Dear Steve Jobs......

If you're reading this (ha ha ha) as I type on my other new Christmas present that you so thoughtfully invented and designed, I would like to make another recommendation for your Christmas 2010 line up.

I need you to get with the Groshong port folks and come up with a similar thing that will plug into the brain so I (we, all the people of the world) can dump our thoughts into our Mac devices and then be able to sort through, arrange (with our fingertips, no less) all the jumble that is there.

So that we can say what we need to say, cause honey, I've got a LOT to say!

So that we can get the music out of our heads and into the light and hearts of the world.

So that we can see the "trash" that clutters our minds and send it to the trashcan in the corner of the screen.....just with the flick of a finger.

Steve, are you listening?????? Time's a wastin'

So for the health update of the day.....

Today is the day they have to test for a type of chemo to see if I can tolerate it. It involves having to have a crash cart outside the door, in case I don't. Hmmmm, would this scare you?

I mentioned my sort of "fear" of this to Dr. Dubay who just sort of waved it off and said..."won't be a problem." I'm trusting you, Dr. Dubay.

Otherwise, things are just clicking along. Had more of a quiet reflective morning, which was nice and very zen like. I don't think I moved in my bed very much because the covers were so straight.

After the blood draw fiasco, day three, involving THREE nurses this morning (actually, not a fiasco, just an annoyance), I decided to pick up where I had left off reading My Life in France by Julia Child. (GREAT book, highly recommend! If you've NOT seen Julie/Julia, I even recommend reading this before you do. If you HAVE seen it, you will enjoy it even more!)

My night nurse came in and asked about it and we started talking about books. She loves to read so we had a fun few minutes talking about what we liked. And then it hit me. SHE needed to be introduced to Diana Gabaldon's fabulous Outlander series, a bewitching combination of a time traveling nurse, historical fiction, hot romance, and men in kilts. PEOPLE, what more can you ask for in a book???? And there are, like, SEVEN in the series.

Mac Attack

Santa came early and visited room 231 this afternoon.

.......Penny now has an iPhone. Now, your favorite librarian, folk artist, mother, daughter, wife, cousin, friend will be even easier to connect with! She practically squealed when Katie called to let us know she and Dad had successfully broken up with Verizon and were now in a serious courtship with AT&T. She could barely contain herself when Santa walked in the door with that bright orange bag. How fun is it when you get to witness someone totally embrace the wide-eyed, warm, innocence of a little girl on Christmas morning? SO FUN!

She's still got some learning to do, as do the other new-to-the-iPhone-club members, Jonathan and Katie, but she's already had fun doing glamour shots from her hospital bed and will soon be an avid texter, just like her tech-savvy daughters.

So, please, I beg of you, texts, texts and more texts! Practice makes perfect, so lets whip this baby boomer into shape! Maybe you could even suggest to her that the youngest Mac (no pun intended) deserves an iPhone too, besides, I think its a great prize for the iPhone Tutoring Job I've now been assigned. (Tutorials, study sessions, etc. will be held in DCH room 231 for anyone interested. Any iPhone veterans feel free to fill us in on any tech-tricks you may have up your sleeve!)

Happy Early Christmas, Mama!

An aside.....

I have another blog that is out of date but kind of fun, if you're interested.

Little Red Hen

You'll see some old Christmas Tree decorating adventures and some dreams deferred, while learning more about my obsessive compulsive tendencies to cram information down your face.

(Picture borrowed from TheatreBristol poster for a puppet show of The Little Red Hen. Hope they don't mind. This Little Red Hen was just too ME to not use!)

What a way to wake up!

My FB buddies already have seen this a while back. But, it still brings back happy memories for me!

This reminds me of being at my grandmother's house (your side, Katie), waiting to walk to school with friends that lived behind her. Because of those friends, who attended Forest Lake Methodist Church, across the parking lot from my grandmother's, I met Pam, from last night's post.

Hope you feel ok this morning Miss Pam!




This is an interesting process I'm going through. I didn't know I had so much I wanted to say. I'm trying to figure it all out.

But the good news is, no chemo treatments today and I'm feeling MUCH better than I did yesterday! I feel so happy, and at peace. As Martha would say, that is a "good thing!"

Plus I have this great night nurse, April, who is so, so sweet. Yesterday we sort of had a panic time while she was trying to draw blood from my Groshong port. It wouldn't come out. No matter what gyrations I tried, it wouldn't come out. Finally, another nurse came in and for whatever reason, the blood started to flow.

This morning, while feeling so good, April came back for the blood draw. I laughed and said "lets get this party started" and she said..."Oh, you like Pink?". Hells to the yeah, April!

We were beginning to have a slow draw again so I sat up and started dancing from the waist up and singing some Pink. She does it better than I do, so here ya go, if you need more of a wake up jolt than the Captain Kangaroo theme song....

The only sort of new realization is that with no white blood cells (from 84,000 to 1 from the time I was diagnosed til yesterday when the doctor gave me the good news about how well it seemed to be working) is that things won't heal up so quickly....so I'll probably not be able to put some pretty red lipstick to cover up that fever blister left over....DANG IT.

People, what is going on here? From Captain Kangaroo to PINK in ONE POST???

I think they're putting something in my drips I don't know about..bit whatever it is, I LOVE IT!

"Have you got five more minutes?......"

I asked my old friend, Pam Malone Miller, last night, after we had been giggling, talking, laughing, confessing, crying, and generally loving on each other on the phone for nearly two hours.

"For you, I have a thousand years...." was her reply.

Isn't that the most absolutely stunning answer in the world?

30 minutes later we hung up and my day ended on a much better note than it had started.

I love you, Pam Malone Miller. I love you so much!

Laxatives of the soul feel just as good as the other kind....trust me.

Pam, I told you just a minute ago, you are one of my Earth Angels.

I have many of them.

Their stories will be told.

One by one, until the stories are done. I promise.

I continue to feel such love and support coming from all of you and I am truly overwhelmed by it all.

I have been going through a period for about 18 months where I've been fascinated by the dynamics of large families that are there for family members in a time of great need or crisis. Perhaps even a little jealous.

I've wondered what would happen if something horrible happened to me. Who could help my family cope with it? An only child of an only child, with only two first cousins. (Who both came from Texas to see me on Thursday. I love you, Rudd and Jimmy. You both feed my soul when I see you because I see Unc (their name for my late father) in both of you and I know he is still here.

It's true....could you call it some weird premonition? I don't know. As I told Pam, strange things have been happening. Strange, weird things, or so it seems to me.

I can say this, though. I've found out I have a HUGE family out there. HUGE.

I am so grateful. So, so, so, so grateful.

I love you, all, so much. I hope I'm not boring you with all of this.

I think this video expresses what I feel more than just words can say. (And don't feel bad if you want to stop about four minutes in.) It's all in the chorus....



Good night, all.......

Just a little funny for you.....

Perhaps you've already seen a copy of Santa's Gmail Inbox.....if you have, I hope you thought it was as funny as I did. It provided a much needed laugh. Click on the link above and be sure to enlarge it so you can read it better.......

Sleepless in Tuscaloosa.......

Ugh, room too warm to sleep....won't forget that again!

Mind spinning again.....sooo many nice comments about my writing/becoming an author (WOW, thanks a BUNCH for those!) which, in turn, made me start thinking about my appearance on Oprah and everything.

And the timing for that might be right because then she'll be filming in SoCali and maybe will invite the fam to her manse in Montecito. And I know she would do that because she would think it was cool that Jonathan had lived in Santa Barbara for 2.5 years to go to Brooks institute of Photography where the main building WAS in Montecito.

Yeah, Oprah would be cool like that. And, I have lot of time to plan on what to where and how to pronounce her hometown's name of (doing it phonetically here)--KAHZI-YOUS-KO, Mississippi.

Oh, and since we come from neighboring states, she would think that was cool, too. See, I have it all planned out. It's how I roll. I see the possibilities...

Now about the movie from the blog thing, I've already cast Renee Zellwiger, so just don't bother to apply. If she can pull off Beatrix Potter, one of my all time favorite illustrators/authors, then she can handle this new role!

Day 2 of Chemo complete. YES! (yesterday). No real results from it, though after a couple of days of bran flakes, I could use some results from those. (TMI? )

Had a really great day yesterday and even better evening, when i got my hair cut into something manageable with my fingers but that is a post deserving of itself. It will even have some pictures! Let me just say HONEYYYYYYY SUGARRRRRRRR, I feel a gazillion times better! (If you live in town and know Johnny Beck, then you understand the last sentence.)

Gonna try to get a little more rest.....

Oh wait, have to make public apology.....got called out by Jonathan about my remark about you know it is a GREAT song when you have to put your hands in the air. I stole that from him and didn't give him the props he deserved. So here ya go, J, PROPS TO YOU!!!!! I love you!

And here's another of my favorite songs that makes me throw my hands in the air.....hope you like it!