Ramblings...

I have been up to my eyebrows in proofing my third book, TSUNAMI, and so have not been making entries to my blog. Shame on me! I was up until 3:30 this morning putting the finishing touches on a chapter. My characters have picnics, shop, struggle with out-of-the-ordinary family issues, and I haven't been on a picnic in years--yet, I don't really miss it. This past week, I went to a friend's home to celebrate her birthday. She has a beautiful home in a clearing in the woods--not much lawn to mow! I have close to an acre-and-a-half to mow, but I don't really mind it. I listen to audiobooks while I'm mowing (super, heavy-duty sound-proof ear muffs over the audio buds). I also hunted down a salvage yard for a windshield-wiper arm for my 1999 Saturn, Sadie. Yes, I name all my cars.

The man at the salvage yard was only three weeks into his recovery from knee surgery. He was telling me how his shop had been broken into just a few nights before and the thieves made off with the computer and some other office equipment and a ton of tools from the work area in the back of the building. I can't imagine someone having the nerve to break into someone else's property and stealing. Oh, I know it happens all the time, but I just can't imagine having the audacity to do something like that. I felt sorry for him--he really needed something like this while he was trying to recuperate. I've never understood man's inhumanity to man.

Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a hurry--I had six gallons of milk in insulated bags in Sadie's trunk. I wasn't at liberty to buy them last thing on my errand-filled trip home and I drive as few miles as possible in an effort to keep Sadie going for as long as possible. When I first arrived at the salvage yard, the man simply yelled to someone in the back. To my regret, when I told him I had milk in the trunk, he got up, walked outside, and around to the side of the building to tell his employee that I was in a hurry. I tried to get him to go back inside and sit down, but he ignored me. I was very uncomfortable that he was walking on a sore knee--although maybe that's what he needed to do. I'm not sure. I did tell him about a friend of mine who needed knee surgery. She had put on a lot of weight because it hurt her to walk, but after her knee surgery, she dropped off the excess weight and had the same figure she had in high school. I reassured him that once he healed, he was going to love his "new knees."

One of my co-workers told us this past week that her pap test came back with a high grade something or other--I can't remember the term now. It meant that there was some abnormality in her cells. She is very worried about this and, of course, she has to wait two weeks for further tests and then another two weeks for some other tests and somewhere in there a biopsy. I asked my chiropractor about this high grade thing (I remembered the other word when I asked her) and she told me the term applied to any kind of abnormality in the cells and that it didn't mean my friend has cancer. It could be a lot of things, most of them benign. I'm praying for my friend that it's nothing and that she'll be fine.

The fragility of human life is scary at times. In the last few weeks, two people in my church have passed away. Deaths come in threes and I'm dreading who the third person will be. I have family and friends in the 80-92 year range and I dread that I could lose one of them. I know it's going to happen at some point unless I die first. It's inevitable. Even though I know they'll be in a better place, loss is still loss and very painful to those of us left behind. I still miss pets that I had when I was a child. I miss both my maternal grandparents that I knew as a child. (I don't remember my paternal grandparents.) I miss my brother who died in 2008--him perhaps most of all. I'm depressing myself! Quit that!

Speaking of family, my cousin Jeff has been trying to research our surname for over thirty years and he's come up against an immovable brick wall. I've joined the search in the last several years and am equally frustrated at our lack of results. Then, last week, I was talking to a man who had the same surname. I had talked to him before and I'm sure I had asked him where his family came from and he'd said Georgia. For whatever reason, I asked him again and he told me that his daughter had traced their family to the first two brothers who came here from Ireland. Their ship crashed on the rocks and they decided to swim for shore. Only one of them made it--to Boston. That's the same story my Great Uncle Edgar had told me!!!! The family tree that my great uncle had has been lost since his death and I'm ecstatic that I've found someone who is related to us and has done the research. They were able to track it from Georgia, but we weren't able to track it from New York. I realize it may not give us the exact information that we need, but I'm hopeful that it will give us enough to finally crack that frustrating brick wall!

I haven't stuck my nose outside yet, but the thermometer says 70-degrees and it's quite windy. I'm guessing we'll have rain later today, but for now, it's beautiful outside even with an overcast sky. The weather has been wonderful and I'm reveling that I haven't had to turn my furnace on much at all so far this autumn (just twice so I could shower in the morning before work).

I hope everyone has a wonderful week!