tuesday 6/24

Just to touch base here, I'm getting my radiation treatments every day. They are painless. You feel nothing as you are zapped. The skin over the area being treated is getting red, like a sunburn, but that is all, besides feeling like a road map of Texas, with all the different colored lines drawn on my body.

We tried to work on fences at the farm over the weekend, but, in spite of a 2 hour+ rain on Saturday evening, the ground was just too hard. The auger would dig in about 4 inches, then, just polish the surface of the bottom of the hole. I filled six 5 gallon water-cooler jugs with water, and filled each started hole with water after the auger was removed, and sometimes while it was still trying to drill. When we got to the end of the line of posts we wanted to set, we went back to the beginning, to see if the water had softened up the ground. It was still rock hard. It is very frustrating, when you have the tools, but the ground is too hard to drill into. It has rained some every day this week, so I'm hoping that the holes will be softened up come this weekend.

My mother-in law passed away on Sunday morning. She was 87, and hadn't been doing well for some time. She had smoked for years, and had emphysema. She lived alone, and wasn't eating enough, or drinking enough. My Brother-in-law would shop for her, but she wouldn't eat. When we saw her last year, she weighed about 75 lbs. Tom said she weighed about 50 lbs at the last. That is how much my 5 year old grandson weighs. She will be cremated, and her ashes buried in Union SC. There will be a memorial service at a later date, after my treatment is finished, so that we can go, as Mike won't leave me right now. She would had been 88 in August.
We would like to help clean out her house. She was a heavy smoker, and everything in the house is coated in tar and nicotine. She lived a long life, and died at home, so I guess you can't ask for more than that.