My azalea blooms!

When I broke my arm tripping over a tree root while running trails in July 2007, my son-in-law to be (Ramy) bought me an azalea full of red feathery blooms. I've had bad luck with these in the past. They don't like regular potting soil or all purpose plant food. I tried to keep it alive over last winter. By spring, it was 90% dead and I put it outside in my too-ugly--to-be-included-on my patio place where it recovered. By fall, it had completely grew back and was covered with blooms until October. I assumed it would go into hibernation until spring but no, it is now covered with beautiful red blossoms now despite its meager soil reserves and no feeding.

I seem to have a new reader from Stuttgart. Wilkommen Lumia! When I was getting my degree in chemistry, it was required to have a reading knowledge of German as in those days, alot of the chemical literature was in German. So for maybe the first 5 years, I regularly had to translate journal articles but as the world changed, this happened less and less. My strange working vocabulary didn't help me too much while in Germany. Several times that I have been in Europe, at least in France and Switzerland, I would try to speak French but it was immediately assumed I must be German, with a bad accent and they would answer in German. No, please go back to French- I am an American. But I was surprised that they didn't know I was an American from first glance. In Gagliano, they would first ask if I were 'danese"-Danish, as there was a colony of Danes buying up the cheap real estate there, but "tedesche"-German- would be the 2nd guess. I would say 'sono americana' but they know we are always from somewhere else at one point and were very interested in that.

Physically I felt almost normal yesterday but today, not so good. Queasy. I am debating whether to take the Zofran or not. I got an appointment with the dermatology clinic to look at my black spot but haven't heard from the radiologists yet. My support group was cancelled last night due to bad weather. It is sunny and pretty out now but extremely cold. We forgot to let the sink drip overnight and the kitchen sink froze. Saved by the hairdryer.

Over the weekend, a classmate of Naomi's, Anna, was brutally beaten with a hammer (in the head!) and then left to die in the snow by a monstrous ex-boyfriend who apparently doesn't take 'no' for an answer. She is currently in a coma and her chances for survival are slim. Anna was in Naomi's advanced art class and the teacher can't stop crying. Very scary! Need to review yet again signs of possessive, abusive men.

Josh came over last night. He still doesn't know what his work situation is and is very scared. So much doom and gloom here and spreading elsewhere. This is on my mind alot making a full night sleep impossible. I try to read, do puzzles, whatever, to get my mind off of these things.