Here's kinda how Cowboy Billy looked yesterday when he arrived home on his hoss.

A little worse for the wear!

He's so blissfully happy, though, that he can't stop saying, "Do you REALIZE how GREAT it is to be in your OWN HOUSE?"

But if you were to see him, I would prepare you: He has lost 35 pounds (!!!) in three weeks, and he is white as a herd of Montana sheep, and his eyes look as big and round as a plate of cowboy beans. But the yellow is gone!

Yesterday, his home nurse came for the first time. She taught me how to change his ostomy and how to stuff gauze deep into his abdomen incision where the stitches came out. At first I had vowed that I would never, ever, ever, ever be able to do any of those things, or even watch while someone else did it.

But when I realized I was cornered, I excused myself, and ran into my prescription medicine cabinet, and an hour later had learned the important life lesson that almost anything can be mastered after a valium.

Of course, I may never eat again.

In which case, by the time you see us, we may both look like piles of sticks after an ice storm. But you'll know it's us, and not really sticks, when you see the deputy badges, and the cowboy duds, and hear our spurs a-jingle-jangle-jinglin.

Bill will be the one with the bag.