Shayley with Silly Bandz, Twilight, President and Porkchop
Dear Friends,
I’m writing to update you on several fronts. Most immediately to ask for your prayers for my upcoming routine CT scans at Duke tomorrow. It’s hard to believe it’s been 4 months since my last scans and two months since my last colonoscopy.
Also, several of you have kindly encouraged me to write again on occasion. I have not written much of late for several reasons—our needs have seemed minor in comparison with others; I have been trying not to be on the computer so much when I’m not at work; writing requires thinking; and lastly my concerns lately have tended to be about others and complicated, and therefore not necessarily the kind of thing I should share.
First, just to update you on Charlie and Shayley. Charlie is about to finish his first semester in the nursing program, with 3 more semesters to go. He’s going to school full time and working part-time. Just before he goes out the door to school every morning, Shayley calls out, “Be good. If any one dies today, no recess.” I’ve told her she needs to stop that now as he’s actually doing clinicals once a week, so it could happen.
Shayley is happily taking care of 4 kittens, Tater, and a yard full of chickens and adult cats. We are down to 8 chickens, including one that got injured and now hobbles. I can’t stand how mean the other chickens are to it, so we try to spoil it with attention and special food as often as we can.
Shayley still writes quite often, but rarely poetry. She’s been working on a couple projects for several months. One she calls Irish Immigrants, 1804, which is about a family of children surviving here 200 years ago. Her research on this involves asking us survival questions and what it would have been like then. Charlie usually hands her really helpful books like the two-inch thick Ernest Shackleton exploration books, US Air Force Survival Manual or Ultimate Wilderness Skills as endorsed by Survivorman (and which Shayley promptly set aside when she spotted directions in it for preparing Cornish hens.)
If Irish Immigrants is a nod to her Dad’s interests in survival, her other project, Over-protective Parenting is maybe an elbow in the side to me! Watch out you other parents out there as she’s on the look-out for examples. Thankfully, she’s getting a lot of good ideas from a Baby Gizmo book and from Last Child in the Woods (she got to hear author Richard Louv recently at a Blue Ridge Parkway 75th Anniversary event.) I don’t know if she will ever finish writing either of these because she’s always starting other new projects which usually entail lists, charts or product ideas for the toy company she wants to start.
As for me, after my last scans in July, I decided I would go ahead and set up appointments for other “long-term” things I’d intentionally neglected. So, I’ve been to the dentist for the first time in two years. And I’ve set appointments about my irritable bowel-type symptoms and my osteoporosis. It happens that those are scheduled for Wednesday and Friday this week. I hope and pray I finish the week with those being my biggest health worries.
As always, thank you for your continuing love and prayers. We are blessed.
Love,
Lydeana
