Love
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Mulder
Mulder Asregadoo April 6, 2015 – May 19, 2023 You all know that Mulder’s lymphoma came back in April, soon after his 8th birthday. He deteriorated pretty quickly, and on May 2nd, I took him to the vet to try to determine his situation. His spleen and many other lymphatic organs were very swollen. She said that if we gave him an injection of enzymes, it would help, perhaps for a month or more. So we went ahead with that. It did help. It was miraculous. He felt amazingly better within 15 hours, all of the inflammation went away, he was playful and happy again. It was fabulous. Unfortunately, only…
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Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day turns bittersweet when your mother dies. A day to celebrate her when she is not here, it is difficult. I miss my mom every day. When I had Maya and became a mother, I felt a different bond with my mom than I had had before. I understood her more. She gave me such grace and understanding, laughed with me, gave me guidance. She was proud of the mother that I became. I don’t think there is anyone in your life that will love you as unconditionally as your parents, with the possible exception of your child or your dog. I am very thankful to have had the…
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Wordless Wednesday – Feeling Good
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Friday Randomness – Catching Up
First off, Happy (belated) Birthday to my wonderful husband, Ted! I shared this picture last year too, but I like it, so I’m sharing it again. His birthday was Wednesday, and he and Maya both took the day off from work. I worked, but knocked off a little early. Maya took Ted out for breakfast, and then they went bookstore shopping, which is something we all love doing. They came home and watched Dune, which they both enjoyed. Ted had seen it when it came out, but Maya hadn’t. I worked for the first hour, so I came in too late and didn’t really pay attention. We went out for…
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Changing the Subject (Mostly)
This is Ted looking cute at a local restaurant in our town. We went downtown last weekend and had a snack and some wine, then went to a bookstore. Some of my favorite things: Ted, food, wine, books. Excellent way to spend a Saturday afternoon on a beautiful day. This is one of the dishes we had. I did not take a picture, this is from the restaurant Facebook page. It’s asparagus, labneh, blood orange, arugula, and a ‘perfect egg’. The picture has spring greens, but ours was just arugula, which is fine by me, because I love arugula. When the menu said ‘perfect egg’, I assumed that was going…
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Discouraged
This is my beautiful boy, darling boy on our walk this morning (Friday). On Tuesday, both Maya and I separately found enlarged lymph nodes on Mulder’s neck. They have only grown since then. I fear this means that he is no longer in remission, and his lymphoma is back. Shit shit shit. We have an appointment with the vet on Monday, but I know what the answer will be. He had 5 months of chemotherapy, and at first all was well. But as time went on, it got harder and harder for him. He had probably 3 bad days every week, where he would walk around feeling like crap, throw…
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Miscellaneous Monday
I don’t know what to write about today, so I’m going to just throw a bunch of stuff at you. Here goes. Regarding the meme above, this is how I felt when we were in France last year. The names of the towns we stayed in were pronounced completely differently than they looked to my American eyes. Mougins is pronounced ‘MOO-jan‘ with a soft j, short a, and a soft n. Click the link to hear. Vincennes is a little closer to how it looks, VA-sen, with a short A. One of the stops on our train ride between Paris and Vincennes is Nation, pronounced NA-si-on, with all short vowels.…
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Intention vs. Accountability
There are things that I intend to do, or not do, but then things fall apart when faced with reality, and I fail on my intention. I have an ongoing issue with my love for potato chips. I do not intend to eat them practically every day. I don’t keep them in the house, usually, because if they are here I will eat them. Especially if they are Salt and Vinegar Kettle Chips, or sometimes, Doritos. So I start out my day just fine, but then I go to the grocery store on my lunch hour, and I get to the check out line, and there they are. Somehow, magically,…
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Friday 5
Today’s post will be 5 things I’m thinking about.
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Grandma’s 100th Birthday
This is my Grandma Ward, on the left, and her sister, my Great Aunt Flo, on the right. Had she lived, today would have been Grandma’s 100th birthday. I wrote about her here when she died. She had a long life, full of adventures (as she put it), travel, and a lot of loss. She outlived both of her husbands and all four of her children. She and my Aunt Flo were best friends, born 16 months apart. They lived together for the last almost 30 years of Grandma’s life…and for at least the last 15, Aunt Flo was Grandma’s caretaker, as Grandma’s health was not great, and Aunt Flo…
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Rainy Day Thoughts
It’s early on Saturday, and I’m sitting downstairs with a cup of tea and the back door open, because it’s not cold and I love to listen to the sound of the rain. Once anyone else wakes up, I will have to close the door because it will be too cold for Ted and Maya (I do have my robe and slippers on), but I’ve been here for almost 2 hours and I’m loving every minute of it. Mulder just came downstairs about an hour ago, and he refuses to go outside and have a pee. Not sure how long he intends to hold it, but I guess time will…
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Happy Birthday to my Brother
Picture of Richard and me, WAY back in 2001, in our Grandma’s back yard before his sister-in-law’s wedding. We’re older and greyer now. Happy Birthday, to my big brother, Richard! I mentioned him in my post last week for my sisters’ birthday. Seems like quite a few of my favorite people are Sagetarious. Richard and I have the same mom, and we were raised together. We were both born in the Bay Area, he in Oakland, me in Berkeley, and we moved to Fairbanks, Alaska when we were young. We lived for a year or two in a homestead outside of town, with no running water and no telephone, and…
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Happy Birthday to my Sisters
This picture is at my Dad’s 70th birthday, in 2013. My sisters are twins, and today is their birthday! Melissa is on the left, I am in the middle, and Maya is on the right. Due to NaBloPoMo, I have a lot of new readers, so I will give a bit of background on my relatively unique upbringing. For anyone with a lot of time on their hands (ha!), I wrote about meeting my dad at the age of 21, here, here, and here. The short version is that my parents met in High School, and were great friends, though never dated. My mom dropped out of college at U.C.…
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Picture of the Day – Shopping for Gifts
While in France, I did a little gift shopping. I bought Christmas gifts for Ted and Maya, and for my siblings and Mother figures (that’s my step mom and my mother in law). One thing I wanted for Ted was a nice shirt, but not something for work. Too much like getting school clothes as a gift. There was a shirt I liked at a shop in Vincennes, but I wasn’t sure of the size, and I wasn’t sure it was something he would actually wear, and it was almost $200. I would absolutely spend $200 to get Ted a shirt from France that I knew he would love and…
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Picture of the Day – Mulder
Mulder has now finished his first 2 months of weekly chemo, now he is moving on to the next phase, which is chemo every other week for the next 4 months. His weight has stabilized, he doesn’t seem to be losing weight anymore. He is not tolerating the chemo as well as he did at the beginning, meaning for the first 6 weeks, he only had one instance of losing appetite and diarrhea, and more recently it has been every time. It lasts a day or two, but is controlled by medication and us tempting his appetite with chicken and rice or scrambled eggs, which he gobbles down. He’s lost…
