Not sure if anyone wants to read what all I have been doing. My mother who is her nineties is going to have mohs surgery next week. It needs to be changed twice a day for two weeks and I have been on the phone continually trying to find help. Her request was to be able to live in her home and its getting very stressful. Nurses won't come out since its not skilled nursing, . I called another agency this morning and the director lives close to her. Hopefully if they can't help, they can give me the name of a qualified person we can hire. The nurses said they can teach someone to help, but they cannot do this as its not skilled nursing. I understand, but its very hard when you live 3 hours away. She has refused to come live with us, and we are trying very hard to keep her happy at home. I was up in the night looking on the internet for help in her small town.

jannie hope you're getting better..it took me several trips going an alternate route before i had the courage to drive where i got rear ended seveal months ago... sue, when i worked for ma bell (in san diego) that was a common complaints..here, it's squirrels that do the most damage...you't think with all tech they could get a wire that didn't taste good! glad you're back... not much going on in mi..weds was b squish day. the rest of this week has been getting dh's laundry all done early. actaully he'll be closer to you next week. they're having a mini elevator convention at purdue u for 3 days. he and the head mechanic are attending...i probably could have gone but would much rather stay home with the cats than sit in a hotel room, lol...

wish i had the commercial sized back up generator i should have bought in 2004 lol. we are in the orlando burbs and have gone as long as 24 days w/o power (aug 13 04). we go often enough that Progress Energy has a speed dial on my cell phone. we have a generator, just not one big enough to run the huge A/C unit, clothes dryer, fridge etc...all at one time. i own pretty much every accessory for going w/o power except for a new digital portable TV, have looked at them but for $200 for a 4" screen i can go w/o and use the internet. our other portable TV does not work now, of course. the state has already said that even in the event of a hurricane they will not be broadcasting in analog, so w/o a digital TV you will get nothing here. in 2004-05 we had an awesome thread going on the FL gardening forum on gardenweb that was 52 pages printed. i printed it but am at work right now. no one knows more about long-term power outages than floridians :-( one thing we do before hurricanes is cook ALOT of food in the stand-up freezer and i bake ALOT. baked goods are neccessary for bribing linesmen and help lol. good coffee also helps. we have 2 huge chain saws w/ 2 spare chains for each. in 04 we could not even get out of our subdivision because of all the trees down on the road in/out, everyone in the neighborhood had to chainsaw thru that. i always have plenty of plastic silverware, paperplates, plastic cups etc...on hand, along w/ foil pans. during hurricane season i do not let laundry pile up. a nice accessory to keep for short outages (1 day) is a power inverter and keep a spare car battery always charged. you can run several lamps, fans and 2 laptops on that lol. and atleast here in FL when it's all over and done w/ be prepared for significant increases ea yr to your power bill to cover repairs & upgrades in the state LOL last yr was 17% increase, this yr 25%, next is 30%....while expecting service to go down. until 3 hurricanes in 04 we'd never lost power, since then it's common and in 5 yrs the bill has doubled while useage has gone down to save $$. ~ liz

Excellent. Do they still sell those plastic toy lawnmowers? Gotta ease 'em into it ya know...