This has not been the most wonderful day of my life. I was working at a very slow home show in Chehalis and it was hard to keep real life from intruding into the workplace.

We were told last Tuesday that Stan has more than 99% chance of lung cancer; he will have biopsy Mar 1 and after we get results, a course of treatment will be started. Some lung cancers are now curable so we're praying his will be one of those. 

The other thing that was heavy on my heart today was that our neighbor girl, Baby Abbey, was being taking off of life support today. (She was born last summer after her mother was put into a medical coma as a result of swine flu and subsequently died.) Abbey's daddy, Kenny, and brother Jacob have certainly been through a lot in the past 7 months. Abbey spit up in her sleep 3 weeks ago and aspirated. She has been in Children's Hospital since then until she went to Heaven this evening. My heart is broken for Kenny.

Since Stan's diagnosis my eyes have leaked quite a lot and most of the time very unexpectedly. Just a little bit ago I saw a picture of Nicole at WSU where she plans to go next fall. I cried just thinking that Stan may not be here to see her go off to college. So many memories come back and even though most of the memories are happy, they bring tears to the eyes and they spill out. 

Shortly after Stan decided he wanted to be married and prayed for a wife, we both went, separately, with friends to the Circle K Tavern on March 15,1969. The Circle K was across the street from Boeing Plant 2 and had a country/western band and large dance floor. Stan was already sitting in a booth w/his friends when he saw me walk in the door. He watched to see where I sat and soon came over to ask me to dance. 'Spose you know I said yes. My friends and I had an agreement that if any one of us was asked to be taken home by anyone we didn't know, that one would automatically be the driver and the others wouldn't have a way home, so when Stan asked to take me home, I was the "driver" so best I could do was agree to see him when Juanita, Vivian and I would be back the next weekend. After seeing each other 3 weeks in a row, I agreed to let him take me home. A few weeks after that when he brought me home from a date, he "accidentally" asked me to marry him. I say accidentally because he said afterwards that he meant to ask me what I planned to do with the rest of my life, but "will you marry me" came out instead. I said "yes" before he could change his mind and we were married June 28, 1969. This is probably not the type of courtship I would recommend for most people, but it's somehow lasted for 40 years!

Most of you who will read this never had the privilege of knowing him when he was not in pain. In October of 1970, while helping a coworker move a refrigerator through a door, he wrenched his back, rupturing 2 discs. He had his first back surgery a few months later and even though he had that surgery and another 5 years later for same reason, he has been in constant pain for ever since. The pain has caused him to become even more quiet than he was naturally, he still has one of the funniest--altho a bit wacky-- senses of humor of anyone I've every known. Unfortunately he keeps most of it to himself.

Blake, Kelli Mark's younger boy (11 yr-old), is over here for a few days--we're actually providing taxi service, but he sure is fun to have around when he's here. He fixed omelets for lunch today and other than the fact that we should have had 2-egg omelets instead of 3-egg, they were very good. He had a bit of trouble flipping his own, but was able to rescue all except one little bite. Fortunately he held it over the stove and not over the floor to flip. I'm sure he inherited some of his culinary skills from me, for instance, he said and he's right, that he's a good cook and baker, but messy. Stan insists that I must pre-flour the counter before I ever start to make pies.;-)

I think we've all made a few blunders in cooking. Don't know if I've already blogged about the time my sister Audrey baked an angel food cake from scratch and I'm not going to search back through to find out, so if you've read this before, you can ignore it. One time when our folks were gone and she was about 12, she decided to make the cake as a surprise. It was truly a surprise because she didn't beat the eggwhites. I don't think you could have cut it with an ax. I know when it was thrown out for the chickens to eat, their beaks bounced off it.

Recently my oven accidentally got turned off while I was baking cookies and one sheet was just a big blob of mess. I won't say who turned off the oven, but next time I ask Stan to turn off the timer, I will be sure he knows which button that is.

My dad had to have been the worst cook of all time. Once when Mother was in the hospital, and he was in charge, he made cucumber omelets for us. Another time he fried mush with green beans in it. You know the expression, "at least he tried," well that still didn't make it edible. I will say he wasn't afraid to try something new.

As I'm sitting here typing this (keying), I wish that I had have inherited my grandma (Anna) and her brother Victor's abilities to tell stories. For whatever the reasons, story telling seems to be mostly a lost art. I suppose it has much to do with the availability of books, tv, movies, etc., that we don't depend on stories being passed on from one generation to another.

I think you know that I am a deacon at my church--the first year of a 2-year term. Anyway, at our meeting last Tuesday evening we put valentine boxes together for the widows and widowers in our congregation. There were some homemade cookies, homemade as well as "storebought" candy and a couple of other things that I've forgotten. Each of us delivered them to the widows and widowers in our parishes. I know that I enjoyed delivering them and visiting with my three "deliverees" at least as much as they enjoyed getting the boxes. I hope it becomes a tradition.

Speaking of homemade cookies, I should get off here and mix up a batch. When Blake gets back from his Grandma Karen's tomorrow and before he is picked up by his friend's mom to go skiing, he and I are going to roll, cut and ice some sugar cookies.