To Hear or Not To Hear, That is the Question

I've now seen my oncologist and my breast surgeon in the last week. They both reported that I am officially boring and to go away and come back in 3 months. For Dr. Alison Laidley to say that is a REALLY good thing!!! And she was smiling and laughing when she said it.

I've had an annoying ringing in my ears ever since I had chemo. It's getting louder, so I asked my oncologist about it. He said it could be a side effect from the chemo but it could have nothing to do with it. We're betting on the side effect. . . . Anyway he sent me to see an ENT doctor today. He looked in my ears first. Now I had purposely cleaned out my ears this morning after my shower since I was going to see him. He looks in there and says, "Well, you might hear better without all the wax in your ears." He takes me into a little room and has me lay down so he can get a ditch digger and roots out some embarrassing looking stuff from my ears. He said it really wasn't wax, just dried skin that was compacted in both ears.

He took me back to the first room and turned off the lights to see if I could still hear the ringing. Yep. Still there---he turned off the lights because the fluorescent bulbs made a slight ringing of their own. Next he gave me a hearing test on a computer. Really interesting. You push a little button when you can hear high & low pitched sounds. Then you have to touch pictures on the screen when they say certain words. There were LOTS of words that I just couldn't hear at all what they were saying. I just knew I was going deaf. Hearing aids, here I come!

I finish the test and he takes me back to room #1 to wait for the results to print out. He comes in and tells me that I have perfectly normal hearing. That was a relief. The ones I couldn't hear, were ones that normal people couldn't hear either. He told me that there is one "cure" for the tinnitis that I have: mask it with music, mask it with music, mask it with music. There is no cure for it, no medicine they can give you. I already knew this from researching it on the internet. He said sometimes it can occur from an illness, but most of the time there is nothing they can do about it. He told me, "I want you to know that I believe you when you say you have ringing in your ears. Just because other people can't hear it, doesn't mean it's not real." He said you just learn to drown it out and try not to be in complete silence because it will drive you nuts. How true, how true! Of course with all my hot flashes now, I just keep a fan going all the time and that helps a lot!

Sandy is 7 Months Old

People look at us kind of funny when we tell them that Sandy is just a puppy and is only 7 months old. But then to us it's kind of hard sometimes to believe he's only a puppy, too. He weighs over 63 pounds and is a chunk. He loves to play with ice. He is a recycler deluxe! I've started recycling all our paper and plastic stuff. I placed a trash can in the closet underneath our stairs. Every time we have something to recycle, all you have to do is give it to Sandy and say "Recycle" and he heads off to the closet. Sometimes he will actually drop the item into the trashcan. Others he gets close to it and drops it on the floor. But he is so proud of himself when he gets through recycling.

I just finished reading a fiction novel by Dean R. Koontz titled "Watchers." Normally I'm not a reader of strange fiction, but I saw a reference to this book because Dean Koontz owns a Golden Retriever and actually used the characteristics of the breed to have a main character named "Einstein" in the book. The book was great, so now I'm a Koontz fan. Einstein was a brilliant, laboratory dog, but there were times in the book that I'd catch myself saying, "Sandy could do that." Here's our 7 month old photo. He's a terrific companion. He owns our hearts.

Summer Is Here

It was 105 yesterday and 104 today when I was driving home from work. Yuck! The mile walk with Sandy at 9 tonight was 'cooler' at a crisp 91. All 3 of us were sweating by the time we turned the first corner. We finally had to turn the water on the lawn last week, so can't wait to see the water bill next month. We had been fortunate enough to have rains nearly every week to keep the grass pretty healthy. But what kills you here is the 90+ humidity that goes along with the temperature. Just like wading through hot water.

Paula Deen's Gooey Chocolate Cookies

I made these cookies for the 4th of July weekend and they are scrumptious! I happened upon a Paula Deen ("Hi, y'all, this is Paula Deen here!") video on the internet right before we went home and decided to make these because they looked so easy. She said that this is her 2 sons' favorite cookie. If you like ooey, gooey, chocolate, then these are for you!

1 stick of REAL butter softened
1 8 oz pkg cream cheese softened
Blend these together with mixer.
Add 1 egg & 1 tsp vanilla and blend in.
Add 1 box chocolate cake mix (any kind)
Mix real good.
Cover with cuptowel and put in frig for 2 hours. When chilled (I did mine overnight,) scoop out spoonfuls and roll in your hands to make walnut size balls. I figured out that this works better if you spray your hands with Pam first! Then roll each ball in powdered sugar. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in 350 oven for 10 minutes. They will still be gooey when taken from the oven, so let them cool for a few minutes before removing. Sprinkle with additional powdered sugar and enjoy! I'm going to try them with pecans and/or butterscotch/chocolate chips, too. Makes about 3 dozen cookies. As long as they last----they stay soft.

Three Engineers --- Ain't It The Truth!

Three engineers are riding in a car: an electrical engineer, a chemical engineer, and a Microsoft engineer. Suddenly the car stalls and stops by the side of the road. The three engineers look at each other with bewilderment, wondering what could be wrong.

The electrical engineer, not knowing much about mechanics, suggests: "Let's strip down the electronics of the car and try to trace where a fault might have occurred."

The chemical engineer, not knowing much about electronics, suggests: "Maybe the fuel has become emulsified and is causing a blockage somewhere in the system."

The Microsoft engineer suggests: "Why don't we close all the windows, get out, get back in, open the windows again, and maybe it'll work!?"

Moving At Work & HP Photo Paper

This week our Finance unit at work has relocated on our same floor so that where people sit makes more sense and we're all together. I am now in a supervisor cube and have a window view looking to the west at the intersection of The High Five, I-75 and I-635. Our cubes are built in such a way that your PC goes in the corner and has an adjustable shelf for your keyboard. I hate the shelf---I'm always banging my knees on the bars underneath and it is impossible to write on it. And besides that my back would have been to the great view I now have. So I chose to be different and face the windows (and I get no glare from them on my PC screen and no, the glare doesn't hurt my eyes.) It's so nice now when I'm running a query in Access and am waiting for it to finish to just watch all the little ants moving around on the highways.

During the move I took down all the favorite photos I've taken from the end of my cube cabinet. I had noticed that about half of them were faded and others were still beautiful and vivid colored just like when I put them up there BC (Before Cancer) so they had almost 2 years of daily exposure to light. I turned them over to look at the back of the photo------ALL of the faded ones were OFFICE MAX photo 4x6s!!!! ALL of the vivid ones were HP photo 4x6s.

I won't be tempted to save some money and get anything else but HP photo paper. I'm including examples of 2 of the photos so you can see the difference. The top photo is at San Angelo's Fort Concho printed on Office Max paper, the bottom is Mt Rainier in Washington printed on HP paper. Just a word to the wise---buy Hewlett Packard photo paper if you want long-lasting prints. When I put these 2 photos up, both were the same vividness. Daddy, thanks again for the big pack of HP paper last weekend!!!

July 4th at Dickens

July 4th was a real celebration at C&M Farms located outside Dickens, Texas (60 miles east of Lubbock in the panhandle.) All the grandkids on my side of the family were there at one time or another except for Kelly & Tami's 6 girls. If they had been there, we would have had 34 people. Friday night we went to town and ate hamburgers around the courthouse square and then set in lawn chairs waiting for dark so we could see the fireworks display. The Dickens volunteer fire department has been very busy this year due to the lack of rainfall. Fires pop up all the time and with gas prices as high as they are, they had a fund raiser not long ago for them and raised over $12,000 in one night. Every fourth of July though, the firemen purchase fireworks and put on this display for the community. One of the guys told my dad (who was the fire chief in Dickens for 8 years) that they buy them wholesale and paid $1200 for $3000 of fireworks. It was a REALLY good show. And man, you couldn't ask for better seats. In fact when one of the rockets fell over and burst all over the crowd, it was a little closer than some wished for. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.

Saturday we grilled hot dogs and ate and ate some more. We had a one year old birthday party for my nephew's little boy, Nate. He really got into that cake. The kids took buggy rides on Daddy's mule. They dug in the dirt. They played on the hay at the barn and tried to catch the gold fish in the cow trough.

We took Sandy with us to the country and Tony & Elena brought Kowboy, too. They ran and ran and just wore themselves out. Those 2 city dogs were given out by the time we all went home Sunday morning. They both got in another cow trough and swam on Friday afternoon. Just like 2 kids playing in the water. Kowboy must have pulled a muscle getting in and out of it, because he wouldn't get back in it on Saturday when we went back for them to play in it again. Tony wound up taking him to the vet because he was hurting. He's much better, apparently just a pull or strain. Both dogs just slept and laid around when we got them home. Sandy didn't really start eating again until Wednesday. He just slept all the time. Charlie, the resident Beagle at C&M Farms, was not too thrilled about these 2 Golden Retrievers coming on his property----until the fireworks started going off. Then he was more than willing to come lay down by the other 2 boys and be friends.

Saturday night Tony put on a special encore fireworks show just for our family. We all got our lawn chairs and sat out in the driveway of my parents' home and watched as Tony set them off. They had bought $25 worth of fireworks----you would have thought it was $25K. We cheered and sang and had a great time with them. The kids got to hold sparklers.

Tony & Elena also brought their telescope that Nikita & Ana got for Christmas. It was a cloudless night and with no city lights to interfere, you could see all the multitude of stars and plantets. We got to look at the moon and actually SEE the craters. It was just too cool. Then we saw Mars, Saturn with its rings and then Jupiter with its 4 moons. For the first time ever the moon, those rings and those moons are really REAL to me because I saw them with my own eyes. All the grandkids (and their moms & dads) took turns looking through the telescope. That was awesome.

Happy 8th Anniversary!

On July 1, 2000 Tony & Elena were married at the Anne Hathaway Cottage (wife of William Shakespeare), which is on the grounds of the Globe Theatre in Odessa, Texas. Two kiddos later and a whole lot of miles, they now live in Kyle, Texas. Congratulations you two! We love you.