today's no exception

this weekend is reminding me why i stopped posting everyday.  when you have kids, it's a little gift to be awake after they go to sleep.  so i want to make these weekend posts quick, but i don't want to not do them.  because unfortunately, although i'm fairly good at sticking to a rule i make for myself, as soon as i start making exceptions, it's not long before the exception becomes the rule.  so if i tell myself i will post every day, then, at least as long as i can keep it up, i'll do it.  but once i start making a little leeway for myself, the posts just start dwindling away.  so i know you don't need to read me talk about nothing every day of the week, but if i want to have this blog at all, i need to put a little something up every day.

so here's my little something today...

i spent a lot of time at the kitchen table playing uno.  william beat me by 129 points tonight.

i spent a little of the day inside a couch fort henry built for me.

we read the first chapter of 'the neverending story' tonight.  greg, who was reading 'treasure island' to the boys, said it was a little hard to understand and henry wasn't really making it easy for anyone to concentrate.  it's supposed to be a really beautiful day tomorrow (53 degrees f) so we won't be spending it in a movie theater watching the royal theatre's production of it anyway.  if all goes as planned we'll be touring about an old, tumble-down castle, and i will be hoping the forecast keeps its promise.

this is about the time of year when the u.s. (midwest, east coast) starts to catch up to us temperature-wise and then swiftly takes the lead.  we'll steadily hang out in the 40's and 50's much longer than feels necessary.

a perpetual early spring.

crickets

it's 11:19 so this will be a very short post.  i had my book club tonight.

gabriela, clove and cinnamon by jorge amado was the book.  i recommend it.  especially if you can read it in portuguese, but i loved it in english.

i made this dish, which was really quick (aside from roasting the peppers and taking the heads, tails, and legs (arms??) off the shrimps) and very tasty...

http://www.food.com/recipe/brazilian-shrimp-stew-moqueca-de-camaroes-501326


also, i ate a cricket from mexico.

goodnight!

you are only as fast as your slowest biker

suffice it to say, henry's seasonal shift from burley to bike has increased our daily commute time tremendously.

this was yesterday, not far from william's school.  henry had suspiciously fallen off his bike, well onto the grass, from a full stop.  i was not convinced it was a real accident, so while his brother was nice enough to help him up and move his bike back onto the path, i stayed put and took pictures instead.  i really want to be a good mother on these exaggerated commutes but some days the best i can do is hold my tongue.

about five minutes after this photo was taken henry told me i was dawdling.  then he called me a vulture culture.  those things made me laugh.

today's commute to and from school was somehow all right too.  he asked me if i could make a book for his friend alfred's birthday. (who even knows when his friend alfred is having a birthday.) and "could you make it out of paper-mâché mama?"  we've never once talked about paper-mâché.  at one point he called me a fuddy-duddy, later, at dinner, we were all a bunch of scallywags.  

i know i shouldn't encourage name calling, but i just love that age when everything that comes out of their mouths is potentially awesome.  henry is definitely at that age, and he's not one to mince words.

today

i wrote my oncologist today to tell him about the contrast-less ct scan and asking him to refer me for a liver ultrasound.  he called me back to tell me everything looked fine on the ct scan and my blood tests are all normal so there's no need for the liver ultrasound and there's no need for my appointment in two mondays and see you in six months (oh, and no need for any follow-up ct scans at this point).

it's good news and it felt good to hear it.  and it felt scary, because those scans have been my reality check and because good news today is not a lifetime guarantee. and it felt sad, because i remember my friends who did not have the fortune i had today in hearing good news like this.  and i feel a strange guilt in saying all this, because i know what everyone wants most for me is that i will celebrate once and for all and get on with things.  i want that too, but my emotions have rarely been straightforward and simple in this process.

it was an unsteady relief i felt today hearing the news.  i thought about two young friends-- mothers-- who died of cancer, and what came into my mind, was that we celebrate today.  they were mothers who knew they were not going to see their children grow up... receiving the hardest and harshest lesson in gratitude and savoring the right now, in spite of the fact that they'd been given a death sentence in their thirties.  again and again i get a reprieve from having to face what they faced.  maybe it's survivor's guilt that these feelings come up on days when i should be celebrating.  maybe i'm celebrating and feeling nervous and feeling their losses and feeling relief all at the same time because maybe life is just more complicated than a simple "hooray!" but hooray is in there too, it's all in there.  all in a day.  all in a phone call.  all in what was and in tomorrow too.

so, hooray!  we celebrate today.

four and six makes ten

morning: 

even though i'm still wearing my overstuffed, blue winter coat and boots with two pairs of socks, hat, and mittens with gloves inside, it looked very much like early spring this morning when i was riding back from dropping henry off at school... 

of course later in the day it was hail-snowing (if that's a thing).  it was the same yesterday, except yesterday it was huge, weighted down, glopping snow flakes and greg said it was like getting hit in the face with snowballs, riding through it... and yet, at some point the sun came out and everything was spring-like. (and just to clarify-- i'm not complaining.  i know we've got it good here... comparatively speaking.)

afternoon:
the fantasy workshop was open today at william's after-school, and there's always a good chance of finding him there when it is.  somedays i walk around for what feels like much too long searching for my missing child, and i'll say it is quite lax, the whole keeping track of children in the after-school program thing. so i always do a mental dance of joy when i see the little danish flag flying outside the door of the fantasy workshop indicating it's open.

today he was making 'candy'...

on the way out of school... they have these fun little cars...

picking up the little brother who's got his own little vehicle to steer...

evening:
we finished up 'the voyage of the frog' (reading a 'captain underpants' book in between chapters 17 and 18) so that we could start 'treasure island' in the hope we can finish it before sunday when we may go to a (movie) theater in copenhagen to watch (england's) royal national theatre's production of it.   it says it's appropriate for 10 and up.  that is neither of our children... though it is if you add up their ages together...  anyway, i guess we'll have to see how the book goes, maybe read some reviews...  

well, that's it.  day three of spring.  not a bad start so far!

the joy of CT scanning

today i had my 5th CT scan.  my 7th if you count my two PET/CTs (and why wouldn't you?).  7 in under 2 years.

my last two CT scans have been different than the previous five in that a nice tech walks out into the waiting room with a liter of water in a pitcher and a plastic cup and finds me and says, "here you go.  you have 15 minutes to drink this."  "well, no thank you.  i'm actually not very thirsty."  "mwah hahaha," he laughs and walks away.

i think i realize now why little kids give their parents such a bad look when they are told to do something they don't want to do.  it's their hope that if their parents see how unhappy they'll be doing the thing, their parents will have mercy on them.  it didn't work today in my case with the tech.  but greg was there this time and he, being all mathematical-like, paced me so that it wasn't nearly as bad as it was last time, when i was by myself and worried that i wouldn't possibly finish in time and choked it down as fast as i could.

once you're in the room for the scan, they do some preliminary scanning, or so it seems.  you hold your breath, you move through the machine and out again.  then they try to inject you with contrast.  for my purposes, this is to get a good picture of my liver.  i told them today that last time they were not able to get the needle in.  i guess they need a large needle for this particular type of contrast because they need to be able to inject it rather quickly.  let me just say for the record that contrast is on my top ten list of things i hate.  i get very nauseous from it.  two CT scans ago, they asked me to hold my breath at the precise moment the very strong wave of nausea from the contrast hit me.  so right as my body was telling me to puke (but actually don't puke because you're in a really expensive machine) the techs were telling me to take a big breath and hold it.  sure thing.  no problem.

anyway, back to getting the contrast in, in the first place.  not an easy task.  first, my right arm is off limits.  because i've had my lymph nodes removed, i am supposed to avoid getting poked in that arm so as to help prevent lymphedema.  which means my left arm is totally fed up with getting poked in general.  second, my veins are very thin (so i've been told).  third, i was freezing cold after drinking all that water.  at one point i had one tech working to find a vein on my left arm while another tech was working to find a vein in my right foot.  no luck but i got an uncomfortable exploratory poke in the left hand for good measure.  the left foot wasn't any more cooperative.  one of the techs said to me that it is seldom one can say that a person can't get a needle and that i am only the second person with whom he's failed... and now that i think about it... i may have actually been the first person too.
 
so, i successfully avoided contrast for the second time, but i earned myself another liver ultrasound.

well, i'll take it.

 

coffee, tea, breakfast, ducks, snow, rainbows, streams

this was the day of three breakfasts, of greg wading barefoot in shorts through waist deep water to retrieve a stiller, fatter, and handsomer duck than real ducks, and snow on a spring day... 

that's how the morning started.  winter telling spring to... well... you know.  

william and henry watching cartoons.  greg and i eating oats, drinking tea, coffee, and more coffee.  

then breakfast number two.  blueberry pancakes... except no blueberries for henry.  

william going off to clean the play area in the common house (he's on a kid's team that has that responsibility every couple months or so)... it was there he ate his next breakfast... bread and jam and cheese.  

at some point, breakfast number three.  we'll call it brunch.  scrambled eggs, and ham for greg, toast, oranges, more coffee.  we toasted to today being greg's first day as a senior scientist.  and we talked about things we could do today that would make us happy.  his was to go on a run.  mine was to relax in a clean house with a cup of tea.  

later... i get my wish.  sort of kind of.  not too long into the relaxing part, i get booted from the couch which turns into a house... 

later i declare, 'i'm going out to the stream.'  'with the duck?!'  asks henry.  'yes,' i say.  this was in lieu of yesterday's aborted trip to the fjord.

on the way down, william declares, "this duck is stiller and fatter and handsomer than a real duck."

here's the stream at the bottom of our street/bike path...

and here's mr. handsome.  well, i dare say there are two of them... one is anchored to the shore.  the other has received about a thousand stern warnings from his mother to stay on it.

this plastic duck was found on a long-ago fjord adventure near greg's office and somehow survived whatever happens to old, found, plastic ducks when people move from one house to another.  i must have been feeling very generous that day...


today's plan (and the goal of yesterday-- yes, mr. duck came on the bus with us) was to anchor him to shore and throw rocks at him.  poor mr. duck.  so we threw a few rocks at him and eventually henry took him off his leash and he swam over to the other side of the stream.  we searched for a way to cross without getting too wet but it all seemed just a bit too deep everywhere, so william walked to a nearby bridge and crossed and crawled down the other side and walked along the bank and rescued him.  then henry did it again.  we threw rocks at mr. duck to try to dislodge him from his refuge, with no luck.  finally, henry half-fell in the water and one of william's mittens was wet so we decided to go home.  on the way, greg ran up to us (he was coming back from his run, so running was just his natural mode of movement at that moment).  i told him about the duck.  i went back home-- with the boys slowly, very, very slowly following after me-- and greg, without their noticing and without my knowing, took off his running shoes and crossed the stream that looks mostly shallow but just a little too deep to cross, even in rain boots, and ended up waist-deep getting to the other side to rescue the duck from a life of... what?  freedom?  fresh air?  a river all his own?  oh well.  back to the shed with you, mr. duck.

henry taking a stick and splashing at the water.  is there anything more fun for a four year old?

while we were out-- with the clouds...

and as we were leaving-- sun... and, unbeknownst to me at the time... a rainbow.

looks like spring, right?