Okay people, life is not fair. Last Sunday, Bill went into the hospital because of a badly infected foot. He has diabetes, and had two open sores, one on each foot caused by calluses falling off. They didn't heal and didn't heal because of the diabetes and then they became infected--badly infected. He had a bad fever, which played havoc with his heart and kidneys AND of course the blood sugar, so he is in ICU. The doc came in today and told us that parts of both feet would have to be removed, and that with the surgery, time to heal and rehab, he would probably be out of work for three months. The company he works for was wonderful when he had his by-pass surgery (this has NOT been a good year for him) and gave him disability and kept his position open, but I'm not so sure they're going to do it twice in one year. I'm kind of in a panic because we're in a strange place and I have no real skills and getting a job that would pay well enough to live on would be very hard. Any way, pray for us--I know the Lord will bless us, but not knowing how he will bless us is going to be difficult. Maybe this is the start of a new life. Other than that small problem, life has been great. I'm very content here in Memphis, Shannon is doing well at PetSmart, and Bill and I hope we will be here for a while. We are making good friends in the ward and they are very very good to us. We are awaiting the birth of our 11th grandchild, a boy, any time now. Seth and Jennie are due on Oct 5th up in Portland, OR. We can hardly wait, but I think his mom is probably more anxious than we are! His name will be Blake Saturn Steyskal. The name Saturn is very special in our family--that was Bill's father's middle name. Anyway, stand by........

As if life weren't hectic enough, we've added a new person to our family. We aquired another dog last Saturday. This one won't be with us for long because Shannon got her to train and then give to Eric, who has been trying to get her to give him Sara for the past year. She's doing it in self defense! Meanwhile, we have two dogs lolloping around the house instead of one. She,s a lab mix, about five months old and is a rescue. Apparently here in the south, the country people don't believe in spaying or neutering their pets, so when they get a litter of pups they can't get rid of they just ditch them at the side of the road. A lady found five little pups near death near her home in Mississippi. She rescued them and four of them survived. We got one of the little girls. Her name is going to be Marion, a name for which neither Shannon or I want any part of. This is Eric's idea of a good name for a dog. She's being named after Marion Morrison, aka John Wayne. Go figure. Anyway, she's also been abused, so she was a quivering mass of black hair when we got her home. She's been with us for five days now and she's a different dog. Both Shannon and I have been working with her and she'll even let us rub her tummy now. Am I having fun yet?????

I'm not so sure about this

This is my first time at this blogging thing. I just created a face book account tonight too. I feel like I'm on a roller coaster that only goes down, faster and faster until it crashes. Hope I can keep up with all this techno stuff!

Bill and I are in Memphis, TN, for those of you who have lost track of us. We are only supposed to be here for six months, but we feel very strongly that we will be here longer. We love it here, our ward is great, it's a pretty place and we feel very much at home here. At our age, of course, we should be very settled, with a house almost paid for, a nice retirement nest egg in the bank and a house full of stuff from 37 years of marriage. That's the way it's supposed to work, right? We don't know where we'll be six months from now, we HAVE no house, the retirement nest egg fell out of the nest and we are starting over from scratch trying to furnish our kitchen and rest of the house. Can you imagine not having a wire whisk, or an 8" x 8" baking pan, or a cheese grater, or any number of things I've had to buy lately? We had to buy a bed before we could move into our house. The ward has been VERY generous and we have been given nearly every thing we need. We also go to garage sales, and the want ads have become required reading every day. We've got most of what we need, now we just need to fill in some small things. I have no pictures on this blog yet--I still have to learn how to post them! Be patient with me!