Ah, a long weekend away at a beautiful little lake in PA... now that's something to look forward to. My sister and I (we share a cottage), and my brother and his clan (they have their own cottage), have been making this trek every year for the past 5 years on Columbus Day weekend. This seems to be perfect timing for Fall foliage, and, so far, we’ve been super lucky in terms of it not being too cold. Here’s a pic. of the view from our back door there. It's very relaxing.



The Lake in the a.m. - great with a cup of coffee!

OK - so my car saga goes on... this is like some weird, bad novel. Ends up my mom's car, that I borrowed because mine broke, needs some stupid window motor and some other regulator thing... Price tag $585. There aren't any after-factory available (old car) but my brother can get dealer cost at, oh, $360ish - PARTS ONLY. Thank god he knows about cars - he's going to go junkyarding and try to find a window motor for less and put in in at home (so I don't have to pay labor at his work) - he's such a great guy.

I'm really hoping the candidates decide to discuss some pertinent issues tonight; but my fear is they're going to engage in a lot more clawing and backbiting than tackling of issues (reminds me of some past relationships I've had - yikes). Maybe we should just throw some gloves on them and shove them into the ring to get it over with and then they can go on to the issues. Guess we’ll see soon enough.

• No boss at work today - somehow that always makes things go a little more smoothly.

• It appears I didn't crack the engine block in my car - just tore up the alternator belt - replaced it about a month ago - will have to have it replaced again. Boy - did it make a stink.

• Bought some of those black & decker plug-in things that are supposed to make some super high frequency pitch sound to keep bugs away - they don't work on fruit flies - sick of those litte bastards.

• Bought some Edy's Espresso Chip ice cream for company last night - it's fabulous! Talk about best of everything - ice cream, espresso, chocolate chips - yum! Next best thing to Andersen's coffee bean ice cream.

• Overall - not a bad day.

Had most of my family over for dinner tonight for my brother's birthday (it was really good too). When dinner was over, I gave my daughter's friend and my niece a ride home. After dropping off the last passanger, my daughter and I were on our way back home and I started to hear this weird noise in the front passsanger side. At first I thought maybe I ran over something and it was stuck and making a flapping noise as I was driving - gross - the thought of this actually made me feel pretty sick. But, thankfully, it wasn't any kind of live thing. Unfortunately, it was some kind of belt in my engine that, after it totally broke and stopped making the dreadful noise, my power steering went, the battery light came on, and the car started blowing smoke like crazy. I managed to drive it home the rest of the way (praying I haven't cracked the block) taking very wide turns and running through a number of red lights. I probably looked like a complete maniac - I know I felt like one. Lucky for me, my mom has two cars and my sister took me over to her house so I could pick one of them up. Tomorrow evening my brother, a Ford Technician, is going to come check the stupid car out. I've loosly been scouting cars for a while now because my hasn't been running great, but I just haven't wanted to take on another monthly payment. I hate cars.

Tomorrow is the first day at my sister’s friend’s new church.
Here is the information I received on the service:

In celebration of the establishment

of his new church...

You are invited to attend the first service at

Spirit of Truth

An interdenominational setting of Christian faith

under the pastoral leadership of

Elder Jerome Livingston (my sister's friend)

Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 10:00 a.m.

2275 Fillmore Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14214

(second floor: unfortunately, no elevator is available)

If anyone's interested in attending, all are welcome.

I had the strangest dream last night. Bill & Hillary were at my kitchen table with me and we were eating potato chips. They wanted to see some of the neighborhood so I took them on a little tour to see some beautiful old buildings that had boarded up windows and were desperately in need of refurbishing. We went back to my house, sat back at the kitchen table talking about the buildings, and then they were getting ready to leave. I asked Hillary if I could write her a check as contribution to her campaign fund. I gave her a check for $50 and then they left.

This was a weird dream on several fronts: 1) I don’t have a table in my kitchen. 2) The house wasn’t really my house but I didn’t seem to be one with which I was otherwise familiar. 3) The neighborhood I showed them wasn’t really mine either; mine doesn’t have the buildings I described. They were more like the old brick buildings along Oak St. or on Michigan. 4) I actually remembered, I think, at least most of this dream. I very rarely even remember if I’ve had any dreams.

Maybe it was those two cookies I ate before I went to bed. It was cold last night, and I just don’t want to cave in to turning on the heat yet, so I made cookies to have the oven warm things up a bit. No, I didn’t put anything funny in the cookies, but maybe I shouldn’t have eaten them so late. They were pretty good though - oatmeal chocolate chip.

Good cookies...



...but strange dreams.

We met in the spring of 2002. He was handsome, funny, genuine, kind, and good, with just enough sarcasm to keep him interesting. At that time, neither one of us was looking for, nor were we really interested in, any kind of serious relationship. My life felt full and I was content, and he had relatively recently gotten out of a long, unhappy marriage. What seemed incredibly, we both fell for each other hard and fast. I would later tell him, “I never knew you were missing until I found you.”

He was the kind of guy who, the first time my daughter (then 7 yrs. old) saw him holding my hand he asked her if it was okay. And, after meeting my 20-year old son, decided that, based on the vibe he got, the next time they would meet he wanted to talk to my son man-to-man to assure my son that his intentions were honorable and that he wouldn’t hurt me. (Boys can be so protective of their moms.)

We moved in together in November 2002 - both happier than we ever imagined possible. But I guess it’s true, when something seems too good to be true, it usually is. In December of 2002, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. On Christmas day we got engaged. There didn’t seem to be any sense in wasting time as the future seemed so uncertain. He was concerned about the possibility of becoming a burden; but nowhere inside me could I remotely imagine anything other than being with him - whatever was to come.

Mid January, lots of testing, biopsy, and stint surgery. The Dr.’s told us that he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that only one in 20-million people get but that, if you could imagine, it was a “better” kind of cancer to have than “regular” pancreatic cancer. It was supposed to be more treatable with a better chance at survival. We remained hopeful. January 25, 2003 we were married. (Aside from my children’s birthdays, it was the happiest day of my life.) Several months later he adopted my daughter - an incredible joy for them both.

Early February, I took a leave of absence from my job so I could be with him while he went through chemo and radiation. We were together all day, nearly every day for the following 6 months, cramming as much as we possibly could into the time that we had. It was the most intense, intimate experience I ever had. Some of it was really hard, but his life touching ours was such an amazing gift. He passed in August 2003.

Today would have been my husband’s 47th birthday -
For him, my wish, my prayer... is that he truly is at peace.

Ugh - all we need is another idiot in charge of anything who can't pronounce new-clee-er. That right there ought to scare people off. I hate her - but unfortunately she didn't fall totally flat on her face. Listening to her and watching her really brings out the worst in me. I'm generally opposed to violence but I just want to pull the dumb bitch's hair.

I tried to give blood last week but the blood donor center wouldn’t take it. They said my iron, and some other thing identified by 3 letters that I didn’t know what it was, were too low. Can anyone tell me how far in advanced of giving blood I have to stock up on iron-rich foods to get it high enough for them to take? When I was a teen/young adult I had some problems with borderline anemia, but not so much in the past 10 years, at least not that I’m aware of. I was giving blood regularly about 5 years ago but stopped after about a year because I got a tattoo (no - not a midlife crisis - kind of a tribute to my husband). Anyway, I didn’t have any iron problems at that time. After a tattoo, they don’t want you to donate for a year, and I just sort of got out of the habit. So, I made a conscious effort to go back and then, go figure, my blood is too weak. Anyway, I want to try again but need to get my iron up. I can’t take vitamins with iron as they make me sick to my stomach, so I guess it’ll have to be the good old-fashioned red meat and spinach way. I just don’t know how long I have to do that before my levels are any good.