Hi Debbie, I admire you so....you always seem to be so "up" even with all your responsibilities. Thanks for filling me in on the prayer circle. It sounds like a wonderful idea and something I would like to do. My day was okay, but lately I feel as if I'm barely keeping my head above water. Besides working full time and caring for my mom, my father in law passed away three month's ago. My MIL is now talking about selling her condo and moving. I'm thrilled that she's made this decision, because she is 88 years old, has a heart condition (under good control) and is extremely hard of hearing. In my opinion, she should not be living alone. I would like to see her in an assisted living facility, but my SIL (DH's sister) is against it and constantly talking to my MIL about keeping her "beautiful place" (SIL lives out of town). I'm trying to talk to my MIL without starting anything with my SIL to keep encouraging her to make the move. I guess we'll see what happens. Right now she lives about 45 mins from us...not terribly far, but there are assisted living places within one mile from our home. I know she would like to move closer to us and quite honestly, she'd probably love to live with us, but that is something that I know I cannot handle. I'm just hoping she'll make the move to a place close by where she will have others around her and we can pick her up and bring her over more frequently so she isn't so lonely. OH! and, I took a giant step today...I made arrangements for my mom to spend a weekend with my sister...yes, I finally did it, well at least I made the arrangements, now I have to follow through. I don't know what my problem is...I feel like I felt the first time I got a baby sitter for my son when he was a baby...that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach. But I have to do this, I know it's the right thing to do for me and my DH...we need a break and some time alone -- it's been seven months of non-stop caring for mom. It's not that long a period of time, but I know it is the best for everyone. I guess I'm anticipating my mom's insecurity, how it will affect her. There's no doubt she will be upset but it's only one night and she's with her daughter, how bad can that be? I figure the worst that can happen is she ends up having a bad night and my sister has a bad night...I just need to get over this first time thing...driving me a little nuts right now...well, I certainly rambled on... And Debbie, if you are cutting your grass for the second time in 4 days, it must be getting nice and warm -- FINALLY...I'm happy for you...be well and take good care, Mimi

Thank you, cyn, and thanks to everyone for your kind prayers and energies... Here's an update: acc. to her DH, J. is moving in the right direction every day, evidently not hurting anywhere near as much, is back walking a bit, and if she keeps improving (it's a *long*, tricky process) over the next couple of days will get put on "the 5-day process" and then back home. Not sure what that last part means but I don't want to bother him. Basically, the direction of change is now positive. Heparin is a really tricky drug...I remembered that when I had my MI, I got clots in the vein in my arm where the heparin drip had been. Luckily, it was a superficial rather than a deep vein, so for some reason it either just dried up as a vein and my body worked around it (my memory is foggy but I do remember the hand guy saying something like that) or the clots resolved themselves without any help. But I remember the discomfort from just having clots in that small size vessel. And DD is pretty much back to normal -- the county and the camp have now decided to *close* the camp for now and investigate further, so no one else gets sick, because another group of campers who came in after us, *senior citizens* (for whom such a virus could be very serious--although any seniors who could go camping in central Oregon are probably tougher than I'll ever be : )), got sick too. Interesting to see public health at work. I'm just happy that DD wasn't nicknamed "barf girl" or anything when she went back on Friday : )

That is so cute and nice. Prayers are good for all as they benefit the sender and receiver.

Thank you all so much. You can't know how much it means to see all these prayers for us. Jim is at Wal-Mart right now. He is a part-time greeter there and he is also in the Clowns Ministry in our Church. His store asked him to come in on the weekends as his clown character, Jimbo the Hobo. They have been having promotions every weekend for the past month. Mostly McDonald characters and the Oreo cookie. They asked Jim to come in. He loves it and I am sure that all he is thinking of right now is meeting and greeting the children. Thank you again for your support.