Trail Seeker

I rushed out with kids in tow last Tuesday to Ohio so the kids can see Grandma, we got back last night. To see my MIL's kids all rally around her was inspiring. My prayer is that my MIL is at peace with her condition, she surely didn't want us to see her emotional side, when she was feeling good she was joining in the jokes and laughter. Jackie couldn't fathom how her parents and siblings could sit there laughing and cracking jokes at a time like this, but they would. My FIL sure wore his emotions on his sleeve though, he was constantly hovering around his wife like a mother hen, it sure showed his love. I finally got him distracted with some small talk, and we covered a number of current and past events, it was the first time he was able to relax. He felt more at ease as he saw his children take care of his wife's every need.

By the time I left, the house was rearranged to accommadate my MIL, she had come home and a routine was started. When I got there no one could plan past the next hour, but now they had their roles to play. In some way I am glad I will be away when the flood of tears come, but how I would love to be there to give my wife a shoulder to cry on.

My dear wife is in Ohio now, I am sure there will be a flow of emotions amongst her and her siblings. I am also finding out that my Uncle Benny is in the hospital in critical condition, he has fluids in his lungs and they may have to do surgery to remove a portion if it won't clear up.

The kids and I are doing fine, I am a bit tired yet from getting up at 3am after only a couple hours of dozing. I did get an hour nap in though. I will be doing the 3am thing again Tuesday when we head out.

I usually don't get to emotional, crying isn't a man thing typically and I am no exception. When I find myself wanting to share the emotional grief, I find myself supressing it. It is hard to right now when I hear my sister-in_law talk to me and I can hear voice voice filled with grief and my wife has had to use my shoulder more than once.

I am so proud of my wife, she will be selflessly taking care of her mother around the clock at home. She intends to stay until there is no more need of her services. I am conflicted by the idea that I want my wife home as soon as possible, yet I want her to have as long as she needs with her mother. For those who understand, that 10% we have been putting away is a blessing right now.

The girls here will be of great help while there Mom is away I can count on that. At least we will be out there with her and her side of the family for 4 days. I hope for the kids that grandma will be in good spirits so that they will have a positive last visit.

My Mother-in-law requested that my wife, Kate, be her personnal nurse when she gets there, the doctor said that would be fine knowing medication and IV's will be involved. Kate will tend to her moms need to the end. The thought of my wife doing this actually really touches me and makes me emotional. I think this will be a special, but difficult time for her. My MIL is at peace, everyone is crying and she is the only one not.

My FIL was upset that this wasn't supposed to happen like this, I think he wanted to go first so he didn't have to face what he does now. There was some talk about a family reunion this summer, but MIL said that it would have to be now, she is holding out for everyone to come home. My wife mentioned about us coming for services later, but I told her I would rather that we come before, let us have some time while she is here rather than after. I bought tickets for the kids and I and we will be heading out Tuesday. The kids and I will head home Saturday, I hope we won't be at any services. We heard the doctor only gave her only three week, after my wife called her Mom and asked her a few questions about such things as eating, meds and such, she broke into tears, she wanted those three weeks, but from the reponses she got, she knew it wouldn't be that long.

I got to go, I have to get things ready and get up around 3am to take Kate to the airport.

The diagnosis for my MIL is AML cancer in late stage, it is the worst kind, they give her about three weeks. My wife plans to head out Sunday morning for an indefinate amount of time.

The preliminary tests show it to be the worst kind of leukemia that my MIL has, they won't know for sure until next week. My FIL said he doesn't intend that she will okay treatment and he agrees, it would be more painful. My wife will be flying out to Ohio for an indefinite time along with her brother in ILL. She wants to help her mother, and Cara said she could use her there. She wants to make sure things are taken care of, that she gets hospice care started and share shoulders to cry on. The kids and I can hold the fort down for a while, but I admit, my wife is an integral part of this family.

My MIL is doing better this morning, her platelet count is up and doesn't need to be in isolation anymore and she is perkier. They put her on antibiotics which is also helping too.

You know these days will come, but your never ready for them.

The prognosis for leukemia is not good at all. We could only hope that my MIL doesn't have it, but after researching it, she has the classic symptoms, it is a matter of what type now. Treatment doesn't cure it, only prolongs life for a couple of years at best. My wife understands that and broke into tears this evening.

The cold front is upon us, it makes for bright sunny days here. Typically if we get snow, it is at the beginning or end of a cold front, but the snow we got has melted off. My added chores now include swapping out the chicken's water and busting the ice on the stock tank so the live stock can drink. The birds also show up in greater numbers at times like this.

My Mother in law is not doing to well, her platelet count was low and she has been anemic. They are going to see if she has leukemia. Yesterday she was able to get up, but this morning she was to weak to do anything. My sister in law (Cara) is a big help to them, my other sister-in-law (Jackie) in the area seems to be into her own little world to care much about others, she is the one in the family who is hard to get along with anyways. She has been mad at Cara, and Cara's husband can't stand to be around jackie. I have the advantage, I live thousands of mile away and only have to deal with her on family get togethers, at that time I try to be socially polite and give her plenty of room. At one family reunion in Ohio's Ash Caves, Jackie had my wife in tears when she went out of her way to state to her that she didn't have any say on what the plans where for the day, that blunt exclusion was a bit hard for her to handle.

I finally got a bivy sack on ebay for the price I have been trying to get it at, the seller who has 100% feedback as I write has yet to get it into my hands. I kind of expect something to show up with in certain time frame and when they don't show I get concerned. The last time this happened, the seller would not respond to me, I even called, I had to turn it over to ebay/paypal and finally months later got a refund. So this fella I pruchased the bivy from says he mailed it to the wrong place, great! I requested he keep me apprised, over a week later he never said a thing. If he can keep my updated, it would go along ways in making the transaction a good one, I'll see.

It snowed this morning, big puffy flakes. I thought we were past this kind of potential WX. There is also an artic front heading our way too, time to bring extra firewood.

I have not made contact with Peter One, I have heard them on more than one frequency and even spent some time trying to make contact but with many others tossing our thier callsigns over a 5-10 megahertz range, find the frequency the station is listening to can be a challenge. These operators work what is called splits, they listen over a range of frequencies while transmitting on another, that way the station can be heard with out the every one else calling on his transmitting frequency. The challenge to improve the odds of making a contact in this case is to find where he last worked a station and transmit there. It would help if I had an amplifier, but that isn't always necessary. They have already made some 50,000 contacts on the air, over 50% of the contacts were CW (morse code). They have made one contact via EME (earth-moon-earth, bouncing a signal off the moon).

Suitsat is dead, sounds as if the batteries froze up since there wasn't anything to keep them warm.

My wife got an email from her sister, there Mom is in the hospital and not doing to good. She said her levels of everything was low, they have drawn a lot of blood to test and given her 2 liters of it. It doesn't sound good, but I don't know what the prognosis is yet. We will be updated tomorrow.

The damaging part of the recent storm stayed just to our North, still was it packed a pretty good punch here. We have been getting a break in the weather this week, it is a nice change.

The current news on the radio front is the SuitSat that was hand launched from the space station, it is a surplus Russion space suit equipped with some radio gear that is transmitting several signals. The challenge is to hear it though. The rumor was that the batteries failed, but it is just a weak signal. A radio buddy in WA has his station set up to work the birds (Satellites), and even with multi-element yagis, preamps, tracking equipment, he was able to hear the SuitSat, but he said even then it was still a weak signal. The suit is also spinning and the signal fades as it rotates. It is supposed to be up about 6 weeks before it hits the atmosphere and burns up.

The place to work is Peter One island off the anartica, there is a DX expidition (3Y0X) going on there right now. This evening the signals from the radio dx station was heard in AZ, but not here, I needed to be on the air earlier in the day. So I intend to work the DX group tomorrow. Peter One

I have been outside battening down the hatches so to speak, we are expected to get the worst storm of this winter tonight through tomorrow. The coast is expected to see gusts up to 90 and potentially 60 in the valley. I am firing up the ol laptop so it can record the weather over the next 24 hours. It is interesting to see the graphs, watch the barometric trend and so on.

I finally made a family web page, I think it looks great, but still needs polishing. I hope to get my wife to assist me with the text portion. One family member said it was a bit slow on his dial up, unfortunately dial up is inherently slow but I might be able to put the web site on a diet.

I also redid my radio web page. While talking to my friend in AZ on the radio, a fella joined us and made the comment that I must be camera shy, I had to laugh. I had a couple of pages of photos on the server, but mostly of my ham station, antennas but none of me. The new site only has 3 photos and I am in them all. I redid and updated my daughters radio web site too, but it seems the password to the server vanished when we dropped one of her radio related email accounts which contained it. I have a link on the popular on-line call sign database to my web site, so some one can see just who is on the other end of the microphone.

I was looking over my blog entries this morning and It has already been over a year since I started, "how time flies". I hope I have no big wind storm damage tales to tell next time and that everyone has a nice weekend.