I just bought a new book, and the sun is shining on the tree with the red berries outside Scarlett’s window. Otto is licking all the stuffed animals that are piled up in a beanbag chair, and it occurs to me that the thing I say the most these days is “Otto, NO!” But suddenly he’s asleep next to my wheel, snoring gently and snuggling with a small stuffed turtle in a non-drooling way that I find acceptable.

It’s a calm day here, a high contrast to last night when the hail hammering down on our back deck woke up Scarlett, and we sat for a few minutes and watched the storm together.

“It’s snowing!” she shrieked, and insisted on opening the door to touch a piece of hail, such a novelty for a kid who’s growing up in San Francisco.

I’m tired this week. My arms seem heavier, and it’s a struggle to correct all the stupid mistakes the dictation is making. I want to scream at it I said Scarlett not Parliament! Why would I be in Parliament’s room? Sometimes I’m not sure if the frustration of using the dictation software outweighs the satisfaction I get from completing a blog post.

Otto has adjusted himself so that he is lying directly on the turtle, with his nose pressed against my front wheel, meaning that if I try to do something as selfish as move to use the bathroom, I’ll probably run him over. There are times when I imagine running over the members of my family with my wheelchair, but I’d rather not do it this morning. He looks so peaceful, and has finally stopped trying to eat glass Christmas ornaments.

Today is also very calm as compared to Wednesday, when I spent nine hours with a film crew, working on a short documentary for the A Life Story Foundation, which is run by my friend Kevin Swan. Kevin and I have been talking for a long time about telling my story on camera, and he reached out recently to say that he found a San Francisco-based production crew who was ready and willing to help.

It was an awesome experience, mainly because the four guys who were here were so easy to be around, and because it was such a different kind of day for me. Normally things are so quiet in the mornings when Scarlett is at school, whereas Wednesday started off with cameras, draping, lights, and an energetic man named Nick drilling into the details of my life.

But capturing a journey from ability to disability in a clear and concise way? It’s impossible. I did the best I could, but there were times when I felt like I was just telling a story that someone else had once told me. How could that have been me in a black skirt and boots greeting Rob at the door of my office for the first time? (I was also wearing a shirt.) How could it have been me who ran miles around the city, and who pushed with more strength than I may ever have again to get a child out of my body?

Nick asked me about the plans that Rob and I had made for our life together, back when it was all ahead of us, and I had a hard time answering. We just wanted to be happy, I think. To have kids, to travel, to be together. I frequently think back to our life in New York City, before we were married, before Scarlett and the influx of stuffed animals, before the disease, before the dog.

I wonder if we had known what was coming what we would have done differently. Probably nothing. Probably we would still have taken walks, gone out with friends, watched 24 on the couch after work, drank wine, argued, slept curled up together. Though perhaps we would have invested in some promising dictation software.

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