Wow, I haven’t blogged in forever.  Now is a great time to restart!  That is, before my laptop dies…

Life has taken me to some interesting places lately.  Currently, I’m sitting … well I’ll get to that: 

First, I love my family.  I have taken many business trips with my sister where she worked all day while I lounged by the pool, ordered room service, had a massage.  Then we would find a fantastic restaurant, club, or both (!) and have a fabulous evening.  I love the mix of alone time an d time with someone that a regular vacation does not afford.  I have taken a couple of trips like this with my dad too.

I would be entirely remiss not to mention that I love to mooch.  Now, I’ll eat six free doughnuts in a conference room, but I don’t just mean free stuff.  I think it stems from my love of someone taking care of me.  From my mom with a wet washcloth during a bad fever- to my sister’s friends scaring the junior high girls being mean to me- to my dad taking me to a scary doctor’s appointment- to my brother giving the bird to my exboyfriend- my family takes care of me.  Sure, we take care of each other, but I’m the baby and we all like it that way.

All I pay is airfare and I’m on my way to a nearly-free vacation with someone whom I love and whose company I enjoy.  I arrange for restaurants, bottles of wine, and other things, but for the most part, someone is taking care of me and I love it.

So back to now: I’m traveling with Dad this time.  He is in first-class and was so excited that I was going that he purchased my ticket with his frequent-flier miles.  On our brief layover, he went to “check on the in-flight meals.”  He returned and with a very dadlike flourish dropped a first-class boarding pass in my lap.  So where are we?  Currently, I’m sitting about 30, 500 feet above Nebraska, moving at 536mph toward Honolulu.  Yeah, that’s right, I’ve managed to mooch not just the hotel like usual but first-class tickets to paradise.

Mom and Dad were married and moved to Hawaii as their first home.  I’m excited to see where they lived, where Dad bought her engagement ring, to see the misty eyes when he thinks of those times.  She preferred to stay home rather than fly and while I’m sorry she’ll miss it, this is a fantastic opportunity for me to spend some time with Dad and hear his stories.  Let the fun begin!

Today is
Where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

I thought everything was going to be all better, but it wasn't.  Two more trips to the hospital and one surgery later, I'm going to be fine…really.

No, really!

Oh, and hail destroyed my car.  But life is still good and I'm smiling.

Last night we spent the evening with my brother and his wife playing games and chatting. I had so much fun just hanging out with them. They knew I was about to have a rough weekend, so there was a certain air of impending bad. But it didn’t overshadow our fun. I don’t have much opportunity to hang out with my sister-in-law so it was really nice.

Topic switch!

OK, this borders on TMI.

This morning, about 20 minutes ago, I took a cocktail of prescription medications that will make me sick all weekend but are supposed to make me “all better” in the end. Side effects include nausea, stomach pain, and severe headache. Hey, I can give myself a migraine without all these pills!

Anyway, I’m already feeling woozy and weird. Wish me luck.

OK, so if you read my blog at all, you’re wondering where the heck I’ve been. Well, this month has just about kicked my butt.

I’ve been really sick in the past few weeks, becoming worse as time passed. I had several doctors telling me seriously bad news, and now FINALLY it’s going to be better. My family has been really proud of how well I’m handling all this bad stuff, but frankly I’m not handling it as well as I’d like. A couple of times I’ve just collapsed in a crying heap.

But like I said, it’s better now. I’ve been amazed by the strength and kindness of my husband as we dealt with my illness, and I’ve been blessed by friends and family who are thinking of me and praying for me.

Let the movie reviews recommence!

As some of you may know, I’ve been out of circulation lately. First was the dog’s surgery. As she ameliorated post-op, she became more and more difficult to control; she didn’t want to be cooped into her cage all of the time. It was a full-time, hands-on ordeal as she became increasingly petulant.

Well, that all pales in comparison with my weekend. We received a call late Saturday that my brother-in-law was seriously injured and that his injuries were life threatening. From that moment until now, it’s been a whirlwind of totally sleepless nights and multiple 3-hour trips to the hospital.

The one positive in all of the mayhem was the overwhelming sense of family that arose. My parents drove to the interstate in the middle of the night to pick up Sunny and cared for her until today (remember, she’s being whiny and needy). My sister offered her prayers and asked multiple times to help; her husband offered to drive us the three hours to the hospital if we were too tired. My brother- not the person with whom I usually discuss spirituality- prayed for my brother-in-law, a guy he’s met only a handful of times. My husband’s family dropped everything to be with him; his father’s assistant pastor even made the long trip to the trauma center.

With a head full of staples and a piece of his skull detached, my brother-in-law is going to be OK. I helped him walk through the hospital corridors tonight and he was more talkative than I’ve ever heard him. If it weren’t for the stress of it all, I would dare say we had fun! I love him dearly and I haven’t been shy about telling him.

I am not big on petition style prayers. I pray thankful prayers and hopeful prayers, but don’t feel like I deserve to be heard when there are so many other people who need so much more. I broke down and petitioned God this weekend. It felt odd to open that kind of dialogue. But it didn’t feel wrong.

Lots of people live who deserve death, and many die who deserve life. I don’t know if God grants our wishful prayers or if what we pray just happens to coincide with chance, fate, or the master plan, or whatever, but I feel thankful to have my brother-in-law still in my life in this world.

So if you pray, pray thanksgiving that he’s going to be OK, and I’ll be praying that he has a positive outlook on this second chance. Thanks for listening, God.

I wanted to update everyone on Sunny’s surgery mentioned in an earlier post.

Sunny is resting, and is still a little loopy from pain meds. I have her swaddled in a blanket so she doesn’t need the E collar while she’s with me. She’s eating and drinking OK so far. She’s not quite herself, but she’s had a rough couple of days. I haven’t taken her outside to use the bathroom yet, but she will probably just tripod and be OK.

When I walked out of the exam room with the little princess in the basket, the whole waiting room full of people were smiling and saying “awww.” Everybody loves her braids, too. She didn’t eat it up like usual; too tired and drugged. I’m glad she’s back home and that I could work from home to keep an eye on her.

Thanks to my wonderful sister who chauffeured me to and from the surgeon, and is out retrieving lunch for me so I can work and be with Sunny.

Well, I have to get back to real work- someone has to pay for this surgery!!

For the fourth or fifth time in eight weeks, I’m sick. I had so much planned this weekend; not only unpacking from the trip last week (yeah, that’s right, I haven’t unpacked), but also cleaning the house, working on my weekly to do list for Lent, going to church.

Six people in my department were out of the office on Friday due to illness. My boss had been out earlier in the week, and everyone caught whatever Plague he was coughing on us. So now I have a fever and a very disgusting cough. I am a little down about it, too, because I had such high hopes for a fresh Lenten start this weekend; I’m hopped up on medicine today and my heart is racing, I’m dizzy, and I’m trying to fold laundry.

On a better note, I’m decorating a room of my house and almost all of the packages have arrived. Carlton had wanted to make our house more loft-like, more urban. Right now we have put so much effort toward buying a car that most of the rooms are barely furnished. Our lower-level family room has one brown, one orange, and one tan chair, all leftovers from other areas of the house. Anyway, I’m decorating one room at a time and I’m really excited about it.

Just sitting here typing feels better than when I was walking around. I watched a movie last night and clipped Sunny’s hair in preparation for her surgery later this week. Since they’re shaving her leg, I thought it would look really weird to have one tiny spindle on a mop of a dog. She looks like a lion, with a tiny little body and fluffy white mane!

OK, enough for now. I have some work to do.

After we decided to go to Florida for the INXS concert, it was only reasonable that we take the opportunity to do little diving. The place where we stayed had no internet access (I nearly died), so we printed some information on several places that did manatee snorkel tours and/or dive tours. As we called several shops, we found that the manatee tours were fully booked. We decided to do a couple of freshwater dives at Crystal River Springs.

It’s been four years since my last dive, so I was pretty nervous. I practiced some movements and mask-clearing the day before the dive. Mask-clearing really unsettles me; I have to keep my eyes closed so I don’t lose my contacts. Being blind, almost deaf, and breathing from a regulator is sensory underload.

The springs flow into a river. I saw a HUGE gar and was so interested I was almost carried off by the Crystal River current! The main attraction of the springs is the caves. I’m not cave certified and have no intention of becoming so. Our first dive was into the mouth of the first cave. It was pitch black in the interior and the cave opening was quite large. As my eyes became accustomed to the darkness ahead, I crept closer to the cave. My buoyancy compensations was terrible, so I kept crashing into boulders, afraid some huge catfish was going to snap at me. I looked back to make sure I could still see the water surface. The last thing I want to do is die from stupidity.

Our second dive was a crevice dive with a max depth of 45 feet. The walls were about 3-10 feet apart, so I had to make sure my reg hose didn’t catch on an outcrop. At the bottom of the crevice was another cave entrance; this one did not have the sloped entrance of the first cave, so it couldn’t be explored at all without moving inside.

I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by not cave diving. I enjoy being underwater a lot, but it can be unsettling. I don’t think I could relax if I couldn’t see the water’s surface. Other divers were carrying nitrox, double tanks, and drysuits to cave dive. The left mini-tanks at the cave’s entrance so that they could have extra air for their decompression stop. I wouldn’t want to be in a spot so far from the surface that I need an emergency tank!!!

That said, Crystal River isn’t a fantastic dive for us non-cavers. I’m really glad I went so I could be in the habit of diving again, but I don’t think I’ll dive there again.

I’m fasting today in observance of Ash Wednesday. A friend of mine left a message on my voicemail asking me to have a Fat Tuesday drink with him and calling Lent “Guilt Season,??? but I think he missed the point.

I don’t feel guilty all season. I let go of bad habits and I stop doing some pleasantries as homage to Christ’s time in the desert. Great prophets and leaders from every group observe self-denial as a cleansing. MK Ghandi fasted to protest and obtain rights for others. My fast probably won’t free a nation, but it definitely makes me more contemplative.

I fast by denial of food for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. I observe a half-fast every Friday, all year long. I used to do a full fast, but realized that eating fish symbolizes being a “fisher of men.???

I also fast through denial. I’m shirking television for Lent: no TV, not even cooking shows. I can still watch movies. But my TiVo will be lonely. I’m also not allowing myself to use vending machines; all my change goes into a change jar for the child I’m sponsoring in Haiti.

However, early in my catholic schooling, we learned that Lent could also be used to start positive habits. I am going to hand-write, on actual paper, one letter per week to family and friends. I will read my Magnificat (prayer book) daily. I will finish my chore list every single week.

These things are not extremely difficult. But they do require me to shake my daily habits and remind me of my faith. I’m nicer to people. I’m more centered. I feel healthier at the end of the season and prepared to celebrate Easter.

Is anyone else doing anything?