LET'S GO HERE NEXT YEAR MIKE AND JAN

I've mentioned my best friend Mike Newton and his wife Janice before in this Blog. Here is a photo of him in 1973. He is the guy on the right. What is particularly frightening about this photo is that I actually remember this night.



For the 50 plus of you that were in Spain with us last year, you will never forget him and his wild dance moves. It would be nice if you would forget that he was dancing with me but we won't go down that path.

Anyway, this is for youm Mike and Jan.

If you go TO THIS WEBSITE you will see that The World Cup of Baking (I am not shitting you-that is the name) starts in France tomorrow.

Wow. The World Cup of Baking. You two are opening a Baking Business and I like to bake bread and I will eat almost anything that has icing on it. Maybe even tomatoes. This is our kind of conference.

What better excuse could we find for going to next years World Cup, also in France?

When you two come to Atlanta to spend the night with us next Friday, let's get into the whole France thing and drink some Pernod and then have a bottle of Pierre Jouet Champagne, then perhaps a nice bottle of Bordeaux with dinner. With dessert we can have a snifter of Bénédictine and perhaps a nightcap of Créme de Cassis.

After that we should be thinking clearly and we can decide how many days we want to spend at next years World Cup. Once decided, Jan and Cathy can go to bed and Mike, you and I will hit a little of the GREEN FAIRY to call it a night.

The only problem is that I am making a 14 hour smoked beef brisket for your visit and I am not sure how well Champagne goes with BBQ but we will find out.

Mike, I just realized that if anyone who reads this does not click on the GREEN FAIRY link to see what I am talking about, our reputations could be besmirched.

See you a week from today. I'm ready to dance.

Notation to Rachel and Eric-when your Mom and Dad arrive at your house on Saturday afternoon to see the kids, do not worry about the way Mike looks. It will be your Dad. (Of course, the truth is he will feel great and the rest of us will feel horrible). Just like always.

LAUGHING AND CRYING OVER THE SAME WOMAN

A few months ago I said I wasn't going to talk any more about the election in THIS POST. I would rate myself a grade of B+ in sticking to that.

I slipped ONCE but have generally, for a variety of reasons, not the least is which good friends I really care about have a different view than I do, kept my mouth shut about this Presidential Election circus.

I said at the outset that if the Democrats do not walk away with the Presidency in this election, given the discontent with the present administration, than the Democratic party should be banned from politics for a couple of decades due to their ineptness. If they can't win now, they never will.

And it now looks like there is a chance they won't win. They are blowing all their energy and much of their money fighting each other while McCain just sits back and watches as he plans his strategy.

So this week, Hillary, who I really want to win the nomination so McCain can be elected, provided me with an emotional roller coaster.

First there was her story about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire and having to run across the tarmac. Of course none of that was true and CBS showed the actual footage of her and Chelsea calmly walking out from the plane (the war was already over and had been for some time) stopping and chatting with dignitaries and hugging children.

So of course I laughed at how stupid she was to think she could get away with it and then put on a sad face when I realized this was going to hurt her chances to become the nominee which is not good.

A little later she reaffirmed her story when asked by the press but then later still said she had been confused.

I am sure I have been on nearly as many airplanes as she has over our lifetimes and I have never gotten off a plane and greeted family or friends and remembered it as being attacked.

So, I was again sad that she may be hurting her chances.

Then, as we were sitting in the Crown Room at the Atlanta airport on Tuesday night, waiting for our flight to Washington, DC where we are for the next week taking care of the boys, there was a sudden noise from a waiter who dropped a tray. I knew it was the big one (these things happen at airports you know) and I threw myself on the floor hoping to not get hit by the flak. Cathy suggested I get up as it was all okay.

I may been a little Clintonesque in the way I told the story in the above paragraph but where we differ is I now am willing to tell you that I was not confused. I just made it up.

What I am not making up is what was on CNN at that Crown Room and so my roller coaster between happy and sad for Hillary continued. This time I was happy with laughter.

Some journalists were laughing about her statement this week about Obama not jettisoning his preacher. They showed a film clip where Hillary said "None of us can choose our families but we can all choose our preachers". It was of course a down in the gutter cheap shot of a panicked person, but what I liked was the commentary on CNN. One of the announcers asked another one what he thought of her comment. His response was "Well, you can choose your preacher but you can also choose your spouse and let's look at her record there."

That comment moved me from my melancholy to laughing my head off. Great answer.

I will be so glad when this Democratic crap is over. Think of some of the problems that could be solved in the world if we used the money for that instead of for this nonsense. Of course, once it is over, then we will hear both parties going at it in a similar fashion. November cannot get here soon enough for me.

PUTTING GAS IN THE CAR

I have always been open about my inability to do mechanical things and many of the normal activities of daily living, but last Sunday was over the top. I was going over to a friend’s house to pick up a suitcase full of clothes. When I left on my 7 week jaunt across the world, I left from a conference in Florida and I didn't want to lug a suit, tie, dress shoes and assorted other crap for 30,000 miles so I stuck it all in a suitcase and Fed-exd it to my friend Bill Robinson. This was in early January.

About ten days ago I had to go to a Board meeting in Ft. Worth and I was looking for a sports coat I own and I could not find it. I even called Cris in DC to see if I had left it there. Then, someone I live with pointed out that I had it in Florida at the conference so the memory of the suitcase came back. It likely would have sat at Bill's house for another year if I had not been looking for it for the Texas trip.

So, on the way over to pick it up, I took Cathy's car to fill it up with gas. I pulled into the station, got out, opened up the gas compartment, took out my credit card and immediately realized I had pulled on the wrong side of the pump and that the hose wouldn't reach as her gas cap is on the right side of the car and it is on the left side of the car I usually drive.

No problema.

I put my credit card away, closed the gas compartment, got in the car, started it, pulled it away from the pump, made a U-turn and pulled it back up to another pump.

Got out. Opened the gas compartment. Took out the credit card. This time I swiped it and pushed the button for the grade and took out the hose.

I had done the same thing. I was still on the wrong side of the pump, just a different pump.

I felt this burning on my neck-I looked around and saw several people watching me. I felt I had to remain sophisticated looking. I put the credit card back in my pocket, clicked cancel on the pump, put the hose back in the pump, closed the gas compartment and walked calmly and confidently back to the drivers’ side.

I slowly started the engine and began to make another U-turn as a diversionary tactic so they would think I had it figured it out and would now park correctly. I then gunned it and shot out of the gas station and I will never go back there again. I was so embarrassed I was not about to stay there and actually buy gas after making a fool out of myself (which of course I do all the time so I don't know why it bothered me this time).

But I did remember to pick up the suitcase and Cheri said she was convinced I had forgotten I had shipped it to them which she didn't believe was possible. It was possible. I had forgotten.

THE BOYS AND MY BLOG

Watching the boys this week makes it almost impossible to do this Blog. I had to set the alarm at 4am and get up just to type this silly post. When 7am hits, things are pretty frenetic until about 9pm and then I am so tired I just want to go to bed. There may not be a lot more posts between now and next Wednesday!

FLOWMAX

Many of you have seen the ubiquitous commercial on TV for the above medication. I think they should hire me as the creative director for them as I have a great idea. And yes, I know I spelled it wrong. That was intentional. The reason is likely obvious.

When we were in India, one of my colleagues, who shall remain nameless (let's call her J. Doe sine she reads this Blog) was hell bent on renting an elephant which we accomplished. Without getting into why she wanted to rent an elephant or what happened with the elephant, a photo of it is below as it arrived at our arranged meeting point.

I think I could sell this photo if I took it to this company for a TV commercial. What do you think? This is definitely Maximum Flow.

From a News of the Weird posting this week. It definitely qualifies:

James Bowring, 45 told a court in New Zealand that he wants to reconcile with his son, Jacob who is 18. This was despite the Dad's conviction for trying to run his son over in a car at 50 mph after making a U-turn and jumping a curb to try and mow him down.

The Dad admitted he was angry at Jacob for calling him a pedophile, after Dad wooed Jacob's 18 year old girlfriend and made her pregnant.

Susequently, the judge sentenced the Dad to five months home detention in the BUS he lives in with the pregnant girlfriend.

Happy Easter Monday. When I was a kid, we always got out of school on Easter Monday because it was a Catholic school. I never understood what the significance of Easter Monday was but we always had fun rubbing it in to all of our public school friends.

We would go down to their school and watch them arrive for class and wave and jeer at them since we didn't have to be in school and they did. Later in the week they would threaten to beat us up for doing that as we were outnumbered by about 50 to 9 but it was still fun. But fortunately, they never did actually beat us up (for this).

FINN

For those of you that don't read Andrea's Blog, here are two videos of our third grandchild. You have to click twice on the arrow to get it to play.

FINN WATCHING HIMSELF IN THE MIRROR


FINN IN HIS SWING

HOW TO BE INJURED MAKING HOMEMADE ICE CREAM

Yesterday, while Wes was sleeping and the Mom's were out shopping, Landon and I decided to make home made ice cream. His parents had given me an old fashioned ice cream maker for Christmas, complete with the hand crank.

Grover remembered, as I do, my Dad making home made ice cream (although in a reverse modernization trend, his had an electric motor) whenever we would go visit my parents when Grover and Andrea were little. So he and Cris bought this cool ice cream maker for me and we brought it with us to Destin this week.

We whipped up a huge batch and so I told Landon (Wes got screwed on this deal since he was taking a nap) that I would let him do the most fun part of making home made ice cream which is licking the paddle. So when it was ready, I took it out and put it in a pasta pot and took Landon outside by the pool so he could enjoy it without dripping ice cream all over everything. Do you think he did?

NOTE THE HAIRCUT COMPARED TO MY PREVIOUS POST


NOTE THE COPENHAGEN TEE SHIRT-HE MAY HAVE A TEE SHIRT FROM EVERYWHERE ALTHOUGH IN THIS CASE, HE WAS ACTUALLY THERE

As an aside, Landon got a big laugh on the way down to Destin Saturday on the grueling 8 hour drive. After a few hours and after asking 100 plus times "When are we going to get there?" he suddenly said "Next time, let's just drive to the airport and fly down to Florida."

After Wes woke up he joined us and was trying to figure out how one of those little bubble making machines worked when Cris snapped this photo of him. I like it because she caught one of the bubbles he had just made floating off to the right in the photo. Note the difference in his haircut also.




Of course, somehow or other, ice cream got tracked into the kitchen all over the white tile floor along with lots of other tracks little boys and their Papi make. So, later in the evening, after the boys are asleep, Cathy gets the mop out and washes the floor.

About 10pm last night, I walk into the kitchen for my 9th ice cream cone and do not notice that the floor is somehow still wet (and therefore slippery). I am not sure how it happened but suddenly I was in the air and just as suddenly I landed with a smack down on my left side on the tile floor. I am very lucky I did not break something.

I was a little stunned but once she saw I had not broken anything, my wife Florence decided it was hysterical and had to leave the room she was laughing so hard. I crawled over to the carpeted family room and managed to stand up so that she and Cris would see I was alive.

About 12:15 this morning I woke up and thought I had been hit by a small tank. My entire left side is killing me, particularly in my ribs, my left foot and ankle and I see my left knee is swollen, a potential problem since it is my artificial knee, although I do not think it is damaged a lot.

I am sure I will be sore for a couple of days but am just really glad that nothing is broken. I appreciated the fact that neither of them mentioned that in order for me to fall like that, I had to move the mop and bucket of soapy water that was intentionally blocking the entryway into the kitchen so that no one would enter and slip on the floor. When you are in an ice cream frenzy, you don't think about small barriers like that.

They say balance in life is important. I am in balance. My left side is killing me from the fall and my right shoulder and arm are killing me from turning the crank on an ice cream maker for an hour.

TORNADO!

Friday was a pretty exciting day. We had to deal with three separate tornados at our house. The first two hit our home about 4pm. Their names were Landon and Wes.

I was so thankful they landed safely and we got home from the airport before the real tornado arrived.

We had a great dinner and finished it off with cupcakes for Cathy's birthday. The only cupcakes the store had were for Saint Patricks day, hence the green teeth look in the photos below.

Move forward to about 9:30 that night. The boys are asleep upstairs in their bedrooms and Cathy, Cris and I are on the main floor sitting and talking with the TV on in the background.

Cathy is sitting with her back to a long wall of windows that look out over our terrace patio onto our back yard.

I am sitting across from her, looking toward the windows and Cris is between us facing the television.

All of a sudden, within about 30 seconds I notice that the entire sky is ablaze with lightning strikes and I think it must be a little ways off as the thunder is not too loud.

Suddenly the TV program is interrupted and the announcer says there is a tornado warning and our conversation goes like this:

Me: This is not a tornado watch. It is a warning. That means there is a tornado. We have to get the boys now and get downstairs and away from all window.

Cathy (who had not seen the lightning): Let's wait and see if it gets worse before overprocessing.

Cris (rather quickly): The TV is saying right now the center is at Phipps (a half mile away) as she thinks to herself that I am definitely not overprocessing this.

Me (as I'm running up the stairs): NOW! GET THE BOYS NOW!

So Cris and I grab the boys and carry them down three flights of stairs and we huddle in the hallway away from all windows. We turn on the TV down there and watch as they now say the center of it is on Peachtree and Druid Hills, a one minute ride from our house.

After about 20 minutes it passed by and we never did hear any real loud noise-just constant lightning.

In the end, while there was damage in our neighborhood, it was not bad and we had no damage. Despite what the TV was saying, the bad part hit in the southern half of the dangerous cell in downtown Atlanta where the destruction was severe as anyone that reads a paper or watches TV knows. Thanks to all of you who called us or sent emails to see if we were all safe.

The hardest part of the entire ordeal for us was carrying the two boys, who were still sound asleep, back up the three flights of stairs. I was huffing and puffing like a steam engine. And I carried the smaller one. Cris had to lug Landon up the stairs.

The next day (yesterdaay) we loaded up in two cars and drove to Destin to our home where we will be with the boys for the next week. We have not seen them for nine weeks, the longest we have ever gone without seeing them so we are excited about our time with them. Because it is spring break, the normal six and a half hour drive took eight hours and five minutes and we were under a tornado watch for most of the trip. It seemed like forever.

But today it is sunny with clear blue skies so we are going out to play. I will close with another photo I took of Landon Friday during the cupcake eating contest. How many four year olds have a tee-shirt from the country of Brunei in Borneo? I wonder who he knows that would have gone to such an unusual place?

SETTING GOALS

I realize that the above title doesn't sound very interesting. But this is a good story.

BACKGROUND:

* A couple of days ago I wrote about my Dad, which you can read HERE if you didn't previously.

* I have written a lot about my Mom, her positive attitude about everything and what an inspiration she is to me. I try hard to model my behavior after her.

* I have also written this last 12 months a lot about her health issues, which began exactly a year ago with a small fall that turned into a $19,465 (thank you Medicare) helicopter ride in an air ambulance to Las Vegas and since then has seen her struggle to get out of bed at times. Her pain has been horrible and she has had many complications-yet her positive attitude stayed with her.
* My Mom will be 93 this year. She reads Andrea's, Alice's and my Blogs. She does email. There are not a lot of 93 year old that do that, although, as an aside, for those of you that speak Spanish, there is a 95 year old woman in Spain that has a Blog that you can view HERE.

* My Mom read my Blog about my Dad and wrote me this email:

Hello on this anniversary day. Was a sad evening as I watched him pass away
but I also was glad he didn’t suffer anymore. So I took up a new life style and
traveled, met many new widow ladies and we formed lasting friendships which we
continue today.

Had breakfast this morning with the ex Bonelli
volunteers and enjoyed very much, used my cane instead of my walker and did
fine. Gene picked me up so I was very careful getting in and out of her car but
did okay. I'm so sorry Cathy is having so much trouble. Hope the shots take away
some of her pain and she needs to have someone do the heavy cleaning. Tell her
that if Andrea has someone clean once a week Cathy should at least have someone
once every two weeks. Andrea's Blog was so funny telling about the cleaning
ladies. Better say goodnight with lots of prayers for relief for Cathy and Love
and Kisses for both of you Mom

So, Mom sends me the above message and it gives you a sense of who she is and how she believes in looking forward, not back.

Now-about goals. As long as I can remember I have set goals. I never really knew why-I just always did. I recently showed Grover a notebook I carry with me all the time that has goals by year in it going back to the mid-80's.

Note-I do not know why I cannot get these this paragraph and the two above it to not be indented nor why the first few sentences are a different color.

Well, My Mom had a goal and she just achieved it. And when she did, I suddenly realized where I learned to set goals.

In July, 2006, I showed this photo on my Blog:


Mom with Sexy Lexie and her Chugged Out Chevy.

My Mom had been driving a 1971 Chevrolet Impala that weighed 11 tons and was 20 yards long since, well, 1971. It was definitely on its last leg.

I had a Lexus LS400-a car almost as long as her Impala but with only 30,000 miles on it. So I gave it to her. I hired a transport truck and had it delivered to Kingman, Arizona. She became the only owner of a Lexus in Kingman. The day it arrived she had this photo taken by my sister-in-law Judie of Mom standing there between her old car and her new car (complete with the bow she put on it).

She loves that car and had a blast driving it the next 8 months. Then she had her fall last March. There were days when we were not sure if we were going to lose her as she was very, very ill several times this last year. But every time she would feel better her eyes would get wide and she would say "I think I am going to drive Lexie again some day. That is my goal."

Last Sunday I called her to see how she was doing. We had some small talk and I started to hang up and she said "I have something to tell you."

I knew what it was.

Immediately I knew.

"I thought it would be fun to walk out to my car and just sit in it so I took my walker and did just that. As I sat in it I looked around at all the fancy switches and gauges and lights to see if I remembered how it worked. I knew I shouldn't drive but then suddenly I thought What the Hell. I got out, left my walker in an empty car parking space, got in the car and drove down to Emily Circle (see below for that) and back. It was great. I reparked it and I am driving it this week to my Soroptimist Club meeting for the first time."

And that, my friends, is my Mom and that is why she inspires me, is my role model and why I set goals.

And in closing, an interesting note is that the Emily Circle she referred to is a little cul-de-sac that has five homes in it. One of the five homes is where a young girl name Cathy used to live when I first met her. The rest is history.

THE GOVERNOR MADE ME DO THIS-I COULDN'T HELP MYSELF

This is pretty interesting. I saw this photo in an Atlanta newspaper this weekend and I was so stunned, I cut it out, scanned it, and decided I would wait to the appropriate time, probably in a month or two, to share it with you.

And then the news from New York came in today. Four hours, $4,300 plus expenses. What in the world are the expenses? Do they add an extra $1.95 for a bag of peanuts to the $4,300 while she takes off her clothes?

I wonder if this womans name is Kristin?

PREDICTIONS:

1. Andrea will think this if funny but may not admit it.
2. Cris will say "Oh, Papi. What were you thinking?"
3. Cathy, will tell me I shouldn't have done it and that I should remove it.
4. My Mom will laugh.

So, blame it on Elliott. He is the one that got me started down this path. I had to do it after his news today.

Then I read the latest post of Cal, a really funny guy who’s Blog I read. He is a friend of Alice (who will also laugh at this-I think). And I decided if he can write that post, I can say what I want about the Gov.

In all seriousness, I feel really, really bad for the Gov's wife and his daughters. But his "I'm holier than thou" attitude toward CEO's that he has been so vocal about now shows he was a hypocrite.
Speaking about Cathy, she really botched things up last week. We were at the Atlanta airport about 645 am last Wednesday heading to Chicago to see her oncologist when she suddenly exclaims "Oh, look! There is Bobby."

So of course, Bobby Jones, who is standing there in his conservative suit with his pink shirt (??) heard her and it ruined my chances to nail his butt to the wall right there at Gate A-16 at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. I was going to run up behind him, grab his throat and scream in his ear and watch him quiver, scream, and run like a baby down the concourse.

Instead, he came and gave us both a hug and told me I missed my chance. He knew what I had wanted to do.

Now, the above makes total sense to those of you that know Bobby. The rest of you are wondering what I am talking about. I will tell you.

The two funniest true stories (in my opinion) on my Blog (let me clarify-all my stories are true-they are just not all funny) is the story of the Dead Body in My Hotel Room that I posted back in June, 2006 and the story of the time I tried to scare Bobby Jones in the middle of a shopping mall which I posted in April of last year.

So, if you clicked on the link to the Bobby Jones story above, you will know why I was so disappointed I missed my chance to put him into near cardiac arrest last week.

I am writing all of this from the Hyatt O'Hare in Chicago. I flew up here this morning for a meeting of The Actuarial Foundation Board that I serve on as a Trustee. Tomorrow I fly to Ft. Worth for a dinner and a Board meeting the next day with USHealth Group, who’s Board I am also on. So, tonight I am here at this Hyatt and as you know, they always give me a special room, which is nice hem although I often get lost in them.

Tonight when I checked in the young woman said "Oh, you are lucky. We are going to put you into one of our newly remodeled suites with a spiral staircase". I should have thought that through more than I did. I just said "Thank You", took the key and off I went.

Guess what? When I got in the room, I realized I was going to have to carry my suitcase, (which has 3 pounds of clothes, 32 pounds of mail I am behind on and 42 pounds of wires and electronic chargers, gadgets, plugs, converters, etc) up the spiral staircase, no easy task for a 30 year old and I am not 30.

NOTE THE BAG WAITING TO BE CARRIED UP

Upon closer examination, I realized the steps were so narrow, I was going to have to mug an elderly Chinese woman, unbind her feet and put the binding on my feet, than walk two steps behind everyone back to my room so my feet would fit on the steps.




Of course I mentioned this to Cathy on the phone, AFTER I had drug it up the stairs and unbound my feet, and she asked me in a rather disdainful tone "Why didn't you just leave your suitcase down below and just walk up the stairs with your pajamas"? I hate it when she is so logical which is almost always.

So right now I am "upstairs" with my pajamas, my pc and almost everything else I own and I have moved the easy chair and my suitcase over to block the top of the stairs as I would not want to fall down a spiral staircase in the middle of the night.

17 YEARS AGO TODAY

Grover, Andrea, Cathy and I were flying to Phoenix so that we could drive the next day to Kingman for the funeral of my Dad, who both Grover and I are named after. He was named after his Dad and Grandad. I am really J. Grover Thomas, IV and Grover is the Fifth but it gets too complicated so I just go by Jr. and Grover goes by The Third.

He was a very loving and kind man who cared more about his family than anything else. He had a horrible childhood and a life of several tragic events and he likely did not have the coping skills like my Mom did to deal with them and move on. And so there was much of the "ups" in life that he did not get to experience and I feel bad that he did not.

But when he died of cancer 17 years ago he was happy. He was helping others, living in a house he was proud of with my Mom, tended to his garden and was so proud of his two sons and his two grandkids.

Maybe because I was his namesake or maybe because he was who he was and I am who I am, we were close. And I still miss being able to call him up and tell him the latest about my career, my life or what is going on with his Grandkids.

Life is a path and there are times that some days on the path remind you of sad things of the past. Every March 7th, the day that he passed on, is that way for me, but it also causes me to remember all the good times with him when I was young. He left for me a rich legacy of many wonderful memories.

Thank you Pop.

WHY DOES IT HAVE TO HAPPEN TO HER?



Many, but not all of you, know Cathy. Those of you that do describe her as one of the most peaceful, genuine and caring people you know. I have described her as the smartest person I know and the person that was the difference in me being a bum or where I am today.

Like all of us, she is not perfect. She is a little weird about things (vacuuming for one) and she would have to be a little strange to have put up with me for more than four decades, especially given that she refused to go out with me at first. Good thing for me she was broke and hungry and finally caved in so I could buy her 15 cent hamburgers at the Burger Chef in Flagstaff.

But, she is truly a wonderful human being. Watching Cris and Grover the first few years that Landon and Wes were born and now watching Lee and Andrea the first few weeks that Finn is with us, I have to wonder how Cathy did it.

When Grover was born we lived in Tulsa, being transferred there with two days notice from Phoenix when she was 8 months pregnant. Neither of us even knew where Tulsa was located.

Cathy did not have a driver’s license but it didn't matter as we only had one car, which I left in early every Monday morning to drive to some small town in Oklahoma or Arkansas for the week, returning at 8pm or so on Friday night. While I was repossessing furniture or cars, or firing branch managers for stealing, or learning to use a new computer system that was basically an electric typewriter connected to a phone line, Cathy was running everything in the house and taking care of Grover. She had to take him on the bus or a taxi to the doctor and if she needed milk in the middle of the week, back on the bus. Oh, and we had two dogs, one of them that weighed 135 pounds.

Yet she never complained. She did what she needed to do with grace and a smile and our home was always immaculate. Keeping a home spotless and well organized is one of her strongest beliefs. It was no different when Andrea was born and we were now living in a spotless and well organized apartment we could not afford in Hoffman Estates, IL. The only thing different for her was that she now had a 30 foot long 1959 Oldsmobile I had bought for 50 dollars and her drivers license. The only thing different for me was now I was on an airplane from Monday to Friday in places like Boise, Rapid City, Des Moines, Santa Fe or wherever.

When the kids were 8 and 3 and we were now in Sioux City, Iowa and we finally had been able to buy a home, she and I decided we could now afford to join the rest of the world and actually go to college, a little later by about 15 years than most people do. We went mainly on weekends because I was still on a plane. She was taking care of the kids and I was flying to allow us to eat.

My point is that she had a very difficult life. She worked her butt off, always happy, always gracious, and always very conscious of what was the socially right thing to do because she had not been brought up in the type of environment we were trying to create for our kids. She was always dressed properly (albeit cheaply for many years), would never say anything inappropriate (I handled that for both of us) and developed, despite being a very introverted person, deep and lasting friendships with people that did and still do love her.

So, she is damn near a saint or an angel in my view and I don't understand why she has so many shitty things happen to her.

She has had her hip replaced 3 times on the left side. She has had her knee on the right side replaced. She has been battling breast cancer for five years and yesterday the oncologist told us that the type she has can recur during years 5 thru 10 so it is not behind us like it is for most people after 5 years. She has to continue the blood tests, the bone density tests and the oncologist visits for another five years

She is also a compltet klutz and has always fallen a lot. When she was pregnant with Andrea she fell constantly and now we have a daughter that also falls a lot. Cathy fell in London a year and a half ago and now has metal in her arm so she is almost all metal. TSA loves her.

She also fell in a restaurant in Atlanta (the second time she has fallen in that restaurant)in October and pulled a groin muscle, shortly after I had taken her to the hospital ER one night about 9pm because she was cutting bread and forgot that her fingers were under the bread.

Probably due to some of the cancer drugs her vertebrae or something in her spine has become compressed and she has very bad pain (never mentioning it of course) and is going to get her second epidural tomorrow.

Bottom line-she has a full and healthy personality and a body that is a mess and it seems very unfair to me as she is someone who will do anything for those she loves-she is the ultimate sacrificer.

About two months ago she developed another bad pain in her groin on the other side. I kept after her to go to the doctor but she always resists because she thinks the doctors have other patients who have more serious things wrong with them.

By three weeks ago when I arrived in London she could not walk a couple of blocks without intense pain. Under extreme pressure from Andrea and me she finally called a doctor and set up an appointment with him for the first day we were back in the country this week (Tuesday).

On the plane coming back she said something like "No matter what is wrong, as long as it is not my good hip, I will be okay".

So on Tuesday she goes and sure enough, her good hip is now a bad hip and so in July (because the doc is booked until then) she will now have to have her 4th artificial hip put in.

It just really pisses me off that such a good person, who always puts everyone else first, has to go through such hell. I am angry and I want to scream but I do not know who to scream at.

By Tuesday night, after the doctor visit and the long plane ride home the previous day, she wasreally struggling to move around the house because on top of everything else, since she is getting an Epidural tomorrow, she had to stop taking some drugs for her pain last Friday so it had intensified.

She had been sitting on the couch resting and I was going through the boxes of mail I showed you in my last posting. Suddenly I heard this familiar whirring noise.

I looked up. I thought I was seeing things.

She was vacuuming. No one had been in the house for seven weeks and although I am a pig, I had not yet had time in the last 18 hours or so to mess it up. Yet she was vacuuming.

I told her she had to stop because it was going to make her hurt even more. She looked at me and said (I swear this is almost word for word):

"Well, if I don't vacuum, I will feel even worse."

That short sentence tells us so much about what a wonderful, caring, genuine (and a bit weird) person she is. And I am just so sad and so furious to see her now have to go through another operation and rehabilitation. She deserves better than this out of life for all the good she has done.

And so I wanted to begin this post with a photo of her and I was thumbing through the many photos we have and I found the one at the top of this posting-notice her right arm. There have been so many incidents, I don't even remember what that was from.

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU LEAVE THE COUNTRY FOR 47 DAYS?


1. You arrive back home Monday night 14 hours after you leave your hotel in Madrid and all you want to do is go buy some milk so you can make coffee.

2. You find that easier said than done when your two cars have dead batteries.

3. You call AAA and they come out and tell you that if you don't eat for 47 days, you won't run so why do you expect your car to.

4. You fly back in Business Class using points and the flight attendants are appalled that you won't eat their salmon or tenderloin and choose instead, during the course of the flight, to eat four Jamón Ibérico sandwiches you made for yourself at the hotel, washed down with the cans of Fanta Limón you brought on board.

5. You get bread crumbs from the baguettes all over you, the seat, the floor, your wife (as she eats her salmon) and much of the plane.

6. You arrive home and see the note you left yourself saying that you weighed 176.1 pounds the day you left. Your intention was to come back weighing under 170 since everyone knows that being in India for two weeks will cause you to lose weight in a couple of ways we won't go into here. Add to that the exercise you got traipsing through villages in the Philippines and India coupled with 12 days of mucho walking in London since Andrea and Lee don't have a car and you begin to think you may be down to 168.

7. So you weigh yourself on the same scale and see you have gained one half pound.

8. You mutter, mumble, gripe and complain about this and a certain someone points out that you probably ate 20 pounds of Jamón in Spain in 5 days.

9. On the drive home from the airport you ponder one of those life’s questions about "How much mail do you think we will have when we arrive?"

10. And then you see how much.

AND THIS WAS JUST SOME OF IT-ALL THAT WOULD FIT ON THE COUNTER

11. You are only in town one day before you fly off again for a board meeting and you spend much of that day changing the light bulbs that burned out in the house and going and eating ribs (after all that pork in Spain) with Bill instead of doing your mail.

12. You get up on Wednesday (today) at 2am to try and catch up on the mail before you leave at 6am for the airport. You look at the pile of it, become overwhelmed, so you say screw it and whine about it on this Blog, which does not catch you up with your mail but makes you feel better.

13. At 330 am you see on the internet that instead of the 73 it was here in Atlanta yesterday, it is going to be 6 or 7 in Chicago. You get depressed.

14. Right after that you see that Clinton did well in Ohio and Texas which maybe means she can get the nomination and you are happy because you think McCain can beat her but not Obama. You marvel at the fact you are actually pulling for Clinton for the nomination.

15. After you type the above you remember you promised you would not talk about the election after your section called "Which brings me to the Political Stuff" in a posting HERE that I did a couple of months ago. You do it anyway because you are tired, cranky and behind in your mail.

AND OUR FAMILY JUST KEEPS GROWING!

We were in Madrid this weekend to celebrate the 85th birthday of our dear Luis. Here he is in the photo below, the second from the left.




It was a wonderful celebration but nothing can top the first five minutes we were with them in their apartment. We had just entered and sat down and Luis said to me “I want to share with you my birthday present. I am going to Copenhagen in August”.

And he handed me a birthday card that he had just gotten from Gustavo and Dorte. I opened it and read the word out loud:

“Te vas a ser un abuelo Papa” (You are going to be a grandfather, Dad).

I couldn’t believe it. Cathy almost screamed when I read it. We were so shocked and so happy.

Then Luis said to me that he really was going to Copenhagen in August and here was the other card that he opened thinking it was a travel certificate.

He handed it to me and I read out loud:

“De dos nietos” (Of two grandchildren).

More yelling. Lots of hugs and near tears of joy.

Gustavo and Dorte are going to have twins. And here is the happy couple below. Gustavo is already tired just thinking about it as he had his eyes closed when we took the photo.



The six of us went to a nearby restaurant and ate seafood and drank young Spanish red wine until midnight. It was just so wonderful.

Now, for some of you who don’t know who Gustavo and Dorte are, Gustavo came to live with us for a school year in 1985. It became much more than a typical exchange student relationship. We grew very close. Our kids went to Spain and spent much of the summer with Gustavo’s family after he moved back. Gustavo came to the US to college in DC for 3 years at the same time Grover was there going to college. He was the best man in Grover’s wedding. He has always called us Mom and Dad and considers Grover and Andrea his brother and sister and vice versa.

A few years ago, Grover, Cris, Landon (who was only 2 years old at the time), Andrea, Cathy and I flew to Copenhagen to be at the wedding of Gustavo, now in a diplomatic career for OSCE (the European Union’s Organization for the Security and Cooperation of Europe) and his wonderful wife Dorte, a bright, vivacious Danish professor who had been Gustavo’s true love for many years and who we had also come to love.

Gustavo’s Dad, Luis, who is like an older brother to me, lives with Teresa and we are blessed to have them as part of our family. So, we went to Spain to celebrate Luis’ birthday and celebrate we did. But as Luis said, he figuratively and literally won the lottery because his family was there together to help him celebrate this milestone, he had the wonderful news about not his first grandchild, but his first and second at the same time, and, to top it all off, on his birthday on Sunday, March 2nd, he actually did win part of one of Spain’s lotteries!

It doesn’t get much better than this!

And I will close with two photos taken in Toledo, Spain. One was taken in 1999 when we were there with our friends Mr. Mike the Dancer and his wife Janice who I have written about before and the other was taken last Thursday. Same person, same location. You can decide which was taken when. She has hardly changed at all.

PWEASE PAPI! DON’T LEAVE! PWEASE!




Finn, who is having a little trouble pronouncing his L’s, was not happy when he learned that Papi had to leave. And Papi wasn’t happy either. In fact, probably no one in the apartment was happy with the possible exception of Lee who had been living with in-laws for the last 5 weeks. In his proper British style, he never said anything like “So, when are you blokes heading back”?.

I think my favorite time when I was in London with Finn, Andrea and Lee was feeding him. Even better than the chorizo sandwich and Jamón frenzy that followed it, although it looks like I was trying to smile for the camera so much I was stuffing the bottle nearly up his nose.



So, lots of tears Wed morning when we left for Spain, but I will see him again in late May. In the meantime, I will have a week with Landon and Wes in Florida and another week with them in DC, and then several more days in early May for Landon’s 5th (how can that be?) birthday.






The photo above of Wes is ten months old but I have never posted it on my Blog and it is one of my favorites. Yes, I do have many more recent ones.

INTERESTING LONDON THINGS

1. The only thing that costs less than double what it does in the US is an extra shot in your Starbucks. It is 15 pence, or 30 cents US, nearly half of the 55 cents in the States.
2. It sounded a lot more romantic, continental and cosmopolitan one day when I decided to take the bus (the only choice) to go get a couple of Starbucks. I walked for five minutes to the stop, waited six minutes for the bus, rode it for another six, got off and got the coffees in a carrier, just missed the bus, waited 8 minutes for the next one, took it for six, walked for five and then sat down in the apartment to drink it. It didn’t feel the way it sounded when I decided to do it.
3. I would walk into the Village every day to pick up or drop off my laundry (20 minutes each way) and to buy a bottle of wine at Nicolas, a great wine chain from France. The guy I got to know was from Paris and was there to train the staff. He was great. One day I was trying to decide between two red burgundies and he asked me what we were having to eat. I said chicken. He got very excited and said “Non, Non, Non. Not zee Beaune. Eet weeel be too metalleek! Buy zee Santenay”.
4. I longed every single day for another chorizo sandwich and some Joselito.
5. We had a discussion with Lee one night about why we say schedule as if it is sKedule and the Brits say schedule like the sch in shoe. The four of us decided to think of another word that started with sche that was pronounced like shoe. Immediately Cathy, who I have said before in this Blog is the smartest person I know, said “Scheherazade”. We all just stared at her. I asked what it was. She said it was famous Persian Queen from many centuries ago. I was certain she was bullshitting us to I looked it up on Google. She was right. As I have said before, she is so smart it scares me.
6. Lunch at a casual place-4 burgers and 4 soft drinks. $90 dollars. Dinner at home of four individual size pizzas and nothing else. $94 dollars. The bus ride to and from the apartment (only 2 stops) to get Starbucks. $8 dollars if you do not have what is called an Oyster card. We won’t even go into what the dinner at an Indian restaurant or at a wonderful Italian restaurant cost.
7. They sell so many different flavor potato chips (which are called Crisps there) you would not believe it. Flavors like Barbecue Beef, Oriental Ribs or Shrimp and Cheese.

Now we are in Spain. We flew here Wednesday and drove to Toledo, the most beautiful city in all of Spain in terms of spectacular views of the city with its castles, Alcazars, and incredible Cathedral.



We arrived in Spain the day the Euro hit the all time high against the dollar. When the peseta converted to the Euro, we were here and it took 88 cents US to buy one Euro. Now it takes $1.50, almost double. But compared to London, it feels dirt cheap.

On Thursday, we decided to go to the little town of Consuegra, which means “with Mother-in-law” in honor of Lee. Just kidding. It does mean that but we went there because it is famous for its “Molinos”, the famous windmills of La Mancha and Don Quixote. We got some wonderful photos.










After going to ConSuegra, we were just driving around the countryside and ended up in a town called Mora (which means blackberry). We got out and wandered around and saw a cafeteria and bar and decided to have lunch there. We went in and ordered from the bar and sat at an old table. On the wall was a 4 foot by 5 foot dusty black and white photo of a young kid, in a white waiter’s coat, pouring a glass of wine at the bar. Cathy noticed that the old man that had taken my order looked like the kid so I went up and asked him and this was so cool because he told me the following story.

In the early 1960’s, Spain was in extreme poverty under the brutal power of Franco. He was just an 11 year old living on the street. The owner of the bar let him clean tables and sweep the floors for a few pesetas and some food to eat and he slept in the kitchen on the floor. One day, they let him put on this white coat and took this photo that now hangs behind the bar. He then had to take off the coat and go back to sweeping the floors.

You could not work unless you were 14 so they had some signals to notify him whenever the police came around and he would hide.

He continued working there for over 30 years as the bartender. In 1994, the owners said that he had been such a loyal employee, for so many years, that they would give him the business. They still own the building and the real estate but the actual business of the bar and restaurant has been his since 1994. He was very proud of how hard he had worked and his reward for doing that. He was a gentle and gracious man who loved the fact that I wanted to know about his story. It made for a very special experience for us.

After lunch we wandered around the back roads some more and discovered a little town (Almonacid de Toledo) with this huge, somewhat still preserved castle at the top of the hill. We tried everyway we could to find a way to drive up to it but there were no roads. So we settled on the photo below of the town and the castle at the top of the hill in the background.



That night, we decided to eat at La Cubana, an old restaurant that I had noticed next to the oldest foot bridge in Toledo. This turned out to be okay food but a marvelous experience. For the first hour we were the only customers and I started talking to the woman and learned that La Cubana was her husbands’ grandmother who had moved to Toledo from Andalucía in the early 1900’s and opened this restaurant that is still there. Everything around it was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s but she labored on. Her son, this woman’s father in law took it over and then this woman and her husband have been running it for the last 33 years. There were lots of photos from the 1920’s with wooden carts with wooden wheels pulled by mules sitting in front of the restaurant.

I always tell Cathy that every person in the world has a story and I would love to be a writer that just goes around the world recording people’s stories. This was a great example. She was so excited to share the history with us and to show us their mementos. When we left she gave us two little gifts as memories of our meal there. It was really fun.

The next day I went back to take a photo of the restaurant as I did not have my camera with me at dinner. Unfortunately, right at the time I arrived, this gigantic sewer truck pulled up in front of La Cubana and began sucking the sewage out of the ground (it must have been a septic tank) with this giant hose. It wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to hang around and watch so I took a photo of the old bridge in front of it with the sign for the restaurant. I figured that was close enough. But if you click HERE you can see their website with better photos.




On Friday we drove to Madrid, checked into the hotel and had three sort of weird things happen. The first was a message from Neil Parekh from Mumbai confirming that he is going to meet us on Saturday here in Madrid after I just spent a week with him in the last month in India.

Then, I went to get a haircut. I probably know 10 people of the 5 million or so that live in Madrid. I walked into this random salon and heard someone say “Grover”. It was Natalia Frutos who came up and gave me a big hug. She happened to be in the salon getting her hair done. What she didn’t know was that I was planning on stopping and seeing her later in the day for some help she had given me.

Then, as I am walking along, someone in a car stopped and asked me (obviously in Spanish) if I knew were Orense Street was. I laughed and said that they were in luck-that I lived in Atlanta and could only tell someone where 5 or 6 streets in all of Madrid were, but Orense happened to be one of them. They could not believe it.

I will write later about how Luis is doing since we are here to celebrate his 85th birthday. In closing, although I am certain he misses me horribly, I understand Finn is doing fine without me. Here he was sleeping on a wonderful yellow blanket that his Great Aunt Judie made by hand for him. It is the softest blanket I have ever felt.