“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.

One way you can tell you’re not cool is that when you get home at 11:30pm, you know you are ruined. RUINED. I can’t handle going out late, and it has nothing to do with ALS. If I went out that late every weekend, that is what would kill me, not this dumb disease.

On Saturday, Rob went biking, so Scarlett and I obviously watched Frozen for the 35th time. Why do I watch it with her? I could, instead, get things done. Or just read. Or even stare at a wall, which seems slightly less insane than viewing the same cartoon over and over. But the truth is, I like Frozen, and I especially like the way she snuggles into me while we watch, and how we look at each other at the funny parts and laugh. During one song, she sings the Elsa part and I sing the Anna part, and if I TRY to sing the Elsa part, I am quickly reprimanded. So it’s fun for both of us.

Later that afternoon, the whole family got haircuts. Our awesome stylist Whitney comes to our house and sets up in the corner, so we can all chat and eat snacks and Rob can watch football. Afterward, we went out to dinner—again—because our hair looked good and we needed to take it to a new neighborhood. And it was a delightful experience, not at all reminiscent of our taco debacle.

Sunday we lazed around and ate eggs and bacon and then slowly motivated to go to Scarlett’s school picnic at a beautiful woodsy spot in the city. I got to talk to friends I haven’t seen in a while, and meet some new people. Scarlett ran around with her buddies, and each time I saw her, she had a new baked good in her mouth. And I didn’t care. Maybe all the Let it Go is getting to me.

I do know that one of the things that made the weekend more enjoyable is that we pulled the trigger on a van. I can roll right in, and it’s not even as ugly as I thought it would be. I do have an issue with the fact that it has badges on every side, proclaiming that it’s a mobility vehicle. I mean, seriously? Don’t worry, though, I consulted YouTube and I plan to blow-dry the emblems and then scrape them off once they’re hot. By which I—of course—mean that I will find someone else to do that. Then both my van and I can forget about the ALS for a while. And if that isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

Share this post on your social platform