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.