The waiting is the hardest part. I hope.

When it rains it pours. Big, heavy, buckets of unfortunate occurrences.

My cat is still missing. Who knew a damn cat could drive an otherwise rational person to distraction?

There's some big doings going on at the Chicky compound that I need to prepare for and Mr. C is pretty much unavailable to help due to work commitments. So the next couple of weeks are going to be a bit stressful.

And worst of all (and I mean way, way worse than all the other stresses that are just buzzing around my head) I just found out that my grandmother may or may not have cancer - and I'm leaning towards the "may" since she's being sent to a much bigger hospital 45 minutes away from her house because the local hospital can't help her - but we won't find out what's going on for at least another few hours if not another day. I don't like this whole waiting thing. It makes a person feel just a wee bit helpless.

Gram had a CAT scan done yesterday after weeks of feeling poor (and not going to the doctor to find out what was the matter because my grandmother is the most STUBBORN woman on the face of this earth) and the results, apparently, were not good. They think it may be ovarian cancer.

My grandmother has already lost her only sister to ovarian cancer years ago. This, I'm assuming, is the outcome she was afraid of. Her reason for putting off the doctors until she finally could not wait any longer.

No one deserves to be ill but my grandmother really doesn't deserve it. She hasn't exactly had an easy life.

She was 17 when she became a mother for the first time and had three more children in rapid succession until, when the youngest, my mother, was one, her young husband died tragically in a freak accident. She was a widow with four kids before the age of 24, can you imagine that? Soon after she married my Papa and had seven more children. Eleven kids in all. She's buried three of them already and one is a vegetable. My Papa died late last year.

So, to recap: Two husbands dead, Eleven children - three dead and one in a vegetative state, one sister dead, oh and a father who died when she was young and a mother who left her - emotionally, anyway - to be cared for by her grandmother. A lifetime of work and toil and sacrifice. She doesn't deserve one more hardship in her life. She deserves to live the rest of her days in peace, surrounded by family and friends, with nothing more to worry about than keeping up on all our birthdays.

I thank you all for the kind thoughts about my cat but if you could find it in yourself to keep one more person who really needs it in your thoughts and maybe even your prayers (if you do that sort of thing) I would appreciate it. My grandmother, though she doesn't know about this online life I have, would also certainly appreciate it. I believe in the power of positive thinking and I can't seem to muster any of my own right now. Gram will probably have surgery in the next day or so, send some good thoughts her way. Okay?

Chicky and her "Gwammy", the happiest I've seen her in a long time.