Margo is getting along pretty good. Her father was up to visit early in the week to make sure she is OK. Her father turns 88 in mid June. He just traded his last year's model Ford Focus for a new a Ford Fusion. He and Scott spent a while trying to figure out how to turn off the emergency blinkers. There are few knobs or buttons--most things are controlled from a touch screen computer.
The Polk County Fair book is available online and probably in local banks. You can find it at http://www.polkcountyfair.com/Fairbook.php Entries are due June 12th for the Fair beginning July 24th (entry day). Entry cost is $6 and you can enter from 1 to 23 items for that $6. Plus it allows you free entry to the fairgrounds for the whole 4 days of the fair! Not only that, you may win some ribbons and money. Margo and I always enter a bunch of things and more than make back our $6.
This year, the Sterling Laketown and Eureka Historical Society hosts the Red School House on the fairgrounds for the Polk Co History Society. We are hoping to get each of the local history societies to participate with an exhibit and some time in the school house. It is a great place to rest up as the only air conditioned area at the fair with free ice water and cookies and a chance to visit an 1850s school house!
Down here in Pine Island for a few days, to make sure Margo gets into radiation smoothly, I am taking it easy and waiting for next week's warmup to head back to the cabin and bottle 30-40 gallons of syrup waiting for me. We ran out of wood slabs for cooking sap, so have to remember to order another load this spring.
I have been off of medications for Myasthenia Gravis for a month now waiting to find out if I am in true remission or if MG will come back. I was taking prednisone to stop the immune system from making the bad antibodies that attack my nerve-to-muscle connection and make me weak. So far the MG has not come back, but the withdrawal from prednisone has been difficult, as my muscles and joints ache and are sore so without ibuprofen or other pain killers, I walk around like a much older man than I really am. Supposedly, my adrenal glands have been shut off by the prednisone I took for 10 months to stop the MG, and they have to get started again to produce the normal cortisol that will again let me feel only the normal 66 year old aches and pains rather than what I have right now. I am waiting for that to happen and also waiting to see if MG returns. Another month or two and something will happen--just uncertain what. In the meantime if you see me creaking around, offer me a couple of aspirin.
We had another 2 inches of snow this morning on top of the 16 inches yesterday. Quite a few broken off branches to clean up and still light snow coming down. We set a record here in the Rochester area for most snow ever in May. The snow doesn't really bother us too much, but yesterday, having the electricity off from 5 am until noon showed us how unprepared we are for losing the juice. Our only heat is a propane furnace that requires electricity; our rural well requires electricity; we found a couple of scented candles and flashlights with the batteries already haven eaten out the metal, so need to make a trip to the local hardware and stock up. Probably a generator would be the most useful--although we would have to put outlets and plugs for the furnace and well. Luckily, in a few days we will forget all about it and be just as unprepared next time.
