I was remiss...

I should have said yesterday that my Dad is doing very well since his two surgeries. Yes, they had to go back in a second time to remove a disc but he has felt virtually no pain from either surgery and was doing so well, they sent him home, not to rehab. The back of his neck looked like a zipper but they took the staples out this past week. Now he will start some low key rehab but we are so very thankful that the Lord showed us mercy again and gave him healing in a way that can only be attributed to His glory and grace and the prayers of believers, those we know well and those we don't. Thank you to all of you who have prayed for our family this summer and know that God has heard your prayers. We've run the gamut but God has been good and continues to hold us in His hands. We are humbled and give all the glory to God. He is the God that heals. Jehova Jira!

Mashed Potatoes!

I was coming out of Hobby Lobby the other day, having scored a handful of those $2 note journals (the ones with Philippians 4:13 quoted on them with a cross on the front) and as I was getting in my truck, what came to mind was, "Mashed Potatoes!" I scored a deal for something I had been looking for and identified it with a TV commercial for Progressive Insurance, the one with James Brown doing his interpretation of the "customer who made it home in time for Thanksgiving Dinner." Who knows the mind of a shopper? Especially a hobby shopper. We are a weird breed. We'll pick up the last item of some coveted embellishment (and not necessarily one that you coveted, just one that "someone" has coveted) and proudly stroll up and down the isles with it prominently displayed in our basket. We'll show it to everyone who wants to see it and explain why it is such a great product. "Yeah, these Basic Grey magnetic discs are great for closures for notebooks, blah, blah, blah" and while you are yapping away, you're thinking, "how am I going to use these? But I HAVE to have them, so-and-so couldn't stop talking about them!" Or, we'll buy the same product over and over and tell everyone why they should have multiple packages of them too. "This is the only chipboard set of letters that includes numbers! You HAVE to have them!" (BTW, those are EK Success Letterpress Sticko Chipboard Letters & Numbers--I KNOW you want to buy them!) I have personally convinced at least two people and one salesperson that they had to purchase several sets of these for any number of cool projects. And really, they ARE the only set of chipboard numbers that I know of. If anyone else knows of any others, let me know! I COVET chipboard numbers. Making my own sucks. Especially when you would really like to have them 2" tall.

I've been working on some craft projects that I will be teaching soon. If I get my digital act together, I'll post some pictures. One of them even includes the chipboard numbers. My DH can no longer say that I don't do anything with my craft stuff. I've actually completed several projects and have had a couple of play days! WOW, Vicki gets out of the house and socializes with something that says something other than "Meowowow!" It's good to have an adult conversation again (nothing against the DH, but he isn't FEMALE and doesn't understand that a conversation involves two people talking to each other, not him talking to the TV). I'll probably have to start singing him to bed too...

What happened to summer?

Boy, time just seems to fly by. This summer has seemed like one of those black holes that just keeps sucking things down into it. The harder you resist, the faster you go in. "Grab the cat, grab the cat! Oh, there he goes, and his hairballs too. Sigh." I had so many things I wanted to do this summer (I started to write simmer, and that is probably a Freudian mistake because simmering we are). As I write, my health seems to be on an uphill swing but my Dad had surgery yesterday for paralysis in his arm. Today that are talking about taking him back in because now his OTHER arm is showing more weakness than the original arm. Go figure. He had severe compression with 4 vertebrae in his neck and had nerve damage and some spinal cord damage. They put in two rods and 8 screws. He was liking the drugs though. He was cracking jokes left and right last night. I though I was going to PMP several times (it didn't help that I had just drank a huge glass of soda). It was good to see him in good spirits. Our whole family is keeping the medical industry in Springfield in business this summer. My sister had her gallbladder removed several weeks ago. I'm waiting for one of the cats to have a "tailectomy". teeheehee! I don't know which one would look the stupidest without a tail. I might have to do a little Photoshop work and see how that comes out...

So, for my last thought, we've been talking amongst friends about how we get our cats to come to bed. We run a tough bedtime schedule because of personality clashes. We can't leave Pewter out at night with Kahlua (he don't like her ONE little bit, don't know why). So, Kahlua stays in our bedroom during the day, and at night Pewter and Maki sleep in our room and Kahlua stays out with Mr. Sniffy and Coon. We used to try to chase all the cats down to get them in the bedroom. This got old as Maki had her game whiskers on and just about the time you would reach down to pick her up, she would run away about 6 feet and sit. We would go around the room this way three or four times. It sucks when you realize your cat is smarter than you are. So, I started singing "Mary had a little lamb" in the highest most squeakiest voice I could. I was like the pied piper of Hamlin. She followed me wherever I went. And surprise, surprise, so did Pewter. So that is how I get them to bed, I stand at the bedroom door and start singing "Vicki had a little cat, little cat, little cat..," and here they come, Pewter sashaying and Maki jogging down the hall as she is sure there must be a dead animal in the room she could eat because it sure sounded like it was dying...