Flying High

This is me and The Boy getting ready to skydive indoors. The company is called iFly, and I did this on my 60th birthday to celebrate.

One needs to do something on one's significant birthdays to make sure life is indeed in the vessel still. Contrary to popular opinion, life was found.

It was the most fun I've had in years.

Since technology is not my friend, I can't post the actual flight. Rest assured it was worth every penny. Many thanks to The Girl for providing the opportunity!

If you ever want to try it out for yourself, you can go here to make it happen.

Next year I may try the real thing!

What's for Dinner?

Around our house, it's a constant fight to get someone...ANYONE...to decide what we're going to eat for the evening meal.

It's become quite the game. The first one to ask "What's for dinner?" wins. 

I have gone to the extreme of making a list, something I am loathe to do. On it are all the dishes I have ever prepared for my family. I left the ones they didn't like off of the list. All one of them has to do is go to the list, pick out ONE THING they like, and tell me what it is. 

ONE THING.

Instead, I find myself in front of the refrigerator, looking at the list and naming things off for them to disapprove. 

"Not THAT."

"I'm not FEELIN' that."

"What else is there?"

I tried coming up with a menu for the week, without input from the rest of the crowd. However, this meant I had to make another LIST (see LOATHE above). While it helped in the short term, it quickly failed.

I am nothing, if not disorganized and undependable.

This morning I made the Executive Decision all by myself. BBQ chicken in the crockpot.

I called Hubster and informed him of what to do and when. It's in his ballpark now.

Thursday

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Mark Twain

Indeed.

It has been a while since I have visited this blog. I could make excuses, but what it comes down to is this:  I hate cancer and all the things that surround it.

No, I am not afflicted. However, I am affected.

I have this friend who is fighting, and fighting hard. The chemo has taken her from a robust, sassy, spit-in-the-face-of-adversity type to someone who, quite frankly, looks like a walking skeleton. She props herself on a cane to walk, and suffers from almost constant mouth sores, which keep her from eating anything substantial.

She is living what I fear most.

My friend Mikey also suffered from cancer. He had close to a year after his diagnosis. A year filled with chemo and no hair and pain and watching his family watch him die.

That last is the hardest part, I think. Knowing that your family knows what you are going through, and knowing there is no way to keep them from feeling the pain. Watching them try to keep happy and upbeat for you, when they know it's all a lie.

I try to do what I can for my friend. The days she is able to work, I bring her a protein-packed smoothie for breakfast. Some days she requests strawberry/banana; others she wants something to soothe the sores as it goes down. She has a positive mindset through all of it; the "treatments" and the low energy and the sores and the pain.

She's a much better person than I could ever be.

Cancer Sucks

My friend Mary is having a hard time with the chemo.

This is the second time she's had it, and she says it does not improve with age. She has so many sores in her mouth she can't eat. Her normal laid-back style of walking has slowed, and she's losing so much weight it's hard to look at her. She says her hair is "loosening up" and she expects to buzz it off this weekend.

Yesterday, I got a smoothy from the Edible Arrangements store close to the building. She had asked for strawberry-banana.  When I checked with her later in the day, it was almost gone. I will look into protein powder and ask them to add it to her smoothy next time.

She has been very positive this time out. She trusts God to bring her through it, and she won't take no for an answer.

If any of you know of some small things I could do for her, would you please let me know?

Spring Cleaning

It is a bright and sunny day!

Yesterday, it seems, was World Naked Gardening Day.  I'm sure many of you participated, and I do hope you wore adequate sunscreen.  Ticks, chiggers, and skeeters seem to be out in full force this year, so I certainly feel for you if you didn't add a little Avon Skin-So-Soft or another bug repellent to your pre-naked-gardening ritual.

At work, things have improved.  The carpet is dry upstairs, at least for the moment.  Rain is predicted tonight, so we'll see where that lands us in the morning.  The termites have taken a bye on swarming today, and the water is (mostly) gone from the basement.  I am thinking about turning it into an indoor swimming pool instead of trying to repair and rejuvenate it. 

Hubster, of course, has other plans. He wants to remove the detritus from the basement and put it into the garage, displacing our vehicles for an unknown period of time. After hauling All the Junk up the stairs, he then wants to rent a dumpster to load all of it into, if one dumpster will indeed hold it all.

This sounds good in premise, but I worry about what it will look like in reality.

You see, we are the very same people who decided to remodel a bathroom by ourselves. When we got to the point where all the tiling and vinyl flooring was done and the mirror was up, we were so tired from it all we couldn't lift a hand to do anything more.

And so it was our bathroom remained unpainted and without curtains or shades for nigh unto a year.

Yes, a whole year.

It is for this reason I see our double-car garage being stuffed to the gills with junk for months and months, and even more months. Our history precludes any other fate.

But hey, IT'S SPRING! New things happen all the time in Spring!

But new things being done by old people?

Somehow I have my doubts.