Not Quite Leaping Into 2024

Hi, friends.

I started doing a thing. 

That thing is ballet.

People find this surprising because I am an adult who is old. (Old = over 25 in this situation.)

If you're new to knowing me, here's some background information. I danced when I was younger but I will simply say that ballet is not where we concentrated our efforts. Being that it is the foundation for all dance, we trained and did what we had to do, but I don't know that any of us were really passionate about it, including myself.

Fast forward a (very generous) few years and I find myself drawn to ballet. I'm not exactly sure why, but here I am.

I've been thinking about going back for a while now, but there are always reasons not to. Time. Money. Schedule. Convenience. Availability. I could go on; I'm really good at procrastinating these days. 

There were things pushing me to do it though too. I still occasionally dance in my kitchen and I've not been happy with where my strength and flexibility are. Plus, when I took my aerial silks class, I was downright distressed by how dizzy I got. I won't bore you with my most recent tire swing adventure, just think about how rarely you see adults on tire swings. There's a reason. Apparently with proper exercise, the ability to turn and not get dizzy can come back though. Who knew?

Even with internal motivation, it was still so easy to put off, so I gave myself a deadline and bought some ballet shoes to create an obligation to power through. I told myself that after my surgery I would look into it. So, around Christmas, inspired by the bombardment of The Nutcracker from all angles and well into the evening of my thirty-seventh year, I started looking for adult ballet classes.

I didn't have to look far. At the studio right down the street, I found a few options for adults. Huzzah. 

Then came scouring the internet to see what level these adults are at because it's advertised as Intermediate Adult Ballet. I don't feel intermediate. At the same time, I know I'm not a beginner either. Plus the Beginner class is on Wednesday nights so that isn't an option for me. What I needed was a class that was like, You remember most the terminology, but you're weak now and not entirely sure what will happen.

In my investigation, I saw a few photos that indicated it was not too advanced and something that said it was perfect for all levels and that everyone was welcome. Huzzah number two. 

Before I signed up though, I wanted to know what the teacher was like. I looked her up online and her name was familiar, but that really means nothing. Even though her name is moderately unique, most people share their name with others so it could have been entirely coincidental. (Speaking of unique names, this poor barista howled the other day when I corrected her and told her my name wasn't Gorisa, but I digress.) I have terrible face blindness, so I sent a picture of the teacher to my friend who suffers no such affliction and she confirmed my assumption: the teacher of this class was one of my ballet teachers from when I was about ten years old. Huzzah number three.

Yes, a woman who taught me ballet 27 years ago in a different city is now teaching an adult ballet class 5 blocks away from my house. Taking this incredibly subtle hint from the universe, I registered for Intermediate Adult Ballet.

At this point, I didn't really have any excuses anymore, right?

Then came the hard part: buying the gear and showing up. 

Like I said, I had already bought the shoes. Shoes have gotten better. I love them. (For those of you needing clarification, we're talking a soft ballet slipper, not a pointe shoe. I'm weird; not insane.)  

I did not want to put on a leotard and tights. Who does? But that's what you do, you know? And from the pictures I saw, people generally adhere to this tradition in this class. My last ballet class was 20 years ago. 4 states. 2 kids. Again, I could go on. In sum, things have changed, including pretty much everything about my body and fitness level. 

Regardless, I hauled my ass over to Step 'n Stretch and instead of walking in and saying, "I need a gymnastics leotard for my daughter," I took a deep breath and said, "I need a leotard... for me..."

"The extra larges are right down there."

Alright. 

So, that's how it's going to be.

To be fair, she knew what she was talking about and likely saved me time and embarrassment but the thing is that I have not been an extra large a day in my life and, despite having accepted that I was going to feel like a sausage, it's not what I needed to hear.

Alas, a size is just a size and I got on with my day. Tights? Check. Shorts? Check. Legwarmers? Ancient. Wildly misplaced confidence? Full of it.

Then came the big day. 

I thought I might've gone to far with decking myself out in full ballet gear. Nope.

I thought I would embarrass myself which I was actually totally fine with, but I did not. 

I thought I would be the youngest one. Absolutely I was. The class is at 10:30 on Friday morning and people have jobs. This was expected. 

The class is awesome. It really is great for all levels and the teacher does a good job of catering corrections to where you're at personally. Nothing in the class is a contest or about trying to be the best and it is wonderful. Last week there was even a woman who started who MIGHT be younger than me. I'm so excited.

As far as the class is going for me personally? Well, ballet is hard. I have no regrets for going back though. Mentally and physically it has been extremely beneficial. That being said, ow. When I tell you that I'm finding muscles I didn't know I had it's because THEY FREAKING DISAPPEARED AND I HAD NO IDEA HOW WEAK I WAS.

Seriously. It is astonishing how much muscle memory you can retain even though none of the muscles are even there anymore. Absolutely ridiculous. I don't think I need to address flexibility, just go ahead and assume the worst. I can still point my foot though and turn. Kind of. I get super dizzy, but we all do. It's good fun.

Leaps. Sweet Jesus, have mercy. I was never a good leaper, but I could get by. This is no longer true. Have you ever tried to jump and gone nowhere? Well, I have. And despite not going anywhere, it still hurt when I landed. The human body really is a remarkable thing, isn't it?

Speaking of being old and out of shape, apparently I graduated from high school 20 years ago and it took me that long to make this massive quilt. Fine, realistically it took about two weeks but I spread it out pretty nicely. What this thing lacks in uniformity, it makes up for in cuddle factor. It's really, really wonky though, I'm not going to lie to you. It's not even a rectangle. It may look like one, but it's rectangular like bacon, so sewing it required some creativity. My camp one is much better, but done is done and toasty warm is toasty warm.

Surgery and Recovery Summaries

This is a picture of some scarves I made for my children. Facebook is going to choose a pic for the preview and it's usually the first one I upload so I wanted something that wouldn't offend the uncurious. Though, I suppose my knitting skills are pretty offensive, but that's what happens when you only knit once every 17 years.

Alright. I’m back. Sans ovaries and fallopian tubes. Nothing else has changed.

Mom picked me up at the butt crack of dawn on the day of surgery and we trudged in with a long line of people checking in for procedures.  Everything was very easy and went smoothly. Nurses and doctors were friendly and professional and downright relieved at my lack of allergies and diabetes. They made me feel like a unicorn. ‘This one has no problems!’ Well, let me tell you about my stomachaches, Janice.

I am very pragmatic about these situations if you haven’t already gotten that. I had an increased chance of getting ovarian cancer so I removed the organ that gets that cancer. This is logical to me and worth doing without question. Because of that logic, I didn’t really allow myself to get nervous about the procedure. There are many reasons for this. First, it wouldn’t help the situation. Second, it certainly wouldn’t help my kids. Third, it just wasn’t a high-risk operation. I am (apparently) the most boring patient in the world, I have been under anesthesia before so they weren’t worried about that and it’s not like heart surgery or brain surgery, right? Like, I hate to say there’s room for error because I’d rather there be no errors, but if someone gets bumped while performing a procedure I think the oophorectomy is the better choice. I still can’t spell that word, by the way.

Unfortunately, not even my stubborn-ass brain could entirely ignore the fact that I was having surgery. I did start to get nervous just as they rolled me back to the operating room, but I think they expect that because everything happened so freaking fast from that point on. Out the room, wheely, wheely, wheely, OUCH (see #2 below), wheely wheely, wheely, hop onto the table and BAM. I was out.

There were 2 things I hated about preop:

1. The sterilizing wipes you need to wipe your entire body down with at home. They were very, very cold. This would have been a great activity for July or August. The ones they gave me in the hospital were warmed up and that was much better.

2. The… um… knock out juice? I don’t know. The crap they put into my IV kind of got held up in the vein in my hand and then when it finally broke through it really hurt. Like, really, really hurt. I legit yelled. Their response? ‘Sorry, sometimes that happens.’ Okay. Fine. Occasionally I still feel a similar pain in the same location, though not nearly as strong, and that is annoying. Not sure what/if that’s a problem or not. I’m assuming not.

My mom said the surgery went pretty quickly. I certainly thought it went super quick, but that’s anesthesia for you. I think I woke up to the anesthesiologist asking me what I like to do in the summer. I have no idea what I said. I wonder if these people keep a list of crazy things people say. I for sure would.

There were thankfully no bumps or complications and the doctor had no uncommon concerns post-procedure, just normal post-op care. They wheeled me out of the hospital about an hour later, but walking wasn’t a challenge, just a liability. I was left with 3 incisions, as expected. The belly button one was the bleeder, the other two were hardly noticeable. White sweatpants were a bad choice though and the blood from my belly button bled through the bandage and saturated the top of my pants. So, I treated the spot when I got home but then balled it up and forgot about it and then the stain transferred to other parts of the pants. Anyway, that blood somehow stained green after all was said and done those are called my ‘blood pants’ now.

For those of you on the edge of your seat with anticipation, no they did not let me see the things removed from my body. She DID however, take a bunch of pictures for me INSIDE MY BODY. Muahahahahahahahhaa. How cool is that?! I find this awesome and incredible. Dan was not necessarily a fan. They are available at the bottom of this post if you are interested. The very, very bottom. Just keep scrolling.

Post-surgery medicine included alternating Tylenol and Ibuprofen every 4 hours. I took them, but only for about 2 days. It just wasn’t painful. They prescribed oxycodone as well, but that has made me sick in the past so I didn’t take it (also, I didn’t need it). I also had to take a stool softener, which is apparently common aftercare of general anesthesia.

Nothing about the surgery really hurt. My abdomen and insides felt really loose and wobbly when I switched sides when lying down, but thankfully I have a friend who thought of this and bought me a special tummy pillow. So yeah, the incisions were fine. Occasionally my belly button bothered me, but so do papercuts. It just wasn’t a big deal. The pain of the gas trapped in my body and building up at my collar bones, however, was excruciating. Listen, I’ve been in pain before. I can deal with it. Just breathe through it, right? Well, what the hell do you do when breathing takes your breath away because it’s so freaking painful? Hm? What then? YOU SUFFER. Ugh. I hated it. And they want you to walk around as part of your rehab and I will tell you right now that that didn’t really happen because the pain was so bad from the gas rising in my body and me trying to breathe. Anyway, that lasted about 4 days. 6 days? I don’t know. Time was not really a thing that was relevant to me.

Monday after surgery a nurse called me and checked on me. That was appreciated. They give you a lot of information after the surgery and I had a couple things I needed clarified.

Post-surgery exhaustion is real and powerful. That was definitely what required the 10 days off work. I also decided that if I didn’t need a job, I probably wouldn’t have one. I’m really good at sitting and doing nothing.

Alright. Let’s talk hormone replacement. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Surgery was on a Thursday. Doc said to apply the first estrogen patch on Saturday. I did that. No hot flashes. No problems. No side effects. No skin irritation. Nothing. It was alarmingly mundane. She was so proud of me. I tell you what though, I thought this patch was going to be huge. Like a 2” band-aid colored square. Nope. It’s a tiny circle. I have 2 alarms set on my phone for this now. Wednesday morning and Saturday night. I am not allowed to turn these alarms off until I change my patch because I definitely know that I will forget to do it. So far, delays in patch changing have had no side effects, but I’ve never been later than an hour or two. One annoying thing is that there are only 10 in a box, so every 5 weeks I need to refill. Oh well. Cancer would be much more annoying.

Lingering things- I have 3 scars. They are tiny. The belly button BY FAR took the longest to heal. The other two were healed by my post-op appt 13 days later, possibly sooner, but the bandage was on so I couldn’t see them. That belly button? Um… 2 months? I don’t know. Maybe only 7 weeks. Whatever it was, it was ridiculous and annoying and a little gross at times.

The Q-Tip is for scale. The scar is the tiny red line under it. I have two of these, one near each hip. The estrogen patch is the clear circle on the left. I can put it anywhere on my lower abdomen, but it kind of just travels back and forth between my scars. They recommend changing it up to give the skin a break.

On the left I'm stretching it out to show the whole scar. The right is how it looks normally.
Yes, my belly button is still pierced. This is because piercings are fairly permanent. Yes, I thought it would close up when I was pregnant. Both times. But it didn't. Don't worry about it. It's not your belly button. (Can you tell I've been given some crap about this? Lol.)

One thing I’ve noticed that I absolutely love and that I didn’t expect- I don’t feel sick in the morning anymore. I don’t know what my problem was but there was about a 75% chance I would wake up in the morning nauseated. It had been going on for years and now it’s gone. Since the surgery I have not had this happen even once. It is awesome.

Oh, right. Pathology. Everything was tested and came back clear so that was a nice little cherry on top of the successful surgery sundae. They also sent me home with a breathing exercise measurement thingy to… prevent pneumonia? I’m not sure. And from how they presented it, I could kind of tell that they were required to give it to me but that it wasn’t really necessary. It looks like this:

One last thing before I wrap this up. I want to thank everyone who reached out to me with their experiences, support and encouragement after my last post. Just when you think it’s something that not many people will be able to relate to or care about, well, let’s just say it’s amazing how wrong a person can be. It’s true that not many people carry the BRCA mutation. Only about 1 in 400, or .25% (holy crap, I’m so special). But you guys, if you think you don’t know someone who has been affected by ovarian cancer or this stupid mutation, whether in themselves or someone they care about, you’re wrong. You just don’t know about it. And that’s okay. Just keep in mind that it’s not something that happens to some mythical and distant ‘someone else.’ If you can handle the burden of the knowledge, I recommend getting tested. Not everyone with the mutation gets cancer and not everyone who has cancer has the mutation, but to me, it made sense to find out and try to be proactive.

If you have any questions at all, let me know. I obviously don’t mind talking about it and if I can help you out I’d love to do that.

Scroll to the bottom if you are medically inclined or just curious and want to see progress photos of the surgery. Let me me clear: these are photos taken of INSIDE MY BODY. That is your warning. If you don't want to see them. Don't scroll down. Easy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keep going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost there…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congratulations! You made it!

 

It's Alive!!!

Just in time for spooky season, the resurrection of the blog! Honestly, I don't know if I can consider it resurrected, but it's a place to share that isn't right on Facebook so it seemed a little more appropriate. Yes, even though many of you come here through Facebook.

Okay. So. I’ve been dealing with something for the last few… six(?)… eight(?) months now and while it all seems very logical and fine to me, when I talk to others, that is not at all the vibe I’ve been getting back from them. At all. This has led me to believe that I’m wrong, even though it’s my body and my feelings, but I also know that my brain does things a little differently sometimes, so I thought I should probably say something before you all hear that I’m in the hospital and find that to be slightly more concerning than interesting.

So here's what's happening:

My mom’s mother died from breast cancer at the age of forty-one. Because of that and another familial connection to this type of cancer, when the opportunity arose to test for a gene mutation that drastically increases one’s chances of getting breast and ovarian cancer, I hopped right on that opportunity. The test took months to return and in the interim I learned all sorts of things, like:

- I'm likely to metabolize caffeine quickly 
- I'm likely to have muscles that don't fatigue easily but aren't as effective at generating power
- I'm likely to not have a sweet tooth
- I'm likely to be able to detect and am likely strongly averse to the smell of asparagus in urine. (Undetermined. I can't even eat asparagus.)
- I'm likely to not enjoy cilantro (thankfully this is very incorrect. Yay!)
- I'm likely to taste the bitter compounds in cruciferous vegetables 
- My face is not likely to flush while drinking alcohol (I don't drink enough to know.)
- I'm likely to stay up late but I don't have the genetic factor that results in delayed sleep.
- I am likely to freckle in the sun, tan, and sunburn only occasionally
- I'm likely to be of average height. For this I want to know: average for what? A female ostrich? Average height for a white woman in the US is 5'-3.9". I am 5'-11". Big miss on this one.

I also learned things about my ancestry, like:

- Despite being 50% German and 50% Norwegian, I also have traces of Finnish, Sardinian (8.4%!), Ashkenazi Jew, Persian (a whopping 4.7%. Seriously, someone has some splaining to do) and Beringian.
- I'm likely to be able to tolerate colder weather better than average (Tell my toes)
- I am not carrying the genetic factor found among the Inuit that helps cope with a high fat diet.
- I am not adapted to high altitudes (This was annoyingly obvious on our honeymoon to Glacier.)
- I am not adapted to avoid Malaria (shocker)
- I can likely tolerate lactose. This one is interesting because I got these results right when I was certain I could no longer tolerate lactose. My solution was to ignore it, power through and increase lactose consumption and now I seem to be better. I think is what the kids call exposure therapy.

Some positive health results were that I don't have any variants associated with Lynch Syndrome which is an inherited condition that increases risks of certain cancers like colon and endometrial. I also don't have an inherited likelihood off high blood cholesterol or heart disease.

Unfortunately, I discovered that I have the BRCA1 gene mutation. (This is the thing that Maya Rudolf was testing for in Wine Country. Great movie. Highly recommend.) This is likely crushing information to most people who receive this knowledge about themselves, but this is the reason why I did the test. It’s not the result I wanted, but it wasn’t at all unexpected either so I had a few cookies and got on with my life and scheduled exactly one million appointments.

Starting back in March, I met with a genetic counselor and then with an oncologist in April. I’ve had an MRI and ultrasound and various other examinations where I been poked, prodded and pricked. All results so far indicate that I am free of cancer and able to make choices in the vein of preventative care which led me to a couple more appointments with general surgery and plastic surgery.

Here’s the thing: there have been great strides made in the detection and treatment of breast cancer for which we are all immensely thankful because it affects so many of us. Ovarian cancer? Not so much. Like, at all. It's embarrassing. Screening isn’t great and often times it isn’t even detected until stage 3 or 4, which is far too late for my liking.

Honestly, I didn’t even need to think about it. Anyone who knows me at all knows that that you could not pay me to have another child. Well, you could, but we’re talking millions of dollars and so far there have been no offers. I wanted a boy and a girl, I got my boy and my girl, and sure, he can’t get from the table to the bathroom without forgetting he went there to wash his hands and she very well may be the cause of my demise (though not purposefully, she’s made that clear), they are happy and healthy and our family has been complete for almost eight years now.

So, I made the decision to have my ovaries removed. On Thursday. Tomorrow. The general population has a 1-2% chance of developing ovarian cancer. My odds are 39-58%. After Thursday, that will drop to zero, and I like those odds a lot more. Without ovaries, I have the choice of going into an early, very harsh, medical menopause, or wearing a hormone replacement patch on my abdomen that I will change out twice per week until I decide to discontinue it. After considering pros and cons, I'm going with the patch.

My doctor is really excited for me, and I think she's excited for her as well. During my examination, while pushing around on my stomach she said, “Yep, this one is going to be easy,” so that was nice to hear. It’s laparoscopic so it’s not even considered ‘major surgery’ and, pending no complications, I will be home and in bed on Thursday evening with strict orders to not move. After hearing of someone who went through this surgery and then tried doing too much too soon and tore her internal stitches, you bet your ass I will be adhering to the orders.

Also, I will be requesting to see what they're taking out. If it’s strange, I don’t care. They’re mine. Now, I’m sure they have to preserve them and whisk them off to pathology and I know I will be in a bit of a stupor, but I think it’s still worth checking.

As for breast cancer, for now I am screening diligently while we get through this ovary crap. My chance of developing breast cancer is greater than 60%, which is, in fact, not at all great, but I’m encouraged by the limited cancer cases throughout my family. I’ve been part of a support group online and some of the women carrying this mutation have cancer by the age of 22, along with 3 sisters, all under the age of thirty, along with mom, aunts and cousins. It's really devastating to hear these stories over and over and over again, but all I can do is be glad that it's not my story. 

So, perhaps my mutant isn’t quite so mutant. Just medium mutant. Or maybe, she’s like me and leans toward the introverted side and doesn’t like to make a fuss. Or maybe she’s lazy and is all, “I could destroy you but I’m just so tired and can’t really be bothered.” You know, like a cat.

Whatever the reason, I’m glad to be in a position to be able to make these choices before they are being made for me. It is recommended that my children be tested when they are in their early twenties and I will leave that choice up to them.

As you can tell, I don't mind talking about this so if you have questions I will answer them to the best of my ability. If this is more information than you wanted to know, well, no one made you read it. That's on you.

To my ovaries: I give a hearty 'thank you' for your years of service and for my healthy babies. I regret to inform you that you will likely not be missed. 

Oh, and for those of you on the edge of your seat just absolutely dying to know how my journey to Mt. Doom is going, I just reached the black gate last week and now I'm almost to Osgiliath and only have 242.03 miles to go!

New Year, Same Me, Slacking on the Blog

I had a meeting in St. Paul yesterday at 10 AM. I found out about this meeting last week so obviously I had been dreaming about Cosetta's since then. The meeting took 7 minutes. Cosetta's doesn't open until 11. I couldn't wait around because I had work to do so I got Taco Bell on the way home instead. If you thought you were disappointed by something lately, here's your reminder that it could've been worse.

Alright. Where were we? November? Oof. Okay. This is not going to cover everything we missed. Just a couple things to share to hopefully kick-start my interest in positing on here again.

We decided to try ice skating this winter! I was pleased to find that you don't need to choose hockey or figure skates anymore- they make recreational skates for posers like us. AND they are adjustable over a 4 size range fore kids, so God bless that person for thinking of that. So, yeah, one day we woke up and said, "Let's go to Play It Again Sports! Maybe they'll have some used skates for all of us!" This might've been an okay idea in September. In January, not so much. Anyways, $238 dollars later (ouch) we were pumped and on the ice! Dan didn't get skates and we decided this was the right way to do things- one adult on skates, one not. Or at least it worked really well for us. 

I hate to break it to you all, but I am not the skater I was when I was 9. And I was barely a skater then. I did rock my rollerblades though so eventually I was moving around okay on skates. Did I try to stop by using my heel as if I were wearing rollerblades? Absolutely I did. Did it work? No. It did not. But I didn't fall, so we are still calling it a success. I was surprised to find that Oskar seems to be the one most interested and best at skating. Even to the point where he, the kid who complains about leaving the house for any reason whatsoever, was consistently asking if we could go skating. We didn't get out as much as we'd like, but he was moving well by the end of the season. Next year we might try harder to find a less lumpy rink. It sure kept things interesting though. The video below is Elena's first attempt.

Oskar had his second piano recital in February. He did amazingly well in my completely non-biased opinion. See video below if you are interested.

I have a couple non-American friends and one of the things we love talking about is food- specifically how food is different in our countries (they live in Brazil and France). We often talk about the stupid food stuff- things that are so ubiquitous in our lives that we don't give a second thought to, but make others go "What?" I even sent them each a box of Kraft mac & cheese and Velveeta and did video tutorials so they could experience these things for themselves. (I'm happy to report that Velveeta mac & cheese has received the endorsement of a Latina grandmother, so I feel like that's pretty spectacular.) The videos are ridiculous and I feel like a fool, but they get the point across. I also did chili, hamburger helper, PB&J sandwiches, crescent rolls... I think that's it so far. We were going to do Thanksgiving dinner as well, but Dan got covid so that will need to wait until next year. 

Anyway, they also took note of all our different flavors of Coke, since there was usually one next to me when I was doing my videos. So, when Dan brought home a new flavor of Coke a few days ago, I did a video of the tasting. Feel free to skip it, I will not be offended, but some might find it slightly amusing. It was too big to upload in 1, so there are 3 parts. Keep in mind this was recorded for people not in this country, hence the comment about real sugar at the end. And yes, my friends speak English fluently.

Shields Holding Steady at 35%

On a trip to see ABT at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

The other day I called my junior high geography teacher to ask if my kids could poop at her house and in return she gave us gummy bears. Yeah, there's a little more to the story, but I'm just going to leave it at that.

You'd think I told her to pose like that but no,
it comes naturally.

Seriously. How terrible am I at keeping this thing going? It is not a hard thing to do. All right, let's see what is new since... My covid shot? Wow. Um, okay, here we go. 

We were drowned by walnuts. Most of you know this. We keep getting people stopping by saying or roof needs  replacing because of hail damage. Next time I'm just going to be like, "Nope, it's walnuts. What do you have to say now?" And they will say, "Your roof still needs replacing ma'am." And I will say, "I know!" 

We hauled about 4200 to the yard waste drop off and through accidental experimentation, we know that the squirrels hauled away at least 200 per day that they were on the ground. We'll never have an exact walnut production number, but the technical term would be 'too many.' The walnuts are done now but the leaves all fell today. On one day. I didn't know this was a thing. Looks like I have plans this weekend.

Elena started gymnastics and is crushing it. No one is surprised. She accidentally started on an evaluation day and almost tested out of the beginner level that day, but she stayed there through the summer and moved up to advanced beginner in the beginning of September. I love this new class because there are only four students in it and they all get a lot of attention. 

Last day of preschool.

Elena began kindergarten this year. At kindergarten round up last spring she saw the kindergarten teachers online, then noticed one of them at baseball at the start of the summer. She proclaimed that day that was her kindergarten teacher and that she was going to be in the same class as her two friends from baseball. We spent all summer telling her this was unlikely to happen at a school this big only to end up looking the fool when she did, indeed, get that teacher along with her two friends. She lives a charmed life, doesn't she?

First day of kindergarten.

I was checking in with her the other night to see how school was going and one of the questions I asked was if she asked for help when she needs it. She looked at me like I could not have possibly asked her a more obscene question and said, "I never need help." Her teacher confirmed this but said that she will be challenged more soon. Conferences has now become her favorite school event because she just loves to hear other people talk about how wonderful she is. 

First day of third grade.

Oskar started third grade and doesn't seem to be struggling with anything at school either, which is obviously good. His teacher emphasized that they are really working on responsibility this year and I've started to notice a slight improvement so that's exciting. He also started piano lessons over the summer. He loves playing and he loves his teacher but he hates practicing, but I think that's only because it's called practicing because once he gets going he loves it. And then Elena watches and repeats his lesson so we are getting a 2-for-1 deal from his piano teacher. He had his first recital last weekend, he did really well AND be had fun. So we're on board with the piano thing.

Dude loves to read all the things.

I'm just going to come right our and admit that we've started drugging our child. Oskar had been having trouble falling asleep because he can't stop thinking. No idea where he got that from, stop looking at me like that. Anyway, we've started giving him melatonin and it has made a huge difference. His mood has leveled out and ADD symptoms have decreased significantly. His piano teacher noticed that he was far more attentive after he began taking it as well. And the week he started it, he said it was easier to stay focused at school and he came home with two blue ratings, which I think means he was a really good listener and participant in class. The funny part is that Dan just picked up the adult gummies at Costco because that's all they had and we need to cut it into 4 pieces to get a child size dose. Yes, you read that right, Oskar is given a quarter of what is essentially a fruit snack every night at seven o'clock and it knocks him out in less than 30 minutes.

Most of the time they are friends.

We were invited to a beach by a friend at the beginning of the summer and after seeing how awesome and uncrowded it was, I told myself we should make it a regular thing. We made it back there exactly zero times after that. Oh well, maybe next year.

You know when you're at the beach and forget to
take pictures until you're in the parking lot
on your way home?

We were so excited that we were able to make it to the Renaissance Festival and the state fair this year. We had so much fun at both and apparently we managed to stay safe enough and our family and those around us remain COVID-free. 

I really will try to be better about this now that I'm kind of caught up again, but we'll see what happens. 

This Episode Brought to You by My Second Covid Shot

Elena when I told her that Nebula and Amy Pond were played by the same actress.

We were at Oskar's baseball practice last week and Elena was bored so she was just sprinting back and forth along the field. She eventually decided to do a running somersault and long story short, Elena did a flip on Wednesday.

I was so excited after I got my shot yesterday because nothing happened. I went back to work and everything was fine, then came home and took my normal Friday afternoon nap and all was glorious. Until about 10:00 PM when I became exhausted and EVERYTHING started hurting. It was not at all gradual. It was, 'Ha! This TV show is so funny' and then BAM and 'Holy crap I didn't know my eye sockets could hurt.' So I am spending the last weekend of my 34th year from the couch. I mean, I probably would be on the couch anyway, but this time I can blame the shot and not the fact that I'm really lazy on weekends.

I'm so sorry I've neglected the blog for so long. I would like to say that nothing has happened, but that isn't true. Most of you saw on Facebook that we moved into our house, finally. Make no mistake this does not mean that our house is done, and right now it feels like it never will be. We are slowly unpacking and getting rid of things we don't need, which I love, but it is taking a really, really long time.

So yeah, Oskar and Elena have started "playing" baseball. It's adorable and infuriating, We have one child with oodles of natural athletic ability and one who struggles to stay standing up straight. I try not to hover but for the love of Pete why can't he remember that he is right handed?

When we told Oskar he was going to play baseball he responded by saying that he didn't like moving. To which I said that baseball was the perfect activity for him. He is really interested in the rules and how the game works, but with no drive to excel. Which is fine. All we told him he had to do was have a good attitude about it. And yes, I absolutely bribed him with a videogame. Shut up. I did what needed to be done and you aren't going to make me feel bad about it.

Oskar and Elena occasionally mention things they miss about living in Brandon. These things include the people and the pieces of wood nailed to our tree so Ellie could climb it. But it's also amazing what made an impression on them while we were there. The other day some heavy machinery appeared in front of out house and Oskar looked outside and said, "I think they are going to fix the road."

I asked, "Yeah? Why do you think that?"

"Our road is not very good. But at least it's not as bad as the one in Brandon. I couldn't even ride my scooter on that one. It was just jsssssshhhhhhhhhhh."

Another conversation between us:
O: Did you ever get growing pains?
Me: Yes.
O: That's why my pinky hurts.
Me: No.

That's it. That's the whole post. I'm just going to ease back into this blogging thing and see if it takes. Sorry for the brevity, but my body is saying sleep, so I'm going to listen to it.

I'm Fine, We're Fine, Everything is Fine.

I have a couple friends who reminded me yesterday that I enjoy writing and that the infamous blog is woefully out of date, so, thanks to L & M I’m back with a vengeance. Well, probably not quite a vengeance, but we’ll see. Warning: language here may be a bit saltier than usual because, well, life. You’ll see; you’ll get it.

So… I see that my last post was in April. Oh my. Would it be okay to say that nothing much has happened since then in an effort to pretend I’m still sane? Oh right, lying is bad. Got it.

Well, to start with, I think it’s important that you all know that I finally took the plunge and did something I’ve wanted to do for probably ten years. I got a decent pillow. Changed my life. And I don’t just mean one that costs more that $3. We’re talking $30 of ergonomic bliss. Not gonna lie, it took a couple nights to adjust to, but holy crap my old bones are loving it now. I’ve been falling asleep faster and everything.

I went to get a massage a couple weeks ago and it was divine. I scheduled the massage on a Friday as I sat working in the dining room on a twenty-five-year-old chair at three in the morning. I took a deep breath and hurt my back, so something had to be done and I’d like to offer a big ‘thank you’ to the internet for making that possible. The masseuse didn’t explicitly say that my back was the worst she’d seen lately, but it was quite apparent that was the case. She kept asking me if she was hurting me and I responded, “No,” but what I really wanted to say was “I don’t care if it hurts, just fix my frickin’ back.”

She had all these crazy suggestions like I should drink water, sleep more, roll around on a tennis ball and you know, just generally take better care of myself. The audacity of this woman, I swear. We were about 10 seconds into the massage and she felt the very top of my neck and said, “Oh my, how frequently do you get headaches?”  She also asked how long I had been like this and I wanted to say, “I don’t understand- is this not what living should feel like?” I joke, but she really was great, and I will be going back because let’s be real, there is still plenty of work to do.

She did her best and sent me home to take an Epsom salt bath. A bath, people. I haven’t had a bath since our car accident back in ’05. Shit, I’m old. Anyway. Y’all might be aware that my parents have a soaker tub, but this lady was very clear in her instructions and said you can’t use Epsom salt with a jetted tub or they will clog. Fine. Whatever. Fortunately, my parents have tub options. So, there I headed to the normal tub. And by normal, I mean that the part intended for bathing is approximately 45” long. So, most of you know what I look like. For those of you who have forgotten or just don’t know me that well, I’m at least 5’10” and the inseam on my jeans is 35”. Dan saw me walking to the bathroom and he asked, “You’re using THAT tub?” And then he laughed. Dan’s spatial awareness is not his greatest strength, but even he assumed I wouldn’t fit in that tub. Shocker: I didn’t. Appendages everywhere. It was like a clown car was vomiting limbs.

But do you know what? It really was relaxing, and I quite literally passed out afterward. So all in all, a win? I’m still not really sure. It was all quite surreal.

We successfully sold our house, made a profit and left South Dakota at the end of May. Dealing with moving, finishing the basement, working from home, home schooling, house viewings and contract signings was 100% the giant nightmare it sounds like. What a terrible time to sell a house. That being said, we miraculously rocked at keeping our house spotless for about six days. The place looked fantastic. Truly as immaculate as a house can get while a family of four is living in it. But it was NOT FUN. It was so not fun that afterward, we didn't go back to normal, oh no no no. We went straight to absolute filth. It was like when they mucked up the fish tank in Finding Nemo.

We moved in temporarily with my parents while we finished buying our house, which we closed on at the end of June and started renovating with aplomb. Yes, aplomb. And for a moment, it was going great. Remember when my biggest problem was pet fur in the paint? Ahhh. Those were the days. I remember them well and look back on them fondly.

Well, that was in JULY and now it is OCTOBER. Some of you might be wondering why I’m bathing at my parent’s house. Funny you should ask! And thank you for your interest and concern regarding our current situation!

I don’t even know how it happened anymore; I think we wanted to move the toilet location, so we brought someone in for an estimate and learned that we needed about $20-25K of HVAC work done. Yes, you read that right. TWENTY TO TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS needing to be spent on nearly the most boring bit of building. The only thing more boring would have been foundation work. And then we found out there was asbestos on the ducts as well. AWESOME. You know what? We weren’t even surprised. It’s just like, okay, might as well just sprinkle some lead paint chips on our cereal and get on with our day.

So our HVAC work was done by the end of September and our plumbing will hopefully be done this week, so that’s good. And we have most our kitchen installed. By the way if the thought of assembling something from Ikea makes your stomach turn, I would advise that you not get a kitchen from them. There was just a garbage bag full of hardware delivered to us. I know a guy and we paid him to do it, which was the plan all along and money well spent. So once the kitchen arrived, it was pretty smooth sailing. And ordering it too, was awesome, thanks to the aforementioned guy. So easy.

Delivery was a bitch. And kept getting bitchier. We had deliveries coming via FedEx and another like third party delivery service or whatever. Try arranging a delivery with multiple companies who don’t want to talk to you and who somehow have your wrong phone number AND address. And then, after updating the information, the delivery company straight up frickin’ lied and said they tried to call and that they waited outside for fifteen minutes with no response. NO. NO YOU DID NOT. We were literally watching the road and the phone all damn day. But yes, we thought it would be fun to pretend we weren’t there? We absolutely loved wasting eight hours waiting for you while you supposedly called and knocked on our door. Because we have time for that. Sure.

So, we still need a full bathroom remodel and the guy who hasn’t been in contact with us FINALLY just called about 30 minutes ago, so that’s good news. I’m still dreaming hard to be in by November. HA. Just leave me alone and let me believe what I want.

Oskar has obviously started at school by now. He is doing a hybrid model, so 2 days in person, 3 days at home. We just had his conference and apparently it’s going well, though it really doesn’t feel like it most days.

Elena is in preschool/daycare full-time and only about a two-minute walk from my office and she LOVES it. It is going really well, and I love picking her up afterward and hearing about everything she learned. Also, now I have a buddy for my half hour commute, which is nice, but I feel bad that she’s wasting so much time in the car. And no, the half hour is not because of traffic, it’s just that far to travel.

I had a dream, back during quarantine, that made me laugh. And I’m going to share it right here with you all now because it’s so stupid.

I had been listening to Hamilton a lot while working so I had a dream that there was this Hamilton sweepstakes thing and our neighbor across the street won. And what they won was a meet and greet with Lin Manuel Miranda. I’m no crazy fan girl or anything, but I saw the giant tour bus pull up and I saw him get out and I thought, wow, that’s pretty cool, it’d probably be neat to meet him. So he was walking around the neighborhood, looking in windows and calling all the neighbors out to meet him, so I’m like “Hell yes I will come out and chat, it’s not at all strange that you are literally peering in to people houses, I’ll be right there.”

So, the thing about real life during quarantine is that it was all about comfort, am I right? So, I LIVED in my Comfy. If you don’t know what it is, look it up and then buy one because they are amazing, and you will not regret it.

In real life I had fallen asleep in my Comfy on my couch, and in my dream, I woke to a big ass tour bus rumbling down our crappy road, still wearing my comfy. So, upon being invited outside, I decided, I haven’t really gotten dressed in like a month, maybe I should do that now that I will be interacting with people in real life. I could go into detail here, but I think all you really need to know is that I definitely missed the whole event because I forgot how to put on a bra. This made me angry, and somehow I thought chasing the damn tour bus down the street would fix it. And then I woke up. And I laughed.