One more (final?) surgery . . .

On Thursday, Bill and I went to meet with a plastic surgeon, Dr. Blair (John) Summit at Vanderbilt Medical Center to see about the skin graft surgery I would need to heal my abdominal wound from my February surgeries. It had been a long wait, and I was apprehensive about a lot of miscellaneous aspects. Had he done many wound surgeries? Would he be appalled by the size of my wound? Would he just as soon Dr. Herline had never referred me?

I began to feel better when his (male) nurse settled us into the examining room and told us that Dr. Summit did a lot of wounds and was a "surgeon's surgeon." I could live with that! He didn't just do tummy tucks for tony West Nashville matrons and "breast enhancements" for their daughter's eighteenth birthdays.

The outcome of our meeting is that we would not have to do a skin graft, but we would be able to remove the top of the wound area and pull over the skin and tissue underneath and stitch it up with self-dissolving stitches. He would have to leave a drain in each side (I hate drains, but you don't get everything) which will stay in for about a week. He said he didn't expect that it would be very painful (hmmm?), and, best of all, it can be done as an outpatient procedure at the Nashville Surgery Center - April 9 at 9:30 a.m. General anesthesia (boo, hiss). I could probably write a book based on the hallucinations I had from my past 4 surgeries. One of the last ones was a bit embarrassing because I told the chief resident (my nemesis) that my nurse had committed suicide the previous night. To make matters worse, I guess after my first surgery that round they had me on dilaudid (instead of morphine or demerol) and I had a bad reaction to it - i.e. not coming round and talking without making a lot of sense for more than a day. Well, what the Sam Hill was wrong with good ol' morphine which I had had previously with no problems?

OK, I'm admittedly getting off the topic here. I very much liked Dr. Summit. I also used the opportunity to ask him about the chronic pain I have been in since my lower chin procedure in May 2004. It has been daily (hence, chronic) nerve pain (neuralgia) from the occipital area of the back of my head around my ears and under my chin; sometimes going up the front of my face on the edges up to my eyebrows. At times it has been severe enough to bring me to tears; it has been life-altering. It has been worse than the pain of my abdominal incision. In the last year, however, it has been helped by the new drug, Lyrica, introduced to me by my wonderful pain doctor, Jay Sun (he's Chinese). The worst thing about chronic pain, I always say, is that it's so chronic.

Again, back to Dr. Summit. I briefly described what had happened and asked him if he had ever heard of this happening to anyone else (I've had a hard time finding that to be true) and he said no, he hadn't. However, taking Lyrica and the tricyclics was the correct thing to be doing. He said it could be a neuroma around the trigeminal nerve. Guess what? I'm a member of and get the newsletter of the trigeminal neuralgia assoc. because they deal with all kinds of face pain.

But, I am hoping that this unfortunate chapter in my personal book on Crohn's will soon be closed, and we can just go back to a careful diet and being conscious of where every bathroom in the world is! Maybe the new Acura's navigation system will help with that!

P.S. I asked for a little liposuction while we were doing the surgery, but that flag didn't fly. :-(

Bill's new car

Bill's odometer was inching toward 90,000 miles, so he was itching for a new car; and evidently he was one of those satisfied customers, who did his research, but ended up a repeat customer. He turned in his 2000 Acura TL for a 2008. Acura's are made by Honda, a Japanese-owned car company, which some of the members of my family aren't as happy with, but the Acura was made in America (Marysville, OH), thereby giving an American a pretty good job, which I say is better than buying an American car made in Mexico or Canada.

It is much the same to me in appearance as the last one although Bill would tell me in 20 different ways how wrong I am. That's because he's in the tire (therefore auto) business. As a note for future generations, this year was when we as a country began to be concerned about gasoline, the price of gasoline, auto emissions, and the environment. Therefore, Bill and I came up with a strategy for our looming retirement: we would have one large, luxury car (the Acura) for travel (which we planned to do much more often in retirement) and a small, full-efficient car for around-town use. Since that car didn't exist yet (the best gas mileage you could get was in a Toyota Prius at 48 mpg, and they were being treated like gold and the asking price required you have a lot of of it!), we decided to drive my Mazda RX-8 for a couple more years until, hopefully, there was a larger selection of "green" cars.

Meanwhile, the Acura is Bill's new toy because it's his first car with a navagation system (see above). And I already talk back to it. I really don't care for her breathy little voice. Bill said maybe you can change that, like the positions for your seats, so you could choose perky voice or male voice or depressed and pathetic voice (so you feel sorry for it and are less likely to pound on the little screen). I do like when you put the car in reverse and it turns into a backup camera, so I can now be almost 100% sure that I'm not going to run over one of the 3 little children who live across the street from me.

My next favorite luxury item (it is marketed as a luxury vehicle), which we had in the 2000 model and I was an "early adopter", is what I call the bun (seat) warmers. It warms up quicker than the heating system it seems, so I always take advantage of that on a cold day or evening. We have a 6 CD player and, I believe, a better audio system in general, and a place to plug in your MP3 player. I wonder if all this will sound so, so antique 50 years from now.

In truth, however, the car was really chosen because it was the only one on the lot with the light-colored (called beige, but I say it's a very, very, very light gray) interior we wanted. All the others had black (too hot in the South) or butterscotch (which Bill called baby poop tan). I guess you don't want to sit in baby poop for long.

The real question, that I am going to be taking names and quizzing people about, is the exterior color. Take a look at the photo again. Is it gray or is it brown (bronze)? Look at the car in front of Bill and then in back. It's 2 colors, n'est-ce pas? According to the Acura website, it's carbon bronze pearl. I'm not sure I know what the Sam Hill that means, but I think it looks gray and Bill thinks it looks brown.

And, really, it's all about the car's color when you get right down to it, isn't it? After all, when the auto sniper, I mean salesperson, approached us on the lot to see if he could help us find anything, I think we specifically said, "we're looking for something in a grayish brown." :-)

On Libraries

In 1988 I received a MLS (Master's in Library Science - surprise! librarians have master's degrees) and shortly thereafter got a job as a young adult/reference librarian with the Cuyahoga Co. Public Library system in Ohio. I worked at the Garfield and Bedford branches until we moved to Tennessee. Library jobs weren't as plentiful here (at the time you had to live in Davidson Co. to work in the Nashville system), and I was unemployed for 1-1/2 years. During that time I sold a car as an auto saleperson (another post). Very, very fortunately, I then got a job as a reference librarian at the Brentwood Public Library in Brentwood, TN. I was the only reference librarian there in 1993, and today am the head of the Adult Dept., with 9 full and part-time employees. We have grown from 14 to 44 thousand square feet and are planning another expansion. After my surgery in June 2007, which turned into the surgery from hell and ain't over yet, I may be retiring with my hubby this July, but I haven't decided yet as I love, love, love my job. In the past 15 years, my 15 years, libraries have not only changed in square footage. As in the rest of the world - but even more so for us - technology has wrapped its powerful, but also bent, fingers around us. I say bent because when the City's internet connection is down, the patrons get testy. That, along with all the other problems that those chips cause. Anyway, libraries, including us, had recently moved to online card catalogs, though this was not also so in many small or less well-funded libraries. I might add here that Williamson Co. is the 7th wealthiest county in the U.S. Whoa! Yes. But what really grabbed us all by the neck was the advent of the Internet. I gave it a capital "i" here on purpose. Suddenly there was a competitor for who had the information; and, quite frankly, we don't win that game. We don't have all the lyrics to all the songs; every image of, well, anything I've ever typed into Google's image search engine, a short or extensive bio of almost any famous person, a recipe for lobster bisque, your's for the mere typing - and the list goes on and on as you well know. What we do have, as you also know if you are a library user, is flesh-and-blood human hands that can help people with technology, that hand readers books that we think they may enjoy, that cradle picture books as we read to toddlers during story hours. We still organize our information by a system that, though not flawless, helps librarians find answers quickly for our patrons (and where else can you be called a patron?). We subscribe to databases that are expensive enough that you as an individual couldn't afford any of them on your own. We offer countless programs for young and old - from Easter egg hunts and story hours and summer reading programs for the young to bridge lessons, computer lessons, and how to manage your money lessons for adults. Click on our website to get an idea of the programs we are offering this month. (www.brentwood-tn.org/library) I 'm usually very impressed at the energy that goes into this icing-on-the-cake at our library. We also have the cheapest and best meeting rooms in town. I have been fortunate to work with 2 other ab-fab, full-time librarians in the adult section for the past 13 and 9 years. And while many patrons view us simply as reference librarians who look like we sit around reading magazines a lot, it's because 75% of our time is spent on collection development. Think about it. The "good book" fairy doesn't just deliver books, periodicals, DVD's, CD's, etc. to libraries. Instead, we read through a gazillion reviews to try and separate the wheat from the chaff. I buy all the adult nonfiction for the library. That means that after 15 years, I have seen every sort of cookbook, money book, he's-a-dope, no, she's-a-dope book, expert or slightly suspect self-help book, etc. etc. and so forth, imaginable. The only thing that still surprises me is dieting books; somehow they still seem to come up with something that makes me say "now I've seen it all" until the next time, when I discover that I really hadn't seen it all. However, I enjoy doing the nonfiction because I do learn snippets of information in reading my reviews, as you can imagine, on a myriad of topics. In fact, in fiction I would have said from A to Z, but on my side of the aisle, it's from 001 to 999. What I also love about being a reference librarian is working with and goofing off with the patrons. After all we are a helping profession. Sort of like nurses without the icky stuff and (slightly) better looking shoes. And since libraries are a community meeting place, we are the gals with the smiles and the smart remarks. I mean repartee, of course. We have some patrons who love to stop by and say hi or ask what's new to read or just talk politics. Of course, there are the complainers, the whiners, the hangers-oner's, the know-it-all's, and that flasher (that's another post too). But, hey, that's what makes the world go 'round. It's not all good! And then there's reading - for my husband (who actually reads more and faster than I do) and myself. He will read almost anything I bring home (although by now I know what he likes), and I imagine this is one of the biggest perks of the marriage. Anyway, we both read some of the popular authors and then other things that I glanced at that got a good review and I wrote down on my "to read" list. It's quite a long list, and I naturally can't remember why anything is on it anymore. Maybe in another post I will list some of the books we recommend. In the meantime, I have a list of favorite book sites a little farther down in the blog.

Happy Easter

Easter came very early this year - March 23. Some strange law of travel physics says that if the Pfaff's come to visit from Atlanta, then Grant and Keri will travel to Atlanta to visit her brother, therefore keeping the Nashville/Atlanta connection on an even keel.

We served our tradional Easter dinner of spiral-sliced ham, scalloped potatoes, green bean casserole, and steamed asparagus. Muriel brought her home-made rolls and a delicious pineapple casserole. Erin brought her wonderful tossed salad with apple,pear, dried cranberries, cashews, and shredded swiss cheese topped with poppy seed salad dressing. We ate at noon so that David could watch the U of Tenn basketball game (luckily they won).

Following the b-ball game, we played a game of dominoes (Dave won) and those who wanted had dessert (see picture) of Easter cake and/or ham sandwiches. At dinner, Muriel had told Erin that at Thanksgiving her grandfather had always had a turkey sandwich later in the evening that also had stuffing, potatoes, cranberries, and gravy on it; so I noticed that later in the evening Erin's sandwich had ham and scalloped potatoes on it. I'll have to ask her if she put any pineapple on it since I know the green beans were gone and she doesn't eat asparagus. Ham and pineapple sandwich might be good. With honey mustard. Nix the potatoes though.

I guess I can't write about Easter without adding a note on religion. The blessing my father said at the dinner table every night while I was growing up:

Thank you, dear Lord, for this food and all thy blessings. In Christ's name, Amen.

On my Parents . . . Martha McCutchen and David Wilson

My mom will be 84 on April 2 and my Dad is 86 until Dec. 25 when, we'll just say, he doesn't only celebrate Christmas. As a matter of fact, for a number of recent years, there has been a contest; whoever was the first person to wish him Happy Birthday on Dec. 25 would get a silver dollar. This compelled the more competitive members of the family, near and far, to stand by their phones on Dec. 24th at 11:59 p.m., only to be outdone by someone who had gotten him on the line at, say, 11:45 to chat until the witching hour. But that also leads me to mention why people would think it was OK to call 2 (dare I say elderly people - not in front of them) 80+ year olds after midnight? That's because my parents are still cool (or "coolio" as my son might say). They get up at 10, lunch at 2, nap at 5 or 6, dine at 8 and retire at midnight or later. They always know who was on Leno or Letterman. And frequently Larry King who's on CNN, that commie-liberal station that I love. And though they live in Ohio, that recently George Bush red state, they voted for a nameless candidate in the Democratic primary. Go Mom and Dad! I'm so proud of them that they still got out in the middle of a nasty, icy day to even vote in a primary. Other reasons I'm proud of my parents: (in no particular order)

• Micro: They have continued to carve a real pumpkin for Halloween years after I bought an electric one. Macro: They seem to never take the easy route.
• Micro: Until recently, they put Christmas lights up in the front of the house, but, even more interesting, on a spruce tree in the back of the house that they could see from the kitchen. As the tree outgrew my father's reach, he made a pole with a hook on the end of it to reach the top. As the tree outgrew the pole, well, we just no longer started at the top. Macro: They are problem solvers.
• Micro: As I am the only one of the 4 children who is a Mother, I think I have an argueably unique perspective on parenthood. I have spent the last ten or fifteen years particularly calling on the crying shoulders of my parents in a way I never thought I would have to. I felt I could tell them all my woes like they were my best friends. And they listened and helped beyond the call. Macro: They were excellent parents, and either I'm the special, chosen child, or, more likely, they profoundly love all their children.
• Micro: David and Grant think their grandparents hung the moon (google it). As the saying goes something like: grandparents and grandchildren are forever linked by a common enemy. Macro: Good grandparents are good people.
• Micro: They have stayed in touch with high school and college friends. They have driven miles and miles to visit ailing friends and bring cheer when they could. They continue in their bridge clubs. Micro: They are good, friendly people.
• Micro: My mom is a newspaper reader; my dad a mostly non-fiction book reader. My dad has a computer and an email account and wanted to "download the music" when that was the free fad even though he never quite mastered it. He recently read my grandfather's, Samuel Proctor McCutchen, III, American history book, History of a Free People. Macro: They are smart! My mom spent 2 years at Syracuse and my dad got a degree in chemical engrg. at Ohio State after World War II when he taught guys to fly in the Army Air Corps.

For My Grandchildren - my favorite dish

Actually this entire blog is for my grandchildren since I expect my children know enough about me to last a lifetime! But, perhaps some of this may be of interest to one or more of our grandchildren (if we are to be blessed with grandchildren). Bill's favorite dish may be pepperoni pizza, and one night when he suggested that he have that for dinner, I said, good, I have the ingredients to make my favorite dish, American Spaghetti. It suddenly hit me that I didn't know the origins of this dish that my mother had served. I didn't think she had a recipe for it. So, I picked up my cell phone and called mom and asked. She said it was something that both her mother and my dad's aunt's cook (a lady we referred to as Aunt Helen) had made. Wow, I thought. If I could get my grandchildren to try this, it would be a 4-generations-old recipe. That seemed kind of neat. So, I have no recipe; I've made it differently every time, but some how it always comes out tasting the same. I don't make it very often because I have a feeling I would get very fat if I did. Here it is: American Spaghetti

1 `6-oz box of spaghetti, cooked and drained

In large saucepan, cook about 6-7 pieces of bacon; remove from pan; drain bacon grease, reserving about 3 T. bacon grease; crumble bacon and return to pan

Add diced dried onion to bacon grease - a little less than 1 T.

Add cooked spaghetti

Add 2 16 oz cans petite diced tomatoesAdd 1 16 oz can tomato sauce

Add 1 c. shredded cheddar cheese

Heat until everything blends together, cheese melts, etc.

Mom said that Aunt Helen used to put this in a casserole dish and bake it in the oven although I've never tasted it like that

At any rate, I hope someone carries this recipe on down into the next generation.

And now, for my husband's and children's favorite dessert, or at least the favorite one I make over and over again because it's so easy:

Chocolate Chip Brownies

1 yellow cake mix

2 eggs

1/4 c. water

1/4 c. oil

1/4 c. brown sugar, packed

Mix together for 2 minutes

Mix in 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Bake mixture in greased 9 x 13" pan at 375 degree oven for 25 minutes.

On the nature of 40-yr. marriages or Marriage is a bed of roses, thorns and all

1. Good gravy! We will have been married 40 years on August 17, 2008. First, I guess I should tell you a little about the courtship. I met Bill when I went to visit Chris Lunt, a friend from 4th grade forward, who had moved from Bay Village, OH, to Staunton, VA, in the 10th grade. I was devastated to lose my best friend, and my parents said I could fly down (a big deal in those days) to visit her in the summer. Well, the summer after 11th grade I came down with a nasty case of poison ivy and had to put off the trip until the summer after 12th grade. I mention the poison ivy because if I had gone that first year I wouldn't have met Bill because she didn't know him yet. So, chalk up the marriage to poison ivy. Bill was a friend of Chris's boyfriend, so we double dated that week. Bill loves to tell the story (do you know how many times I've had to listen to this in 40 years?) that he was paid to take me out. Anyway, he must have liked me because he invited me to Duke for their homecoming weekend. was even more amazing was that the parents (who with 4 kids weren't rich) shelled out the $$ again for another plane trip for their daughter from Ohio State into the land of cotton where old times there were not forgotten. One thing led to another, (I liked him because he was smart and he liked me because I was hot) and after a 2-1/2 year courtship, during which time we saw each other a total of 30 days (but, oh, the phone bills - no cell phone plans in those days), we were married. Bill, who had only been dabbling in Duke, knew he needed a kick in the pants and voluntarily joined the Army (during the Viet Nam War no less), went to OCS; I think he scored 141 on the Army's IQ test, and became a 2nd lieutenant. We were married in Mentor, Ohio, at Hope Ridge United Methodist Church with a reception following at a local restaurant (in the afternoon). My bridesmaids wore apricot. We pulled a small U-Haul filled with I don't know what (since our apt. would be furnished) behind Bill's new car, a 1968 beige Volkswagen beetle. It was practically bigger than the car. We had no money and stayed in some pretty seedy motels in places like Joplin, MO, on our way to Ft. Lawton, OK, where Bill was to be stationed in the Artillery. That's a whole 'nother post. So, about 40 years of marriage and how does one do that? I'm going to keep this simple from my perspective. I can think of a few major reasons (outside of staying madly in love for 40 yrs, which almost no one does, as like the tides, the love in marriages ebbs and flows: you are just more happy some months or years than others). Here they are: 1. You are not a changer; you are not a restless person and would just as soon stay put as go out into that whole dating scene again. In fact, you didn't much like it the first time and the thought of doing it a second time terrifies you. 2. You actually believed in the part of the ceremony about "in good times and bad" and "till death do us part" - not as the hippies wrote into their ceremonies "for as long as we both shall dig it." 3. You've read acticles about how married people live longer presumably because they are more content, not only emotionally, but certainly financially. Our marriage certainly falls into all 3 of those categories. Plus we tried to never go to bed angry and I always tried to communicate my feelings. Bill's an engineer and only communicated feelings when forced to make up one. Actor Alan Alda said the secret to his 50 yr. marriage was playing cards. "Spite and Malice - the card game, of course. We play it every day, and by the end of the game we're cursing and laughing." Whatever it takes . . . but mostly, commitment, communication, patience, acceptance, respect, and never stop laughing.

On the nature of illness by Nina, not Thoreau

Since I have been ill for the better part of a year now with my Crohn's disease, surgeons, and hospitals, I thought I'd add a few words on illness.

Certain family members will think this is too much of a downer to include in a blog; nevertheless, it's my blog and certainly my illness, though I couldn't have gotten though it without tons of help from Bill.

In June 2007 I had emergency surgery to remove a stricture in my colon that had been there for years. Long story that we won't go into. This led to abscesses to leaks to fistulas to painful drains to 6 months off work (some of that not so painful - I got a lot of reading done). That led to the final resort: literally trying to glue me back together.

When that failed, we were left with no other option but more surgery at the end of Jan, 2008. The surgeon removed the problematic fistula once, then twice (???), then an emergency surgery (no kissing Bill goodbye for that one) to pop some intestines back into place. Altogether 3 major surgeries with general anesthesias in 8 days. I just thank God that I'm "only" 60 and could stand all that fooling around. However, for reasons that only other Crohn's patients can guess at, the 2 weeks I spent in the hospital were a total nightmare.

The nurses were all great except 1, and that can make for a long couple of 12-hour shifts. Please nurses: compassion and no dirty looks about the pain shots. The residents (it was a teaching hospital) were all great except the new chief resident (female who really could have been cast for the TV show in looks and personality as the new hard-nose chief trying to find her way - please, just not on me). We locked horns until I finally just fell apart and cried and she eased up. I don't know if that is advice or not. I keep hating to be a bawl baby at 60.

I am now stuck with a big wound (as a result of the 1st or 2nd surgery this time) that was infected, but the wound vac and my wonderful home health care nurse Tina have pretty much taken care of that. I was liberated from the wound vac Mar. 7 and was told I would need to see a plastic surgeon for a skin graft next. Appt. scheduled for Mar. 27.

Hmmm. When I was sprung in Feb., I promised myself never to step foot into that particular hospital again. Stay tuned . . .

Grant and Keri's Wedding - May 26, 2007

Though Keri (nee Brewer) had already worked at Bridgestone with Bill for several years, it was at a night spot that Grant said to a mutual friend, "hey, introduce me to her" and the rest is history.

They spent a year enjoying the planning of their wedding (Keri is a Proj. Mgr. at Bridgestone and Grant was best at Squad Jobs in kindergarten). And it paid off with a lovely evening on Memorial Day weekend. The ceremony took place at the First United Methodist Church (where Grant was confirmed) in Franklin, but officiated with the minister from their present Presbyterian church. The reception followed at The Factory at Jamison Hall. The rehearsal dinner was held at The Flying Horse, also at The Factory in Franklin. Out of town guests were invited to a lunch of subway sandwiches the following day, a token to Grant's first job as a sandwich artist at Subway. Honeymoon was in Maui.

On Pets and other wildlife

We've been fortunate to have 2 goldfish and 3 great dogs. Starting with the world's greatest female Pembroke Welsh Corgi, unoriginally named Corie. We got her from a breeder in Hudson, OH, when the boys were about 6 and 8. She loved to play catch with a tennis ball. The game she taught us was to take it to the top of the stairs, push it down with her nose & then we would throw it back up to her. 9 times out of 10 she would catch it. Some baseball teams would have been lucky to have her as shortstop. Unfortunately, she died of bone cancer when she was 10 and broke all our hearts. But they were 10 joyful people/dog years. Our next dog was an "oops" - but meant to be. I saw her on an early morning news show (which I never watched) as the dog of the week featured from the Nashville Humane. She and her brothers and sisters had been left in a box at a fire station. I could tell she was part welsh corgi (as it turned out probably part beagle as well and maybe part shar-pei, the latter according to the vet, but who sees shar-pei's running around loose on the street?). I went to the Humane center on my lunch hour and that closed the deal. What person who is leaning can resist a puppy? Bill was on a business trip at the time, and when he came home, it happened to be my late night at the library. I left Little Debbie, hence forth to be known as Lucy, in the computer room with a big "Happy Valentine's Day, Bill" sign (he hadn't wanted another dog, but those are the kinds of gifts he can expect, if one at all, on Valentine's Day). A year or so later, after noticing that many of our neighbors had 2 dogs, and feeling guilty about leaving Lucy home alone all day, we starting searching the pounds for a friend. We tried out a pug named Henley, who never pee'd on a walk. We'll leave you to surmise where he did like to do it. He also drooled and wanted to play ball 24/7. Our hearts bled for poor Henley, but he had to go back. We were then chosen at a Humane event when we asked to look at a mini dachsund. When they let her out of the cage, she came right into our laps, rolled on her back, and showed us what a drama queen she could be. She was 2-1/2 at the time and came with the name Gracie, which we loved, and gave us two female comedians. Which they were for the ten years they both lived till succumbing to blindness (I couldn't stand to see Gracie walk into walls) and probably cancer again for Lucy ($400 to the vet with no diagnosis, but eventually she just quit eating anything) . Terrible decisions as dog lovers know to decide when the time has come. But, in their prime, they had great fun chasing each other around the circle in the house - Gracie always in the lead, Lucy looking for lazy ways to head her off. Lucy became quite the little guard dog, usually stationed on the table at the living room window, checking out who had the nerve to walk or even drive on her street. We spent a lot of time saying "quiet, Lucy." Gracie always loved to get under the covers with us or under an afghan. I swear I don't know how they breathe. Gracie was not big on sharing our affection with Lucy and had an ugly little snarl she reserved for those occasions. Lucy, of course, looked away and pretended not to see it. Bill religiously walked them every evening when he came home from work (while I was getting dinner ready, folks) and misses doing that to this day. Frequently he would come home and tell me about the deer they saw on their walks, Lucy's barking at them having no visible effect. Bill has said I can get another dog if it's a Welsh Corgi, but for now I am not missing the dog hair and my consistent (not constant) worrying about the dog's psyche every time we go somewhere. We are glad to have two grand-dogs, so to speak. Keri and Grant have a Welsh Corgi (female) named Magi, and Erin and David have a black lab/Irish Setter/Golden? mixture named Lucky because he walked into their yard when he was about 6 mo. old, terribly malnurished and mangy. He was Lucky he found them. Now he loves to swim off their boat and, like many big dogs, thinks he too is a lap dog. Magi is very smart and Grant has taught her how to play with a ball on the steps. It's nice to know your kids occasionally take something with them from their childhoods.

Dave and Erin's Wedding - April 2005

David and Erin (Pfaff) were married on April 16, 2005 on the beach at Tybee Island in Savannah, GA. They met while working as waiters at Amerigo's Restaurant in Nashville. After graduating from Vanderbilt, Erin is now a teacher in Nashville. Dave graduated from Nashville Tech and is a Project Coordinator for Interstates, a electrical contractor. Erin and her mom, Muriel, worked hard planning and executing an out-of-town wedding. Erin grew up in Atlanta and had gone to the beach on Tybee many times, so it was "home" to her. Once I figure out how to put my pictures into a url, I'll add more wedding photos, but for now just a few. Although it was unseasonably cool for GA in April, we all had such a wonderful time, I plan on remembering it into my senility.

Honeymoon was in Jamaica, man.