"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." Alexis De Tocqueville

I found the above quote on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac today. I liked it. We should all keep this in mind. The government is NOT giving us anything that we are not paying through the nose for.

We stayed home all day today. Good thing. I was really sore again this morning. So I rested as much as possible and just tried to exercise just enough to keep the muscles stretched. I called the nurse to ask what to do about my hip hurting so much. They said that I should back off on the exercising and let the pain be my guide. I am also doing the same thing with the pain meds. I hate taking them but am trying to just take enough to keep things at bay. I feel better tonight than I felt this morning.

Bart called this morning. Yea - good news. Barbara will be going to Germany for the Army as she did when she went to Florida and to Washington DC in the past two years. She will leave in mid August and come back just before Christmas. She and Bart are so excited. They wanted to take a trip to Germany. Barb has uncles and cousins that live there. And now they will just have to pay his way. He will go sometime about half way for three weeks. Similar to the way they handled the other assignments. She is certainly the perfect candidate for the job. She is so competent, she has done this assignment before, she speaks German and she has her passport. This will be so great for them.

We called Jim and Michelle tonight just so we could hear Jim's voice for ourselves. Had a nice comforting visit with both of them. Jim is sorer today than yesterday, which is understandable, but sounded strong. This was reassuring to Dick and me. They sent pictures of the car and it is really a smashed up piece of junk - our poor little Hyundai.

Yesterday when Katie Dippel came to pick up the Mass folder for St. Michael's Mass, she glanced over at my desk and said. " Oh - your statue moved." Roxie had moved. So Roxie got a little extra scritching. Which we all know that she KNOWS she deserves.

I heard a report on how swine flu is projected to spread in the next three years through the US. It reminded me of a "mini" epidemic that hit the Orange County Four Wheelers on one of our jeep runs. We were out in the Borrego Badlands camped in a usual circle. A goodly number of the families were there. Then in drove the Bernicas, one of the families, consisting of two parents and four kids. They pulled in with a camper full of sick. On the way down some of the kids started with a stomach flu that just swept through that family - then it started moving through the rest of the camp. I never saw anything like that. Every family was affected in some way though not everybody got sick. We called it the Pollack Love Bug and it became a Jeep Club Legend.


That is all that I have to report today. Not bad for a slow day at home.

Love
Mary