Coming and Going

For the past week, we have been coming and going and meeting in the middle. It was a week ago on Wed. that Toby's mom fell and broke the top two vertebrae in her neck. On Monday they moved her to a physical therapy hospital.  She will be there for a couple of weeks gaining strength and learning to take better care of herself. Here is a photo of her taken a few weeks ago on her 85th birthday.  She is not looking quite as spry today, but she is working to recover.

My mom, who is physically doing great, got herself in trouble again with sweepstake scams.  It's not the first time she has been scammed. She seems to be greatly susceptible to scat scams.  Several times she has fallen for phone scams, until we canceled her land-line. Although we had warned her and warned her about the sweepstake scams, she refused to listen. She continued to send small amounts of money to these sweepstakes that promised her winnings. Earlier this week, she deposited a large check from a sweepstakes scam. Of course it was a fraud. You can read on the link above how that scam works. The good news is that she never lost a large amount of money - we were always able to stop her. But who knows how much she has given out to these sweepstakes over the years, not to mention giving away personal information.

So last week was spent running back and forth to WF to check on Toby's mom in the hospital. This week has been spent running back and forth dealing with Mom and her scam. I am hoping this time, my mom has realized that these sweepstakes are bad news. And hopefully we have her set up where it will not be a problem any longer. Like I told my mom, these scam artists are good - really good. They seem so legit. The really sad thing is that they prey on older people, many of whom cannot afford to lose or give away their money.

Speaking of artists, not scam artists, but real artists, I am taking an art workshop with Kay Franklin.  She did a demo at an art guild meeting several years ago and was very impressive. I have wanted to take a class with her for a while now. So I signed up about a month ago. It does mean another trip to WF, but my car knows the way now. I can put it on auto pilot and get there easily, and then run some errands and check on moms.

Speaking of pilots (don't you love my transitional words?) yesterday a small plane kept buzzing my house. At first I thought it was the usual small plane checking the oil/gas pipelines that crisscross the countryside.  But it continued to fly/roar overhead making me wonder what was going on. When I stepped outside, I saw this crop duster. He was spraying acreage nearby, circling over my house, coming in low...I mean really low. I stood out in the yard and took a few pics of him. My pics do not do justice to how close he really was.  Those guys are amazing to watch.

I should mention that we did take a break last Saturday. Toby and his coworker, Brian, had signed up for a bike ride at the German Fest in Muenster.  Here they are waiting to start. It was a beautiful day, but I was not impressed with the actual festival. It was mostly the usual carnival crap. The beer and brauts were good, but certainly not worth the price. If you are ever in Muenster, stop by Fischer's Market and buy yourself some sausage, cheese, beer, etc. They have all sorts of wonderful German foods and beers.  Fischer's Market is worth the price and trip to Muenster.