I know I've said this before, but...

...there ain't no mama like the one I got!  She got me a Tiny Tears doll!

Truth be told, Tiny Tears is as much for Mama as she is for me.  Mama owned a doll similar to Tiny when she was a child (possibly Kathy Cry Baby, as her doll's name was "Kathy"), so she has a fondness for this doll.  Plus, she and I have both been a mite unhappy lately; we both are in a fair amount of pain, I from my hip/fibroids/what-have-you, she from her sciatica, and we're both sick to death of it.  So Tiny has been something of a morale booster for the both of us.  Anyway, the early examples of Tiny Tears had plastic heads, while later versions have vinyl heads.  My doll has a hard plastic head, and it's both hard as a rock and pale as a ghost.  Her body is soft and pink.

Tiny Tears came in several different hair colors, with my particular doll having strawberry blonde hair.  That pleases me greatly, though I'd have taken whatever came.

Tiny is very pale in the face, and she has the same unusual hairline that Tam's doll does, despite having a hard head.

Very unusual.  I'd love to have seen this doll's manufacturing process.  

Unfortunately, dolls and other items are sometimes shipped in packing peanuts, and that was the case with Tiny Tears. 

As I've said before, the Doctor has the Daleks, and I have packing peanuts.  I hate these darned things!  Packing peanuts aside, Tiny Tears was not expected, but she's welcome and already very loved.  I hope Mama knows how I love her.

Cheers,
RagingMoon1987 

Fayetteville under siege

For the uninitiated, Fayetteville, Arkansas is where my sister and brother-in-law live and work.  This drama started shortly after 6:30 local time, with this hideous radar.  Both of the red polygons in this screenshot had confirmed tornadoes. 

The northern storm prompted this headline, which did not fill Mama or me with enthusiasm. 

As usual, my fur niece Louise gave zero effs.  My sister says Louise hates bad weather, but here she's chill...unlike the TV!

More Louise.  Y'all wouldn't know that she's really a psycho.

A very loved psycho, though!  She may not like me, but I like her!  

Not long after sending that picture Sister told Mama that they were crating Louise and making for University of Arkansas campus (after Louise finished taking a dump, LOL).  That's better shelter than the second-floor apartment where they live.  Apartment buildings are not the safest places to ride out tornadoes.  And right as we were receiving word that they'd arrived at campus, we get THIS headline.  Storm was headed right for campus. 

Sister says that the campus has a shelter, and that's where they hid as the south side of Fayetteville got clobbered. 

Their apartment is sadly in the path, and Brother-in-law says that the tornado is headed straight for the building.  Thank God they left.  I must say, crap like this is NOT what I like to see.

Please pray for Fayetteville, and for Fort Smith as well.  They too are in the path of a tornado. 

Yours truly, 

RagingMoon1987 

The big three-seven

Yep, it's that day again!  Since it's a Sunday Mama and I are gonna chillax and lay low.  Uncle Man-Child wanted to go out to eat, but the last time we did that it was a hundred-mile round trip of nothing but him chatter-chatter-chattering.  I'm not in the mood for that, and neither Mama nor I were in the mood to go out, so we opted to...well, NOT go out!  It's a good thing we didn't too, because I woke up in a significant amount of pain and am having a hard time moving.  So we stayed home and ate pizza and exchanged the few gifts we have.  My present to Mama isn't here yet, but I know she'll like it.  It's a wooden cutting board, and it's got a pattern burned onto it using a very dangerous technique. 

As for me, my gifts consist of some wearables, plus one doll.

How the sam-hill Mama knew I'd like this one, I don't know.  I've been vocal about my fondness for Asian Cabbage Patch Kids, but I never told Mama that I had my eye on this specific outfit.  This doll is a Jakks Pacific Kid, and she's a "Preppy Girl."

I knew that this line had a lot of cute ones, but my favorites have always been Preppy Girl and Skater Boy.

Regarding my doll, her name is Margot Madeline, and she also just had a birthday.  Please ignore the fact that I put the birth certificate in the envelope the wrong way. 

Included with Margot is this little card, stating her favorite things.  It surprised me that she likes to paint, seeing she's not Artsy Girl.  She also apparently likes playing sports and scary stories, which I can dig.

Now here's Margot Madeline out of her box and looking VERY pleased about it.  She still smells faintly of baby powder.

Look at that smug little face!  She reminds me of Coleco #15, who also has a huge smile.

I love Jakks Pacific and Play Along Kids!  All Cabbies have their merits, but dolls from these two eras have the best faces.

And as far as I know, that will be my birthday for now.  Nice and quiet without a lot of hullabaloo.  I'm thankful that I have a roof over my head and clothes on my back, particularly when so many to the east don't have those.  Helene's death toll keeps rising, and there's ANOTHER storm in the Gulf of Mexico, predicted to track right over Florida!  Y'all down there, I'd be getting outta dodge if I were y'all!  Be safe!

Love,

RagingMoon1987 

Gonna hitch a ride...

The older I get the more depressing Thanksgiving is.  When I was young the dining room table was bursting at the seams.  At our biggest gathering there was...hmm...my maternal grandparents, both my uncles, Mama, Daddy, my sister and me, my grouchy great-aunt who loved dolls, and my aunt on my daddy's side.  <pauses to count>  That's ten of us, enuff that Aunt on Daddy's Side, Sister, and I all had to sit at the card table.  During meal prep Uncle from St. Louis took us kids over to the school playground to keep us out of the kitchen, and true to stereotypical fashion the women cooked and the men did nothing.  But it was a good Thanksgiving, warm and filled with love and delicious food.  Nowadays with a lot of the adults being deceased and us kids being grown, well...y'know.  Sister, Brother-in-Law, and Uncle From St. Louis all elected not to battle the traffic and the weather, so this year it's Mama, Uncle Man-Child, and me.  Mama and I did all the cooking and all the cleaning, while Uncle Man-Child sat on his a$$, asked stupid questions, and told stupid half-truths about himself.  I couldn't say a word to Mama, even in a whisper, without him demanding to be included in the conversation.  And this guy is a few years shy of seventy!  You'd think he was still thirteen!  I suggested to Mama that we just skip Thanksgiving this year, but she wouldn't hear of it, so here we are.  Add to that the fact that I had to bury another cat this past weekend, and you've got one sad Moon Girl. 

Yep, another cat.  Week before last it was Lola, and last weekend it was Edgar, one of my mom's cats.  Edgar was solid black, and that earned him the name "Edgar," after Edgar Allan Poe.  My aunt found him at the bank when he was just a kitten, and he was a knucklehead from the word "go."  Before he was a year old he'd swan-dived off our kitchen table and broken his foot, and we had to doctor him through that.  Three weeks in a cast and in a cage, three more without the cast but still in a cage...I don't know who hated it more, him or us!  The foot healed at a slight angle and Edgar limped on it a tiny bit, but he didn't let it slow him down.  He lived to be twelve, insisted on going outside a lot even if it was raining, and last Friday night it apparently caught up with him.  I found him the next morning in a neighbor's yard.  He didn't have an outward mark on him, no blood or cuts or anything, but his spine was twisted in a way that spines are not supposed to twist, and his pelvic area was flattened a bit.  Based on that I believe that he was hit by a car and managed to drag himself out of the road before dying.  Sigh...we knew that was a possibility when he went outside, but if you've ever owned a cat then you know how difficult it can be to keep them inside.  Mama's other two cats couldn't care less about going out, but Edgar had to be the oddball.  He was always the oddball, the one who liked to run around like a wild ape, the one who wanted to be the first to the food, the one who liked to lie on his back so the sun could warm his belly.  I have a picture of him doing that.

He loved the sun.  That may have been the reason why he liked going outside; when the A/C ran in the summertime it would get cold in the house, so he went where it was warm.  Then going outside became a habit, and that was that.  We see how it ended, but thank God, I at least know what happened to him and I was able to bury him properly.  He didn't disappear into thin air like a friend's cat did recently.  But it still hurt.

All that has culminated in me being unusually depressed, and unlike times in the past I can't seem to shake it.  Even playing with my dolls has brought me little pleasure, but I do it anyway.  As always, my doll is Rita Cheryl, and today she is...decidedly oddly dressed, much more so than she was last Thanksgiving.

Pandas, Boston and Doctor Who.  What a combo.  Anyway, it's warmer today than it was at the beginning of the week, so Rita Cheryl did a little traipsing around in Grandma's backyard.  She isn't as young as Camille and thus didn't dream up a ton of imaginary games, but she did find a nice hiding place.

She also found a nice pinecone.  Dern thing was sharp, though!

I will admit that while Thanksgiving leaves me feeling melancholy, it's still a helluva lot better than this past summer, when things were so cotton-pickin' hot.  Probably by the time April rolls around I'll be longing for thunderstorms, LOL.  Right now I'm just tired and overwhelmed.  I'm ready for the mold to be gone from my house, ready for the water to be back on at Mama's, ready for spring...time for a nap!  Don't wait up!

Love, 

RagingMoon1987 

Memorial Day post

Yeah, I  know it's seven-thirty local time and Memorial Day is just about over, but here's Rita Cheryl getting in the holiday spirit anyway. 

My family members who served in the military were blessed enuff to come home alive, but all the veterans knew people that didn't.  My dad said there were two days of the year when his great-grandfather would crawl into a bottle, and both days were anniversaries of particularly bloody Civil War battles that he'd been in.  I know he'd survived the battle of Shiloh, but I forget the other one.  Either way, my great-great-granddaddy had a hard time two days of the year.  Daddy said the rest of the time he hid it pretty well.  

My own grandpa also suffered some PTSD after his experiences overseas during WWII.  Again, he functioned pretty well, but he saw things (and did things) that haunted him 'til the day he died.  Our military men and women are not wussies, ladies and gents.  I admit that I love the day off from work, the family, and the food that Memorial Day brings, but I don't let myself forget the real reason for it.  I hope y'all don't either.

Happy Memorial Day, 

RagingMoon1987 

Runs With Scissors

The good thing about silly doll names is that they make your family members laugh.  The bad thing about silly doll names is that they sometimes stick.  Meet my new doll, Runs With Scissors. 

She was a gift from First Uncle (the one I like).  He told me I won her at a silent auction during a trivia event.  Her hair needs a little TLC, but otherwise she's a fine doll.  She's got pretty eyes.

Scissors is a big girl, by the way.  I didn't photograph this, but she's taller than the American Girls.  I have no idea who made this doll, but it's entirely possible that she has a better name than Runs With Scissors. 

Love to all,

RagingMoon1987 

Cool cat boogie

Mama loves to surprise me, and I love to be surprised.  So when this odd-looking package showed up in her mailbox, she simply handed it to me and said "Open it!"

"Feels like a stuffed animal," I said.

"Oh, you're good!"  Mama replied with a big grin.  She'd gotten me a stuffed Pete the Cat for my workstation.

For the uninitiated, Pete the Cat is an anthropomorphic blue cat and the subject of several children's books.  He likes to dance and sing, and he's usually depicted wearing high top sneakers.  The illustrations in the books are fairly dark, so Pete usually doesn't have much of an expression...but my Pete is smiling.

That is typical cat!  Always chill...unless it's mealtime or three o'clock in the morning.  Then cats are batsh!t.  Anyway, my Pete has his shoes, like all good Pete the Cats do.  One is red and one is blue.

The varying colors are significant to...I think I Love My White Shoes was the first in the series.  Pete goes out in brand-new white high tops, only for them to become red, then blue, then brown, then white but wet in quick succession.  Rather than throwing a fit because he messed up his shoes, Pete rolls with the changes, singing "I love my white shoes" and changing the lyrics as the shoes change.  Simple story, but a cute one.

I love my mama, and I love the little things she does for me!  I wish she were easy to shop for, darn it!  Every birthday or Mother's Day that comes up she says "Oh, don't worry about me," but she always does nice things for me so I want to do SOMETHING.  I gotta put on my thinking cap.

Happy MLB Opening Day,
RagingMoon1987

What we get

Jaylin got a new dress...

...I got bitten on the finger by a carpenter ant...

...and Mama got to go back to the hospital!  She's having severe pain again.  We don't know why yet.  Sigh...this summer has sucked, and it's not over yet.

Jeers,

RagingMoon1987 

Take me with you!

Change, nothin' stays the same
Unchained, and ya hit the ground runnin'!
--Van Halen, "Unchained"

Like Van Halen, I tend to hit the ground running these days.  Up at seven-thirty.  Take my dogs potty, then feed dogs and cats.  Get dressed.  Run over to Mama's place to take care of her animals.  Usually then I'd head over to McDonald's for breakfast and get my happy butt to work after that, but thanks to some lovely insurance caveats, I have to flush Mama's drains.  I don't mind going over to help Mama, as spending time with her is always time well-spent...but the damn drains are FINNICKY!  Anyway, flush drains, receive threatening message from an ex-Facebook friend, and FINALLY get to work...seven minutes late, in a foul mood, with Luciana in tow because screw the rules.

Yes, Luciana.  This morning when I was getting dressed I glanced over at my dolls, some of whom are jumbled together waiting for a review, and I saw Luciana with her hand slightly out.  Pardon the terrible lighting.

I solemnly swear that I did not pose her like that.  But anyway, she reminded me of a story I saw on Den of Angels, where a young woman was preparing to leave her room, when she saw her very tightly strung ball-jointed doll.  BJDs with tight strings tend to stay with their limbs bent, but this time the doll had his arms outstretched like he was pleading to be held.  Same sort of thing with Luciana; she's a relatively new doll and her strings are still tight, but just the same she had her hands out then.  Very well, then...allons-y, Rose Tyler.

Oh well, at least my life is merely "Unchained" and not to the point of "Jump."  OMG, that song tainted my opinion on Van Halen for YEARS!!!  For real, I hate "Jump" that much, LOL.  And to the ex-Facebook friend, fool around with me and I'll tell everyone that you're not really a royal.  Seriously, the guy is deluded!

Love and box fans (stay close to one),
RagingMoon1987

The heat is on

It's summer now: the heat is on.  It's summer now all summer long. 
--Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Chapter 9/Flood

That single chapter from Ms. Dillard's book made its way into one of my high school English textbooks, and while I enjoyed the whole chapter, that single line is what stayed with me.  It stayed with me because it made sense.  Summer begins when it begins, and it ends when it ends, with no regard for manmade calendars or timetables.  This year, for my area, at least, summer began today, a full week and a half before the solstice.  After a somewhat out-of-the-ordinary winter and a mild, rainy spring, the summer looks to be a hot one, or it will be if the week's predicted temperatures hold true.  Mid to high nineties are predicted clean through to next Friday, with heat indices in the low hundreds and not a drop of rain in sight.  

Usually on summer evenings my mother and I would go out to the road by Crowley's Ridge.  We'd enjoy the cool that the canopies of the trees provided, and if it was dark enuff we'd marvel at the lightning bugs.  Alas, there will be no lightning bugs for RagingMoon1987 this summer, as I'm stuck in town, where the lightning bugs rarely stray.  I'm perfectly capable of driving myself, but with Mama still out of commission it's not much fun, and with gas prices rising such leisurely drives are increasingly wasteful.  Oh, Mama's home again, with the drains still in her stomach, and she's acting more like herself, but I'm still cautious.  If she has to go back to that hospital again I'm gonna go off on a certain doctor like Castle Bravo.

Since I have no long drives and no lightning bugs at the moment, I busy myself with my dolls...when I'm not doing laundry, that is!  LOL, anyway I went back to Wal-Mart yesterday and picked up the My Life dream team captain.  I chose to name her "Jemma."

Whew, those long pajamas and fuzzy slippers are too hot for this weather!  How 'bout a change, Jemma?

That's better.  Airy is ready for the heat too, Elton John glasses and all.  Neither of these outfits came with shoes, but that bothers Airy and Jemma naught.  Indeed I'd probably be barefoot too if my yard didn't have so many thorns.  Doesn't that dress of Jemma's match her hair perfectly?

Etsy couldn't have done better, and that's saying something because Etsy has no end of nice things for dolls this size.  There isn't much else to say about Jemma since she's everything Airy is, shocking blue eyes, tight joints, and all.  Indeed, if Cititoy hadn't started tinkering around with hair colors then these dolls would all be one and the same.  Here's a closeup of Jemma's hair; as I noted a few weeks ago she's got mostly purple hair, with some green and blue mixed in, and some yellow that I initially missed.

The roots are about the same as Airy's, but Jemma's got longer hair.  

So that's my brightly-colored little pair!  I'm glad Cititoy is stepping up their game with hair colors.  Now if they'd vary up their head molds like Our Generation has then they'll really be fun little dolls!

Love y'all,
RagingMoon1987 

Patient redheads, and impatient Moony

"Waiting...waiting, waiting."  Thus begins a brief video of the 2011 Lambert Airport tornado.  Yes, lately I feel like I've done nothing but wait.  Wait for Mama to recover, then wait to hear from the hospital, then wait for the surgery to be over, then wait for Mama to recover again.  In case y'all were wondering, Mama never did fully bounce back from the initial gallbladder surgery, and as the weeks passed she grew more and more confused.  Yesterday when she went back for a routine checkup she didn't remember what year it was, or who the president was before Sleepy Joe took office, or ANYTHING!!!  So now she's back at Southeast Hospital in Cape Girardeau with a UTI and an infection around the initial incision.  The doctors are opening her up again around the noon hour to put her drain back in, and I presume that they'll clean her out a little as well.  So my future consists of more six-day workweeks, more taking care of two households of pets, and more listening to Second Uncle whine about how bad he's got it.  Never mind that Mama is in the hospital and Sister, Brother-in-Law, First Uncle, and I are all worried sick.  Second Uncle cares only about Second Uncle.  

Oh well, I'm thirty-four, and six-day weeks are no serious issue.  On the other hand, Coworker A is eighty-five, and six-day weeks are kinda tough, especially when she usually only works two days a week.  She'll be getting a day off this week so that eases it up a little for her.  Coworker A has been a complete rock star, by the way.  She's picked up the slack for Mama and hardly complained, and both Mama and I are at a loss for how to repay her.

To keep this post from being nothing but whining, here's my two new girls.  They too are waiting.

Far, far away I can hear a tall brunette man in a long brown duster moaning "Awwww, I wanna be ginger! It's never been ginger!"  Well...so do I, LOL.  My hair has never been red, nor will it ever be, because what's the point of a dye job when you've gotta do a ton of maintenance?  Anyway, the ginger on the left is Julia, an early-model Gotz Precious Day doll, and her sister is Amelia, a later-model Precious Day.  Truth be told, they're probably BOTH Julia dolls, but I didn't want to leave them with the same name.  I hadn't had either of them a full twenty-four hours when I took this picture, and when I looked at them through the car window I pictured two little siblings, weary from several days on the road and ready to go home.  Kinda how I felt right then, LOL.

Spleen vented, dolls shown...I think that will just about do it for now.  Unless something good, bad, or ugly comes up the next post will be Molly's spotlight.  I hope it'll be more popular than Samantha's.

Nanu nanu,
RagingMoon1987

That's life

I am NOT, nor will I ever be a big Frank Sinatra fan, as his voice was flat much of the time.  However, for much of the past week I've gone around humming "That's Life."  Why?  Because life happened again.  Mama's pain came back with a vengeance early Monday morning, and after much ado and some wasted time she finally got to a hospital that could diagnose her properly.  The gallbladder was the problem and the gallbladder came out, and as of writing Mama is at Southeast Hospital in Cape Girardeau with a drain in her side.  The gallbladder was severely inflamed, parts of it had turned necrotic, and an infection had set in.  In addition Mama's blood pressure was bottoming out, and that suggests to me that she was dangerously close to going septic by the time the hospital got her treated.  Right now she's where she needs to be, and she's in a lot of pain but staying...well, relatively positive, considering the circumstances.  She says she's been treated very well, and if I know her like I do then she's trying to be nice to everyone in return.

To kill some time I'm gonna talk about two dolls that I saw at Wal-Mart yesterday.  Neither of them are super-unique, but they caught my eye.  The first one is this My Life doll, the Dream Team Captain.

I don't know how well y'all can see, but her hair is this unusual mix of purple, green and blue.  The rest of her is typical My Life fodder, no different from Airy, and since I have too many dolls in this size as it is I didn't get her.  There are better images of her hair on Wal-Mart's website.

I didn't get a picture of the other doll, but she's one of the new Shadow High dolls.  Here's an idea of what they're like; the one available at my local store is Heather Grayson, second from left.

I love the idea of Rainbow High's rivals being in grayscale!  Hey, gray has its place in the color world too!  I used to hate wearing gray, by the way, as it reminded me of surgical tools and the walls of the hospital where I spent much of the summer of 2004.  I've since grown to love wearing gray, but I digress.  As noted above, Shadow High is Rainbow High's rival school, since every good school has a rival (Malden's archrival is Kennett, for example).  These kids are fine art students like the Rainbow kids are, and....that's all I know.  From left, their names are Natasha Zima, Heather Grayson, Ash Silverstone, Nicole Steel, Sunny Madison's antithesis Luna Madison, and Shanelle Onyx.  Betcha a dollar to a doughnut that Sunny and Luna are related.  Their hair is exactly the same style, and their names are both a play on celestial objects (the sun and the moon).  The two extremes, uber-pale Natasha and very dark Shanelle are my favorites, and I'm excited to see these kids moving into Wal-Mart.  Too bad they're thirty bucks a pop.

Speaking of black and white, bird crap is black and white, and I've been seeing a lot of it lately because Mama's carport has swallows again.  Only one baby bird is visible, but this morning I watched the parents visiting and I saw three little mouths begging for food.

Last year there were five babies.  There was so little room in the nest that one bird had to sit on the ledge...but then again those babies were very close to fledging by the time I took the picture.  The current babies are nowhere near big enuff, but they're healthy and the parents are taking good care of them.  I love swallows; they can be ornery, and like all birds they produce a lot of droppings, but as wet as this year is we're going to need as many swallows as we can get.  We'll need swallows to SWALLOW the mosquitoes!  LOL, I wonder if that's why they're called swallows?

Tomorrow's AG Spotlight will go up as scheduled (it's Kirsten's turn).  Dang those posts are easy, especially for the historical girls, since all I have to do is snap a couple'a pictures.  As insane as my life has been lately, I haven't had the energy for much else.

Hugs, rainbows, and bug guts,
RagingMoon1987

Another temperature flip-flop; or the purging of some sadness

Flip-flop...speaking of flip-flops, it was warm enuff here in the Bootheel last week that I considered wearing a pair to work.  I didn't, because wearing flip-flops too much has really done a number on my feet!  Anywho, it was in the low seventies last week, and then yesterday the temperature bottomed out with copious snowfall, to my chagrin and Rita Cheryl's apparent delight.

Today the snow had all but melted by getting off time (5:30 for me), and temperatures will be in the sixties again by about Tuesday.  Amanda and Rita Cheryl sum up the wild variation pretty well.

Won't be long until Rita Cheryl will be wearing her spring clothes again!  In honor of Turning Red I bought her a red panda dress, but it won't be here for awhile yet.  Odds are that it'll be here in time for the tried-and-true equinox.  And no, I haven't seen Turning Red yet, though I love the idea of someone shapeshifting as their emotions rise and fall.  Plus, I love red pandas.  So does Rita Cheryl, LOL.  Rita Cheryl loves pandas, period, as shown by her raincoat and boots.

Now...as is often the case with these posts, I have some spleen to vent...no, wait...one vents one's spleen when one is angry, don't they?  I'm certainly not angry, not today.  I've mentioned off and on that my mother had a cousin who was sick with some trippy type of cancer, and up until about a month ago she was stable and holding her own.  Unfortunately a wave of complications hit in the middle of last month, and in a span of about two weeks Kristi went from being ambulatory and alert to on hospice to deceased.  She passed away yesterday.  Here is a screenshot of her husband's tribute.

Kristi was just a little slip of a woman, and since she was constantly smiling and friendly one would think that she was a complete wuss.  Not so!  Kristi endured her disease and the pain and frustrations that come with it with great courage and strength.  She had her moments of fear and despair, of course, but only her closest family saw that.  The rest of us, myself included, usually saw her smile and her optimism, and her unquestioning faith in the Almighty, a far greater faith than I've ever had.  So while I'll miss Kristi dearly, I'll also remember her with a smile on my own face, and in the future I'll strive to be more positive and more brave like her.  I'll also be keeping Kristi's husband Dan in my prayers, as his health isn't much better than Kristi's was.  He's got heart failure and is on dialysis, and last I heard he was trying to get on the waiting list for a kidney, though I don't know if he'll bother now that his wife is gone.  Y'all know how sometimes someone gives up on life after their spouse dies?  I hope and pray that won't happen to Dan; he's got lots of people who love him.  But then again, so did Kristi.  So I need to just shut face and let God do His thing.  He knows what He's doing.

Give your loved ones an extra hug tonight!  You never know when they'll be called home.

Love,
RagingMoon1987

The doctor's visit

So today was D-Day for both Mama and Second-or-Third Cousin.  Mama and I visited the oncologist today, and even though we both kept saying it was nothing we were a bundle of nerves.

Of course we didn't just go to the doctor.  We got to Sikeston super-early and had time to eat and swing by Goodwill, which I always like to do.  Mama needed a restroom and I wanted to look at any dolls they had.  Dig this funny-looking thing!

She was made of rough, cheap porcelain with a stiff cloth body and hot pink yarn hair.  Yep, YARN hair.  Yarn hair is not uncommon for rag dolls and not unheard of for dolls from the second world war, but this one was a weird one.

Speaking of rag dolls, Madeline toned the weirdness down somewhat.

Most Madeline dolls have removable clothes and visible appendix scars, but alas, this Madeline had her dress permanently attached.  Madeline's closest shelfmate was this Irish girl, Maggie. 

Maggie is ready to compete in a feis...or she would be if she could stand up straight.  Rounding up the items that caught my attention was this very pretty teddy bear. 

I'd have named him Cranbeary, LOL!  I didn't need any of these items so I didn't buy them, though I have to admit that I liked that first gal with the weird pink hair.

Then, of course it was time to go to the doctor.  Mama had been told that the doctor was more of a blood doctor than a cancer doctor, but the sign in front wasn't reassuring. 

The good news is that Mama doesn't have cancer.  The doctor said that though her hemoglobin levels were a little high they were still in the normal range.  He diagnosed her with secondary polycythemia, stated that the leading cause of this is sleep apnea, and scheduled Mama for a sleep study.  He also wants her nurse practitioner to keep an eye on the hemoglobin levels over the next few months.  So that's it!  Mama will probably be okay, and if she gets treatment for sleep apnea then she might even feel better than she does now!

While we were waiting for Mama's doctor we learned that Second-or-Third Cousin came through his surgery fine.  He'll have to lie very, very still for a time, but as always he's putting his faith in God and in his physicians.  So today started off nerve-wracking but ended on a positive note.  I'm thankful to our good Lord above for taking care of us all, and I pray that he'll continue to do so.  Thank y'all for the prayers, positivity, and advice!

Much love,
RagingMoon1987