Eighteen!

 This beautiful boy turned 18 years old last month. How time does fly.

Fall Bucket List

 

Personal day

Last Wednesday was a really nice day for me. 

I took a personal day off work and drove to Aiken, SC (about two hours west of Florence) to have lunch with my aunt Linda. Aunt Linda is my dad's older sister, and his only living sibling. 

I really didn't have much contact with my dad's family growing up. My mother hated and resented them her whole life and made sure no one could have relationships with them. It was all very toxic and awful, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Anyway, now that my dad is dead, and my mother and I have cut ties, I've reached out to my aunt once or twice and she seemed genuinely happy to hear from me. Back in the summer I'd found some information about my Polish great grandparents online that I wanted to share with her, so we started planning to meet. It turned out that she has all sorts of family history documents, one of which is the ship manifest from 1906 when my great grandfather, Pawel Czmiel, came to Ellis Island at the age of 17. She made me copies of everything: the ship manifest, naturalization applications, family baptism records, my grandfather's WWII military documents, and on and on. It was wonderful! We met up at a restaurant with outdoor seating (the weather was nice) and sat and talked for over four hours. My aunt was so kind to me, and so welcoming, and I look forward to building a relationship with her going forward. It's nice to feel like I still have some family left in this world, and learning more about my dad's relatives means a lot to me.

Thought for today

Go slowly, go gently.

Rise up, yes -

but rise gently,

You are not a machine to be driven

nor a thing to be forced into labour,

You are a soul

fragile and luminous,

finding its way through a world

that can be both wondrous and merciless.

Go slowly, go gently -

Give yourself a break

you are doing your best,

Even on the days when your best

feels like little more than survival,

Let compassion fall inward

toward your own heart

the way you would soothe a friend

whose strength was faltering.

Go slowly, go gently -

Life can be cruel enough

do not add your own hand to the lash,

Let your tenderness meet your tiredness

and may you rest in the truth

that you are already enough.

Go slowly, go gently -

All that needs to be done will be done

time is not your master,

nor are the demands

nor judgements of others

the measure of your worth,

Do not rush yourself

into an early grave

by carrying the calendars of strangers

upon your back.

Go slowly, go gently -

trust the rhythm of your own days,

What is meant to be finished

will find its way through your hands,

And may you come to know

with a quiet certainty

that your life is not a race, a test, a goal, nor can your worth be measured in transactions,

Your life is an astounding sacred unfolding

and it is the only one you have.

So, go slowly, go gently.

- Conchobhar Ó Súilleabháin.

Sicker than I thought

 By the time I woke up this morning, the congestion had spread to my chest, and I was wheezing badly and short of breath. Otherwise, I felt ok, no fever or anything, so I went to work but called my allergist as soon as the office opened. The nurse (bless her!) said, "Hold on a minute, let me go talk to Dr. Stone" and when she came back said, "Can you be here at 10:00?" I said sure and told my principal I needed to leave for a little while to go to the doctor. 

When I got there, Dr. Stone said the nurse could hear in my voice how badly I was wheezing. They did a spirometry test to measure my lung function (it's the one where you take a deep breath, and then blow out as hard and as fast as you can into a tube). Well, turns out that my lung function was only 42% of normal.

Dr. Stone said it's the worst result I've ever had on one of those tests. 

In fact, he turned to the young resident doctor accompanying him today and said, "This says to me that her lung function has been deteriorating for a while. If she'd had normal function up until today and you flipped a switch and turned it down to only 42%, she wouldn't have been able to walk in here or talk without gasping for air. She's obviously been compensating for reduced function for a while so didn't notice until it got really bad." He gave me two breathing treatments and a large dose of prednisone on the spot and made me take two more spirometry readings before he was satisfied that I was okay and let me leave. He said I could easily have ended up in the hospital. 

He's putting me back on some stronger asthma meds (that I had discontinued last year), two weeks of prednisone, and an antibiotic just to cover all the bases. He wants to see me back in three months and said to come immediately if I had any more exacerbations in the meantime. He also said that I probably had never really recovered completely from being sick last month. My regular doctor had seen me and just gave me three days' worth of prednisone since my only real symptom had been congestion and wheezing. (I had tested negative for Covid, strep, and flu so she thought it was a regular cold). In the future, I'll go see Dr. Stone for any issues like that, since a GP obviously isn't an asthma specialist and isn't the right doctor to see in those circumstances. I asked today if I needed a flu and/or Covid test; he said that if it's flu (unlikely) that I've had symptoms for several days and Tamiflu wouldn't work now anyway, and that I could take an at-home Covid test if I was curious, but that there wasn't much they could do about that but treat the symptoms, which we're already doing. He thinks it's more likely that my asthma is not well controlled these days and the slightest cold is pushing me to the brink. I think he's right about that.

You know, I've been feeling low-key bad for weeks (if not months) now. I wake up exhausted, I'm tired all the time, sometimes I have brain fog...no wonder! I'm not breathing well! For the longest time I've been looking at myself in the mirror in the morning thinking, "I look awful. My color is bad; I have bags and dark circles under my eyes. I guess my age is catching up to me. I guess this is just what I look like in the morning now" and just feeling awful about myself. Well, my age may be catching up to me a little, but the bags and dark circles and pale blotchy skin probably has more to do with a lack of oxygen more than my age. I hope so, anyway. 

I went back by work to close out the day's deposit, then left early. I've been at home since hoping to get a nap, but I can't (probably due to the prednisone) but I'm breathing a little easier at least. 

God, what a week. Thank you all for the supportive comments on my last post.

Not again!

I'm sick again. The little vectors are really doing me in this year. It's only early September, ffs!

I'm seriously considering going back to wearing a mask at work. This is ridiculous. 

Ugh. 

Mrs. Blow

We're less than six weeks into the new school year, and already it's been a doozy. I've never seen so many angry, disrespectful, and frankly, unbalanced parents before. It's like a whole year's worth of adult crazy has already unfolded around us in less than six weeks. The administration and the front office staff have been really stressed out. We joked on Friday that maybe it's the upcoming full moon making people act so wild!

I still love my job, though. One of the best parts is early in the morning when all my little friends stop by the office to say hello to me. Without really trying, I've become pals with around a half dozen kids who all go out of their way to come see me, give me hugs, and talk to me. I just adore them. 

One little girl (a first grader and the daughter of one of our teachers) is especially sweet and one of my favorites. She's also kind of shy. Thursday morning while her mama was clocking in at the office computer, she came over to say hi and give me the customary morning hug. Afterwards, she stood there, hesitating, and I could see she wanted something. Her mama prompted, "Go ahead. Ask her. It's okay." Then little A., very nervous, whispered, "Um...would you like...would you like to buy some popcorn...to help my dance class?" 

Turns out her little ballet class is doing a popcorn fundraiser where they sell big tins of flavored popcorn to raise money. I was the first person A had asked, and she was scared. It was so freakin' cute! How could I say no? :) Later in the day her mom texted me a link to an online catalog, and I went ahead and made a purchase, and then promptly forgot about it. 

The rest of my day after that was utter crap. I kept running up against deadlines and obstacles at every turn, and to cap off the day my bank deposit was off. I ended up going back to work when I was supposed to be done for the day, to figure out where the deposit problem was. I was on the phone with an accountant at the district office, getting more and more stressed out, when little A. appeared at my office door. As soon as I was off the phone, she gave me a big hug, thanked me for buying popcorn, and handed me this sweet card she'd made for me. 

That made the whole day better for Mrs. Blow!

Girl gone wild!

 Here's a little short video I took of Poppy this weekend. She was beside the banana plants, behind the fence, and acting so playful that I had to whip out my phone and film it. She's such a happy girl. Just look at those doggy grins!

PS..that's George barking in the background, from the porch.