Hi Barb! I'm so sorry your sister is having to endure all the treatments and operations. Hopefully once finished she will be able to rest and heal at home. I'm sure having you nearby is a tremendous help and comfort to her.

It's the first day of Spring here and I turned my heat back on this morning. It was 37 degrees!! It should warm up and be back in the 70's by Friday. Just waiting for the pollen to hit us.......it seems to get worse each year.

I'm having the entire family over for Easter dinner next Sunday. There will be a total of 12 people here!! It will be fun and the first Easter the girls have been big enough to enjoy. I got them both an Easter basket, a couple of books and a Disney Princess chair (one for each of them) so they can watch TV with the rest of us.

What's everybody else doing for Easter this year?

Barb, ouch! That is quite the surgery. I will pray that your sister does OK and you all have the patience to wait it all out.

Kitty, there are only 5 in our family that live here in town. Everyone lives far enough away that they don't make it here for Easter and are involved enough for the Easter in their own churches that they wouldn't be able to come. My sister usually goes down to Arkansas to spend it with her daughter. Her daughter's church where she is a member of the choir always sing the Hallelujah chorus and invite any visitor who is there and knows it to come and join them. So my sister gets to go and stand with her daughter and sing that glorious song. And then my daughter, who Easter means nothing to her except a nice dinner, was going to go out of town for a wedding. So that left us and my sister's son and his wife. Their attitude about Easter is the same as my daughter. Then my sis had to have surgery and their trip canceled, my daughter's car finally gave up the ghost and she couldn't go to the wedding. So now everyone is in town! We always go out somewhere to eat. I know my parents if they were alive would be upset that we don't make a big meal and celebrate together. But all the kids are all grown up and don't even care what it means. Enjoy your day with the kids. We want pictures!

Ah, my dear faithful old NT pals...you've kept in touch while others have left--so many others!!
I've been AWOL this month due to the fact that we spent 21 days in Hawaii and didn't want to use the wifi offered. So many peoples' laptops have been hacked that way that we stayed off. I used my phone to keep in touch on FB, but we were running low on data so I reduced that as well.

So, now I am catching up. It is sad that so many have left our little village here. I got so much information and support from these types of boards when I was first dxd. And so much laughter!! People like Sally kept my spirits up and kept me going when I just wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over my head.

We all have been through a lot over the years. And I hope we can continue to check in at least weekly. I still need to hear about Kitty's kitties, Doydie's challenges with her husband's health issues, Barb's new house, her niece growing into an even more beautiful young woman, as well as praying for her dear sister.

And I of course check in daily, even if I don't post, just to keep up with my dear SalPal. Sally, you have been like a sister to many of us, supporting us, informing us, and giving us a chuckle that we so sorely need.

I am sorry that you are in a more confining living circumstance. I think you should either write a blog about aging, or a book. Your voice is so special-a mixture of reality and humor, with a dose of compassion and wisdom that young people need to hear.

Anyway, we had a wonderful time in Paradise. We vegged most of the time, but did take a couple of drives. One to a winery, where we tasted pineapple wine (yuck) and had an elk burger (totally yummy).

We had 1/2 day of rain--the other 20 days were sunny and warm. There were quite a few days of strong winds causing 12 ft waves. DH was crazy enough to attempt to go into the surf and got carried back about 30 feet:roll eyes: He thinks he is still 12...

I got another blood clot on the way over on the plane due to an 8 hour flight and messing up my anticoagulant med schedule. After a couple of days of getting back on track it dissipated, but I was scared for a bit.

We got back early yesterday morning and so far the leg seems fine...fingers crossed.
My new knee recovered just fine and I was able to exercise and take nice walks. I feel so blessed!!

Now it's back to a stack of bills and the everyday drama of the kids' lives. I missed my doggy so much and he was in heaven when he came back from his brother's house. I caught up on sleep after an hour of sleep the night before (I was instructed to get up hourly on the plane-made for a long overnight trip).

I'm glad to be back-not home, but here at NT

Hope everyone is doing well, I haven't been on as much as I would have liked Between watching the GB and getting a massive spasm in my back that sent me to the hospital... I'm really limited in the time I have to sit and chat. I'm off to the doctor again today since the spasm has left me with several symptoms of shock over the past week and I'm not sure that it didn't break something LOL.

But enough whining and cheesing from me. Just as we were mourning the death of one of our dear mollies from our tank. We found that his spirit will live on as there are now about ten baby mollies swimming around . I have no idea what we're going to do with the babies. I really hope my father decides to get a fish tank up again, then I can just drop the babies off with him rather than flushing them which just seems wrong to kill living fish. If they pass on to the other side and need the great flush that's one thing, but to kill them just because they'll over populate the tank otherwise... that's another matter entirely.

Especially since they look just too too cute. Their father was a tuxedo mollie and their mother a Dalmatian mollie so they alternate between to the two traits but it seems all of them have a white belly which the tuxedo mollies don't have. Of course that may change as they grow up, right now they are just tiny little fry, and they even have their black sheep of the fry group who is just black as night and hard to distinguish from the gravel we have in the tank excepting the little streak of white on his/her belly. Needs to get just a little bit bigger to start sexing them out.

And I tried so hard to prevent pregnancy in my tank, well okay I didn't look closely enough at the fish we bought from the store to see, little boy, little girl, but I did pick up a Betta who I thought would harass them just enough to prevent them from having babies. Unfortunately our Betta named Toothless by the GB seems to truly be toothless and spineless and instead of harassing the other fish, he's more interested in playing nanny to the fry. My animals never seem to match what is supposed to be their true natures, I always seem to end up with the weirdos.

Which reminds me I have to go and switch the laundry now so the GB can have her dress to wear that match our little puppycat's bandana. Neither one of them like having the particular article of clothing removed. Our cat will get up in a huff when we take off his bandana and will jump right up in the lap and start head butting us when he sees us pick it up, and the GB will cry and scream and shriek as soon as you try taking her dress off and will try to snatch it away to wear if she sees it. Who would have thought that 2 $1 bandanas could cause such household strife. And even though she has a bunch of other clothes made by the exact same pattern, she'll argue that she can't wear them and will cry when you try to dress her in anything but her matching Snowcap dress.

Well hope everyone had a Happy Easter! And I'll try not to be such a stranger.

Starz, you write quite a story! Glad you enjoyed your vacation. I have a good friend that is finishing up her one month there. They flew there and then took one week in 4 islands. They rented a car and just drove and drove. Beautiful pictures.

I have only had one betta. We really didn't know much about them, just knew that they were beautiful. Unfortunately found out later that they have to be loners. Sounds like you have quite a comical tank though.

Have a bad tooth. I have to have it pulled but that is leaving me with to many empty holes so I now have to make the decision about partial, bridge, implant or what. Pretty sure the implant is out just because of the huge cost of it.

Finally got our taxes done today. I always wait until late to do them because I know I am going to be paying state taxes and don't want to give them my money until I have to. Was glad to see we have to pay less than last year. Would like to see a trend in that. With the amount of loss this year, it would take 5 years to finally get something back. And Charlie starts monthly payouts on his retirement this year and will have to pay a penalty so don't know how that will have to affect our taxes next year. He took a payout early so we could do some much needed work around the house.

With my husbands health like it is, we can't go on vacations anymore. We used to take an annual vacation with both daughters and the one girl who is married her whole family also. So there were 7 of us. We would go during the grand kids spring or fall break. Then ulcerative colitis came to live with us and a trip to the grocery store is iffy most of the time.

So this spring break daughter and family came to us and based a staycation here at our home. I know there is a big Garden of the gods out west somewhere but we have a smaller one that is still breathaking with a lot of hiking and climbing over, under and around rocks and boulders. So they went there today, yesterday was our local zoo, tomorrow is a big cave.

But boy is it tiring for us here at home. I want a nice meal for them when they get home, they forage around and get their own breakfast here and then get their own lunch wherever they are. I ave one grand daughter who is very high energy and giggles the loudest giggle all the time. The other is almost 15 and boy have the teen years hit her. You don't know if she will be part of the family or totally moody. They got here Saturday and are leaving Wednesday. I hate to say it but I will be glad to see them go. I love them so deeply but now that husbands health is like it is, our life has changed and they interrupt our routine. I think when we went on vacations I ran on adrenalin. With them gone all day I don't have that hormone to keep me going. then all of a sudden, wham. Here comes Ellie and all the energy.

I love my family too, but many times while I'm so happy to see them I also wonder why they aren't gone yet . Health factors aside, there's just something about the disruption to the everyday, and the chaos that comes whether it's little ones visiting or even my own grandparents when they were still alive. It's exhausting vacationing sometimes.

On the note of exhausting experiences... I have yet another fishie dropping babies in my tank. This time it's Francene our fancy guppy, now her possible mate Frank only lasted 3 days in our tank... Leaving me to wonder is Frank the daddy or was it Po, the deceased tuxedo Mollie, or could it have been any of the other multitude of suitors from the fish store tank?! Apparently, guppies can have pregnancies for an entire year (birthing every 30 days or so) from a single insemination!!!

I love kids, I really do, but could you imagine getting pregnant every nine months for about 10 years after a single act? The animal kingdom hardly makes up for what us poor females must endure with its black widows and praying manti. And I really feel bad for the poor girl, she's been in labor since about 11:00 this morning, it normally only lasts a few hours and she's at the 12th hour . But so far there's at least 4 little itty bitty fry, without too many more on the way I sincerely hope. I still don't know what I'm going to do with the Molly babies. Let alone a bunch of guppies, or possibly muppies? Gollies?

So what is labor and delivery like for a fish?

OK, I'll bite....... no pun intended!! What is labor and delivery like for a fish?

Fish seemed to come in and go out (dying) through our life, we seldom named them. For awhile we had guppies and them giving birth. Since there were other fish in tank who liked eating them babies we had the pregnant mothers in a birthing tank , held on side of regular tank but isolated mother with slatted walls. Seemed like giving birth was like pooping for the fish - she just "squirted" them out.

Being a midwife (twice) for cats requiring a person around was very interesting. It involved scissors to cut cords, tearing open a placenta of an ignored kitten who was about to suffocate and removing some placentas so the Mom didn't eat them all and get sick afterwards. I had a book on cat birthing but as my nurse neighbor who came over to assist remarked "It was a little too late for you (me) to try and read it".