RIP Gina Strolberg, among other things

Those cabinets are beautiful. Perfect. Amazing. Too nice to be in my house. But there is not a sink to be found, and so I shall abandon ship again and visit Rikki and the Children's Museum. So pretty, but I can't wait til Friday night when I can have my house back. Can't. Wait. Not a lot of homeschooling going on, either, but we'll just deal with that. I am sure the kids don't mind.

I was going to go visit my friend Margy, but one of her kids has the chicken pox, and I'm not sure if two of my kids are vaccinated yet, and chicken pox and childbirth just doesn't sound good. I can't nurse a child very well when I just had a baby.

We hear my MIL is in the hospital, but we don't know how serious it is. We'll try to get in touch today. They did not call us directly, so we don't really know anything yet.

My mom emailed me to tell me two things: be ready in case the baby comes too fast, since that almost happened to my mom with her second. She was five minutes away from a side of the road birth. That same day she'd seen the doctor, and he said it wasn't even close! However, she did have toxemia, and I don't, so I think I'm ok. But I will put some garbage bags in both cars anyway, and some newspaper this weekend. I wonder how my dad would have handled that? Of course, he had midwifed cows, sheep and goats, so maybe he would have done ok. I dunno. I don't think he likes it when people are bleeding, unless it's him, and then he hardly notices.

The other thing was that my friend Gina Strolberg passed away. When I was 13, she gave me riding lessons (English) in exchange for me feeding her horse before I went to school. She was good teacher and had a pretty together life at the time. She was probably my age at the time. Early 30's. She was a very nervous, somewhat paranoid person, but she loved animals. She was a good rider. Eventually, her earlier demon, addiction, came back to haunt her, and after a divorce, she went downhill very, very fast. I saw her only a couple of times after that. She never had any children, which was probably a very good thing. She did have a very positive impact on me, as I did well in 4-H shows and went to state because of her lessons. Her horse came to stay with my folks a few years ago. My mom found out she'd passed October 28th because her brother and sister came from Chicago to take care of things and see the horse, Flash. My kids get to ride Flash whenever we visit. I guess they spread her ashes on our property! Isn't that crazy? So now when I go for a walk on the trail my mom directed them to, I'll always think of Gina. I hope God had lots of mercy saved up and gave her some serious rest. She really, really needed it. I expect she was in her early 50's, if that. And to those who think we should just legalize drugs and be done with it, phooey on them.

I love you, Gina, and I'd give you a hug again if I could.