a family story or 2 :)

(you have been very kind in your comments and thank you for listening to this challenging week)

Penny the beagle met with the Cornell vet school surgeons yesterday.  She has surgery number one today with a biopsy and radiology and maybe that will:  hopefully show that she merely needs more surgery and treatment done either today or in surgery number 2 OR it will show she has terminal cancer.  The surgeon cautiously thinks it is NOT cancer, but will know more later :) If it is not cancer but cureable instead, it involves complicated surgery and treatment costing 3 times our vet's high estimate...which will be worth it :)

My father is about the same, but home still.  Hospitals are awful places, whether you are a dog or human.

OK, stories????



1)  My great-grandmother is the grandmother I grew up with, living an impossibly long life near us.  I never saw my other grandmothers, but we saw her all the time.  She was delightful and tough.  She had limited mobility as she aged but always had an immense garden.  She would be out there with her cane or walker, with sight and hearing not what it had been, with a million flowers and veggies.  She had a big fat cat named Mi Mi allowed everywhere (table, counter, etc)  and she cooked immense feasts...walker, failing sight and hearing and asst. chef basketball sized cat included.  I remember at least once chowing down and my mother saying "Gary that is enough!" and grandmother saying "eat, eat, let the boy eat!" guarenteeing my mother would be cleaning up little boy puke later :)

ANYWAY, I was at my parents' farm the other day, as you know, and filled the trunk of the car with lily of the valley, my wife's favorite flower AND my great-grandmother's.  My parents had dug up some of it from her garden and have a lot of it, now our yard will have some too :) Can you imagine, having your great-grandmother's flowers growing in your own yard, something she originally planted 70 years ago?

2)  I steal rocks and come from a long line of rock thieves.  I remember as a little kid my father would grab a nice big rock when we visited a park, building what was surely the only rock wall in Iowa (where we lived at the time).
I steal rocks too.  But of course, they are abundant in the northeast....and we are making a new wall to mark the new lily of the valley garden in the corner :)