DOLTON

Today's picture is of Jaime's kitty Mitzi sleeping on top of her TV. Today is sunny but cold especially the wind---it was real windy last night--you could hear it kiting--sounded more like March than December. We were able to get our food delivered to our middle man yesterday to go to two families that are having a hard time . One family is the man and wife , their grown son and four grandchildren. The man and wife are in their seventies and she used to work at a fabric store until the fibers contaminated her longs so bad she had to quit work. She actually needed a lung transplant but now she is in such bad shape even that wouldn't help. She was a small woman but has gained over a hundred pounds in fluid including in her lungs and none of it can be drained because her lungs would colapse--she is drowning and nothing can be done--makes me very sad. The grown son's wife ran away from home when the youngest children were eleven months old (they are now five year old twin boys) the next child is a hyperactive seven year old boy and the oldest is a girl about thirteen. The other family the dad was in the first Iraq war and was injured over there. Seems they had this hole they were ordered to blow up left over amunition and they did that and were told it was all blown up and were using the hole to burn trash. Well the trash burned for six hours and you guessed it there was still some amo in the hole and he was hit with shards of stuff. He has brain injuries and now can't remember very much. He was working at Lowe's but after his memory started going they had to cut his salary by eight hundred dollars a month. I don't know whether his wife works or not but they have a boy five, a girl seven and a boy ten. Of course the veteran's doctors have been no help getting his pension from being injured in the line of duty---but our friends that help us deliver the food have gotten him hooked up with the right people so hopefully he will get his pension started by the first part of the year.

I was climbing on a little stool yesterday and it flew out from under me and I hit my hip and am very stiff and sore this morning. I don't bounce as well as I once did. We did make it out yesterday and checked out CompUsa once again. Jaime bought an external hard drive and then we checked out Office Depot and I found an external burner for fifty dollars. Seems my internal burner has burned out---it will play DVDs but won't burn them. Today we decided not to try to go to church. I feel we did quite a bit yesterday and since we had the pageant last week I didn't have anything to do. I know Donald and Hazel are going to their oldest son's for Christmas today and one of the other members is going to her middle daughters and when you take that many family members out ---it doesn't leave many anyway and since it is cold and there is not enough heat and my back hurts---I decided to stay home where I could be warm and comfortable.

We have put some packages under the tree and so far the kitties haven't opened them. Need to wash the color out of Jaime's hair so we can dig out a few more things to wrap before Meg wakes up.