DR ELMORE - sounds like you are making it through with your usual aplomb - a plum as the case may be.
If by that, you mean I haven't decked the Macbeths yet, I'm trying to maintain a class act.
It was great today seeing my cousins, many of whom I hadn't seen in years:
Steve, 28 years ago
Jeff (his brother), 12 years ago
Jeane, at least 10 years ago
Jennifer, at least 10
David, last time I saw his sister Jennifer
Then there were all these kids who lived in our house while we were growing up: Chuck, Macbeth's friend who lived with us for about a year in 1966 or so, Rob and Mark, Randy's friends who were always with him from around 1972 to 1979 when I left for New York. It was wonderful to see them today. Rob and Mark stopped by last Saturday to see how dad was getting along.
Chuck didn't get along with his stepdad, so one day he stayed overnight and never moved back home. My mom would fix him breakfast in the morning and send him off to school, and my parents fed him and raised him - I believe he was a highschool junior at the time - for over a year. My dad had a great generous nature, and he considered our friends part of his family. We had, in the late 1960s, a neighbor friend of Randy's who was found to be a thief after several sums of money had gone missing around the house. He was the only bad example out of a lot of great friends.