One Job

Hello again! Did you miss us? No news is good news on the cancer front. Things are a little rough right now, but nothing like last year rough, just some viral stuff we are all fighting and all winning except for Daniel, who cannot take immune boosting supplements because if they work, they could interfere with his immune suppressing chemotherapies. But due to his recent steroid pulse pushing his neutrophils high, then a brewing virus pushing them higher, his ANC was sky high last Friday night, when a fever over 101 degrees forced us to make a bleary 3:30 am trip over Swan Mountain to the St Anthony's emergency room for blood work and cultures. Like 9,000 high. High for even a normal person. His lymphocytes were really low, which is to be expected with his treatments, since they are the white blood cells prone to errors in replication, thus the white blood cells they most want to suppress. The fact that he really needs them and doesn't have them to fight off the junk he's fighting doesn't matter much when the alternative is relapse risk. 

My parents were up here for Thanksgiving. It was about time- both boys were asking on a daily basis if they could go see "goppa and gomma". (Now that they are talking so much, it is amusing to me to hear their perceptions of their relatives. We pretend to go see grandpa and grandma, we pretend to call Aunt Marci, and we pretend to open presents or non-pretend dig through our wardrobes to find shirts and pants from Aunt Mary.) My dad had a little episode before coming up here with what they assumed was a touch of listeria, since it happened shortly after he ate some lunch meat that, it turned out, had sat on the counter overnight. He recovered in time to come up here to see us, but while here, my mom came down with the same thing, obviously viral instead of bacterial. So we know we have had exposure to a stomach bug with a seven day incubation period. With any luck, we'll kick this head cold just in time to start with the vomiting. That should be fun. 

On the way into the ER early Saturday morning, I realized that in the chaos the night before, getting two little boys to go to bed in spite of grandparents being here for a slumber party, and being on fever watch, I had completely spaced giving Daniel his weekly oral chemo at bedtime. I made a mental note to give it first thing in the morning. 

But did I? 

I have counted the pills we should have taken since our refill on November 5, but that didn't help because I think I remember dumping the rest of the old bottle into the new bottle last month to make room in the medicine cabinet, rendering the number of pills left in the bottle (2, a full dose is 6.5) useless to me. I remember dissolving one dose in water in a syringe because he refused the swallow them, which was unusual, since he usually takes them in the form of a "pill truck",

(It's a flatbed semi! But it is having tire trouble. Do you have a tire shop in your tummy? Can it drive down there to get its tire fixed? ...here, let me listen to your tummy...yep! I hear it jake braking all the way down! I think it made it to the tire shop! How awesome is it that you could help the pill truck get into your tummy to get fixed?!")

...but I think that might have been last week. I counted the pills before we went to the clinic on November 18 and remember thinking he would run out after his dose on November 25, but I think maybe I counted them thinking I would not be giving him a dose that night, because on clinic days when he gets a spinal tap we skip the weekly oral chemo because he has had the same stuff already injected into his spinal fluid earlier in the day. I remember at bedtime on November 18 suddenly realizing I did have to give it to him because that day at clinic had been IV only, no spinal. But I think when I counted them as two weeks worth before we left for the clinic that morning, I was not remembering I had to give a dose that night. Or was I?  I have given so many pills to him in so many forms they have all blurred together. The kid should have swallowed 43 pills last week. But did I only give him 36.5? I'm losing my mind. I had one job. One. Keep the relapse risk at absolute minimum by giving him his meds, all his meds, at home and on time. 

But did I? 

The oncology clinic returned my call, which was laden with embarrassment and groaning under heavy self-recrimination even on the message left on their answering machine, to tell me that even though I was eighty percent sure I forgot to give it to him, the 20% chance he would receive an overdose was a bigger concern. 

One job. I had one job.

Well. I mean, besides momming a toddler and a preschooler, feeding and clothing and dealing with their hysterics because they don't feel well and trying to keep them from sharing drinking glasses or silverware, and mitigating potential injury caused by thrown toys, sibling jealousy or parental neglect (they have discovered chairs can be moved to access countertops, there is nowhere left to hide the knives) and occasionally working part time, dragging them with me into condos to clean or inspect, obsessively washing their hands and bathing them and cleaning house and bleaching surfaces and taking their hands out of their mouths approximately 7,000 times per day and helping one build Lego airplanes while keeping the other from destroying and/or eating Lego airplanes. 

Okay, so like... One really important job, closely followed by other really important jobs. 

I have heard people say everything with kids is twice as hard as without them. I think that is BS. If everything were twice as hard, we wouldn't have a problem. I think it is more like an order of magnitude harder. Think I'm being hyperbolic? Here, let me tell you about my day so far. (Those of you with more than two kids, you should probably stop reading now. You clearly are not on the same plane as we mere mortals and your ironic chortling over my lack of ability to not lose my crap with my two kids while you feed organic homemade meals to your 3-6 kids and get them to bed on time with while smoothly juggling full time jobs clearly means that you have come into contact with gamma radiation at some point and have powers I do not possess. Just remember, as you are exiting, with great power comes great responsibility to not intentionally make the rest of us realize how terribly we are failing. On some level, we already know.

This morning. We awake with two kids in our bed, because Alex never has slept alone a night in this 19 month life so far, allowing us to not even add a crib or toddler bed to our budget, let alone find the space for it, and Daniel, even on the nights he starts out in his own bed, finds his way between us at some point. They both wake up wanting, nay, needing, nay, desperate for "da boobies". Now, let me say here, I am so. over. nursing. I really am. But are they? (Excuse me while I laugh maniacally) ...No. No, they are not ready to be done. And I can't wean them. I might be sorely tempted to if Daniel hadn't sailed through 10 months of maintenance chemo with exactly one fever. We don't do things much differently than the parents who are in the ER every few weeks, except for that. More times per day than I willingly admit, Daniel fishes around in my shirt, crying, and I sit down with him and we nurse, and he gets a fresh dose of a personalized antiviral, antibacterial, pro- and prebiotic substance. And what happens then? Thing 2 happens. He sees da boobies, and here he comes, his face all lit up with expectant delight. 

Funny thing about tandem nursing. It isn't this way for everybody, but it definitely is for yours truly. One kid, it's fine. I'm fine. I can basically ignore the squeezing, playing, kicking, tugging, gnawing, stretching, rotating, yanking, everything that goes on when a non-infant is nursing. But the second it starts happening on both sides, I lose it. My skin crawls. I feel dirty and violated. Most moms who have nursing aversions don't last long at this nursing game. I'm incredibly lucky I only feel this way when nursing two, because some feel it with only one latched on. It just feels gross. Like spiders across your hand gross. Like slime oozing down your back gross. Like hugging a really sweaty person gross. Chewing on tin foil gross. I digress. It's happening right now. Im trying to write through it and focus but all I'm really doing is failing to ignore how I feel right now. I love my kids, but when they nurse through my aversions, I picture doing violence. 

So then we get up, after they have had their first course of liquid breakfast in bed. They are happy, their blood sugar is up, I'm feeling like a new person because my body is blissfuly my own again. Breakfast is turned down by Daniel, who prefers Legos, even though I lower my standards and tell him he can do both simultaneously. Alex munches on a cracker I left lying on the counter overnight, and with him so distracted, I make an omelet, which B takes half of, eats as if in a race, grabs his coffee, and is out the door. I spend the next hour trying to convince the two small ones to eat, and then to let me dress them to go outside. Bobby has too much to do today to also shovel the decks and walkways of our seven large houses, so he's asked me to do it. I can't get the boys interested in going outside to play, or helping me snow shovel, or sled, so I pull out the big guns and promise them a gondola ride, put your snow clothes on and get in the car, we just have to make a few stops first. Just slaying this parenting thing today. They immediately stop the Lego redistribution project they have expanded into three rooms now and plop down with their legs in the air so I can slide their snowsuits on.

(At this point, let's contrast where I'd be by now if it were only myself I were dealing with. I'd have gotten up, made breakfast, put on my snow clothes, driven to my first property, shoveled it, worked up a healthy sweat, and be on my way to the next one.) 

Alex has by now ignored his omelet but has eaten several handfuls of shredded cheese, so he's fed. Daniel refuses to eat anything, but he did have breastmilk, so it's better than nothing. I get Alex bundled into layers. He looks like a marshmallow wearing boots. I know this won't allow me to buckle him safely and tightly into his carseat, but we're only going a two miles and I can't unbundle and bundle them back up fourteen times in the next few hours. I'm sure any officer questioning my decision would understand. The Summit County police force and frequent state troopers are known for their lenience and understanding on motor vehicle safety compromises. 

By the time I get Daniel dressed in snowpants, coat, gloves, hat, double socks, and boots, Alex has removed his hat, boots, double socks, and gloves, and is working on his coat. I tell Daniel to sit, and I dress Alex again. Then I turn around to tell Daniel we are ready to go, only to discover Daniel has his gloves off, and is freaking out because the band aid that was on his thumb is now lost inside his glove. A bandaid that once covered a very minor pinch from a toy that barely drew blood exactly eleven days ago. There is a slight change in pigmentation on his thumb where the owie once was. But that bandaid is apparently the difference between him being able to function and turning into a crying heap on the floor because his injury is naked and exposed. I go to get him another bandaid after only about thirty seconds of arguing that he does not need one. I put it on his thumb (intentionally covering his former injury site with the tape part because it proves two points- one, that he doesn't need it and two, that I really am that petty). I put his gloves back onto his hand with two bandaged fingers (he pinched his pinky putting a lid on a marker, therefore bandaid) and go to find my own boots, only to come back to Daniel holding up another finger, outside his gloves, with another invisible owie, begging for a bandaid. 

So I do the only logical thing. I snap. In a lovely display of parental restraint, I stomp to the bathroom, grab a handful of bandaids, stomp back, plop down next to him, grab his hand, and, ripped wrappers and wax papers falling around us like snowflakes, put a band aid on every single fingertip. There. Let's see you ask for another bandaid now. He sits there looking at his five bandaids with a baffled expression, then starts to whine. "Nooooo! Not all bandaids! Don't need them!" I shove his hands back into his gloves, his feet back into his boots, jam his hat back on his head, and shove him out the door toward the car that has been running for fifteen minutes already, because I needed to give it about five minutes to warm up. Then I turn around, and Alex has removed his hat, gloves, shoes and double socks. 

So I do another highly logical thing. I push him out the door too. Not sure if this is child abuse or just showing him why we need to keep our shoes on when we are walking out the door, and I expect him to stop immediately and ask for shoes, but the snow outside literally does not phase him. He trots barefoot across the snowy porch, down the snowy steps, over the snowy driveway. I follow incredulously and lift him into his carseat. Only then does he seem concerned- his feet have snow stuck to them. "Feet wet? Feet wet!" Feeling remorse, I squeeze his cold little feet in my warm hands, then attempt to put his socks back on. "NOOOOOOO!" Okay, then. Apparently frostbite is fine. As long as it's a dry frostbite. 

In the meantime, Daniel has not crawled into his carseat as requested multiple times, but is sitting in the middle of the driveway eating snow we and the dog have been walking in, gloves off and soaking his five bandaids. I yank his hands out of his mouth for about the fiftieth time so far today, then swing him into his carseat. As I am buckling him in, he starts complaining that something is wrong with his socks. I think its actually the toenails, they are horribly separated right now thanks to chemo, detaching from the root side. Its really horrifying to look at, but he claims they don't hurt unless pulled on. I assume his socks are catching on the jagged, split out edges. His boots are already off. I adjust his socks, put his boots back on. They still feel funny. I tell him to try to fix them himself while I drive. He doesn't protest immediately, too distracted by his funky- feeling socks.

The dog, meanwhile, has spun himself into a frenzy, not knowing whether he will be invited to come along, freaking out he won't be, attempting to force his way between my legs and into the car. I finally put his mind at ease by stepping aside and speaking to him that most euphoric of phrases: "get in." He practically levitates, scrambles past and over Daniel and into the back, snow flying everywhere in the car, then sits, grinning a huge, gaping, tongueful grin of pride in his good boy achievement.

The house is already locked, but I forgot my phone inside. I let myself back in, then go to the storage shed for their two little shovels. I can only find one. I get tired of looking, take one and a sled, hoping they wont both think they need a shovel, and drive to the first house, already an hour behind schedule. 

No sooner are we driving, then Daniel starts whining about his five bandaids again. Feeling more calm and embarrassed about my earlier display, I tell him to remove the ones he doesnt want. He must do it, because the whining stops and excited chattering about how we were going to ride the "donyoya" starts.

Once we get to the first house, I survey the back of the car, littered with four gloves, four pairs of socks, two hats, and four boots flung into far reaches of the car's interior. I decide they might like to play inside the car instead of outside it, so I unbuckle them from their carseats, pull the keys, and finally, finally start to shovel my first large deck of the day. 

Exactly five minutes later, wailing is audible from inside the car. They are beside themselves. How could their mother abandon them like this? I lean my shovel against the house and go to the car, put on all the socks, shoes, hats, and gloves again, and bring them up to the deck with me. Oh, you want your shovel? Um....ok? Oh, great, now you both want it. Did you see the sled? No? Sleds are stupid? Gloves are stupid? Now your hands are cold? Now all your gloves are off as you play tug of war with the one shovel? Now you're both crying? Here, here's another mommy-sized shovel. Look! It's just like mine! It's so big, it's like a bulldozer! What's that? You're not an idiot, you know I'm just trying to get you to shut up so I can work? Yeah, I know the idiot is, in fact, me, for thinking I could do this. 

Twenty minutes of hysterical crying, snot and tears and wet snow all mixed together on little red faces, I have exactly one deck half cleared, and I finally call Bobby to see if he knows where the other stinking shovel is. No, he does not. He does, however, pick up on the crazy in my voice, and gathers another clue in the crescendo of bawling in the background, and tells me to forget it. Just take care of your kids. We'll get the shoveling done eventually. 

I load them in the car, Alex so hysterical he is almost gagging. I consider nursing him for a few seconds, like I sometimes do to instantly calm him after being put in his carseat, standing on the running board leaned into the car in front of him, but it is blowing swirling snownados around us, I'm warm inside my coat, and my boobs are buried under three layers. "Just let my get out my nipples for you right here in the freezing wind with little shards of ice flying around", said no mother ever. 

By the time we get home, he is slightly more calm. I run into the house to get him a hat I hope he wont hate as much as he has decided in the last hour to hate the one with the tails that hang down where he can see them and be reminded of the existence of the hat to which they are attached. I briefly consider driving down to town to pick up the little pair of skis we bought for Daniel the other day, that are still at the ski shop I used to work at, waiting to be DIN tested and adjusted to his boots. No, too complicated, plus with the mood he's in, not an ideal day to introduce him to skiing. Keep it simple, stupid. 

We pick up someone walking on the road and give them a ride to the bus stop. I do this quite a bit. The Summit Stage removed the closest bus stop, so it's about a mile walk from the trailer park to the bus stop. Yes, Summit county, in all their free public transportation wisdom, removed the bus stop from one of the few "affordable" housing developments in the area, forcing the humans who live here without cars to walk, hunched into the winter wind, carrying grocery bags or sports gear or backpacks with their nice waitressing shoes inside a whole mile, then a mile back home. Andy goes a little nuts over the intruder, but calms down once determining she is harmless. She is okay with it. She's a dog person, on her way to volunteer at the animal shelter. 

We drop her off at the bus stop, then head for Keystone and the dondoya. And now Daniel has decided he wants to eat. An apple. He wants an apple. I have bananas at home, I have oranges, I even have a few ounces of apple juice, but no apples. And the kid wants something fresh now? What gives? Maybe I can run into the Keystone Grocery and pay four dollars for a Granny Smith...I feel under my seat. No purse. Didn't think it would be there, but sometimes I forget to carry it in. No money. I tell him we will try to find some free granola bars and apple cider when we get to the gondola. He isn't impressed, but we are going to the gondola, so he guesses he can hang. 

By the time I find a parking spot in Keystone, Alex is asleep. Barefoot. Again. No gloves. No hat. Daniel is in the same state of undress, except awake and excited. I leave them in the car and retrieve a curtesy wagon, rehat, resock, reboot, reglove them, put them in the wagon, and trudge to the base area. We have to go inside the season pass office to get their passes for the season. They are free until they are five years old, but they still need a pass. It was hard to wait when the gondola was so close, but they survived. 

And finally, we are able to go get scanned in and navigate the lines and get on the gondola and take off. Totally worth it. We see snow guns and snow cats and kids riding on the ski school magic carpet and other people in other gondola cars. At the top, we watch the skiers and talk about how much fun it looks like to ski. We go into the Summit House and climb stairs until we get to where they have blocked the top levels off. And then it starts. 

Daniel: "I need cheese! Where my cheese? I need my cheese!"

Me: "You want cheese?" 

"Nooo! My cheese! We go home get my cheese!" 

"Are you hungry?" 

"No, no, no! My cheese! For my feet! Like the people outside!" 

"Ooohhh, your skis?"

"Yeah, my cheese! Let's go get them!" 

So much for keep it simple. 

I tell him we can go get them, since I do have other errands to run down in town, but they are at the ski store and we will have to stop by home for my purse first. And first, we get to ride the gondola back down. I say this hoping they will go to sleep on the drive and I can take them home and put them to bed, then possibly do some damage to the opened bottle of pinot doing nobody any good in my fridge. Because why take cold medicine when drinking achieves the same goal, right? Except for the congestion. But what would you rather be, a little buzzed and congested, or have a clear nose and no excuse to put off housework any longer? 

I put Alex on my back in the carrier, and carry Daniel in my arms, to the amusement of various skiers and snowboarders on top of Keystone. Neither of them wants to walk. About halfway between the Summit House and the Gondola, Alex kicks off his boots. I carry them, too. We get ourselves into a gondola car, I turn to take Alex out of the carrier, turn back around, and Daniel's boots and socks are lying on the floor. No, he will not be putting them back on. Not a chance. No. The boots and socks are off. Permanently. End of story. 

I try all my tricks. 

"Honey, why dont you want to wear them?" 

"I not want to."

"But why?"

"I not like to wear them." 

"Do they hurt?"

"No."

"Will you wear them another day?"

"Nope."

"Do you feel sad or mad inside?"

"Nope, I just not want to wear my boots."

I encourage him to stand on the icy, slushy metal gondola floor in his bare feet. He tries it and immediately gives me a story much closer to what I expected out of Alex earlier- dancing from foot to foot, crying "it hurts, mommy. Owie! It hurts!" 

At this point, I again slip back into logic, which in this case, consists of arguing with a three year old. "Of course it hurts! It's freezing cold! We do not take our shoes off in the gondola! This is a freaking ski hill! It is winter! You are wearing full ski gear, on a ski lift, and you are barefoot! I will not carry you, you can wear your shoes. Put them on." 

"Nope."

"Put. Them. On."

"No."

"Here. I'll put them on for you." 

"Nooooooo!" 

I do think his chemo causes sensitivity to hot and cold, which manifests as actual pain. I've heard older kids going through the same treatment say this. It makes sense. Nerve damage is a real concern with Vincristine. What makes no sense is that he refuses to wear his shoes. Did I mention, in a snowstorm? On a ski hill? He's choosing the pain of being barefoot over wearing his shoes, pain that for him is probably magnified? And not because his shoes hurt, but because he just decided not to wear them.

And the doors are opening at the bottom, so I grab Alex, whose boots I have finally gotten back on, and Daniel's boots, lead Alex out of the gondola, turn around expecting to see Daniel behind me, only to see him sitting resolutely on the gondola seat as it moves past the boarding platform and prepares to go back up the mountain. I drop Alex's hand and sprint back into the car, grabbing Daniel and pulling him out after me, in his bare feet. Then run back to Alex before he decides to dive under the moving gondola cabins, pull him over to Daniel, then ask Daniel again to put his boots on, to a loud "NO!" 

At this point, we are definitely the scene of the hour. I look at the lifties and shrug my shoulders, palms up, head tilted and eyebrow raised with an ironic smile, like, "Kids. Whatcha gonna do, amiright?" Not one twitch in return. Like until that point I thought maybe they were thinking, "This kid is experiencing a natural consequence of being a little jerk, because this is the way your world works when your parents care about you." But I'm now pretty sure lifties have about the same sense of humor as the Colorado State Highway Patrol. I even thow in an admittedly condescending, "Daniel, honey, we keep our shoes on in the gondola because gondola rides don't last forever and eventually we have to get out and walk in the snow." Not a flicker from our scowling lifties.

So, all the way out of the maze of ropes that only directed a few lines of skiers, we limp. 

"Owie!" 

"Put your shoes on." 

"NOOOOO!.....Owie!"

"Put your shoes on." 

"NOOOOOO!" 

Once outside the line, I kneel down, pick up Daniel's feet, and put them inside his boots. He cries, but it is more mournful than angry. We find a wagon and I pull them back to the car. We drive home, stopping long enough to give a ride to someone walking home from the bus stop, and by the time we get there the crying has stopped and they are asleep. I get them carried inside and they sleep for twenty minutes, then Daniel is awake, hitting Alex, yelling, "Alex, wake up!" Alex does. I consider crying, both for naptime that isn't to be and the pinot that also isn't to be. But I lie down between them with my shirt pulled up and attempt to stifle my aversions and redirect my attention to writing instead. It doesn't really work. Alex wakes up more, demands lunch. It is noon, I cant blame him for being hungry. I ask Daniel if he wants lunch. He says no. He isn't hungry. He wants da boobies long, he says, as opposed to da boobies a little bit. He has learned that sometimes I will cut him off by counting to ten if he doesn't specify and get me to agree to boobies until he is done. I tell him he can have boobies long, but first Alex needs some lunch. By the time Alex is fed, Daniel is sleeping again. 

I let Alex watch TV, a toddler singalong show, while I write and ponder my failings of the morning, and wonder what I didn't see, what little thing I missed that made them seem like such little jerks. Maybe they were just trying to express something I wasn't getting. Likely they were as frustrated with me as I was with them. Daniel was likely hungry but didn't realize it. Would that I could have had that apple available when he wanted it. He probably chose to walk barefoot in the slushy snow due to low blood sugar, due to the lack of an apple, the one and only thing that sounded edible to him, and he couldn't identify, let alone express this confusing concept. 

Now Daniel is up too, has finally consented to eat something (that something was ice cream, I am not proud of that, but it was ice cream or nothing and I am hoping ice cream will be the gateway food that will make him willing to eat better things), and I finished this post while Alex was in the tub, because his own lunch was messy and required more than just a wipe-down. He's now running around the house naked, perfectly willing to fight for his right to never wear clothes or a diaper again. The last thing he did before climbing out of the tub was try to rinse himself off with a Big Gulp cup. Except he tipped it the wrong way, poured it outside the tub and all over my lap. I'm now soaked in bathwater from the waist down. Kids. Amiright? The day is young. What could we do with the rest of it? 

Oh. We've moved from ice cream to a banana smoothie. Which has now been spilled over several hundred Legos. 

Help, hype or hope? Holy Healthcare, Batman!

Hello! It's been quite a week, huh? I thought I was going to polish off some comfort food and wine election night, but instead I spent it in the emergency room, watching Alex struggling to breathe through a croup episode and trying to keep him calm in spite of getting less air than he needed. Then I brought him home in the wee hours, temporarily fixed up with steroids and racemic epinephrine, to sit and process what had happened with the election. Not just the results, because no matter which way it could have gone, only time will tell if we will be better off, but the way human decency left the building this year. 

I am choosing to live and love and try to learn in spite of not understanding what happened this year to the whole process, from messed up primaries giving us two completely polarizing and unelectable candidates, to trying to understand how personal integrity and family values, such a popular subject other elections, became somewhat irrelevant this year, and moving on... to how it affects us, as in yet more healthcare reform. 

The president-elect promises to repeal the ACA, which definitely had its issues to iron out, but was the only way we could be sure our little cancer fighter with a now pre-existing condition would be insured and not have a yearly or lifetime limit on healthcare expenditures. I'm not saying we and other families of tiny heroes are screwed, but I'm not saying we're not, either...that is impossible to know right now and only time will tell. But. If this turns out badly for those with pre-existing conditions and those who, like us, have a three year old who has already had $1.5 million worth of treatment and a 90% chance of some sort of future, chronic health issue, from nerve damage to learning disability to relapse or secondary cancer, we foresee only two options: keep our income low enough to qualify for Medicaid (there go all those grandiose promises of prosperity), or, in the worst case scenario, ask our friends who voted for the candidate who promised to repeal it to help us pay for Daniel's treatment out of pocket. (You all won't mind, right?) 

For some of his supporters, it might have been as simple as plugging their nose to swallow his distasteful words and actions, and voting for the candidate who promised lower insurance premiums on a plan they don't use because they and theirs are healthy. For Daniel, that might mean having to compromise his ideals to remain eligible for government assistance, fight with insurance companies and play the system his entire life, and have every decision he makes be influenced by whether or not he can remain insured. I don't know. It all depends on what replaces it. We were hitting boiling point with the ACA, as well, needing to save the parts that worked and rework the parts that didn't. But, regardless of party affiliation, it was a good window of time in our healthcare history to be diagnosed with cancer- we didn't have to worry about that diagnosis limiting his healthcare options. 

Here is a brief picture of what we have done so far: Daniel was diagnosed in Colorado on an 18 month extension of Kansas Blue Cross Blue Shield. That covered $1.2 million of his most expensive chemotherapies to date. It did not cover prescriptions and out of network ambulance rides, so we paid, in addition to $600/month premiums (on an outdated plan grandfathered in, hence the lack of prescriptions as recently as last year), $16,000 out of pocket. It covered all facility-administered meds, but around the time Daniel needed to start taking expensive, out-of-pocket oral chemo, we realized how fortunate we were to have moved to Colorado during a tech, tourism, cannabis and oil boom, with a healthy state budget and an expanded Medicaid program, and finally got him on secondary state insurance based on need rather than income- the Home and Community Based Services Waiver, which covered whatever Blue Cross didn't. Then the oilfield left town, and with it Bobby's job, at the same time our Blue Cross extension ran out. Which left us with no income, living entirely on savings and qualifying the whole family for Medicaid, no other options for subsidies, or, if we didn't want Medicaid, paying for an unsubsidized plan, which would cost us $1,200/month. Obviously, we chose Medicaid. Now, do you know what you can't do with Medicaid and a medically fragile, severely immune compromised kid who has to go to the ER for every fever or nosebleed? Leave the state. You won't be covered. At all. We cancelled all our family reunions except the ones close enough to the state line we could run him to the closest Colorado emergency room if needed. The only place outside of Colorado we have been while on Medicaid is a half-hour into Kansas. 

Now, just as our income is creeping back up enough to kick us off Medicaid, we see the election of a candidate who has promised to repeal subsidized insurance that guarantees coverage to cancer survivors and does not allow limits on how much one patient can use it. Even with the ACA, doing the math, we needed to make $20,000/year more to pay premiums and deductibles to maintain the same income we have with Medicaid, once we get kicked off. Now, there is no way to know what our future holds. While trying to research what might happen, I have heard from people on online cancer boards who, before the ACA, had to get divorced or adopt their sick kids to elderly relatives in order for them to qualify for government healthcare that would cover pre-existing conditions. I've judged people who admit to playing the system and keeping their income low enough to qualify for government assistance, but we find ourselves in the same dilemma- stay within 135% of poverty level, or find a way to make an extra $20,000 /year just to break even. And it might not even be about the money- even if we made an extra $50,000, that does not guarantee, without the ACA, that a plan with no spending limits and no pre-existing conditions clause will be available to us, aside from income-based government healthcare. 

So, can we all, no matter who we voted for, hope and campaign really hard that families dealing with diseases like cancer, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Muscular Dystrophy, HIV/AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, all autoimmune disorders, and rare diseases can not become as marginalized as the people groups already made to feel "less than" this election? Yes, insuring very sick people makes everyone's costs go up, but to their families, these precious fighters are the whole world. I wasn't always a cancer parent either. Tomorrow, you may wake up as we did on April 22 of last year, notice your own child looks a little pale, and become one of us. 

I love you. You have been absolutely wonderful, and you know that $16,000 we paid? Almost two thirds of that came from you. It arrived in envelopes, sometimes without return addresses, it showed up on our gofundme, sometimes anonymously. It nearly rips my heart from my chest to think of how much love we have been the recipients of. I am confused about how someone who used hate speech in his campaign even got through the primaries, let alone elected, but the fact remains that some of the same people who campaigned for him sent us their own money when we needed it the most, so I know love for fellow man is in your hearts, and I return that love. 

The world keeps turning and we keep on hoping for healing on a national and world level, for our hearts as well as our bodies. If everyone who voted donated one dollar to childhood cancer research, we could double the research budget for a year. That's a campaign I can get behind.

Alex is still having a hard time breathing, but between keeping the house humid and taking him outside in the wee hours to breathe cold night air, and holding him to keep him calm, we have avoided another ER trip. It's been scary a few times hearing him gasp and honk when breathing, but the worst episodes have been short ones. I don't know if this is the difference between Loveland and Summit County or the difference between Blue Cross and Medicaid, but the the same low oxygen saturation and biphasic stridor that didn't completely resolve in the ER that got him admitted last winter got him discharged from the ER in record time the other night. 

Daniel had a chemo break for low counts at the beginning of the month, so we have been on house arrest a lot lately. So far, he hadn't gotten whatever Alex has, so our fingers are crossed. Daniel has, however, been extremely oppositional, confrontational, and mournful lately. Which usually means either he doesn't feel great or he is three years old. He's also in detox week, very rashy at the moment. We go in for chemo (IV only, no spinal) in seven days. 

Fits and starts

Hello and welcome back. It is definitely my bedtime, but I've just eased myself back out of bed, out from under two tiny, finally sleeping bodies. I should still be there, but these last two weeks have been nonstop mothering. I need some me time. 

We haven't really found our groove in Summit County yet. I had a little more time to write in Loveland because we had a back yard. They played, I sat inside the patio door at the table and watched them play while I wrote. Here, I must constantly hover because our front door opens onto the street and no matter how sincere a three year 

old's promises to stay on the porch might be...ain't happening. But I do try to get them out once a day, load them in the bike trailer, and go to a park, explore a bit of lakeshore, or do a small hike. The only hikes we have done have involved Daddy for his carrying arms, since mama isn't strong enough to carry two big boys for any amount of time. I have a Boba carrier for one of them on my back, but the other must often be carried as well. Most recently, I bike them to school, over the ridge that lies between our house and the school, then carry Little in the trailer to go pick up Big again three hours later. It isn't much, but my legs feel stronger already, I've lost some weight, and am feeling stronger and healthier than in a long time. It is frustrating to live in such a beautiful, activity friendly place and not be able to use it at will, since B often does not get home and relieve me of childcare duties until after dark to allow me and the dog the chance to go on a solitary poop and sanity walk, but we knew it would be different this time around. We have kids now. Everything is different.

It is the night before this month's chemo. We have to be in Denver at 8 am, which means we need to leave here at 6 am. Little Dr. Daniel is asleep in his dark blue scrubs to save us having to wake him enough to dress him in the morning, Curious George is sitting on the counter all ready to accompany us to the hospital to be Daniel's patient tomorrow. 

I have the dreads. I don't always have them the night before chemo, but tonight I do. Daniel has been irritable and occasionally inconsolable this week, often uncharacteristically weepy. His head has been sweating while I hold and nurse him to sleep. The only time that happens is when he is on steroids, normally. And pre-diagnosis, when his bone marrow was over 90% cancerous cells and his blood was thin and useless. His face often feels cool but sticky, sweaty. Today, his breath smelled strongly like acetone, telling me he is ketonic, like perhaps his liver enzymes are out of whack. I stuffed any food he would eat in him all day, just in case he was ketonic from lack of calories, and it did seem to fade a bit toward evening. He has a chemo rash extra badly this week, his ears and around his mouth especially affected, his ears all swollen and red with what he calls " bug bites", the acne-like sores around his mouth opening up and oozing a bit. This too makes me think perhaps his ANC is unusually low, because that affects wound healing, but tomorrow's bloodwork will tell. He has also been easily exhausted, but he is in the middle of a big life change, plus he started preschool two weeks ago, and has gone five days so far. And almost every day, he tells me he has bug bites on his lower back, or that his lower back hurts. I know this is to be expected when one has a needle shoved between one's vertebrae into ones spinal column every thirty days, but it still makes me angry that he has to feel the effects of his treatment like this. 

I am so incredibly grateful he is finally talking enough to be able to tell me how he feels, where he hurts. I am finally hearing his thoughts and feelings, as well, and this is so rewarding. He tells me without reservation when he is happy or sad, and we sit together and sort out his feelings and what might have caused them. 

It all 

...I believe I fell asleep. I'm actually amazed I can finish a sentence some days, let

...I swear that wasn't on purpose. Just lovely irony. I sat down to finish this post, somebody needed something, and it is now the next day. I am now attempting to write while a singing, dancing purple dinosaur raises my kids, one of whom is sitting in my lap taking random swipes at the keyboard with his feet. 

My mom instinct was spot on again- as in, not so much. Daniel's ANC wasn't low, it was too high, out of the "anti-relapse" range. If it is too high again next month, he will have to have a chemo increase. We do not want that. Chemo increases come with less than ideal side effects. We want to achieve nicely suppressed neutrophils with as low of chemo doses as possible. He did have some elevated numbers on his metabolic panel, but nothing so high as to cause his caregivers concern. I now believe what I was seeing was detox. Since last month was Vincristine only, no spinal tap with Methotrexate in his spinal fluid, detox was probably extra severe, since it had been two months since his last spinal. Two days after he got more chemo he was lethargic and a little pale, but his rash had cleared up. By now, ten days later, his energy is back, his skin is smooth and clear, he is feeling okay. Well. Except this morning. He woke up saying he did not feel well, and his temp is hanging around 99.2. Not much to go on, but I feel like (with my infallible mom instinct) he might be getting sick. Well. And he was exposed to strep the two days ago, by someone who wasn't symptomatic until yesterday. So I am keeping him close, letting him be a couch potato, letting his body fight without introducing new assaults. The internet tells me the incubation period for strep can be five days, so we'll be on house arrest until Thursday.   

...and it is two days later. Turns out, the strep wasn't strep, just a virus. But Daniel is still running a very low grade fever every afternoon, just upper 99's, and being fairly horrible to his little brother, and I'm feeling protective, so home he stays. 

I have an eye twitch. One of those weird little twitches that starts every time you experience an uptick in your stress level. And the exhaustion. I could happily go to bed every night at 7pm and be comatose until 7am, except my kids don't even consider bed until 9, and I am awake 3-4 times a night to give meds, refuse to nurse, allow nursing, replace covers, soothe night terrors. 

I suppose it is the non-medical craziness catching up with me. The move, the stress, the illicit fence building (more on that later). We've had smooth sailing medically. No inpatient admittances or even ER visits (aside from an injury-related CT scan) for nine months now. Which means, dun-da-da-dunnnn! We have successfully kept him well, in spite of his 25%-50% of an immune system, with nary so much as a fever, for nine months. This, my lovelies, is unheard of. Unheard of! In the case of childhood leukemia treatment. Granted, the kid is sucking me dry. He nurses himself to sleep. He nurses all night. He begs to nurse during the nightly five hours he must be NPO to avoid the enzymes in my milk deactivating his oral chemo. He nurses when he wakes up. He nurses away every sad (and a threenager has a lot of sad.) And guess who else wants to nurse every time he sees Daniel nursing? I feel like a dry husk most of the time. I feel strangers judging me for nursing when they are falling apart in public. But (and yes, we are a study of one) the fact remains that breast milk is antibacterial and antiviral, and guess who has not had so much as a fever in nine months? These kids. Neither the one who is on immunosuppressant drugs nor the one whose immune system lacks nary a neutrophil has so much as sniffled in nine months. But me...oh my... I miss the days when I woke up in less pain than I went to sleep in, as I now wake up hardened into a twisted shape almost impossible to break out of due to sleeping contorted in such a way that two little vampires have access to my mammaries without waking me too much. I miss sleep. I miss my patience as I attempt to convince big that little can, in fact, play with toys, eat food, breathe air. I miss adult music, adult Netflix, adult time for things like walking the dog, and the ability to finish a blog post in less that five different-day attempts. 

Motherhood is blessed and beautiful and messy and wretched and smelly and confusing. I swear some days I can actually feel my sanity dying. And I only have two kids. And they aren't as close together as they could be- they are 27 months apart. That 27 months is easy for me to remember, since Daniel was 27 months at diagnosis as well. So I suppose it hasn't exactly been a normal experience, but does anybody have a normal experience? The part that has me puzzled and feeling like a failure is that now that things are easier with Daniel, I am losing the ability to handle life with a toddler and a preschooler. We weathered steroid storms and sh**storms (literally) and deathly fear of losing Daniel to infections and complications of treatment, but now is when I lose it because my husband comes home from work just as I have finally gotten two hysterical boys calmed down enough they are dozing off at bedtime, and the dog barks, and everyone jerks awake, and they are off and running again. Now is when I lose it over them fighting and tussling on my lap as they both nurse, toothily yanking on my nipples as well as on my last nerve. Now is when I have the luxury of being at my wits end because my 17 month old refuses to wear a diaper and hits, and my three year old helps him remove his diaper and hits back. 

I am that mother right now. I am touched out, am often deaf to their crying until it hits a certain pitch because I just don't have the energy to mediate the battle over the toy car the three year old has decided the 17 month old shall not have, and all I want to do, quite honestly, is wean them and let them cry and fight it out. But I won't. Because I fear breastfeeding is the one thing keeping everyone healthy, and the research suggesting leaving a child to cry without responding to those cries has a correlation with future trust issues makes perfect sense to me. 

Here is where we go wrong in our modern attempts to allow children to experience evolutionary norms that have proven themselves over millennia. We have all the advantages of modern life, such as clean water and vaccines to keep rampant disease at bay, saving our children's lives. We have birth control, enabling us to decide when we have reached or slightly exceeded our litter size limit. We have research galore pointing to patient, responsive, available parenting (do not read helicopter parenting into this; I think we both know the difference) being the best gift we can give our children. What we do not all have is close extended family. We do not have other adults to take our children when we start to look a little wild-eyed and smell due to lack of personal hygiene. 

(Attempt #...6? At finishing this post. 11:17 pm, Oct 6. Two sleeping angels, I have a good feeling about this!) 

Parenting has just been...intense, lately. Daniel is going through something. Maybe it's just being 3 and a half. I suspect he is sick of me. I can't blame him. I'm sick of me. I snap at him, then I remember how empty my life could be right now without him and am filled with remorse. I hear myself yelling. When did I start to yell? I am not a yeller. I am a parent who remembers she is the adult here. Right? At night, when Little is no longer crying hysterically over small disappointments, such as being forced to play with the black toy car instead of the blue one, and Big is no longer ripping every toy Little picks up out of his hands, when they are no longer begging to nurse constantly, when they are warm lumps under fleece blankets, tiny bottoms in the air with perfect toes turned toward each other, silken curls and warm pink cheeks, tiny hands clutching tiny toys in their sleep, so innocent, so peaceful, so beautiful, I whisper to them of my remorse for all the days ugliness against their impossibly soft temples and hope they are too young to remember today, and promise them I will do better tomorrow. 

So about the fence... I went into the office one day to ask if I could possibly start a petition, do some community organizing, be a squeaky wheel in the corporate machine that is the mega company that owns this trailer park. I didn't intend to leak, I truly didn't. My face just started to as I was asking, due to all the stress I had been experiencing, realizing I probably should not have gone to all the work of transferring D's IEP, getting him into preschool up here, because I realized what a germ pool preschool is. I mean that wasn't news to me, but dropping him off his first day and hearing all the coughing about did me in. I no longer have the option to take Alex inpatient with us during flu season, and I have no back-up childcare plan for if we get admitted. I was embarrassed, but I got out my story, and how if I was going to have to spend our entire winter in solitary, so to speak, on house arrest, how was I going to do that while also keeping them off the street every time we so much as ventured outside?

I didn't realize the manager of this trailer park is a leukemia mama herself. She fought this beast tooth and nail twenty-some years ago, almost losing her kid four times, and once a cancer mom, always a cancer mom willing to give another cancer mom the shirt off your back because you know exactly what she is going through. She told us to build a fence and leave the rest up to her. We built the fence. Paid money we didn't really have to do it, didn't think twice about it. Knew it was a first world problem, didn't care. The boys have a safe, secure place to play and no longer run out in the street. My life is so much easier. But every time I wonder how she is going to explain to her boss and other envious residents her allowing a fence in a trailer park that stopped allowing new fences to be built a year ago, my eye starts to twitch and I get a stomach ache.  She doesn't deserve this, either. I hope there is no fallout from it. I hope her job and standing is secure enough this will be overlooked. In the meantime, the fence had to be built in a day, lest her boss notice it getting built and freak put, so we had to hire a crew. With real money. No cheaping out on a DIY project as is our usual. So far nobody has broken our windows or keyed our vehicles, so apparently the neighbors are being adults about our special treatment, but I'm still slouching around with my tail between my legs, fearful of their judgement.

In the meantime, I think our lovely, charmed Indian Summer has ended, and with the first snow came reports from the school of students being sent home with fevers, vomiting, diarrhea, and strep. So far the preschool, which is mostly insulated from the rest of the school has only had fevers and sore throats, but I am keeping him home again today. The preschool is fastidious, for our sake, about sterilizing toys and surfaces, isolating possibly symptomatic kids, and calling me if anything is a little "off" about Daniel or any other kid so I can go pick him up, take him home, wash his clothes and scrub him down in the shower. It's all we can do while attempting to give him a normal life, and it has worked for three weeks, but I fear this latest flurry of sickness, in conjunction with the suddenly cold, damp weather and lack of sterilizing sunshine on playground equipment signals the end of our attempt at giving him a normal kid experience for this winter. 

Life is messy and there is no longer any black and white. It seems hard times, or maybe just the process of becoming more emotionally mature and aware, smudge the lines of good and bad, right and wrong, until ones inner landscape is a monochromatic juxtaposition of happy and sad, hopeful and resigned, moral and wrong, weak and strong. Everything has nuance I never realized before. No story is straightforward, no villain is bad, no hero is good. The educated and uneducated both make dumb mistakes and display brilliant genius. Somewhere in there is the lesson that perhaps life defies classification and must be appreciated for exactly what it is, even when we have no idea what that is. I am trying. Mostly I'm trying to take my own advice and live in the moment. Fail if I must, but love and make amends, rebuild bridges, and be the adult.

Life, accelerated

Hello, dear ones!

There have been so many changes since the last update, I am exhausted even thinking about trying to detail them all. But I will try; I owe you all that. Here's a quick summary:

A month ago, after a little vacation in Summit County, feeling all caressed by cool, pine scented breeze, soothed by the Snake River running past our feet, all our worries evaporated by the incandescent mountain sunshine, we went back home to the oppressive summer heat in Loveland asking each other why we had left, and if we thought we would ever be back. We had some great years in Summit County. Popping out of the Eisenhower Tunnel and coasting down the west side of the continental divide still feels like coming home. It still feels strange to be in the county and drive right past Summit Cove, to no longer live in our double wide trailer house a few steps from National Forest trails, a few miles from skiing. It is sad how idle our bikes and skis, and my cross country skis have been since we left. Andy the dog languishes in the house or backyard, having to content himself with on-leash walks to the dog park instead of joyous explorations of forests, flopping down in icy streams when he gets hot, running and rolling in snow covered sagebrush in the winter. 

There are so many wonderful things in Loveland, a house with every kid's dream backyard, a sand box, play house and swing set under a wide, shady apple tree that the boys forage food from all day, amazing parks with running and spraying water, a truly laid back, incredibly supportive and nonjudgmental group of friends who share my hippie-dippie stuff and are up on the same gentle parenting philosophies I believe so strongly in. Our kids play together, exploring and learning without a lot of adult intervention, and it is so amazing to see and experience them interacting with their environment together. My village in Loveland is amazing. But it wasn't as though we had a great job keeping us in Loveland. And it really seemed, just by talking to the few people we recognized around town that weekend, like work in Summit County would not be hard at all to come by. Everyone we talked to seemed enthusiastically supportive, telling us crazy tales of needing work done in homes and second homes, and calling all the contractors they knew of, and either not being called back, or being called back only to be put on a wait list. Which is the opposite of Loveland, where we have found some decent work through word of mouth advertising, but finding work the regular way, marketing and advertising, ads in phone books and newspapers, social media and websites meant joining the cacophony of similar contractors all clamoring and competing for the same jobs. We know or have only a degree or two of separation from the entire workforce of Summit County. Plus we aren't regular users of medicinal or recreational marijuana. Which, now that it is legal, is both a wonderful and terrible thing for the professionals in mountain towns. It has brought money and people to Colorado (Loveland included, but Summit County has always been more 420 friendly, the high altitude and easy going local atmosphere more inviting to that particular population than the city bustle) and everything, especially housing, is seeing the effects of it. In five years, housing has jumped 30-40%.  

Knowing nothing would come of it if no affordable housing could be found, we casually asked around to see if perhaps we could find some work around Keystone the rest of the summer. We even went so far as to swallow our pride and contact the company we used to work for in Summit County, offering to bid any pre season maintenance or upgrades that might need to be completed in their condos and houses before the busy ski season hit. When they told us they had it covered with a full time maintenance contractor, we shrugged and carried on with our odd-jobbing in Loveland. 

Wednesday before last, they called with an offer- if Bobby could come up two days per week, they would hire him those two days to cover for the full time maintenance person, to give the existing help a five day workweek instead of seven days. We agreed to try to make it work, although we were not sure exactly how we would pull it off- if we could manage to rent a little place for him to stay or if he might couch surf with friends. Friends offered, eager to help us, our village still there for us even after five years away, so we committed to it through the winter and began tossing around the idea of simply renting out our house in Loveland and moving to Summit County, finding the same sort of work we were doing in Loveland using our old contacts in the county for references. It would be a big leap of faith, considering that the two days a week guaranteed work plus our Loveland rental income would only barely cover our rent and nothing else. I wrote a letter describing the sort of cleaning and maintenance services we provide, and emailed it to a bunch of Keystone homeowners, hoping a few might be tired of managing their VRBO condos themselves, and also tired of hiring a full-on management company, and looking for the sort of niche private services we could offer. Most were not interested, but a few responded favorably. No sooner had we committed to meeting a few of them, then last Friday happened. Friday morning, out of the blue, our old company's full time maintenance contractor resigned, leaving his work uncompleted and his job wide open. Bobby was the first person they called. And suddenly, there is more work to do than time to do it in.

It is actually pretty ideal. I love Bobby, so I hope nobody takes this the wrong way, but he's a less than awesome manager. Bless his hardworking heart, delegating is truly difficult for him. He would rather do things himself, and do them right the first time, than be the bad guy and send an employee back three times to train them to do it right. So the offer of returning to his old job, minus the management part of it, is actually really perfect for him. Especially since the pay is the same as when he was managing in addition to running around doing maintenance and customer service. He knows exactly how to do his job, what is required of him, and has years of familiarity with the properties- which ones freeze up and where, what the recurring problems are, where to tell guests to park, which complaints to head off at the pass. He isn't learning a new job or trying to get a read on a new boss. No, we won't do quite as well up here this time around as we did before, because I won't be able to work more than part part-time for a few more years yet thanks to the babies, but for Bobby, it is a job with some degree of self-management, the freedom that as long as the work gets done, he has the option to bring Daniel along, come home for lunch or a quick bike ride or ski run on quiet days when the phone isn't ringing, and it is job security. As long as ski guests come to Summit County, they will break the condos they stay in. This much has been proven in the 25 years this company has been serving ski guests.

We left this job because Bobby burned out. Managing it was a lot for him. Being yelled at every day by guests was uniquely unsuited for his personality, being the responsible one, the middle child, the pleaser. I watched his hair turn gray and saw him stop caring about doing fun things, his world shrinking to work and sleep when everything depended on him. Five years ago, when I saw his eyes light up at the thought of spending his days by himself in a manure truck making better money than he was making getting yelled at all day, I supported him completely. I encouraged him to make the change, in spite of it meaning that we leave the beautiful high Rockies we had come to love so much. I redirected my mountain biking and skiing energy into making babies and growing food. 

In the five years since, we have had to admit a hard truth: the lodging company was a good fit for us. We shouldn't have waited until management burnout was so complete we didn't have the energy to fix the issues, when the only solution we saw was to jump ship. We should have negotiated, Bobby should have asked to be relieved of his management responsibilities and simply done what he does best- the actual work. 

The first year and a half after leaving Summit County, we saw some really good times. We had Daniel. We made more money that year than we expected. But then it stopped. And in the four years since our good year, there have been times we have scratched our heads and asked, "when did everything get so hard?" It was almost as if everything we tried that wasn't the Summit County lodging company just fought us, and we realized we had it better there than we thought, and regretted not fighting harder to stay there. 

And what do you know. In a week and a half, Bobby has scared up more work in Summit County than he did in months down in the northern Front Range. 

Looking for apartments the last week and a half, we found nothing but dead ends. A few places were promising if we didn't have a dog, but we realized most of our income would be going to rent. Our new-again boss rented us a small condo month-to-month until Thanksgiving, with the agreement that since we were not paying top dollar or committing to any time frame, we would "float", being ready to move to another empty condo if the one we were in was booked by a higher paying guest. 

We applied to rent another trailer house in the Summit Cove trailer park, which is the county's only truly affordable housing, only to be told we were applying for the last available lot along with about four other people, and someone had submitted an application for it five minutes before us. The trailer park was our last hope for housing we could make work long-term. My parents agreed to keep to dog all winter, if needed, to allow us to keep working and possibly get a six-month, no-pets-allowed rental, so we could keep the job through the winter and figure our stuff out. 

We started looking for a six month rental we could afford, while living for the moment in a condo at the base of Keystone, only steps from the ski lifts, in a little corner of Keystone that is silent and abandoned right now, just us and the rustling aspens. The area will be expensive, teeming and busy in a few months when snow is on the mountain and the lifts are turning. "Stay calm", we told each other. "If it's meant to be, it will be. If we can't find anything before Thanksgiving, when we can no longer bounce around ski condos, we'll go back to Loveland, and we won't have lost anything except time. And a job. Which is not possible to keep anyway if we don't live here."

Yesterday, the trailer park called back. "You application was approved first", they said. "This puts you at the top of the waiting list. Do you want the trailer and lot?" 

We raced to Summit Cove to look at it. It is a small 3/2, much smaller than the one we lived in five years ago, but almost 30 years newer, with no obvious reasons we wouldn't be okay living there. Not fancy, certainly not roomy, but a roof over our heads. And just like that, feeling a little guilty that we landed it instead of the herd of other applicants, but also feeling a little like we won the lottery, it is ours to live in. Housing has suddenly gone from impossible to find to completely covered. How we got ahead of the other people in line for it, we are not sure. But we'll take it. I guess we just expected to be the bug. Being the windshield caught us off guard. 

If we can rent our house for the going rate in Loveland, a going rate that is the reason we were forced to keep the failing oilfield job just long enough to be allowed to sign away the next thirty years of our lives to a mortgage there (rent is crazy there, too, at the moment), we can cover most of our rent here. Which means it will actually be cheaper to live here than in Loveland. And Bobby has a full time job here. So within two weeks, completely without warning, we have leapt off square one and shot, as if from a cannon, into our future's trajectory. 

Or not. If we have learned anything these last few years, it is that anything can change at any time. We are only ever a breath, a phone call, a right or left turn away from everything changing massively, for the better or for the worse. We duck, we bob, we jab, and when we take a punch, we roll. As long as we have each other, and you, our amazing intentional family, our village, there isn't really any change so big we can't take a breath, clear our heads, wrap our minds around it, and set off in a brand new direction toward amazing new possibilities.

Which brings us to tonight. For the first time since I got here Saturday night, I left the kids with Bobby and went for a hike all by myself. It took about ten minutes for the mountain high to kick in. I felt invincible, relaxed, and ecstatic for no particular reason. Just me, the squirrels, a red fox I surprised, the setting sun sending flaming arms into the sky above the pines and aspens that reached friendly arms toward me to welcome me back. I have been embarrassingly stressed out and short tempered out all week. I have been bogged down in details. I have been mother to a 'roided out three year old and a clingy sixteen month old, bouncing around a ski condo that is incredibly non-child friendly, trying and failing to keep them from trashing it and breaking things. But until tonight, I haven't simply been. When I finally left the babies in the condo with Bobby and wandered under the pine trees for an hour, I realized I've lost that loving feeling, running around being adulty, but tonight, I got it back  for awhile. That feeling is what Summit County is to me. 

We are leaving the city. This is bittersweet. The city has been good to us. Our friends and neighbors there have become family. But as these two little boys get bigger, I am excited that they will do so as woodland wanderers, speaking the language of the forest- silence that isn't silent and solitude that isn't alone. I grew up in the grassland and river breaks surrounding the dry Smoky Hill River, embraced by the earth, wind and grass as it has been for millennia. Maybe it was the lonely spaces, the big sky, that formed my preferences as an adult. The mountains are everything I loved, in addition to everything I missed in the flatlands. I want them to grow up loving the same things I did. 

Life is surprising. Two and a half weeks ago, we were still trying to decide what to do with ourselves, in our lovely little Loveland house on our little Loveland cul de sac. Now we have a full time job and a house in Summit County. Didn't see that one coming.