Nana & Pepe

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Today I am reminiscing about my recent weekend spent literally “giggling” with my siblings and mother. All four of us flew to Florida to see my mother and of course my Nana and Pepe.

I am so very thankful to have spent time with both my Nana and Pepe-what a great blessing. My Nana is very sick. My only regret is that I have not had children that will remember their “Nana and Pepe”. I will be sure to tell my children someday about their great grandparents. About how proud Pepe is of his entire family-all 9 of his children and their children. How he loves to get the family together to celebrate….anything. About their generosity. About Nana’s quiet strength that radiates from her-even now while she is sick.

I cried when I said goodbye to Nana on Sunday. I have struggled with it this entire week as well. It hurts to think of not seeing her again. Our family is one that has been blessed more than any of us can begin to imagine. We are a family that is healthy and full of longevity and have been fortunate to not have experienced any tragedy. Adam comforted me in reminding me that the time we have on this earth is just a “blink of an eye” of our time together and that the real time we will be together is on the streets of gold which will be for eternity.

I have many framed pictures of my family on the walls in my clinic, including the engagement and wedding photos of my Nana and Pepe. I hear at least once per week how much I look like my Nana and this makes me proud.

then1

Man-made sunset

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On Saturday night I had the privilege of watching a rocket take off. At 10:53 pm NASA launched the “Kepler”…a rocket in search of other habitable planets. My siblings, mother and I went down to the beach and were literally wading in the ocean when we saw it.

I had no idea what to expect. Cape Canaveral is actually a little over 20 miles away from where we were and I figured we’d have to squint our eyes and search really hard to see the rocket when it went off. This is why I did not bother having my camera ready!

It was amazing…so bright, like the sunset on a clear evening. I couldn’t help but cheer when it first went off-how amazing. A minute or two after it took off we heard it…light traveling faster than sound of course. How crazy is that!

I can’t imagine watching the shuttle at a night launch! The Kepler will be out there floating about for three years they say…maybe it’ll find a new vacation hot spot or something.

kepler

Diet

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Philly

Philly

You probably know that my Nana is fighting terminal lung cancer. She lives in Florida and my mother has been down there for the past couple of months to be with her. We are taking care of my mother’s two cats; Philly and Delphia-yes, say the two names fast and together and it does sound like what you are thinking.

Anyway, I wanted to post a picture of Philly. Poor guy has a slight weight problem. Adam and I took him to our vet for a consultation and have him on a very strict diet. About an hour before meal time when he starts to get hungry he starts eating paper, literally.

He started the diet the second week of January and the good news is that he has lost: 4 ounces!

Way to go Philly.

Locked in…literally

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As you all know we are living in a home that turns 99 years old this year. I know, I know…what were we thinking? Long story and for another day (but it involved a baby crib late at night while being on call at the hospital).

We have two front doors and are replacing them with red doors with solid glass storm doors over them. Adam replaced the one on the side of the house with no problem-it’s beautiful!

He proceeded to start working on the other front door (which is the main front door) however discovered that the frame wasn’t the same. Only, he discovered this a little too late. He’d already dismantled a lot of it getting ready to put on our nice new pretty red door. This being an evening project he tried to take on he wasn’t able to re-build the entire door frame so he had to come up with a solution until he has time in the future.

Solution: screw the old door on, literally. In other words, no visitors allowed I guess.

Mr tax man

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So I took two days off this week to work solely on taxes. We do have a CPA, mind you but we can’t afford to just bring her three big boxes full of papers, receipts and what have you and say call us when you’re through. We’ve got to do as much of the work as possible before giving it to her-much cheaper this way! I think back to the days of sitting down one afternoon and using turbotax and being done. Voila.

No more. Adam drug in two eight foot tables for me and at times I covered every inch of them. Lets see…we’ve got my practice and home office expenses, the store, Adam’s computer business and Adam’s lawn/snow business. Sheesh.

Apparently there is a place you need to write down what you paid the IRS in back payments for the current tax year. I hadn’t kept really close track I just know we owed them a ton last year when we had our taxes done and have been paying them each month to try and get 2007 paid off. So, I had to call the IRS. The first time I called it said you will have a 10-15 minute wait and played some nice classical music. I put the phone on speakerphone and went on my way working on other things. Ten minutes later…click. Yep, hung up on me somehow-classic.

So, once again I called back. Only this time the connection was crackly so now the classical music wasn’t as nice. Ten minutes later some man with an accent answered. I think he was middleastern and was wearing a turbin. Don’t get me wrong though-really nice guy. He said “your phone is crackly”.  I said yeah-that or it may be yours and he proceeded to discuss with me how he wished the government would buy all of them blue tooth headsets because they always have their phones hooked to their heads.

Anyway-he got me the figure I needed and asked me if there was anything else he could do for me. I said no and he said… and I quote “don’t feel bad, Mrs. Carter-I will probably owe a little this year too on my taxes-not as much as you though. Have a nice day”.

Thank you mr turbin man.