September 22: Fall Equinox, and Then Some

Today's one of those days I have circled on my calendar. For one thing, it's the date of the fall equinox--when the hours of daylight match the hours of darkness, and when autumn is officially underway.

That's my prompt to get pre-winter prep going into higher gear. And as weather would have it, we're forecast to get our first freeze tonight. Time to get out to the barn and make sure the washrack pipes are drained!

For another, September 22 is the anniversary of husband Ed's emergency open-heart surgery. He had it in 2005, undergoing a triple bypass and a valve repair at age 44. Right about this time three years ago, he was hooked up to a heart-lung machine, with his chest cracked open for the most brutally invasive procedure in modern medicine, and I was sitting in a special waiting room, with a direct phone line from the operating room. Every time that phone rang for me, it was with a life-or-death update. Most assuredly the longest 8 hours of my life, I can tell you.

Thank goodness we both survived the ordeal, and are still here to enjoy life's compensatory pleasures--like the arrival of our grandson Jacob, who enjoys a little cuddle time here with "Grandpa Ed."