Besh! A happy belated birthday to you! I hope that you celebrate all weekend! Zig. I am cracking up about you and the DH's ideas on the perfect date! Donna, I have never had an "official" pedicure before. DD gave me a foot bath, a water filled foot massager with various attachments. I'll bet it was WONDERFUL! John, I hope you have a GREAT time camping and 'yakking. I'll be camping vicariously thru you and NH Suzanne. I am going to consider a solo camping trip as most of my friends are "camping weenies" and won't go. Please let us know how it goes. Raeanne, I'd like to be prepared to do both scenic touring AND white water kayaking. We have kayak demo days at the bay about 30 miles away. I have put different rigs in the water and tried a bunch of them out. What I haven't done is made up my mind.... :) I am also just "window shopping" right now. I will buy as a reward for a goal I have set for myself. Thanks to you and John for your yak stats. Oh! And CONGRATS on your loss! I am down 2# this week! I have had a rough few weeks here. I want to thank everybody here for standing by me and helping me out. I haven't gone into too much detail but I have really had to work on having a better attitude. I miss my DH. I also don't seem to "fit" in a lot of our old social circles as a single person. Even church feels a little awkward. I have called my mother in laws house several times just to hear his voice on her answering machine message.(he taped a message for her machine 2 yrs ago) Work has sucked... gotten blamed for other peoples incompetence and in my book, when we are talking patient care, this is unacceptable.I can't work like that. What I do, I feel, is a calling, not a job. Things have changed dramatically since I became an independent contractor. Still a lot of adjustments to be made. I have made a point of "fake it till you make it" and slowly but surely it has been working. I participated in the Cooking Forum swap and that certainly cheered me up. You guys are terrific. Thanks for all the emails and the phone call AND the accountablity. Don't stop now!! : ) Love, Tikanas

Thank you all very much for your thoughts and prayers. There are always miracles, but from what we have been told so far, this is the "bad" kind - adenocarcinoma. We will know more on Tuesday. I appreciate so much you keeping her and our family in your prayers.

Thanks, I knew you guys would help. The odd thing is, I know better. I feel like I got pulled in in a way I didn't expect. Besh, your comment about the anger was helpful. If I sounded angry to you, then I'm sure I did to him, too, and I wasn't really angry, just feeling desperate and scared and hurt and sad. I thought if I'm not as angry as I sound, he probably isn't either, and that helped to think of that. Email is hard, too, or private messaging, as there are only the words, and they almost always sound harsher than they are meant or felt by the other person. Dee, your metaphor helps,too. I used to have an guided visualization audiotape where I was guided through giving up carrying around my own rocks. Now here I am picking up someone elses, and they are some rocks, believe me! To look at them and give them back is a good way to think of it. Actually, maybe I'll look at them and ask him if he wants to give them to the angels to carry away for us. In any case, I don't have to drag them around. I hate losing people I love, we all do, and things got hard recently. He feels so trapped. But I was thinking it's not like he is harassing or threatening me, so I don't think I should have to get away from him if I can just get my own feelings back under control. Marci, that's great about your colonoscopy results. I'm happy for you that you don't have to go through anything difficult there. We had the remains of Tropical Storm Daniel pass by here today, but it was refreshing, nothing damaging. Did I tell you I had mice? About three months ago, two or three came in and I didn't want to kill them. After procrastinating and watching one litter be born, I had my home helper buy me a live trap, but it turned out to be a rat trap, and they just climbed out through the holes. I ordered a Havahart live mouse trap from the net and just got it a couple of days ago. So far, I have relocated 16 mice to a field several blocks away, and there are still about 5 to go. Those things breed like crazy. They look like pet mice though - not just gray, but some white, one kind of a silver cream, some black and white spotted. They are very cute.:) gretl, I hope things go well with your DD, Hi, Wild Chicken if you get by, and Maddie and Patty and Raeanne John and others. And thanks for calming me down and talking some sense back into me. (((hugs))))

Just got in from the land of orange groves and double wide trailers. It was good, actually! I went to get granny first, and I made her cry because I gave her a rotary cutter and self healing mat... she quilts by hand and she's lost her rotary cutter and never had a self healing mat. Her hands shake now and she has trouble cutting in a straight line with fabric scissors, so I thought that would help, and she was really touched... now I just have to get her that Bunn coffee maker she's been talking about. She had a bunch of quilt blocks spread out all over the sofa so she could show me what she has been working on. She's always so happy for me to see her work, and I am so shocked that she insists in quilting by hand at her age... she thinks machine quilting isn't really quilting. I strongly disagree! I brought my Dyson to vacuum for her since her vacuum is so awful. I took the hose off the Dyson to get under her couch where the upright part was too thick to reach and heard a SLURP. The incredible suction of the Dyson pulled in an entire quilt block! And, I was nowhere near it with the wand, I still don't know how it happened. It happened so fast, I didn't even see it, just heard it. I had to open the dust bin up and retrieve it.... I apologized, but she wasn't upset at all... we both got a really good laugh out of it. It didn't even get dusty! Once I realized it didn't bother her, I laughed so hard I cried, and so did she... it took me a while to gain enough composure to retrieve the quilt block from the cleaner. I sucked up enough bobby pins and straight pins to start a factory... not to mention thread a fabric scraps.... I could make a whole quilt with what's in the dust bin. I also brought my new tiffany style lamp to show her and she really liked it. She gave me a card that was really sweet, and apologized that she didn't have any money to buy me a real present... I told her that was silly and love was all I needed (I buy myself enough "stuff")... she said,"Well, that's good because you got plenty of that" (meaning love). It was really sweet. Then we went to my uncle's and the food was ready.. they smoked chicken, grilled chicken, and BBQd chicken. The also had a salad, and baked beans with sausage. It was all REALLY good! My aunt made me a cake (just want I needed!).... it was a boxed yellow cake with store bought icing. I didn't get any salad and they were wondering why... my grandma told them I was dieting and that I love salads (which I have never said because it isn't true), so after eating the other stuff, I had a plate of salad (had to pick the tomatoes out, at least they had ranch dressing). They gave me a card and more mylar balloons (what is up with mylar ballons) and pictures of me as a kid all dressed in halloween costumes and such (remember they were the ones that raised me from 6 to 19). There was another aunt there, another grandma (not the one I was close with... the one I brought was the one I was close with) and my little cousin that I was raised with (she's 19).... we talked a while and ate and then granny stood up, which his her signal that she was ready to go home. I was too at that point.... the aunt was getting annoying (she just doesn't know when to shut up and "picks" on everyone... except me, because I haven't been back in their life long enough yet) and their spoiled black lab was begging for food and trying to lick my face the whole time. So, I took granny home and we talked a while at her place... I looked at her sewing machine and fixed the tension and wrote down the model number so I can download an print a manual for it.... she wants one and it didn't come with one when she bought it. She had trouble letting me go, she didn't want me to leave... she's so bored/lonely living out there, so I promised I'd call and be back soon and started home. It was a good day. The aunt gave me a tupperware cake carrier (turquoise!) to take the cake home in and told me to keep it... it was my little cousin's, exes and he never came to get it after they broke up. That is great because I can keep that one and give Larry my gray and white sterilite one! Oh yeah, and I popped those mylar balloons (my "car scissors" are so handy!) and threw them in the trash at the gas station on the way home. I didn't need them bouncing around in the car during the 50 minute drive home, and they would have just been one more thing to carry home. I tried to find some child to give them to, but there weren't any! I hope they don't go to the gas station later for some chewing tobacco and see them in the garbage (there's only one gas station in that town!). I'm throwing aunt's cake in the trash too because I just don't have room for it. They sent me home with lots of food and I will enjoy it for a few days... I don't have room for 3 cakes, but I'll make room for the chicken and baked beans, even if I have to throw the milk and eggs out! So, yes, a good day, I'm surprised and happy :) Larry is on his way over to try some of the Publix chocolate cake and see his nephew (Jasper the cat) and watch some Lucy :0) I guess I'd better vacuum the cat hair off the sofa (he hates cat hair) and dig a place on the couch for him to sit.... oh yeah, and wash a dish so he can try the cake.... I've been lazy with the housework lately! Thanks again everyone.... by the way, Larry said that isn't the Paula Dean recipe, but one of several he found on Google for the coconut cake. Oh yeah, the Publix cake tastes as great as it looks.... under that dark brown chocolate top layer is a lighter brown layer of mousse like frosting.... man it's good!