Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas friends and family! I pray that you have a wonderful weekend full of rest (avoid the crazy soccer moms) and time well spent with family. Karen and I will be going to my parents tonight for dinner and gift exchanges. We will leave tomorrow morning for Harlan County, which is the place "Hee Haw" must have originally been created. I enjoy going there for Christmas and seeing my family, but each year has gotten a little more awkward with several of the family relationships dealing with major issues. My hope is that those people are able to set differences aside and enjoy celebrating Christmas together.

Karen and I are really trying to make Christ the central focus of Christmas. We plan to read the true Christmas story from the Gospels each year to make sure we have our focus in the right place.

I'm praying that we all enjoy any gifts that come our way without being materialistic. I also pray that we have all done our best to help others that aren't as fortunate as we are this season.

By the way... this picture I took shows one more reason why I love my job. One of my bosses bought 5 toy dart guns for some of my coworkers to battle our other boss, who is constantly shooting us with his dart guns. It's just plain awesome. They ambushed him with 30 darts in an all out battle for 5 minutes! When you have bosses that do everything possible to make your job both productive and enjoyable, it makes a huge difference. We have tons of fun and are able to goof off while still getting quite a lot done. In our environment of dealing with cancer patients and research, it's good to have people around you that can keep things positive.

Faith Miller Cole

I had intended on posting this morning about the wonderful weekend I had baking all the food for Christmas presents. I had intended on telling everyone how much fun it is to make food for others and how much I truly appreciate my friend Michelle for helping all weekend long even though she didn't have to. She's just cool like that... very giving friend that doesn't ask much in return. I had intended on telling everyone how much I love my wife for being the only person in the world that can make a bowl of cereal and still manage to get flour all over the house and probably even on the roof. She is a trooper and busted her butt all weekend to get the cooking done. These were my original intentions this morning.

Now I intend on telling you why today is a sad day for me. While I was a freshman in high school, I met these two wonderful Jewish twin sisters and have been friends with them since the first conversation. Catherine and Aaron (yes, she spells it like a boy) brought me into their world of friendship and included me as part of their family as a brother. As part of the family, I met Faith Miller Cole (a.k.a. "Momma Cole"). The sad news... Momma Cole passed away last night.

Momma Cole was once the Director of Communications for Kentucky Utilities and was full of great ideas that she was often awarded for. This was until she was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease, a horrible disease of the colon. She was put on many different medications, which over the course of the last 10 years have reacted with each other causing the need for more medications to be mixed in. She eventually was basically bedridden and fell into a deep depression. One disease or illness began leading to another.

This death is a tough pill for me to swallow as I spent a considerable amount of time with the Cole family and watched as they had to deal with the pain of watching their mother battle through life so much. Catherine, Aaron, my sister Heather, and I all identified with each other so well during those first few years because my mother was battling cancer at the same time. The difference today is that my mother is alive and well (praise the Lord) and we are left here mourning the loss of Momma Cole. We all knew this day would come for many years, but it's never easy to accept when it finally happens.

This will be a new corner to turn for all of the Cole family. Catherine and Aaron have spent so long worrying for their mother and taking family trips rushing to the Mayo Clinic at least once every few months for some kind of emergency. John, the husband and caregiver, can now start the process of moving on past the day he's known would eventually come (I can't even begin to imagine how hard this is for him).

So I guess this blog today is my way of releasing my emotion out into the world. I'm waiting to hear about the visitation and funeral, which will be extremely difficult to handle as I will hug and cry with my friends and old family.

Please pray for the Cole family as they deal with this and that I can comfort them in some way this week. Thanks for listening, friends.

If it's good enough for my paint thinner, it's good enough for my cat??

Ok I know that sounds really bad, but hear me out.

Since painting our cabinets in our lovely new home back in the summer, I've had a paint can full of paint thinner sitting in my garage wide open for 4 months. As I understand it, you are supposed to fill the can up with sand or cat litter and then close it off before throwing it away. I've been too busy (busy= lazy= real truth of this story) to get a paint can top and bag of sand to take care of this mess.

So I'm walking through Target the other day with Karen and all of a sudden I hear this "THUUUD" from behind us. When I turned around I saw a bag of Tidy Cat laying in the isle behind us. I could just imagine God standing in Heaven after a long hard day of making the world go round stopping for a moment to help:

God: "I have been watching long enough. It is time for me to intervene. Oh Tidy Cat, your destination will be different from that of other cat litters. You must help Chad instead of being pooped on by kittens. Come forth from thine spot on this retail shelf and make yourself known!"

I got the point and picked up the cat litter. I had to double check to make sure it was the cheapest available, which it was. There were several other options that cost anywhere from $3-8... but not Tidy Cat. That crap was only $1.89 for a bag! Having never purchased cat litter before or held a bag of it, I assumed you are supposed to carry it like a dirty diaper (hands way out in front as if it's on fire). After all, it's sand that holds pooh... really. I quickly changed my carrying style after I start getting strange looks from people, but this didn't help.

I finally realized that people were giving me the looks because I was going to purchase the cheapest generic brand of cat litter I could find and THEY thought it was actually for a cat... not paint thinner. I know I know, can you believe that?? Great, now I'm actually starting to feel like a cheap pet owner WHO DOESN'T EVEN OWN OR LIKE CATS. As I walk around the store deciding if I should take it back and get the next step up instead a thought occurred to me... I don't really care. I just hope I don't offend the paint thinner because that's some mean stuff. I purchased the junk, added it to the paint thinner, and watched it desolve. Much fun.


On a side note: We stopped at Magee's Bakery this morning on the way in to work and got some coffee and cinnamon rolls. After eating my cinnamon roll at my desk, I was working on a newsletter when I noticed a small white dot on the corner of my finger. Strange, what's this? It looked a piece of leftover icing, but you never know. It could be a piece of tissue paper leftover from blowing my nose.

Only one way to find out, right?

Ahhhh, I'm glad I won this battle!

Moral of the side note: Maybe it's time to go on a diet.