Hi to my SI peeps. I've had some time to come on here and read, comment a couple of times, and that's been about it lately. This morning I found myself with some "me time", so I thought I'd say hi and let you know I'm still alive and mostly sane.
The health situation with my dad has turned into a marathon, but it's looking better. He decided to go ahead and fight the cancer (at 85) and the prognosis is actually fairly positive. But it means treatment 5 days a week in a neighboring town (90 minute drive to the facility), plus the chemo treatments will be very time consuming. My daughter & I have come up with a workable tag-team schedule to deal with this, so I think we're gonna be able to pull this off (God willing). He's going to be going thru chemo and radiation at the same time, and I hope the chemo is as mild as the doc says it will be. Keeping my fingers crossed, for sure.
On to the other stuff.....my Bear has been showing me every single day that he has my back and is in this for the long haul. This man is doing everything in his power to make me feel safe, loved, and cherished. 
He pitches in and actually asks if there's something he can do to help! OMG!!! He's been my rock, and he's got a great set of shoulders that I've been leaning on (and cried on a couple of times).
I really had given up on dating when he finally got me to agree to spend some time alone with him (he'd been working on it for a while), so my brain had gone into long-term single mode. I'm really glad he didn't give up because I think this guy is a "keeper". 
We haven't had much time available to really go out much, or do the usual new relationship stuff, and that kind of worries me.....but when my day is done & he's hanging out on the porch with me, we've done a lot of talking, laughing, and gotten to know each other pretty well. He's been able to get my mind off my dad's health issues and get me to relax and enjoy the time we do have together.
So....things are going surprisingly well considering how crazy life has been lately. And I do mean crazy. Tuesday night a mountain lion killed my daughter's 3 pet goats. Wednesday night DOW trapped the lion, so Thursday morning I ended up having my morning coffee while watching a very large, pissed-off tomcat hiss, spit, and snarl at all of us. I'm pretty sure he's the one that's been going through my yard, and I'm glad he's gone. He was big (around 130 lbs.) and damned scary looking. Never a dull moment around here!
Sometimes the hardest part of finally seeing through someone is accepting what you see...
God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to
change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me.
-Reinhold Neibuhr
