Still inhabiting planet Earth

I've had all these posts swirling around in my head, and absolutely no time to put anything together. Well, I probably could have a bit over the weekend, but I was up in Tahoe and I decided that I needed to spend some time not staring at my computer! My hubby is off on a 5 night backpacking trip in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, up above Bishop. We drove to Tahoe on Friday, stayed at my parent's cabin until Monday morning, then drove down the eastern side of the mountains to Bishop. Ah, it was beautiful! So incredibly different than the western slope that I've grown up visiting. We stayed overnight in Bishop, then Matt and my step-dad were off on their hike on Tuesday morning. They should be out on Sunday, provided everything goes well and they don't have vast amounts of snow (although the report at the ranger station didn't make it sound too bad). I rather liked the town of Bishop, and the mountains are just incredible up there - I love the mix of trees and all the different wildflowers. Too bad Bishop is so hot - I might be tempted to move there. :-) At least the temp drops rapidly once you head up into the mountains. My mom and I drove back with Emma yesterday, and got home rather late. Today I've been running around doing laundry and errands, because tomorrow at 7:40 am I'll be on a flight with my brother and my daughter heading up to Portland for a little vacation of our own. My mom was supposed to be on the flight with us, but my grandmother is having more health issues so she's staying with her until my aunt can come up tomorrow afternoon. My mom will fly up tomorrow night instead. My poor grandmother - she's at the point where she's getting a blood transfusion *every week* and good ol' Kaiser isn't sure why she's getting so incredibly anemic so fast. It doesn't seem like a good thing though... My mom has really had her hands full the last 6 weeks or so trying to get her taken care of, but it has been very difficult for her. And my grandmother is so out of it sometimes that she doesn't even remember if my mom visits her at the hospital or not! Very discouraging for my mom, to say the least. Getting old is really not a pretty sight when you've never really taken care of yourself and you really don't have much drive to keep on going.

At this point, I guess I'm just rambling. Just thought I would stop in briefly and say "hi". I might blog from Portland as I have to bring my computer for my brother to use... and we have free internet access in our hotel room. :-) It depends on how tired I am each night!