not what I wanted to see yesterday.

Life's little ironies can take on a life of their own, like the time that we went to Estes Park, Colorado. We stayed in an old hotel that was in the process of being renovated into condo's. It was halfway up the mountain looking across from another old hotel called The Stanley on the other side of the valley. I had read up on our vacation destination and knew that Stephen King had stayed at The Stanley at the end of the busy season and was so taken with the feeling of isolation that he penned The Shining. We were there between busy seasons too and were the only people staying in the entire hotel, even the innkeepers lived in a separate house. I have never been big on sleeping so after everyone went to bed, I stayed up to enjoy the peace and quiet after several hours in a small car with two small children. My plan was to read and watch the news and relax. A local story caught my attention about a man who 20 years before, had killed some campers in the area and had just escaped from prison......Turning the tv off, I sat in the quiet and noticed something that I hadn't before....this building made a lot of noise. The wind whistled outside, there were creaks and thumps and I, being of sound mind, turned on every light in the place and sat across the room from the windows so I could watch them and the door. This wasn't the first or the last time that I stood watch because of real or imagined case of the 'fraidies.

If you have to spend the night in ER, I'm your girl, if you are up all night, having a nervous breakdown or have a child that is sick, I'm your girl....if you need someone up at 7am to go somewhere with you....call someone who cares.:> It's not that I am a night person by default, I truly enjoy from 10pm to 4am. I can be barely dragging through the day but come 10:00pm and I am wide awake.

RJ's Adventure is about to begin and I am not going to cry...yeah right.

I've promised myself that I won't cry, it would be selfish. I know that they will be just fine. I did it, I lived in Europe, Grand Prairie, Texas and Kansas City, all hours away from family. I have even greater faith in my daughter and her husband, that they will handle every speed bump that life throws at them. Lil' Pumpkin is spending the night with us, while his parents pack up 2 years of marriage. Not an easy job but especially difficult since they have to divide it between their new and hopefully few months in Iowa and the rest of their household that will go into storage here. I hate to go to sleep and miss a minute of him.

Imagine 2 cats, one Irish Setter puppy and a baby in an SUV for 10 hours...Adventure is the only word for it.




Gunner is going to be a great friend for RJ,once he grows into his feet. Right now he is all legs and about as graceful as a giraffe on ice, but he is a bundle of love.



Cricket, the Tortie and Kona Bean are uniquely qualified to raise RJ, they already love his mom and they are training Gunner to be tolerable. They say that people worshiped cats in ancient times. The people forgot but the cats never did.

The hardest years of my life were in college and I couldn't have a pet. My little fighting fish, Arthur, was beautiful and I did talk to him, but he didn't have much of a cuddle factor. I picked up a lot of strays and ended up keeping an Irish Setter that I named Cassie. She was the gentlest dog I have ever known. Kelci doesn't remember her but Cassie was her first guardian angel.