The Baboon Congress

Not Done Yet

115 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from tim.

my moms visit to the hospital was a good reflective time for me. she has been spending her life as the caretaker first for the students she taught while shuffling family matters then for my da when they retired up to leach lake and now she has been slow to realize that it is ok for her to be on her to take care of list too. we went a funeral for a student of hers and a classmate of mine and she felt poorly and we ended up going to urgent care, the emergency room and then checking her into the hospital where they found a tumor after deducing that her weakness and feeling poorly was due to blood loss. the doctors looked at her charts and saw that she had a do not resussitate order on her history and the doctor asked if they were going in to do the explority stuff to find where the internal bleeding had its origins and she happened to have a failure did she really want to keep the do not resussitate order in place? well…… she said that maybe they should change that. she still had some stuff to do. i thought that was a nice milestone. to realize youve still got stuff to do.

while sitting up in that god awful dressing gown
my mom found life had an attraction
she wasn’t quite done with the stuff she wrote down
her to do list still needed subtraction

she just moved back to town after living on leach
trading lakeshore for retirement stuff
she had boxes to organize and pictures to sort
shed done some but not nraly enough

she just got diagnosed with sleep apthia syndome
she just started dong the machine
just think how life could be in her freshly painted new home
with a good sleep and days in between

with brain cells and group stuff thats offer each day
the choices are endless it seems
and now she has chosen to come back and say
howdy partners life is made out of dreams

its good to be happy to just be alive
what one greater gift could there be
to count all your blessings there are at least five
on the left hand alone yip yipee

i remember being asked one how much for your sight?
how much would you sell your eyes for?
appreciate small things like having the right
to get up and walk out the door.

life throws us curve balls and flattens our tires
i hate it when whacked in the face
but theres no where that i rather be to aspire
to win out there in this rat race.

get up splash some water on that tired old smile
say helo to the friend in the glass
could be that today is the best one in a while
get up get on out there kick ass

life can be simple and life can be grand
or a conniption is yours for the giving
get out there and leave your footprints in the sand
and be glad that life is worth living

five reasons life is good please.

115 thoughts on “Not Done Yet”

  1. Good morning all. The first five reasons that life is good that come to mind are: family, friends, people working for a better world. music, gardening.

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  2. tim, good to hear about your mother’s renewed interest in life. I been in a situation some what similar to the one you experienced with your mother, with my mother, my mother-in-law, and my dad. They are all gone now but they all did the best they could right up to the end which was good to see.

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  3. Rise and Appreciate Life Baboons!

    What lovely thoughts tim. Thanks so much for your post.
    Five reasons why life is good:

    5. I have lived long enough to see our first black President elected, and he now appears to be hitting his stride.
    4. Joanne’s Quinoa and Pomegranate Seed Tabouli (and Pomegranate Seeds in general make life worthwhile).
    3 That I had the good fortune and circumstances to discover I am meant to be in business–AND on Valentine’s Day was notified that our group has achieved the Minnesota State Credential as a DBT Therapy Provider. WooHoo.
    2. My Grandchildren
    1. I still wake up wanting to know what will happen next

    OOHH, OOHH, OOHH, ONE MORE–THERE ARE 6 REASONS WHY LIFE IS GOOD!

    My Garden and the anticipation of tuplips, flowers, raspberries, kohlrabi, and FRESH TOMATOES!!!

    Thanks tim. Life is Good.

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  4. kind of like a car, as soon as you are done with payments the repairs start coming up with more frequency. your mechanic becomes a friend and also can be the bearer of bad news at the same time.

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  5. Liam Report, First Day:
    Liam has a cold, and yet he arrived in Minnesota smiling when he wasn’t barking coughs. I drove Molly and Liam to Lunds to shop for food. Liam rode a grocery cart while I (thanks for arthritis) drove the electric shopping cart. I pretended to try to crash into Liam’s cart. I put my head down and shook my cart in frustration for going so slow. Liam cracked up. His Grampa Steve is funnier than Groucho.

    At the checkout counter, Liam charmed the baggers and checkout girls. Soon there was a gathering of young people around him, everyone laughing. As Liam left the store about a dozen teenaged Lunds employees waved and shouted, “You have a great time in Minnesota, Liam! Come back soon!” (This is the most socially gifted kid I have ever seen.)

    Here at 2168 Juliet I told Liam, “This is a magic house, a funny house. It has toys hidden in it all over. Toys for Liam.” He walked about with huge eyes, looking for toys. I wore my Christmas reindeer antlers, left over from Sherrilee’s party.

    Later in the evening, Liam and I had a discussion. “What do lemurs say, Liam?” “Woooo, woooo, wooo!” “What do monkeys say?” (there was a monkey in the box of toys he found). “I don’t know.” I did my monkey imitation: “Uh, uh, uh, uh, wa, wa, wa!” “What do airplanes say, Liam?” “Roooooaaaarrrr!”

    Molly stood in the doorway, breaking off from cooking Liam’s “mackie cheese” dinner. “This is what I came for. This is already enough to justify the time and trouble of getting here.”

    (tim: I love your blog topic and hope you can see that I was answering your question, but in a different way, with this post.)

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      1. i think you need to tell him about karl malone of the utah jazz who brought home the mail and was nicknamed the mailman for all his years in the nba for being so good at getting the job done. i mention this because of liams special relationship to the mail. liam spelled backwards

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    2. From observation, grandparents become transformed in the presence of their grandchildren. They possess magic only available to grandparents – clearly Liam has brought out that magic. Hope the Days with Liam are all wonderful!

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    3. I am glad to read this story Grandpa Steve. I wish I had been at the Lunds when this went down. Maybe you can notify me before the next trip so I can be there! Have fun.

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  6. Greetings! Excellent post, Tim. And thanks for the wonderful update on Liam, Steve. I needed to hear this today. My life feels like a Series of Unfortunate Events lately; and although I keep up with a semblance of being positive, it’s gets harder each day.

    I am grateful for wonderful kids, helpful people, loving relatives, a mild winter and karate. Have a great day, all!

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    2. If there were something we could do for you, Joanne, I sure hope you’d not hesitate to let us know. I can offer you some cabin time to relax, but I suspect what you really need is something like a good job. We’re all thinking of you.

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  7. In no particular order: Hugs from my daughter, dark chocolate, laughter with friends (especially the kind that makes you start to lose your breath and brings tears to your eyes), fresh baked goods from my kitchen, supportive family that genuinely likes each other.

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    1. I still can’t post on my own, so I’ll piggyback on you today, Anna:

      1. The unconditional love given by animals
      2. Good food handmade with love and skill
      3. Libraries
      4. The ever-changing but ever-constant cycles of nature–the seasons, the moon, the tides
      5. Time spent with close friends

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      2. talk about the cycles. pat conroy of prince of tides grew up in charleston sc with the tides playing an important role in his life. i enjoy the moon and always get a kick out of the lady at the grocery store who says all the lefthanded people come out in full moon situations but i dont know beans about it.

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      6. True, even with the Lyndale bridge closed, I am still within a block of all of my major vices (books, coffee, red wine, good chocolate, cheese)…but it does wreak havoc with getting to things that are on the north side of the creek (like Grandma’s house).

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  8. We just went through a scary time with my mom too. I saw her 2 weeks ago in the afternoon and she was fine. Within 20 minutes after I left she told her husband she was having trouble breathing and that he should take her to urgent care. When they got there, the staff immediately called an ambulance and while she was in the ambulance she stopped breathing, her heart stopped and the EMTs administered CPR and brought her back. We were all called to the emergency room at Regions Hospital where she went through a very rough week. At first it took 3 different meds to keep her blood pressure high enough to keep her alive and we were starting to plan her funeral. She had psychotic reactions to the combination of drugs she was on and fought like a bucking bronco whenever she came out of sedation. She had a 1:1 CSA with her at all times to keep her from hurting herself with her thrashing; no one could believe how inhumanly strong she was. We had a family member with her all the time as well, taking turns spending the night and scheduling relief teams throughout the day. Six days in, she woke up from a horrible nightmare, made some nasty comments to the nurse and aide who were on duty and had figured into the plot of the dream, shook it all off and came back with all her ducks in a row. She didn’t have a heart attack, a stroke, a pumonary embolism, a massive infection or anything that might have caused permanent damage. No brain damage, no heart damage, mostly just a very sore chest from the CPR, some weakness, and the collection of physical infirmities of being 87 years old that she had before. She moved into transitional care for physical and occupational therapy on Sunday, 9 days after the event, and is expected to be able to go home this Sunday. Best guess is that she had a mucus plug lodge in her wind pipe which caused the progression from shortness of breath to stoppage of breathing to cardiac arrest. Now she’s walking and talking and throughly enjoying all the attention from family, friends, and staff in a nearly spa-like environment. It’s an amazing transformation!
    Oh yeah, five reasons life is good?
    – immediate and extended family that can come together and work like a well-oiled machine at the drop of a hat (or a family member)
    – fantastic children and grandchildren who are not only amazing now, but full of potential and who make life a joy and adventure
    – a functioning brain (not as good as it once was, but good enough for me)
    – knowing that there is a community of friends and strangers working in huge and tiny ways to improve the world, one random act of kindness at a time
    – a trail of baboons who always provide a place to laugh and relate, even when life is too hectic for me to contribute

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    1. no wonder you are occasional, when you write it is n epistle. glad to hear the scare is over. kind of puts a new perspective on stuff huh? love those random acts. thanks for sticking your head in.

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    2. Wow, OC, that was a rough week.

      I have a friend – my one-time housemate from about 25 years ago – who died at Regions yesterday after a hospitalization of about a month. She was just 47. Arteriovenous malformation, the medical professionals called it. A stroke, basically, or actually two of them, two weeks apart. We lost a sweet, caring person.

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      4. So sorry Linda, it is especially hard to lose someone so young. I’m sure she got the best care possible. I was impressed with the caring efficiency of everyone in the three levels of care Mom was in at Regions. It has improved since the last time we had a loved one there. We only had one nurse we had any kind of issue with and that was in her interaction with the family, she was excellent with her patients.

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      8. So sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. Those AV malformations are terrible ticking timeboms. Sometimes they go off in babies. Your friend’s 47 years were too short, but it sounds like she used them well.

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    3. I can’t say that I have been through anything like what you experienced with your mother, Caroline, but I do know a little about that sort of thing. I have been in situations, like you were, where you don’t if some one is going to make it and the situation is very dificult. In my case the worse was when my Dad’s pain medications weren’t working and he was having a panic attack. Fortunately that was an aid who was very helpful at the nursing home where he was staying and we did get him to the hospital where they could get his pain under control. The medications that are available to help with pain and other bad medical problems can be very helpful and can also cause a lot of serious problems. It is good that you and your family was able to be there for your mother and help get her through that bad time.

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      1. I seem to be a little off myself this morning and didn’t notice that I was making a lot of mistakes in the reply I just wrote.

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    5. Good luck to you and your mom, OC. The first time we hear “old age is not for sissies, we are apt to chuckle.” Sooner or later, most of us learn just what that phrase can mean. I think you know how lucky you are that things turned out as well as they did.

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  10. I just read your Mom’s story. I reurned from my family farm where my Mom, 87, is still farming. she waters her 60 head of Hereford every day and even though I have repeatedly wanted her to install automatic system she says she likes seeing them, counting the heads, looking for new calves, and hauling out 50# blocks of mineral supplement. she plays piano every Sunday for her church ( congregation of 20), and drives to “gospel” sings three nights a week. she keeps her 45 in a Wal Mart bag and drives around her farm ready to shoot coyotes who like the taste of new calves. She had a triple bypass four years ago and told the docs she would drive herself home!

    as a baby-boomer, this week is thought I should buy stock in Medical devices, GE scanning machines, and hospitals…one friend – brain tumor, another triple by-pass, a friend facing her third re-occurrence of ovarian cancer and today-friend who found a “spot” on her lung! I have cattle to water myself- getting to them and keeping spirits up.

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  11. tim, your poem helped make life good for me today – thanks!

    All of these in no particular order:
    The friendly open-mindedness of baboons; the unconditional love of dogs; eyes to see how beautiful the earth still is; a heart to understand the message in music and a voice to sing it with; and friends to laugh with.

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  12. Sue, you mom sounds like my parents. They, along with husband and children, make life good, along with 2. our garden and the food we can cook, 3. our books and our intellects to appreciate them, 4. music, and 5. Grace (I am Lutheran, so this is a biggie.) Nice topic today, Tim.

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    1. I love the Lutheran notion of “grace” – I may not be a regular church-attendee these days, but that idea/definition/concept of “grace” has stuck with me.

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  13. Thanks, tim, for a good post.

    I find these things are best done off the top of my head, so here goes (in no particular order)

    Garden-fresh food…my own garden (small & pathetic as it is), farmers market, and especially raspberries in the back yard
    Two friends, one in Vermont and one in New Mexico (at least some of the year)
    Good books
    I have a coupon for a free dessert at Longfellow Grill and I am going to use it today

    And my mind stalled out after four things…

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      2. ha, ha. well, i took the bus there…i had gathered everything, bus pass, money (had to buy some food in order to redeem the coupon for free dessert), book to read with coupon tucked inside. checked the bus schedule online and took off. got off the bus, started walking and realized – damn, i have everything except my book and coupon! took the bus back, made the mistake of taking the 21. it went about 5 mph and stopped every 2 blocks to let on 35 people and traffic was backed up cuz of an arrest on lake street plus 2 fire trucks….by the time i got home, it was late and i said forget it and typed that “forget” post.

        but then i decided to go back because darn it, their bread pudding is so good and the coupon is going to expire soon. so took the bus there and back (avoiding the 21 this time). but hopefully all that walking helped me work off all the calories…all told, i walked about 50 blocks.

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  14. A big ol’ full moon, like the one we had a couple of weeks ago.

    Fluffy snow falling on a winter day, but not too much all at once, please; or if it’s summer, a gentle all-night rain.

    A quality cast-iron bathtub with hot running water and time to soak in it.

    Late-summer sweet corn.

    A walk around the neighborhood when the lilacs are in full bloom.

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  15. Great story and pome, Tim! Great mothers, Tim, Caroline and Sue; a trio of Feisties.
    And a super-lovely grandfather/grandson story from Steve. My first close friend to become a grandmother just became one last night. She’s over the moon and on her way to Boston.
    1. Family – sons, DIL, sister, brother, cousins and my beloved only remaining aunt
    2. Friends – church friends, camp friends, old friends, new Baboon friends
    3. Music – singing, dancing, listening, appreciating
    4. The camp I attend each summer that allows me to be 8 years old again
    5. MPR (is that a dirty word in these environs?). Like you, I’m very sad that TLGMS is gone but I couldn’t live without the music and information that fills my house and car.

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    1. not dirty but tainted stil listen to phc and radio heartland but…
      did you know that when there is a but in a sentance all the stuff that went before the but doesn’t count?
      congrats to your friend the grandma

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      3. one of my nieces, when young, was a real snot. she bullied my kids when they were very young, and she became kind of a know-it-all-i’m-not-listening-to-you type of kid (when she was a pre-teen and young teenager; thankfully, she has improved somewhat). she was ALWAYS saying to me, “Yeah, but…” It drove me nuts. WHY do you even bother to say “Yeah”??? – when you are just going to refute what i just said.

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  16. Great poem, Tim. I salute your mom’s spirit (aka spit – if you were typing it).

    Three weeks ago my dad who had alzheimer’s died. His last week was spent in hospice at the hospital, but until that time he lived at home. It was hard work for my mother but that’s how she wanted it and she did it well. So did the workers from the home healthcare agencies who initially came a few hours a day to a few more and a then a few more and eventually around the clock.

    His Top 5 :
    Family – wife, 4 kids, 7 grandkids.
    Socializing – he was a farmer and seed corn salesman and knew everyone.
    Humor – most of the stories people shared were about him playing jokes and kidding around.
    Fishing. We took yearly trips to Ontario and he out fished us all. It was disgusting.
    Music – he lost interest in TV a long time ago – couldn’t follow it – but never stopped enjoying his CDs. We played them in the hospital – Jim Reeves, Eddy Arnold, Patsy Cline.

    Steve – so happy your daughter and grandson made the trip!
    Nice comments today, kids. Therapeutic, you know? Like cajeta and summer shandy.
    Count me in with the moon junkies.

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    3. Donna – Hard to lose a parent, doubly hard when you lose them in pieces to Alzheimer’s. How wonderful that there was help so he could be at home for so long.

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    4. Thanks, friends. He was a good dad. I’m glad he was able to stay at home too. In a nursing home he would have been scared, confused and lost. We couldn’t bear the thought of him being locked up in a memory care unit and likely heavily sedated.

      I’m off for President’s Day break. Going to Mom’s in IA today, then on to Twin Cities to see daughters on Saturday. Sometimes this teaching gig isn’t so bad.

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    5. I hope you can rejoice that his suffering is over,rejoice in the person he was when he was healthy, and mourn his passing and the loss of who he was when he was at his best.

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    6. thanks for remembering your dad today donna. a corn seed salesman has fgot to be a special breed. jim reeves eddy arnold patsy cline says it all. i dont care at all about fishing but you seem to have to go nice places with people you enjoy and spend to much time. i love that description. and he beat you all at it. even better.

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  17. Thanks tim for starting us off on such rich stories. In no particular order:

    – I so love it that we can have both happy and sad stories on this blog on the same day.
    – I am blessed to live in one of those little city “pockets” where I have trees and hawks and a railroad track within a stone’s throw… and good neighbors.
    – I have many people to love and be loved by.
    – I still have all my senses intact, and I can still dance and sing.
    – I have a spouse with a similar belief about how the universe “works”.

    I’ve also been re-reading the Little House books, and am particularly grateful this week for:
    washing machines, central heat, freezers, electricity, and indoor plumbing.

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  18. All these stories trigger a cascade of recent events for me. It was less than two years ago that a doctor called me with the esophageal cancer diagnosis. I can honestly say that the gift of cancer has been irreplaceable and precious – I wouldn’t give it up for anything. My first overwhelming thoughts were how a premature death would cause pain to my kids. I made it my mission – live or die- to take this journey in a way that would least devastate them. I kept my humor, my curiosity, and continued dancing through the many weeks of chemo/radiation with a pic line in my vein attached to a chemo pump. I even danced for several cancer center audiences (including my doc) on the final day of treatment.

    What I gained was the humility of allowing others to give to me. I had no choice, and in the receiving, I felt a depth of human love I never had before. I also learned that death is truly nothing to fear and that my BC (before cancer) life was peaceful & nourishing already. All I had to do, if the fates allowed, was bravely return to it. The massive Mayo surgery resulted in four months on a feeding tube in various hospitals. Only during this time did I wonder if the old “Nancy” had fully disappeared. Months of being so terribly ill depleted my spirit, but the one consistent activity I pursued every day for a year was writing my heart out on Caring Bridge. Recording & sharing every detail of this ordeal in raw, irreverent detail kept me tethered to life when all else had been stripped away. About a year ago, I had all these journals bound in hard cover and named the tome, “Dancing With Cancer”. I’d love to publish it one day, but haven’t got a clue how to make that happen.

    Living in the present moment isn’t just a cool cliche; it’s a moment to moment choice I make. Fortunately for me, I’d pretty much mastered this BC. One of many surprises from the gift of cancer was that my historical tendency toward drama & anxiety rarely manifested during this year-long journey! Here I finally have a solidly legitimate reason to be hysterical and yet I passed by the opportunity. Honestly, I think when something so life-threatening occurs, it brings out either our greatest strengths or greatest weaknesses. I chose strength this time.

    I apologize for carrying on so long….this topic clearly moves me.

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    1. CB, if I ever have to face something as devastating as your cancer diagnosis, I hope I will be able to approach it with such a deliberate positive attitude as yours. You’ve made gallons of lemonade.
      No apologies needed for the long post. Very inspiring.

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      1. Postscript: I’ve had FIVE clean PET scans since the surgery and I’m counted as one of a mere handful of EC Stage 3 survivors at this point. I’ll just keep dancing 🙂

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  19. Afternoon Trail.

    Great and powerful stories everyone. tim, yours to start and the rest along the way are enough to give me pause and thanks and think about what I’m typing. Thank you all for sharing.
    There are so many worthwhile things we come across; the full moon to the snow, the birds to the dogs.
    In a meeting this morning it was interesting how events from our past surface later on. A childhood home becomes a reference to a situation here and now.
    1) Family; the laughter, the hugs, the memories, the feel of each other.
    2) Puffy clouds in the sky on summer days.
    3) Animals; pets, bald eagles cruising over, the hawk in a tree, momma’s talking to their babies.
    4) The power of music
    5) The power of the seasons: Seeds growing, the smell of the dirt, fresh mown alfalfa in summer, beautiful fall days, a bright crisp winter day.

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    1. I so agree with you, Ben. Every single morning, I awake with a “tickle in my belly”; a feeling that, “Oh yea – here’s another day to enjoy!” I think gratitude and abundance are closely related – focusing on what’s precious in my life rather than what’s “missing”.

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  20. Thank you, tim.
    My sympathy to you Donna. Miss you here. You have me thinking of my mother’s death in SF, a good death; she had lived a long a full life.
    My joy to you, Steve, at seeing Liam and your daughter. At your being out and about with him.

    I have never been good the listing the blessing thing. I have trouble seeing the world in separate entities. Wrote about that in my novel. How do I see family as not a part of nature because I grew up in nature amidst my family.? And my wife and children–we lived right on Superior and camped and walked the woods, and spent so many hours on our private cove on the Lake. So family and the boreal forest and Lake Superior are on my list but I do not wish to separate them. But I will do so, to a degree. My five:

    1. I do not state this overtly on here very often, but the question demands it: my God and Savior, my faith, my church (in the largest and ideal sense). But you see how do I separate that from Creation and Family. All are bound as one, vines all entwined.
    2. For the modern drugs that have allowed my my wife to reach age 72 next month in reasonable health, in a manner that has allowed her to be a full grandparent, perhaps the one thing after children she most wanted and was equipped to do so well. That her two grandchildren will remember her, remember her as “stiff,” as they always call here, but funny, creative, loving, and a perfect doting grandmother. See that cannot be separated from faith and family.
    3. For Nathan and Rebecca and the next generation Lily and Jonah whom I cannot name as separate from faith and creation.
    4. For creation and the creative urge, albeit that most of my creations are fit only for a bin or a filing cabinet. Burt that is not the “why” of creation or creating. And all of that is bound up for me in the woods, the nature, that was much my parent as were my parents. And what does not the word “creation” include? It must for me include the wonderful and yet sometimes terrible diversity of human life, terrible only because of the will we all have a times to hate, some so deeply that, well, you know what. But it includes much more. The creative urge is for a way to see the face of my creator.
    5. I am left with no fifth, nothing I want to attempt to separate from the All.

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  21. I am now remembering a daily thing a couple of my friends and I used to do, only lives got busy and we let it get away from us: we used to email each other daily with 3 good things from the day. They could be large or small, but 3 things we were grateful for in our day. It was a good exercise. May have to reinstate it. 🙂

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    1. i remember leo buscaglia saying his family tradition was to have i new thing at the dinner table that you didnt know before…. iceland has xxxxxx number of people. red is the most popular color among non color blind cola drinkers… something you heard somewhere that would lead to discussion. good stuff

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  22. Did anyone else catch the important scientific news item in “The Morning Report” on goats? Goats, it seems, speak regional dialects. Goats from geographically separated regions have the same speaking vocabulary, but some goat have funny accents!

    Only a few animals are thought to have this. Goats are cool.

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  23. I’ve enjoyed everyone’s comments and thoughts here today. Tim, I send good wishes for your mother. Hmmm, five faves. What to choose, what to choose…
    > the genius of creativity that lights our way.
    > newborn family members who show their grandparents and great-grandparents in their faces
    > the gamut of laughter.
    > blueberries.
    > the satisfaction of working hard, yet knowing these four and a zillion others will buoy me up when work tries to take over.

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  24. Wonderful topic and post today. Thanks, tim and everyone who contributed. Having a hard time limiting it to five. So many things to be grateful for. I’ve attempted, but end up with a pompous and insincere-sounding list of things. I could no more put a price tag on my eyesight or hearing than my sense of taste; call me greedy. I’ve had it all and want to keep it that way as long as possible.

    I have two friends facing a struggle for life as I write this. I feel torn between grief and hope. I know hope will prevail, but I also know grief is inevitable.

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    1. try thankful for the gifts you have received from them and the opportunity to learn what they had to teach and the benefit of what they have to leave behind in honor of their lives and the things that have a special meaning from them. all the things in the world and when i think of a person there is always one thing that comes to mind for them. one special thing and i can relate and remember and honor their contribution to my life. sad in one respect but some consolation anyway. sometimes consolation is the best thing you get out the moment its not enough but its something for now

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    3. Today I placed on my computer screen a photo from the Westminster dog show of the Kerry Blue terrier who won best of terrier group and went on to the Westminster finals. Her name is Chelsey, and the photo captures her leaping into the air with absolute joy after her win for Best of Terrier Group. She knew that she had done well and that something good had happened.,The picture captures exactly what I wish I could maintain all day in my work. i wish I could post it here, but I am tech stymied and I suppose it is copyrighted. In any event, she is an inspiration, and if a tech savvy baboon could find her in the thumbnail from Yahoo and post it, all of the baboons could see Chelsy’s reason why life is good.

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  25. I’ve been out since 7:30 this morning and came home to Tim’s thoughtful and thought provoking post, and the heartfelt stories everyone shared. I was laughing through my tears, truly 🙂 Thank you all! Husband and I were with our 2 tiny granddaughters for the last 10 hours — who knew that this time in our lives would bring such life and joy? I guess when I got home and read your thoughts, they mirrored so much of what I’ve been experiencing and feeling lately, both the good and the not-so-good-which-I-try-not-to-obsess-on-regarding-health (personal/family/friends’)-eldercare-livelihood-etc. that I just want to say thank you. For your humor, your life experience, your curiosity, your insight, your goat stories. Again, thank you, Baboons, for lifting everyone’s boat today!

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