Last night, when we were at the hospital, both of us noticed how people treat me as I am writing on a white erase board instead of speaking.   I kid you not, and Angie and I both can attest to it, they treat me like I'm a moron or simpleton.  Most of the people speak slowly, more loudly and they use smaller words.   I am not making this up.  The problem is that my lungs were hurting - even with small breaths - so laughing really stabbed me and jumped my pain level from 7 or 8 straight to a 10 - but those people made me laugh.  I truly was crying at times because it hurt so bad - but to see these people like that was actually funny.

I know there is no way they realized they were doing it - but now I have a very small feeling how someone mute is treated.  We all might want to be careful that we don't do the same thing.

Ok - today is a much easier breathing day.  My lungs still hurt - but at least I can breathe without having pain on every breath.   It was also a bit of a sad day for us.  We've lived in this house since 1988 and when we moved in, there were 2 smaller pin oak trees in the front yard.  I immediately trimmed them so they would grow upwards and they did, to about 50 feet and they provided great shade to the front of the house - as you can see here, from a photo in 2001.


Missletoe has spent the past 4 years infesting the tree you see on the left  to the point that it was growing out of the trunk at the base.   Today, we had to have it taken down before it gives the missletoe to my other trees as well as the neighbor's tree.   I have to commend the crew that came out on how quickly, professionally and efficiently they did it.  Patterson Tree Service did a great job and they were much less expensive than 2 other quotes we had gotten.    This is how it looked while they were working on it a






and how it looks now....



We are going to be ordering  some japanese trees that really looked beautiful in the photos, that grow to about 70 feet (about 15 feet a year) with really pretty blooms, but we need to give the ground about 6 to 8 months before we plant them.

So - my advice to you is that if you have missletoe get into your tree that you want to keep - get on it quickly and do not let it get away from you or it will kill your tree.

Don