No, no, I am still here. I had a great vision for this email I wanted to write you about my expereince with Idlewild but I am still working on it. It is a biggie, I say. But hopefully I will finish it this weekend as I am going to have lots of time. Grandma fell and broke a vertebra and had another mini-stroke she is in the hosptial. Of course, Daddy is trying to do all he can but it is so hard for him. So, I am planning on going up tomorrow afternoon, spending some time with Grandma, John's band is playing in Little Rock Saturday night, so I will get a hotel room, visit again with Grandma on Sunday morning and then head back. Neall is going up this afternoon after work to meet up with Daddy. I hope this way, Daddy can go once or twice during the week and then next week we can do it again. As selfish as this sounds, I hope our Washington trip isn't affected, since I think it will be so good for daddy.
John got tickets again for the floor of the Grizzlies game and didn't want to go! How crazy is he? So, I took Tara. The girls sitting beside us left at the beginning of the fourth quarter, so I got their tickets and Dan and Natalie, who also were given tickets at work, came and sat on the floor with us during the fourth quarter. It was much fun. Here are the girls:
Everything else is toiling along as usual, I suppose. John is still driving me nuts, Work is always an experience, all the basics. I did see this article in the paper that they are looking for the most inspriational women in Memphis. Can you only guess who I nominated??? In case they don't select you on the technicality that you don't live in Memphis, here is what I sent them. I had to cut so much out since they only allowed it to be so long....
The most inspirational woman in my life never lived in Memphis but her impact has made its way to the Bluff City. Some of my earliest memories are of my mom caring for her mother as she suffered through a debilitating disease for twenty years. Vacations and trips were scheduled around arranging for a temporary caregiver, her best friends usually, and evenings and mornings always involved my brother and me tagging along as momma helped her mom do the most basic of tasks, including getting in and out of bed, into a chair for the day and of course, as every Southern woman knows, putting on lipstick. She would later go on to have a sense of guilt for missing out on a lot of our childhood but I know that through it all she taught us the most precious lesson of all: love. It is not always pretty and it is not always fun, sometimes it is just downright hard, unfair and messy, but through it all, it is precious and an inspiration.
I was a sophomore in college when my grandma left us. I remember hurting so much that I thought if I started to cry, I would never stop. Momma was heartbroken and told me “There is just something about losing your mom that never stops hurting”. But then over time, it was like she became a new person. All the years that she and Daddy stayed close to home to care for grandma, all the years of being there first thing in the morning, at lunchtime, and the last thing in the evening, and all the years of watching your inspiration and mentor suffer were gone. Momma shed some of her inhibitions that next year and just kept on throwing them off for the next ten years. She lost some weight, started buying clothes she liked (instead of my hand-me-downs), went on trips with her friends (forming the Traveling Buddies) and became a dynamic duo with Daddy. You would be hard pressed to find them at home on a weekend, whether it be going to the movies or to see the Hogs play, they were not ones to sit idly by. For years, Momma worked in the Wynne (AR) Public Schools, the majority of which at the high school library. Being around teenagers was good for her—and them—and gave her a chance to have fun everyday at work, something many of us never have the opportunity to do. The students loved her teasing and funny character and she never missed the chance to show out.
When her aunt moved into an assisted living facility, mom was right there in the thick of it all, stopping by to visit and cheer up the residents. She and her Red Hat friends would stop by—bringing hats for all of the ladies!—and sing Christmas carols or drop off candy or just visit. Being retired meant being seen and being exciting! Trips with the Traveling Buddies could be just a shopping visit to Memphis (where once she looked with at a salesperson with horror asking “what is that thing?” and the reply was “Ma’am, that’s a range, would you like me to show you how to use it?”) or the entire month of January spent in a beach house in Gulf Shores. Momma has taught me how to have the best of friends, how to love them and appreciate them for everything they are and everything they want to be, and how important it is that they know you love them. She has taught me how to enjoy friends that you only see occasionally and the friends of those you love, since all of them make a difference in your life.
Momma died at the beginning of 2006, only 41 days after she was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme astrocytoma—a brain tumor. But every day she continues to inspire me and teach me. Her friends have become my friends and my support. My friends have become to see her as example for their lives—and our incredibly close relationship as something they want with their mothers. It’s unreal that the one word “friend” can be a mother, aunt or sister; someone your age, half your age, or twice your age; or it can be the one person who even though you know that there is no blood relation, you are convinced that you both share the same heart. So now, my pretty, fun, hard, unfair and messy love for her is the most precious inspiration of all.
There are stories and words that I could never tell you or anyone to show how inspriring you are to me and so many other people. No matter what, you are always right here,
More,
It is uncannily similar to National Lampoon's European Vacation when they did the run through all the museums after winning the trip on Pig in a Poke. This must have been foreshadowing on your part when you named him this but it has been great fun and as Neall keeps saying, "Tara we have to get going, we only have so many hours to see the nation's capital city!"But it has been great fun. On the run past the mall, I was able to get this photo of the cherry blossoms. Don't tell Neall or he will realize that I actually could have been running faster through it all. 
