A Week Alone

Captain Obvious is coming home today and tomorrow we are going to go pick up Captain Adorable. Capt. Obvious was in Australia for a meeting where he presented a paper. We had hoped I'd be able to go with him but it didn't work out. Capt. Adorable is in Tennessee spending his annual week with Oma and Opa.

I missed both of them terribly and I long to have them back home. At the same time, I noticed how clean the house is--amazing! I clean it and it stays clean! It feels so lonely at night when I go to bed. I barricade myself into the bedroom each night because it makes me feel safe. I bought a game for myself (play on the PS3) and have had a wonderful time playing it and watching Downton Abbey because I don't have to take anyone else's preferences into account.

I hosted an impromptu get-together for a few friends from my neighborhood. Which was such fun that I really hope we do it again. It was so easy to host with no worries about planning around my beloveds.

I've also been working. Not as much as I should have, but hours each day. Now that I think about it, I've done work for three clients and one potential client this week. OK, so I'm not making any money (in fact the practice is still in the red) but wow, four clients seems pretty good!

Summer: Travels, Work

As we approach the last week of July I am amazed at how fast the summer has gone. I remember how slowly time seemed to pass when I was a child. I wished then I could speed it up and of course now I wish I could slow it down.

So far this summer I drove with Captain Adorable and Captain Obvious to Tennessee. While where we visited my parents and Captain Obvious and I attended a friend's wedding. After some thought, I decided to take Capt. Adorable and drive to Atlanta to visit my brother, his wife, and their children for a couple of days. My brother and his family have been living in Europe, and we hadn't seen them since last summer's vacation in Croatia. I got to meet my little new niece, who I will call Birdie because she chirps like a bird. She was 3 and a half months old when I met her and oh what a wonderful sweet baby. 

We visited the Atlanta children's museum, called Imagine It!, which was fun but not as wonderful as Port Discovery in Baltimore. We also visited the Atlanta Botanical gardens, which were fantastic! I'd really like to go there again next time we visit Atlanta.

Then we drove to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, met up with Captain Obvious who was there for work, stayed the night, and drove home the next morning. It was quite a relief to be back home after all that driving! 

The day after we got home I attended a day-long seminar on hanging out a shingle which was very informative. Then one day off, then Monday rolled around and Captain Adorable had a (second) week at camp. While he was at camp I dove into my computer (worked from the minute I got home from dropping him off till I had to leave to pick him up) for a couple of days for one client, and then worked at a less feverish pace doing research and developing documents for other areas of my practice.  I am learning a lot and get a lot of satisfaction out of what I am doing.

I hope there are some lazy days this summer, too. Maybe in August. ;)

A high school acquaintance/friend of mine just contacted me to let me know she had been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer with metastasis to the liver.  We exchanged a bunch of emails; I've been thinking about cancer and reactions to diagnosis for the last few days. 

What a beautiful life I lead. What a lucky/blessed person I am.

Next CT in Six Months

The news is: the CT scan yesterday was clear, according to the preliminary report. I will get the full report in a few days along with a CD containing my scan. I order one every time so that if I ever need to send it off to some other medical facility it will be easy for me to accomplish.

It was a stressful day, yesterday. The effects of the prednisone (makes me eat more, sleep less, and be super emotional and aggressive--everything becomes an emergency to me) make an already stressful situation much harder.

For example: I had gotten confused about the appointment time and arrived 2 hours early. This made me stressed out as it was very important to me and to Captain Adorable that I was on time to pick him up from camp (and not have him go to after-care). I ended up having to just let Captain Obvious deal with the issue because I was way too wound up about it, even breaking into tears in the lobby. Fortunately everything worked out.

Next time I go for a scan I will have a new doctor (new fellow). Which is good. I give myself a gold star everytime I out last a fellow. This new one will be my fourth.

Along with my happiness there is also sadness and loss. I still long for another child. Sometimes the feeling fades and sometimes it comes rushing back, large and in color. Yesterday it came back. Today I am recovering. For the next few days I am recovering... Why is it that, when I have so much, when I am so rich, so lucky, with a full life and a full heart and the best possible outcome I could have imagined, surrounded and supported by my beloved family and dear friends, why do I still yearn for this child who does not exist?

First Week of Summer Vacation 2013

Captain Adorable is no longer a kindergartener; the last day of school was on June 14. This last week, his first week of summer vacation has been fun. Its been good getting used to having him with me all the time again, though there have been a few moments of frustration for me and boredom for him because of trying to balance my new work obligations with his desire to be entertained. I want to be with him and play and read and go for adventures all day long, but I had clients to meet, so preparation work before, and follow up work after. I'm making it sound like a big deal, but it wasn't that bad. At home, he played with his legos more than ever before (and did a few experiments with them, including freezing a bunch of lego guys together!) and looked at things through his microscope. He wrote in his journal several times. I took him on several adventures, including swimming at the neighbor's pool, to a walking and biking (5.74 miles!) at a large local park, and of course the three of us went sailing last night--a moonlight sail to look at the supermoon.

Here are photos of a few of the adventures this week.

Frozen lego guys

Dip in the pool

Walk by the water in the park

Supermoon rising over the water as sun sets 

Wind, waves, and supermoon

Just when I've gotten used to being together with my smart, funny, creative, sweet boy, he's off to day camp next week. I'll miss him but I'll get a bunch of work done and I'll exercise everyday!

Craters on the Moon

Last weekend we sailed to the the Rhode River to anchor and spend the night. It was a beautiful day--and lovely weather. The sky was blue and the wind was good. The three of us were together. We saw an osprey carrying a fish in its talons. We looked for jellyfish and saw none. We counted cargo ships anchored in the Bay. I asked Captain Adorable if he could see the moon. He replied, "Yes, I see it. I see craters. They are very small, but on the moon they are very large."

My next CT scan is on Wednesday. As I get closer to it, I wonder if it will turn out to be a small crater or a large one.

My Very Own Law Firm

For a while now I've been moving towards working for pay outside the home. My chosen profession, as you know, is practicing law. For the past few months, I've been doing pro bono work through a couple of local charities to get a taste for how to juggle work and personal life, and have found the adjustment to be challenging but doable.

On Monday, June 3, 2013 I opened my very own law firm. This is wonderful and exciting and scary too. Despite the fact that I am working out of our house for now, starting a law firm requires a large outlay of money up front, and there are no paying clients yet. These are early days...I have clear goals and many hopes for my firm.

My main goal is to have a fulfilling job that allows me to make a difference in the world and at the same time be present and available for Captain Adorable (I figure Captain Obvious can mostly take care of himself at this point haha).

In other news, Captain Adorable played lacrosse this spring, and despite him being one of the youngest on the team (he's only in kindergarten after all), he was invited to represent our sports organization as a member of a team that travelled to a tournament in another county. The tournament team he was on played very well and won both of their games by a solid margin (there is no official score keeping).

There is one more week of school after this one, and then he will be finished with kindergarten. Summer stretches out before us with the promise of swimming pools, sailing, camp, a trip to Oma and Opa's house, and playing outside with friends. Too bad he's sick right now! Yet another nasal infection that turned into an ear infection, ugh. This infection had a result we've not seen in the previous ones--the pressure in his ear got so bad the eardrum was perforated. It hurt him quite a lot! :( He missed two days of school already this week but (fingers crossed) tomorrow he can attend, which makes us both happy.

Adventures with Clifford

Captain Adorable's class recently finished a unit on plants. Among other learning projects, they planted green beans and brought the seedlings home at the end of the unit. We transplanted the seedling into a bigger pot so it could grow bigger and maybe even produce green beans. (Which is ironic for me to put all this care into a green bean plant as I am a life-long green bean hater.)

You may notice a red stuffed toy dog in these photos. The kindergarten class has this dog, "Clifford" and each child gets to bring it home for a few days. Each family is supposed to take photos to put in a book and write about the adventures the child had with Clifford. The adventures are mostly things like "We went to my brother's hockey practice," and "We ate ice cream together," but some are more exciting. For example, the teacher had Clifford first, and she took him on a ski trip! Capt. Adorable had Clifford for an extra long time because he had an extra cool adventure to share! His uncle got tickets to see the Capitals play the Rangers in playoff game #2 from a box at the Verizon Center! Capt. Adorable was really excited and asked his teacher for permission keep Clifford long enough to take him along to the match.

The funny thing is, Capt. Adorable became a Rangers fan that night. He went to the game as a Caps fan but felt so sorry for the Rangers, who were playing an exciting game in an arena full of loud, enthusiastic Caps fans all wearing red (the Rangers' color is blue), that he switched teams to give the Rangers some encouragement, cheered for them and was angry when the Caps won!