Christmas 2018

Merry Christmas 2018 and May you have a Blessed and Happy 2019

And yeah, Wow! 2019 does mean we are only one year away from 2020

which sounds more like a vision test result and less like a year I ever even imagined

I'm going to start by saying that I sincerely hope that the old tale that things happen in threes, is correct, because I'm ready for the end of this current cycle of three Holiday seasons. For the third Thanksgiving/Christmas season in a row, Greg and I have lost one of our parents. His Mom died The day after election day in 2016 and Greg and I spent Thanksgiving with the Goode family in Newcastle, Wyoming having a memorial get together and laughing that this life long Democrat just didn't want to hang around for the next term of Republican presidents. Then after we bought train tickets to spend Christmas with Greg's Dad in 2017, he passed away unexpectedly of pneumonia on December 4^thand our Christmas visit featured his celebration of Life service as well as a chance for Daisy to meet more Goode's and go out in the Black Hills in the snow to get her Christmas Tree with Uncle Harv and her Dad. Then this October, Mom, who was weakened already and wheelchair bound, but content in her assisted living center near Brett and Lance, developed Pneumonia herself and never recovered, so on November 4^thwe lost her as well.

We traveled by car this time, only Greg and Daisy and I, meeting my brothers and nephew, nieces, sister-in-law and cousins aplenty. The family gathered in Cody, Wyoming and laid Mom to rest beside Dad, in the same Riverside Cemetery where her parents and several other family members are. So I'm officially an orphan at 55 and it's strange and sad. I don't like it. But there were some really sweet, happy moments in the celebration of Priscilla Slack Miller. We had a wonderful feast in the Cody Club, with the cousins and friends, laughter and conversation and food always being a part of every good moment with Mom. We even found that one of the murals there featured her uncle Clarence wearing her Dad's wooly chaps in a snowy landscape. With a four year old with us we did a lot of the very things Mom most enjoyed, hot tubs and Motels, waterpark, and the Oregon Zoo and Multnomah Falls. People ask how the trip home was, and it feels odd to say, but all three trips home for funerals have been good, happy, family filled visits. I just hope that the next time I get together with family, it isn't for a funeral.

Right after we got home, Greg joined the Crescent City Chorale for a two week tour of Italy, Germany and Poland, so Daisy and I left him at the Portland Airport and stopped at a waterpark in Springfield on our way home for Thanksgiving. That was a dud holiday, the power went out so we had no cooking, or water, or lights and ended up waiting for Emerson to get off work and eat Dinner at Denny's

It has been a year of both loss and births, so Mom will be missed, but the family has a new Granddaughter, Trinity Revae was born on August 3^rdto Austin and Trisha, and joined our grandson Gavin who had just turned two in May. Trinity is beautiful, alert and has an adorable laugh and smile. Gavin is sturdy and strong willed and a real charmer. I don't see them as much as Daisy, and can tell you that living with one granddaughter is such a delight, I'd never known how wonderful being a grandmother could be before her. She is in preschool and is smart and kind and funny. This year she has done swimming lessons and soccer and a lot of art and playgrounds.

The extended family is growing too, so Daisy had a couple new cousins born this year and my niece has another due early next year. I guess that is good, if I don't watch too much news and get too fearful of the future this world holds for today's children. I reassure myself by remembering all the times that I heard my Grandmother, Grace laugh at the fears of parents when I was a child, in that good old days of the Vietnam era. She swore that parents are always convince that te world is a dangerous place and ending soon and that this is the worst time ever to have a child and that children themselves are much more horrid, but they have been saying all those things since Socrates at least and probably since cave men days.

I had a couple of long term sub jobs where I had a class of my own for months, and in June Greg finished 27 years teaching music and started teaching basic skills, GED prep skills, to inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison. I'm liking the fact that he no longer commutes to the next state to teach, as the prison is only 4 miles from our house, nor does he have to be out of town many weekends and evenings at various competitions and concerts. It isn't a job with summers off however, as the prison of course, runs year round.

Healthwise, I haven't been doing very well. And as of yet I've only been eliminating possibilities rather than finding answers. Negative tests and a lot of time between visits make it a slow process, but I'm moving slowly and stiffly and things happen like popping my achilles tendon and tearing my rotator cuff. It isn't Lupus but may be some form of Rheumatoid arthritis, but even more likely not, and may be IBM (the disease, not the big company) which is a type of muscular dystrophy.

Anyway, this aging time of life isn't for whimps, but I guess it's undeniable when you are a grandmother, with no parents of your own left above the surface of this beautiful planet.

I'm still writing my books and doodling in my free time and most of all helping raise a wonderful girl who adds so much joy to my life, but really misses her own Mom and doesn't understand that, but then neither do we. If you are one who prays, as I am. Pray for the children and this wonderful, troubled world and every now and then, remember us.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and

“God Bless us, everyone!”