Dear Friends

  • Mini Lilypad – Beach Weekend

    Our frequent weekend trips, coupled with lots of work, have kept me from updating lately.  But I’ve had family members clamoring for details on what’s happening lately in our lives (CLAMORING).  I must keep my public satisfied, or . . . or they’ll be unsatisfied.  Last weekend – – – – In June of 2006 a pair of close friends got married at the Outer Banks – the bride’s family owns a house there, and she got the use of it for the wedding (and also this past weekend, it’s where we stayed). Their beautiful classy wedding was an absolute blast and also a disaster. Unfortunately, despite the fact that they’d…

  • Adventures in Chemotherapy

    You know work is bad when you prefer spending the day at the chemotherapy treatment center.   My job has myriad, disparate tasks.  Myriad.  And disparate.  And here lately these pesky insistent little duties have all hooked their long fingers around one or the other of my limbs and started trotting off in their disparate directions, threatening to tear me apart, medieval execution style.  Then yesterday, the Biggest Baddest Need of them all stepped up, swept away all of his grabby competitors-for-my-attention, and demanded all of me, for 6 hours.   This Biggest Baddest Need was a friend’s cancer.  A key employee is needed at a key meeting that cannot be re-scheduled.  His wife is due her…

  • To You Who Suffer

    I won’t give you a list of all of the people in my life who are desperately ill right now.  Some friends, some spouses of friends, some family members – it’s a long list.  This morning I have been inundated with stories that I wish I wasn’t hearing, because I wish they weren’t happening.  My favorite college professor told us in class once that life is pain.  It is right now for a lot of people I love; a brutal, grey, sucking sea of pain that is trying to draw them all down. That said, I am marveling at these people’s responses.  The bad news keeps coming, they keep getting…

  • Weekend Update

    Oh, I love friends.  These particular friends who came up this weekend, well I love them.  We all had a great time, they loved the play, our house, my cooking – it was a warm fuzzy weekend of love, compliments, and happiness. I also love free time.  Although I don’t really know what to do with myself these evenings off.  We are “living like monks,” as the Professor likes to say, in anticipation of the upcoming honeymoon.  So we can’t spend any money on activities.  And we don’t have cable, so vegging in front of the tv is out.  All our Netflix are in transit in the mail, so no movies. …

  • Failure

    Catching up with Nora recently, and she sent out an APB – please, tell me about your worst failure in life!  She’s going through some pretty risky life changes at the mo, and was looking for people to reassure her.  Most failures in life are survivable, except perhaps failure to strap your parachute on properly before jumping out of a high-altitude situation, or similar.  Well, if I can make this usually perky lady a little more cheerful by discussing a few black times in my life, I sure will!   So.  My WORST ever failure . . .  How does one know when one has failed?  Is it when you feel…