My cat has decided to make my flower basket his new hang out. I figured why not and added a cozy blanket to make it more comfortable. Come next Christmas I might have a problem when I want to use this basket for my real evergreen branches and poinsettias. We will cross that bridge when we get to it.

This past week has been a mixed bag of good and not so good news.  I received a letter from the hypertension specialist telling me that my appointment has been scheduled for March 1, 2004. After being told by his secretary that they were booking appointments for patients referred last year I figured I would have to wait several months to see him. Needless to say the letter made me very happy. I am a little worried about my spiking blood pressure and hopefully the hypertension specialist will have some answers.

The temperatures in our part of the world are finally warming up. Daytime temperatures this week have been hovering around minus 5C. What a difference from the minus 29C temperatures two weeks ago. We have had a lot of snow and are hoping for a gradual melt to avoid flooding this spring.

We received an email this past week from friends who have spent the winter in Texas. They will be heading home at the beginning of March and this is good news indeed. We have missed them and it will be good to spend time with them again. I am sure they will arrive at home sporting lovely tans while we still look like Casper the ghost.

On Friday I picked up the movie called “Secondhand Lions”. Even though there are negative reviews in some papers, I thought this was a wonderful, funny and heartwarming movie to watch with my nine year old grandson. I suspect some of the reviews which included comments like “terribly ineffective”, “less than inspired”, “sentimental hooey” and “a third rate lark” have been written by the people who will always find something negative about any movie that does not cater to their anti-traditional family orientated political agenda. I agreed with the papers that published reviews which included statements such as “combines a gentle coming of age story with swashbuckling fantasy”, a feel-good celebration of youth and old age enriching each other..carefully leavened with humor” and “comedic fantasy with a big heart”. To say my grandson enjoyed this movie is an understatement. He watched it with his papa on Friday evening, with both of us on Saturday afternoon and with his parents on Saturday evening.

There was no school on Friday so I took this opportunity to pick up my grandson and go to my parents for lunch. My mother, my grandson and I; three generations represented; played several very lively games of Skippo. My grandson is very fortunate to have Papa 1 and Nana 1 in his life. Not every child has a great grandpa and great grandma to spend time with.

The pain is still very much a part of my life and that is the not so good news. Some days it is harder to tolerate and I use up all my resources to cope with it. This past week was one of those weeks when I found the pain particularly difficult.  Thankfully, most of the time I can conquer my frustration and discouragement with the pain and just go on with the day. When the discouragement and frustration settle in I know it is time for a pep talk. I remind myself that “this too shall pass” and that there is always hope for a resolution. When one is dealing with a chronic, undiagnosed illness, one must believe that there will ultimately be an answer. I have come to the conclusion that there must be a reason why I remain ill and undiagnosed. Right now I have no idea what that reason might be but in order to keep my sanity I have to believe that one day I will understand why.

This week I have been receiving daily emails with viruses attached. Thankfully I have a very good virus checker so the attempts made by the “sickies” to disable my computer are being thwarted. Since this brazen attempt to destroy my computer has only started this week I have to wonder if the Drama Queens are involved.  Surely they would not stoop so low.  On the other hand I doubt whether the Drama Queens have the computer savvy to bombard someone with viruses sent by email. Needless to say this is one of the not so good news items to report. Hopefully who ever is responsible for this onslaught of malicious intent will get tired of targeting poor old me.