Birthday boy and a “second opinion”..

I gotta tell ya, it’s getting harder for me to plop myself in front of the computer and try to pull a blog out of my arse these days…Not sure why, buy my brain doesn’t want to cooperate and the creative juices seem to have taken a hike. I always said that if my blog became like a homework assignment, I would cease and desist doing it.  Not sure exactly what the problem is, but it’s a good thing I don’t have to write a newspaper column weekly!…I would  have been fired long ago!!

Last Friday, I took the GMC to Zionsville to help with Aiden’s 6th birthday party…and conveniently I had an appointment with Dr. Michael Moore.  Dr. Moore is an ENT at Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis. More about that later…

When I arrived at their house, Chris was still at work, Aiden was at kindergarten, and Maddox was at day care..I had the house to myself, so I just relaxed and watched some TV…I was just beginning to unwind from the drive when I heard the dreaded sound  of the “Roomba” start up.  Roomba is a battery powered vacuum that starts itself and proceeds to vacuum the floors while no one is home…

Mr. Roomba and I have tangled on occasion.  He likes to attack me as I walk through the room..AND he loves to make me lift my feet up while I am sitting and trying to watch TV…Oh, and not to mention that Mr. Roomba doesn’t use his “inside” voice…He can drown out the sound of the TV almost as good as my nemesis” Burlington Northern Railroad and Amtrack.  This sucker starts vacuuming and he won’t stop until he is finished…which is about an hour or more…SHEESH!

Aiden had a great group at his  birthday party, and there was food galore…

It should be no surprise to those who know me, that I made the Jack O’ Lantern cheese ball and the deviled egg (some with spiders).

Chris and John had ordered a bounce house for the kids to play in…

 

The bounce house arrived a couple hours before the party started and Aiden and his little brother, Maddox, wasted no time in trying it out….I noticed it had a double slide and Aiden and I were planning on going down it together..However, Mother Nature had other plans and it began raining and never stopped..So much for the bounce  house idea.  It was a good thing that at the Wolff cubs at least got in about an hour before the rain hit.

On the downside of a wet and useless bounce house is the issue of what to do with all the kids who had planned on it.  Well, between their basement toy area and the upstairs toy room, everyone was kept entertained…By the time the party was over, it looked like Toys R’ Us threw up in their living room…and their kitchen….and the garage…and the bedrooms…and the dining room…

Chris and John have a lovely home, and I love the neighborhood they live in …It’s called Raintree.

Left is Chris and John’s home..it’s on a corner.  The photo on right is another house in the neighborhood…The leaves were peaked!

Aiden got a skateboard for his birthday…Who in the world would  have gotten him that?..hmmm…HEY! Chris told me he really really wanted one! What‘s a grandma to do? Maybe I should have included a gift card to the local ER.

I stayed with the Wolffs until Tuesday because I had a doc appointment in downtown Indy to see if I should get a second surgery for my Parathyroid Adenoma.. Chris went in to her work late so she could go with me…It’s a good thing she did, too..That huge complex of hospitals and medical buildings is like a maze! Chris knew exactly where to go and how to get there, since she attended school for Vascular Technician at this school.  The school is called IUPUI…standing for Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis…and the peeps that work and go to school there pronounce IUPUI as “OO-EE-POO-EE”..I just like sayin’ it…tehee.

Long story short, I loved Dr. Moore.  Being a learning hospital, I had a couple residents in the room with us too. He told me that he doesn’t want to do anything until next April 21st.  At that time, I will have a CT Scan and see him afterward.  He also wants to read the surgeon’s report of what was done back here.  According to Dr. Moore, this Parathyroid surgery is no “slam dunk”.  He always allows 5  hours for this particular surgery…Sometimes it takes only a short time, but often it is not an easy gland to find and remove…(wished I had known that in July!).  He assured me he would look over my transferred records and we would decide if another surgery was the best route to take…Yep!, I do like this guy..no rushing in with his green scrubs and his little scalpel…

Dennis is back in the cornfields and hopefully he can get it done so we can leave by Nov. 30th for Florida…I am returning to Zionsville IN to babysit the Wolff cubs on Nov. 13th for 4 nights while Chris and John get some much needed adult time going to Jamaica with a few friends.  Then on Nov. 22nd the family will gather here at the Cave Dwellings for an early Thanksgiving Cave-A-Palooza…As you can see, this has already been a whirl wind Fall and I cannot WAIT to hit the road in the Hiker, hearing Dennis say those magic words, “Ice down the cooler and get in the truck!”

 

This is what a great Mom Christie Jane Cave Wolff is…She made the boys a “fort” in the living room for them to play in..…complete with lighting..Actually they had so many toys in their “fort” that THEY couldn’t hardly fit inside!..There is just something really neat about a fort or playhouse.  I grew up in Elgin IL, and we lived about 1 block from an appliance store..My “playhouse” consisted of an old refrigerator box that Dad hauled home…memories..yep…that’s what it’s all about!!!!

“Every family has a story that it tells itself, that it passes on to the children and grandchildren. The story grows over the years, mutates, some parts are sharpened, others dropped, and there is often debate about what really happened. But even with these different sides of the same story, there is still agreement that this is the family story. And in the absence of other narratives, it becomes the flagpole that the family hangs its identity from.”                                   ~ A.M. Homes