Last week I got the humbling experience to go snorkeling with some manatees. My brother-in-law, Joe, my sisters-in-law, Heather and Tammie, my father-in-law, and Lily accompanied me on the excursion to try and find the “swimming potatoes”. Manatees are gentle creatures but very large. They can be very fast considering their size. I took a point-and-shoot underwater camera with me and struggled in the silty water to catch something other than tails. We saw several in the springs we were swimming in. The water is about 72 degrees all year round, so they had us wear 5 mm wet suits. We had snorkels and pool noodles to keep us on the surface so as not to bother them. The water was 4-6 feet deep in most areas. This time of year there aren’t a lot of manatees in the area as they are out in the ocean. In the winter time, there are hundreds….so we will be back in the winter! This is only about a 1.5 – 2 hour drive north from the Tampa area. My first go with the waterproof camera was not the best. I hope to be able to do this again this winter and get better results. I had a bad snorkeling experience about 10 years ago and now have a mini panic attack when I am attempting to snorkel…especially if I have fins on and cannot touch the bottom and have to enter from a boat. However, I was a woman on a mission and I had a pool noodle….which took a lot of the worry out of me. Lily did great! Michelle loves manatees. She has since she was in elementary school. Joe used to tell me about how much she loved them. I was DETERMINED to get a good photo of one for her. My 2nd photo of the swim was the one. A large manatee started to head to the surface to breathe (they do this every 5 minutes or so) and it came right up next to me….like inches from my face. I actually have a shot that is all whiskers and pores because it was THAT CLOSE. Joe thought it had kissed me. It was pretty darn close. Anyhow, after this swim, I, too, have an affinity for manatees and am determined to bring Michelle to Florida with me this winter to do this again. Maybe have a manatee weekend….where we can snorkel with them…..do a clear kayak ride amongst them….get a photo with her and a manatee. I think our Joe would love to see that happen for the both of us.

A few people have been shooting me emails or texts and asking about my health status. That was kind of the reason for this whole blog….was to be able to keep everyone updated on my health in one place…at one time. Joe’s death really side tracked that plan…my health news seems to have taken a very distant back seat to the grief our family is living through. However, since I have received news, I will pass it on. I can easily forget that there are those out there that actually wonder how MY health is, so here it goes.

I had scans and my big three month treatment on June 16th. On June 17th, I met via zoom with my local oncologist here in Omaha. He is flabbergasted this treatment regimen is working for me and has kept me stable for so long. So that was the answer to the CT scans…stability. This is good. We left for Florida and was gone for a week. Rich and I met with my Mayo Clinic sarcoma specialists while we were in Florida. That man must think I am never home. I only meet with him every three months, but this is the third time in a row I have been somewhere other than home. I have been in West Virginia, Texas, and now Florida. He does realize this means I am out and living my life to its fullest. He, too, is happy with my stability. My tumors have shrunk or stayed stable long enough that he suggest we go to only scanning every 4 months. What is one month, you ask? When you live your life and plan your life in increments of 3 months time….it is a gift. It is one less set of scans I have to do each year. With the tumor load that I carry around, it is really good news. So the next scans are in October. I won’t be sweating by then…it will be fall. I can live my life with reckless abandon until those results come in. So all in all, good news. I am not cured and never will be. I am still terminal…but I am currently stable and have been given a little respite because of that continued stability.

Rich and I went to Montana for a quick 4 day trip to talk to our builders, figure out where on the property our house will be (we got to stake out our house on our land which was made it a bit more real), met with the county noxious weed commissioner (she had no sense of humor whatsoever), and talk with a banker to work on financing our build. Even though it rained three of the four days we were there and the river was RAGING from the excess rain and fast snow melt…we had a great time and got a lot accomplished. We did get to spend a long afternoon in Glacier National Park. One of these times we are going to time our visit for when the full park is open. They were still working on clearing the several feet of snow along the Going-to-the-Sun Road. I think it is a pretty short window…July through Sept maybe. But that is where the bear grass and wild flowers are and the stunning views. However, we got to see some relatively stunning views down below as well…even if we were soaked with rain and covered in mud after the 4.5 mile hike. We actually saw a woman in her wedding dress (the bottom 6 inches was covered in mud) because they wanted to take wedding photos at Avalanche Lake. The rain stopped so I got a few photos without the rain drops. We also got to have dinner with a wonderful family I met as a secretary at Fort Crook Elementary. We can’t wait to be neighbors! Lilacs were blooming everywhere and we enjoyed 55 degree weather the whole time. Enjoy the photos…

It has been REALLY hot in Omaha the last week…and it will continue, unfortunately. However, this means as a part of tornado alley, we have lots of pop up severe storms, especially in the evening. Thursday night, I looked out the window and the outside was orange. I walked outside and it was hot and humid and ORANGE…like I was wearing orange colored glasses. I grabbed my camera and took a few photos. The sky and the clouds were amazing. So these are all from my front yard or back deck. God’s beauty.

I feel like I am forever playing catch up with my life on this blog, especially when it comes to processing photos. On May 31st, I took Lily to the Henry Doorly Zoo here in Omaha. I have been there several times, but we quickly realized it had been about 7 years since she had been there. There were not a TON of people there, as there was rain predicted, but there were definitely more than when I was going before if was completely opened and I was wearing a winter coat. We spent about 5 hours walking around. We had a blast. Lily really loves puffins. They had some in the aquarium near the penguins. She was pretty excited to spend some time watching them in action. They aren’t the most popular exhibit so we were able to spend quite a bit of time watching them on the way in….and then stopped again to say goodbye on the way out. She also really liked the red panda, which, I have to admit, is pretty darn cute. He doesn’t come out much but was out for about 20 minutes that day before going back indoors. I hadn’t had a chance to see him prior to this visit. Evidently he is shy. The bengal tiger who is always snoozing…was, well, snoozing. However, it is warm enough that the flies were out and bothering him enough that he got up and was pacing throughout his enclosure. This allowed me to get some good photos of him. Lily was certainly my lucky charm! The lionesses were out and when they hear the click of my camera, tend to look right at me, so that helps to get good photos…but it still makes me shiver on the other end of a telephoto camera to see a giant lethal cat like that staring me down. The rhinos were mud bathing. The pigmy hippos were blowing bubbles. The giraffes were making faces….although I found out later that the matron of the herd had died the day prior. These photos are of all the adult females…so perhaps they were feeling a bit lost. I know how that goes. The elephants were outside….Eugenia and Sony were with their moms for a big but then decided to give us all a show and have a bit of a romp. They were wrestling and playing. What a pure joy it was to watch them play together. I am guessing it is pretty rare to have two elephant calves to photograph that are so close together in age…they are only 2 weeks apart. They are still nursing. Sony is the youngest, but as a bull calf, is now bigger than Eugenia. She tended to be the one on top of the elephant calf pig pile though.

Now that the zoo is fully open, we were able to get food and drinks there. If you live here in Omaha, I am warning you that when they say “elephant sized pretzel” they mean it. It was literally the width of my forearm and came in a medium sized pizza box. It was the best pretzel I have ever had, but it feeds a family of six. You have been warned. Lily and I had such a wonderful time walking around experiencing the zoo. I had over 22,000 steps by the end of the day (I did go to a cardio class and walk the dog in addition to the zoo…but still….lots of walking). We haven’t seen the seal lions yet. Maybe I will try and head out sometime soon for that. It is just beastly hot right now and I am not sure a lot of the animals will be out because of the triple digit weather. Anyhow, if you are tired of cute zoo animals, sorry to disappoint. There are several photos. Even the cheetahs were cooperating. I am going to have to take Lily more often!

I like to spend a few hours every day on my back porch. Even in the horribly hot weather we have right now, I enjoy sitting out there watching the birds, feeling the sun on my face and the breeze through my hair. I have a set of windchimes on my porch given in memory of our Joe. It is relaxing for me to sit back there and listen to an audio book or write letters to Joe and listen to them gently clang in the wind as I sit under an umbrella. I am a big lover of sunflowers and a dear friend, Emily Ryan, more of a big sister, really, brought a few to me a couple of weeks ago. They lasted a long time for cut flowers and I was testing out a new lens and took them onto the back porch to get a few photos of them.

At the end of April, very early on a cold, rainy Saturday morning, I gathered with about 20 other people to go on a photo shoot at the Wildlife Safari in Ashland, Nebraska. It is a part of the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo…but not located near it. It is about 30 minutes from the zoo proper and it is mostly one of those places where you drive out through winding roads and get to see herds of buffalo and elk and then hike up to large enclosures of bald eagles, wolves, and bears. There are some closures of owl exhibits due to avian bird flue scares in the area, but we had the park to ourselves for the first couple of hours and not many people came out in the driving rain. There was a class the night prior at Rockbrook Cameras, a local camera shop. There were some photographers with Tamron lenses there to somewhat guide the class and to lend out glass to those who may not have super long lenses. I do, thanks to Rich several Christmases ago. The rain was not a lot of fun as you still have to roll down your window to take photos. If you have ever lived in Nebraska, you know it almost always rains sideways thanks to our generous winds. Thanks to three years of rainy weather conditioning in Norway, I was fine with tromping in the rain to take photos. The animals are all wet. We were all wet. For those who want to know, wolves do smell like wet dogs. And….if you have enough time, you can catch most animals with their tongues out!

I have been attending a grief counseling zoom class online for the last few weeks and one thing they talked about last week was self care. You have to do things to try and bring yourself joy…or at least a little break from all the grief. It could be something as easy as getting your nails done, or for me, going on a photoshoot. I signed up with a local travel company to take a bus to Orange City, Iowa this past Friday. There was a tour guide and we were fed a Dutch meal upon our arrival. There was almost 40 of us on the tour bus from Omaha. I went alone…just me and my camera. I was curious to learn about the Dutch Tulip Festival. Having been to the Netherlands a few times and having lived in Norway for 3 years, I thought this would be pretty interesting. I got to take lots of photos of tulips, the Straatfest (like a fashion show of old world native costumes), street scrubbing, and Volksparade. There is a senior who is nominated as the Tulip Queen each year. This year was Queen Naomi’s year. There is only about 6000 people in Orange City and I think all of them were in the parade. After the straatfest, the bergermeister (or mayor of the town) comes through the streets with some other town council folks and inspect the street for cleanliness. The streets have to be cleaned for the Tulip Queen and her court for the parade. The boys throw buckets of water on the street and the girls use scrub brushes to clean. I have to mention at this point that the temperatures did not get out of the 50’s and there was a pretty brisk cold breeze as well. Some of these young boys were SOAKED. I think every kiddo was there dancing or singing. Most of their parents and grandparents were there dancing as well. I also spent some time walking around and taking photos of their late-blooming tulips and replica windmills. I also learned how they make the famous wooden shoes that everyone was wearing. The Orange City Marching Dutchmen, their award winning high school marching band, march in those wooden clogs. I was amazed! The noise was incredible. Anyhow, this was my 12 hours of grief therapy and I captured several photos of families and flowers enjoying a cool May Friday.

This is the answer that I give to people who ask how I am doing. I don’t want to give them the flippant “fine” because I am not fine. I haven’t been for awhile. I was just getting used to being able to honestly answer “fine” when we lost Joe. Now I am “hanging in there”. Every morning I quickly scan my Facebook memories to see if Joe’s face will make an appearance. Today was a photo from his graduation from high school from a friend. That was kind of hard. My mind started to think of his 10 year reunion and how he wouldn’t be there to show off his amazing wife and all his tattoos. He wouldn’t be drinking beers with old friends and telling stories of his time at Bellevue West High School that had inflated with a decade of time. Joe was dyslexic…he was moderate to severely dyslexic and school was a struggle for him. What would take an average person an hour would take him 4 times that long. When he set his mind to it, though, he could accomplish anything….like graduating from high school….going to college and graduating from UCM….from going through the OFD academy and then wanting to go to paramedic school. He was enrolled in anatomy and physiology at a local college when he died….in preparation to start paramedic school. He was working so hard with that.

I had a few other photos of Joe this week I am going to share. One was from high school rugby. He started playing rugby in Norway alongside his brother. The two of them continued to play in the Omaha area throughout high school and then they each played in their respective colleges. Joe loved the game and I became a pretty involved rugby mom. I used to collect and wash all the jerseys for their high school team. I usually washed them twice.

The last two I didn’t remember. They were from 7 years ago in 2015 when we were visiting Joe. Lily was so little there. She adored her older brothers and especially had a fondness for climbing on Joe. On her last birthday, he seemed to realize she was growing up and bought her a mace keychain and a book on personal finances. I had talked to him at great length about Lily and her future as an adult, because I wasn’t sure how long I would be around for it…or if I even would. He seemed to take that to heart and was trying to talk to her more and more about her future plans. She is finishing up her last week of her junior year. She won’t have Joe at her graduation from high school next year cheering her on and that just guts me. He was so proud of her and she loved him so much. I look at his instagram page and he has all sorts of posts about missing his “little sis”. Now HE is the person we are missing oh so much.

Today I sent out the last two thank you’s for Joe’s Celebration of Life. I know they are so late, but I just couldn’t put into words how much the Olathe Fire Department and the MO Army National Guard has done for our family in regards to Joe’s passing. They stood up and helped when we were all so grief-stricken that we couldn’t think straight. Countless members of Joe’s unit and OFD friended me on facebook so they could keep up on what was going on with our family and so they could share memories of Joe with us that we might not have seen. They continue to take care of Michelle and are in contact with her all the time….mowing her lawn and making sure everything around the house is okay. These guys have stepped up when they could have stepped back, and I am so proud that Joe was counted in their ranks of both of these awesome organizations. Thank you so very much. Joe would have been so very grateful and proud of the way you are taking care of the love of his life, his wife, Michelle. So I feel that having all the flowers dead and gone….the thank yous all sent out now…that a period of mourning has been checked off in a way. I don’t want to go on without my Joe…he made me smile and laugh like no one else in our family could do. I guess I will leave you with a quote I saw online that sums everything up pretty well: I miss the memories we’ll never have.

Circles…that is the theme of this post. Tallinn living his best life chasing after bubbles that Lily is blowing for him in the front yard. Then a few moon shots during the eclipse. Still a work in progress!