Next Few Days

By the looks of things, the next couple of days are going to be full - very full!

Tomorrow, Mandy and I go up to meet with a friend of her husband's to purchase a Ford Windstar minivan - 1996 model - at a pretty reasonable price. The guy had bought it from the original owner when it broke down and he put a rebuilt engine and rebuilt transmission in it and now, it runs fine - according to my son-in-law, my son and also my daughter, Mandy. Ok, that will fix part of my latest run of problems here to have the third vehicle available if we need it - or if I want to go someplace and Mandy doesn't - then I can go off on my own!

Thursday, Mandy has that day off work too and we are planning - provided the weather doesn't turn really yucky on us - to go to State College so I (we) can check out the possibility of purchasing a new computer. The unit I'm considering - saw it in the Office Depot's ad in the Sunday paper here plus my cousin e-mailed about it too as he saw the same ad in his Sunday paper in Indianapolis. THe brand is Lenovo and my cousin, who is an avid follower of Consumer Reports, says it has a very good rating with that publication. He saw it has just about everything I had said I wanted in a new model computer too! So, hopefully, things will pan out and we can come home with a new computer! Maybe they even do an install and hook-up, etc? I don't know but that would be nice as I'd like to see if I can still use this computer perhaps in conjuction with the new one. I don't know if that is possible but a fellow blogger told me she thinks it is a doable thing. Will have to find out for sure about that I guess.

I'm also going to be scheduling an appointment for myself with the eye doctor too - get my eyes examined, new glasses. Something I have been in dire need of for sometime now. Boy, it will really be nice to have a vehicle again, glasses to enable me to read and sew easier than I can do now and a new computer to play with. Nice. Very nice.

But, there's a thorn in all this packet of "nice things" right now too.

Tonight, my son-in-law's sister called to let us know that she was at the emergency room with their Dad. "Pap" had a problem with some bad rectal bleeding and when Kath took him to the ER, they did a CAT scan, said he has an infection of the colon (diverticulitis) as well as that a mass the size of an orange showed up on the CAT scan too in his colon. So, tomorrow morning he is scheduled for a colonoscopy to be followed immediately by surgery to see what they can do to begin the repairs needed. Pap is 69 years old, had open-heart surgery about 2-3 years ago and, as my ex-husband would say "He's ornery as cat crap!" My ex-husband has such a way with words, you know!

So, right now, things here, as you can imagine, are more than a little bit tense. Pap is ornery - for sure - doesn't like to pay attention to anything doctors tell him, for openers. Also doesn't pay attention to a lot of things along with not always understanding a lot of stuff too. Although they say he has a mass in the colon, they haven't yet done any lab tests to get any kind of determination as to whether it is malignant or not - that will come about with the colonoscopy in the morning. Once they get some type of determination from that, they will have more idea then what they are dealing with and can go from there.

Much as my son-in-law's dad tends to irritate me at times - particularly with his nosiness about everything my son is doing, does, did - and making up stories about him too by not getting all the details about things he hears or thinks he sees, he's still my two little grandkids' "pappy" and pain in the behind or not, I still have to think of some of his antics from the attitude that he means well - just doesn't always go about expressing that all that well!

So, if you're one who believes in the power of prayer and are reading this, how about putting in an extra word or two - or three or more - for Maya and Kurtis' Pappy. I guess one has to remember he is an ex-marine and maybe that's where some of the extra dose of "ornery" he has comes from!