This past week we lost a friend here in the park. Roger was a very active member of the HOA and worked on all the events in the park with his very active young wife. He was in his early 80's and had been diagnosed about a year ago with leukemia. The last four weeks he had been pretty much homebound with hospice so we knew it was coming, but still sad to see him go. Before being homebound he was still showing up at the Fri. night socials and although movement was slow, he could get out on the dance floor with his wife. Both were excellent dancers. RIP Roger!

Yesterday I heard from my neighbor, Lois, that her good friend, Roy had passed away. He was in his early 80s and had suffered a stroke about 8 months ago. One of his daughters was caring for him at home after numerous trips to hospitals and several rehabs, and we had given them a wheelchair, walker, shower chair and some other medical supplies to help with his care when he came home. His daughter is very close to Lois, and she treats her as a daughter so this was really hard on Lois. I think she spent 2.5 hr. yesterday talking to me about it as we sat on our front porch while Gary napped in the afternoon. I offered to drive her to the services if she needed me to do so whenever they are arranged.

Gary has an appointment early Friday morning with an oral surgeon. He has finally broken the tooth that was cracked by grinding his teeth when he gets agitated..........that darn Bronco game on Sunday didn't help any when they lost badly to the Rams. He was grinding his teeth through most of the second half when it appeared they weren't going to make a big comeback. Dan and I kept telling him to stop and threatening to turn off the game if he didn't. He does not realize the damage he does when he's grinding those teeth, now he will have to be sedated and the tooth will have to come out. It's been about 5 or 6 yr. since the last one was removed, and he had a difficult time coming out of the sedation at that time. This time I will take Kelly and Dan with me to help get him back out of the dental chair and into the car. He will most likely sleep a good 24 hr. after and then will be on pureed foods for a while until we figure out if he can chew his food again. Just what we need with him still having swallowing difficulties from the stroke 10 yr. ago.

Yesterday morning I stopped at the casino for an hr. to pick up one of my "free" gifts that I received a coupon for, and while waiting for the line to go down I played a penny machine. I hit a jackpot over $900 and came home $800 ahead after tipping the gal who hand paid the jackpot. I'm sure all or most of that $800 will go toward paying for Gary's oral surgery on Fri.

Good news came yesterday also - The package I had sent a week ago finally arrived at the funeral home in WA where I had sent my Mom's cremation urn and all the paperwork to prepay her arrangements for when she passes. After all the drama last week of tracing the package and FedEx finally finding that it was sitting in a back room at the local post office, which is why they didn't have a record of picking it up at the Mailbox shop where I had originally left it, they finally got it sent out on Friday with a new tracking number. I had spent nearly a month getting all the paperwork together, after having to send some to two of my sisters for signature and waiting for the return of those pages, then putting it all together with the urn that I had for Mom, and enclosing a check, only to have it disappear from the radar for five days. It was beyond frustrating, and after blaming FedEx for the error, I now think it may have been the Mailbox shop that gave the wrong group of packages to the postal employee that day. They send packages via USPS, FedEx and UPS, from that shop. I will no longer send packages that way, I will now go directly to either the post office or FedEx or UPS stores, even if it means driving farther to do so.

Only other news is that our granddaughter in Colorado, who recently got her car back after it had been stolen about a year ago, has now had it totaled by a driver who slid into it on an icy street in front of son's house. At least she wasn't in the car at the time, but son is very frustrated that they had just finished fixing it all up for her again after getting it back. That was a car with bad "Karma."

Sarah