My Wish for 2007

I WISH...

For world peace.. although I know deep in my heart that this will not happen. At least not until we can convince the bad guys to leave us alone, you know, live and let live.

For eradication of world hunger... not in my lifetime, I'm guessing. In fact, I think it will actually get worse as land is laid waste through war and conflict.

A cure for Lupus, MS, Fybromyalgia, Osteoarthritis and Cancer, although again, I believe it won't happen. Drug companies would go broke if cures were found, think about it. Drugs are a huge industry and drug companies too powerful.

I WISH for homes for all the homeless people in T-Dot. A lot of people are just one paycheck or one disaster away from homelessness. What is the solution? I don't know, but it's got to be out there somewhere.

I WISH for more knitting books, although I got three new ones for Christmas.

And of course, I WISH for more wool, one can never have enough in the stash.

I WISH for a healthy baby to be born to my Offspring and Girl come April and I don't even care if it's a boy or girl. (I'm lying here, I wish for a girl)

I WISH for good health and prosperity for my three grandsons and their Mom and hope their path in life is smooth.

I WISH my two step sons in California continued success in their business life, but it's really time they made my sweetie a grandpa, he's kind of jealous of me, I already have three with he fourth on the way. Come on Guys!

I WISH that my Mom regain some of the vitality and strength that has gone astray this year.

I WISH that what's left of my family wasn't scattered around the world, that we could be together all the time.

I WISH for all our friends to have a safe and healthy year and those dealing with health issues, I wish for them to be resolved.

I WISH that I will be able to re open my Pottery Studio and spend my days with clay. It is the most honest of hobbies, more exacting that knitting and I miss it terribly. I really haven't done any potting since before my hip replacement and miss the connection to the clay. For now, the wheel and kiln sit forlornly and collect dust and spider webs.

I WISH for all my readers a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2007.

Finally, Something Finished

I've been knitting like a fiend recently and here are the finished socks.



They actually fit really nice on my big feet, I love them. Now we only need some cold weather so I can wear them.



As soon as these were finished, I cast on a new pair from a book I got for Christmas. Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush. I chose a shell pattern and the yarn is red, blue and yellow variegated. I'm not sure yet how they will look but I will do one pattern set and decide. Not ready to post yet though..

On the subject of Bank fraud, I received another e-mail this morning, this time from Bank of America protection department, asking me to verify my sign in information on my account. I don't have a Bank of America Account. This is clearly fraud and it's so easy to fall for it. I almost did. When I liked the TD email I got, the page it brought me to was so legit looking, I almost fell for it. Once you sign in to their phony page they have your card number and pin number and your bank account will be cleaned out in minutes.

I don't know if this has anything to do with blogging, but there have been way too many junk emails and fraudulent things happening recently.

Internet Banking Fraud

Know what phising is? Well I do, and it's not nice.

Today I received my first fraudulent email ever from someone purporting to be my bank. I was asked to click on a link which brought me to a website just like my bank sign in page, for on-line banking. I was then asked to enter my bank card and pin number. They are professionals, the site is perfect.

Of course, I had read and heard about this scam before, but for the briefest of seconds I actually thought it was legit. There was absolutely no difference, no spelling errors, nothing to make you think it wasn't legit. The only reason I didn't do as asked was that I had heard that no bank would ever send out an email asking for personal information.

So, if you get one of these emails, report it and delete it.

Getting Tough on Crime

Saturday mornings at our house are spent over a leisurely cup of coffee with Sweetie doing Sudoku and me reading the news. Every once in a while I will tell him an interesting piece of the news.

Today there's some pretty grim, in my opinion stuff in the paper. There was the story of a man who drove cab all day and took over from his wife to work nights at a variety story they owned. A few nights ago a couple of decided to rob him of his money. He fought back successfully and fortunately for him all he has is a cut cheek.

Then there was the shooting last month of two young boys, one thirteen and one sixteen. The thirteen year old walked himself into hospital emergency room. This begs the questions, where were his parents? And just this past week there were a few more shootings, a couple of murders and the odd stabbing.

I too have raised a boy and can't for the life of me imagine letting a thirteen year old go to hospital on his own. Where mom and dad out partying? Is there a dad on the scene? Maybe my questions to myself are politically incorrect, but I can't help myself.

We also just passed the one year anniversary of the senseless shooting death of an innocent girl on Boxing Day. Last December 26th, Jane Creba was shot to death while shopping with her Mom and Sister on Toronto's Yonge Street.


Sweetie told me a little story, about a young boy from a very poor family. He stole and egg an brought it home to his mother, who said "oh what a good boy you are". A couple of days later the boy brought home some meat he had stole, and again the mother praised him for it. The next time he brought home 50 drachmas and his mother was overjoyed. What do you think became of this boy. Yup, he became a career criminal with his mothers blessing.

Sweetie used to live in New York city during the days when street crime was rampant.
I spent a few weekend there also during the Eighties when crime was pretty bad. So what changed there? I think it's called the "broken window" approach to crime and I'm not sure why our "City Fathers" (and mothers) cannot or will not try it here.

Lately our neighborhood is being "tagged" by gangs and I have noticed newspaper boxes and mail boxes kicked over. We have our very own group of punks here. They started out really innocently as a bunch of 12 and 13 year olds a couple of years ago just out for a little fun. Nobody paid much attention and last summer when they started creating havoc I involved our local councillor. Now these same kids are a little older, a little noisier and the group has grown to about 10 or 12 boys who congregate at midnight and head for the local park. On their way, they create a little shit to impress each other. Nice stuff actually, they ripped off Christmas lights, deflated a rubber snowman, broke some flower pots, toilet papered a car and so on.

Small stuff, kind of like the story my sweetie told me. It's just an egg for now. What will it be next year?

Global Warming

The subject of global warming is always in the news of late and I have had numerous heated discussions with middle grandson on the subject. We here in Canada have had the one ton challenge, whereby we all tried to reduce our personal emissions by one ton. Of course the average Canadian uses nineteen (19) tons a year so one ton is really a drop in the bucket. Besides, it wasn't achievable. This is a cold country with vast distances where automobiles are a necessity. I can't imagine too many Calgarians standing in -40 Celsius waiting half hour for a bus in the dark and liking it.

The real problem, from my perspective, is to get rid of some of the "sacred cows" in this world and by that I don't just mean the real sacred cows in India, although that would be a first step. I'm sure the people of India will rise up if forced to kill their "sacred cows" even though they are more damaging to the environment than cars.
It is trendy to blame George Bush, he blamed him for everything here in Canada, but the reality is that the cow is worse for the environment than a plane or automobile. And there are a heck of a lot of cows in India, about 200 million to be exact and they fart a lot.

In the rest of the world, people need to consume less . In other words all those new cars every couple of years, computer consoles like xbox and wii and so on, that become obsolete every year, computers that don't last two years, cameras, clothes, anything really that we consume needs to be made to last longer and our expectation of getting new or updated or better needs to be ditched. Anything that needs to be produced in factories, using electricity, produced by coal is bad bad bad.

When it comes to cows, who are the biggest producers of carbon dioxide (they fart the stuff) need to be culled. We don't need to eat that much beef, although if we eat beans we will also contribute carbon dioxide. Come to think of it, maybe she should have restricted breathing. No, only kidding. Really, we don't need to eat as much as we do, therefore less has to be produced saving energy and electricity produced by coal (which we all know is dirty) and oil.

Other things we could do is restrict travel. Maybe something like one airplane trip every five years per family, no business travel (use teleconferencing), automobile travel restricted by sale of gasoline and of course the rich would have to give up their cottages up north.

Electricity usage would be severely restricted by way of smart meters (which we are getting here in T-Dot) which charge different rates at different times of day, night being the cheapest.

Does this all sound a bit extreme? Maybe, but really I don't think there's much choice. Not if this planet is to survive. We in North America live way better than most of the world and we expect way more than the rest of the world can even dream of. Mind you, we will have to find a way to deal with massive unemployment and factory closures. How will we feed them if we don't produce? Then again, people starving to death might just rid the world of enough humans to make the planet sustainable again.

Kids of the age of my grandson like to blame the older generation for ruining their world, yet they have and want more "stuff" than we ever had. They seem to forget that little fact when they lay blame.

I'm just afraid that if we don't really tackle the problem it will be done for us.

A Beautiful Christmas

Even though it was just the three of us, we had a beautiful Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve entertaining some visitors, delivering gifts to the neighbor's and eating lots of cookies. We also opened a few gifts in the German tradition. The grandchildren called from Edmonton, where they are visiting their other grandparents, and the offspring phoned from Hawaii. Read his adventures and see his pics on his blog

Christmas Day was spent opening more gifts, cooking the dinner and just generally having a quiet restful day. Mom was happy, she got the perfume she wanted (she doesn't want or need much at her age) and she got way more chocolate than is healthy for her. We will all be eating chocolate for months there is so much of it.

Today we are all going over to a neighbor's home for her traditional Boxing Day open house. There are seven of us neighbor's who get together twice a year, a summer barbecue and the Christmas thing. That's what it's all about, family and friendships. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

From Our House to Your House, Merry Christmas

It has been very hard for me to get excited about Christmas this year for various reasons the chief one being that we will be just the three of us, Mom, Sweetie and me.

Last year at this time I was elbow deep in baking, cleaning and shopping for presents for the offspring and his three sons. This year it's a little less hectic. The offspring and his girl are heading for Hawaii tomorrow and middle grandson B has booted it back to Calgary. The photo is from last Christmas.

The baking is now almost finished and the neighbor's will be happy. I'm putting on weight because of course everything needs to be sampled once or twice. The only thing left is the find a nice fresh Goose for Christmas dinner. Nice traditional German meal this year for the three of us.

This has been a bad year for Mom health wise. First the diagnosis of congestive heart failure in January, further testing revealed mini stroke activity and a couple of bad falls have all added to making her more frail. I think the final straw was getting shingles, which is very hard to recover from at that age.

It is heartbreaking for me to watch this sudden decline in woman who was always so incredibly strong. In her marriage of over 50 years she was the leader and the rock. I guess the decline started after my Dad passed away but I didn't really notice until she moved in with us two years ago.

My sweetie also had a health scare this year and my sincerest recommendation for anyone over age fifty is to have a colonoscopy. It is a lifesaving test to catch the most curable of cancers. I can't emphasize enough how important this test is. Go on, have one it's not so bad.

And me, well I'm stressed but reasonably healthy. The fybromyalgia doesn't bother me all the time, the migraines seem to be getting worse and the hip, oh well, I see the surgeon again in January and will tell him it's not great. I don't really know that there is a solution at this stage, I'm not prepared to have another operation. I will just soldier on.

I wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

The Kodak Battles Continues

I'm pretty angry with Kodak Canada right now. The good news is that I got a camera back in reasonable working order on December 22nd, just in time for Christmas. The bad news is that it's either not my camera or whoever repaired it broke some other stuff in the process.

I think that what actually happens is, they look at it, determine that it has not been mistreated (by me) and then send out another like reconditioned model. That is the only explanation I can think of why the mode dial is loose, the battery closure is stiff, the SD card slot cover is loose and there are scratches around the viewfinder.

Now I know for a fact that my camera (the one I sent them) was in perfect condition other than the fact that it didn't work and I did call Teleplan International, the authorized Kodak agent the moment I looked at it but I have yet to hear from them. This presents me with a dilemma. The actual warranty expires on December 26th and of course they are closed until the 27th.

On Boxing Day I am going out to buy myself a brand new camera, there is a cute Sony I've been eyeballing and I'm also partial to Hewlitt Packard having owned one before. In fact the old HP is about 5 years old, doesn't have a scratch on it, and still works great. It's just a little heavy and doesn't have the megapixels I'd like.

I'll keep you all updated on my progress with Kodak.

It's Happening - The Bake Marathon

The tools of the trade and the materials.



It started. I finally got all the stuff together to start baking. Quick trip to Costco and 7 pounds of butter, yep seven pounds. I also found nut ready to go at the bulk bin and bought about six pounds. A few hours later and this is part of the result.



There are a couple of dozen on the way to Calgary and the rest are well hidden from Mom and Sweetie, of course I left some out for them to eat. I'm not an ogre.

So far my count is seventeen dozen, four varieties but I figure I need another 20 dozen to satisfy the neighborhood. Tonight after supper (which is when I bake), I will tackle the biscotti and the meringues.

The "Offspring" Would Love This

HouseATTACK_!
Uploaded by lowmax

Things That Don't Work, Part II

This is a copy of an email I sent to Kodak Canada Inc. today regarding my camera that doesn't work, has been sent for repair and hasn't been returned in the promised time. Will be interesting to see if a response is forthcoming. Stay tuned.


From: rosittab@sympatico.ca
To: kciinternet@kodak.com
Subject: C330 Repair Delay?

To Whom It May Concern:
On or about December 1st, my Kodak camera Model C330 bit the dust so to speak. I received Return Authorization through your website with the number 1824079. I duly packaged the camera, enclosed copies of my bill to prove warranty covereage and mailed the whole thing to Teleplan International, 101 Courtland Avenue, Vaughn, On L4K 3T5 and proceeded to wait for its return.

I made a quick phone call to Canada Post and was told the package was delivered December 5th.

Now here's what has me upset. The form I enclosed with the package is pretty specific in that it promises the following;
Turnaround for servicing is 5 business days from receipt of your product.

When the camera didn't return to my premises by Thursday December 14th, I started the tracking process, which is a challenge in itself. When I finally did reach someone at Teleplan I was told, "sorry, we haven't even opened the box yet". I was told to call back Monday but was also told I probably would not have my camera back by Christmas.

I will probably have to either buy a new camera for Christmas (not Kodak ever again) or use my old 5 year old HP, which has never given me a moments grief.

I will leave this in your capable hands to deal with.

Yours truly
rositta

Christmas Trees Under Attack, Again!

A few years ago the debate over Christmas trees and holiday trees had been put to bed, or at least that's what I thought. At the time, it was our Mayor Mel Lastman who declared that it was definitely a Christmas tree and has been thus ever since.

It seems to have reared its ugly head again just yesterday when a Toronto judge banned a Christmas tree from the courthouse lobby. Now even our Premier and Muslims are coming to the defense of the Christmas tree.

In this multicultural country, where we are always celebrating other cultures holidays, somehow according to this judge, any sign of Christianity is offensive.

On this blog there is a list of stores that either wish one a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. Personally, I will shop only at the former.

Back to my knitting.

Sex Trade Workers?

I have been reading a fair bit about "sex trade workers" recently in the main stream media. I know that a number of them have been murdered in Britain of late and that is a sad thing. I hope they catch the perpetrator sooner rather than later. Dead women, no matter their lifestyle choice is not a good thing.

In today's paper there is a story about a young "worker" who is putting together "love baskets" for these girls on the streets for Christmas. These will include things like condoms, chocolate body paint and candy canes. She will walk the streets for the next two weeks handing out goodies.

My questions is this, when did it become okay to call them "sex trade workers" instead of what they really are? What are the qualifications for this job and is there an apprenticeship program if one wants to become one? How long does the apprenticeship last and who decides whether or not you have passed?

Is there a union for these workers to join? I don't get it. Are we legitimizing this "profession". Isn't this a lifestyle choice rather than a real job? I am not necessarily opposed to prostitution, just let's not call it what it isn't. It isn't a legitimate job. Just my opinion.

Where Is Toronto The Good?

Once upon a time, not too long ago, my cousin and her family came to visit us in Toronto for a long weekend. On a whim, late at night, we decided to go walking downtown. Now my cousin, who hails from Chicago was a bit apprehensive to say the least but we reassured her that Toronto was safe and you could walk pretty much anywhere anytime.

That has all changed in recent years. I would no longer advise anyone to go walk about late at night. Last Boxing Day, late afternoon, a young girl was caught in gunplay and shot dead on the streets of Toronto and a number of people injured. Most recently there was gunplay on a major downtown street and in that instance fortunately no one was injured.

During the American Thanksgiving holiday, another young Toronto man, who lived and was going to school in Pennsylvania came home to visit his family. During a night out with friends, he was robbed and when he and his friends went to look for the assailant, he was hit in the head with a brick. He died.

My middle grandson moved to Toronto from Calgary in October and I told him that Toronto was not as safe as it used to be. "Don't worry Oma" he said to me, "looks safe to me". This past Thursday night turned out to be not so safe for him after all. On his way to grab a bite of food on Yonge Street (our Main Street) with his buddy, they were waylaid by 8 or 9 hoods, shaken down and B was sucker punched. He is fortunate that all he has is a black eye, it could have been so much worse. He and his buddy lost the contents of their wallets, but they are alive to talk about it.

The powers that be wonder where the tourists have gone? Why don't they come in droves as they used to? They blame everything from our SARS outbreak (old news), to the strong dollar, but what they don't blame are the poor misunderstood hoods. We have a hug a thug mentality that requires strong backbone to change, but we have a City Father who doesn't know how to grow one.

Will We Resist Our Loss Of Privacy?

Between watching the movie, The Day After Tomorrow and reading this story in one of todays papers I'm completely scared silly. The movie, for those who haven't seen it is about the end of most of North America and Europe. Huge storms, floods, tornadoes and then the beginning of the new ice age. It's a bit overdone and dramatic in places but I've always thought that the world will self destruct some day.

The article on the other hand, offers opinion of a different danger. The loss of our privacy through microchipping. This one is actually scarier because of the way it can be presented to us. After all, who would object to having pedophiles microchipped? And according to this opinion piece, this is how it will start. The author of this piece is not a nutbar, he is Kevin Haggerty, a professior of sociology and criminology at the University of Alberta, Canada and a member of the Surveillance and Society research group (www.surveillance-and-society.org) linked here.

Read the article and decide for yourself if this is a threat to our freedom or if this is kind of like 1984. Oh yes, I'm almost finished with a pair of socks. Pictures this week.

Runaway Turkish Bride

That is the heading for an article by one of my favorite Globe and Mail writers, Margaret Wente. Unfortunately, I can't link to it because it is by subscription only, but I will tell you what it's about and insert some quotes from it.

Last spring, Selda Pekgul decided to run away. She had been planning her escape for months. She got up a little earlier than usual and pretended she was going to school. She put on her head scarf and went to her parents' bedroom. "I wanted to see my mother one last time,"she says. "I couldn't even hug my brothers and sister's goodbye."

Margaret Wente, is currently in Berlin and doing a story on Turkish women and forced marriage. In this story, the young woman in question managed to get away with the help of her teacher who gave her a train ticket from Frankfurt to Berlin. She ran away because she chose not to enter an arranged (forced) marriage that generally happens when a girl is fifteen. Selda was nineteen when she ran and was able to cope, albeit not easily. She currently lives in a shelter that specializes in Muslim women. She missed her family and called home once. Her father tried to get her to come home and when she refused, told her "if he found her he would kill her.

This brings to mind a story I read last year about a young Turkish woman Hatun Surucu who ran away from a forced marriage only to be found and shot dead by her brother. There had been six such honor killings in the six months prior.

A Turkish Author,and sociologist Nedla Kelek has written a book about foreign brides in Germany. You can read her article here.

Germany has a lot of problems in dealing with its' Turkish residents and a good part of the problem is that Germans are "bending over backwards" because they are afraid "they'd be called Nazis if they dared to bring up issues of human rights in the Turkish community".

What will the country of my birth do to change this. When will they wake up and realize that this doesn't work any more and if they are not astute and make some changes the far right will become way more popular. And then what? The far right bloggers
are already discussing these issues.

Oh yes, the young girl in the story, Selda Pekgul. Seems she might be a lucky girl, she now dresses in western clothes and isn't frightened to go out anymore. I hope it lasts for her, after all, it doesn't have to be her father or brother who kills her, it can be any pious Muslim.

Back to my knitting, sigh..

Things That Go Wrong - Update 1

Last week I talked about my camera going bad on me and the Ipod that needs help. This is an update of my progress to date.

The website for Kodak Eastman prompts you through various steps to solve the issues and when all else fails you get a pre approved authorization to send said camera for repair. Nowhere on this website is there a tracking function. In other words, once the object has been mailed, there is absolutely no way of finding out how things are going.

The company that I mailed my camera to may or may not exist. There is no listing in the phone book and there is no listing on Canada 411, which is like a huge telephone book.

So now what? If the camera doesn't come back within the 5 day turnaround time promised on the mail in authorization, of which I do have a copy, what do I do? Get in my car and drive to Vaughn, Ontario? That's gotta be a one hour plus drive.
At least Canada Post has tracking and I know my camera was delivered December 5th. I guess if I haven't got it back by December 15th, I can start worrying in earnest.

The second problem was the Ipod. The website again offers a self help area where different things are tried to resolve the issue and in my instance was pretty futile. My problem, which is sound distortion when I turn the little darling on, is not listed as an issue on their pull down menu. So I proceeded to fill in all their little boxes and the end result was that I was issued with an authorization number and told that a package would be sent to me that included packing material??

Now, this package, including tax would cost me $45 bucks! This included said packaging material and postage. This Ipod is under warranty, remember and I'm being asked to pay 45 bucks. Now, just for a little perspective, it cost me just under 8 bucks to mail my camera including insurance and I managed to package it up just fine. In fact, I still have the original packaging.

I decided to hold off on the Ipod until just before the warranty expires next March. If I have to pay 45 bucks then I may as well wait, they generally don't fix them but send you a brand new one. Stay tuned for the camera update.

St

Which Of Santa's ReindeersAre You?

You Are Vixen

Sexy and sultry, you're the one all the other reindeer dream about. Why You're Naughty: That fur pulling spat you got into with Dancer over Santa. Why You're Nice: Because even when you're nice, you're still delightfully naughty!

Which of Santa's Reindeer Are You?

Think Your Potholes Are Bad?

We here in T-Dot complain about our potholes constantly. The city says they are trying to fix them as fast as they can, but can't keep up. After seeing this picture I think I will stop complaining, at least for a little while. I don't think we have them quite this large.

This is a pretty huge pot hole, don't you think? It's in Saskatchewan, Canada and I for one wouldn't want to run into that one.

Okay, You Gotta Check This Out!

Came across this little beauty compliments of another blogger. This little lady will answer all your questions, she's better than the Guru on the top of the mountain. Love it. In fact I think it is more fun than Google, now if she was a cute guy, it would be even better.

Are You A Senior?

Innocuous little question isn't it, except when asked of me. I just about belted the salesclerk that asked me that today. Nope, snarled I, not just yet, maybe tomorrow. He turned beet red, good I thought, that will teach him. He was probably not a day over 12 himself. I guess to a teen anyone over 20 looks old.

That was the start of my Christmas shopping and may well be the end. Time to go to Amazon or some such website to do my shopping, at least no one can see my baggy eyes. Funny, I actually thought I looked pretty good today compared to most days. I did put in my contacts, combed my hair and was dressed in other than jeans. Maybe that was the problem, black trousers make you look older.

Now I have never been afraid of getting older, the wrinkles part anyway, body is a different issue. I don't buy the latest face miracles, rarely wear makeup and half the time can't find my lipstick in the detritus of my car, but heck I'm a long way from being a senior, not that there's anything wrong with it.

Why Doesn't Stuff Work?

I knit a hat, it didn't fit. I have a relatively new digital camera, it doesn't work. I have a new Ipod the battery dies way too fast and my laptop has been for repair twice in the past year. Is this just me or is there a trend out there to keep repairman busy?

There's the hat, it looked fine for the Sweeties head but when he put it on the head kind of disappeared. So I decided to felt it and this is the result. It fits a little better now but I sweated as I was doing it hoping it wouldn't shrink too much.

The camera is another matter, the manual gives no telephone number in T-Dot only a website. Once you get there you need to go thru a diagnosis process and finally they will issue you a repair number with detailed instructions were to send it. Of course it's nowhere near were I live, so in the mail it goes. Hopefully I will have it back before Christmas. Am I trusting Kodak too much, you think?

The Ipod battery dies too fast but finding any information on line is pretty futile. I guess I have to look for an Apple store somewhere in town. Of course if I had bought the extended warranty I wouldn't have to go thru this, just take it back to big retailer. Problem is, I am very much against extended warranties on principle. The stores make way too much money on them but with the way my luck goes, maybe I need to rethink that.

Our Very Own Saviour

I don't know how else to describe this man that I am half in love with but as a saviour. He is kind, gentle and almost always available when I call him and your probably all wondering who this man is. Well he's not my Sweetie, although my Husband is all of those things and more, but this one is someone else's sweetie and I'm not stealing him. I only borrow him from time to time.

Okay, I'll end the suspense, he is my Mom's doctor, and he makes housecalls. Yup, you read that right, he actually comes when called. This is pretty abnormal in this day and age in T-Dot (Toronto), although I suspect in some of the smaller communities it is not so unusual.

A brief history, my Mom fell September 18, which was also the day my real Sweetie left for Greece to take care of his ailing Mom for a few weeks. It seemed Mom was actually getting better for a few days, she didn't break anything, but suddenly she took a turn for the worse. Her heart went into failure and he had her admitted to hospital. Now the hospital is a whole different chapter but after nine days Mom had enough and promptly signed herself out. She called me to come and get her, which under protest, I did. Her wonderful doctor arranged home physio therapy for her and came by to visit.

After a few days at home, Mom got Shingles and another trip to hospital, although this time they sent us home with anti viral drugs. She wasn't getting better and another call to her doctor brought him promptly to our door on a Sunday afternoon! And today, he dropped by on his lunch hour and gave her a flu shot and pneumonia shot. As he was leaving he said he'd be back in three weeks, but don't hesitate to call if I need him. Pretty amazing, I'm going to have a big box of homemade cookies ready for him and his family when he comes next time. I'd give him my next pair of knit socks but I think it would embarrass him. God love him, he is a sweetie.