Plenty to keep my mind occupied

If you’ve ever had anyone steal your stuff, you’ve probably had the fantasy of seeing the dirtball, looking them in the eye, and wondering what kind of dirtball that person is just before he goes off to jail.   Well, Monday night just as the Former Boyfriend and I were getting ready to crawl in bed we got a call from ADT Security Systems that some dirtball had set off the alarm at the lot.  Luckily, the security camera caught the whole break in and gave the Sheriff’s Department plenty to work with. It cost five hundred dollars in repairs and a sleepless night but Brandon Schlueb, well known to local law enforcement and currently on parole was caught for the break in at our lot and two other local businesses.  Maybe fantasy will become reality and he will be headed back to jail very soon.

On Thursday my oldest brother, Roger fell getting out of his car.  His son Allen found him in the garage about 45 minutes after he had fallen.  His blood sugar was off and he was unable even with Allen’s help to get back on his feet.  A call to 911, a ride to the Emergency Department, and a two night stay in the hospital and Roger is doing much better.  Many prayers were answered.

So on Saturday we got a chance to relax and enjoy a neighborhood cookout.  We have new neighbors Shannon and Gary and they hosted the party and we got to view their renovated home.  It was so much fun to see so many neighbors all together and meet some new friends.  We’re very, very lucky to have Shannon and Gary in our neighborhood.  We’re looking forward to getting to know them better.

Labor Day weekend is the annual Greek Festival.  It is another “Can’t Miss” event for us.  We headed down on Sunday after the rain walked around and ate some amazing Greek food.  Father Kokanos was kind enough to take time out of his very busy weekend for a photo in his Team Gyro t shirt.  

Opa!

We’ll soon be heading down the road, and posting a bunch of pictures.  But keep the prayers coming, I have an appointment with my Oncologist the day after we return.  We now live blood test to blood test, scan to scan.  Love you all.

Who cares if it's 90 degrees and 90% humidity

We’re having a great weekend.  As soon as The Former Boyfriend got off work we headed to Prairie Oaks Metro Park for Wagfest.  It’s an annual event created as a means to celebrate human-canine relationships, or as they call it BFF (Best Furry Friends).  Prairie Oaks park has over 500 hundred acres and the place was packed.  I took a picture, but the photo doesn’t do the event justice.  Sponsors gave away tons of coupons plenty of dog treat samples, and even took family/pet photographs but with temperatures near 90 Tillie was especially fond of the doggie ice bath.

After Wagfest we went to Plain City for their annual Classic Car Cruise In.  There were some really nice vehicles (I loved the Firebird with the shifting paint) and again the event was much larger than we expected.  

As for me, I was to have an appointment with Dr. Kanodia on Monday the 25th, but that has been rescheduled for mid-September so I’m celebrating two weeks of no doctor appointments- not even scar tissue release. (Which is going well) And for an early anniversary present, The Former Boyfriend and I are planning on packing up the dogs and heading for the open road for a few days. That's a couple weeks away and you know we’ll post photos.

A weeks worth of pictures

First let me apologize to anyone who spent an hour of your life watching 20/20.  Dr. Kanodia has helped me so much I wanted everyone to hear his message of health and healing.  I knew the program wasn’t going to focus on Dr. Kanodia, but after eating up his entire day filming when he could have been seeing patients, I expected a little more from the show than one minute.  Should have known better with television.

So as promised this is going to be a week in pictures starting with Billy and Lisa…it’s Billy who we have counted on so much this past year.  Every time I had a doctor appointment (and there were a lot) Billy worked at the lot so the Former Boyfriend could be with me.  That took so much stress off of both of us there is no way to thank them. Monday night Billy and Lisa had us over for dinner. It was delicious and very much in keeping with my limited diet.

Lisa and Bill

Next up is the Former Boyfriend and Rose Thursday night at the Columbus All Breed Training Club.  Rose can look so obedient for a picture.

Rose is the one on all fours

Saturday night was one of my favorite events of the year.  The Stratford Ecological Center’s Enchanted Evening.  This was the 4^th year for the dinner and we believe it was the best ever.  It’s the first year that it has sold out and Stratford has more corporate donations this year.  We’ll hear the final total this week, but they expect to make over $20,000 and had over 200 people attend.

At Stratford

Sunday was Jandy’s (Jan Dawson and Andy Reinhart) annual Garlic Festival.  They hold the event every year on their breath taking farm near Bellefontaine.  It’s a can’t miss event for us and it’s made even more special because we get to spend a little time with Gene and Carol Logsdon.  If you spend 5 minutes with me you know just how much I love and respect this couple.

With Gene and Carol

This week it’s more heart rate variability monitoring and scar tissue release. Oh, we'll find something fun to do too.

Love you all!  J&J

Something worth sharing, and thinking about

For those of you who know the Former Boyfriend’s Godson Jack Crowley, …this article was in the Columbus Dispatch … we love Jack, we’re proud of him and  we are SO grateful that he is home safe.

Jack in Afghanistan (with a dog that looks very much like our Tillie)

His medal nests in a box that’s tucked into a drawer somewhere. Maybe it is at his parents’ house, maybe it’s at his Grandview apartment.  Jack Crowley doesn’t really know.

He pulls out his Purple Heart for military balls or a comrade’s funeral. Otherwise, the shrapnel scars that show and the many wounds that do not are reminder enough of the violence that befell him and his unit in Helmand province, Afghanistan, at about 1 a.m. on June 13, 2012.

Crowley, a Navy corpsman back then, and six others in his group of 10 were wounded as they returned to base after a routine reconnaissance mission. The men stepped on explosives planted by the enemy.  Critically wounded himself — with his medical bag obliterated by the bomb and his eardrums blown from the blasts — he tended to his comrades in total darkness.

One Marine died; two others lost both their legs. Crowley is not yet over it. But today, National Purple Heart Day, he takes a small measure of comfort in the gratitude of a nation.


“People hear about things, but I don’t think most of them really understand what happens to us over there,” said Crowley, 26, who left the military in March. “They just can’t.” This year, city and county officials decided to make a fuss over Purple Heart Day, an annual commemoration for the estimated 1.9 million American troops who have been awarded the medal that goes only to those wounded or killed by an enemy in combat.

The LeVeque Tower, City Hall and Columbus Commons are all lighted in purple this week. City officials on Monday designated the corner of Front and Broad streets as Purple Heart Way. And yesterday, the Franklin County commissioners designated Franklin an official Purple Heart county.To cap off the week’s events, the inaugural Fallen 15 Purple Heart 5K race will be run through the Arena District starting at Arch Park at 9 p.m. on Friday.

Crowley plans to run and hopes others will, too.  “Just because you’re beat and hurt doesn’t mean you have to sit in a chair in your house and feel sorry for yourself and complain about your life,” he said. “I’ve got to stay active, man. I’ve got to live.”
Others, such as Todd Fewell, will be at the finish line to greet those who cross.  Fewell is commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart Buckeye 500 Chapter in Columbus (with 174 members) and is retired from the military after a 24-year U.S. Air Force career. He earned his Purple Heart on March 31, 1990, when terrorists fired on his two-vehicle convoy heading up a mountain road in Honduras.  The bullets ripped through his leg but he recovered. He counts himself among the lucky.  He hopes those who show up to support the race Friday night remember those for whom battle didn’t end so well.  “You’ve heard, ‘All gave some, some gave all?’  ” asked Fewell, 48, of Reynoldsburg. “Well, it’s the ones who gave all that too often are forgotten.”

A new local veterans organization called the Fallen 15 is organizing the 5K.  Some Purmission is to get veterans — especially younger ones from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — engaged.  This race is only the start of the movement, Jackson said.
“These young veterans, especially, don’t go to the VFWs or the Amvets posts as much,” Jackson said. “So we want events and groups and activities where they can come together with one another but also with the community at large. They get the camaraderie and the action, and the community ple Heart recipients will be walking or running and others will be at the finish line to hand out the medals, said Marshall Jackson, a co-founder of the Fallen 15 and an Army veteran who did two tours of Iraq. He now is a major and works full time for the Ohio National Guard.  Part of the Fallen 15’s gets to show its appreciation. We’re all in this together, right?’

The article was written by Holly Zachariah and published in the Columbus Dispatch on August 7, 2014.