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Procrastination is my middle name.

First the shameless and gratuitous display of the cutest baby I know and the new mom that I am so very proud of.










I kept telling myself that I would write again a little later.....apparently, a little later is over a month for me. Things have been busy in my medically dominated life. I have had 3 treatments in the drug trial. I get very sleepy for a day or two after the treatment but I don't think I can tell any difference yet. Only time will tell.

I took Sinfully Chocolate Brownies to the the staff at the clinic for my last treatment. Working in a doctor's office, I know that the best afternoon pick me up in the world for an office of estrogen is chocolate. They are all very nice, but it never hurts to butter up the ones that are starting an IV in your arm.:>

I've had a deja vu epiphany, maybe more of a recurring epiphany, maybe I just like the word epiphany. A friend sent me a slide show presentation of Erma Bombeck's words on "If I Had My Life to Live Over "at http://www.andiesisle.com/ifihadmylifetoliveover.hs.htm

It is so easy to get lost in real life and forget the important things. Sometimes, despite my best efforts, I get caught up in the pain and with the medications and doctor's visits that can easily dominate my life. Erma has always been my hero. When my mom first got one of her books, we made her go read in the other end of the house because she was laughing so hard, we could hear the TV. When I got married and had kids, her books took on special meaning to me. They were not just amusing anecdotes they were a road map of how to squeeze enjoyment out of any family situation.

As I've mentioned, our family creed would read: We don't just embrace insanity, we feel it up, French kiss it and buy it a drink. Life is so much better finding the giggles of a situation, no matter how dire. We kind of look upon it as a challenge, one of us is bound to find the humor in any situation. The trick is not to get caught giggling at an inappropriate time in front of the staid and dour masses. This trait makes our family like a club, outsiders envy our rapport but they have no idea that our collective sanity was forfeited long ago.

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.

Smother Mother

My skills as a Smother Mother are about to be tested. My oldest daughter, Kelci, is leaving next week, with MY grandson to join her husband in Iowa, while he works for a couple of months. I haven't even got a leg to stand on. Her dad won a scholarship to study architecture in Europe for 7 months. We left when she was 8 months old and came back the night before Thanksgiving when she was 15 months old. It was in 1985 and terrorism was happening all over Europe. We were at places that blew up within 2 days of us being there, three different times. We arrived in Rome right after the Achilles Lauro had been hijacked the Italian government had collapsed. There were soldiers with machine guns at intersections and when my ex asked one for directions, I knew it was time to go home to Oklahoma....Yep, putting her grandparents through that kind of torture is really coming back to haunt me.

We did get both sets of grandparents to come over and visit us. There is nothing like strolling through the red light district in Amsterdam,with your in-laws. Below is Kelci and me in St.Mark's Square, Venice, Italy, 1985.

RJ spent the morning with me, the afternoon with his Great-Grandma Renee then the evening with me while his mother was taking some engagement pictures for some friends. Grandpa Ed walked by and started talking to him and RJ grabbed his finger in delight at the sound of a male voice and the comfort that there was still testosterone in the world. Being the first boy in 3 generations is a lot of pressure for the little guy, I think he is in danger of estrogen toxicity.

Hannah and Jason's engagement pictures turned out beautiful. Kelci is spreading her wings as a photographer and soaring.