Well I pulled out the hated wireless key board and mouse to use with the lap top. So now I am working on making them work. I tossed them asid in frustration sometime ago and there they have sat gathering dust. So far I have changed all the batteries and figured out how to sync them. Now for the fun part of figuring out which keys are sticking and take them off and clean them. It would appear that I have found and fixed them all. woo hoo. Far fewer typos with a real keyboard and the mouse seems to have the same quirks it had before, but it is better then the little scratch pad. Well after a long day of gardening then blogging and surfing and now messing about with this keyboard I think I am ready to curl up with a BBC special on HRM Queen Elizabeth.

Ta La

An inspiration and a hard choice.

I met Jenifer Magliocco for the first time this spring at a meeting for Ethan's Walk for Wheels. The foundation that her family set up to help CT families with SMA is helping Ethan's family and helped set up the benefit. I knew some of their story. That her son had died of SMA shortly after coming home from the hospital. I could not imagine how difficult it was for them. thought that it took an amazing spirit to take that hurt and make something good come out of it. That is what they did. They created The Angelo James Magliocco Foundation

I was struck by the strength of Jen's faith and her bubbling personality. Today I read Jen's words telling of the struggles of her son's short life. I was moved to tears and thought I would share her story with you.

Even if we were able to get him onto the BI-PAP machine, it would only give him 2 months at the most.” My husband and I had already discussed what we would do in a situation like this, and had to make the toughest decision ever. We knew that we didn’t want him to suffer, and we knew that we did not want him to spend his last moments in a hospital. We put our son’s life in God’s hands and decided to take him home. He was still able to be on the oxygen, but there were no machines to monitor him, or to beep, or to drive us nuts. Also, Hospice was there to help us.

The next time I woke up, it was morning. I could feel that my son was still breathing, but he was a little cold. I told my husband and our parents that I had a strong feeling that little Angelo did not have much longer. I sat on the bed while holding him in my arms. We all took in every inch of his beautiful face. He opened his eyes for a moment and looked around at everyone. After his eyes met with mine, he closed them and took his last breathe. Our little boy was now our little angel with God in Heaven. We knew he was at peace and was now SMA free.

My husband and I feel extremely lucky to have had 7 weeks with our son. It's more than some parents have with their child. We would have done anything to have him with us longer, but we truly believe that God needed him more. Angelo James was sent to us for many reasons. He made us better people, taught us to love unconditionally, strengthened our bond with each other, brought our families closer, and strengthened our faith in God. Everyone has a purpose in life. We believe that Angelo's purpose is to help other children with SMA. It is now our job to fulfill that purpose through our foundation. Our memories of little Angelo will never fade and our love for him will last forever.

Read the rest of Angelo's story

Ignored Beauty

This is a good lesson in taking time to look around and see what is really there. If we ignore the beauty around us then what is the point?

HT to Len

Auf Wiedersehen Pet Opening Titles

There are some very obvious cultural difference between this show and what flies in USA but it is one of my favorites.

This is the life

It's Saturday morning and here I sit on my small back deck watching the morning arrive. I have my coffee and a comfy chair. Thanks to my previous job I was awake well before the sun. I watched "The Treasure of the Sierra Madra" and listened to the commentary. If you have some how missed this film take the time to rent it. The film deserves every one of the awards it earned and probably a few more. Bogart's slow decline from a sane man to a man consumed by greed and insanity is heart breaking and fascinating to watch.

Now that the sun has joined me in being awake I have moved out here to enjoy the rewards of all the hard work I put into this yard over the past two weeks. The birds are busy chattering away about their plans for the day and their are small critters forging for their breakfast in the wood lining my house.

I sit here looking out at the flowers and garden and I feel proud of my accomplishment. For the first time since I moved in here I am not ashamed of my yard. There where good reasons for not managing this before. I simply could not do it before now. I needed help with some small projects in order to finish and I had a hard time getting that help. The recovery of my leg was slow not in being able to walk but in having strength enough to do what needed to be done. My other health issues also made managing this yard difficult. I had asked my brother for help in turning this yard into something I could manage on my own last May. He said he would and I am still waiting for him. LOL Good thing I didn't hold my breath.

Not working the crazy hours of a coffee shop I am sleeping better. My over all health is better. I no longer have a gray complection with dark circles under my eyes. I am not a vane person, but I don't like walking around looking sick all the time. I don't like people asking me if I feel alright because I look like a walking corps.

In the past two weeks I created a long wanted path from the driveway to the back deck. I dug up and hauled all the rocks that line the path and stole gravel from my drive way to fill it. THat was a lot of heavy work and while it may seem like a small accomplishment to some, to me it was huge.

I cleared a section of the yard that was over grown with plants and weeds some taller then I am. I didn't even flinch when I saw the snack hole. I assumed he was out for the day and kept right on working. I left his area mostly untouched just cleared out the dead leaves. Hopefully he liked his home spruce up and continues to reside there. Snakes scare off other things far more hazardous to my garden plans. :-) I am sure he is a common garden snake and not something awful

I lost track of how many wheel barrels full of debris I carted off into the woods. I was working on digging up the stumps of the 6 dead shrubs the other day when my father showed up to work on a neighbors house. In 2 hours I had managed to get most of one of the stumps out. In out 30 minutes he had removed the rest of that one and the other 5.

I planted some marigolds snap dragons and pansys in the place of the shrubs and it looks nice. Come fall I will take out a good portion of the pea gravel and replace it with dirt. Plant a few bulbs and next year I won't have to work so hard to have a bit of spring when it arrives. I cut out the area in front of the deck and planted some nice flowers. In the fall I think I might plant some bulbs there too.

I moved my veggie garden to a spot the dog can not reach she seems to have this idea that if I plant something in the ground she must help water and fertilize it. She never went in the area the garden was in until I planted a garden. Now that there are flowers in front of the deck I have caught her watering those too. I don't mind that much since I don't EAT those!

The new garden patch is smaller then the old patch, but I think I forgot that when I was buying seeds and plants. I have more plants then space so today I will be expanding the garden bed. I have 11 tomato that need a better home then the small buckets I put them in last night.

The garden has 2 rows of green squash, 2 rows of cucumbers, 2 rows of carrots, 6 melon plants. In this neck of the woods it is rather difficult to remove all the stones. It took me 3 years to clear the last bed as well as it was. Every year I sifted the soil and took out what I could plus added a ton of topsoil and there was still stones. I figure I may have some funky shaped veggies but they will taste just fine. I have 2 small container herb gardens with parsley basil and rosemary.

My hands are callused and I have poison Ivy on my wrist behind my knees and under one of my eyes, muscles that I forgot I have ache from being used, but it is all worth it. For moments like today.


I can sit here with my coffee and watch the miracle of morning erupting all around me. As I sat here before getting the laptop out. I found myself contemplating a few things.

1. This world and the God who created it. IT is all so perfect and balanced except for where we humans have messed it up. We should be a part of that balance but we are not. We are not part of the balance because we think we are better and more important the the rest. In balance each part is as important as the others. We are dependent on this world and it's resources but we use and abuse the same world and resources we depend on. It's our sinful nature that makes us behave the way we do to our world. We are selfish and bent on self destruction and we are taking our world with us.

2. God must be full of Grace. This world was created by God he man it with love and care. I know this because of it's beauty and balance. If he did not love it he would have slapped it together not really caring about the end result. If my name was God and I put that much love and care into something and gave it as a gift to a group of beings and those beings trashed it as we do I would be rather pissed off. It's a good thing I am not God. I am not nearly as forgiving as he is. Instead of being pissed off he instead gave us another gift. His son and the promise of a new world and eternal life with him. He has forgiven our sinful nature and our selfishness. What an amazing creator we have. I wish I could be that forgiving. I am still struggling with some real basic forgiveness that I should have turned my cheek to a couple of years ago.

3. My God truly loves me. I have not been well enough in the past few years to enjoy a day like this. Yet here I am. Sitting sipping thinking. Basically well reasonably strong relaxing and enjoying the fruits of my labor. How did I get here? I have finally started to learn the lessons God has been teaching me about letting him be in control. With God in control of my life he finds the time for me to have moments like this one. A time to sit and reflect and to realize again the magnitude of God's love for us.

I will never understand why God created us or this world for us. We don't deserve this world or his love, but I do know that for today God intends me to enjoy it therefore I am going to, and thank God all through this day for today and all the days like it in my life.