Dang - once again I have neglected my blog.

My house almost burned down about a month ago. Love the nice weather but hate brush fires. It was really scary. Jordan's lil bro Jake was up on the roof watering it down and singing hymns and Christmas carols. It was cute - I kept thinking surely my house won't burn down while Jake is still singing right? We had a lot of people helping us water the yard and take our valuables to the car. Some people were here helping till 2 am. It was scary. They sent me to stay with some friends that lived about a mile away where it wasn't as smokey. People with deficient immune systems shouldn't be around fires but I was still scared cuz I didn't know what was going on. Had my house burned? Where my parents ok? It turned out ok - atleast for my family. The fire stopped at the yard of the people that live behind us. It was about 150 yds away but that's a little too close. There were some bad fires again last night but they were about 10 miles away. We could see orange in the distance and smell smoke for awhile but we were ok. My dad went to help some of his friends that lived over that way.

I still have no job, but things are looking better. I'm actually healthy! and I have a beautiful new portfolio. I showed it to one of my dad's friends in Tulsa who works with a lot of designers and ad agencies and he said it was great and told me some people to talk to. He said I could use his name. Then I got strep. When I was feeling good again I went in to see Cubic Creative. The guy was great. He looked at my book and talked to me for about 20 minutes. He said he really liked my stuff but he didn't have any openings. He was glad that I would be in the area for awhile and wanted to keep in touch. He told me about the Art Directors club of Tulsa and gave me free passes to their Christmas party the next night. Too bad I got a cold and lost my voice the next day.

The doc said that I have allergies. I'm allergic to Oklahoma. Who knew. She decided to give me some shots to help my immunity. She had the male nurse do it. He comes in and says he has to give me the shots on my butt. I thought I had given him ample space on my love handles to do the deed but he said and yes this is a direct quote, "Show me some more meat." Is that grounds for sexual harassment? But I've been doing a lot better since then. I ran 2 miles the other day!! It's no 5 miles but it still rocked. Baby steps...baby steps.

Pops found out around Thanksgiving that he needed to do dialysis. He had one kidney that didn't work and one that only half worked. He did that for a couple weeks. Then they did surgery and he seemed to be doing better. They thought he could go home but then he had some kind of infection. The infection started attacking his brain and his heart and then he had several mini strokes. He lost his speech and his sight. We went up to the North Kansas City hospitol Dec. 20. He was responding when we talked - well he would flutter his eyes and try to look around and see us. He even moved his hand when my dad wanted to say a prayer before we left so we held his hand for the prayer. They moved him to a nursing home in Chillocothe the next day. The care there was a lot better. We stayed at Pops's house which was about a mile from the nursing home. I found a lot of Pop's old pics from when he and Grammy were dating and some when Dad and Aunt Janie were little. They were so cute and there were some good ones of Pops in his Naval uniform. We spent a lot of time at the Nursing home. I read him Joe's email cuz he'd heard about everything and had written some things to Pops. Pops died at about 9 on Dec. 23. Dad, Mom, Aunt Janie, Uncle Joe and Aunt Laurie, and me were there. Carl and Becca had made it over early in the morning to see him for the last time. It was really nice that they came especially since they were sharing a car with Becca's family. It meant a lot to Dad. We stayed to help with arrangements there and we talked to Joe on Christmas Eve. Then we drove home Christmas day to work on funeral arrangements here. He was burried in the cemetary about 2 miles from our house. The funeral was really nice. He was such a good person and everyone had so many nice things to say. Teachers can do a lot of good. Pops was my only grampa that I really knew and he always looked out for me. He will be missed but I'm glad he's with Grammy again and that he's not in pain.