The doctor tells you in 20 years you will need neck surgery. He's replaced a vertabra in your neck and added a metal plate as a result of a car accident, and you are doing great. But there's that picture of the future he's planted in your head.
Your former life was about trusting your body. You could make it do anything you wanted. And now, an expert has told you that you can't trust it anymore. Avoid anything that involves up or down motion. Don't carry heavy things.
So what happens? You begin acting like the surgery is every day of your life. You let the expert hold you back. You limit your choices and you feel like you have already aged by those 20 years. You focus on what you've lost and not on all that you have gained. The pre- and post-event differences become all too real.
The only future that any of us have is today. Right now. If we don't live that way every single day then we will have wasted today and every day between now and that 20 years. No one, not even an expert Doctor (who made miracles happen) can tell you how to live your life or can take away the joy of experiencing every special moment.
To a man 27 years my senior. That's right. We got married when I was 24 so that means that as of June 24, I have now been married half of my life. Yikes. That sounds so finite.
Sure there have been sacrifices. He has had to put up with my rushing through the good stuff, missing out on some of the best moments with our children, impatiently trying to get somewhere, while he savored and appreciated every moment.
And there were times when being a caregiver got old. But he didn't complain when he had to come home from work at lunch time to give me shots and hook up my IV during one turbulent pregnancy.
And the travel got old. But he has been the steady source of unwavering support through all of those job changes and long-distance commutes. He has smiled as I followed my every whim, never questioned my outings with friends, never complained about my terrible housekeeping skills, and never openly wondered what I was thinking when I made this decision or that. And he has always complimented my cooking. Even burnt toast. He claims that he really likes burnt food.
He is a coffee drinker and I prefer Diet Coke. That sort of sums it up. It is hard to gulp down your coffee while running on to the next thing. Diet Cokes are made for gulping and going.
And now it seems that my Diet Cokes are becoming more hot tea, his cups of coffee are finding cups with lids and we are meeting in the middle more often. We are taking the time to remember what it was that made us think this crazy relationship would actually survive and we are enjoying it.
In case you're wondering about the maximum amount of gas that you can put it an automobile in one fillup, it appears to be $75.
I discoverd this handy tidbit while driving a U-haul truck from Northern California to San Diego. The first time I went to fill up the truck, I just turned on the pump and got back in the truck while it filled the tank. I really didn't want to look while the tally climbed into the hundreds. Eventually, I heard the click, removed the pump, and resumed my journey south. That's when I noticed the gauge was not sitting on "F". I was afraid there was something wrong with the gauge until I pulled in for my next fillup. This time I paid attention and as the total price neared $75, the pump began stopping. Then I noticed a small sign on the pump that said "In an effort to keep the cost of gas low (yes it really said that!!) we have limited each purchase to $75. Feel free to begin a second transaction if you exceed that amount."
I am dying to know how the $75 cutoff saves them money. All that know is that I had to load up 3 times at the $75 limit plus one more $60 fillup to reach my destination. I don't know how those truckers do it.
The day she graduates from high school. The nest will be empty.
What are two parents supposed to do with themselves now? What will we do with those hours that used to be reserved for handling the crisis of the day? For calling school to address her absence? For waking her up and then waking her up again? How will we replace those moments when we could solve a problem? When we received a special hug? When we found her lost object? When we watched her tiny body in a pink leotard parade across the stage?
For 18 years we have watched her come and go. We have seen her learn and we have seen her try and fail. We have watched her win and watched her triumph over challenges. We have been proud and we have been disappointed. Now we will be doing that from afar.
This last year has been a special one as we have had more time together. It has made as all stronger and more able to handle the coming separation. But it won't be easy.
An event put on by Stanford Hospital to celebrate their part in their patients' victories over life-threatening injuries. What a great idea to allow former patients and their families to meet the people behind the roles that were so crucial in giving us our lives back.
From Heather the amazing nurse who suggested we get an Ipod so our daughter didn't have to hear all of the incessant beeping of various machines in ICU ,to the nurse who allowed us to stay by her bed way past visiting hours, to the doctors who knew how to re-grow tissue on her damaged knee it was one miracle after another. And now. less than one year later it hardly seems real.
So we will celebrate the victories and the skill and mostly the extraordinary talent and caring of the Trauma Center at Stanford Hospital and will give thanks that we are able to be part of an event like this.
Big milestones require a proper ceremony. Getting promoted from Brownies to Girl Scouts had a wonderful bridging ceremony that made you feel really special. Marriage has a whole bunch of special elements which are designed to help you move into a new phase of life. Retirement brings the obligatory gold watch to signify something (maybe that you will have too much time on your hands?) not sure about that one. Anyway, ceremony is a big part of recognizing life-changing passages.
So what to do for a daughter who is turning 18? How do I show her that I have faith in her power to make good decisions, without sounding preachy? How do I convey my love and respect for all that she has become in her brief 18 years? How do I give her a gentle nudge without driving her away? And how do I instill in her a sense of the long line of mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers who have passed this milestone ahead of her and who stand in silent support of all her hopes and dreams?
Her path will not be the same as mine, but it feels right for her. Maybe the best that I can offer her is a blank notebook - pages that are ready to be filled with her experiences and an endless world of opportunities to write her own story.
There are 4926 miles between Pleasanton, California and Atlanta, Georgia. How do I know this? Because I have just returned from an epic journey by car between those two cities with my husband (yes we are still married) and our Bassett Hound.
On the drive East we were bombarded with snow and high winds through Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Once we got to Arkansas it turned to rain and just plain cold. Tennessee and Georgia were warmer and thankfully filled with Chick-Fil-A's so that made it nice! The scenery was beautiful and the only painful memory was an unplanned interaction with a tumbleweed plant?, bush?, tree?. It impaled itself on the grill of the car and left an ugly hole but it was either the tumbleweed or the car in the next lane during one particularly cold, windy stretch of road and we made the obvious choice.
If you are interested, it seems that Sonic only goes so far as New Mexico when you are heading West and on many stretches of road you are lucky to find a truck stop for gas. Restroom stops get harder to find in New Mexico and we found a number of places with either no rest rooms or all rest rooms closed. The dog, however, found ample spots including one patch of desert on the side of Interstate 40.
It is possible to consume 8000 calories per day without ever leaving the car, while only expending a maximum of about 40 calories by pushing the cruise button on and off and using the seek button to locate a radio station that works.
My new favorite fast food restaurant is Arby's which has a chicken salad wrap that feels almost healthy. It was a nice change from the burgers that were available everywhere.
My advice to those planning a similar journey is - have you considered flying?
Why were there 12 days? Why not 13 or 15? What is the significance of 12 days?
Obviously I am not the first to wonder about this as there are a number of sites dealing with this very issue. Most of these sites agree that the 12 days have a significance in the Christian calendar and that each of the gifts are Christian symbols.
I am more interested in the numerical value chosen. The 12 days after Christmas to Ephiphany are meaningul in the church calendar. But that doesn't explain why they became the 12 days before Christmas in the song.
It turns out that 12 is an "abundant" number in mathematics. That means if you add 12 to the sum of its other divisors, 1,2,3,4 and 6, the result is more than 2 X 12.
I can picture an early mathematician creating the "12 days of Christmas" song to teach his math students more about abundance using the first abundant number, 12, as his starting point.
Now you've got something really interesting to talk about over that next glass of eggnog.
That's the price you will pay to buy a $25 roll of US presidential coins from the US Mint. That's right. The mint makes a $10 profit on each roll of 25 of these $1 coins that are actually in circulation.
How do I know this you might wonder? Well, I am one of the few people who is actually dumb enough to pay that price to get these coins. There are four of these in circulation for 2007: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. The banks don't seem to carry them at all. They might be able to find you a roll of re-circulated coins if you time it just right. But I like to have the shiny new gold variety, with a single president represented. So I go straight to the mint and order them online.
I think this is a wonderful way to get children to learn the Presidents of the United States in order. If they get it right, they can earn the appropriate coin. At least now I know the first 4 presidents in the right order. It's going to take me a long time to get through the whole list at the rate of 4 new coins issued per year, but that's okay. I'll get there eventually.
And in the meantime, the US postal service stamp machines are actually providing these coins as change, so you might luck out and get your Washington dollar for a dollar. As for me, each dollar of mine is actually a $1.43 gold piece. That just makes them more special when I give them away.
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