Spending time with son Raymond and Baby before he took off to Utah

Raymond picked me up around noon but realized he had forgotten an item he needed to his brother's house, so he drove back out to Gary's where I took these photos of Baby and one of Raymond and Baby. My son Dan visited with us briefly, so I got to see two sons!
That was a bonus.

I got to ask Dan what he wanted to do for his birthday coming up in a few days on the 24th of April. I did not get to pet or play with Baby as I hoped as it is getting very hot in Phoenix. Raymond threw her in Gary's pool to cool her off and then decided we had better go as he did not want to be on the road after dark. But we chatted all the way there and back.
The three brothers had a good time visiting. Raymond said he cooked dinner for them over the weekend, spaghetti I think. Raymond is a pretty good cook. In fact, he cooked for quite a spell in a restaurant when he started his working days in his teens. Gary also used to cook steaks at Pinnacle Peak for several years while he was a teen. Dan said they were short handed at his job and he had been having to work seven days.
I hope my grandson Dante is doing well in Calif. When school is out I don't know what he plans to do.
I had Raymond let me off at Walgreen's to get my meds and waved good-bye to him. He was eager to get out of town before our temp. hits 100! And I don't blame him. Only those who get to enjoy our wonderfully mild winters should have to put with such heat.
I came back home and watched the first episode of the Tudors, fourth season. 'The Young Victoria' is a movie I want to see that came out today. They say the period costumes are wonderful, and I love the English actors doing their own history. Doc asked me to shop for him so watching a costume drama on his big HD TV screen was my reward.
I read some more on my bio of Paul Dirac. That name is French even though his father taught in England, so that is where he grew up. His father was quite abusive to him and insisted he and Paul eat apart from the rest of the family and he was only allowed to speak French to him. His father was so suppressive that Paul thought he was mainly why his older brother who was intellectually less gifted than the physicist Dirac committed suicide at 25. He wanted to be a doctor which his father did not support. So all families have their struggles. Dirac was marked for life by this miserable childhood.
My kids and I always had a lot of fun. I tried to be a lot more relaxed mom than my dad was as a parent, despite his alcoholism, and my kids all pretty much decided what they wanted to be. There was no money to educate them with my disability, so they had to earn scholarships, etc. to pay for schooling. Dan went in the navy so he could get the college money they offered. A group of engineers starting up a construction company gave my son Gary the opportunity to learn to operate heavy equipment and before he was through he was their field supervisor of a number of jobs. He said he got the equivalent of an engineer's education on the job, learning to read blue prints and later on all the ins and outs of bidding jobs, but not quite the pay! Ronda was a merit scholar and earned a tuition scholarship all throughout college which is what Jamal has earned. They were both in the gifted classes.
So kids find a way to do what the want to do. When there is a will there is a way!
Tomorrow I am going to a musical at the Black Theater Company playhouse! Looking forward to it.
By the way there is a darling video on Sara's Blog on my blog list I got from Connie of her border collie Oreo. Sara says when she has a cold he likes to help them with their tissues, so he kept putting the tissues in the waste basket! This video is so cute. Since I did not get to play a lot with Baby, you might like to go there and see a very similar dog perform. I also found a blog of a woman who has a pet coyote! It is called 'The Daily Coyote' on m blog list. She has some great photos of it, and he also has a dog pal. I have never actually seen photos of a coyote someone successfully turned into a pet. I was fascinated reading about her history with him. A boy up home had pet coyotes he raised when their mother was killed, but he could not let them out of a cage or I believe the chickens would have been in dire danger!