Depressing Summer

Sadly, this summer has been more depressing than I had anticipated. Sorting through drawers, cabinets and closets has brought back old memories of younger years and made the years fly by. They cannot be recaptured. We had our friend's son, a college student, help us take down about 50 boxes and other miscellaneous stuff from a shelf across our entire garage. Seeing all that old stuff from lifetimes ago has made me overwhelmed and sad. Going through old documents, paperwork, and school memories makes me wish for times long ago.

Even more tragic has been the death of two of my closest friends. They both were diagnosed with cancer almost 3 years ago, about a week apart. They've traveled the journey of cancer treatments together. Luckily, for them and their husbands, they had the support of each other who knew exactly what they were going through.

Candi passed away on July 6. Irene, and all of us were heartbroken, but Irene never recovered from it. She passed away July 25. Irene was my dearest friend. She and her husband traveled with us on many vacations. We were at each other's family events and celebrated most holidays together. I played mah jong and poker with Candi and Irene so we saw each other weekly, until the cancer took over their lives. A group that we are thankful for is "WeSpark" which helped them both during the process. They were lucky to have such a wonderful group for support.

Caringbridge.org is a wonderful website where the family can post messages about the person's life, before and after they pass away; they can post pictures; and people can leave comments and memories in the guest book. In this tech generation, it's a good way to keep in touch.

Besides the funerals of Candi and Irene, I've been to 2 other funerals of parents of other friends in the past 3 weeks. I've got my mother on my mind because it's the anniversary of the day she died 8 years ago. I hope my vacation in September will help me get out of this funk and to look ahead to the future.

Fireworks

We're busy getting ready for a big 4th of July party tomorrow. It's just as much work for 10 people as it is for 20 people. It'll be fun and we'll see fireworks afterwards.

Cool...CVS pharmacy gave $10 in Extra Bucks for a $25 Aveeno purchase and Aveeno gives a $10 rebate for the same purchase. I also had a $4 off Extra Bucks coupon and a $1.50 Aveeno coupon, so my two products are almost free!

The trees on the backyard slope have been cut down and it looks barren and bare. There's about a 4-foot wide stump which would look good with a nice scene painted on it. I hope we plant some shrubs there soon, to get back some privacy and to make the yard look nice again.

The new carpet is in! It looks so fresh and clean. It has a different feel to it, when walking barefoot. The cat got out of the room she was in, during installation and got frightened. She spent most of the day on top of the refrigerator, behind a plant. Poor baby. She isn't allowed on the counters, but she wouldn't come down from even the counters until nighttime. She spent almost a week in one of the unused bedrooms, safely poised on top of boxes of books. The carpet had a different feel to her paws, too, I'm sure.

The wife of one of my home health patients asked if I knew a speech therapist who was a friend of hers. YES! This woman was the first person I worked with after I got my credential and MA. I haven't seen her in #$^$%@ years. So the wife, the speech therapist, another speech therapist I worked with, and I all got together for lunch. How fun to catch up after all these year! How amazing to see all the unforseen changes that have occurred in our lives, too!