Category Archives: Parenting

Weekend in Review

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” —Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

This weekend, I forgot I had ALS. Not the whole time, of course, but for entire delicious hours. I don’t know exactly how it happened, and I don’t plan to analyze it too closely.

Friday night was our 6th wedding anniversary. To some, that’s the “iron” anniversary, but Rob and I know it as the “one where you celebrate with your brother-in-law, who scored Beck tickets and invited you because his own wife was out of town.” The three of us went out to dinner and to see the show at a new SF venue, The Masonic. Brand new places are awesome, because they all conform to accessibility laws and basic common sense. Our general admission tickets led us to a raised platform with good views, and, most importantly, safety from the sweaty, excitable guy below who kept high-fiving a thin-lipped usher, even though she clearly just wanted to be at home with her cats.

It was an older crowd at the show, suggesting to us that Beck is perhaps not as cool as he once was. Which is fine, because I am totally, totally uncool. And I’m not just saying that so that someone tells me that I am, in fact, cool. I’m not and it’s fine. I think most of the trouble I’ve gotten into in my life stems from trying to be cooler than I am. Perhaps we’ll explore this in a future post. Read More>

|Categories: Age, Life, Parenting, Relationships | Tags: , , , , | Permalink

Wising Up

Rob is out of town again. It should be fine, since he barely travels for work anymore, but even once a month makes me anxious. I think it’s more the build-up to the trip that I dread than the trip itself. It’s easier when he’s here, because we have an understanding, a way of managing my illness, our daughter, our schedules. When he’s gone, I worry that it will all fall apart. But it never does. I have plenty of help, including family who traveled to be here this week.

Last night, Scarlett climbed into my bed. “Daddy isn’t here and I get to sleep with you!” She had the beginnings of a cold all day, but it wasn’t until night that they blossomed into full-on congested coughs, snorts and sneezes. Neither of us slept, and now she’s home from school, watching My Little Pony: Equestria Girl. As an aside: this movie is TERRIBLE. I tried to turn it off, but she begged to keep watching and I gave in. It’s 9:30am, we’ve already read six books and had a dance party (she spun, I laughed.) About an hour ago, I began to wonder why I didn’t just send her to school. Then she started hacking in my face, and I remembered. Read More>

|Categories: Age, Life, Parenting, Progression, Vanity, Venting | Tags: , , , | Permalink

Things that Matter

Today I had this weird thought that maybe people think my whole life revolves around my ALS. Well, around that and around being a mom with ALS, because those are the things that I talk and write about the most. So I’m going to tell you some other stuff that I’ve been up to, because I don’t really want you to think that I write one line a day on Facebook and then kick back, streaming Scandal off Netflix until it’s time to pick up Scarlett at school. I do not do that. Ahem. I do not do that all of the time.

Once a week, I take an Italian lesson with a woman named Paola. Paola comes over and I make her a cup of coffee and we speak Italian for an hour. And sometimes we eat brownies because the lesson is at 9:30am and that is an outstanding time for chocolate. This means I have homework, so at other times during the week (usually the night before a lesson), I can be found studying Italian. Other times still, I can be found speaking to Scarlett in Italian and she can be found yelling “No Italian!” at me. Read More>

|Categories: Life, Meditation, Parenting | Tags: , , , | Permalink