Bitch, I'm BACK by popular demand!!!!!!!!! HA! With much love and fun from dear family and friends!!!

You gotta love Bey!!  And lord knows I've been having to make a few gallons of lemonade!!!  It's been a long and crazy road from August of last year to now! (And that's skipping a lot of shit from 1964 to 2003 to 2007 to 2010 to... You get the idea!)  Recovery required time.  Work.  Support from friends and family.  Seriously guys, you will never know how much your texts, cards, care packages, letters, emails, IM's, DM's, meant to my spirit.  When first home from the hospital I could go up the stairs and back down once a day.  Maybe manage a walk to the edge of our yard.  But, little by little - 5 minutes on the elliptical, then 10.  5 sit-ups. 15.  Doctor's visits.  Treatments.  Two steps back.  Four forward.  I worked in the yard.  I wrote.  I sewed.  I went out very little due to lack of strength and risk of infection.   I kept at it. 1 mile runs.  2 mile runs. 20 sit-ups.  70 sit-ups.  After months of nothing beyond doctor visits and a few small errands, we made our first little trip to Cades Cove earlier this month.  When B sent this pic from our hike to the kids he captioned it:

"She's BACK!!!"   Thanks to all of you, I think I am!  Getting to hike my favorite trail again was ever so lovely.  And we got to top it off with a good visit and dinner with Fred-o and Irina!!

After that successful adventure, we had another.  One that was a long time in the making, thanks to dear Beth, who included a gift certificate to a local restaurant in a lovely care package she sent me back in November!  Getting back to normal food has been a bit of a challenge in and of itself, so a lovely meal out on the town was a real treat!  You were so sweet to do that for us, B3!!!!  Doesn't it all look yummy?????

And girl!  That's not all!!  We've been on a roll.  Last Friday we took off to Hot'lanta!  B was the best sport, helping me find and check out some new-to-me fabric stores!  It was good, silly, decadent fun.  I got some great cuts that I'll be sharing soon.   Just look at that fabric shopping cutie!!!

If you are in need of African Wax prints in the Atlanta area, check out Fine Fabrics!!!  They have an impressive selection!

B was a master planner and had our route to Gail K Fabrics, Fine Fabrics, Top Stitch, our dinner and hotel mapped out perfectly.  I highly recommend Chai Pani if you like Indian food in the Decatur area.  It was REALLY good!  B was tickled I could enjoy it with no ill effects as there was a lot of spice.  It was great!

The next morning we were off to the Dekalb Farmer's market.  A fun adventure in and of itself!  But all that fabulosity is not even the best part!!!!!!!!  That afternoon we got to attend Charlie (Ruthie's son) and Kayla's wedding!!!  How special is that?  (B has much better pics, and one should probably start with the bride and groom, but I don't have any of those!!  I'll share his work when he gets them ready, but my little phone snaps capture some of the sweetness!)

 If that mother/son dance isn't sweet enough for you, check out Char's dance with his granny.  So precious!

And there was plenty of crazy fun had on both sides of the family!!!

Especially when you get three girls together who used to bust out some Sister Sledge while waiting on the school bus....

"We are family!!!  I got all my sisters with me!  Get up ev'rybody and sing!"

The bond between sisters is something even the dedicated efforts of the Queen of Gaslighting cannot destroy. A term far more nefarious than current popular slang makes it seem.  To whit:   "Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's belief."

I always told my children and nursing students, you can learn just as much from a bad example as you can from a good one - perhaps more.  Each day we choose who we are and what we do with our limited time on this planet.  I have seen lives wasted in a negative world of their own creation, absent of joy or hope.   That is not the world I want to inhabit or project.

So, after plenty of fun and a ton of love, I leave you with a vision that brought sweet tears of joy and appreciation to my eyes as I watched in real time...and even while looking at the pictures now ~

Two of my favorite humans on the planet...

...sharing a dance.  Both living examples of lives filled with kindness and laughter.  Both dedicated to the welfare of others above themselves.  My heroes.

The bleeding heart is a living testament to love.  "Love is patient.  Love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth." 1 Corinthians 3:4-8

Thanks to each and every one of you who continue to love me for who I am, in spite of all that I am not. Much love and happiness to Char and Kayla.  May every precious day bring joy to each of you. ~ les