The Happiness Search

Wow, time for an update. When I look at my calendar, I can’t always understand why I end the day exhausted and feel like I had been on the run. My part of the calendar is relatively clear – it’s full of K’s events and some of J’s. Of course, I don’t schedule a time to pick up the house, run to the store for some forgotten food item, work on the endless flow of paper associated with the settlement of the estate, take J to school, meet with someone for coffee to discuss financial planning, and so on and so on. The days seem to fill themselves and I still haven’t weeded the front garden. It is a mess.

Aside from things like that, we are settling down into the school year routine. The kids are more self-managed this year, which is good. K has such a full plate that I worry about her overdoing. She picked up a cold right off the bat and is treating it with sleep deprivation. She is working about four nights a week plus Sunday afternoon so she comes home for an hour and then takes off for work. The homework load from school is fairly light at this point, but it won’t remain so and she will have to be much more organized than in the past. We will see.

I am trying to find a hole in the schedule so I can run up to Duluth and see my parents. This week is out so now I am looking at next. There are all these little (and some not so little) things that need to be taken care of.

The weather has been mixed around here lately. We went through a patch of cold, rainy days and nights, but the weather shamans keep saying that we will warm up, so I have procrastinated bringing in the fern and palm from the screen porch. I hope that I have not given them too much of a chill. My track record on keeping the indoor plants healthy has taken a couple of hits and I worry about more.

I am feeling pretty good in this interlude between treatments. I took all the precautions I could to keep from getting K’s cold. I remember getting sick when I was doing this treatment ten years ago and it took forever to get rid of it. My immune system is losing steam and will continue to do so over the course of the treatment. My next scheduled round is the last week of this month. It is always possible however that they will push it out a week if my blood counts are too low, which plays havoc with making plans.

Overall, things continue to feel like they are getting better than they were. I find this very difficult to actually judge being in the epicenter and also being subject to mood swings impacted by who knows what all. I cannot tell you all how good it feels to feel good when it happens though. I know, bad grammar and sentence structure, but you know what I mean. When that feeling of happiness strikes, it is like drops of water falling on the parched lips of a stranded pilgrim in the desert.

I know that sometimes I feel like a junkie waiting for my next hit – it’s asking for a letdown if it does not come, but what are you going to do? There is always the opportunity for pain in this world. Happiness has been in short supply of late and so I take it where I can find it.

We are still working on family plans for down the road. I would like to do a little traveling during the school holidays. Trying to get agreement from all contingents is proving to be a trial however. Still, we will work at it.

Well, got to go. K is home from her doctor’s appointment and I have to drive her to school – wait, that’s not on my calendar…..