Love
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Friday 5
Today’s post will be 5 things I’m thinking about.
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Grandma’s 100th Birthday
This is my Grandma Ward, on the left, and her sister, my Great Aunt Flo, on the right. Had she lived, today would have been Grandma’s 100th birthday. I wrote about her here when she died. She had a long life, full of adventures (as she put it), travel, and a lot of loss. She outlived both of her husbands and all four of her children. She and my Aunt Flo were best friends, born 16 months apart. They lived together for the last almost 30 years of Grandma’s life…and for at least the last 15, Aunt Flo was Grandma’s caretaker, as Grandma’s health was not great, and Aunt Flo…
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Rainy Day Thoughts
It’s early on Saturday, and I’m sitting downstairs with a cup of tea and the back door open, because it’s not cold and I love to listen to the sound of the rain. Once anyone else wakes up, I will have to close the door because it will be too cold for Ted and Maya (I do have my robe and slippers on), but I’ve been here for almost 2 hours and I’m loving every minute of it. Mulder just came downstairs about an hour ago, and he refuses to go outside and have a pee. Not sure how long he intends to hold it, but I guess time will…
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Happy Birthday to my Brother
Picture of Richard and me, WAY back in 2001, in our Grandma’s back yard before his sister-in-law’s wedding. We’re older and greyer now. Happy Birthday, to my big brother, Richard! I mentioned him in my post last week for my sisters’ birthday. Seems like quite a few of my favorite people are Sagetarious. Richard and I have the same mom, and we were raised together. We were both born in the Bay Area, he in Oakland, me in Berkeley, and we moved to Fairbanks, Alaska when we were young. We lived for a year or two in a homestead outside of town, with no running water and no telephone, and…
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Happy Birthday to my Sisters
This picture is at my Dad’s 70th birthday, in 2013. My sisters are twins, and today is their birthday! Melissa is on the left, I am in the middle, and Maya is on the right. Due to NaBloPoMo, I have a lot of new readers, so I will give a bit of background on my relatively unique upbringing. For anyone with a lot of time on their hands (ha!), I wrote about meeting my dad at the age of 21, here, here, and here. The short version is that my parents met in High School, and were great friends, though never dated. My mom dropped out of college at U.C.…
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Picture of the Day – Shopping for Gifts
While in France, I did a little gift shopping. I bought Christmas gifts for Ted and Maya, and for my siblings and Mother figures (that’s my step mom and my mother in law). One thing I wanted for Ted was a nice shirt, but not something for work. Too much like getting school clothes as a gift. There was a shirt I liked at a shop in Vincennes, but I wasn’t sure of the size, and I wasn’t sure it was something he would actually wear, and it was almost $200. I would absolutely spend $200 to get Ted a shirt from France that I knew he would love and…
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Picture of the Day – Mulder
Mulder has now finished his first 2 months of weekly chemo, now he is moving on to the next phase, which is chemo every other week for the next 4 months. His weight has stabilized, he doesn’t seem to be losing weight anymore. He is not tolerating the chemo as well as he did at the beginning, meaning for the first 6 weeks, he only had one instance of losing appetite and diarrhea, and more recently it has been every time. It lasts a day or two, but is controlled by medication and us tempting his appetite with chicken and rice or scrambled eggs, which he gobbles down. He’s lost…
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Picture of the Day – Locks of Love
There is a relatively recent custom in Paris (and other European cities) for couples to put locks on bridges and railings, which is adding so much weight to said railings, fences, and bridges that they are threatening to destroy them. This is a railing near Sacre Coeur with thousands of locks, and you can see how they might do damage. Of course, the souvenir shops in the area sell the locks, so most tourists don’t know that it is doing damage and that the city has to remove the locks periodically. Personally I don’t get it, and I don’t find it charming or romantic, but clearly there are a lot…
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Mulder Update
I thought I’d let you know that Mulder is now 1 month in to his 6 month treatment plan. He was a little lethargic and had some tummy issues after the first treatment, but they gave us medication for that. Since then, he has been his normal happy self, no problems other than he is losing weight (but still eating normally), and that generally resolves itself soon enough, so our vet is not worried about it. She said his numbers are all looking good, he is responding well to treatment. One more month of weekly appointments, then the next four months will be every other week, and then he will…
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Updates
I think it’s time to fill you in on the life of J. First and most importantly, Mulder had his appointment with the oncologist on Thursday, and she said he is a very good candidate for chemotherapy, with a six month protocol having an 85% chance of putting him into remission for at least a year, though he has a marker that often means remission can last longer. We have decided to try this treatment, so he will have weekly appointments for 2 months, then maintenance appointments every other week for 4 more months. It is expensive, I would not buy a dog for that kind of money, but he…
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Mulder
We received some devastating news yesterday. Mulder has lymphoma. I was petting him on Saturday and it felt like the glands on his throat were swollen. We got him into the vet on Monday, and she took a bunch of tests which confirmed the diagnosis. She could feel that it was not just the lymph nodes at his neck, but all of them that she can feel, they are all swollen with fluid. After the diagnosis yesterday, she then sent out for some more tests to determine what kind of lymphoma he has. What we know so far is that it is ‘intermediate to large cell, high grade’, and the…
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Meme Monday – Catching Up
Looking at this meme, you might think I had been to the beach. Perhaps back to Hawaii. Nope, life has been very local lately. I have no excuse for not posting here, other than laziness. I’ll catch you up, OK? Back in April, I took a drive out to see my Great Aunt for her 98th birthday. One of my cousins arranged a party at her retirement home, which was great. We had family come from as far as San Diego and Reno, and I saw folks I haven’t seen since I was 5 or 6. It was a relaxed event, KFC and strawberry pie. Aunt Flo’s memory is horrible,…
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Wordless Wednesday – Birthday Edition
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Wordless Wednesday – Birthday Boy
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Wordless Wednesday – Birthday Girl