Beautiful pictures, Gud!

Chemo can be a bitch. I hope they work out a less vile experience for JZ.

Not significant enough imho and the roads were fine. New superintendent is being extra cautious. The old one used to only call things off after all the surrounding towns canceled. The new one is first instead.

Oof, it's going to be a long winter for you!

{{{ JZ }}} I wish I could loan you the use of my cast-iron stomach, or at least about half my appetite.

Beautiful pictures, Gud!

My condolences Sheryll. It does sound as if she didn't have time to suffer.

I’m so sorry for your loss, Sheryl

I have two dogs this week (trading dog sitting with a friend who will have them both next week when I’m gone instead) and they are cracking me up. They get along fine (he’s dogsat them before together) but mostly want to pretend they are the only dog, so studiously ignore each other. Luckily it’s a decent size house. The only time they were super close was when I was trying to do yoga. Then, they were both all up in my business!

{{{JZ}}}

Oh no, Sheryl! Such horrible news.

I'm recovering well from my surgery, as far as I can tell--my post-op appointment is this Friday. Mostly I'm just still bruised, sore, and itchy, and have been freshly reminded that there's no heroism in seeing how quickly you can wean yourself off pain meds.

Dylan's mother died suddenly in mid-November, we think either from a stroke or an aneurysm. We've been coping with it as you do with a complex relationship with someone you loved, and who loved you, but who went off the political deep end sometime between 2016 and 2020 and who never fully accepted Alex as her grandSON. We just received our share of the life insurance and have been discussing how to apply it to various small debts, needed home repairs and improvements, etc. when it hit us that since Dylan's dad died when he was in college, and both my parents passed over a decade ago now (wow, how has it been so long), that the next time our family gets one of these little cash infusions it'll be because one of US has died. It's so strange to no longer have elders, and that between early deaths and long generations Alex is only 18 but has no living grandparents left.

I was in that boat. All of my grandparents except one were gone before I was 5, and the last one died while I was in college. One parent gone in my 30s, the other gone in my 40s. It’s an odd unmoored feeling. At least it was for me.

Unmoored is a good word for it. And it is so weird to me to see people my age who still have living grandparents, though obviously all it takes is shorter generations than mine--if your mother had you when she was 20, and her mother had her when SHE was 20, of course you can be in your early 50s with a living grandparent.

Of course in the other direction you get my jaw dropping when I see a high school classmate whose grandchild is graduating high school this year, i.e. is Alex's age. But I do remember that she was one of our class's teen moms, and apparently her kid also had a kid at 16 or 17 or so, making her a grandmother around the time I had Alex at 33, i.e. the perfectly average age for my well-educated big-city liberal demographic.

I had one grandparent, but she died when I was maybe 6. The rest were gone well before my parents were married. Having my kids as late as I did I was the grandparent age at all the school meetings. My kids have one grandparent left, but my mom made it to 95 so I'm grateful for that. My dad died when I was 30 and it really changed my perspective on so many things. That first real look at mortality left me unmoored, but it also gave me a clearer picture of what I wanted in my future.