Three to Six to Who the Hell Knows

We left later on Friday than we'd planned, as always, heading up to Pennsylvania in the thick of DC rush hour, hitting additional rush hours in Baltimore and Delaware and Philly all the way up, to a degree where the math of "rush HOUR" starts bending the space-time continuum and we basically sat in traffic for five solid hours, until 11 o'clock at night. We arrived at Jason's parents far too late to get over to visit mine, and I admit I was grateful for one last chance to steel my nerves before having to walk in and see my dad, now that we Knew, here in the After, the Suck. 

The first thing he said was that he'd read my posts. I'd emailed my mom and all but ordered her not to read them -- I didn't want to make her cry, but I needed to write what I needed to write, and I knew I'd end up with something different if I imagined them in the audience.

She completely ignored me, of course, and then promptly told my dad to read them. 

He loved them. He stood there, looking so thin and pale and bruised like a peach, praising my writing to the skies -- vocabulary! prose! flow! everything he spent 30 years trying to coax out of his high school students! At any other time in my life, I would have burst into hot ugly tears because that's all I've ever wanted to do since I was a tiny thing with my crayons: To be a writer and make my dad proud. 

On this day, though, I scrunched and contorted my face and felt some warmth juuuust behind my eyeballs, but I still could not cry. 

***

Later that day, I watched my mom cry. A lot. I hugged her and patted her back and stared up at random points on the ceiling. I watched my sister cry as she talked about a dream -- a ridiculous, meaningless dream -- where our dad expressed his completely fictional disappointment with her. I watched my mom cry again as my sister and I tried to convince her to hold off on putting the house on the market, as she heard me say the most awful thing out loud, because someone had to.

"Three to six months, Mom," I said as gently as I could. "Three to six MONTHS."

I didn't much like the idea of those three to six months being spent with a sign on the front yard, with strangers marching through the house and eyeballing medical equipment and oxygen tubing and perhaps even him, in bed, because how the hell can he get up and out every time a realtor wanted to stop by? I didn't like the idea of three to six months' worth of stress over low-ball offers and contingencies and inspections and contracts falling through, and then, even if everything works out...a move? To where? To what? How? Look at him. Look at how fast it's already happening. 

I felt mean and cold and hard. When it became clear that they were going to ignore our pleading and put the house on the market anyway, I got vaguely irritated and stomped off. But I still did not cry. 

***

Even later that same day, Jason and I volunteered to go get some carry-out for everybody. We drove to a restaurant and sat at the bar while we waited for the food and I rehashed everything over and over again. We drove back to my parents' house and I talked and talked and talked, arguing with no one in particular, because Jason had already agreed with me from the beginning but was just allowing me to ramble.

We pulled up to the house and I said it out loud for probably the 12th or 17th or 32nd time: "Three to six MONTHS."

But this time I only made it to the word "six" before I was wailing. I put my head down in my lap and cried and cried and cried.

***

Jason got sick the next day, with some kind of vicious acid reflux episode that wouldn't let him eat or sleep for rest of our visit. He still had a work-related obligation on Monday night involving a cocktail party and a baseball game at the Phillies' stadium. We went even though we both felt miserable, trying our best to put on a happy face. My mom had asked me to get my dad a blue Phillies shirt while we were there -- which required a Lord-of-the-Rings style quest to find, despite the fact that every other fan in the stadium seemed to be wearing one. 

Once we found the elusive blue shirt, I bought myself a Phillies hat to replace the one I lost when we moved. 

***

Yesterday -- the day we were planning to leave -- my dad had a doctor's appointment. The magical call from the lab never happened on Friday -- it turned out that in my parents' shock they had completely misheard the doctor and the full pathology results would take several days longer than that. 

My mom called me from the office parking lot, shrieking at the top of her lungs. 

"IT'S GOOD NEWS IT'S GOOD NEWS IT'S GOOD NEWS!"

She was beyond hysterical and I started shouting over her, begging her to get on with it and tell me. I felt my feet going numb. What good news could there possibly be? Was the doctor completely wrong? How could he be wrong? And if so, then what the hell is wrong with my dad?

My mom finally calmed down enough to say that the leukemia was not acute, it was chronic, and started rushing to assure me that this made "all the difference in the world" and it "wasn't a death sentence" and the doctor was telling them about how TONS of patients go on to live YEARS with this diagnosis. YEARS. Now, this was just their regular family doctor and they'd need to talk to the hematologist but still, Amy, STILL! Everything is going to be okay! This changed everything! EVERYTHING!

I sensed my mom was waiting for me to scream, to laugh, to give a triumphant whoop. Instead I went weirdly quiet and stared at the ceiling. I told her we'd be over once they got back from the doctor.

Jason started questioning me: How can this be that different? He still can't do chemo. He still can't do a bone marrow transplant. What treatment is there? Did they catch it earlier than they thought? It's still obviously coming on fast, and making him sicker, so...?

I shushed him and sat there for a minute trying to process everything. I felt like I'd been knocked off my axis, like it was Wednesday night all over again, only...worse? I felt...angry? 

"What the fuck is wrong with me?" I asked out loud.

How many times did we have to go through this? How many phone calls and car trips and well, THIS? How many times did I have to lose him, to grieve over him? To worry endlessly that The End would not be peaceful and quick, but painful and long? At what point is "more time" not actually better? When was this really and truly going to be over? 

"What the FUCK is wrong with me?" I asked again, to no one in particular. 

***

Part of what was wrong, thinking back, was that my brain was starting to already remember random Google nuggets I'd read about the chronic diagnosis. It would be one thing if they caught it early, or if he was younger, or if he was otherwise in better shape, health-wise. There would be some additional treatment options, some chance at the disease staying in a holding pattern for a decent length of time, of him BEING one of those "TONS" of patients who live for years. 

The doctor had still not told my parents what stage the cancer was actually at. On the way to their house I pulled up a few websites on my phone and quickly cursed my creepy photographic memory. At Stage III or IV, after anemia develops and other internal organs get involved, intensive chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant are pretty much your only options. My father has been anemic for a few months already. He had to be at least at Stage III.

The doctor told my parents something about getting his platelets and anemia back in check, making it sound -- at least to them, in their amped-up joy -- like fighting advancing leukemia required little more than an iron supplement, tra la la la laaaaa. 

The only difference I could really deduce between a chronic and acute diagnosis in my father's particular case was that while it would very likely kill him, it would just take a bit longer to do it. Or maybe it would let the chemo do it instead.

***

Jason had suggested outside that I try my best to keep my mouth shut and let the doctors talk with them, to let them enjoy this reprieve, and to pretend like I didn't know any better and was just as happy as they were. I promised to try.

***

When we arrived at my parents house I felt downright sick with knowledge. My mom came to the door with a huge smile on her face and her arms in the air, repeating her refrain about the GOOD NEWS! GOOD NEWS! 

I could see my dad standing in the hallway behind her, clapping his hands. 

***

I am a terrible liar. 

***

Noah amused himself with my phone during the trip home, completely draining the battery. So I didn't see my mom's text message until a few hours after she sent it.

doc called

aggressive

needs chemo

u were right

***

I am exhausted. I am angry. I need something to hit. Something to throw. Even though I never really believed that the switch in diagnosis meant anything...maybe I did. I know my parents did, which makes the whole farce seem so extra cruel and unfair. 

Their house is on the market. After being at peace with the no-chemo route on Monday, he seems to be changing his mind, despite the high risks, in a desperate bid for more time. My mom is terrified of chemo, terrified of no chemo. I would now give anything just to have been wrong about the whole thing.

Because now I can't stop crying. 

After the Fall

 

Thank you.

I...don't really know what to write next, but a formal Internet-wide thank-you note seems appropriate, for all of your lovely and kind comments, emails and tweets. Reading them felt like...well, like an actual physical hug and actual physical arms propping me up. 

Thanking each and every one of you personally would probably be the best thing to do, and a much better use of my time than what I've actually been doing. Which is...not much. A lot of staring into space. Watching cooking shows. Swiffering up our yearly mid-September ant infestation in the foyer because the wipe-out-the-colony-in-a-blaze-of-Jonestown-glory traps aren't working nearly fast enough for my liking. I've made significant progress through the box of Godiva chocolates Jason ran out to fetch me almost immediately after I got the news, but that's only because it fits so well into my established plan of sitting on the couch and staring into space.

 
 
The one thing I haven't been able to do yet is cry. Which is a weird feeling for me, because I cry over everything. TV shows, movies, commercials, any YouTube video involving a dog, news stories about the triumph of the human (and/or dog) spirit. But for the past 48 hours or so, I've been a STONE. I doubt evenSteel Magnolias (BUT MAH DAUGHTER CAAAAAN'T) or A Little Princess (PAPA! PAPAAAAA!) would trigger anything more than a snort of derision and a crack about the visible teeth marks all over the scenery. 

A friend of mine called yesterday after reading my post and she immediately burst into the tears that I was unable to shed, but oh, I was so grateful for her call and the sound of her voice. She let me ramble on and on for as long as I needed, though I realized I sounded oddly military in my list of Things That Of Concern: having to explain things to Noah, for one. Ezra's young age and lack of memories. Their house, my mother, hospice care -- all of which I rattled off like logistics from a a spreadsheet before brightly mentioning that Hey! I'm getting ahead of myself. Still need to wait and see what the lab results tell us, right? 

She paused, awkwardly, knowingly, and I suddenly realized what I was saying. Oh. Denial. That. 

 
 
But it's true. I managed to write that entire post yesterday without really actually letting the news sink in. Like I would jinx something by talking about the obvious likely outcome. Like tomorrow's call from the lab could still magically make it all go away. Like the next time I Google acute leukemia I'm going to get a completely different set of results, so instead of a prognosis that took his age and health and medical history into account, would look at the comment numbers and Twitter outpouring and be all, "OOPS! NEVER MIND, YOU'RE SPECIAL! YOUR PROGNOSIS IS OVER HERE, BEHIND THE FREE UNICORN."

This probably would have been a good opening for that cry, but instead I just went back to work for awhile before spraying the ants with the can of super-toxic Raid that Jason doesn't know I use when he's not around because I don't think the environmentally-friendly stuff he buys does anything and I FUCKING HATE ANTS SO MUCH.  

  

So then I decided to scan more of the old photos my mom sent me a few weeks ago. In preparation for the Move That Was Supposed To Solve Everything, she's probably spent a hundred hours over the last few months meticulously sorting through hundreds of photos, so all seven of us could receive gallon-sized Ziploc bags' worth of orange-y memories. Scanning them seemed like a nice mindless activity. Load photo. Hit button. Stare blankly at wall. Occasionally push tongue back into slack-jawed mouth. Repeat. 

The latest batch are particularly hilarious -- ripe for cautionary photo essays about Jams shorts and tube socks and decade-long awkward phases -- but of course I had to start with the photos of my dad. Most of which were taken with the exotic touristy background locale in mind, so he and I are blurry squinty-eyed figures standing way too far away from the camera. 

 

I plucked out a few that seemed to reflect my mind's memory of him -- sunglasses and a baseball cap when I was really little, then years and years of various plaid ivy caps, coats with patches on the elbows like every good high school English teacher, church clothes every Sunday. Sitting in his chair, or posing at Easter in front of the forsythias he planted so my mother wouldn't have to look at our neighbors giant RV from her beloved screened-in porch out back. 

  

I have better photos of him, of course. Gorgeous ones from my wedding day, as I pin his corsage on in my parents' downsized townhouse living room and he escorts me down the aisle at a church they attended by I did not, anymore, at that time. And more recent ones with our digital cameras that include him and the boys, photos I could immediately check for closed eyes and bad lighting. I have photos from hospital rooms where we still made jokes and treated it like no big thing, here, hold Ezra and make a funny face for the camera. Photos of him at home, with his oxygen, lying down but smiling anyway. 

I'm glad to have those photos, particularly for Noah and Ezra's sake. Ever since they were born, I've been particularly careful to take photos of them with their grandfather, because I knew. I have been walking this path of a kind of...knowing denial for years now. It's coming. Don't panic, but carry a towel. Just in case. 

Right now, though, I admit I prefer the old pictures, from before I knew. 

I never want to forget the before. 

The L Word

I felt vaguely unsettled yesterday. I made multiple stabs at writing a semi-funny story, but every attempt ended with me losing interest and idly staring into space before holding down the delete key and obliterating everything I'd written. Noah was home from school because of the primaries, so I figured I was just distracted by the constant interruptions of Mommy, Mommy, look at this Star Wars toy I made it's from Legos but I put this piece here instead of here and now it's a pod racer Mommy do you like it Mommy it's from Star Wars pew pew pew!

I finally gave up and decided that we both probably needed to go play outside for awhile.

***

Three months ago, my mom mentioned my dad's platelet count. Among probably a good five or six other things that were of concern. Ever since the roller-coaster ride of his heart surgery and multiple bouts of pneumonia, I haven't written much about my dad, I know. There was almost too much to say, what with the continued irregular heartbeat episodes, his permanently damaged lungs keeping him tethered to an oxygen machine 24/7, his diabetes, his hearing loss, the falls, macular degeneration, mysterious bruising, overwhelming fatigue, and the depression that inevitably comes when your age and body and health turn on you so dramatically, when the few simple pleasures you have left -- reading and watching baseball on TV -- are slowly slipping away behind increasingly cloudy vision. 

He only leaves the house for doctor's visits, and there are so many, and there never seems to be good news or an all-clear from any of them anymore. Something else to watch and monitor. Suspicious growths that need to be removed, minor surgery to be performed, something new to be followed up on in three months, give or take the specialist's vacation schedule.

So I didn't really think much of the platelet count thing at all. 

Instead, we all threw our energy into figuring out the house situation -- to get them into a smaller, single-level place, preferably one for seniors that would allow my mother some freedom for the first time in years, where she could feel safe leaving him for longer than it takes to make a furtive trip to Target Pharmacy for prescription refills. So the need for her own visit to her own doctor wouldn't lead to a tearful, panicked phone call because there's no one to watch your dad that day. 

This lead to cleaning and purging and sorting and donating. Then came the discovery of expensive house repairs, at just how overwhelmed they've been in their small townhouse for all this time. Then we found out about a home equity line of credit and more debt than we were expecting. They'll only get how much for the house? The top-choice communities want how much upfront? 

The next-door neighbor had a psychotic break and did WHAT out in her front yard? OMG, that would almost be funny if the whole situation weren't so terribly, horribly sad.

***

The house is going on the market on Monday. The follow-up visit for the platelet count issue was yesterday. 

The doctor took one look at the bloodwork and ordered a biopsy performed on the spot. The results were definitive. It's leukemia. 

The lab is now looking at the biopsy and we'll know the extent of the cancer by the end of the week, but his doctor was kind yet blunt: We are probably looking at something acute. The diagnosis alone means he is already officially too sick for the senior community they planned to move to. He is already saying he does not want to go through chemotherapy. 

My mom related the information over the phone last night and I sat down on the floor. I felt like I was floating. I couldn't really cry. I remembered the time she told me about his throat cancer in a Taco Bell parking lot. The time I sat on the floor in my dorm hallway five years later and she told me it had come back. The time my brother-in-law called in the middle of the night to tell me about the aneurysm. 

At some point, the calls drift together and aren't quite as distinct, even though they kept coming. A mysterious fall. A heart problem. We're at the hospital. At the ER. Headed to the doctor now. Diabetes. Skin cancer.  Heart surgery. Pneumonia. Collapsed lungs and more pneumonia. Congestive heart failure. His eyes, his ears, his lungs, his heart, again. It was always something, he was always aging, always sick. Perhaps I'd started to just expect it, and the phone calls.

But I wasn't expecting this one. I just wasn't expecting it to be this.

 

In Lieu Of

This post is sponsored by the American Cancer Society.

I was in the ninth grade. It was early spring, a few weeks before Easter. My mom offered to take me out for lunch, and I, in my infinite gastronomical taste and sense of occasion, chose Taco Bell. We sat at a tiny table by the window. I remember I talked a lot.  I don’t remember what I talked about, but afterward, when we got back into the car, my mom drove out of the parking lot…and then parked the car a few yards away, in a different fast food parking lot.

That’s when we had the conversation I realized my mom had probably intended to have at the restaurant.

“Your dad has cancer.”

***

He had cancer of the larynx, to be exact. The voice box. He’d quit smoking when I was a tiny little asthmatic thing, but the long years of cigarettes and daily high school English lectures had taken a terrible toll. He underwent radiation. I have a weird memory of going with him to a radiation treatment that I think I may have made up. I started writing short stories and essays in earnest around this time. That Easter, my parents gave me a tiny black-and-white kitten. Her name was Sabrina. She cheered us all up, and she was especially fond of sleeping on my dad’s chest and stomach during his naps. He took a lot of naps.

But the cancer went into remission.

***

Five years later, I was a freshman in college. I was attending a tiny Christian college in the Midwest, 13 hours from home, and absolutely miserable. Not even a full semester had gone by, but I knew I’d made a terrible decision. I had no idea how to fix things or admit that I hated it there without disappointing my parents – especially my dad.

That’s when the phone call came. I was sitting outside in the hallway, the curly phone cord stretched across my tiny cell of a dorm room, when my mom’s words buzzed over the receiver, causing me to slide down the wall to the floor.

“The cancer is back.”

***

I came home and stayed there. My dad had accepted an early retirement package from the school district after his first diagnosis, and been teaching as an adjunct professor at a local community college. I got to attend it for free. I was happy there. I made friends and good grades and landed the lead in the drama production.

I also, inexplicably, like a jackass, took up smoking.

But I quit just a few months later, at the urging of my boyfriend. A tall, dark-haired boy who held my hand for hours in the hospital waiting room, whom my father had eyed warily from his bed as they wheeled him into surgery. He would lose his larynx, and his voice. His voice that I listed to on my old walkman while we waited, a tape he’d made at my request, a recording of his rich voice reading bits of Shakespeare and Bible passages until the rasping, tired soreness of the cancer took over and he had to stop.

***

The tall dark-haired boy and I were married a little over a year later. My dad read I Corinthians 13 at the ceremony in a hoarse whisper, his new voice. A few months after that, my cat Sabrina died of lymphoma.

***

I was pregnant when the next call came. I don’t remember any details like I remember details from the other moments. The grey interior of our Ford Taurus. The slickly painted cement walls of my dorm. The ugly blotchy pastel furniture of the hospital.

I was probably at home, probably wandering aimlessly around the living room like I always do when I’m on the phone. She’d probably told me to sit down, but I’m not sure I listened, since I was so sure it was nothing, so sure there was no question that my parents were fine now and would meet this grandchild. My dad had been cancer-free for years, my mom’s few scattered health scares had a remarkable track record for not being anything really, truly serious.

Until now. She had breast cancer. She needed a mastectomy.

***

Both of my parents are still here, still alive. They’ve met not one, but three new grandchildren since my mom’s diagnosis in 2005. My father has gone on to fight many other health battles, from thyroid cancer to skin cancer to an aortic aneurysm to diabetes to emphysema to congestive heart failure. AND HE IS STILL HERE.

When my grandmother died several years ago – of complications from a fall in the shower, not cancer; in fact cancer has yet to successfully take out a single member of my family – my mother still asked that donations be made to the American Cancer Society in lieu of flowers.

The American Cancer Society asked those of us participating in this sponsored post/awareness campaign to keep our stories of how cancer has affected us mostly positive, to not dwell on the insidious, the unrelenting nature of cancer, of the fear that hangs over your head once the diagnosis is made – fear of every check-up, every late-night phone call.

I could have easily written that entry. Cancer changed the course of my life – cancer was *right there* at every major turning point, nudging and sometimes walloping me in directions I never would have otherwise gone.  I don’t ever want to get cancer. I don’t want my husband or my children to get cancer. I will continue to donate to cancer research to up our odds.

But I know it can be survived, and survived spectacularly. That’s the story I really want to tell, the story I hope came through in my rambling today, the story of a family who kicked cancer’s ass, in lieu of the other way around.

 

Things!

1) Hey! Localites! Next year you MUST attend the Share Our Strength/Taste of the Nation event. Was a great party. Great! So great that now, many many hours later, the only word I can think of to describe it is...great. Well, that and...fuzzy. Wine-soaked. Creamy polenta served with braised shortribs and some kind of mystery fried foodstuff on a stick that I kept seeing people with but was never able to locate, which pissed me off because one of my guiding culinary principles is FOOD + FRIED + STICKS = AWESOME.

2) Also awesome was the fact that Jason and I were invited as (bwah ha haaaa) press, which meant we were tagged with the Yellow Wristbands Of I'm So Blogging This. Didn't stop one cute little old guy from scolding me about my hair ("You have gorgeous blonde hair and look what you did to it! Why? Whyyy?"). But after I explained the whole Pink for the Cure thing, he graciously asked for my site address so he could donate. Which is when I realized I had no business cards or even a damn pen. MOST. AWESOMEST. NETWORKER. EVER.

3) Also most awesome: mah shoes.

Yeah, I was totally bleeding into the ankle strap by the end of the night, but they were worth it.

4) Hey! Look!

This was a total shock, actually, and I actually froze the first time I saw the logo projected on the massive screens around the event and just stood there pointing, all "eh eh eh hey!" Jason donates all his ad proceeds to different hunger-related charities every month -- and apparently his small check was enough to get him classified as a local sponsor.

That makes me kind of...sad, actually. It's really humbling to think about how much money we spend on food every month and how far the cost of just one meal out could go towards helping hungry children in our very own city.

*hangs head in shame, mumbles something about the getting the shoes on sale at least*

5) SPEAKING OF CHILDREN, here's a lesson for everyone: if you are going to have a conversation about how your child has never even attempted to climb out of his crib yet, about how it has never even occurred to him that it's an option, don't be all shocked when THE VERY NEXT MORNING you wake up to hear a terrific thumping sound, followed immediately by the wails of your baby who just fell ass-over-teakettle over the crib rail.

(Edited to add Thing #6: Mamapop. Argh. ARGH! Our server went boom. Or almost went boom, and then our host went GAR! SMASH! and yanked the site down and won't put it back up, or something like that. I couldn't really follow the whole story because my head exploded HOURS AGO. Basically: we're too sexy for our hosting provider. Also too popular. And way too obsessed with liveblogging Anna Nicole Smith babydaddy news. So the site will be moving to a shiny new server this week, and I could not love my safe little world of Typepad more at this point, because they never make me deal with scary things like server load times and CPU storage and blah blah talkyspeak blah.)

Squishy

Ok, so it really does not take much to make me cry. Am hopelessly weepy and sentimental and I may be crying RIGHT NOW just from trying to think of an example of something lame and ridiculous that recently made me cry. Like that Free Hugs video. Or those Kleenex commercials with the couch. Or the heartbreaking beauty of my pizza bagel.

All of that setup to say NO FAIR WITH THESE COMMENTS. All the honesty and bonding and gorgeous tributes to your boys and your girls and Christ, my eyes got all blinky and shit while reading them. (ALL of them, plus the emails, every one, yes.) So...thank you.

In a similar vein, thank you to everybody who recommended the Ellyn Satter book after the OMFG MY KID WON'T EAT GOING TO STARVE TO DEATH IF I DON'T MURDER HIM FIRST post. (Uh. This one.) I finally went out and bought it last Friday (and bumped into reader Krista* while there, in a overwhelming confluence of Internetness) and spent the entire weekend reading it while slapping myself in the forehead.

A couple of the big mistakes I made:

1) Caring, obviously.

2) Doing the short-order cook thing, where I'd whisk away a rejected food and make him something else, and then something else after that.

3) Trying to force a spoon into his mouth because I figured if he'd just TASTE it, he'd LIKE it.

4) Entirely too much juice and milk between meals.

5) Completely unrealistic portion sizes.

6) Did I mention the caring? How very desperately I cared? Which resulted in hovering and hand-wringing and the renting of garments and probably some liver damage?

Wow, that's way more than a couple mistakes. I am a freaking moron.

Last night Noah ate chicken. And fresh fruit. And lentils. He gobbled up matzo brei (also known as the Hangover Special in our house) without even hesitating. Today he ate a meatball and applesauce and part of my pizza bagel. The Squish Test is no more. We smile at each other during meal times now.

I honestly cannot believe how quickly Ellyn's advice turned things around. He refused to eat a bite of about two or three meals, but I refused to care. I fought the temptation to make up for those meals with cups of milk or juice. And then...boom! He started eating. Tasting foods he's refused to even try for months now. Eating everything on his plate and then asking for more.

I'm just...dude. THANK YOU, INTERNETS.

Don't get me wrong -- he's still kind of weird. He eats his applesauce off the tip of his index finger because he refuses to use his spoon. I have to check his nose after every meal because of his penchant for shoving food up there. (THANK YOU to wilddreemer for the plugging-a-nostril-blowing-into-mouth trick: that saved us from at least two trips to the emergency room and/or having to explain why my son has a lentil plant growing out of his nose.)

Yesterday we gave him a little Easter basket -- I filled it with some cute Easter-related toys he has owned and ignored since being in utero and a few of those plastic eggs full of snacks. Cheerios, puffed rice and what I figured would be the big hit of the day, a couple Hershey Kisses. He tentatively licked the chocolate, smiled politely and then handed them back to me. The puffed rice was his favorite.

That's just weird. Luckily, I have no problem eating pre-licked Kisses.

Because that's not weird at all.

* And one final THANK YOU to Krista, for leaving out the truly SCANDALOUS detail from our meeting in your comment, which was that my hair was most decidedly un-pink. I feel the need to confess it anyway. I don't know whether the dye is losing its potency or my hair is getting resistant, but I'm having a slut bitch of a time keeping the color in. And after noticing that the full-head applications were turning my hair into crunchy straw I backed down to just a couple pink streaks. Weird suspicious looks from the neighbors are one thing, but crunchy straw hair is quite another. (Also: I am sorry, fuck cancer and all, but there was no way I was going spend the next five years looking at hot pink hair in my driver's license photo.) If I don't apply the color about every other day it washes out almost completely.  It's a messy and time-consuming process, and with a fragillion blogs to update and the gentle soul of a child to nurture...yeah. Every other day doesn't always happen.

Anyway, we're a mere $990 away from our goal of $7,000 and my release from pink-zebra-stripe-hair-hell. I'm almost out of aluminum foil and my cuticles look like I've been marinating them in beet juice. (Yes, gloves would be smart. Remembering to buy gloves AT THE STORE instead of the minute I get home would be EVEN SMARTER.)

I apologize for all of my many hair-related deceptions. Here's a photo of me right now, freshly re-highlighted.   

As always, I am incapable of getting my entire forehead in the frame. Brilliant.

Back from the Brink

Bleh.

So while no members of my family showed up at my house to kill me after that last post, my preshus son certainly gave it a sporting effort. I once again fell victim to that parenting phenomenon where your kid gets a single solitary ooky diaper and then BLAMMO, you are beyond violently ill for the next 24 hours, crouched on the bathroom floor and praying for the sweet release of death, or at least begging your stomach to GIVE IT UP ALREADY, YOU ARE COMPLETELY EMPTY YET CONTINUE TO PUNISH ME, WHY, WHYYYYY?

Ahem. What? Enough with the vomit talk? Okay!

(Shall I shake you down for some more money instead? We're at $5,430 [dudes! awesome!] -- 78% of our goal. I have a wine-and-cheese cocktail party this weekend with our community council and neighbors and really don't want to go with pink hair. Especially since I think they may already not like us because ours is the only recycling container with so many glass bottles instead of plastic, not that I would ever check and maybe dump a couple wine bottles into someone else's recycling container and then deliberately put our empty milk cartons on top or anything. No. I would never do that. Anyway, Stacy and Heather still need your donations. Thanks!)

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me as I attempt to claw my way back to health and sanity. I was going to reward your patience with a hilarious video of Noah throwing a terrifically pointless and snot-nosed little temper tantrum -- the kind of video that would generate a lot of tsk-tsks from people because HOW DARE I MOCK MY CHILD'S PAIN FOR SHINY INTERNET NICKELS -- but there's something wrong with the file and I can't get it to upload correctly.  Damn it.

So here, you get this instead.