Free At Last

Perhaps "free at last" is a little too much entheusiasm for the occasion, but..... I completed traffic school. Last Saturday I sat down at the computer and figured I'd check out a few on line schools. One stated it was "4 less time", so I signed on and did that one. It turns out that Saturday was the last day I had to complete the school so It is a good thing I did it online and had the results sent directly to the court! Today I received an email from the court stating that I was now "free and clear", ie., fine paid, traffic school done on time, etc. Whew. Guess my insurance won't have to go up after all. I don't think I have to take the driving test for my license renewal in 2011 either. When I'm on the freeway now I set the dang cruise control and keep my led foot off of the accelerator.

We had a terrible summer forest fire near here yesterday, in Auburn. Auburn is about 20 miles East and North of us. Anyhow, the fire started outside of a subdivision, jumped (or burned) a fence and roared through the subdivision and onward. Sixty homes were lost. On one street every home but one burned to the ground and on another street all but two homes are gone. Further out into the coutry the destruction continued, taking farm houses, outbuilding and anything else in its way as well. A wedding party had to disband and run for their lives to get out of the way of the fast moving fire. As far as I know to this point , there were no lives lost, although there were a few cases of smoke inhalation and minor burns as people tried to get out. All of the local TV stations carried nothing but fire new from the time it started about 230 yesterday afternoon until mid-morning today. It is now fully contained but not out.

Fargo and I have managed to brave the evening heat and walk two or three times this past week. I keep threatening to dress when I get up at 6 and walk then. Somehow the motivation is there in the evening but not in the morning. I used to walk three miles every morning, at 700 all week and even weekends during the summer. When I visited in Canada during the winter I still donned my boots, heavy coat, cap, gloves and "face" scarf and plodded through the frozen snow for about 45 minutes or so. Now I wonder what ever happened to that motivated person? Someone else has lost a few pounds. I know this for sure because I found them - right around my waist!

My oldest daughter has been diagnosed with a kidney disorder that I think is called "IC". The doc explained it to her a Chrohns of the bladder. The Doc thinks that this may have been (and still is) the source of all of her pain and symptoms for the past 13 or 14 years. I think of the numerous surgeries and procedures she has had to endure in an effort to fix the problem, with each specialist being "sure" that he or she knew what was wrong and could fix it with their specialty surgery. The disorder she has is no picnic and there is no cure, but there are symptom relief medications and diet. These would have been more effective 10+ years ago, but better now than never. The one thing that really made my daughter feel better was to learn that one of the common complaints is that riding in a car for an period of time causes pain and discomfort, probably from the filling bladder and the steady road vibrations. My daughter was afraid that we all thought she was just stressed at traveling, which might have been somewhat true early on, but certainly not the past few years. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could somehow take our children's pain and carry it for them for awhile? Of course, there are times when I wish the reverse! I'm being summoned to join Ernie and Sarah for "Jeopardy". Peace.