death, and more death. . .

This week has been a long week. Monday I went to Blueridge Healthcare Center and visited with Annie and Carlton Jones. Annie has cancer and has been given 2-4 months to live. She decided to try starving and thirsting herself to death. She's so afraid of dying of cancer. She took care of her mother and sister who both died of cancer many years ago. I told her that she didn't want to die from dehydration or starvation. I convinced her to try her first frappechino and throw in a peanut butter cookie on the side. She drank all the strawberry frappi and downed the cookie as well. Carlton and I went to McDonald's for lunch while Annie had hers. We talked for a quite a while and then we went back over and I visited with both of them for a few more hours. On Thursday I got a call from our Associate Pastor, JoAnne Stancil that Annie had almost died that afternoon and that she only had a couple more hours to live and Carlton needed me to come. I fed the cats, changed my work clothes and went to be with them. Carlton had gone to dinner with their son, Alan and so I talked to the hospice nurse, Theresa, while Annie rested. She had several visitors and she was very alert but extremely tired. I stayed until about 8:30 and then left, grabbed dinner at Panera's and then went home and crashed. On Friday a.m. my sister called to tell me that my Uncle Ken had died. He had Alzheimer's for years, but physically was fine. Apparently he began having seizures and died Thursday night during one of the seizures. I had promised Carlton I would stop by and check in with them after work if he didn't call me before then. I got to the nursing home and the door was closed. I asked a nurse why the door was closed and she said the CNA was probably working with Annie. I waited outside the door and then the CNA came out but he left the door opened a crack and I could see Annie and something was not right. He closed the door and then another nurse asked if I was family and I said, "No, just a good friend of the family." She told me to go and wait in lobby for the family to return because it would be a while before I could see Annie. I went to the lobby, but something seemed wrong. I went out to my car and called the church office to see if there was a new report on Annie for today. Wanda said Faith had visited with Annie that morning and she was still bad, but doing a little better. I decided I'd go home, call Carlton and then go back over if he needed me to. I really just wanted to go home and crash. When I got home two people from church called to say Annie had died around 4 that afternoon. I was there at 4:10. I think she had just died before I got there. My neighbors invited me over for dinner, but I declined their offer and asked for a rain check instead. I no sooner sat down to eat the pizza I had picked up on the way home, and Sheri called asking if I could come and help pack up Kira and Andrew's stuff. Kira had decided to leave Steve was he was away in Las Vegas gambling over the weekend. How could I refuse?? I took two bites of pizza and went to Kira's. We packed until 11:45. I got in bed at 12:30 and slept until 6a.m. when the cats wanted to be fed, fed every cat and went back to bed until 9. Carlton called and asked if I could come over. I showered, went to Carlton's, we cried together and then his son, Alan came and while they were away making the funeral arrangements, I cleaned the house. I had just finished when they got back. I came home, fixed lunch, watched a little TV and then went to work from 2:30-5:30, ran errands, then crashed on the couch all evening. This morning my body didn't want to move. I did sing with the choir and then joined Nancy Langdon and Nelson at Boston Market for lunch.
I got a two hour nap in today, went to the Aids Care Team meeting and now I'm home for the evening.
I'll only work 1/2 day tomorrow. The funeral is at 2 at New Hope. I'll be there. I miss Annie terribly!! I looked forward to our Monday a.m. chats once a month. I was her outside line to the church. She went to S.S. when she was able but staying for church became too much for her. She'd be waiting at the kitchen table eating her breakfast, working on her crossword puzzle that was in the newspaper and we'd chat for about 45min-1 hour. She always wanted to know how the girls and Nick were doing. We'd talk about how she was feeling and then we talked about stuff that mattered to her. She was a real spit fire, but she also was a sweetheart when she wanted to be. She was an encourager to me for many years while I was a single parent. She always made me feel like life was going to be OK and that I was doing the best job that I could possibly do. I loved my little Annie.
Friday was a long, hard emotional day. Last night I spent 30 minutes after my shower, just sobbing. My heart felt so broken! I grieved the loss of my Dad, for Betty and all that she's going through, for Carlton, for Kira, Sheri, Jim, Andrew, for my Aunt Bertie and Ann and Christy and the days ahead for them. . .I was so sad. I just climbed into Jesus' lap and stayed there until I couldn't cry anymore and then I praised God for this love for me and for all of them in spite of all the pain we were all experiencing. After all the bad news I had heard on Friday, I just needed to hear one piece of good news and Cindy Bordeaux said, " God loves you! That's the good news that you need to remember today!" She was absolutely right! Because of God's love for us, we can face anything here on Earth. Today might have been bad news, but God was with me along the way and He still is. AMEN

I'm back. . .

Hey gang,
What's going on in your life? I just got back from Indiana. It was great seeing all the family again so soon. Everybody's really busy, but we managed to squeeze in some family time together. I arrived Friday night at 6:15. Betty was downstairs vacuuming the basement. This year the basement has decided to leak. What a mess!! Her sons came last weekend and pulled out all the wet carpet, and now Betty has to vacuum every 2-3 hours to keep the water up off of the floor. It seeps in all around the edges. We're not sure if the water is running down from the walls outside, or if the insulation underneath the paneling is just moist with condensation. We need to pull the paneling off and see how wet the insulation is. Craig, her son went up on the roof and sealed around the chimney area and her other son, Sean, cleaned out the gutters and put extenders on the downspouts so that the water is moved away from the house. I guess everyone there is having problems this year with water. They've had so much snow and rain, it makes sense.
We had Friday evening all to ourselves. It was a nice time to chat and catch up on everything. Saturday, her sons were there all day and she showed me more pictures she found. I took the originals to Walmart and had copies made. I now have a few pictures of my mom when she was about 3-4 yrs. old. I'd never seen them before. What a treat!! I've got them in an album already. Maybe the girls will enjoy seeing them someday.
Saturday night we were alone again, so we enjoyed each other's company.
On Sunday we went to church, drove to Warsaw and had dinner with Kim, Greg, Caroline, and Darrin. Kim is fostering a chocolate Lab, named Emma. They're installing a fence this week, so I'm thinking she's going to keep her. The grand total at the LeBarrons home now is 6 cats and two dogs. Meemers is 19 yrs. old and only weighs about 10 lbs. He's old and dying but still hanging in there. All of his hair is falling out and he got ringworm from some kittens that Kim had taken in, and he's slowly recovering from that. He looks pretty bad, but he still has quite the personality. Kim said it won't be long and she'll have to put him to sleep, but as long as he's eating, drinking, and using the litter box, he stays! It was good to see him. I came home and found out that Skittles has tapeworms. I went to the vet and got worm medicine today. In two weeks I'll deworm him again. He gets them because he gets fleas every now and then and then he eats them, the flea eggs hatch inside his stomach, the worms grow and then unless I deworm him, the worms will begin eating his food, and eventually he'll lose a lot of weight. No offense Skittles, but you could stand to lose a little weight, but not that way!! He's pretty good about taking his pill. I open it up and and dump it into his regular food. He doesn't seem to mind the taste. I'm not sure why Buttons never gets tapeworms, but he doesn't.
On Sunday night we had Fred, Holly, Haley, Chelsea and their friend over for some Stouffer's Lasagna. It was delicious!! Fred was so funny!! He had a great big tear in his bluejeans right near his front crotch area. Apparently he was trying to rake up the yard before he came over for dinner, and Holly has this stick in the yard that has a fairly sharp arrow head on top of it. Fred's pants got caught on the tip of the stick and almost shitzkabobbed him. He couldn't get his pants off of the tip of the stick so he leaned back and that's when he ripped his jeans. When he was telling Holly and us what happened, Betty and I laughed so hard, we were crying. It was hysterical listening to his descriptions of the events leading up to the ripped jeans. He's always been a good story teller!! He borrowed a pair of my Dad's old jeans until he could get home and change into some pants that did a beter job of covering his parts. HA! HA!
Well, I've got to run to choir tonight. I'm glad its Easter weekend. I'm off on Monday.
More later. . .

My crazy life. . .sound like anyone you know. . .

Hey Guys,
I've been so busy lately that I really haven't had time to do anything else but work. It's been crazy trying to catch up with everyone and now I'm heading back to Indiana this Friday,(weather permitting), and I have to juggle everyone all over again. My Dad's birthday is on March 16th and when I left the family in Feb., I promised I'd be back over that weekend. Everyone's excited about seeing everyone again so soon. Usually it would take 6 months to a year to work it out, but not this time. My goal this year is to try and travel back to Indiana over the holiday weekends. Usually I stay here but I don't really celebrate anything because all the kids work in retail of sorts, so they can't get together, or they choose not to, I'm not sure which is the truth. So I won't travel over Easter because I will just be getting back, but I'll try and go over Memorial Day weekend. There are several drawbacks to my plans though; the traffic will be heavier and the price of gasoline at over $3 a gallon. I don't know if my sanity or my pocketbook will empty out first. Time will tell.
I have a new opportunity to share with everyone. My church is offering Angelfood ministries beginning in March. You can $60 worth of groceries for $30. Now that's a good deal plus you don't have to spend time in the grocery store shopping. Just bring a box with you and we'll load your box for you and even put it in your car, if you'd like. It doesn't get any better than that!! Even I'm going to participate. I would love not having to do the "grocery" thing each weekend. The amount of food will last me about a month, and a family of four, about a week or more. Not bad, not bad at all!
We have a new interim music minister at church. I don't like to complain about other people, because I believe everyone tries to do their best at whatever they do, but this guy is not for me!! He sings every song the same way. He took a beautiful Pepper Choplin song that Pepper himself taught us to sing for his Dad's funeral, and butchered it. Every song is sung slowly and without any regard to tempo. He said he doesn't care about the musical quality but it's all about the words. Call me nuts, but I'm thinking that Pepper wrote his song with both the musical style and the words being of equal importance. Their are some songs like this one that the tempo is so important. Oh well. . .what do I know, I'm just a lay person. We're voting on him this Wed. and he'll be our new interim music minister. I may just have a walk away from choir for a little while.
Last night I was at church again, (surprise, surprise)! The boys and girls were racing their pine derby cars that they made themselves. The boys have been doing this for years, (Brian, the youth minister did it when he was a little tike), but this year they invited the youth group and the girls. The youth declined but we girls took on the challenge. There were 9 boys and 17 girls racing. The boys raced the boys, and the girls raced the girls. After the real competition the boys and girls could race each other. It was a lot of fun watching them compete. Justin, Brian's son took first place like he did last year, and Tiffany took first place for the girls. We'll do it again next year. The kids draw their own design on the block of wood, another man in the church cuts it out for them. they sand it, paint it themselves and then other men drill the holes for the wheels, put the wheels on, and then shellac them for the kids. Some kids do their own work as much as possible, and then other kids let their parents do the work. The Dad 's last night were for the most part, the real designers of their kids cars. Maybe we should have a parents night of racing, what do you think?? Still, all and all, it was a lot of fun!!
Today I'm back at the church at 10 a.m. getting ready for the spaghetti luncheon tomorrow. We'll feed about 275-300 people. My job this year is working in the take out room for both services. The first 15-20 minutes I'll be running like crazy but after that I'm not sure what I"ll be doing. I'm sure Alma will have something that needs to be done. Tomorrow will be an extremely long day. I have impromptu first service, (warmup at 7:30), S.S. and then the luncheon from 11-2 with cleanup afterwards until about 3-3:30. Plus if that's not enough on my platter, the time changes so I lose an hour before I even begin. Oh brother!!!! My only saving grace, is I have nothing planned in the evening and I have a light work day on Monday.
I can't think of anything else going on around here. . . more later. When I look at other people's blogs, their's are never this long. Mine tend to be a little long. (YOU THINK). I've never been at a loss for words, though, so it all makes sense. My kids tell me I could hold a conversation with a wall, and they're right. Hopefully my blog doesn't put anyone to sleep, but I figure I really don't blog for others, I blog for me, so what's really too long, you know??