I can't think of the character from the cartoon Lil'l Abner that walked around with the rain cloud over his head. Well that's me for the last few weeks. I got sick right before Thanksgiving! I had to get a cortisone shot in my hand and guess who is allergic to the numbing agent. Yeah you guessed it-me. A couple of trips to the emergency room and all seem to be on the road to wellness.
Then my brother and his wife had planned to come to St. Louis from California for the holiday. Three times, he changed the flight information. They fly standby as their daughter works for the airline. They arrived Tuesday before T-day. Only after they missed their connecting flight in Phoenix, and didn't bother to call until after I headed to the airport, which is about 30 miles away. So I went to the outlet mall and shopped for 4 hours.
My dog group had decided to have a Thanksgiving Day dinner as a thank you to all who helped us get 120 dogs' new homes. Ninety of them came from New Orleans and the other thirty from a puppy mill in Houston Texas. So we prepared dinner for 35 people.
Sunday after T-day, I had to go to the emergency room with the dog. She was dehydrated and had to be put on some pills for 10 days. The following Wednesday I took my brother and wife up north to the cousin's house. They had planned to spend a couple of days with them and the cousin would take them to the airport. I tool them a day early because an ice storm was predicted and I said I was not driving on ice.
Well the ice hit the trees broke big branches off and fell on the lines to the house and I lost my electric. So I had no heat. The first night wasn't bad but the house was getting colder and colder. I ran the water in all the drains so the pipes wouldn't burst. I called around until I found a place for Sugar and me to stay. I carefully drove the two miles and parked the car. I'm lucky I have a local police department so I could call and see if power had been restored. Four days later, I got power back. Some people were without power for over a week.
After I returned home, the PC wouldn't boot. I couldn't even get to the recovery screen. Luckily, I had a backup on disc of the most important stuff like my 300+ cookie recipes. I had to take it in and have the drive reformatted.
Now, on to the good stuff. After wading through 968 emails, I found that I have received numerous messages and cards from my Secret Santa. I shipped my Secret Santa box off after I got the PC back up and retrieved the shipping information. And Santa dropped me a wonderful Christmas box. My local scrapbooking group is coming to my house Saturday for a gift exchange and crop party and I decided I would hold it until then. That is killing me. But I wanted them to see what I got as I have been bragging what a great bunch of people this group is.
Please except my apologies for not writing or responding to your emails and cards but some things have just kept me off line and out of touch with the world.
Denise