Latest posts
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Practicing Gratitude
Lately, I have been listening to and reading a lot of Brene Brown’s work. Though I love her writing, its listening to her voice that really gets to me. She’s brilliant, challenging, funny…and affirming. If you aren’t familiar with her work, her website describes her as “a Research Professor…who spent the past decade studying vulnerability, courage,…
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The Man and the Machine
For the past couple of months, Vernon has needed to have a sitter with him during every dialysis session to keep him safe, in case he gets too agitated and tries to pull out the connecting tubes or if he decides he’s had enough of sitting and tries to jump ship. Thankfully, some willing souls…
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Song and Singing
Thanks to everyone who sent me a congratulatory note after my last post about my name change. If I’d known it would be so celebrated, I would have made the decision earlier…haha! Since that seemed to add a odd little dash of romance to the air, I’ll continue in that spirit here tonight. As I played music off…
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Mrs. Adams
This is a Polaroid from the night of our wedding. Since I moved to the UK two days afterward, I didn’t bother to change my last name. I needed my current passport, for one thing, and there were so many official immigration documents that I was constantly having to update over the next several years, it just…
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Father’s Day, 2015
As of my writing this post, Maki has been in New Zealand with his family there for about nine hours. And yet he was only boarding his plane this time last night. The hardest thing to get our heads around is that he arrives two days later, though its only a 13 hour flight. Of…
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Promotion
Today was last day of school for both kids. Maki would have been happy if it ended weeks ago, where as Justine would be happy to go every day of the summer too. I found myself getting sentimental when I dropped Maki off at the middle school for the last time. This is the school he…
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A Kind of Acceptance
For the past few weeks, I couldn’t shake the idea that Vernon was dying. And even if he wasn’t dying at the moment, it was probable that he wouldn’t last many more years. His health is so compromised. If he wasn’t getting better, my emotional logic told me he must be getting worse. Without physical…
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Interchanges
When I arrived in Fountain Valley at the Vascular Surgeon’s office this morning, Vernon was already there, discreetly tucked away in room with his ambulance drivers. He gets a lot of different drivers, but today’s was the same duo that I met last Wednesday, when I had that horrible experience with the Urologist’s staff. Not only…
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Ode to Joe
One emotional-health tool I’ve discovered through the years…and especially THIS year, is choosing to look (if desperately sometimes) for something that is good. Something to hold on to. Gratitude is a lifesaver…and by lifesaver, I mean the flimsy ring on a rope that you barely catch on the third or fourth try. You are still sputtering and swallowing…
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Plateu-titude
I realize I haven’t written here for almost a week, a far cry from the early everyday posts of last summer. It’s not like there hasn’t been anything to document. I just have run out of emotional strength. And the things I really want to process, I’m not sure that this is the right forum…