Update

Hi,
I apologize (to anyone who reads my blog) for not having written in awhile. A lot has happened. The good news is that I got an A- for the folklore class I took (can't recall if I mentioned that prior to this). Bad news is that my father-in-law (I wrote about his coffee group for my final class paper.) passed away less than a month ago. He'd been operating on less than a quarter of a lung for a very long time. He incurred asbestos damage from many years working as a plumber at construction sites. The fact that he smoked didn't help matters. He had a final heart attack, but it seems his death came about from the lung problems from the asbestos damage. Although he and the rest of the family expected he might pass (it was obvious that his body was breaking down as evidenced by his erratic white blood count requiring transfusions), we didn't expect it to happen so fast. Everyone is handling it as well as can be expected. My husband flew out to Michigan for the funeral, but he wanted our kids to finish school normally, so the kids and I stayed home. When we went to Michigan for the pre-planned vacation two weeks later, we participated in the interment at the cemetary. Then we visited with my mother-in-law, went to her family reunion (with her and three of my sisters-in-law) in Cheboygan, visited Mackinac Island, and - while staying at one sis-in-law's house in Lansing - visited Gizzard City (a hole-in-the-wall diner portrayed on the Diners, Dives, etc. show my husband likes to watch. I was disappointed that the show made no mention that the diner is very small and allows smoking throughout the place. Fortunately, it was only 15 minutes away from my sis-in-law's house, so we managed to get the food to go and eat it at her home. We agreed that the gizzards tasted pretty good, but we weren't impressed with the deep-fried cheesecake chunks. My daughter had the turkey club, but she said the tomatoes tasted weird. My son ate the deep-fried hamburger. He said it was pretty good. I ate potato skins and the grease has, once again, put me off of potato skins for a very long time.

One thing that annoyed me is that my mom-in-law's credit card company turned her account over to a collection agency. This was immediately after she called to tell them of my dad-in-law's death and promised to pay the outstanding debt. It was just awful! This collection agency began calling before even a month had passed since we'd buried him - and even less time from when she'd told the credit card company about his passing. It's so impersonal and insensitive.

Anyway, that's why I haven't posted in awhile. The trip was nice, but I'm paying for it now. I didn't do my back exercises during the trip, so now my lower back is sore and I'm having excrutiating pain down my legs at night. Hopefully, I'll be able to get it under control before we begin our next long drive to Florida to visit my mom.

Next on the agenda: reading "The Taming of the Shrew" to get into a Shakespeare-type mood for the Shakespear comedies class I've signed up to take in the fall. Also, I plan to try subbing middle school and high school next year (along with elementary school, which I've done for years) to try to determine whether I want to become an elementary school teacher or just an English teacher. I want to find time to get together with some of my friends, too. It's been way too long since I've enjoyed their company.