DH has been working too hard around the homesite lately. With his bad back and painful gut he doesn't need to be laying rocks! But he's doing it, because he loves to play with rocks and is good at it. The muddy morass between the back of the house and the old rock wall which contains the flower bed will be all ROCK. Spring is trying to be here..the dogwoods are just coming into bloom. The daffodils are all gone, the creeping phlox is going wild, the rhubarb is up (pie, soon) and maybe..just maybe..the berries will do something this year if we get enough rain. The peonies are full of buds. I hope we've had our last freeze. I need to mow the grass. That's my job, by my choice, because I don't like the way DH does it; and he's hard on MY lawnmower! I love driving the mower around, with the suicide knob on the steering wheel, and amazing all onlookers with my sophisticated pattern which leaves no blade unmowed without ever stopping and backing up. Tomato and pepper starts are living under the fiberglass leanto outside now, getting strong before moving to the garden. We've had too much wet in the past few days, so the garden area is untillable, and it's still really too early to plant. I planted two rows of Swiss Chard in the middle of the newly-cleaned out strawberry bed, with a row of radishes between the berries and the edging. Why not combine? It's close to the house, and I might even water it. I have rhubarb in the front flower bed, with the butterfly bushes and forsythia. The weather has been weird! A couple of warm, dry days..then two or three days of rain. The plants love it, that's for sure..but it cramps my style when I have to work on the only days that are sunny and dry. Planning a trip in August to the west coast to see kids, grandkids, and old friends. Haven't checked on prices yet, and am prepared for sticker shock. Haven't told DH I'm going, either, but he will support me in my need to connect with family and friends. It will be a busy, busy, trip; I dare not stay with DS and family for more than a week, or we would certainly NOT stay friends! Just too different! I just walked around the yard, and some asparagus is up! Spears the size of my thumb..but not enough to make a meal. I hope they do better this year than they have done in years past. I am getting creative urges..so it SURELY is spring! Replaced a wicker seat in a bench for a friend, and have been looking at my old basket books. Another friend wants me to paint an old window for her for her exercise area, so she has something to look at besides a blank wall. I have the window, and the paint, now all I have to do is do it!

I live in a rural area. Most of the people I work with are men. Making in-person and local friends is hard. I have one very close friend that I used to spend a lot of time with, but she is dying of cancer right now. She will probably not last more than another month at best. I will miss her terribly. I am spending every Sunday with her and also visiting during the week. She is on such strong pain meds right now that I am not sure she knows I am there....but I know I am there so that's enough. I have lots of internet friends that I have met through various internet boards. We have actually had several face-to-face get-togethers at koi shows in the past couple of years. I consider many of them to be real friends that I could count on in a crisis. None of them are local, the closest being 3 hours away. I do wish I had more local friends though. My grown daughter and DIL are probably the closest things I have to local friends. They are both wonderful to be with. Cindy

"Cousin marriage has genetic aspects that do not arise in the case of other marriage-related political and social issues like interracial marriage. This is because married couples possessing higher than normal consanguinity have, on average, an increased chance of sharing genes for recessive traits. Consanguinity means the amount of shared (identical) DNA, the genetic material. The percentage of consanguinity between any two individuals decreases fourfold as the most recent common ancestor recedes one generation. To cite some examples, first cousins have four times the consanguinity of second cousins, while first cousins once removed have half that of first cousins. Rare double first cousins have twice that of first cousins and are as related as half-siblings." "In April 2002, the Journal of Genetic Counseling released a report which estimated the average risk of birth defects in a child born of first cousins at 1.72.8% over an average base risk for non-cousin couples of 3%, or about the same as that of any woman over age 40.[176] In terms of mortality, a 1994 study found a mean excess pre-reproductive mortality rate of 4.4%,[177] While another study published in 2009 suggests the rate may be closer to 3.5%.[2] Put differently, first-cousin marriage entails a similar increased risk of birth defects and mortality as a woman faces when she gives birth at age 41 rather than at 30.[178] Critics argue that banning first-cousin marriages would make as much sense as trying to ban childbearing by older women. After repeated generations of cousin marriage the actual genetic relationship between two people is closer than the most immediate relationship would suggest. In Pakistan, where there has been cousin marriage for generations and the current rate may exceed 50%, one study estimated infant mortality at 12.7 percent for married double first cousins, 7.9 percent for first cousins, 9.2 percent for first cousins once removed/double second cousins, 6.9 percent for second cousins, and 5.1 percent among nonconsanguineous progeny. Among double first cousin progeny, 41.2 percent of prereproductive deaths were associated with the expression of detrimental recessive genes, with equivalent values of 26.0, 14.9, and 8.1 percent for first cousins, first cousins once removed/double second cousins, and second cousins respectively.[179] Even in the absence of preferential consanguinity, alleles that are rare in large populations can randomly increase to high frequency in small groups within a few generations due to the founder effect and accelerated genetic drift in a breeding pool of restricted size.[180] For example because the entire Amish population is descended from only a few hundred 18th century German-Swiss settlers, the average coefficient of inbreeding between two random Amish is higher than between two non-Amish second cousins.[181] First-cousin marriage is taboo among Amish but they still suffer from several rare genetic disorders. In Ohio's Geagua County, Amish make up only about 10 percent of the population but represent half the special needs cases. In one debilitating seizure disorder the worldwide total of 12 cases is exclusively Amish.[182] Similar disorders have been found in the highly polygynous FLDS, who do allow first-cousin marriage and of whom 75 to 80 percent are related to two 1930s founders.[183][184]" from Wikipedia

Update: everyone gone, party a huge success, music fabulous, birthday boy received enough wine to stock a package store. Exhausted, even with two helpers who served and cleaned up after, as I spent most of the day working in the back yard grooming flowers, refilling hummingbird feeder, weeding, etc.-----and then it RAINED! But we had drinks and hors d'oeuvres in our new lower level before dinner and I loved the way we could go in and out between the inside and the covered patio despite the rain. Final head count of 14, two went out of town unexpectedly so it was a nice manageable number. Everyone had a wonderful time and honoree was in his element. Plans made for a repeat get together with this group plus a few absent friends at in December, for our Choral Society's Christmas concert and supper afterwards here. These people travel more than an hour to visit us, so we do our best to make it a festive occasion when they do.