Earlier this week, a local man, Doug Sands, said goodbye to his family for what no one knew would be the last time. He and his wife, Tammy (Barnum) were very quiet, shy, and nice people. They had a five year old daughter called Mariah, who was a gorgeous, adorable, sweet little girl with dark curls and big blue eyes. And busy hands, as I once helped her mother pick up all the change from a jar her daughter grabbed off the store counter and dropped...kids! Heh. She was driving on highway 6 between Raymond and Pe Ell, Washington, with her mother, her grandmother, and her mom's boyfriend. I don't have details, except that there was an accident, and all five perished. Mariah was apparently still alive, but died at the hospital later. The families are, of course, devastated. So, send your prayers in whatever manner you can. This is a prime example of bad things happening to good people. I hate humans, generally, but these people...no one could ever say anything bad about them, they were just very good, very nice, very kind people. And yet people like Butch still roam the planet. Makes you wonder. A lot.

Well, I didn't go to the funeral, since I've sworn off them, but I was getting ready to leave town about the same time as the funeral, and there was absolutely no place to park anywhere in the entire town! That's how much these people touched everyone's lives. I cried.

Correction: The grandmother was not in the car, so it was only four people. Tammy, her daughter Mariah, Tammy's mom, and Tammy's mom's boyfriend, who was driving, and driving too fast for road conditions, slid on ice and snow, down an embankment, etc. The grandmother was already dead, and they were returning from making funeral arrangements. Bizarre and tragic. Not only that, we found out that the death of an old lady in her burning house was no accident. Two local morons were robbing her, she woke up, so they killed her and burned the house to cover it up. Interesting week here.

PS--Apparently, there were over 1000 people at the funeral!!!