Even though we did a lot of work around here today, it was fun. I worked in the pool for about 2 hours, vacuuming it out and cleaning it up so now, it is actually usable! Plus I enjoyed just being in the water for a while.

Tom pulled a big ole pine tree down today because it was leaning toward our neighbors house. I don't think it would have reached it had it fallen, but we just wanted to make sure. So down it came. Now he is out there burning pine branches and sticks and limbs, etc. He loves to burn things. So he is in hog's heaven right now.

I got my Mom's power chair out and went all around the yard with Tom. I usually can't do it because I can't walk that far, but today I decided since she left it to me, I would get it out and use it and I really enjoyed being able to run around the yard and help Tom and just be with him. It was nice. We played and joked and talked and it was nice.

There was only one bad part of today. Gretchen, our Min Pin, had some kind of something on her left side Thursday when I picked her up from the vet. I had taken all three dogs in to get their yearly shots, and get their nails trimmed, etc. Anyway, I didn't think much of it then, just that maybe that was where they gave her shots to her. (She is a free bleeder) I just thought maybe she bled a little bit when they gave her shots, but it was in an odd place where they don't usually give shots.

I didn't think much more about it until this morning when I took her outside and was holding her to go put her inside the fenced area of the year and when I set her down, there was blood in my hand! WTF!? I looked at her side and it was yuck, yuck, yuck! Her hair was coming off in that area too. So I grabbed her and brought her back in, called the vet and rushed her up there for him to look at her.

We don't know what it is, other than some sort of bite, but he kept her and is going to watch her over the weekend and he put her on antibiotics too. He said because she bleeds so easily, he wanted her there where he could keep an eye on her. Poor baby. Tom was upset about that, because he LOVES that dog. It would tear him up if something happened to her. But I think we caught the infection quick enough that it will heal.

Well, that's all for now. I am hungry and need to eat. I feel my sugar dropping. See ya!

Things are looking up here today. Yesterday my Breast doctor called me to tell me my results of the biopsy were good and today she called again. She had forgotten that she called me so late last night, but had printed the results for herself and then called me. Then today the lab sent her the results again, so she called again to tell me everything is ok. She apologized for calling me again, but I just told her that I considered that double good news and that I appreciated it again!
Funny how things work.

I did have some bad news today though. A friend (never met her face to face) that I have been talking to on the phone for a long time now (i'll call her P) about her father who had Altzheimer's died this morning. P and I had met through a mutual friend since both our fathers had that horrible disease. We have spent many hours on the phone supporting each other and listening to each other about our feelings and our experiences regarding Altzheimer's disease and our mothers' deaths, etc. Well, P called this morning about 7:30 and told me her father had passed very early this morning. I understand how she feels. He was her last parent, as Mother was mine. I also understand that she had mourned her father for a long time now because of the Altzheimer's taking his mind away long before now. I know how that feels.

I am going to attend the funeral tomorrow which is being held at the same place my Mom's was held. I think I can handle it, but if I can't, I will just leave. At the very least, I will just go to my Mom's grave and tell her about this man (although she probably already knows), because she and I used to discuss him after my talking to P. I would tell Mom how things were going and how P's father was doing. My Mom was always concerned about him and about P.

Keep P's family in your prayers. I will pray for courage to go support her and meet her face to face for the first time as well as for peace for her and her family.

About 30 minutes ago, my breast doctor called and said GOOD NEWS! No cancer! WOW, what a relief! She said it was just fibro cystic changes and they had to check them, but it is nothing to worry about. She said come back in a year and have my regular mammogram. I am so relieved.

I also went to the Grief Support Group today and was really glad I went. Everyone there was so nice and they are all at different stages in their grief and for different reasons and they were very helpful to me. At least I know now, I am right where I am supposed to be and that it's ok to be where I am.

They all got together after the meeting and went to lunch and they invited me and I did go. It was nice to just get out and socialize some and not feel the pressures of normal life for a little while. A couple of the women gave me their phone numbers and told me to call them anytime if I need to talk and that it's ok, because they have been there too and know what I feel.

I feel so much better today. Positive things to look at now. I will be going back to the Support Group next Tuesday.

I didn't do much today, but I didn't spend the entire day crying either, so I guess it was more successful than the last week.

I have waited to hear from the doc all day about the biopsy, but no-one called. If I don't hear anything tomorrow, I am going to call her. I am impatient about things normally, but about this, I am excessively on edge. Understandably so.

I am going to try something new tomorrow. I am going to go to a grief support group and see if it makes a difference to me. Maybe being around others going through much the same thing will help. I will see. Wish me well on that.

Also, I am going to take my laptop to get it fixed. I am tired of being stuck in the backroom alone when I am on the computer. With my laptop, I sit in there with Tom and watch TV while I do stuff on my computer. Also, there are lots of photos and such on that computer, that I NEED. It is frustrating not to have access to all of that. I know one thing, when I get it back, the first thing I will do is a back up on my USB drive. We are all told to do these things, but I wonder how many of us really do them.

That's about all I have for today. Will have more maybe tomorrow after the support group and hopefully the talk with the Boob doc!

Today is 3 months since my Mom passed away and I am still crying all the time. I realized that I don’t know how to do this…how to live without my mother in my life. I never had to do it before and I have no experience with it. No one can teach you how to do this. Why? We all have to go through something like this in our lives, why don’t they teach us how grief works. I go from guilty feelings, (even though there is nothing for me to feel guilty about) to anger and to the greatest sadness I have ever felt in my life.

I know my husband (who has been my rock) is sick of my crying all the time, but he supports my feelings anyway. I have been depressed before in my lifetime, but this is the worst. I just want to put my arms around my Mom and tell her one more time, how much I love her and how much I enjoyed having her live with me and Tom. I miss our chats, and our giggles about silly things. I even miss our little arguments. They were few and far between thank God for that.

How does one get past the grief? All I want to do it sit in my chair and blindly watch TV or sleep off and on all day. There is no energy to do anything. I think about feeding the birds and then the thought of Mom and how she loved to watch them overwhelms me. We enjoyed sitting on the back porch in the mornings and watching them while we talked and drank our cup of coffee. I haven’t has a cup of coffee in the morning since she died. I don’t even want to fix it. There used to be a pigeon that would come everyday and sit on top of the phone pole while she watched him. He hasn't been here since she passed. Where did he go? Does he know she is gone? I wanted to see him and tell him she wouldn't be back. Is that silly?

I had the opportunity to spend today and tonight with my daughter Heather. I called her and told her not to come. I just didn’t feel like I would be good company.

Mother’s Day was hard, my first one without my mother. But we went to Heather and Allen’s house and spent it with them. They cooked for all the mothers in the family and it was nice. Heather and I then left and went to Wal-Mart and spent some quiet time together. I did enjoy that, so why did I not want her to come today? I don’t know. I just stay so weepy. I know my Mom wouldn’t want me to do that, but she never taught me how not to.

This coming Tuesday, I am going to a grief support group I have learned about. I hope it will help me. Maybe they can share their experience, strength and hope with me and help me get through this awful gut wrenching pain.

Twice I have tried to blog and have typed my little heart out and before I get finished something happens and everything just stops working! WTF?

So then I decide to try typing in Word and then posting to my blog that way. I type about 5 paragraphs of stuff and then my computer locks up and I have lost it again. CRAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

I have had a shitty week and I just wanted to tell someone about it. Actually to be quite truthful it’s been a shitty year so far. I need a break and I am not getting any.

I told you guys about the printer that I ordered. Well, I very carefully followed the instructions (who does that anyway) and get to the point where I am supposed to hook up the USB cable to the back of the printer. There isn’t one in the box with the damn printer. Who ships a printer that has to have a cable and doesn’t include the stupid cable in the box? Lexmark that’s who. Then it says put in the ink cartridges. Plural. CartridgeS. There is only one and it’s the color cartridge, not the black one. I had to go buy one of those and a cable. Pissed, do you hear me….pissed. The printer works now so that’s a plus.

Then I have to have a mammogram, my yearly one. I go and do the duty and then I get a call saying there is something suspicious in the pictures and I need another type of mammogram. So I go to the breast center and have the second mammogram done and they tell me while I am there, that I will need a biopsy. There is a very suspicious something that they are looking at. Now I have to find a breast doctor, make an appointment to get established as a patient. Oh she can see you in 3 weeks. WHAT!!!??? No, sooner than that! So they finally find me an appointment in 2 days.

I show up for that appointment and she is a very nice lady, very down to earth and just plain ole plain ole. I liked her immediately. She explains the suspicious something and tells me she needs to get a needle biopsy done. It’s scheduled for the next morning. That was today, Friday. Now I have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday to get the results. If you have had a needle biopsy done, you know it HURTS. And if you haven’t, then I am here to tell you it hurts. Even though they deaden it. It wakes up later. You know? OUCH! Tylenol helped though!

One of the things I have always told my family and friends, is NEVER to ask 'what else' or 'what next'. But here lately, I guess for the last year, one thing right after another has happened. Some of them not too too bad, and others are tragic.

I wrote last week about one of the tragic things that happened in my family and thank goodness we have had nothing tragic this week.

I went to the hand therapist on Wednesday and showed him my elbow and he immediately brought me over to see the doc because the elbow was infected. They had taken the staples out Friday a week ago and it was trying to open again. Soooooo, I got steri stripped and put on antibiotics. I am fine. I went again on Friday for Doc to look at it again and he said it is doing much better and he thinks it will be fine. Good! Whew!

Now something on my car that I have already had fixed once a few weeks ago, is now broke AGAIN! Damn it! I absolutely HATE sitting in a dealer waiting room while my car is being fixed (or is it?), but that is exactly where I will be this coming Tuesday. Sitting there again to get the same thing that was supposed to be fixed last time hopefully fixed this time.

And then my laptop which I used daily while sitting in the living room with my dogs in my lap went kupput. Tom and I thought it was the battery, so we ordered another battery ($140) and got it in, put it in the lap top and voila! Nothing. So I call technical support and they go through all the trial and error thingys with me and they tell me it's the A/C adaptor that is bad. Tom gets out his volt meter and tests the adaptor and it is putting out the volts it's supposed to. So now we think it's something internally where the A/C adaptor plugs into the back of the lap top. So he tells me it will take a couple of weeks for someone he knows to look at it and (maybe?) fix it.

Before my Mom died, her printer worked just fine. All the other printers in the house were not working so I would send things to Mom through email and have her print them for me. Well, up until last week, I haven't really needed anything printed. But I did then, so I sent it to Mom's email address which I have kept as a backup address, and low and behold, the item never arrived! WTF?

In the meantime, while waiting for the email to arrive on her computer, I looked around on her computer and found something that I wanted to print, so I turn on her printer, wait for it to boot up, click on print, and it printed, but it was completely illegable. I changed the ink cartridges, nothing changed. I went through printer repair, etc. Nothing. So I had to order a new printer.

I am fed up to the brim with all this electronic crap that doesn't work half the time and it's always fix this or buy that to replace some piece of crap that no longer functions. Why can't things just work they way they are supposed to and quit causing all this frustration!???

New printer is in now, so I am going to install it and see if it works. I think, if it doesn't, I will just take a hammer to it all. So if you guys don't see me for a while, I will be hammering and pitching a Cindy fit! That'll take care of it!