The Servant's Quarters

Back Online

I'm back from my long and completely unplanned hiatus. My apologies for anyone who's been tuning in looking for updates on Mom. My absence stemmed from a couple of things, mainly the fact that last weekend I came down with the same stomach flu that I had had to clean up after the weekend before. It was pretty bad. I don't usually get sick, and when I do, it's not nearly as bad as it was a few days ago. I came down with the crud on Friday, which delighted my co-workers no end, I'm sure. I was finally able to return to work in the afternoon on the following Tuesday.

The only up side that I can see to the whole thing is that I was able to catch up on some backlogged reading while I was trapped in the bathroom in the middle of the night during those sick days.

But I'm sure you don't want to hear about that.

So, let's play a little catch up -

Mom is doing well. She still has some soreness, but she is healing up nicely from her surgery. Today is the big day that kicks off several months of chemotherapy. We all went to her orientation last week. It was supposed to answer our questions. Instead, it gave us more questions and apprehensions than we cared to deal with. Basically, chemo can affect your body in all kinds of nasty ways up to and including congestive heart failure. And there's no way to predict what side effects she's going to suffer. She is definitely suffering some pretty intense jitters. Prayers, please!!!!!

Mom is scheduled for dose #1 of chemo this afternoon at 1:00 PM. I'll post again tonight with another update.

In other news......

After years of watching our front porch rail deteriorate and the excessive vegetation in front of our house die a slow, agonizing death, we decided to do something about it. This past weekend, we crashed on the Front Porch project big time. First, we rebuilt the railing. This turned out to be much easier than we thought it would be. Aside from some spacers that I had to cut for the bottom of one portion of the railing, we had all the pieces we needed already. We glued and nailed all the pieces together and held them in place with straps while the glue dried.

Next step was to removed the dying evergreens that overshadowed the entire front of the house. I decided to give this a go on Sunday afternoon, thinking that I'd be lucky to remove one or two of the trees. I wasn't having a lot of success when Rita accidently discovered that the trees had no root support against the house. By pushing on that side, I had no problem bending most of the trees right down to the ground. That left the roots that had grown away from the house, which Rita cut with a saw while I moved the tree to give her different angles to cut from. We ended up pulling out all seven trees yesterday. And was I feeling my oats! I told Rita that I didn't know any other husbands who could rip trees out of the ground with their bare hands.

Next weekend - painting and getting new porch furniture.

Also -

Aidan's potty training with some success.

Tonight is Liv's audition for Ever After Production's version of Aladdin.

Ford is a scary place to work these days. After last Friday's announcement, I admit that I am feeling nervous. Please pray that my job is protected (or that God opens up a new job for me somewhere else if He doesn't want me here).

Less than two weeks until vacation time! Yes!