Are you saying you think 2 liters is to much. I'm not sure how willing my husband is going to be in changing his diet at all. In fact I know he won't. He didn't when he had his heart attack and stents, and he won't now. He had tamales for lunch and burrito with extra enchilada sauce on it for supper. Now his ostomy has been spewing and spurting ever since. I do think after he starts going out to Karaoke again and wants to avoid that pretty loud spurting he may double think his food intake. Of course what he might do is avoid eating supper at all before he goes out. I know that's a bad thing, he knows it's a bad thing but he doesn't care.

I'm glad weather is pretty pleasant here. I had a couple of errands today and it was nice. Still need to do a grocery trip and that's what I hate.

Sorry I haven't posted an update in such a long time. So much has happened and I can't remember the last time I posted. Steph ended up in the hospital for three weeks back in April I think. At the hospital she had two blood clots that traveled to her lungs and went into a fib. She eventually recovered from that. Was realeased and surgery was delayed until last Wednesday.

The great news is that she had a complete response to chemo and radiation and no cancer showed up in any of the pathology reports. 18 nodes and other tissue were examined. So they are saying she is cancer free. They did remove 2/3rds of her esophagus and 1/3 of her stomach so she is in quite a bit of pain and recovery and learning how to eat again will be a challenge. She was released this afternoon just 6 days after surgery which may be a record for her doctor.

My mom has been staying with me for the last 6 weeks so that has taken up alot of my time and energy too. I also moved yesterday into my new house. I am basically living in the middle of a construction zone right now. It will be nice when all the houses are done. Right now it is just dirt and mud and halfway done houses around me. Landscaping won't be done for awhile.

I am sure this post has typos in it as I am pooped. I will try to post again soon, and catch up with what I missed soon.

Ahh the loveliness of summertime. Rain and humidity, tornado warnings, and of course the venomous snakes sitting just outside your door. First venomous snake spotting of the summer! Coral snake 2' of supposedly shy deadly snake stretching out across my porch between the front door and the screen door to get off the porch. Surprisingly though it's actually my first sighting of a coral snake... Plenty of cotton mouths, countless timbers, and the odd few pigmy rattle snakes, but first coral snake. Rather a shame I'm so scared of snakes and it's a venomous snake too because I must say it was rather beautiful, if a deadly no-legged freak of nature can be considered beautiful that is.

Starz, you are crazy!!!!!1 Yes, they might have lovely colors but so does a rainbow. Go admire a green snake or something.

Hi Barb!! I'm so glad you posted. Every time I see a news story about the flooding in Houston I worry that you and your family are OK.

The news about Steph being cancer-free is miraculous. I know you all were relieved.

Congratulations on the new house. Have fun decorating!

That is such great news. Wow, it sounds like she will have to completely re-learn how to eat. hopefully it won't take to long and she can get back to learning a different way of living. As we all say here with MS, a new normal. But it becomes our normal.

Hopefully it own't take much for your house to get settled in. and the potential of all those new friends!!!!

Hi Everyone!

Barb - That is great news!!! I am so happy for your sister as well as you. It will take her some time to learn to eat again. Does she have a speech pathologist working with her? Congratulations on your move! How exciting for you, despite all the construction.

Doydie - I personally drink about 3 liters of water a day. I don't remember how much they recommend those with ileostomies to drink. They tend to have more trouble staying hydrated. I hope things are settling down for you and Charlie and you are getting in to a new routine. I also hope that you have taken some time for yourself and doing the things you need to keep yourself healthy.

Starz - YIKES!!!! I don't particularly like snakes. In fact, I don't like them. The only snake I am ok with is King snakes as they keep rattlers away. I learned that once when I was living with my old bf and we had a 5' black King snake in our yard. It creeped me out but I knew it would keep other snakes and such out of the yard so I was ok with it.

My heat whine . . . It's so freaking hot!!! Plus, it's been humid too. Yuck! Ok. Done with the whine.

My laptop was getting so old that many programs that I need to do my little bit of work are no longer being supported. Add in that the computer was terribly s l o w. I had to get a new one. It scares me to have to spend the money on a new one. Since I use it mostly for work, I needed it now! I ended up having to get one and make payments on it through QVC. This is my first time ever using them. DD26 had used them before and has always had good experiences with them so I went that route. So far things are going smoothly.

I got my hair cut short. Well, short for me. It comes to my shoulder now. I have not had my hair this short in about 20 years. I don't know what possessed me to cut it this short. It doesn't look bad and I'm not mourning over the loss of several inches of hair. I'm just trying to adjust to shorter hair. I can still pull it back in a ponytail which was important to me. I still want to be able to pull it up, especially in this heat.

I hope you all are having a great Sunday!

In addition to all the heat down here, after disposal of the coral snake... I was greeted by 2 more snakes on the porch. One being a simple rat snake and the other scrambled away before it could be identified but didn't look the same as the rat snake... No clue what it was though. I'm done to death with snakes on my porch. but there doesn't seem to be a way to prevent them (short of moving to a part of the country and a new front porch).

Hi Everyone!

Starz - There's snakes in all parts of the country. I don't know a state that doesn't have them. To see them slithering around bothers me so much. It's so funny because I don't mind lizards and actually enjoy watching them. A snake is something completely different.

This weekend we head to he11! Triple digit heat in the teens!!! I'm so not going anywhere unless I have to. It's even too hot to go swimming. Of course, that will heat the pools up to bathwater temps in no time at all. *sigh*

I finally got my kitchen table painted. It looks so pretty there in its pretty white color. This table is a round table. The one I had before was a rectangle table. The round table works much better in the space. I now have the chairs to redo but am waiting until I get the fabric to redo the seat cushions. I want something that will always be in style. I'm thinking navy blue or beige/tans/neutrals. They both will work with white. I haven't decided yet so I am not going to paint the chairs until I decide. I don't want to take the seats off twice. I'll just have to deal with cherry colored chairs with maroon seats and a white table for a while. It doesn't look bad at all.

I hope you all have a great evening!

I inherited my parents big Duncan Phyfe table. One time long ago I found a wonderful cross stitch rose pattern in a book and saved it. It was my dream to cross stitch and re-do the seats on all 10 of the chairs! What a dream. It's still a dream, haven't even looked closely at the pattern to see what it would take. But then I would want to put that awful plastic on my wonderful works of art so no one would stain them.

I don't mind snakes, unless they are poisonous. My daughter had an 8 foot boa and when he was a little smaller I would help when she needed some one to hold him while she cleaned his cage. But at 8 ft he was just to big. Do you know when snake poops, they have two poops, one is the regular poop and one is a white bone poop. Was quite interesting the first time I saw it. But if they have it in the cage and you don't catch it, you need to carry stupid snake to your bath tub to give it a bath. This guy got pneumonia and she had to give him shots! She loved that guy.