Life's twists and turns

The twists and turns of life can sometimes throw us completely out of our safe little cocoon.

We’ve been really busy as usual without giving much thought to the rest of the family, even our own boys. This month is the month to try and catch up with our overdue payments so we have tightened the belt very tight and used the time to start cleaning up the mess called our house.

Then a week ago tonight we heard from Dale’s sister that the wife of her oldest son had been diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. I’d never heard of this disease so looked it up on-line and was horrified to learn that people with this survive about 4 months, have memory loss, become paralyzed, go into a coma and die.

Only 1 week before our niece was driving and still involved with her two teenage boys lives and we were keeping in touch on Facebook. Now a week later she staggers, has memory lapses, sleeps a lot, can’t talk much. To read the research and then to watch someone suffer with this disease are 2 different things. We are shocked at how quickly she is going downhill and feel profound sadness for our nephew and their two boys. We are trying to work out how to best help the family.

Now today my oldest granddaughter’s mother has emailed that her husband, our granddaughter’s step father, has lumps again like the ones he had when he was diagnosed with lymphoma. They are most anxious to move back to this area so he can go back to the cancer center where he was treated before.

It brings it back that I must make the best of my life because life is short.

Watching "A Prairie Home Companion"

Back in the late 70’s or so Dale and I discovered “A Prairie Home Companion” on our Public Radio. We would listen every Saturday night with our 3 boys and as the boys grew so did the stories of “Scotty the Show Dog” and “Guy Noir”. The boys even named one of their dogs Scotty.

We always thought that it would be fun to see the show in person and had been so disappointed when Garrison Keillor decided to stop the show some years ago. When he brought the show back we thought great we have another chance to get there. We even have Dale’s brother and family who live in Minnesota so have little excuse for not getting to the show.

Tonight there was a special live show from Minnesota viewed by a live feed to various theaters in the U.S. including one in our city. I’d heard about the show during one of the radio programs and told a very good friend who is also a fan of the show. Dolly came by early this evening and had dinner with us. Then after I got Dale off to work we went off to the theater getting set up with Ziploc bags of orange sections and cookies to snack on.

The show was fun to watch, the HD showed the performers so clear that you’d think that you could touch them. The surround sound made us hear every sound so clearly. It was fun to see the 2 guys do the sound effects and Garrison Keillor do the News from Lake Woebegon. The piano player from Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band was amazing as the cameras focused on his hands playing his tunes.

But really I’d still like to see the show in person. The energy of the audience and being in the presence of the wonderful theater and the performers give an effect that goes beyond the HD effects. So, at least for me, I still will not be happy until I get to see this show in person.

Dreaming of Alaska

I’ve been working on claims recently and have been sick on top of that, not a great situation. But yesterday I started thinking about a trip to Alaska.


For two years we have planned to go to Alaska for a grandkids trip. Two years ago we got airplane tickets using our United frequent flier miles, paying the fees for all 6 tickets. The trip was problematic in that the only seats we could get gave us only 5 full days in Alaska, not much time. Then Dale was notified that he had to attend a conference during that week and Sunny found out that she had to register for her new school during that time. We canceled paying the additional fees to put the frequent flier miles back into our accounts.

Last year we planned again to go to Alaska. This time we found that rules had changed so that there were only 2 seats per day available. That would be 3 days up and 3 days back for the 6 of us. Instead we got tickets for our youngest son and his wife and my friend John. We would drive. Well something else came up; I think that money was an issue. Again we paid all of the fees to put the miles back into our accounts.

This summer we will go to Alaska for sure. All of the grandkids get out of school around June 3rd so we will leave on the 4th driving of course. I’ll write more as we firm up our plans.

Dale and I have been to Alaska twice with our own kids so we are anxious to take the grandkids. This will be different because we will be there over the solstice, something that really looks to be fun.