Free falling....

this is my step niece, the step daughter of my BIL who is staying with us, on some tower in Auckland. She jumped down though it didn't look as if she was going very fast. Still I would get sick if I had to do this

Happy hour yesterday at a Mexican restaurant. Yummy sangria

we've been getting great sunsets

my only purchase this week but I do love it. I found it on my bicycle route so it was fun strapping it to my body on the way home

we've had this cactus for years. Hard to tell if it's alive but it's still green and maybe has grown a little

love toad lilies

On the health questionnaire I filled out the other day  for my annual physical, I was asked how many times I have fallen this past year. I assume this is the old lady version though it did ask if I could be pregnant. Well I fell just once in he past three years but it was a doozy. The bills are still coming in and amount to $15K so far, of which the insurance is covering most though balking at the dental part. Aside from my fatness, which he didn't even mention, I am healthy so yay for that. I do try not to look at the scale fearing it would put me in a funk. Easy not to look at the scale but it was written down which I read later. Yep it did put me n a funk. I think last year at this time I was at my lowest since the whole cancerfest. I though since I was exercising even more and had a pound of the mega boob removed, I should be lower. No such luck. Now I feel bloated and fat and hating myself.

My friend did show up at the cancer cooking class and enjoyed it and even ate quite a bit. It was good to see her optimistic. She thinks she will enroll in a clinic trial that will address the GVHD of the lungs. The class is for people who have survived cancer or people who support those going through cancer. We each get time in the beginning to tell our story. Finally this woman, who has been there for the past few months, admitted she does not have cancer nor does she have any friends or family going through cancer though there is a chance she does have cancer but she is too afraid to have it checked out lest they find out she really has cancer. She said she will leave if people want her to. Of course no one would tell her to go away. she is a sweet woman. I did encourage to check out her symptoms which could be explained by several benign conditions so at least she would have peace of mind.

This has been a slow week. My BIL likes to take it easy though we did persuade him to sit outside and watch the sun set the other evening. Now the kids are over to watch college football. We've spent lots of time listening to classical music full blast. And yesterday was the perfect day for a bike ride though I kept being interrupted by numerous texts by warring ex-spouses.

The pit of corn

Took Steve's brother and Maya to the local farm last night

she loved playing in the corn pit

my feet in the corn. Yep I need a pedicure

feeding the pygmy goats

milking the fake cow

me showing her how to do it

riding the pig

BIL unperturbed by fake crows. Maya would not go near them

Allie with butterfly wings

Zingermans's for the BIL yesterday

While we ate Korean

rainbow cookies fresh from Brooklyn

Northville the other day

Maya and her mom showing off their flexibility

from the internet

Cool, sunny days..the best. Steve's brother will stay with us until we leave dropping us off at the airport. The kids come with their kids to visit him. Monday, we went to Northville for lunch and yesterday, Kerrytown in Ann Arbor. We stopped at the wrapping paper store for my BIL to buy some old Brooklyn maps (which are sold as wrapping paper).

They also sold lots of greeting cards including a whole section for those who have cancer. Some examples:

I promise  never  to refer to your cancer as a journey unless you are actually taking a cruise.

I am so sorry I am ignoring you in your time of need but I don't know what to say.

WTF(for the second one)? I have heard of people neglecting their friends with cancer just because dealing with them makes them uncomfortable. A friend was told by a former friend that seeing her bald was just too depressing for her. But to make a card for this is unbelievable.

My friend after a very long absence, will try to come to the cooking class tonight for survivors.

We had Ms. Maya last night. As she had such a hard afternoon, we tried to do something special for her, thus the farm trip. Still too scared to take the train by herself. It was a beautiful night.

Somewhere NW of Hell is heaven

I do look awful here as I just took off my helmet without combing my hair but being in this all around massage chair felt so good. I did take one of my arms out of the massager to drink my wine as no one would give me the bottle with a long straw

And after the bike ride and after the massage, on to the pool. Hair still uncombed but wine glass still in hand. Then with great difficulty, I hoisted myself up onto a floating lounge chair. Ahhhhhh

hibiscus in early morning light. Tree now covered with ten blossoms

rose with beetle damage

dahlia

first of the toad lilies. I see buds for about 20 of them this year

Back when I was running races, several of them went through Hell (Hell of a run; when Hell  freezes over,etc). There was also the Ride through Hell on a bike that I've done numerous times.

Hell itself is very small, home of the Dam(n) site Inn, a convenience store and a post office that gets more business than a town that size usually gets. Yesterday, our bike posse, minus one, explored the roads by bike NW of Hell. Usually I approached from the SE. Riding to Hell and back from our old house was a 50 mile commitment.

We went almost 20 miles on sandy roads. Some looked familiar from the Hell half-marathon (much hillier than the Dexter-Ann Arbor one). Went by newborn twin fawns (at this time of year?) and pumpkin patches. It was a beautiful, calm day. Usually I like to bike in the morning to avoid traffic and wind but on the backroads, little of that despite it being midday.

Our friend has a massage chair that felt good after the ride. I actually was more sore from moving furniture around earlier in the day. Then we went for a swim (a very loose term) I sat in a floating lounge chair sipping wine and cooling off by dangling my legs in the water when I got too hot. Very nice. And we all contributed to a tasty dinner.

Late last night, my BIL arrived from NYC. Usually he takes two days but decided to keep on driving. If he ever gets ready, we'll go for lunch.

I've had a good last few days plotting and planning our trip and having friends come over. Bonus, highs are in the 70s now.

What the Yab Yum and I have

I mulled over getting this for a week. Do I need a Japanese screen? I really like it though. Online research indicates it was made in the 1950s. There was one just like it in the Yab Yum. What's that? See below

There is a small field of sunflowers near my house

not apparent in this photo but the landscape is 3D

Real life landscape. Find the monarch

there it is

and here. Unlike the swallowtails, they feed with their wings closed. I have plenty of flowers but they preferred the zinnias

Last week, in a far corner of the basement of my favorite resale shop buried under quilts, I found the above Japanese screen. Every month an item goes unsold, the price is reduced another 10%. If I could hold out until yesterday, the price would be 30% off. As it was still there, I bought it. Groan from Steve but he made several purchases from the nearby paper store. Why would he like paper? Because they sell wrapping paper made from ancient maps of New York City so now we have 2 more of those. Maybe one of them can replace one of the 3 world maps we have mounted in the den?

He found a very similar screen on-line at a dealer from Amsterdam who said it was from the Yab Yum Gentleman's club of the same city. The price was 36x what we paid (he is liking the screen more). So the Yab Yum was an extremely expensive brothel full of deluxe furnishings.  It has since been converted to a museum with most of the boudoirs intact. Plenty of photos online though I couldn't find my screen. I haven't found a god place for it but once we replace the overstuffed ginormous, old sectional we have, it can be used as a room divider. And I do love cranes.

So it's my 8th cancerversary and I am still alive. Yay! There is now very little chance of recurrence though what conditions that set me up for cancer the first time still probably exist. But I still remember the terror I felt when they kept repeating the scans over and over and finally a radiologist came in to do an ultrasound. And how she sighed impatiently at my many questions that I was too shocked to articulate quickly enough for her.. A year of doom and gloom. Why couldn't I just concentrate on the 70% chance I had of survival?

And my friend whose odds are much worse, found out that she has an irreversible  lung condition yesterday. At best, with lots of drugs with lots of side effects, they can stop it from spreading. She is understandably devastated.

Another factor I neglected when I made trip plans the other day. My California friend was coming to see me. Turns out we will have only 2 days of intersection. I must plan things better. Where we are going is a work in progress. The tufa sculptures of Mono lake look real cool...

Back to school

Oliver off to 3rd grade at a new school. The kids will be in 3 different schools

1st grade for Daniel

kindergarten for Maya

she's smiling here but she is extremely nervous as she hates strangers. She also is a head taller than everyone due to being older and tall for her age

Josh and his grade school buddy. They were born on the same day and he went on several of our bike rides across the state. Now a daddy of an 18 month old

fawns (they had spots)bounding back and forth across our yard

hummingbird moth which moves almost as fast as a real hummingbird. From the side, its long tongue looks like a hummer's beak and it sips nectar. Unlike hummingbirds, it is not aware of us but still zips around quickly to evade potential predators

here its wings are not flapping. They flap so fast usually you can't see them

The end of summer but not of heat and humidity. 90 today and unbearably humid.

All the kids and their kids came here yesterday. The girl cousins played well together though it was too toasty to enjoy the outside much. I love having the whole family over. In 18 weeks or sooner, there will be another little one to love.

I have this expensive airline credit card that gives a free ticket once a year but I didn't use it until today. I thought I could make reservations by the end of the month for a flight in late October but no, I was told that my travel has to end by September in order for me not to lose the ticket. Scramble, scramble. My basic rule is not to leave Michigan when it is nice here, only when the weather gets sucky. We want to go to Yosemite which at least won't be snow covered then so that's what we will do. Steve's brother is coming next week. Hopefully he doesn't want to stay more than 8 days. I guess he still can but we won't be home.

My friend who has battling host versus graft disease has it in her eyes (along with in her lungs). She does not make enough tears. They put plugs in her tear ducts, which you would think would be counter productive but tear ducts drain from the eye not to the eye. Even artificial tears aren't working. They recommend that she get these special lenses, which are like huge contact lenses that trap saline solution over most of her eyeball. $10,000 these things cost!!! The insurance covers only half the cost. Can she afford $5000 for a bit of glass or plastic? Nope so she is doing a gofundme. page.  Hope they work.

Despite the heat, I am making chicken broth that will be the base of matzoh ball soup. Most of the chicken was used to feed the family yesterday (along with other stuff).

Hummingbird wars

Allie's first coaster ride

the work of local chalk artist David Zinn

hard to tell but this a flock of turkeys I went by early this morning They will be prettier in the spring

Whitmore Lake on my bike ride

sunflowers past their prime this morning

my Delaware host's dog 3 weeks ago. He was put to sleep this week due to a tumor that would be painful to treat. As my friends were quite attached to him, they are very sad

For the past month, my flock of hummingbirds (maybe 5 or 6?) have been hellbent making sure no other hummer gets to eat. I have 3 feeders and numerous gardens (their favorite flower is my cigar plant followed by the butterfly bush) so no one is going hungry. But as soon as one lands on a feeder, another zooms in to try to stab it in the back. Then there is a chase. Sometimes they fly inches from our heads. One of my feeders is right outside our bedroom so I can lie in bed and watch their antics. In a few weeks, they will be gone. I assume most of this chasing is just getting their flight muscles in shape for the big trip across the Bay of Mexico. I thought the swallows were gone too but today a tree swallow swooped through the yard.

A perfect day for a bike ride. Cool and best yet, no wind. Although there was no fog at our house, I soon went through a mile long patch of it. Fortunately I was covered in flashers so that the very few cars could see me. 33+ miles. I went by the back of our old house, weed city. So much time was spent last summer making those gardens nice and now they have all gone to weeds. Not my problem anymore, thankfully.

We rarely use our patio except when we have crowds of people coming over as uncovering the table and chairs is such an ordeal. But since there is no rain for a while and all the family is coming tomorrow, the patio is now useable and especially nice at night as the sun is on the other side. It is now surrounded by flowers though some of the petunias are looking raggedy. Last night I left a container of bird seed out that the chipmunk so much wanted to steal. Too bad we were there. Still he kept trying to sneak up on it.

All the grandbabies and their parents should be here tomorrow. I will have the food prepared all in advance so Steve and I can enjoy the kids instead of being in the middle of food prep most of the time.

The end of summer...sigh.

Swamp gas

Allie preparing to take care of her baby sibling

Tessa and Maya harvest Shanna's corn and carrots. Huge ears of corn; tiny carrots though the girls selected the smallest ones as they were so cute

Maya at our house

I liked this travel poster of San Francisco. Hopefully we will be there in a couple of months

I got this 3-D paper art. Needs to kept away from direct sunlight. It would look perfect in my beach themed bathroom but then no one would see it

large ceramic trivet

It is said that one retains the memory of odors longer than those of the other senses. How true!

When I was 5, we took a trip from upstate New York to Florida and back going through coastal Georgia and South Carolina. Did they have I-95 then? I don't think so as we wound through town after town.We went in the heat of the summer. Our cars never had air-conditioning (though to be fair, I don't think any cars did). Some of the towns smelled so bad, this pungent sulfurous cloud of funk. It made me gag. How could people live  in this miasma of stink? They get used to it, my mother said.

On the way home, my one year old brother became so ill that they thought it was necessary to take him to the ER in a small town hospital on the coast. It was dark and hot. I could hear the loud buzzing of cicadas. The air reeked of putrid decay. I was left in the car by myself as for some reason, it took 2 of them to deal with the doctors. Of course these days, leaving a 5 year old alone in the car would land them in jail. I felt I was in that car forever. At one point, several ambulances came screaming in. Huge traffic accident nearby which set my brother further back by triage. Finally I started to scream on the top of my lungs. Someone heard me and brought me into he waiting room where it wasn't dark and smelly. Why couldn't they have let me wait there in the first place? My parents lacked common sense.

What smelled so bad? Paper mills, my father thought.

We went back to Florida several times but from Michigan, one takes a inland route far from the coastal swamps. After we were married, Steve and I took the coastal route to Florida from NYC but we were on I-95 and it was winter. No bad smells.

Once when working in Detroit, in a walk-in  refrigerated storage, I smelled it again. Not sure if was a single chemical or a mix .

However, when I crossed the wetland portion of the trail in Delaware, I smelled the putrid smell again. It must be the swamps as they wouldn't dare have a paper mill anywhere near such a fancy area. The odor must be due to some sort of decay in salt water swamps though I must have been near them in the NE and never smelled that odor. Maybe only in the south. And the odor wasn't as nearly as strong as I remembered as a 5 year old.

The last de facto week of summer. The kids had their school open houses, with Shanna dealing with 3 different ones on the same day. Maya is now enrolled in the neighborhood school where she shall remain for a while. Three girls from her Young 5s also will go to her school and all the parents wanted the girls kept together. They were told they would be but from the class lists, the three are in separate classes. Worst, Maya has been placed with an elderly, rigid woman who was there when my older kids were there. Naomi had her briefly as she was in charge of her first grade reading group. Naomi was in the top group because she was so fluent. However, no one noticed the entire year that she had no idea what she was reading. I would like a teacher more on the ball. Turns out the young principal coached basketball at Naomi's high school and remembers her. She agrees this woman is not a good fit.

It is cool and sunny out, perfect for me. I have been visiting various friends over the week and in general, have enjoyed myself. Sad that soon it will be winter.