Mary Bellamy

I know that no one ever believes me when I say I'm from the country. No one believes that Connecticut has any countryside left. But really, it does - mostly in the small area around my parents' house. Examples:

• Upon leaving the house to head to town for some groceries on Monday, I promptly got stuck behind a tractor.
• The farm stand has pies for sale on Tuesdays.
• While in the entryway looking at a flyer for a haunted pumpkin ride (not happening until October), I realized that the bank smells like manure.
• We stopped by the general store for grinders (know as sub sandwiches to the rest of you). The general store is located on the town green. I think it sells chicken feed along with people feed.
• Sign on the road: Baby donkey, $500.

I've realized that I miss big trees and old buildings, neither of which are present in Alaska. I snicker inside when people talk about preserving a historic building in Fairbanks that has been there for 100 years. I grew up in a 300-year-old farmhouse.

And now for the update on my dad. We went to the hospital on Wednesday, leaving at 5:30 in the morning to get there on time. It is not sunny in CT at 5:30 a.m. Chalk one up for Fairbanks. A lot of the day was spent doing tests, including an angiogram. The two surgeons needed to talk with each other about the best way to proceed, so naturally one of them was in surgery most of the day. We left the hospital with a "We'll call you about scheduling surgery sometime within the next two weeks." That was a little disconcerting, as I came home on Family Medical Leave expecting that the emergency surgery would happen immediately (as in the day we went ot the hospital) and I could return to Alaska the next week. All jokes in my previous post aside, this is not a vacation and I am not at the beach. But I have had some damn good cheese.

The good news is that the FDA has finally approved the procedure they want to try on my dad, and the surgeons say he is just within the limits for them to do the surgery. For right now, the surgery is scheduled for next week. I wish I had more news of any sort, but I don't.