"Baby"


The Black Cat Gets A White Butt (Temporarily)
Some of you may not know that Mark's father died of Cancer some years ago. There are many interesting things to tell about his Father. His hobby was collecting and selling diamonds, antique gun locks, Ruger pistols, and antique firearms. He was also a gun maker and made some beautiful muzzel loading and flint lock guns. There will be more about Mark's father in a later blog. Mark's step-father figure is James, a slow talking Texan from the Panhandle of Texas. Mark loves James' cowboy cooking and claims that early on in his cancer battle, when James visited Bangkok, the cowboy cooking helped keep him alive. James is an Aggie (graduated from Texas A and M). Aggies are notorius for doing things in a strange fashion: often backwards. When it started to rain recently, James decided to paint the door trim on the front door. The mom did not realize the threshold was painted until she looked down and saw her footprint in the wet paint. James pointed out that she was not the first to get into the paint. The cat had earlier sat in it and slid off the threshold onto the porch. The curious black cat named "Baby" then had a white butt.

Is leprosy contageous? Mark cracks the mom up. Mark e-mailed that he was entertaining two small children from a village near Laos, a little boy named "Boy" and a little girl named "Baylee". They were watching cartoons and eating lemon popsickles with Mark. This was a big adventure for them. They told Mark that no one in the village would believe them when they went back to school and said they had been up high in a building where a "farang" (foreigner) lived and ate popsickles and watched TV on their holiday from school. The nurse in the mom cautioned Mark about entertaining people, telling him to be certain none of the children or adults had a cold or anything contageous since his immunity is down due to chemo. Mark wrote back saying: "Okay I will try to screen out sick people from my social calender. I can't remember if leprosy is contagious though. " This cracked the mom up and she nearly fell out of her chair laughing. It is good to laugh about the things surrounding cancer that are so hard to manage and Mark always seems to have a good grip on life with his keene sense of humor .