Our memory is a mysterious thing. I have, along with kazillions of other people, recently gotten involved with Facebook. And here's an interesting thing that I have discovered. I knew it before, but this brought it home.
When I remember someone, I remember them as they were the last time I saw them. Not really surprising, but this includes their age. If the last time I saw you you were 8, then I would always think of you as 8, even though I KNOW that it's been 20 years since I've seen you and you can't possibly still be 8. You'd have to be like, 32, wait, that's not right. 8 + 20 = 28. Yeah. 28. That's it. You'd have to be like 28 years old. You might have gotten married and had kids or hijacked a plane or something else that normal 8 year olds don't necessarily do.
And yet there is still a bit of a surprise when I see a picture of a 28 year old that was 8 the last time I saw them. Weird, huh. I wonder why that is. And here's another thing. My Dad has a full head of hair that is completely gray now. But if you asked me to bring my Dad to mind, his hair would be sort of salt and peppery. Even though I see him nearly every year and it's been completely gray for some time now. Again, I wonder why that is.
So I'm sitting in Gary, IN right now, gonna finish this up, maybe watch some TV on Hulu and go to bed early. I'd like to be rolling about 3 or so but I'm not setting the alarm. I haven't been feeling all that well for a few weeks now and I'll wake up when my body says it's ready to wake up. My wife said though, that it would be very helpful if I was home tomorrow by 5:15. Preston has a Dr's appointment. Now get this. She says I should be home by 5:15, but his appointment is at 5:15. And it's 35 minutes away if the deer aren't running. Does she have some new form of transportation that I don't know about? Maybe one that travels at the speed of light? Maybe that's why her headlights aren't working.
The police never showed up Saturday night. I called them and told them it wasn't an emergency though so I shouldn't wonder. We had some pretty good ice in town and folks were sliding everywhere. One of said folks slid into my yard and hit the guy wire that supports the telephone pole on the street lawn. They didn't bust it, but they did pull it out of the ground a little and frayed the wire some. I figured somebody would want to know about it. Hence the call. Maybe they came after I went to bed.
Sheila and I are disappearing this weekend, so if I don't post before that I may not post again til next week. It's been too long for us to have some time together and we figured the easiest way to do that was to go away from home where nobody can bother us. We're not going far. Probably to Columbus and just getting a hotel room. We'll see. Sharing a room with two of your kids sucks, but it looks like that's about to change. You may see me walking down the street with a new spring in my step. Ok, that's it. See ya next time.

OH MY WORD!

Can we get any busier? Life has just been ridiculously busy. I seriously do not know how single parents do it. We both have been running like crazy for the past three or four weeks and it's all I can do to keep going. I get home in the afternoon, and it's run here and then there and then back over here and then...by 7 pm I'm ready for bed. Just wishing I could crash.

Haven't been feeling good lately. One of those colds and coughs that doesn't make you sick enough to stay in bed but just wears you down.

So what's new?

The door on my pickup broke...again. I've jury rigged it a number of times, and did so again this time. But I'm fairly certain this is the last time. After this comes a new door. The sheet metal where the door latch is attached is too thin and the door is so big that it rips the sheet metal after too many times shutting the door. So what's the magical number? Don't know what it is, but I hit it. In the past I was able to fix it so the door shut good and I just had to be careful about shutting it too hard. Now, it won't shut all the way. It'll latch but you get a lot more wind noise. I need someone to run into my door with their car so I can get it fixed. Any takers?

Hana just called a while ago from town and said the headlights on the van won't come on. Not sure what that's all about. We've had a problem with the dash in that van for a few months now. The van runs just fine. It's just that every now and then, the dash gauges will quit working. No speedometer, no fuel gauge, nothing. We're lucky Hana or Sheila hasn't run out of gas yet as a result. But Hana's been good about putting gas in it when she thinks it's getting low. The gauges will be off for a few days and then voila, they're back. No rhyme or reason to it. Oh well. It's paid for.

Both mine and Hana's cell phones have been eligible for upgrades for a while now but we liked the little 8300 that we both had and just hadn't upgraded yet. I've been looking at that Blackberry Storm and dreaming a little and this past week the time came. Several planets aligned for this to occur. The tax refund came back, my phone started acting up, and Verizon had a special, buy one Blackberry, get the second one free. So being the primary line on our account, I was able to get a pretty good discount for the Storm, and then got Hana one for free, which really cheered her up some from the funk she's been in since she lost her special Princess, and canceled the broadband card that I was using in my laptop while I was on the road. I can tether the Blackberry to my laptop and use that as my broadband access. So I've been trying to get the software on the computers and get it all to sync properly and figure out the tethering deal. I guess I got it working cause I'm using it right now.

And Tuesday we had two new foster kids arrive. Hopefully they will be able to be here for some time. Two brothers, nine and six. The younger is autistic and so we'll have a little bit more learning to do about how to best help him? I may be calling on you, Anne, for some tips. They seem to be pretty good kids overall, and once we get them in the school, which should be next week, things should settle down quite a bit. But the ages fit right for them to share a room with both Preston and Isaac and so it appears, let's not get our hopes up, that Sheila and I may get a room to ourselves again. Wouldn't that be nice? I am not looking forward to moving two boys into my room, Hana into their room, and Sheila and I into Hana's room, but basically, I just do what I'm told. Mostly. Why not just a two room move instead of three? I don't know either.

I think I'm going to bed. Goodnight.

Princess

My wife is not a complainer. Never has been and probably never will be. So when I ask her how her day is going, 9 out of 10 times the answer is fine or okay. So I knew something was up yesterday when I called her back in the afternoon, a couple hours from being home, and the answer I got to that question was "Not so good".

We had spoken earlier in the morning and the answer at that point was "I've had better days".

See, Princess had spent the night in the kitchen because she had been having diarrhea. Sheila thought it was over but apparently not. She woke up to about 15 puddles of diarrhea all over the kitchen floor. When we spoke, she was trying to laugh about it and not let it gag her down. I told her to try to get Princess into the vet to see if they could find the problem. Then I signed off and we went our separate ways for the day.

So when I got the "Not so good" later in the afternoon, I knew something was up. Seems Hana and Sheila had taken Princess to the vet and the news was not good. The vet said she could run a bunch of tests but from what she was seeing it appeared that the diarrhea was a side effect of the pain medication that Princess was on. It's some pretty strong stuff and everything else we've tried hasn't worked. She would spend the nights getting up and down and whining and crying, too uncomfortable to sleep. The diarrhea would not go away as her system adjusted to the meds and anything else would not help her pain.

So, my wife and my daughter, over many tears, decided that Princess was suffering more than they could justify allowing. The time had come to allow her to rest in peace.

Princess was 14 years old. She had severe arthritis, was nearly blind with cataracts and was going deaf. She had lived a good and happy life andwas a great companion to our family and my daughter in particular. We were remembering her yesterday afternoon and we got her as a puppy when Hana was 8 and in second grade. Now she's 22 and a junior in college. Princess has been right there with her all those years, except for a couple three years or so when she lived with my parents. We had moved and were unable to keep her in our rental house. But when we moved again she came home to us. Thanks Mom & Dad.

Yesterday was not so easy. Actually, yesterday was hard. This afternoon I'm supposed to go pick up her ashes. Maybe things will get easier.