Tuesday, January 16, 2007, 10:20 a.m., C.S.T., Nashville, Tennessee~

Dear Eileen Marie~

Hey ho!~ This is your friend in Tennessee, Louie, writing! I want to thank you for the letter of last week; it was nice to hear from you again! Glad y'all are doing well there, but I have been worried; have heard about the bad weather y'all have had there, and I am hoping that y'all are okay! I know y'all aren't used to this cold snap! You must be shivering in your Texas boots by now!

Here it is sleeting and freezing rain out; ice is starting to accumulate on the windows of Bill's Volkswagen Beetle (my van is in the garage; don't have to worry about that!), and the roads are starting to get slick. We are under ice storm warnings here; we are expected to get even worse weather by tomorrow:  the local weather forecasters are calling for as much as a foot of snow here; we are under blizzard warnings! Just yesterday and for the past several days we were on the warm sector of things: we had heavy flooding rains (no floods here, thank goodness; our house sits on a hill), and we were under tornado watches for a good chunk of the afternoon. Crazy weather we are having!

I hope the icy conditions have moved on from your part of Texas; now your weather has migrated to here, and we are feeling the effects. (Thanks a lot, Eileen! LOL) I am glad that I am off work today; I don't need to be out in this stuff!

I have mailed your books; hopefully you will get them sometime this week. I went to the UPS office yesterday while I was making my rounds; went to the grocery store to stock up on food, bread, and milk  so we wouldn't run out during the duration of the winter storm. Let me know when you get the books, okay? Thanks!

Boy, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Illinois sure got nailed with the icy weather; what y'all got was nothing compared to other parts of the country! You should count your lucky stars, and thank God that y'all didn't get the major power outages or icing that Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois did! We have been watching the Weather Channel, and the videos they have been showing have been absolutely unbelievable! Now we are getting a taste of the "Yukon Yeller", and it is not very pretty! I will be glad when warmer weather comes; my Cajun blood can't take too much of this cold!! BRRR!!

Johnny and Ronee' have both written y'all letters; be expecting something in your e-mail! They were more than happy to write to you!

I am sorry to learn of your health problems, Eileen. Having RA is bad enough; I can't imagine having to live with lupus on top of that. Sheesh! I am sorry to hear that you fell last month and broke the arm band off your one crutch. Just be careful, especially in this icy weather. If you don't have to get out, DON'T; just stay in and try to keep warm~! I don't need  you falling and hurting yourself; that would not be good at all!!

I will add your name to the prayer chain at my church, if you don't mind. You sound like you could use a touch from God!

Eileen, I write to at least two dozen people now on a regular basis. I write to people in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alaska, Alabama, Washington state, California, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Louisiana, and Arkansas. In addition, I write to a woman in Japan, a woman in Canada, and a woman in England. All are adoptive parents like myself or are in the process of adopting. All belong to the adoption community that I run, and just about all of them have adopted children with special needs. I am in the process of getting ready to contact three new people, one in Ohio, one in Pennsylvania, and one in Minnesota. Two of them (Elaine George in Pennsylvania and Vida Esperanzas in Minnesota) have each adopted two children from China; the third one (Ruby Oppenheimer in Ohio) is currently awaiting word to see if she will get a child; she is in the process of adopting a little boy from Belarus. I don't know how I find time to do this, but somehow I do!

(I do most of my writing when the children are in school or when they are in bed. *giggle* Or I do it on the weekends when my husband and kids aren't clamoring around me! LOL)

Well, the washer has stopped; will have to put the clothes into the dryer. I will then fix my husband and myself something quick for lunch. Take care, Eileen, and do write back soon! I hope y'all made it through the rough weather; it was really bad down there from what I saw on the Weather Channel!

God bless you mightily, and do be careful!! I don't need to hear that y'all are in the hospital with a busted hip! (Or anything else!)

(((HUGS))) and much love from Tennessee, your friend, Louie May. :)