Wednesday, June 24, 2009

My Aunt Vivian


My Mom called this evening at 9 p.m., a strange time of day for her to call, so I knew that either someone was sick or someone had died. My father's sister, Vivian, the last of the 12 siblings passed away today. She had had a stroke a few weeks ago and hadn't been doing well since, so it was not a surprise. And I guess she would be about 85 years old now, but it is still a bit hard to realize that now all of Lucy Myrtle Williams Dowell and Jeff Dowell Sr.'s 12 children are gone.

I don't know how old she was in this picture, but this is my aunt Vivian as a young girl.

My thoughts are with her three children, Steve, Rhonda, and Terry Dallas.


Monday, June 8, 2009

Monday, Monday

I am so behind in reading journals. I knew that this evening I wanted to visit a few Blogger friends, but the task seemed a bit overwhelming -- where to start? So I decided I'd start by returning a visit to everyone who commented on my last post, eight kind souls. That was a beginning, at least! I dropped by and read all of their June posts, and that's about the extent of catching up that I can do today I'm afraid! I'll do a few more tomorrow and so on and hopefully get by to say hello to everyone by the end of the week.

My brother's surgery went well last week. He had the aneurysm in his groin taken care of (repaired? what is the word?), and he had two arteries unclogged. They did not have to do a graft (I think that's right) below the knee like they thought they would. He has really good blood flow in that leg now. I was there once when they were checking it with the Doppler, and it sounded great! He went home on Friday, which was a day earlier than the best estimate, and he is doing well, as long as they can keep him from getting up on his own. To get up out of a chair or out of bed he is supposed to have assistance, because he is not to put any pressure on his groin at all for a while.

We went to the graduation party of a dear young friend of ours on Saturday. Some of you may remember the young girls who lost their mother to suicide last year. The elder of the two graduated from high school Saturday. She seems to be doing very well; they both are, really, although the younger is still having some tough issues to deal with.

I guess everything is well with us. The weather has been nice, and it's time to mow the yard again. I'm hoping I'll have a bit more time to write and blog now that Alton's surgery is over and a few other things are taken care of.

I have some window treatments that need to be taken down and freshened up, and that is on the agenda for tomorrow. Woo Hoo, exciting, huh? I'll try to get back on here at some point too. So, until then . . . .