Five. Five! FIVE!! It's his most favorite number, by the way. Funny, because it was always mine, too. Still is, I think. ; Noah's Fifth Birthday Music: Northern Downpour by Panic at the Disco (Related: One, Two, Three, Four) Read more →

I am getting REALLY sick of being so goddamned right all the time. I knew chemotherapy would be rough on my dad. I knew his doctor was pumping him full of horseshit by saying crap like, "You're gonna feel better after just one session!" My vote was hospice, not chemo, for better, more peaceful time, not more-at-any-miserable-wretched-cost time. But I also knew that someone else's cancer is not a democracy. He wanted the chemo. The more. So I just hoped it wouldn't be as bad as I feared. It was so bad they had to halt treatment just hours in because his reaction was so violent. They tinkered and restarted, but it was still so bad that by the time my mother picked him up (she couldn't handle staying there, because HER reaction to seeing other people going through it was also pretty violent, in its own way), he was running a high fever and covered in vomit. Within hours he was running a fever of over 103 and in an ambulance, headed to the ER. "Huh," his doctor said, when my mom called to find out if she should call 911. "Yeah." His platelets were down to 10. His... Read more →

My dad started chemotherapy today, the first of THREE all-day, 8-hour, super-intensive sessions he'll have THIS WEEK. Then he gets a couple weeks to kick back and relax before the next round. Maybe play some football, drink a few beers, go see a death metal concert or something. In other words: DEFLECT! IGNORE! LET'S TALK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD. Ahem. Continuing on with some random things that are slightly more amusing: 1) Toddlers with the ability to accessorize. 2) Jason stopped at the grocery store yesterday and purchased the special nut-free store-bought birthday-snack cookies. We only needed one bag for Noah's classmates but he bought three. 3) Magnum! 4) So far, I've flushed four (4) stinkbugs down the toilet today. I know that wouldn't usually be a check in the "YAY!" column for me, but I guess it speaks volumes for just how wildly I'm grasping for purpose these days. 5) In other insect-related, the-wine-glass-half-full news, I'm actually pretty jazzed that the baby no longer looks like this: Yeah, YOU try telling people at the playground that it's a "mosquito bite on his eyebrow" and see if any of them believe YOU, either. 6) In two days, I'm... Read more →

So I have no intention of trying to fake it for you guys. I'm sad. I'm miserably, terribly, fucking-ass sad. Something inside feels like it...kind of cratered last week, so I have no defenses against even the mildest, stupidest everyday sort-of bullshit. I'm getting a zit! I can't find the nail clippers! Ezra only wants Daddy all the time and it hurts my feeeeeeelings. A kid was mean to Noah and I'm the one who burst into tears. Folding laundry dissolves into a fit about gaining weight and clothes not fitting and WHY BOTHER, MAN. WHY EVEN BOTHER. I wish they sold Xanax or something over the counter, because I can't even deal with getting my ass in to see a doctor. I had a mole removed last week and the effort nearly killed me. I'm supposed to get my hair done in a couple days and I'm all, "I don't want to goooooo, the receptionist is always so chatttttttty." I'm supposed to be planning a birthday party for the boys like, RIGHT NOW but instead I've decided to downsize the current goal to: "Get to the store and buy a package of cookies to send to school on Noah's... Read more →

So. My dad has decided to go ahead with chemotherapy after all. I don't agree with this. Nobody does, actually, except for one doctor who seems to put chemo on par with prescription-strength Tylenol. Take one! You'll feel better in no time! Giddy up, let's get this systemic invasion started! My mom called me yesterday from a pharmacy parking lot just so she could finally scream and cry out loud about it. Best case is maybe a year or two of remission before the cancer comes back. Because this kind of cancer always comes back. The more likely case is that the chemo will kill him, or make him so desperately sick that the extra time will be the opposite of good time. But he's changed his mind and. He. Wants. That. Time. Which means it's probably time for me to stop talking about it for a little bit, because even though my opinion on the matter is probably something like this... ...I shall instead post the other photos of the mini-pre-birthday party we threw for the boys last weekend like this: There were cakes! To tenderly caress! Festive paper fire hazards! The realization that omg, our shirts like, totally... Read more →

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,... Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

Yo. Homes! What up. And stuff. I hope to publish something real ("real" being completely subjective because you know everything I post is complete and utter indulgent nonsense) later today, but Noah's off from school thanks to VOTING and DEMOCRACY, so it's kind of crazy. But I realized there's some housekeeping type stuff I should tell you about. So yes! I have lured you and your RSS readers here on false pretenses! You expect to be entertained and instead find yourself informed! I am evil, and should be destroyed. 1) As some of you may have noticed, the Bounce Back column at AlphaMom has been MIA the past couple weeks. The truth is, I was fired after failing a random drug test. Okay, not really. Mostly, I felt like it was getting silly for me to be writing a column about postpartum issues almost TWO YEARS after having a baby, so Isabel and I agreed it had more than run its course. 2) Of course, you are still more than welcome to ask questions about crazy postpartum craziness at the Advice Smackdown, that old beloved workhorse that's still going as strong as ever. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It definitely has... Read more →

Just now: Me: I love you, baby. Ezra: Wuv you! And then he blew me a kiss. And then he ran off to do shit like this: They somehow manage to be both the life and death of you, at the same time, every day, I swear. Read more →