Friday...March 16th


I have very mixed up emotions today....

Today is our anniversary. 22 years and counting. If you can believe this, I have been married to Paulie for three times the number of years as both his previous, numbers one and two. I win. Gosh, where has all the time gone? Zack is 21 and just about on his own. (Pffft! to those of you who are counting backwards on your fingers....!) We are going back to Illinois to sell the house and have already reconciled ourselves to the fact we may come out with little or no profits. College costs and the early retirement scenario with the in laws has depleted the equity we would have recovered at sale time. Neither Paul or I have any regrets. The cost of nursing care for Catherine would have been over $110K if we had not put the addition on the house. And, after being in the nursing home for various times during her last months convinced me the care she received from her family, at home, in her own bed, was far superior to any she would have gotten in a nursing home. We made the decision to spend the money on the addition, fully aware that we would not get it out of the house. If there is one thing I would say "if I could do over...." it would have been to have stayed put and not moved around from house to house as many times as we did. I am not regretting it, we did what we did at those times because it was the best decision we could have made then, at that particular point in time. The old saying, hindsight is 20-20 is true. But if we had not made the changes we did when we did, we might not be going in the direction we are headed....wintering in the warm Rio Grand Valley with Gene, and planning to travel for the rest of the year. I am happy we will be able to do what we have dreamed of doing...roaming around the continent(!) in our Aluminum Asylum.

I am also grieving today. Paul and I lost a wonderful friend. Gay Leezer from our FMCA group, the Cenois Prairielanders, lost her battle with cancer. A lovely woman with a brave spirit and loving heart, she will be missed by all. Gay always had a smiling face and a twinkle in her eye. She had class and warmth, a quick wit and a practical candor about life that was typically Midwestern farm country. IF I had to chose someone to serve as a substitute mother if mine wasn't around to seek advice, Gay would be one I'd turn to. She was a wonderful cook and I think the entire club would have followed her to the ends of the earth for a sample of her cobblers...or anything that came out of her kitchen. She could produce miracles in that motorhome kitchen. My heart hurts for her husband Bud...they were married many many years. Rest peacefully dear Gay, we will miss you terribly. I will miss sitting with you around the campfire or at the Red Hat tea table and talking about anything that crossed our minds and there was never a time that I didn't learn something from you during these conversations. I shall cherish my memories.


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Wifi has reportedly been fixed. Baloney. It is spotty at best. Sorry I haven't written earlier but it is very frustrating to get a whole page written and then lose the connection. Whamo...there goes the time I spent wording my blog just right or coming up with something humorous about toenails. I should go back writing daily on my 'puter's Word, but I tend to get lazy...all I have to do is cut and paste. But, I hate the spell check on Word...why should that damm program worry about me making up my own words or if my sentence is a fragment or not grammatically correct. The only one I know reading this (and I am sure he doesn't) that is almost qualified to judge my grammar is Zack the English BA in the making. I recall in the Dilbert comic strip, the janitor is complaining to Dilbert that janitors were being fired and engineers were getting raises...Dilbert's response was "who told you that you'd find a job with a BA in English?". For some reason that cartoon made me laugh my butt off. At the time I thought of someone who had a BA in Political Science...it was funny then and still funny now, to me at least.

Well, the dish guy is here to switch out the cable to satellite and I have to get ready to go to McAllen to get a hair cut. The boys are playing shuffle board(I KNOW, I KNOW ....Geezer games) and should be back by 11. I hope Paulie will drive me...not to sure if I can do that by myself today. I am doing the two step when I walk which is not a good thing.

hugs

dee