An Hour To Myself

And I've decided to talk to all of you. A conversation in my head. I am sitting on my mother's couch (still referred to by my father as "the good couch" as it is the only new piece of furniture my parents ever bought together...back when they were married...over a decade ago), with her dog, Jack, who is not entirely pleased to be sharing the space. I am listening to my favorite singer--Ms. Mimi LaValley from my YRUU days--and generally feeling good. My stomach is not 100%, but I haven't puked at all today and miraculously woke up without too much sour tummy even though everything I ate yesterday was greasy (except the chocolate cake) and I ate it well into the evening. I can't remember the last time I woke up and didn't vomit stomach acid. So today is a good day. And I've been having lots of those lately.

I am on my extra-long-thanks-to-thanksgiving break from hospitals and doctors and medicines that make me feel like crap. Last week was full of family and food (that I mostly did not throw up--well on my way to gaining back the twenty pounds I'd lost since my return to Sloan). I have once again fallen in love with my nephews, who can now both call me "Tia Wose", and who are both chatterboxes of the most endearing kind. I missed my sister Megan, her husband, and their beautiful baby girl though. Little Evie got a virus and spent the holiday weekend scaring her mommy with fevers and a wheezing cough, which left us all missing each other.

I found myself, as usual, but especially so on this holiday, thankful for life, as it comes, everyday. Thankful, too, for friends, family, and my partner Julia, who is both, and who survived her first Lynd family Thanksgiving, or Thanksgivings as the case may be. We had "small, medium, and large Thanksgivings" this year, as my cousin, Clare, put it. On Thursday my brother-in-law Alex, with moderate help from the rest of us, cooked a fabulous Thanksgiving Feast for our immediate family plus one aunt and uncle (just 10 of us, including the boys). On Friday, my cousin, Brent, and his partner, Reanne, had us over to meet her family and see their beautiful old victorian apartment--which amounted to 20-some adults plus kids for another feast, this time centered around a honey-baked ham. Then we topped it all off with my family's traditional pizza-feast on Saturday, where about 35 of us engaged in our usual conversations about politics, the universe, and who is a first or a second cousin, who is once-removed, and--for the girlfriends and the folks who married-in to this clan--whose name can I remember? Julia was almost falling over from exhaustion by the time we left, laden with the usual leftovers.

So, before my mind starts to wander to darker places, I leave you this post, so you know that I am doing well. I am still essentially bald, but the new fuzz is growing in, and someday soon there will be enough to even it out with the longer stuff that never fell out in the first place, and in the meantime Rachel lent me the softest hat in the world to keep me warm. And even on the coldest, dampest, greyest Columbus day, I am glad to be here in Ohio, resting far from doctors, eating yummy food, and just letting myself be for a few days.