Good Stuff.

So for Valentine's Day my wife gave me the Robert Plant/Allison Krauss album. "Raising Sand". It really is very good. I listened to the CD for the first time on Thursday, the twelfth. She gave it to me early so I could listen to it on my overnight Pittsburgh run. The mechanic down at The Dock put a new stereo in my tractor. I don't know how he got the company to pay for it. I didn't ask either. Sometimes you just don't need to know. You know?

The album is very good. I have always been an Allison Krauss fan. Her voice just gets to me. Robert Plant. I'm a die hard old Zep fan. It's Robert Fu#*in' Plant man! Talk about a guy who knows how to get the job done. He has really grown older gracefully. It's hard to imagine him doing Black Dog now. I just mean that all that good stuff was then. All this new good stuff is now.

So now it's the First of March. I wrote the above a couple of weeks ago. I have not sat down at this keyboard since then. Except to do the taxes. TurboTax. I bought it at Wal-Mart a few days ago. It makes life easier, and it's cheaper than going to a place to have it done. All those places do is fill out an on screen form, like TurboTax. We will actually get some money back this year. I had extra held from my paycheck. Last year we had to pay.

So we started filling the living room up with house plants. My wife's idea. I never told her about the reader comment on the last post. Plants are nice. Plants make you feel good. Spring is really trying to bust through the winter. I'm going to grill steaks later today.

My wife said I get to decide what we do with our tax refund this year. I'm going to put new tires on our old Jeep. Anything else it might need as well. I think I'll leave the rest of it alone. We should have a couple hundred left after tires and a whatever else the old Jeep might need. (I'm thinking exhaust hangers. Got a little vibration coming from back there.) It's nice to have that option.

We are laughing more these days. She is feeling better. She still gets those hot flashes. That's the Tamoxifen that causes that.

I was on the phone with Beetus on Friday afternoon. I was dog assed tired from the work week. Laughing like a couple of idiots, me and Beetus were. Laughing at stupid nothings just like when we were sixteen and stoned. It's better these days. We are older now. We get tired easier than we did back then. Tired is as good as stoned. Tired is better than stoned. Tired is free and legal.

So my wife hears me laughing in the kitchen. She knows I must be on the phone with Beetus. She comes in and starts just like she always did, but hasn't done for awhile because of the whole cancer thing. She starts on both of us. She's really good at breaking balls. She's like a Zen Master of ball breaking. Me and Beetus, we can't keep up. Me and Beetus are totally out of our league. The best we can do is make the occasional pathetic attempt. All that does is leave the door open for more. Beetus is laughing so hard he's crying. Me too. Beetus is very happy about all of this. Beetus just said, she's back.

Yeah. She's back. I hope it's all here to stay. It's so good to hear her laugh. It's so good to see that sparkle in her eyes. She has another appointment coming up. A complete round of diagnostic stuff to see where she's at. I'm praying, with my fingers crossed. Praying that they find nothing else. Praying that she's beat this thing. Beat it like a drum baby.