Our son, Brian, came up to visit for three days the beginning of the week.  He did come to see Ray, but also to help me with various things around here that Ray would normally do.  Like lugging in the box of 10 reams of printer paper I bought at Walmart last week.  I managed to struggle and get it into the trunk of my car...........where it has remained.  Way to heavy for me to get out, but Brian to the rescue.

Couldn't reach my clock up on the wall here in my writers studio either and we went on Daylight Savings Time a few weeks ago (While Ray was in the hospital)  But Brian easily reached up, got the clock and pushed the time ahead one hour.

He also helped me with some repotting of plants in my container garden around the fish pond and lugged in the huge bag of potting soil I had left in the garage.

But it wasn't all work and no play.  One of the days, Ray and I took Brian downtown to Kona Joe's for lunch and their delicious coffee.  I knew Brian would love it there and he did.  The food, the coffee, the view and Joe and Edie, who are so friendly.  And here he is with his coffee and wearing a cap I told him he'd better keep close to him.  I just love that cap!  He bought it in Paris recently when he was there.

And I even managed to coerce him into letting me "borrow" it for a little while.

We had a great visit, got a lot done around here and even had some nice down time while he taught me to play a game on Facebook.  It remains to be seen whether that was good or bad, as I'm finding the game a lot of fun, but also addicting.

RAY UPDATE:   Well, the incision is healing very well.  However, I'm afraid he got slammed again and set back a bit.  He had been having pretty intense hand pain (that woke him during the night) for about a week and we couldn't figure out what the heck was going on.  Until.........I discovered a few patches of red on his stomach near the incision.  My first thought was, "Shingles, again?"  Yup!  This was confirmed the next day when the red patches now had blisters.  It had followed a nerve right to his hand, causing the pain.  He had his first experience with shingles in January.  It's brought on by stress and with the infection he had, I'm not surprised.  And now, I think the stress of surgery has brought on a flare-up.  He had a refill though on the meds for the med pain and it does seem to be helping.  It was 4 weeks yesterday since the surgery.  He still hasn't gotten back all his energy and I'm afraid it'll take awhile longer.  We see the surgeon again on Tuesday.  What a long road this has been!

Join me here next time when Brie and Ralph wanted a chance to do a blog post.  See you then.........