Saturday spent with relatives

Good news about Cap. He is still an old dog but he seems happy and content. Thank you for all the pleasant thoughts you sent us. I treasure all the warm comments.

Yesterday, Saturday, was a fun day. Gilbert, my son, is painting his house, and since it was in dire need of paint, there was a lot of prepping to do before the actual painting. So he invited his son and girlfriend from Montana, and a college roommate of Sam's to come to spend a week helping with the work involved. They worked hard, but there was also fishing and crabbing and golf in their lives during the visit. Saturday was finally my turn to do something to aid in the venture and I chose to take the gang to my favorite place for breakfast. Unfortunately, Gilbert took the group to his favorite place for breakfast and so almost an hour was wasted while we were waiting for each other. Finally I called Gilbert's place, and sure enough, there they were, waiting and hungry.

When eating was finished, the group split up. Heather, the girlfriend informed me that she was going to spend the rest of the day with me. We had a fun day. First I took her out on the long Hook protecting our harbor. She enjoyed the spectacular view of Port Angeles as seen from the North. It was a beautiful day. Then when we approached the Pilot Station I hung a U turn. I stopped the car and let her discover the structures that were built on the rocks protecting the Hook and in turn protecting our Harbor. She was absolutely passionate when she saw them and realized that they were fleeting and would all be gone after a heavy north wind hit them. I told her that when I last saw them they were completely different and that these had been made this summer by completely different people. The ones I saw last year seemed very delicate and very Asian. The ones we were looking at were more solid looking. Made probably by Americans who came from maybe Des Moines or from Indianapolis. They were equally beautiful. Heather was engrossed in deep thought and when we got to my place I asked her if she would like to use my water color supplies and she sat down and worked for probably three or four hours. When I saw her paintings I smiled for they were exactly like what we had seen but the paintings looked as though an Asian had painted them.

Sam came to pick her up when it was time to go back to Gilbert's place. They were all through painting and had had a great Golf game. I said Good bye for they were leaving early this morning to go back to Montana. I feel I have a new friend. Heather is a great person and I feel she will go far.

Granddaughter

I just finished reading Shreve's twitter and found all the responses she evokes. Daily Coyote is my first touch of reality in the morning and it is so real, so filled with love and grit and beauty that it feels like 'who needs all that night time of dreaming' and I am so happy to be awake.

The reason for the lapse in my blogging is my sick dog, Cap. The vet told me his age is a problem. There are many reasons why the only treatment for him is love and care at home. And my son has promised that he will help when the time comes to love him enough to let him go.

Pray for us.

Healthcare

When I was little I had many sessions of ear-aches. Doctors removed the things that grow in the back of the throat and the adenoids. Didn't stop the ear-aches. They removed some of the bone structure in back of the ear. Some of this happened after father had died and we were very poor. But we already had Universal Healthcare in Sweden and the costs were paid by our taxes. I don't remember that we had to wait for service, and since I was the one with a painful ear, it seems I would remember.

A couple of years passed and it was discovered that I had a hernia. When I exerted myself a little part of my insides pushed on my abdominal muscles and seemed to want to pop out. I don't know how long that had been going on, but a doctor said he thought it might have been caused by the constant early crying in the baby buggy. My mother gave me a choice. I could have a truss, or I could have surgery. Since I had observed an elderly man in the autumns wearing a truss out side of his pants while he was raking the leaves in his garden I knew I did not want to be wearing a truss. I chose surgery. I had a local anesthetic, for a strange heart condition had been discovered earlier. ( I was excused from Physical Exercise because of that, so I felt it was an added asset for me. I will tell you later what else I was saved from. ) But because I was awake during the surgery I heard what one MD said to the other one there. He said, 'Shall we tell the mother?' The other said 'No she would worry.' Those words would worry me most of my life. What was in there that could worry my mother. Or were they not even speaking of me. Every time some Md was working on my insides I would ask him to check for any unusual condition. I had four c-sections and one other opening for the removal of my uterus. Nobody found anything of interest.

The other thing I was saved from was participating in Choir. Some one told me that if you ate a whole raw potato nobody would ever want to hear me sing.

Kennedy. cont.

You may have noticed that in my previous blog I said, 'in my minds eye' this was the way events occurred. Now that Senator Kennedy's memoirs are being printed, we will know more. From the few words we have heard about the contents of the book, it promises clarification and insight. I can't wait to read it. The trouble with living as long as I have, is that so many heros become heros of the past.

My paternal grandmother was the first one who died, and whose leaving really affected me. I was too young to understand what dying really meant. She had one huge fault. She owned a cat named Topsy who bore kittens several times a year. We got to see the little blind babies for only a few days and then, suddenly and tragically, they were gone. She told stories about what had happened. The trolls had come out of the forrest and they had stolen them. Or, some witch had come to town and had worked some miracle with them and had turned them into horses for her fancy conveyance. We were always sad that they were gone. Many years later rumors spread that she had drowned them all in a gunny sack. Life as a grownup is not always romantic. I wish I had never heard those rumors, for I remembered her as a sweet little tiny lady, who herself looked as though she could have been magic.

Until I moved I still owned her church hat. Seeing it used to bring her spirit closer. I have forgiven her for drowning the kittens.