I know it has been a while, which is why I will speak to the second topic first. I’ve not had any energy to speak of these recent weeks – not depression, although not having any energy can get me down a bit – just an indescribable level of fatigue/exhaustion that I haven’t been able to completely lift out of. When I have had a pick up, the focus goes to those few things that I can do for my family in the way of support and I just haven’t been able to climb all the way out of the valley before the next wave hits. I’ve had to forego a couple of events that I was looking forward to. I have had nothing left over to give in the way of writing or reading and commenting on any of the other blogs that I like to follow. So there you have it.

And theeennnn… and this is one of the happy news – we added a puppy to the family a week ago Sunday. It is Joe’s puppy actually, but I am the chief assistant care giver. It is like having a new baby, more or less. I nap when he naps and when he’s not napping, much vigilance is required. Joe named him Cody. He is supposedly half black lab and half white shepherd, but nearly everyone who sees him thinks that there is some Border Collie in the mix and I agree. He’s adorable; we’re all in love with him. I only have a few early pictures to share here, the most recent and cuter ones are on Shannon’s camera in Naperville, Illinois, which leads me to the fact that Shannon was home on Saturday to see Joe off to prom (once again the pictures recording the occasion are in the same state of being as the latest puppy pictures, but even if they weren’t, Joe would probably not grant me publication rights to include them here.) After viewing the prom’s Grand March together, Shannon took me out to dinner at “La Estacion” for Mother’s Day. Sunday morning she presented me with a gift card for a massage from her, Katie and Joe before departing once again to Naperville where she is finishing her senior year at North Central College.

Katie arrived home Sunday night in order to have her first teaching job interview in Milwaukee on Monday. It was sometime Sunday that the ‘roid rage began to hit – the pain-in-the-ass kind, not the illegal substance kind. I sit here now ensconced on a donut pillow trying to produce this brief update before Cody wakes up again. I am not a pretty picture, I must tell you and enough said about all of that.

Katie returned to Madison last night, reasonably happy with her first interview. She will graduate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison this Saturday with a History Education and English majors. We will be there, Hawk and I, with Shannon and Joe, just bustin’ our buttons! Although technically finished with her studies, Katie will have to finish her student teaching through June 12^th.

My stepson, Brian, celebrates his 30^th birthday on Sunday, May 17^th.

Shannon’s graduation from North Central, with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, will follow in a month. That will be on Saturday, June 13^th. The majority of my energy in these coming weeks will go to putting together an open house to celebrate for both of them on Sunday, June 14^th. Brian hopes to join us. All of this is complicated by the “happy, but things-are-happening-too fast news” that Shannon was accepted into the graduate studies program for Marriage and Family Therapy at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, which is only about an hour from Brian and Kelly in Stamford. The thing is that Shannon must begin some pre-course work June 1^st in Connecticut while finishing her bachelor’s in Illinois, so she has a complicated web of commuting/packing/saying good-byes for 2 weeks and will have to leave for Connecticut immediately after the party June 14^th. So it will be “Congratulations and Bon Voyage!” for Shannon and “Congratulations and return to Madison to start training Monday morning for summer job with Madison Public Schools while continuing search for full time teaching position!” for Katie.

And so, this is my brief update/not-intended-to-be-a-literary-effort attempt to keep all my breathless readers informed. Please feel free to join us on Sunday, June 14^th if you’re in the neighborhood!