Vanilla-flavored update

Time for an update. My last post was Monday night, about the Glenn Miller Orchestra concert. Lots of things have happened in the last six days.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we went to my mom's house, to start cleaning things out there. Our first days of that work.

(Sigh.) It's going to be a lot of work. During our first two days, we focused on the books and papers in the living room and then moved to the spare bedroom (just started there). I had lots of papers and documents to look through, and that's picky, time-consuming work.

Among the things we found: some documents we had been wondering about; lots of stuff about the Mount St. Helens explosion of 1980 (my mom's favorite mountain); some of my report cards from high school (mid 1960s); some Women's Day magazines from 1962; and knitting pattern magazines from circa 1950 (my guess). You know those knit mittens with snowflakes or pine trees or reindeer knit into the design? That kind of stuff.

We also came across some things that used to be familiar parts of everyday life (during my lifetime) but now can be called antiques. It will make a curious bunch of pictures eventually.

But things changed on Tuesday morning, when we got an e-mail from my sister-in-law. She said my father-in-law was back in the hospital. He had been taken in on Monday for a checkup (driven by the SIL), but he got weaker during the trip. The doctors admitted him with suspected congestive heart failure. You may remember that he had a bad case of pneumonia early this spring. He lost some of his heart function at that time.

That night, we got an update. The doctors were talking about a quintuple bypass (including rerouting blood vessels around an aneurysm he has had near his heart for the last few years and that he had never seemed interested in remedying until now). Plus, replacing a heart valve. All of this on a guy who's going to be 79 pretty soon.

If all goes well, he could live a while longer. If not, he could die on the operating table. In any case, he is too weak right now for such an ambitious operation. If he gets stronger, they may try it. But one of the doctors working on him (not his primary doctor at the hospital) told my sister-in-law that he doubts my FIL will ever be strong enough to have the operation.

He was sent home on Wednesday to continue recuperation and to think about his options. The family seems divided. The sons seem to think it's worth trying. The daughters (including my wife) are mostly asking what's the point, since he has refused to deal with the aneurysm for years. Now he is a lot weaker; that's not the time for a major operation.

In any case, his vote is the only one that counts (outside of the doctors, of course).

We talked about driving over to visit him on Sunday, but then my wife came down with a head cold. I suspect all the dirt and dust at my mom's place--I have had a cough since then, too. It was coolish, and the windows were closed. This week, it will be in the mid 80s, and the windows will be open. Haven't heard anything new since Thursday--my wife called her dad on that day.

I wanted to get this posted before leaving for the movies (David wants us to go with him to see "Shrek 3.") So I'll just give you a verbal update on wildlife.

On Wednesday night, on the way home, I saw (and got photos of) a snapping turtle along Highway 70, our favorite road from here to there.

And what's new at the robin's nest? The last time I wrote, she had been gone from the nest for a few days. But she was back on Monday and has been on the nest almost continuously since then.

She stepped out on Thursday, and we got a look--three little blue eggs. She was back on her nest until tonight, when she stepped away again. I got the chair and mirror again. Just three little blue eggs.

We're keeping an eye on it. Photos to come.

This weekend was a very busy one: rodeo weekend locally. Until this year, the rodeo took place in mid July, but it was moved to early June this year. Regardless of when, I was there with my camera, getting shots of the cowboys and horses and steers and bulls. Took tons of action shots with the new camera, which I haven't sifted through yet. Some of them will appear here, too.

As for Keith's Restyle: Actually, I've been waiting for the grand and glorious Restyle for a while. I have been thinking about making changes to my plain-Jane blog's appearance for quite a while, but since the Restyle was in the works I decided to put it off. Now that it's happened, I've lost that excuse for inertia.

I'll come up with a new one, though. Trust in that. Seriously, what I'll probably wind up doing is selecting one of the pre-made templates, making a few changes to it, adopting it as my own and calling it good.