Category Archives: Drugs

I’m Not Done

May is ALS awareness month. I’m sure that anyone reading this post is more than aware of ALS at this point, but let’s keep talking about it anyway. Otherwise this might have to be a blog devoted to my love of tortilla chips. Happy Cinco de Mayo, by the way. And how about that Ted Cruz? No! Stop! This is an ALS blog. Puppies.

ALS TDI is running a campaign this month called #InThreeWords. They are asking people to come up with three words to explain how ALS makes them feel. I thought it was something that Scarlett and I would do together, but that didn’t work out as planned, and you can hear why by watching this 1-minute video I made to share my three words. It’s G rated. Read More>

The Leadership Summit, eventually

This morning Scarlett and I were sitting at the dining room table where she was eating a typical breakfast of spaghetti and meatballs and I was drinking a cup of tea.

“I didn’t blog yesterday,” I told her, as if admitting something scandalous.

She seemed unperturbed, busy aiming an entire handful of grated parmesan cheese directly into her mouth.

“Please stop doing that,” I said, and then had a flashback to my own childhood and visits to see my Aunt Theresa and Uncle John. Theresa was my grandmother’s sister and everything about her and Uncle John seemed very old and very Italian. Their couch was covered in plastic. The fruit on their coffee table was wax. When we arrived in the morning, they were always eating cold spaghetti, and Uncle John would pinch our cheeks so hard they stayed pink for the remainder of the visit.

Scarlett continued eating her spaghetti, oblivious to my distraction.

“What do you think I should blog about?” I asked her.

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “You could definitely blog about Otto throwing up and how Jack almost dropped my tooth fairy in the throw up.” Read More>

Weekend of Awesome

Fall is a crazy time. Maybe that’s true for everyone, but for some reason this fall seems more chaotic than usual in our house. Or, if not exactly chaotic, then just busy. This past weekend started with the Friday publication of an essay I wrote for CNN. I was so excited, and spent the morning toggling back and forth between different sites, trying to determine if anyone was reading it. They were! At which point I had to question my decision to send CNN that one picture of myself in the ICU with very, very dirty hair.

I then spent the afternoon at a trampoline park with Scarlett and one of her friends. When they got bored of bouncing, they went outside into a grassy field, dumped dirt on each other, and then found some puddles to splash around in. I put my mud monster into the car about an hour later, and the evening was spent trying to find a child beneath the dank exterior of what looked more like one of those dogs with dreadlocks.

So when I say we’re “busy”, I don’t always mean busy in a cool way. Read More>