Joan on the Road...of Life

My heart is still pounding a little faster after watching our Friday night movie. We try to alternate who picks the movie. Tonight was Jim's choice..."We Were Soldiers" starring Mel Gibson, Sam Elliot and Madeline Stowe. It's the true story of a three day battle, 1965, Vietnam. Lt. Col. Hal Moore led the 1st Division of the Seventh Cavalry into battle...a bloody, and according to Moore, a realistic view of what happened. The U.S won thhis tragic battle.

We started the movie as we started our steak dinner. Not exactly the right thing to do. I had to turn my head at some of the scenes. I like Mel Gibson's acting and I think he did a heck of a job portraying Moore. It's a very intense, emotional and unnerving movie...one that we won't watch again for a few years.

There's a haunting song played over a few scenes where the battle is raging but you can't hear the gunfire. You hear this haunting song of Sgt McKenzie. From what I gather it is sung by the composer, Joseph McKenzie, who wrote it in honor of his grandfather who died at the hand of the Germans in WWII. Many veterans ask that this be played at their funerals. It sends chills down my spine.

Now it's 10 PM and I need my Sleepytime tea to relax and unwind, thankful for all those who have laid their life on the line for our freedom.

Posted by Joan at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My public loves me! Do you know how good that feels? How much fun that is? I do! ...because several of you contacted me and encouraged me to keep on writing. Beth said maybe it's not a travel blog but it is a life experience blog. Thanks so much to all of you for letting me know your thoughts. Char suggested I write a book. I always wanted to and do you know I have 785 entries. I'll bet that's enough for a book. If only I wrote on "Blogger" because they now have a function to publish your blog as a hardcover book.Wow!

So I checked out my Blog Statistics site today just to see how I've fared over the last few months. Amazing! I average about 75 unique hits per day and had 596 unique visitors in April. In March I had 1200! Now that may not seem like much to you but to me it is "no small potatoes"!

Then I checked my Google Adsense account! Amazing! :( I've probably had the ads on the right side for 4 years and so far I've earned $68!!! Not enough to live on! But I'm going to investigate and see if/how I could increase that. Guess I have to write every day about stuff that generates new ads every day. Oh well..I can only write about what motivates me and comes from my heart :)

Today is soup day here in Hemet. Temps never got above 55 today with a strong west wind. Time to go cut up the veggies.

Posted by Joan at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's time! I apologize for not writing for so long. When I read other blogs I worry and wonder what's happened to my online friends when the entries stop. But I also understand why that happens :) I just could not formulate my thoughts enough to write and tell you what's going on.

The day after my last entry Jim went into the hospital, sort of his choice, to have a drain tube put in his lung to drain off fluid. That went pretty well but he had a reaction to antibiotics and wound up with a nasty intestinal upset and ran a fever for a couple of weeks. The upside of the whole thing was that they analyzed just about every fluid in his body and found no sign of infection or cancer! But...he was in hospital for five days, lost 10 pounds and came out pretty weak.

At the same time I came down with the nasty flu and felt so lousy I stayed overnight with son Jim and then came home to rest while Jim tended to his Dad. In retrospect, I think we both were not as recovered from all our medical escapades of the last year and as strong as we thought we were. It's only in the last week that I've stopped coughing after a couple of rounds of antibiotics and many doses of cough syrup.

Today, six weeks later, we're beginning to feel pretty good. But a lot has happened and we've made a few choices about the future. Biggest choice was to stop traveling for a year. Yes, you read that right. Why? Bottom line it's a stress and financial issue.

You know, we've been dealing with this cancer issue since 2004, a year after we hit the road. Unless you live with cancer you don't know the toll it takes on brain space, energy, and stress levels. We have been very, very fortunate. But recently I've felt like something happened to my "get up and go"! Every time we talked about packing up and moving I felt high levels of anxiety. I kept thinking it would go away but it didn't until we decided to just stop for awhile.

Then, over the last couple of years we have pampered ourselves a lot. So we need to just stop, save money on gas, economize and regroup. We signed a one year lease here at Golden Village Palms which saves about 10% on rent. It's a pretty good place to pause! There are 3 large heated pools surrounded by palm trees, an air conditioned workout room, plenty of roads to walk or bike, and lots of shrubs and trees with birds and bunnies. The down side of staying here is that Hemet is HOT in the summer.But we'll get through that.

So should I continue "Joan on the Road"? I think so. It won't be a travel blog for awhile but it has become my "life diary"....I don't want it to stop here :)

Posted by Joan at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)