Oh, crap.

My sister-in-law Lesa got here last Monday, TT & I took her out to Aunt Joe's house and spent a couple of days. We left her there, then I went back on Sunday, spent the night and brought Lesa back to my house.  Fred and I took her to LAX this morning. Very VERY cool time. I've so enjoyed having both Bob and then her here lately. He came out a few weeks ago and did pretty much the same thing, except Lesa has better taste than Bob and she stayed mostly at Aunt Joe's.  Bob stayed with me and we never stopped laughing - it was the first time since that year back in 1964 that we've spent any time alone together. I'm not kidding. 
TT and Bob are very good friends and have always been close as adults.  Jill and Bob ran in the same circles at school and spent a lot of time together for years.  I'm so happy that he and I (and now Lesa and I) are getting our time together now.  Fred also has never gotten to visit with Bob that much either and we haven't stopped talking about their visits. I'm glad they came out here and got some love from me - I sure have it to give.

In between taking Lesa out and bring her back in from Aunt Joe Grantham's house, Fred discovered the sewer tank in the trailer did not drain when we dumped it at the dump station on the way home from Glamis WEEKS ago. No biggie, Fred just started draining it into the sewer drain in our driveway. About 30 minutes later he checked on it and not only had it not drained, it came up through the toilet and filled the trailer with about six inches of BAD, well, sewer water.
Worse than you can possibly imagine. When Fred opened the trailer door, it poured down the stairs all over him. Cancer boy. Please don't touch other people's feces boy. It was about 9am on Saturday morning and I have (had) those cool rain boots I've worn to Erika's house, so I put those on, tucked my pajamas in them and cleaned the trailer. We were done about 330pm and Ryan (Katie's boyfriend) sent his mom's boyfriend over and he cleaned the carpet that was rolled out on the driveway. It was epic. It was a shitty day. We will go buy a new toilet for our trailer when we return from Europe.

So, Europe. We are flying to Madrid on Tuesday and staying there until Sunday. Stephanie's school is over then and we'll see what is going on around Madrid.

It's gonna take us a day just to go to El Prado Museum.

It's the largest art museum in the world. It houses more than 8,600 paintings, of which they exhibit less than 2,000 because of lack of space available. I cannot WAIT go. Stephanie has gone back to see the Velazquez "Las Meninas" ("Maids of Honor") painting again just to make sure she looks at it enough. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Meninas

Plus we'll see Botticelli, Rafael, Rubens, Goya, El Greco, Rembrandt, Raphael, and Katie's favorite, Hieronymus Bosch.

Then we're gonna drive around Europe until June 2nd and see what else there is.  The original plan was to drive down to Barcelona, then along the south of France, say hi to the movie stars in Cannes, look at Monaco, then see what they have down there in Italy...we wanna stop at all the major stops.  But now Stephanie's not going to go to Paris for the weekend, so do we go there instead? Or in addition?  We drove 4,000 miles throughout the southern states.  The next year we drove 2,500 miles through New England. 

Oh, yeah, Fred...  Fred?  Fred is fine.  He is wonderful and amazing. 
He walks into Dr. Janis' office every two weeks, rips open his shirt to expose his IV portocath and says, "Gimme all you've got!"  But then he pays for his cockiness and good nature.  But not that much.  He doesn't have extreme nausea, he never has to throw up. And he's still quite hairy.  Quite.  He has a few thin spots and shiny patches, but the cop mustache remains.  He does have a lot of exhaustion and minor bothers: Tender gums, sensitive mouth (ketchup is as spicy as he goes), heartburn and stuff like that.  Nothing compared to what it could be. Nothing compared to our friends and family that have or have had cancer.

Do you remember the CEA count post?  When he was first diagnosed in October, Fred's CEA count was "too numerous to count." The default is 500 but it at least that - maybe thousands. In December his CEA count had dropped to 350. That was very remarkable.  In January it went down to 60.8.  Now his CEA is 25.  25!  We got this news a few weeks ago and we were pretty stoked about it. We should have shared it and I'm sorry.   We've been so crazy busy. But you care and it was rude of me.

Katie is very busy at school.  It's all night classes and she comes home totally amped and wants to talk.  I pretend I'm Virginia and just nod and sleep. Fred has been a much better listener lately, I think.  She is staying home while Fred & I go to Europe.  That will be fun if you ask me.  Well, it would for me. I've never been by myself for three weeks!

Stephanie is looking forward to our arrival in Spain.  She has so much to tell us and can't wait to start our trip. You can read all about her on her blog.

I love each and every one of you, individually,
xx Jodie