Susan G. Komen for the Cure | Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Encourages Continued Coverage for Avastin for Breast Cancer Patients who are Benefitting from the Drug

Susan G. Komen for the Cure | Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Encourages Continued Coverage for Avastin for Breast Cancer Patients who are Benefitting from the Drug

Avastin is a drug that helps cancer patients survive. Let's ask the FDA to keep funding it.

January Spiders

     Today I was murderous and barbarous by choice and without apology.  I have found that sometimes I lack even the smallest amount of sympathy, and that is by choice.  I made that decision years ago. I am not certain whether it is by nature or nurture, but I hate spiders. I do not have even the smallest amount of tolerance or compassion toward them. If they are in my home or if they show up where I am, they are as good as dead.  One would not think that would even be an issue in January, but today it was.

     The fact that I was encountering spiders in the dead of winter was my own fault. It was because of my negligence.  I knew that whenever one stores a firewood pile from the winter through the summer it becomes a shelter to all sorts of critters. That was true for my woodpile too.  I just didn't regard that as an important detail this past May, June, July or August.  The wood was neatly stacked up against the fence under a tarp and I chose to ignore it.  That was good news for the spiders and bad news for me.

     As I have been been burning wood in my fireplace I have been restocking it with that wood from my backyard. As I get down to the bottom of the pile, I am finding the critters that used the wood as their home over the summer:  wood roaches and large brown recluse spiders.  The spiders have been curled up in the nooks and crannies sparsely covered with their webs. A vain attempt to overwinter.  Too bad for them.  Once I caught my breath after discovering them, they were promptly sprayed with insecticide or squished.  I am grateful they are not moving so they are easy targets.  My motto: a good spider is a dead spider.  That is ESPECIALLY true of a brown recluse.

     Recluses and black widows are common around here. But now recluses are a little less common!  I stopped restocking the wood so the freezing temperatures could penetrate deeply into the bottom of the stack.

     Yes, I have learned a lesson.

These long winter nights and cold days make me yearn for spring! A fire burning in the fireplace in the evenings brings warmth and somehow comfort.  I am a substitute teacher and the work is feast or famine. Right now its famine. This month I will travel back to St. Jude with my daughter for her 9 year check up.  Behind the doors of that institution was fought an immense battle for Hannah's life.  Back then we didn't know if we would be coming home. I often wished I had a crystal ball so I could know if we were going to be one of the survivors.  I thought if I just knew the outcome I could prepare.  We walked through treatment one day at a time, hoping it would work.  We met many young people whose treatments didn't save them.  Our hearts broke.  Although I love St. Jude and the people who we met there, I wish we had never had to walk through the doors.  St. Jude treats its patients royally.  One father said, "When you become a patient at St. Jude, you become a member of a select fraternity of which you wish you never were a part." I agree.  We go back every January when the temperatures are freezing and walking between the buildings for appointments is not much fun.  But I am reminded that there are many who would gladly trade places with us, so blow, winter wind.  We are alive.  Thank you God, for these days.

Just a Day

Even the most boring and uneventful day holds something eternal in it.  Today was just such a day.  The sun set close to five o'clock and it rained a nasty mist nearly all day which got everything wet and made the day appear gray.  When the phone rang, it was either a solicitor or the wrong number.  But, I am reading To Kill A Mockingbird, and I read the Bible.  I started a blog.  This is a good day.