Pottery Chatroom Board

Hi all,
Just a quick note to let you know that I am ok. I have had a rough couple of months. I decided to indulge myself, and just stayed in bed....not really, but I did sleep more than usual. My younger sister passed out in late June, and broke her ankle in 2 places. She is doing ok for now. Then my youngest son, Jimmy, who has MS, had a relapse. His meds quit working, and he got an infection where gave himself shots in the abdomen. He had 2 very angry sores and needed IV antibiotics. The heat has really bothered him this year, and he passes out when he gets too hot. He is better now, but that doesn't keep mom from worrying. The humidity has gotten to me this summer. Every time I went outside, I had a hard time breathing. I had severe pains when I took a deep breath. I knew it wasn't my heart because I had an echocardiogram the middle of July. It was a bronchial allergy thing, and after a shot, I quit hurting. Then my older brother who is 83 passed out, fell and broke his hip. When he got to the hospital, they found that he was 2 pints low on blood, had a staph infection on his heel, and his pacemaker battery was low. He spent over a month in the hospital. He is also doing better now. All of it together just put me into a place where I didn't want to be, so I had an extended pitty party.

I got so far behind in my gardening and everything else. We did have a bumper crop of tomatoes and squash, and kept both o f our closest neighbors supplied.

Bob and our neighbor who lives just behind us decided to team up and start a business. Back in 1968, Bob had made a garden tool, and everyone who saw it wanted one, so he decided to patent it and start making them. The neighbor had all the welding equipment, and had been laid off his job, so he set it up in our almost empty workshop, and they went to work. He did the welding, Bob did the cleaning, and I painted the handles on 40 of them. Our town has a festival along with homecoming weekend, so we got a spot and spent the 19th in the wind selling them. The paper had a very nice write-up on the Thursday before. We got 58 made, and sold 46 of them. We were both wiped out for a couple of days. We called it a Whoop-T-Do special, and painted the handles green for our school colors. We barely came out even on the costs, so we are going to up our prices on them now. Several people told us we were too cheap.

Well, it is after 1 AM here, so I need to get to bed. First I have to wrap and package 3 of them to send to South Carolina to Bob's niece. She had already bought 6 of them, and when her friends saw them, she needed more. I will try to do better at getting on here.

Ann