Thursday

Greg stayed home from work Monday, and that always messes me up on my days of the week. Today most certainly didn’t feel like a Thursday. Last night's chicken w/shrimp cream sauce turned into tonight's dinner instead. I'd forgotten that yesterday was payday, and that's our night to eat out. So we had roast beef po-boys instead.

Greg's back is really hurting him again. He's had another MRI and it shows scar tissue. It doesn't look too much different than the first MRI. It's so disheartening to see him in pain at all. He went through so much last year. He's going to have physical therapy and he's taking an anti-inflammatory med that does help his pain. It kills me to see him limp off to work some mornings. He's quite a trooper. His surgeon says if the therapy and meds don't do the job, he'll have to have surgery again. This time they'd remove the disc and fuse the vertebrae.

Gregory started playing World of Warcraft today. He's been wanting to get started at it, but needed to wait for the new computer. He's really enjoying his online gaming friends. I think G will have friends over this weekend. My friend Brandie has a son who turned 13 yesterday and another who's 11 (2 of 6 kids!), and they love to sleep over. It's neat to see how differently Gregory relates to them. The older only wants to play video games. G loves his games, but he likes to do other stuff when he has a friend over too. He actually gets along with the 11 yo better because he'll play anything. They still do a lot of imaginary play - still use old costumes. They'll even make videos while he's here of short stories they make up themselves.

I didn't get very much done today. Got my plants watered, but nothing more than that. One of the many things that happened while I wasn't writing was the drowning death of Vivian, 2yo daughter of a friend of mine. You can imagine how difficult it's been the past 3 months. Her mother Lisa is keeping a journal at caring bridge. It's been a lesson in so many things to see how this family is creating a new normal in their lives. The family has taken down the pool and will be planting a memorial garden there. They've asked friends to bring plants for the garden. I'm grateful for something physical I can do to help. I've been debating what to give her. I'm pretty good at keeping plants alive, but cuttings are not my talent. Today I can across a small piece of begonia growing among some weeds. It's the perfect size and will require very little care.

Well, I titled this Thursday, but it's been Friday for almost 2 hours now. Goodnight all!

7 months

I cannot believe I've let so much time go by without writing. So much has happened in that time. I could never summarize it, so I won't even try. Today begins anew.

We've been indoors much of the past few months. It quickly gets too hot for us in the summer. I haven't even gotten much gardening done. I began to dig out about 18 inches of clay to redo my front garden. At this time it's a trench running along about 75% of our front porch. It's been mild this week, so I may finish the digging soon. I don't like having that trench there. If anyone should step into it accidentally they could get hurt. It has been cool to see the tadpoles make a home of it after summer rains. This summer has been more about maintaining the plants than adding new ones. But I do hope to get some things in the ground before "winter". Ooh - that reminds me - the bougainvillea that I bought 2 years ago is finally blooming for me. It was blooming when I bought it, but hadn't since. It's always exciting when something finally gives back some color.

G's been steadily conquering the world (mostly the post-apocalyptic world) on his Xbox this summer. He's made lots of friends gaming online and even has a few IRL friends that he plays with some evenings. I love the teamwork I see in him and his friends. They really look out for each other in the games.

We got a new-to-us dog in April. She just showed up and decided she wanted to live with us. She's more active than Bullitt, but much more graceful. They have a hard relationship to describe. But she loves Bullitt so much that it annoys him. And that's not all bad, because it has curbed just a little bit of his own obnoxiousness. I think she may be younger than Bullitt (he's 3.5yrs) because she just has so much energy. And she can get bored. This morning, to keep them from barking and waking Gregory, I had his bedroom door closed. And I didn't realize that Greg had also locked the pet door. Between Greg leaving @ 7:30 & me rising @ 9 she had gone into our front room (the junk/hobby/office room where the cats have a bit of sanctuary from the dogs. I also use some shelves in there as a pantry). She got a hold of a box of mashed potato flakes. It was unopened. The mess began in the front room where it looked like she'd made a concoction of potato flakes, cat litter, and poop. The she took the box of flakes over the baby gate (which we'd never seen her go over) and had a party in the kitchen and living room with it. She had to have shaken her head big time with the open box in her mouth. It was everywhere. She also got into an unopened pack of rubber bands - nice and chewy. I'm sure she'll be recycling some of them soon. Thankfully this is not normal behavior for her. But that does make it harder in a way, since I don't really know what will trigger her to destroy something. I can usually spot the trigger after the fact, but she's hard to predict. She is a chewer. We knew that right away. She ate all of Bullitt's rubber toys. Now they have several lengths of knotted rope to play with.

We have a new computer and I'm still fine tuning stuff, like pictures. If I'm lucky, I'll get in a little nap before fixing dinner. I'm baking chicken breasts and making a cream sauce with some shrimp - Greg held back a few when he fried the shrimp Monday and we've not had anything "with a shrimp cream sauce" in a long time. :)