Scattered Thoughts . . .

While Sheila and I drove down to Springfield, Massachusetts for our annual train show extended weekend this past weekend, Liza, John and the kids hopped on an Amtrak train to meet us there.  Sheila and I arrived early, did some shopping, had lunch, did a little more shopping, bumped into Frank and Christine while at the Holyoke Mall and then headed to the train station to pick up everyone.  Lukey and Kenzie were counting the days as the weekend approached mostly because they were excited about the Amtrak journey.  The only other time they were on Amtrak was for a short day trip when we all headed to Brattleboro for a nice lunch on the Connecticut River.  That was a few years ago so they were ripe for another train trip! The Springfield Union Station is newly renovated so we wanted to take a look at the station anyway so meeting them at the station was actually convenient for us.  The new station is clean but, disappointingly, it lacks any sort of usual railroad station architectura

For those following this blog, you know that Sheila has been in treatment for her second bout with breast cancer.  Additionally, this time around, the cancer had spread to her lymphatic system too.  She has been through successful surgery to remove the cancer (well...  this was actually her third cancer surgery), aggressive radiation therapy and, at this point, 13 months of ten years of drug therapy targeting her specific form of cancer in order to minimize the chance of recurrence.  More importantly, as many of you already know, Sheila has been having a very difficult time with the first 13 months of this drug therapy...  although I suspect few know just how much this long-term treatment has affected her quality of life.   Sheila's problems with this drug treatment have been so difficult and so severe that she has been to the ER.  Even the ER doctors were visibly concerned and a bit shaken because the initial thoughts were that perhaps her cancer had spread to her brain.  I k

The snowstorm that was forecast to hit us actually did materialize and it dropped a fair amount of snow on us.  Sheila and I spent about three hours clearing out the driveway, the paths, the mailbox, the fuel tank, and the roof.  This is the longest amount of time snow removal has ever taken us! We removed about 14 inches of snow and, since then,we've had another few inches.  I actually expected far more snow to be dropped on us this storm but, considering how much work it was to clean up today, I'm thankful that we got considerably less snow than was forecasted. Thanks to some of Sheila's old co-workers, we have a nice snowblower and that has come in handy many, many times since it was gifted to us.  This helps out my spine significantly but, I should point out, it is still a painful experience.  The snowblower is actually a bit too heavy for Sheila to handle so I am the one to manhandle the snowblower while Sheila gets started on raking the roof and doing a little

Thursday night, Sheila and I were relaxing at home and our Alexa Show started flashing light and sounding a notification sound...  I told Alexa to answer the call...  Miss Mackenzie was on the other end and had to ask us something.  Gee came into the room as Mackenzie asked if she could have a sleepover at our house.  Gee excitedly answered, "Of course you can have a sleepover with us!" So, Kenzie has been with us this weekend.  Last night we had some meatballs, pasta and bread for dinner.  We watched a movie or two.  This morning I made my pastry-style French toast with a side of bacon and Gee sliced up some strawberries to add to the French toast.  It was delicious! We have a big snowstorm headed our way and had some errands to run so we had planned to immediately head out after breakfast.  Mackenzie and I were ready before Gee so I shot a few photos of her...  here is one from that bunch... One of these days, I need to do a longer modeling session with her.  She i

Not a day goes by when I don't turn a certain way or lift something incorrectly or simply breath incorrectly that I am instantly slammed with spinal pain that is enough to trigger my body to involuntarily buckle at the knees.  In those daily instances, I manage to catch myself before hitting the floor.  This morning, I awoke with spinal pain in my lumbar spine.  I got up out of bed and instantly fell to the floor, a heap of red-hot nerves in excruciating pain... wedged between the wall, the nightstand and the little step-stool to help get in and out of our rather tall bed.   I've had a nasty cold...  perhaps the flu, I don't know which nor do I care...  for the past three weeks.  I still have nasty, thick phlegm running down my throat at night so I try to sleep propped up on three pillows to keep me from choking.  This helps me breath, typically, but it is terrible for my spinal injuries.  Anyway, the cold is still lingering, causing problems, and getting my abnormally ex

Back a month ago, we went to one of Lukey's hockey games at Stowe Arena.  After hockey, we all went to a local Christmas Tree farm to cut Christmas trees and then went out to lunch.  I'll write more and share more photos of the tree farm and lunch but this long overdue blog entry is about Lukey's hockey game. Lukey was in goal for this particular game and he did a good job.  It is funny, it seems like every time I started recording video, Lukey let up a goal!  I did happen to capture a few good saves by him but the video is a bit misleading.  He actually did have a lot of saves...  far more than goals scored against him.  Most importantly, Lukey had a great time in goal! So, here are a few photos from the game. At the bottom of the page, there is a short video too... It is difficult to spot at first but, in this photo below, Lukey blocked the shot with his right leg pad...  the hockey puck is blurred because

This has been an absolutely brutal Christmas week so we have postponed Christmas until... well...  until things improve significantly. I haven't even written lately because my own health has been that poor.  I've still been trying to recover from a disastrous attempt at a colonoscopy in early September. It has been a terrible few months as far as my health goes so I have not written here in the blog nearly as often as I normally do.  Sheila is still struggling with terrible side effects of her cancer treatment.  Sleep is difficult for her for various reasons including pain, headaches and night sweats.  The sleep deprivation takes its toll on everything. On top of all that, she's even been trying to shake a nasty cold for the past two weeks. While Sheila has been trying to shake her cold, I developed her cold a few days ago and a nasty cold it is. No amount of cold medications have been able to even slow it down a little bit. I was up all through the night the other