Flashes of gratefulness and depression beyond belief keep coming bright before my eyes. I want my house to be my own again. One second later, I don't want people to stop being here. What will happen when they go? I haven't been alone except for the rare hour or so, here and there, for over a month. I live alone, and am used to living my life almost completely on my own (as readers--all 3 of you--know very well). This is different for me. I want my life back. I don't want it either.

My dad and stepmom came. I started my new job from home. It's intense, and this is going to be completely different than what I was used to in some ways...but that is a very good thing. I'm doing federal government affairs now, so all the Congressional antics that keep playing out on Cspan now suddenly are personal. They dictate whether or not I'm up all night, whereas previously, it was the Governors of the states who did that. And they tended to be much less dramatic ;) Joint debt ceiling resolution? Did anyone pay attention to that? Turns out I should have been - because now my paycheck depends on my awareness of its outcome.

A day in the life. Right now, it begins with my mom bringing me oatmeal as I stumble my way into the kitchen on crutches.

One month ago today...I was laying down in bed, and facing surgery the next day. I'm four weeks and two days post-operation. Five weeks away from this whole thing happening. I still find myself re-playing it in my head. But not once--not once--have I questioned this. I haven't mourned my lost vacation, or thought about all the things I was going to have seen. It never seemed real to me--like the whole time we were planning, we were just playing.

Turns out, we were.

And now it's October. My favorite month ever...and I can't be out in it. I got to go out to my front steps today. Cast on, crutches laid beside me, I sat on the steps and small-talked with people going by. Looked at the leaves that have gotten their colors now. I realized they were starting to do that a couple weeks ago when my best friend was here, before Dad took his shift and my college friends came with kiddos and two HUGE gift baskets of stuff that I'll never be able to actually eat. She forced me outside and I sat there blinking in the bright sun and feeling weird about being outside. She talked on her blackberry and sometimes glanced my way and I alternated between wondering why she'd come and feeling grateful as hell that she had.

Look, I said, pointing to the tree. It's starting to change.

I'm halfway to being able to be fully mobile. I'm hoping so much that THIS, this, is starting to change. I'm working from the couch, watching bad TV and learning my coworkers' quirks from afar, and doing it all without learning just yet where the bathrooms are and what the coffee protocol is in the kitchen. I get a little break, to google things like "proposed rulemaking" in the privacy of my own home while I'm on a call needing to know arcane congressional procedural rules (wake up, I won't talk about procedural rules again, I promise).

I get my cast off on Monday, and I get a walking boot on. I start being able to put pressure down on it in about two weeks--I think--alot depends on what the doctors say when I go on Monday. I think I'll be able to go into the office around Thanksgiving. I need to navigate what i'm going to do about thanksgiving, and Christmas, and and and.....

And.

For now, I am trying to heal. I am taking my vitamins. Multi's every day, extra vitamin D. Lots and lots of milk. Lots of mom grilling me cheese sandwiches. Lots of my dad and stepmom cleaning my house. Lots of my college friends making me mexican dishes to freeze since they're my favorite. Lots of my friends here sending me edible arrangements. Lots of food, food, food it seems like. I can't move! Don't give me more calories!!

It's fall and I've fallen and broken. I'm halfway standing, and hoping for healthy winters to come.

"Three thousand five hundred miles away...what would you change if you could?"

Then there's you

I guess if I needed to learn or remember anything throughout this journey, it's that an awful lot of people care about me. I have always known this, but it's something that I haven't felt in a very long time. It's like I've had some sort of barrier up, or a wall of my own self-centeredness, or a cloud of doubts hanging over my head--to be seen, but not touched. Not felt. Not where it mattered.

My best friend came up to spend a few days with me. She kept her head down, working frantically through her very busy time of year. I felt at times she was a million miles away from me while sitting beside me on the couch. Then she'd turn to me, smile, and ask what I wanted her to fix me for lunch and I remembered. I remembered to be grateful for every card people are sending me; every care package.

Mom was here for two weeks, and my dad is driving here as we speak. I was very glad to have a parent-break of a few days and get my head on a little straighter from so many days of my mother caring for me. I was grateful as all get out for it, but it is easy to regress when you're being actively parented long after you actually require it. I need help, yes, but I don't need parenting.

My dad is bringing with him his toolbox and his guilt about not being here for the brunt of the injury, the surgeries, the doctors appointments. I have no doubt he will absolve his guilt by fixing things that work, and by stuffing my face with things he grills.

I can't wait.

I am certainly not having the October I had planned on, nor that I wanted. I'm in a fair amount of pain still, although it's significantly less. Showering has taken on a whole new level of prep-work, and fixing myself a bowl of cereal and carrying it into the next room? Forgetaboutit.

But, I know, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt....I am lucky still.

Even still.

Well

Life sure as hell doesn't go as planned, does it?

Two weeks ago, I set out for a vacation of a lifetime with an old childhood friend and we were drunk on life and possibility. We were headed for a Mediterranean cruise, and were going to Italy, Greece, Turkey and Spain. We each left from our separate homes, and met in Paris in the airport. We hugged excitedly, headed for the currency exchange, and I pulled out my wallet. A few hours later, my credit cards were gone. All of them.

Sarah left for Venice, and I stayed behind for 3 hours until my flight. I landed in Venice at 11pm, actually GOT my luggage, and headed out to find the cruise reps who were supposed to be meeting me. No one was there. I had no money, didn't speak the language, and the airport was closing. I was making frantic calls and found an old man who offered to drive me to the ship (at least, I assumed that's what he was saying. He DID drive me to the ship, even though as we drove along winding Italian roads at midnight, I realized that he could kill me right then and there and absolutely no one would ever, ever know).

I made it on the ship. My friend and I had a blissful day and a half...until I slipped down one slippery step, and broke my ankle severely.

Severely.

So severe, in fact, that I had to have emergency surgery the next day in Athens, Greece. Yes. That was my sight-seeing adventure in Athens. The medical staff on the ship was wonderful, as I cried and sobbed to Sarah that I'd ruined our trip, her trip, why did my life have to be so hard, ohpleasegodjustkillmenowthishurtssobad rants because the pain was so out of this world awful.

In Athens, people stood over me shouting in Greek, as they took off my clothes and put me under so they could set the break. Two days later, Sarah and I were issued Turkish visas and flown out of Istanbul. We landed exhausted back home to DC, where I had surgery AGAIN last Friday...and here I sit.

In two weeks, I'm supposed to be starting a new job. I'm supposed to still on be on vacation. I'm supposed to be going to Kentucky in a couple of days to see the kiddos. I'm supposed to be able to walk. Instead...I am sitting on my couch, five days post-op, with my mother scrubbing things with bleach water in my kitchen as we speak.  I wish I were writing this with more flowery words, with more emotion, with more life lessons that I've learned threaded throughout...but I have told this story so many times that I am weary.

My family and friends have been wonderful, and I haven't been alone for a second since this happened. Mom's here for two weeks, then Dad comes. Dad told me he got physically sick when he heard what happened -- from a combination of knowing I was in horrible physical pain (pain like i've never experienced) and from the heavy feeling that his child just could.not. seem to ever have it easy. He was so happy that I was finally on a trip of a lifetime, finally able to do something wonderful for myself....only to literally be knocked down and slammed back into hard reality.

I told my friend who was with me, Sarah, that i keep waiting to hear on the news that our cruise ship is actually on the bottom of the ocean. Because we clearly (clearly) were not supposed to be on it. It was almost as if the universe was TRYING to make it to where I couldn't get on board. And once I did, I sure as hell couldn't stay. I laid in the medical center the whole first night it happened, shivering as morphine was pumped into me continuously but somehow not even able to touch the pain. They didn't even set it that night, I had to wait til official surgery for that the next day. It was one of my lowest life moments, I think.

It's just a broken ankle. Just. But it's sure as hell disrupted my life, and shaken a few hard lessons into me. I have four screws and a plate in my ankle now, but I'm expected to make a full recovery. Six more weeks.

If it happened for a reason...I've got my eyes wide open, trying desperately, straining, to see it.

Change

My last day of work is today.

I fly to Italy tomorrow.

Life goes on.

As for the blog? We'll see. Keep writing...I'll keep reading.

In which I finally update my blog

It's been a summer, y'all.

In five weeks, I went to Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Minnesota, and Los Angeles. Of all of those locations, I went to southern california to cool off apparently, because L.A. was cooler than MINNESOTA. Cooler in a few senses of the word, since the Teen Choice Awards parties were happening outside my hotel, and I ran into Clint Eastwood in the airport. I literally ran into a paprazzi photog while trying to find the cabs. I looked on TMZ later to see if there was a picture of Clint Eastwood looking irritated, and me looking like a dumbass in stretchy pants, standing in the background looking for cabs. There wasn't.

While I was wandering the streets of Minneapolis, pacing the streets like a nervous father in the waiting room, my sixth nephew came into the world. I was listening to "Let It Be" on my ipod over and over and over, occasionally crying, and generally looking like a hot mess. If I had seen me coming down the street, I would have crossed early to avoid me.

He was born on the first birthday of my last nephew, L, and I missed his birth too. I remember that one vividly -- he came into the world a few minutes after midnight while I sat on my front steps on a Saturday night watching people have fun and staring at my blackberry.

He's been an awfully sick little boy, but it appears he's on the mend. He's been in the hospital since Tuesday, and he'll be released tomorrow if the blood culture results show he's all clear. I haven't met him yet and he's 17 days old and I am going insane waiting to get my hands on him.

I've been in a weepy mood all week, partly because of that, partly because of other things going on. So last night, I fixed a cup of tea and settled down with a good book. Ya know, about the holocaust. The holocaust. WTF was I thinking? After crying through that, I remembered I didn't HAVE to read the damn book, put it down and decided to watch the Hangover instead. That, and cruising through damnyouautocorrect.com, is my go-to remedy for curing anything that ails me. DYAC -- seriously. It'll make your day.

In just over 3 weeks, I am cruising the hell out of DC for a long, long while. My longtime childhood friend and I decided that since we'd been such good savers of our money for all these years, and neither of us had EVER taken a real vacation in our adult lives, we decided to do something. Something big. And we are. We're going to Italy, Greece, Turkey and Spain for fifteen days!! I can't wait to turn off my blackberry, get into my stretchy pants, and not even begin to think about anything relating to the health care industry.

I have a feeling the world will go on without me just fine.

In Transition

I've started first sentences on a blog a dozen times in the last month or so. But I always think it sounds trite, or shallow, or too deep, or blah blah. So I delete it, shake my head, and vow to do better tomorrow.  And well, I'm finally bored enough to do it =)

I'm sitting in the train station, with my red suitcase that I got for ten dollars at Goodwill, and ol' Red and I are going to be spending a lot of time together this summer. I'm country-hopping, doing a round of regional meetings for work. Last year, I was more of a fly on the wall, observing. This year, this is all me baby. A day and a half of SJ for these lucky, lucky participants! I'll be performing my tap dance from the northeast all the way to Los Angeles and 3 other places in between. The only thing I'm disappointed about is that none of them are in proximity to Allegra and Angie in the pacific northwest. Bummer. Unless you want to fly the kids to LA, Ang? Field trip!!

I didn't think I'd be making this country-hop again this summer. I thought I'd be in a new job, maybe even a new town, by now.

But here I am, in sweaty sticky Washington in the height of summer and it's my most hated time of year here. Tourists are EVERYWHERE...I live in a very popular tourist destination neighborhood, and I work right by the Capitol, so they're on my commute everyday. I don't mind them, it's simply the crowds. It takes me about another ten minutes at each stop to stand in line behind a group of same-tshirt-wearing clumps of people figure out how to operate the ticket machines. But mostly I just hate it because it's as hot as holy hell, and I hate being hot. I also hate feet, and I hate seeing so many people's feet. I'm such a strange person.

Summertime is also the time of year when everything shitty that can possibly happen to me, does. So...stay tuned I suppose? Everything's okay so far. But you never know.

I met a traveling baseball player for the Cubs in the airport a couple weeks ago. We spent a very fun and memorable few days (read: nights) together, and now he's gone. I don't miss him. It was fun to have a fling, and I really needed the esteem boost of being "picked up" and flirted with and especially by such a cutie. I'm sure he's romancing someone else right now, as we speak, in San Diego or Cleveland, and that's okay. Dating is not a priority for me right now. I'm sitting tight, so to speak, and waiting to see what's next. Keeping my heart here with me for awhile. Keeping it whole just in case something happens this summer to break it.

I spent the 4th of July lounging at my sister's house with the little girls who are quickly becoming kids rather than toddlers. I didn't have to split my time with another family, I made no plans (deliberately) and I spent two fantastic days just lounging in the pool and catching kids as they jumped in the pool. I was again, and almost always am when I have such a good block of time with my family, amazed at how my family dynamics have changed in the last five or so years.

To put it in perspective, this same sister (stepsister, technically) and I are the same age. We were 7 when our parents got married (4 when we met) but had drifted apart after we hit puberty and I quit spending alot of time at my dad's. Through high school and college, she was basically a stranger with whom I shared a sink with every other weekend. We both went to Panama City with our respective friends during our sophomore years of college. We were so distant by that point that I didn't even know she was there. We were in a dark club, music beating through our bodies, and we rounded a corner and came face to face. Stopped and stared for a minute, said hi, and walked away from each other.

If you told me that in ten years, I'd be in the bed with my head on her belly listening for my newest nephew to kick me, I'd think you were crazy. She'd think you were crazy too, if she thought I'd be teaching her daughters to swim in the backyard of her farmhouse where she lives with her high-school sweetheart. She wanted to move to New York City and be a lawyer. She now lives on a farm in Kentucky and is about to have her third kid and is a third-grade teacher. I wanted to be at stay-at-home mother, maybe a librarian, and that was about the extent of my ambitions. I now live in Washington and have an extremely successful career with no children. Our lives/ourselves have completely reversed.

We flipped around, traded futures, and found each other again in the process. Her blond daughters--one of whom bears my middle name--are my practice babies. My teachers in the ways of eventual motherhood, and there are times when I'm riding the four-wheeler around her farm that.....maybe, perhaps, we are living our dreams out...but in each other. Together, with our younger sister, we have the careers, the kids, the urban life, the country life, the married life, the flings, the travel.

Together, I guess you could say we have it all.

Fade in, Fade out

"I don't think you're taller than me yet, buddy" -- To a nephew, 11, that is staring me right in the eye with that smile I've known since he gave his very first one. I kissed his cheeks and sent him on his way, with him looking like a man in jeans and muddy boots.

Scene: Fade Out

"What did you ever see in me?" A high school boyfriend asked me, after 11 years of not talking. We're on hour five of conversation. I gave a long, in depth answer about how he was the yin to my yang, and that he was good for me in ways that he didnt know yet. I didn't tell him the truth in that his smell and the way his lips tasted was almost all that I saw in him and that memory was strong enough to keep me on the phone with him.

"What did you see in me?" I asked. A pause.

"You were hot," he said.

Scene: Fade Out

"She's pregnant. I need you. Only you. Talk me down from this," she says to me before dawn.

I sit up and steel myself.

Scene: Fade Out

Crossing a busy intersection on my way to a job that I could care less about right now. "Don't use again" I'm frantically texting on my cell to a boy who is seven light years away from me but I'm rolled up in, just the same. Kissing in the car as we did 11 years ago.

Scene: Fade out

My sister, 7 months pregnant, and my neices and me on the bed. They are 5 and 3. Their baby brother kicked and made my sister jump. "bad baby brother!" Everyone yelled. We found where his butt was located in her belly and spanked it. Rolled around and tickled and screamed. Went to sleep. Brooklyn sighs, throws her arm and leg over me. "I love lou."

The next morning, the four of us (plus baby brother in utero) crammed onto the four-wheeler to find pregnant cows, the girls' daddy working the fields, and then came home to make pancakes.

Scene: Fade out

Sixteen year old neice plunks herself in my lap on the porch swing. I kiss her back beside her tank top strap. She curls into me like she did when she was a baby. "Do you want me to get up?" She asks.

Never.

Fade out.

The month of May. A snapshot of a few of a million moments, tied up into my reasons for living. I could have pinpointed so many more.

My heart is full.