23 September 2023 - First Day of Fall!

 It has been a fantastic week for the Jones families.  I had my Masonic Cancer Center ovarian cancer 6 month followup on 20 September and I am "stable".  Cancer marker CA125 at 72 but is goes up and down a little and never gets to the less than 30 mark for "normal".  Nothing new found so lab recheck in 3 months and office visit in 6 months so it will be close to my 77th birthday and I am almost 4 years out from the diagnosis of Low grade serous Stage IIIc ovarian cancer and low grade means more difficult to treat!  So I'm a lucky ducky!

Then yesterday 22 September daughter-in-law Amy had her 3 month MRI followup after the brain tumor return a year ago this month and all is clear so we both got good news!

Of course cancer treatment/surgery/chemo/radiation leave lingering after effects but we can deal with it!

Then this week was our Guthrie Theatre play "The Importance of Being Earnest" from book by Oscar Wilde and it was fantastic and lots of good laughs.  Since we've been subscribers there for over 25 years we have seen it a couple times.  The actors and stage were fantastic and since we are long time members we usuall get in 2nd or 3rd rows center front!  And we are not scaredy cats and we did walk 6 blocks to a casual Ale House for dinner and I could have wine!

And as always we have to stroll out to the "Endless Bridge" at the Guthrie for a view of downtown Minneapolis and the Mississippi River.

Last weekend our "young friends" from the Fab6 Mike and Janelle invited us to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and it was the Glass Pumpkin Festival and they had 5,000 beautiful blown glass pumpkins and not cheap but lots of people buying them.  We are trying not to buy more "stuff"!

Me and Janelle and I helped train her when she started working at the hospital where I worked and I'm at least 25 years older than her.  She still calls me "Mama Dee" and checks in almost every day by text.

And Mike and Ross get along great and talk about guy stuff - tech stuff, airplane stuff and all that!

We got our annual flu vaccine and the updated Covid booster so we are ready to leave in 5 days for France - starting in Paris and ending in Nice on the Saone and Rhone River and I love the "little longships" with not a lot of people and off the boat all day to do all kinds of tours.  We are blessed that we can travel and keep doing it even at 76 and 80 years old!  Again we'll be meeting our travel buddies from Pennsylvania Greg and Linda!  We have been to most of the places on our own and we always learn a lot more on the tours with the local guides and we don't have to drive and haul our bags!