Slowly and quickly.

Each day seems to drag on as we wait for Mom's cytogenetic test results.  They determine how the doctors rate prognosis, which seems awfully callous.  If we didn't know about chromosomal abnormalities pointing towards poor outcome, would we view the cancer any differently?  Is it just for the insurance companies so they know what to allow for treatment and what to deny?  Is it to give us a realistic notion of Mom's chances or is it only to help target treatment?  As Tina keeps saying, Mom isn't a statistic, and she's doing very well so far, so maybe the cytology will have little impact on her actual outcome, but what does knowing you have a genetic tendency that makes your cancer less responsive to treatment do to your morale, which is a key factor in treatment success and recovery?  

1 in 10 to 20 adults with ALL have a chromosomal abnormality called Ph1 that can indicated a poor response to chemo.  If Mom has Ph1, then she may not qualify for a marrow transplant, which is usually the best bet for remission.  I feel tense and angry that the test is taking as long as it is to be completed, as it seems to be all we can think about.  However, Rigoletto is next month, and that's seeming to approach all too rapidly, as I'm not memorized yet.  Thank God I'm only in three scenes, although even they seem impossibly dense right now.  Frigging Verdi.  It couldn't have been Handel, could it?  

So, we wait and play with the babies and chew our nails and cook meals and do laundry and edge lawns (Marianne, you tireless badass) and go to sleep each night wondering what news we'll wake to in the morning.  Every night we just pray for the best and cry a little as we wonder if it will be the worst.  

A bit of good news.

The cancer is not in Mom's spine.  She started chemo today and it was a bit rough, but she's been feeling fine since it ended.  I'll be Twittering updates as well as posting them to Mom's Caring Bridge website, https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/judyblewett.  

Last night, Kyan, my godson and second oldest nephew, was lying in Mom and Dad's bed watching Snow White.  Mark asked him if he liked doing so and he said, "Yes, when I'm here I feel like she's with me."  Sniff.

Every worst case scenario.

Mom does not have the type of leukemia we were hoping for.  She has ALL, the most common type of childhood leukemia, but a rarer type for adults, and one that is harder to treat.  Mom had to have a lumbar puncture to determine if there are cancer cells in the central nervous system.  When the puncture was performed, chemo drugs were injected into the spinal cord, just in case.  She will begin chemo on Friday, which will initially take a month, and then she'll have maintenance chemo and then stem cell transplants in Seattle.  And she will not rent an apartment to save me bother, despite her protestations.  

This is going to be a long, sucky road.

Why can't the good be left alone?

Why must there always be bad to temper the good?   I hate having my pessimism validated.  You all know the good, here's the shit stack:  Mom has leukemia.  

I cannot even write it without wanting to throw up.  She was admitted to the hospital Monday as she had gone to the doctor to have her lightheadedness, shortness of breath and fatigue analyzed, and her hemoglobin was so low that they admitted her for a transfusion.  She had her marrow biopsied today, so we'll know the type tomorrow, and the DNA typing will be done next week.  She'll come home for two days starting tomorrow afternoon, and then will be in the hospital for a month for chemo.

This is a woman who has eaten a healthier diet than an army of vegan hippies, who takes vitamins of varying degrees of strangeness, who works out, who does everything right, and this still happened.  She is the epicenter of the universe to the grandkids, and they won't be able to see her for four weeks.  There is no shit like cancer shit.    

Follow Up

When an infant has a UTI, there's a concern that an abnormality of the kidneys, urethra or ureter could be causing reflux of urine, leading to repeat infections.  When Viv was diagnosed with the UTI last week, the pediatrician at Children's and our own pediatrician both recommended an ultrasound and voiding cystourethrogram to evaluate the health of Viv's kidneys, bladder and involved anatomy.  So, yesterday, we took her back to Children's to have both done.  I am again grateful that we are lucky enough to live in Seattle.  Children's staff members all seem to have excellent senses of humor.

The ultrasound was easy, Viv was perfect and laid still with nary a fuss for the 10 minutes it took to capture pictures of her TEENY TINY ORGANS.  We saw her wee little uterus, which was a little odd.  I felt like I was invading her privacy.  Christian thought her kidneys looked like a baboon's face.  The ultrasound technician had never heard that one before.  No, literally.  She guessed that Christian was an artist, as she said that artists and engineers always see bizarre images in the ultrasound.

The VC was less pleasant.  Viv had to be catheterized, have dye injected via the cath into her bladder and then be x-rayed voiding.  She was incredibly calm, though, and didn't flinch or fuss when the nurse inserted the cath, which was remarkable.  The nurses were impressed that we had thought to bring Viv's favorite toys, as, apparently, most parents don't think of it.  Oh, and everyone said she was just beautiful and called in other staff and faculty to see her.  She's the prettiest baby ever.

Anyway, both tests showed that everything was functioning normally, and that she doesn't need to be on prophylactic antibiotics, thankfully.  We're relieved, for us and for her.

That first trip is the scariest.

Until this week, I felt very lucky that Viv has been so healthy, especially as she wasn't breastfed, and without clostrum, she may as well be thrown into a pig wallow in Mexico for all the immune system she has. She had a mild case of croup that cleared up on its own, requiring only occasional treatments with albuterol delivered via nebulizer and her demeanor never really changed during that short illness.

She woke up Sunday, however, with a fever and seemed listless and out of sorts.  We called the doctor that night, but she was out of town, so we spoke with the consulting nurse at Children's.  She told us to just keep an eye on her, especially as she had no other symptoms, but she vomited twice that night and couldn't sleep, and was running a higher fever the next day, which was, of course, a holiday.  Another call to the consulting nurse, another keep an eye out.  We made an appointment for Tuesday, and my lovely pediatrician examined her and took a urine sample, which looked suspicious.  Her fever was 102.5 by then, and she vomited up the Tylenol we tried to give her to take down the fever, all over me, the doctor, the floor and her own clothes.  However, by then, the fever had climbed to an alarming 104. 3.  She was so hot it was difficult to hold her, so we tried to cool her using cold washcloths.  The doctor's office was out of fever reducing suppositories so the pediatrician actually ran to the pharmacy for us.  It was quite above and beyond.

However, by the time she returned, Viv was not improved, so she called Children's and they asked that we bring the poodle over.  A slightly tense drive during which I was convinced that Viv was not, in fact, sleeping, but was in a coma, and we were in the ER, but I couldn't have felt more low rent, as I hadn't anticipated the barf episode, and had no change of clothes.  So, I carried in my sick baby, swaddled only in a diaper and an industrial towel from the doctor's office.  However, the suppository had, blessedly, started to work and she began to improve.  They did give her a teeny, tiny hospital gown, which was actually quite fetching, but then Shelly arrived with actual clothes.

After a four hour wait, during which they took a urine sample via catheter (which I hope to never, ever have to do to her again), the urinary tract infection was confirmed and we were sent home after a primary antibiotic dosing.  I just got a call that it is an E. coli infection, the most common of the childhood urinary tract diseases.  The next morning, she was hugely improved, her normal, happy self.  Now we just have to take her back to Children's for a screening ultrasound to examine her ureter for defects.

I am curious as to why she didn't sleep last night and why she had worked herself into a frenzy before bedtime.  Barfy McSpewy couldn't keep down her antibiotic until the second go, so she was grumpy until we finally got her to sleep around 10:30.   Once she was asleep, though, I kept prodding her to make sure she didn't have a concussion, because, you see, she fell off the bed yesterday.  I set her in the MIDDLE of a pile of laundry, surrounded by bedding and clothes, and I didn't even know she could roll over the way she did. Why do children always celebrate milestones with grievous personal injury?  And why do things always happen so quickly when one has merely turned one's back to grab a blanket?  Anyway, she was, and is, fine, but I was terribly afraid that she was going to bleed on the brain, so I kept checking her eyes and pupils.  Right now I'm just letting her sleep.  Poor kid deserves it.

So it's come to this.

When we brought Viv home, we were so panicked and desperate that we purchased our equipment willy nilly with nary a thought to ease of use or any similar considerations.  We bought our stroller and car seat as a set, and I knew they were very safe, but I had no idea they were so damn chintzy and awkward.  I've come to despise the very sight of our horrid, bulky, cheaply made stroller whose parts fall off with a visceral passion.  It's incredibly heavy, I can't lift it with one hand, it's difficult to open and close and it's so large that it occupies the entire space of the trunk and I cannot navigate store aisles without knocking over displays in a comical, sitcomish fashion.

Still, I had no idea that, in a post from several years ago in which I cruelly made fun of parents and their strollers, I would jinx myself into becoming the worst of them.  We bought a Bugaboo today.  More specifically, a Bugaboo Bee, one of the most expensive and pretentious strollers available on the market.  Well, in the top five of pretentious strollers, after Stokke, Inglesina and Orbit Baby, and above Quinny and Phil and Teds, although not by much.  However, we did get the stroller secondhand from Craigslist for a really excellent price, and it had been used a very limited amount of times.  It's the smallest and lightest weight Bugaboo, and folds with one hand and fits behind the front seat of the car.  It is a thing of beauty and genius and I adore it.  Too much.  It's embarrassing.  I still will never get a luxury SUV, though, despite that seeming to be the next link in the fancy pants chain of events.  My Toyota is good enough for this family.

Oh come ON.

Last Friday, I finally had my Nissen fundoplication.  I spent the night in the hospital and came home Saturday.  I was catheterized during the procedure as I was under general anesthetic, and developed a bladder infection by Sunday morning.  It's disturbing to urinate blood, even when you're half expecting it.

After calling the clinic which houses my surgeon and his residents and fellows and being ordered by the nurse to bring my sorry sad self down within a half hour, I was driven down my Mom, gave them a sample and waited two hours in uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room only to have the initial orders given to me on the phone contradicted by the front desk staff, who told me that, despite the initial assurance that I would be squeezed in by 10:30 am, my appointment with the resident was not, in fact, until noon. This was at 11:30, and I just couldn't wait anymore.  

After waiting three hours at home, I called the office, received a call back at 4:30 and was told my sample was full of unfortunate substances and a prescription had been called in for me.  But what did they call in?  Not your average, run of the mill Sulfa drug, no.  They called in anthrax-busting Cipro.  What the hell was in my pee?  

As I can't swallow pills yet, I took the first pill in ground form and hoped for few if any of the myriad of terrifying side effects listed in the pharmacy handout.  When I awoke this morning, my throat felt full and sore, and upon investigation, I saw the normally pink roof of my mouth covered with white patches from candida.  The ground pills wiped all of the good bacteria out of mouth and now I'm reduced to gargling tea tree oil twice a day, because the three types of ground pills I'm taking in addition to the antibiotic aren't foul enough.  However, the narcotic pain pills are giving me fun dreams, even though they're keeping me from knitting as I can't focus my eyes.  I'll take it where I can get it.

Time, you deceiver.

Five months old, Viv is five months old today, and is celebrating by coughing her lungs up from a bronchial virus.  Can she be this big?  She weighs 15.8 pounds, according to the doctor's scale, still spot on at the 75th percentile, but lanky.  She has a long, skinny midsection and all of her pants, while too big in the waist, are already too short.  Her twiggy arms are utterly unlike her pleasantly hamhocky thighs.  She also has really big feet.  Can it be that she'll be tall?

This kid, this little peanut has completely reordered the way I think about life, and even though it's going by way too fast, the changes she undergoes every day are so exciting that I eagerly await each new coordinated hand eye movement.  She smiles every time she sees me, even if I've only been out of the room for a second.  Every morning, she wakes up happy, thrilled to bits to be seeing us again.   I wondered, before bringing her home, how to spend time with her.  What would we do?  Now, the days seem to fly.  I chew on her ears and cheeks constantly, and the bald patch on the back of her head is more bald because I rest my cheek against it.  She likes to play by herself already, which I hope is a good sign for her future intellect.  She's teething and so droolier than a hungry basset hound, and she's eating real food, so the mess is substantial.  She goes through five bibs a day at least.  She's sitting up almost entirely on her own and she can roll partially over in both directions.  She's an utter genius and I love her so much I have to close my eyes and remember to breathe.

Manometry twice, fix once.

I had debated whether or not to repeat the worst one of the battery of tests I underwent in September of 2007 to determine if I was a candidate to have my hiatal hernia repaired, as that horrible test showed the first time that my esophagus had so little motility that I could only have the hernia partially repaired.  This did not make me happy.

Before I scheduled the partial, I wanted to meet with the surgeon to see if there was any way I could have the full, and he recommend the repeat manometry to check if the motility had improved. He thought the improvement unlikely, but as it had been a year and a half and a really, really wanted the full repair, I redid the test.  It was as wretched as I remembered, full of gagging and nose pain, but it turned out to be worth every discomfort as it showed that my motility had improved to the point where I can have the full repair.  This means no more stomach drugs, no more reflux, no more pain, and that makes me very, very happy.

Sad, lonely Fritz.

Fritz is destined to be alone, I think.  Poor little Pierre was lost to us today.  He never was quite himself after the beak injury, and he wasn't terribly hale to begin with.  Christian found him on the floor of his cage today, emaciated and very weak.  I tried to feed him with a needleless syringe, and he ate for a while, but gave up after filling his crop.  His little heart and kidneys were most likely too weak.  

We'll miss his little fuzzy butt terribly.

They're actually implanting a microchip with that syringe.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist.  I don't believe that there's an Area 51 UFO coverup, I think that JFK was shot by one wacky guy, I think that Elvis is long dead and I don't think that Beatles' albums played backwards relay a secret message.  I believe in science, and that, to be accepted as fact, any scientific findings must have consistently repeatable study results.  And, if the author of a non-repeatable study admits that his results were falsified, the conclusions of that study should be deemed void.  

It shocked me when I learned that Wakefield's single, small sample sized study caused an estimated 12% drop in the vaccination rate among children.  Hundreds of thousands of parents believed the anecdotal evidence of one physician (and their countless friends who repeated the findings of the study as fact) above the adamant assurances of most of the rest of the medical community, and thousands of children were put at risk because of (repeatedly disproven) fears about mercury-based preservatives in vaccines.  It was believed that the medical profession was lying to parents about the true risks of these vaccinations, and that the government was in league.  

There is so much irony in this controversy.  Seemingly, those who quickly jumped on the anti-vaccine bandwagon didn't bother to do even the most rudimentary search to reveal that no mercury-based preservatives have been used in regular childhood vaccines in eight years (and most for much longer), or that multiple similar studies were unable to confirm or even approximate Wakefield's findings.  Parents who believed they were protecting their children from the risks of developing autism hung on word of mouth tales of seemingly normal children who, after their first or second round of vaccinations, suddenly developed symptoms pertaining to the autism spectrum.  They didn't bother to read that these symptoms emerge in vaccinated and unvaccinated children alike at the age where social skills are emerging and difficulties with those social skills become evident, which is at the same age where some vaccines are recommended.  The link between the two is coincidental, not causal.  

I see the desperate need to blame as being the driving force behind these controversies.  An imperfect child must have been damaged, as the genes of the parents couldn't possibly be the culprit.  The diagnosis of autism must be crushing to parents, but especially those who have placed all of their hopes on the future of their child.  Again and again I've seen in parents my age the same desire to have children who are the fulfillment of their lifelong quest to matter, children who are the answer to the unsatisfying career, or the tarnished dream to change the world.   Children who must be raised in the most progressive, the most correct, the most expensive way, because then, and only then, will the parent feel as though they have succeeded.  And what would a disability do to those parents?  Would it mean they have failed?  That they chose poorly for their child?  

Viv has been vaccinated.  She was vaccinated because I couldn't find even one shred of evidence, in all my reading of the scientific journals, that vaccines cause anything more than a mild fever in almost all children.  There are, of course, rare instances of life-threatening reactions to vaccines, usually because of an allergy to an ingredient, but these instances are so few and far between that I could only find a few single case studies detailing them.  

Children with suppressed immunity cannot be vaccinated, because live virus strains can fatally infect their defenseless systems.  Therefore, to keep infections such as measles from coming into contact with children who cannot fight them their own, our child, like other healthy children, has been given the vaccine to create herd immunity.  

We will continue to vaccinate our daughter.  I believe it is our responsibility to protect our children as well as the children who cannot protect themselves.  

Mark, I'm expecting to hear from you about this one.

Stats

Viv had her four month appointment today, and she was again deemed perfect.  Even the ARNP said that she has an ideally shaped face.  So, professionals have confirmed her to be so, to no one's surprise.   I mean, look at this face!

She is now 14.5 pounds, which is the 75th percentile and she is 25.25 inches long with a head circumference of 42 centimeters, both of which are in the 80-90th percentile.  Her muscular development is ahead of the curve and her sleeping habits (so far) are exceptional.  I'm so proud!  

If only these tricks were part of my audition package.

I've often thought I was born in the wrong era.  I wanted to be born in the 20s to allow me to be in my 20s in the 40s, so I could be a big band singer.  In my elaborate fantasy, Christian is a trumpeter in the band and we meet and fall in sparkly, lyrical love set to fantastic dance routines in sound stages made up to look like Paris.  However, if being a singer in the 40s would mean competing with the Ross Sisters, I would have been screwed.  I can't compete with that. 

Who are these women and why have most of us never heard of them until now?

It was the shrimp, wasn't it?

God, let's have a little chat. I gave up two things for lent: buying yarn and eating fast food. I've been incredibly devoted to that first promise, which has been surprisingly difficult. I've mentioned before how yarn is my soul's warm blanket on a cold, cold night, and not picking up a beautiful skein here are there has been utter torture. The skeins I already have are not shielding me from the bitter cold of the recession. However, not spending any money on anything, much less yarn, has been another kind of balm for my worry, so I'm at least glad for that. Oh, and everything I've knitted in the past month has been with yarn from my stash, so there.

So really, fast food was a secondary promise. I only gave it up to save us some money and calories. I don't eat it all that often, really, it's mainly a convenience thing, so when Christian brought home Ivar's shrimp and fries last night, I gladly ate the meal. It was already paid for, so throwing it away would have been wasteful, it was Friday, so no meat, and I've been sick for over a week with a sinus infection, as stated in my most recent post, so I haven't had a lot of energy to cook. So why the disproportionate punishment, oh white haired One?

That first call to the bathroom at 1 am started out blandly enough, I thought I just had a little distress from the fried food. Happens sometimes. I have tempermental bowels. But then, the violent one two to the gut, wrenching my stomach out through my belly button and wringing out the contents in front of my eyes, not one, not two, not even three but five or six times, until there was nothing left but tears in my eyes? And then, the next bout at 3, so brutal that the force of it lifted me to my tiptoes, gasping and choking. But that wasn't enough! At 5 I was so grateful to have a bathroom small enough where I could sit on the toilet and reach the tub that I could have kissed the porcelain if it hadn't been visited once before, and not by a kiss.

And now, unable to even keep water down, so wrung out and exhausted that even typing this is an effort that will render me useless for hours, wondering when it will end. And all because of that shrimp. I get it. You made your point.

Warm now, please.

In three weeks, I will be here:

Right now, I'm cold, I've been sick for over a week and I have a messy house littered with hampers of laundry.  At least it's clean laundry.  That way, if I fall asleep under it, I won't wake up smelly.

They help her self-confidence.

I have a shameful addiction, even more embarrassing than my love for Duran Duran and Easy Cheese.  I cannot stop watching pageant shows on WE and TLC.  Exploitative parents?  Check.   Unrealistic expectations?  Yep.  Enormous pressure placed on tiny shoulders?  Of course.  Women who wish they were still young enough to compete so they force their daughters to dress in matching outfits so they can compete together?  Don't you ever doubt it.  Tragic, inbred families who have one lone beautiful child they hope will save them (and their gene pool) from poverty/obscurity/institutionalization?  Yes, oui and da.  Fathers who watch blandly as their wives/sisters/mothers/grandmothers turn their children into hateful, vain, selfish, spoiled, greedy, arrogant little bitches?  You betcha.  Mothers who spend an entire month's salary on one beaded dress that makes her daughter look like a cowgirl stripper from the 50s, but keep the expense from the husband?  What he doesn't know won't hurt him.  Telling the world that no expense (nails, hair, tanning, clothing) is too great as long as it makes the little girl happy?  Paging Suze Orman.  Hiring a pageant coach/hairdresser/choreographer for a two-year-old  because only the most artificial child with the biggest hair is allowed to win?  Sing out, Louise.  Teaching the next generation that the only thing in the world that matters, aside from getting married before you get fat, is being pretty?  Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the vainest of them all?  All-encompassing fury boiling in my innards, so hot and violent that you can hear the enamel being ground from my teeth three counties over?  Just ask Farmer Bob in Snohomish.  He made a complaint about the noise.  

I'm so deeply ashamed that I now know the what flippers are and that the Grand Supreme title is for the contestant with the highest overall score.  Now where's my shoe so I can beat some sense into these parents?

The constant struggle.

Christian and I have already started talking about schools for Viv.  I went to Catholic school, he went to a free school in Seattle and then public grade school and high school in Bellingham.  I believe the education I received at private school put me ahead academically of my peer group in public school, and, as I spent a year and a half at a public junior high and was years ahead of my classmates in math and English, I had a good basis of comparison upon which to make that judgment.  

We agree so far that Viv should attend a private high school such as Blanchette, as their academic, extra curricular and sports activities are exceptional, and by that age, she'll be able to form her own judgments regarding the things she's taught, and we'll have had ample opportunity to instill in her the values we find important. 

However, grade school has become a bone of contention.  I want Viv to have the greatest opportunities for academic success, but I'm just not sure I can send Viv to a school that teaches the things the Church taught me while I was growing up.  I don't want Viv to think that gay people are sinners and that their love is less than that of straight people and that they can change if they choose.  I don't want her to be taught that condom use will exacerbate the AIDS pandemic in Africa.  This pope is supposed to be God's representative on earth?  I find the current pope to be a reprehensible, arrogant and spiteful old man, and refuse to pay money to any organization who takes his orders as handed down from God, and am deeply ashamed that the administrators of the Church have chosen to continue to cloister themselves from the needs of their flock.

These issues chafe on a painful and long-worrying problem I've been wrangling with since I was a teenager.  My objections to the Catholic Church and its dogma make it extraordinarily hard for me to remain a member.  I've stayed because I've always believed that the Church is defined by its members and not its leaders, much as America wasn't defined by George Bush when he was in office.  However, Catholics lack the ability to make their dissatisfaction heard by voting their appointees out of office.  We are beholden to the entrenched, conservative bigots who continue to appoint individuals who forward their agenda, and those who disagree are marginalized.  I have remained a Catholic because of individuals like our parish priest, a devout, kind, welcoming, intelligent and compassionate man, but a man who is on the verge of retirement.  Who will the Church appoint in his place?  Surely not another one such as him, the man who founded the gay ministry at our parish and who jeopardized his own position by viewing it not as a career in need of advancement, but as a means to do what was right.  The direction will likely be one of revisionism, a reversal of all that I value in my congregation.  I've also always believed that change can only come from within, but if those within continue to try and downplay the importance of progress, love and tolerance and instead push the doctrine of exclusionism, judgmentalism and all of those things I find so contrary to Christ's teachings, I cannot see how those who wish for change will find a willing ear.  

I'm often surprised at how heart-wrenching I find this conflict.  I was raised Catholic, yes, but that's not why I feel a strong attachment to it. It's the fact that the Church has survived in spite of itself, in spite of the terrible deeds and injustices and greed and baseness.  It has survived because members believe in something far, far greater than themselves, and they only find that greatness in each others presence, in the sharing of that sense of love and wonder, in the ability to more as a group than as an individual.  Whether we believe that Christ was human or divine, he was a really, really great guy who came to us to forge a new relationship with God and with each other.  So much beauty has come of that message that, even though the worst kind of ugliness has resulted from it as well, I'm not willing to give up the quest to find the means to have the former without the latter, to keep the beautiful rituals that bring comfort and hope and community without having those rituals take the place of enacting real good.  Attending Mass on Sunday doesn't free one from applying the lessons of that service to the rest of the week.  Giving money to help Catholic Charities doesn't mean that you can conveniently forget that charity starts at home, or at work, or at school.  We understand the Mass, we feel that it gives us a sense of continuity with our forebears, we can go anywhere in the world and know what is being said, even if it's in a language we don't speak.  I would be loathe to give that up, I would hate to not hear the music I so adore in a context I value, but I'll do it.  I'll do it because I don't want my daughter to have a hypocrite as a mother.  

The cheeks are legally ours.

Since we brought Viv home, I've tried not to think about the steps we would have to take before she would legally be our daughter. I knew that if I let myself dwell on the post placement report, the additional fees, the paperwork and the final court date, I wouldn't be able to just enjoy the first few months of Viv's life, her life as our girl. Because I had so vigorously pushed down the painful what ifs that would pop into my head when people asked us questions about such things as whether the birth parents could change their minds and take her back, I had avoided thinking about the court date as it would arouse similar anxieties.

So, March 2nd's seemingly instantaneous arrival surprised me almost as much as the springlike weather that accompanied it. I had knitted Viv her berry tart hat and planned our outfits and made arrangements with those who wanted to come to the courthouse with us, but I didn't think about what the actual event would be like, or if it would make us feel any different, which is why I was so surprised to find that, upon arriving in the courtroom to meet the judge, I was actually shaking with excitement. When Judge Fair (so auspicious) signed our papers, I would have cried had I not been smiling like I was in a toothpaste commercial. I felt not just relieved, but elated, proud, indescribably grateful and bucolically happy, which I can't really say is an emotion I've ever felt before. On my wedding day, at the moment where we were told that we were married, I was happy but dazed, like the event was happening to someone else. I had planned for so long that it seemed like it would never arrive, and when it did, all I could think was, "Oh, thank God, we can go eat now."

Because I had planned for nothing and halted myself from even imagining what the event would be like, I had absolutely no expectations for the final court date. It was more different that I could have imagined from even the fragment of thought I had given it in the few minutes we were waiting for our time. It was so quick! We answered a few questions, the judge signed the papers and then held Viv while praising her sweetness, we took pictures, Christian posed with Viv in the witness box, we had lunch, and went home.

I'm now exceedingly glad that I didn't run the day in my head a million times, as I think it would have lessened the perfection of the way it really happened.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Just seen on the license plate frame of a Volvo, of all things, "I'm a bitch, I'm just not your's."

Now, even if "your's" was a word, it would mean, "your is," which is still just as incorrect as the contractive form. And this wasn't an email with an accidental apostrophe, it was an object whose production required foresight and special ordering, but apparently no proofreader. The driver of that car certainly isn't the English language's bitch.