Category Archives: Relationships

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>

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Little Sister

Ask anyone with ALS. We are all fighting for our lives, but we have a list (sometimes a very short list) of the people for whom we’re truly fighting. My sister is very, very high on my own list. She is one of the MVPs of my story, a long-time fact that has only been underscored by my present situation. It was her birthday yesterday, so we celebrated. But the truth is, she is worth celebrating every day (or…at least once a week.)

I’m four years older than Liz, and when we were younger, we didn’t always get along. I found her to be very annoying and also cuter than me, which—if you’re someone’s younger sister—is the recipe for getting punched in the head. And I’m sure that did happen to her, although it was a great number of years ago, and so I conveniently forget the details. Read More>

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Being Someone Else

When Rob and I lived in New York, I walked to work. It took me about 20 minutes to get to my job at a Manhattan publishing house, something that sounds so glamorous when you write it, and actually was occasionally that way. Picturing myself walking across town on 23rd Street in heels is like recalling a movie I’ve watched over and over again (something besides Wayne’s World.) Could that have been me?

I would likely have these disconnected feelings about that time even if I didn’t have ALS. After all, so much has changed. We moved to California, I worked from home in yoga pants and had a baby. I started hanging out at playgrounds and speaking knowledgeably—even passionately!—about Music Together and tumbling classes. Heel wearing had declined considerably long before I started tripping over my own feet.

But back when I first moved to New York, it was November 2005, and the staff at my company was working on a book due to launch the following year. Read More>

|Categories: Life, Parenting, Progression, Relationships, Vanity | Tags: , , , | Permalink