This weekend...

we painted the wall behind our bed. It was just the pick-me-up I needed at this bleak, mid-winter, can't-wait-for-spring time of year.

Ahhhhhh!

Buying Hope?

Yup…it’s in that shopping bag from the sporting goods store, right over there. That one: with the newly purchased running shoes. Did you see the box? Or, more importantly, did you see the calf muscles on that runner on the box? And, what about that yoga mat? Did you see the tag on that? Look at her beautifully toned stomach and the calm and collected expression on her face. And, the swim goggles. You should have seen the store display by the goggles!

Yup, $100 of hope is right there in that bag!

Normal

“Hi, Ade! How’s your day?” Mom queries as I pick up the phone.

My day? Normal. I’ve vacuumed, made peanut butter sandwiches, shoveled snow; I’ve helped the kids tie yarn ‘leashes’ onto stuffed dogs so they could take them for a walk; I’ve checked my bank account balance, folded laundry, dusted the furniture; the bathroom cleaning bucket is still waiting for me, that task yet to do.

And, I called my friend; my friend who has, since July, been sitting near the hospital bed of her not-quite-two-year-old son; praying and hoping for a miracle; watching her baby battle against the cancer that consumes his small frame. Her life has been flipped on end and her days are far from my kind of normal. For her, ‘normal’ means tests, surgeries, therapy, set backs, steps forward, small miracles and devastating news. She’s learned to speak a new language filled with medical terms and lab result vocabulary. Her family has experienced their day-to-day at home, thousands of miles away, while she bunks with extended relatives and sets up camp each morning in the oncology unit.

The news today isn’t good. The doctors have declared that there is no more they can do. They are trying to stabilize her son enough so that they can fly home and wait. Wait for a miracle, wait for the end…wait for normal to somehow resurface.

I’m sure she’d give anything to cook dinner and go sledding, mediate toy battles and wash windows.

Tears are flowing as I slowly push my vacuum, grateful that my day is so normal.

Snow Cave

What lucky kids ... Daddy helped them build this great snow cave today. I guess that's looking at the bright side of all this snow, eh?

{Happy} Groundhogs Day

Punxsutawney Phil popped his little rodent head out of his hole and saw his shadow yesterday, predicting 6 more weeks of winter. Since we got about 4 inches of snow overnight and it is still coming down hard, I'll have to (unfortunately) agree. Drat!

Nothing like a little chocolate therapy to sweeten up the sour news.