I hang out in a gardening website quite a bit. Over the years, even though most of us have not met, we have become friends. Recently we lost one of our own, I'll call her Mrs. J. I've hung out there for over 10 years and she was part of the community before I found it.

Mrs. J. had it hard for the last few years of her life but she never let us know. About 3 years ago, her husband, an airline pilot, had to take early retirement because of heart attacks. He fought depression for quite awhile but was coming out of it. Shortly after he retired she started to have mysterious symptoms that took about a year to diagnose. I forget what rare disease it was but it was similar to lupus. They had to fight the insurance company about once a year to continue the treatments that allowed her to continue to be a functioning individual. About 2 months ago, Mrs J posted she was going to have surgery but it was no big deal. It was a big deal and did not go as planned - she never regained consciousness, the family removed life support after 5 days. Our little community of gardeners and gardener wanna bees has been missing her ever since.

Capt. J, Her husband posted yesterday. He has not posted anything since she died. It seems that their only child, a young lady only a few months younger than my eldest, was killed in a car crash yesterday. I may have never met them, but my heart is breaking for this family. K, the daughter would have graduated high school this spring, had already won awards for her writing, was active in school plays (even had one she wrote win a state contest) and was the light of her parents lives.

I feel numb just hearing this.

Working out in the yard today and notice that my blackberries have blooms! My mouth is already starting to water! Moved on to the back yard to mow... those who read this regularly (or as regularly as I post) know that I have two dogs. Before mowing the back yard, I gotta go pick up the doggie by-products, the crap so to speak. Reached for what I thought was a pile of crap in the middle of a tall clump of grass and it moved. I had me a big ole toad! In the 20+ years we have lived in this house, I have never had a toad before. Since I didn't want to mow him, I had to move him and he liked his tall clump of grass. I think it would have been easier to herd a bunch of cats than to get that toad out of the back yard

So as you can see I still exist, haven't had to dip into the bail fund yet (Eldest daughter has me hovering over it tho), and still have Crazy Lady's youngest here as a house guest(?) *sigh* At least it is not raining...

UP and down week... I think I finally got myself back in order at least. Now if the rest of the world would let me stay that way.

A week last Friday was supposed to be a DragonStorm game. I was going to be late as I had to be at a wedding rehearsal but I thought I could still make it an hour late. Somehow that become "She can't make it" to someone and when someone else couldn't make it, the game got canceled. *sigh* But that was evened out since this past Friday became a DragonStorm game that was not a regularly schedualed one with friends from Cleveland coming down to Columbus. It is good to be out and be with real live adults even if it is to only play games.

The block on Crazy Lady from Down the Street but now in Jail and her aggravating phone calls went through. *YEAH* Only now she calls other people to call us, *BOO* Last night she convinced someone there at the jail to call us from another number. What part of Blocked Number is so hard to understand? This will NOT continue...

Am working on a new paper mache project. It's a wonder my fingers are not glued together. Heres to hoping that it actually turns out o.k. The other project for the week was using wood from the garage along with other bits and pieces of Projects Long Gone and/or Things That Broke to create a pole lamp for a grow light form my plants. I hope to get through the winter this year with them looking less ratty by the time Spring arrives. Hubby tells me the police are gonna come knocking since grow lights are the dominion of the Marijuana Growers of Dayton. I'll just offer him up to the police since he thinks that is a great joke...

'Bout time to get off this computer and back to writing. Still have one scenario to finish writing before the Great Gaming Convention of Pentacon. It is slowly taking shape, I think. I'm not sure I'm happy with it right now but who knows what will happen anyway with it once the PCs get involved. Things have a way of getting changed on the spot if not actually going WAY off track...