June 3, 2013 Greetings My Friend, Junior went off to the air force base here in MI and M is in her room taking a prayer break and me, I am on the computer playing with the internet and my new phone. I have seen M for the first time more than a few minutes since her accident and I am surprised at how busted up she is. She has been telling me and now I see it and it is hard to watch. My neck is trying to scream at me and I am working through the discomfort….part of old age the aches and pains we struggle through. Later we will go find some lunch out. I am thinking Olga’s would be fun. Part of my week back is eating my way through the various foods I used to enjoy. I have had my chili cheese fries, spinach pie and now I am moving onto Olga’s and the like. It is a fun way for me to enter into my time back home, remembering the variety of foods we had available to us on a daily basis and now we don’t have it I find a strong desire to remember through eating my way through the week. Junior and I spent several hours at a Verizon store yesterday. I dropped my phone in my cup of coffee at home and I need a new one. I have it now and am learning to use a more advanced phone. It is a challenge I am not up to date with the newest of fads. It is what it is. I find it strange out in VA when we eat breakfast out we are not given a choice of toast. They serve white bread and that is it. Strange to me but normal out here and I am learning to deal with it. It is what they do and I don’t eat white bread and well. It is what it is. For me the eating when I get back to MI brings back familiar comforting times. So I eat my way through the week remembering and holding onto the memory for the next few months till we come back again. Through the years I had gotten into a habit of meeting a girlfriend for dinner out so we could connect with each other and well it is a pleasant memory to me, the eating out at old familiar restaurants recalling special times with special friends. My activity level has increased with the running around this week and strangely I am sleeping through the night with no wake up for an hour moment. That is awesome and I plan to keep a more active pace when I return home. I am planning on walking outside again since the weather is starting to stay warmer. I love to walk and my walks out here give me so much enjoyment. I see forests, farms, animals and my dogs tag along with me on my walks. By next winter I hope to turn the ellipse around have a mirror in front of the TV and then I will occupy my brain with TV while I walk and I believe I will walk longer. I think I am excited about the smart phone because when I am out and find myself getting bored, I will have the internet available to cruise through and I won’t bother that special guy I am married to. MB will be heading back to VA for a week with us. I look forward to her yearly visit with us. We will do our girl thing and then in a week we will take her home again. This year we are thinking of stopping in Frankenmuth for the day before heading back. It is where we honeymooned and to us it will be fun reliving a time in the past and enjoying the quaint German town. With this trip we will not return for a year. Up until now we have been coming back to the dentist 3 times a year. We have decided that the 3 trips were a bit much and it is time to pare ourselves down. Part of me is hoping that we can take other trips and if not I am good with staying home more. I have learned to be quiet and enjoy staying around the house more. It is refreshing to me these days to not be on the constant go. It would have been hard for the younger “me” but the older Janet is enjoying moving at a much slower pace these days. M and I are older. It feels strange and wonderful at the same time. We’ve been friends for most of our lives and frankly she knows me from back in the day. We often pick up like we’ve not been apart and again it feels nice. We sometimes recall days gone by when we did silly things and we laugh at the younger people we once were. We share our children’s ups and downs. She is a comfort. I was married 24 years the first time and that was a huge struggle as I left that marriage. He had known me for so long, good or bad we had history and it hurt. With M, I find that she knows those old moments to some extent and frankly it feels nice. In the last 15 years Junior and I have made some wonderful friends. Still M knows me from back as children and frankly it is nice sharing moments with her. I enjoy the new life I have with Junior. I no longer live in constant fear of getting hit. He is patient with me when I can’t learn real well. He is kind to me when I am struggling with physical problems and we work through them as a team. We are a team and frankly that is about as awesome as it gets for me. We also have those annoying personality defects but for some reason that is ok. We accept the good the bad and the ugly from each other. Life is sweet and I have a best friend to share life with. I also have a girlfriend who has stuck by me and yup that is wonderful too. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet