Take Me Off Into the Swamp In an Airboat, Please

What a whirlwind the last week has been.  And with Christmas coming it seems to have even greater urgency.

Frustrated Me

Monday night we put the dogs into boarding and headed down to New Orleans. I had planned on setting up something fun so I could just take a break and relax.  I looked at things like an airboat through the swamp out of Butte La Rose or Des Allemands.  My second though was a more passive tour of the San Francisco Plantation or the beautiful Laura Plantation.

Neither of those goals were achievable because the Baton Rouge Orthopedic Clinic was incredibly disrespectful of my time.  Sine my appointment was 2:15 and the last time I had an appointment I left after sitting in the waiting room for an hour and a half and never getting called back.

I thought I could outsmart them so I got to the clinic at 1:30 and do my waiting BEFORE the appointment time.  Right?

At 3:15 they called me back to let me sit for another 45 minutes in a room.

When I got to the house, Frank had not brought the dogs to the vet, and I still had to do that.  Now we weren't even able to plan going to dinner in New Orleans.

On Tuesday we attended the Tammy's graduation from the Occupational Therapy program in the UNO Arena on the Lakefront.  In 1970, Frank was a student at LSUNO which later became UNO.  So it was a trip back in time for him as well.

Tammy went back to school after being a Medical Transcriptionist for the last 23 years.  She won all kinds of academic awards in the program  as an honors student.  Her sweet personality will provide a great lift for the patients she will encounter in her job.

Tammy's daughter is working on her PhD at LSU in Operatic Music.

Tammy and her dad Howard

Tammy, husband Billy and Daughter Vivian

There were many tears shared between the two of us, Tammy's mother was a dear friend of mine who lost the fight to cancer 12 years ago.  She had a rare brain cancer.  I know Janice was there with us and was so proud of Tammy's huge accomplishment.

It is interesting to note that while their family lived across the street from us in Tickfaw, LA I was attending Southeastern LA University and they attended MY graduation where I won all kinds of academic honor awards including Valedictorian in one of my undergraduate degrees.










Whistful Me.

What an emotional day after the last week with Diane and Rodney and Jason and Chad.

Which, by the way will continue with Rodney's wake tonight.

Remarkable Photo That Will Never Happen Again

And not because it is me in there, although that may be case if the "straight tails mean they are dead" theory is true. 

Crawfish, you know.  you are not supposed to eat the crawfish that have straight tails because that means they were dead before they got boiled.  Well, I ate three of them tonight.  So we shall see.

Today was the CAAWS Open House where we opened the shelter officially to the public with tours of our newly remodeled facility.  We held dog and cat adoptions as usual showcasing our brand spanking new parking lot, air and heating systems, fencing, system of 5 yard areas, 14 dog runs, cat activity shelves dog wash and grooming area and re-braced roofing so the whole thing won't come crashing down on the animals heads.

The building remodel was dedicated to Ted and Anna Anthos whose legacy provided us the money with which to do the extensive remodel of the building.  They were amazing people.  Escaping from Nazi Germany, her father was a Polish officer shot by Hitler's squads.  He worked in the resistance at age 13 until he was caught and brought to a prison camp. 

We had cupcakes.


The Easter Bunny.


And I gave a speech.


Go to my faccbook page if you want to see me cry making that speech while I cut the ribbon at the  Open House.  Thanking my volunteers.  You can always think of a million things to say later, and ways to say it differently. 

 That is OK.  I said it from my heart.  It is hard, what we do,  But we do it anyway. 








Holly Reynolds came.  Thirty nine years ago she started Capital Area Animal Welfare Society in her kitchen in 1979.

She stood beside me and we cut the ribbon to open the remodeled shelter together.










Holly is 99 years old.  And I am thinking this is the last time there will ever be a picture of the first president of CAAWS and the current president of CAAWS together.  And we were both proud to stand beside each other.

Lips

Just to show you how much I love Suzette.......here are the lips.

 Don't you just love that  color on me?

Here are the five of us at the parade.  I  saved this from Carrie's new camera and it auto corrected it to black and white.  Sometimes I
amaze myself at what I can do without even knowing it!







This is a new project.  I figured if I am finishing up two quilts this month I can add at least one more to the pile.  Right?

This is the grandmother's house  in Little Red Riding Hood.  I need to go copy some additional tree blocks today, I need 6 of them.  I only copied 3 for some reason. 

And then there is Red and the Wolf blocks.  Been wanting to do this one for a while. 

Flashback to the Past!

Oh my!  I just randomly went into Frank's office to see if McGee was "looking out".  He sits in the window and watches things go by the front of the house.  The window is long and low and he can lay down, prop his chin on the sill and fall asleep.  Often DiNozzo joins him and they chill together.

So......I digress.......

I went into Frank's office and noticed these photos.  I wonder why he didn't say, hey, I found these, come see?

Here I am.  I was 17 and that handsome guy with me is Tom.  He was an ex-racehorse my Uncle Buddy got me when I was living with him and  Aunt Edith.  My evil Cousin Linda had a pony named Danny and we rode the neighborhoods together nearly every day.


This was like in 1969.


And these were my parents.  I have never seen these photos before.  They were in an envelope labeled Passport Photos.  They really didn't travel the world, but they did go on one cruise in the Caribbean after they moved back to Louisiana from El Paso, TX.  So that would have been mid to late 70's.

If you remember the show MASH, I am sure you do, there was an actor who played Trapper John, MD.  He looked a lot like my dad.  Dad's company always had a Sky Box in the Superdome for the Saints games from their very first season.   I think he went because because people thought he was Trapper John.  They would crowd him and ask for his autograph, which he would sign Herb Graci!