Sigh

I need to make this blog private. I know I don't post that much anymore, but if you'd like to still have access to it. Leave me a comment or drop me an email and I'll hook you up.

Update on Emily

I just wanted to let you all know that Emily will have her surgery on her arm on Wednesday morning. The surgeons need a relatively small amount of bone that can be saved (I believe it was a quarter of an inch on the sides and below her shoulder socket) in order to be able to place pins in her arm to save it. If removing the tumor takes too much of the bone tissue, they will have to amputate. She's had really good progress with the chemotherapy...all but two of the tumors in her lungs are completely gone! This surgery is a big thing for her. Keep her in your thoughts, drop a prayer for her, or eat some sketti on her behalf. She's a livin' doll, really, she is.

Go lightly.

If one were to read my last post, say, without knowing me, or um...talking to me regularly, you might think that I'm a drama queen. But those people who know me, love me, and talk to me every stinking day will assure you that I am a drama queen. It's all good. I know who I am and I know when to succumb to it and when to ride it lightly. Please know that I'm okay, Dev is okay, and we are riding it lightly 90% of the time. And when we need to be dramatic, we tackle that with panache...and try to step on each other's lines without stumbling over them.

On Sunday I picked up the boys after church. It was their weekend with their dad, but he works with the youth group on Sunday afternoons so they spend a few hours with me. It's generally a nice quiet time to kick back or make a trip to the library. This week Dev produced a CD I'd made for him while the divorce was still fresh, full of tunes to help keep him upbeat, that called upon both my history and his, our shared love of music. We popped it in as we drove home and it ran through a couple of songs as I drove to work today, and it made me smile. I picked Dev up from his second to last day at the hospital partial program and we sang The Bear Necessities together as I drove him to his daycare. And when I hopped in the car to drive home, I turned the key and was greeted with this.


This is the key to our life, to any life really. Go lightly.

Oh and also?

In case anyone thinks I'm not still grounded to a real life, my darling Foster puked all over the carpet while I was typing all that. He's just keepin' me real and all that.

Bad Date Olympics

In honor of my "getting back out there" I'd sure love to hear your favorite bad date stories. You know...to keep my expectations in check.

And for my comrade Barb, I'm adding this:

Harry: It was the most uncomfortable night of my life.
Sally: Oh...The first day back is always the toughest Harry.
Harry: We only had one date. How do you know it's not going to get worse?
Sally: How much worse can it get than finishing dinner having him reaching over pull a hair out of my head and starts flossing with it at the table?
Harry: We're talking dream dates compared to my horror. It started out fine, she's a very nice person, and we're sitting and we're talking at this Ethiopian restaurant that she wanted to go to. And I was making jokes, you know like, "Hey I didn't know that they had food in Ethiopia? This will be a quick meal. I'll order two empty plates and we can leave."
[Sally laughs]
Harry: Yeah, nothing from her not even a smile. So I down shift into small talk, and I asked her where she went to school and she said. "Michigan State", and this reminds me of Helen. All of a sudden I'm in the middle of this mess of an anxiety attack, my heart is beating like a wild man and I start sweating like a pig.
Sally: Helen went to Michigan State?
Harry: No she went to Northwestern, but they're both Big-Ten schools. I got so upset I had to leave the restaurant.
Sally: Harry I think this takes a long time. It might be months before we're actually able to enjoy going out with someone new.
Harry: Yah...
Sally: And maybe longer, before we're actually able to go to bed with someone new.
Harry: Oh I went to bed with her.
Sally: You went to bed with her?
Harry: Sure.
Sally: Oh.

My worst date (thus far) was when I was young and impressionable but um...not THAT impressionable. My sister set me up with the son of a friend. He was about my age and he seemed to develop an instant crush on me. So he called me up and invited me out to do "something." This should have been the tip off, but he'd been talked up a lot, so I decided to give it a shot. He picked me up in his pickup truck and off we went to "somewhere" which ended up meaning picking up his best friend (because first dates are always better with extra people) and we went and saw one of the renditions of Lethal Weapon, I don't remember which. While not much of a date movie, I was happy for getting to look at Mel Gibson for a few hours, which ended up being the high point of the evening. After we left the movie he suggested that we "drive around" which is normal young people entertainment for nearly anyone, so it didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was that for these boys, "driving around" included finding car loads of people of other races, yelling racial epithets at them, and throwing things at their cars. He was shocked that I refused to see him after that. Go figure.

So tell me yours. Pulleeese?