Walking with Sam and Jeni....

Boy, the best laid intentions of mice and men really do go awry way too quickly in my life.

I had been planning to try to reactivate my brain a bit and come back to some regular blogging but every time I think I'm going to do that, something seems to come up that takes my attention elsewhere.

Like today, for example -when I saw something while walking Sam on the first of our daily walks and today, I was able to recruit my neighbor into helping to take care of what I had noticed along our walk down the road for at least the past three days.

In the run-off ditch in the front of a neighbor's house, down the street from my place, I noticed two smallish piles of leaves there -looking sort of like they had been raked there but no evidence elsewhere that any raking had been done recently in their yard. But it wasn't the leaves themselves that caught my eye, but rather what looked a bit strange from the road looking at the leaf pile. I thought I saw something else there and upon looking a bit closer -without alerting Sam to start sniffing around -I realized there was a dead cat laying half covered by the leaf pile!

It kind of looked like one of the cats that had belonged to another neighbor's daughter but not quite like that cat in that this one was a bit on the scruffy side. At first, I thought if might be a stray that has been wandering around this road for the past 2-3 years at least now -since it was abandoned by the family that had it prior to their moving away from here. That cat, which my daughter and the neighbor next door nicknamed "Scruffums" though is all gray, with a very fluffy coat -when he's sort of cleaned up. He goes to several homes along the street where neighbors there often put food out for him and I just saw him a couple days ago, reposing under a vehicle at the end of the row of houses on this road so I know he was still on the loose.

But today, as Sam and I were coming back towards the house, the neighbor across the street from where this cat is located in the leaf pile, happened to come home and pulled his pickup down his drive and I walked down the alley then to talk to him and pointed out the dead cat to him. He thinks perhaps this cat may have been hit by a car or other type vehicle, possibly back during the very snowy times we had here and then, got buried by the snow plows and ended up that way partially covered by the leaves but now visible since the snow has melted off now. (Snow, which by the way, is being predicted for us later today -in mid-April! Makes me wonder if this really is going to be the winter that has no end, EVER!)

But anyway, the end of the dead cat story is that the neighbor I showed the cat to said he would get a garbage bag and scoop up the remains and leaves and get rid of it before it really starts to decay. Not the best ending for a cat story, I know, but the best that can come out of it, I guess.

Moving on to a little other stuff in my life, last week and the week prior to that were more than a bit wacky for me. First off, on Monday, March 31st, my neighbor and good friend for all my life, phoned to ask me if I was planning to attend our monthly meeting the next night of our church women's group. To show how strangely my brain was acting then, my initial response to her question was "What? Already?"

She sort of chided me then as she reminded me that the next day, Tuesday, was April 1st and also, the first Tuesday of the month, which is when our woman's group normally meets! Hmmm. How the heck did that day, and date, roll around so quickly and why was my mind thinking that there was another week yet before our meeting as well as before my next Social Security check would arrive? I remembered I had two appointments scheduled -on for April 3rd and the other, for April 4th -both of which would require me to be sure to have a full tank of gas in my car and due to my rather confused frame of mind, I had been worrying about if I would have enough money in my checking account to be able to fill the tank to make both of those appointments. Also, my friend's little tapping into my wonderland trip, mentally, caused me to then remember that March 31st was my friend's older sister's birthday and then too, April 1st was that lady's husband's birthday too. Two events that I normally would have purchased birthday cards for each of them and hand delivered them to them by the 31st but here it was that date already and me with no cards for either of my good friends! Talk about stuff that was upsetting my mental apple cart, big time, that was doing it for me with just that one phone call that evening.

So the next day, I had to hurry and find two appropriate cards for the birthday couple and drop them off to them. I also hurried up that Tuesday to bake and ice a cake then to take to our group's meeting that night so we could all have a piece of birthday cake to celebrate her birthday a day late but, hey, what the heck. Better late than never, right?

And, as we went into the little restaurant near here where we were having our meeting that evening, there were five of us walking across the parking lot together when it dawned on me that my good friend's sister, the "birthday girl" was not with her and I commented to her that she apparently forgot someone along the way. She looked around and then said "Oh, you mean my sister? Well, she's not coming tonight because their oldest son was taking her and her husband out to a special birthday dinner that evening." Then she realized too that I was carrying a cake and she figured out I had made a cake then for her sister and her husband's birthdays. We laughed about how I had the cake but no true recipient of it being with us but we all had a slice of cake after our meeting and on my way home, I stopped and delivered cake to her sister and her husband -again, a little bit late but there, all the same!

That Friday then -the 4th of April -I had an appointment down outside of Pittsburgh with the surgeon who has been keeping tabs on me since my last surgery 4 years ago this summer. There had been some questions about a potential issue that had surfaced on the PET scan I had last August and this doctor had me have another PET scan back in November as well as one the week prior to my appointment so he could verify if there had been any changes in the spots that had shown up on the last August scan. Thankfully, the last PET scan revealed no growth, no changes so now, I don't have to go back down there until the fall for just a checkup and next spring, will have to have yet another PET scan to keep track of things. The doctor's office is in Mars, PA and because my older daughter, who normally is the one of my kids who has become my regular transporter to the Pittsburgh area, was unable to get off work that day so it ended up I was going to have to drive myself to Pittsburgh. And that, was a big deal in my life as it would mark over 11 years that had gone by since I had driven that far alone! I have a tendency if I am by myself and driving that anything over 50-60 miles often causes me to sort of zone out and want to go to sleep -not a really good thing to have happening when you are behind the wheel, ya know. So to try to be able to keep myself alert, I had an older gentleman who is a good friend of mine and my kids, ride along with me. Someone to talk to and also, who smokes too so I didn't have to worry about offending any of my non-smoking friends on a trip like that! And, having him riding shotgun with me proved to work quite well as we talked, laughed and yes, filled the car with cigarette aroma too but I had no problems that way then of felling like I was going to fall asleep and that was what I had hoped would take place. So it was successful in that aspect then, wasn't it?

This past Sunday was the first that I wasn't present to help celebrate the birthday of my younger grandson though. Kurtis had his little party down in Middletown this year with his sister, Mom, her boyfriend, his two girls and his parents too and I was here as there's no way I could have managed a run down there, never having been to their house before and try to find my way down and back in one day's time frame. But Mandy said she had baked him a cake and he wanted her to decorate it somehow with three steam stacks on it because his current obsession is talking and learning anything and everything he can about Three-Mile Island and the steam stacks that are within sight of where they live of that nuclear power plant that had the first big major emergency back in the late 70s with a nuclear meltdown. When Mandy and the kids had been up here the week before, the first thing Kurtis said upon entering the house was to ask me if I knew about Three-Mile Island and what happened there.

This child absolutely amazes me! I know I've said that before on numerous occasions but it is the absolute truth about him and also, his sister, Miss Maya. Both of them do some really awesome things for children in their respective age ranges and never ceases to amaze me where their interests are and how well they can learn many things about those things too! Both kids are advancing in school quite well these days -which is a big relief not just to their Mom but also to me as we were both very concerned how things would go for the kids when they left here and moved to the Harrisburg area.

Now, this coming weekend is Easter and I'm very happy that Mandy and the kids will be coming up here to celebrate this with me. Hopefully, all will go well and maybe the other two kids -Carrie and her son, Alex and my son, Clate and his girlfriend, will all be able to be here Sunday afternoon and we can have an Easter dinner together as a family along with a little bit of a belated celebration of daughter Carrie's birthday and Kurt's then at that time too.

 And now, time for me to get myself organized to start doing Avon deliveries this week and hopefully get enough orders to make a little profit this campaign for a change! Sadly, the last two campaigns were not the least bit profitable for me and let's face it, I can't afford to have campaigns like that, for sure! So wish me luck that the majority of my customers like the current book and order a lot of things this time from it too!

Peace!

Now