Say What?

I'll be publishing this post at a later date as I don't want to create any additional drama for my mother who is just a couple days away from some quite risky heart surgery. My niece, Aleah, has become a cancer in our family and has been using her grandmother (mom) to cause great division within the family for far too long. It's a really sick thing she's been doing and none of us can understand why. Jackie and Jerry have done everything to reach out to her but each attempt is met with venomous responses. The latest turmoil began with plans for a Christmas Eve get-together at our home. We're all fairly certain that this will be Mom's last Christmas with us considering her quickly deteriorating heart health and most of us are of like minds in wanting to get us all together with Mom/Grandma/Great-Grandma for Christmas this year. I asked my brother Keith if he could host Christmas Eve at his house as I didn't think there was any chance that Aleah would c...

I ventured out in my truck this morning and picked up our Sunday paper at the bottom of our driveway on the way out. Today is Monday. I never made it beyond our living room couch yesterday.  I awoke out of a sound sleep at 2:00 Sunday morning to an awful, nauseous feeling. Rather than waiting to see if it would quietly go away I quickly made my way to the bathroom and stood bent over the toilet for just a moment before my insides exploded. I spent the rest of the morning until after 7:00 repeating the above at least hourly. I'll spare you the details. The rest of my day was spent curled up on the couch with our pups. I was concerned for my mom because she was exposed to the bug as well while at our home Christmas Eve. Our littlest visitor that night had just gotten over the illness (or so we thought) and he must've infected many of us. Tammy tried to get a hold of Mom but her phone was off the hook. I texted Tim and he confirmed that she was sick in bed. Rachel texted us fro...

One of the white squirrels (as of last winter we had two) that frequents our feeders met an untimely death this past week. He got tangled up in the cornstalk feeder we have on the side of our house by the bird feeders. I was sad to discover his lifeless, frozen body tangled in the metal tines of the feeder knowing he suffered a difficult death. He was a nice addition to the wildlife we have in the area and I'll miss him. I was standing in line at Michaels Wednesday afternoon waiting to pay for a picture frame and matting that's to be part of a Christmas gift for my mom. While waiting, I spied some containers of gummy candies at the end of the register and agreed with my inner voice that I needed to bring a couple of those home with me to have for a Christmas Eve gathering at our home. I'd no sooner had that thought when I took notice of the woman finishing paying and walking toward the door. Is that Luan I wondered? I couldn't see her very well as I'd just caugh...

I'd taken my red Serotta (what's up with the Hugh Jazz seat bag?) in to Flanders Bros in Minneapolis several weeks ago for some upgrades. Adrian called Wednesday afternoon to tell me it was ready. I combined my trip to pick it up with a stop at J Ring Studios in St Paul for some stained glass supplies. I left my failing Mavic Ksyrium rim at the shop to be sent back across the Atlantic to be rebuilt. Rather than investing $1000+ in a new set of wheels, it makes more sense for me to have the one repaired for a few hundred. I'll be good-to-go for several more seasons with it. It's been over 2 weeks since I've ridden and I'm getting that need again but the break has been nice. I've been able to focus a whole bunch of time on other stuff, namely stained glass. More on that toward the end of this entry. Friday morning I went back to the lighted tree on Cedar Avenue in Bloomington to get some video and daylight shots of it. I wanted to capture it with a bl...

The pacemaker replacement surgery last Friday for mom was only partially successful. A third lead from the pacemaker that winds its way through and around her heart to more fully involve the whole heart had to be disconnected as it was coming in contact with a nerve causing her diaphragm to spasm. She was disappointed because without the third lead (something her other pacemaker didn't have) her condition wasn't much different than before surgery. Tired all the time. They told her it would be 7-10 days before they could see her again to attempt to fix the problem. We didn't have to wait that long. Tracee called me yesterday morning to see if I'd talked to Mom yet today. I hadn't. She said she sounded extremely tired on the phone and that she was going to put in a call to her doctor to see if she could get her seen asap. Mom is always one to minimize her need to be seen and not one to want to be fussed over so the chance that she was going to take the initiative to...

Mom has surgery tomorrow morning to replace her pacemaker with a pacemaker/defibrillator combination. The last time I wrote about this I'd said that her doctor didn't feel her heart was strong enough for this procedure but he's decided to go forward with it anyway. I don't want to look at this as being a last-ditch effort to resuscitate her life but considering how weak her heart is, what else can it be? The surgery is a risk, there's no question about that. The doctor was very clear with her when he told her they lose people in her condition on the operating table. Still, it's about quality of life and should this turn out successfully, she'll have a return to her old self; the indefatigable, independent older woman in her green '97 Ford Escort wagon running around town and occasionally jumping on the freeway to blend with 70mph traffic. I want her back to her old self as do we all. One thing that has caused me to pause and take notice is her attitu...