I'm back!

Through the efforts of my husband and our friend Patrick, I am computered once again. The kids spilled a coke on my laptop, and I'd pretty much resigned myself to not being online a whole lot for 6 or more months - we can't exactly afford a laptop right now. However, because my babu is an amazing sweetheart, he arranged to trade work for a laptop for me! I am now the proud owner of a 1.5GHz PowerPC G4! With the light-up keyboard, oooooooo. Sure as heck faster then my old iBook... with a bigger screen... and a hard drive twice as large... yes, I'm aware I'm both spoiled rotten and lucky as hell. In husbands, I mean. Among other things.

I'm awake at 7 something this morning because M was sleeping with me and she wet the bed. Nothing like waking up in a pee puddle that's not your own. *sigh* I'm hoping she doesn't have the same trouble with bedwetting that I had as a kid - we'll see.

It's been a rough month. Great Aunt Mary died - she was our favorite. We took a whirlwind trip up to Tennessee to check on Mamaw & Papaw (her younger brother), to make sure they were doing okay - Aunt Mary's son was returning from Iraq to take care of things and he's always been a little nutty anyway, so we wanted to be on hand just in case. They were doing fine - aside from Mamaw having congestive heart failure, a leaky valve, and a hole in her heart, of course. It was frightening to see how weak she is. During this time Mamaw's brother in California had a stroke, and is not doing well - I've not heard any more about him yet.

Before we left to go up there, an old family friend of 15 or so years, Tom, had taken ill and they'd discovered tumors in his liver. He & his wife went up to Boston & stayed with his brother while being seen in a hospital that specialized in difficult cancer cases. It turns out that it was originally colon cancer, and because he didn't go to doctors and had never had a colonoscopy, it hadn't been caught until it had metastasized and taken over 90% of his liver... he died yesterday morning. Another 3 days and it would have been his 66th birthday. I still can't wrap my head around it... every time I think of his wife I get weepy; she was my 2nd grade teacher and we've been friends with her pretty much since then. They were such a pair - thinking of one without the other is like peanut butter without jelly or something. It's just off. It occasionally leads me to think about what would happen if something suddenly happened to J - which of course makes me fall apart totally. He's promised, by the way, to always get colonoscopies -- LET THIS BE A LESSON TO ALL OF YOU. The prep for a colonoscopy is shitty - pun intended - but the test itself is not a big deal. You're either sedated or knocked out; it's just pooping all day the day before that's not much fun. However, I think dying in four weeks is much worse, don't you?

In the middle of all this, the little boy turned three. We're having his party on Saturday - drop by Winthrop around noon for cake! I'm making a peaches & cream cake, and you know it's gonna be delicious.

I think that's all the news for July. Bill, I've not had time to read, so I'm way behind. I'm hoping to finish it in the next week before the copy of Harry Potter that a friend bought for me shows up in the mail. (Did I say I was spoiled? Wheeee!)