astronautdc

"Are you going to wear that down the street?"

"What?" I looked down. "I don't know. Maybe?"

She laughed.

"Don't accept any offers!"

I considered the tutu jutting out from my middle.

"Maybe I will take it off."

I imagined the looks I might get from people passed on the street - on the way to the Metro, other train riders and people in my own neighborhood. I shrugged. It didn't matter; I had seen them before. The people who didn't notice might be more interesting.

With Halloween just a few days away, someone at DC Books to Prisons suggested costumes and a potluck to celebrate our pack night, and I tried to think of something that wouldn't require too much effort given the workday before it.

In the depths of my costume box, the Daphne costume seemed a bit of a stretch without the rest of the Scooby gang and the dirndl had raised a few brows in its day. The chef's hat and jacket would have to wait until I had time to bake. Last year, I wore the cape as Red Riding Hood. I decided on a tutu over a brightly print dress with a bright, somewhat matching, somewhat clashing scarf and combat boots. I marketed myself as a fashion disaster.

The tutu was easy; I already had one. It had made its way down the street, many streets, as I walked the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. In a couple of weeks, I would wear it in San Diego for yet another trek, but it looked slightly less strange in a sea of walkers in pink than DC on a random Wednesday night.

In the room where we all volunteered, only a few of us wore costumes. A woman in business attire labeled herself as an "Ebola lawsuit." A few years ago, she was a carbon footprint. Someone else came as a lifeguard, with shirt, hat and whistle. (She wore trousers, too, but they didn't really add to the costume.) Another just wore a pink feathered boa. The rest of the group just came as themselves and one asked me if there was an occasion for the tutu.

"We're celebrating Halloween!" I said. "Have a treat."

The food was set up in the corner. The rest of the night progressed as usual with letters and books, packing materials and stamps. Maybe next year, I will dress as a superhero or at least wear the shirt with a cape as I consider saving the world.

The thing about life… One of the things about life is that it is not the big things that make it worth living: Relationships, babies, the perfect job/house/car. Big, beautiful and strangely stressful, the thrill can pass in flash as months of planning culminate in special, spectacular day, which is still just one day. 24 hours.

Things go wrong. Things go right. Stressed, unhappy brides. Happy brides, unhappy wives. Sleep-deprived parents of babies. Worried parents of teens. Ungrounded parents of college students. Work is still work. Home is just a place to live, filled with the things that you bring and the life that you make. There will always be another newer car. Bigger, brighter, faster. Better.

As my niece and I talked over the weekend, we touched on the idea of running away. A friend of a friend had tried to convince her to go, but she knew it wouldn’t last long, not with the $2,000 he’d saved, not without an education and plan for the future. We had each considered it, though, briefly, as did my mom and my sister, but even with my (fairly regular) forays to other places and cultures, we all came back.

“I realized a long time ago,” I told my niece, “that wherever I went, there I was. I might as well figure out how to deal with my problems because I would be taking them with me.”

I had flown to Minnesota to spend some time with the girl and her sister, with my sister (their mom) and my own mom as well as her husband and friends. More than the flight and traveling across several states to be in the same place for a little while, it was the small things that made the trip so very special.

On Saturday night, with white chocolate on our faces and in our hair (my fault; I started it), my niece made me laugh so hard that I almost peed my pants. My mom shook her head, sighing, “Girls…”

“Just wanna have fun,” her granddaughter sang and I joined in at the chorus. “That’s all they really want! When the workin' day is done, oh girls they wanna have fun. Oh girls just wanna have fun!”

And we did. We made soup and treats. Ate dinner. Watched a movie. And in the morning, my niece sleepily mumbled at me as I prepared to head back to the airport.

“Don’t go.”

Sunrise and sunset. Trees shedding leaves in shades of red, orange, and gold. Playing catch with a 5-year-old who announced to the world that I was his new friend and remembered (and repeated) the statement the next morning. Talking about toys with my mom. Talking about books and Broadway with my stepdad. Packing for camp with my other niece.

“Appropriate undergarments?” I read from her pack list.

“I think they mean t-shirts and socks and stuff.”

“They list those separately. I think they mean ‘underwear’ and were too embarrassed to type out ‘underwear.’ Don’t get me started on the ‘personal hygiene items.’”

I sat on the floor and tried to stuff her new sleeping bag, rolled, back into its bag, but it would not go. After a half hour, I gave up and showed her how to use it as a stuff sack.

“That’ll work, right?”

Later that night, my mom put my friend to work, the one who’d just driven several hours to see me, while my niece and I accidentally ripped the side when we dug a hole (as requested) into a loaf of bread. We turned the loaf over and over and over again so Mom wouldn’t see it.

The weekend was made up of things like going outside to not see the solar eclipse and staying inside to watch American Horror Story, singing Yankee Doodle Dandy with my mom when we drove past a sign for “Yankee Doodle Road” in Saint Paul and walking one of my sister’s favorite trails at the Nature Center. It wasn’t anything. It was everything.

Walking to work this morning, tired from too many late nights made even later by an hour time difference and encouragement to “sleep in,” the scaffold-shrouded Capitol made me happy as did our growing 6 a.m. breakfast club in the office. Last night, I enjoyed last week’s Jeopardy with my brother. Yesterday, I enjoyed a conversation with my seat mate on the plane.

Life isn’t any more (or any less) than these.

I didn't know where to look.

"Somewhere over there-ish," I thought as I stood on the roof and watched the night sky. "I should have brought my phone or my iPod or some other time-telling device."

Instead, I snapped random pictures and checked the time in the corner of my camera screen. It seemed to be set for the right timezone, which wasn't a given but it was a start. I didn't know how I would know if or when the rocket would launch. I didn't even know where I should watch.

According to the Washington Post, "the rocket will become visible in the southeast sky about 10 degrees above the horizon one to two minutes after launch. Look for a glowing trail of light that makes an arc in the sky."

I thought I saw something fairly unspectacular, and then it was gone.

The rocket was set to launch at 6:45 pm from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia in a mission to meet up with the International Space Station (ISS) and resupply cargo on November 2. Coincidentally, a few minutes later, the ISS itself was slated to pass over DC.

Head back, camera out, not catching a thing, I made myself dizzy watching it pass, and I made myself giddy with the thrill of it all.

Granted, I did not see anything inherently exciting. A bright light in the darkening sky held a steady course heading southeast, and then, it was gone. If I hadn't known either was happening, I might not have left the house at all. If I had left the house, I probably would not have though to look up, to wait and watch, but I did know. I pulled on a coat. I pulled out my camera, and I went to the roof to see something rare.

As it turns out, the launch was rescheduled for 6:22 Tuesday night (due to a boat in the vicinity of the launch site). I still don't know quite where to look, but I will be somewhere outside, camera in hand, watching the night sky. This time, I might even take my phone, my iPod, or some other time telling device. But that doesn't matter. Maybe it'll be great. Maybe it'll be singularly unspectacular. Maybe it will be postponed again and I will forget. For now, it is enough to try.

So, the sun rose today... It was a little cloudy, a little windy, and awfully cold. There wasn't much to see at all and then, a flock of birds flew past as I snapped a picture. It wasn't a great shot, but it was mine. That moment with the sun and the birds and the wind. My memory. Part of my life.

Every day, I write a story, an essay, a reflection on something happening in my own life, and every day, I struggle to find something to say. As my mother recently noted, I have covered a lot of topics, and in 9+ years of mostly daily writing, one is bound to do so. Something like 3,338 published posts (outside of this one) live on this site.

When I started 9+ years ago, I did not set out to write 3,338 posts. At that point, I grappled with the idea of writing just one. And then another. And then another. Three thousand three hundred and forty eight days later, I am still wrestling with the idea.

Part of the problem, as I have written before, is that there are things in my life that I just don’t want to share. Some things, I just want to keep to myself. Relationships. Family. Things that involve other people because their stories are not really mine to share. Likewise, I am not comfortable writing about work. This is not the appropriate forum for airing my professional life; though, I can say that I do love my job. I feel very fortunate to have found it… Have I ever told that story?

Almost 13 years ago, my roommate at the time (who was dangerously close to becoming my common-law wife because we spent so many years living together and whom I haven’t seen in more than a decade) decided to celebrate her 30th birthday in her favorite place: The Bahamas. She and friend were seated together toward the back of the plane, and I was on my own near the front and seated beside a woman who looked decidedly nervous.

Determined to distract her from whatever made her clutch the armrest so tightly, I started talking to the woman, the stranger. As it turned out, her discomfort was warranted a million times over; she and her husband were headed to his son’s funeral. No parent should ever have to bury a child.

We talked for a while in the short space between National and Charlotte where we both changed planes, and I think that maybe I made her laugh just a bit. (Despite the heavy topics I frequently cover, I am really quite funny.) She smiled, at least, and as we disembarked, she turned to hand me a business card.

“I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know if you’re happy with your job, but I think you’d be a great fit for our company.”

She was right. About a month ago, I left that company (the one my seatmate suggested) to take a job with my client, doing the same work as a direct employee. I had been there for more than 12 and a half years. I still love the work.

Maybe I have written that story before. Almost everyone who knows me has heard it once or twice or so it feels – familiar, worn, like a favorite pair of jeans. I try not to tell it that often, though. I don’t want to wear a hole in the memory and again, I like to keep some things to myself.

In the past 9+ years of writing, I have found myself talking less, telling fewer stories, and listening more, which is funny. I almost always have thoughts on a subject. There are always things I want to say. Granted, I have started to slur and stutter, which is incredibly frustrating when trying to speak, but more than that, I figure I ought to get over myself and let someone else talk. I can write my stories later.

Then, I sit at a computer and wonder what in the world I can say. How can I be interesting? What would I want to say that anyone else might want to hear? Read? Consider for the amount of time it takes to get from Once Upon a Time to The End?

I start typing.

Somehow, as I write, stories form. Lately, it seems that all I write deals with big heavy topics like health, money and an uncertain future, but when I look at the screen, I really just want to write light, happy things. I smile a lot. I think the world is truly a beautiful place, even with illness, with war, with helium and clown shortages.

Lately, I have considered how much my life has changed in the past few months (with 100 happy days) and the past year and a half (with my diagnosis), but I don’t know that I have ever really written about the past 9+ years or how the writing itself has shaped my life.

Writing is considered a healthy habit. It helps people express their emotions and think through situations and experiences. Studies have show that people who write sleep better and it’s possible that they heal faster, too. Physically. Outside of the health aspects, though, telling stories every day has meant that I have needed live a life worth telling. I have done more, seen more, lived more than I ever imagined. I have written from all seven continents including the use of a fairly expensive satellite phone from Antarctica. I have grown up a lot.

A million stories live inside my mind. Some are n0t really worth a post of their own. The smell of caramelizing onions, cornbread, roasted squash with sage and thyme that I bought in Uruguay fill my house, head and memory, but I don’t know how to weave them together in a tale. Not yet. I can only write about answering letters from prisoners so many times before I start to sound like a broken record, even to me, and regular long walks and long talks on gorgeous autumn days don’t necessarily warrant mention at all. They just make life better.

Life is not all sunshine and sausages, but I am up before sunrise every day now and it still seems a marvel. Every single day. I don’t think I can write stories about it for the next 3,348 days, but I imagine I am going to sit behind a computer and try awfully hard.

Walking past a metro stop on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, I considered what would happen if I were to vomit in the trash bin near the top of the escalator.

“Ebola,” I decided. “People would think I had Ebola.”

Of course, they would be wrong. There was absolutely no way I could have contracted the disease, but the current media frenzy had people thinking, wondering and worrying. (A friend recently canceled a family trip to Florida because she didn’t want to be locked in a germ-filled plane.) Public vomiting could definitely give rise to panic so I concentrated very hard on not tossing my cookies. I kept walking.

It was not an idle concern. I worried that I might not be able to make it home without getting sick. I had eaten too much, taken a bus, and lived in a nearly perpetual state of nausea. Really, it was more the last one than anything else.

Three quarters of the things that I take to stay healthy - both of my medicines and one of two vitamin supplements - cause nausea. I had only just started eating again when I started the second medication, which not only nauseates me but also suppresses my appetite and I lost the few pounds I had regained.

Nobody would look at me and think “Hey, that girl is totally wasting away. She should eat a sandwich.”

Of course, that is a horribly judgmental and shaming sort of remark. Nobody should ever think something like that, but I am not wasting away. Honestly, I could lose five or 10 pounds and still maintain a healthy weight. This is just not the way to do it. In fact, I have stopped losing weight altogether, which is somewhat frightening.

I work long hours, volunteer frequently and walk something between five and 10 miles a day, recently more as I train for a 3-day walk against breast cancer. I need more than a couple of pieces of fruit to sustain me, but I cannot stomach the idea. My body may be slipping into something called “starvation mode,” a state in which a body gets superefficient at making the most of the calories it does get from food and drink and starts eating into lean tissue or muscle to provide some of the calories it needs to function, resulting in muscle loss.

I continue to pack my regular breakfast and lunch, but it takes me a couple of days to eat them. My coworkers and friends have taken to telling me to eat. Regularly. And chastising me when I don’t. I, in turn, drink ever more ginger tea to settle my stomach and have adopted a strange obsession with the food, shopping at the grocery store on an almost daily basis, picking up high-calorie comfort foods along with the ingredients for ever-more-elaborate dishes, praying for the right combination, hoping something will stick.

Oatmeal cream pies! Candy corn! Rotini with roasted butternut squash and goat cheese topped with caramelized onions, apples and lightly salted, roasted squash seeds!

Yesterday, I accepted invitations to three separate brunches, and I went to all three. I even ate at two of them (with several hours and several miles of walking in between) with a little granola and fruit here, potato pancakes there and great conversation at all. Then, I went home and made dinner.

Yesterday, for the first time in more than a month, I ate three full (albeit small) meals, and I came dangerously close to tossing my cookies (granola and potato pancakes) in a public environment.

Some time soon, something will have to give. While I rather enjoy eating treats I have skipped for years, I might have to start carrying air sickness bags to avoid causing public panic.

I definitely do not have Ebola.

It all sounded much better five months ago. New routes from Dulles! A $30 promotional fare!

At three o’clock in the morning, my interest waned. At four o’clock in the morning, waiting 15 minutes in a dark, shared van for a pair of silly young women who failed to answer their phone before jerking across the city, making a few more stops and heading to the airport, my interest revolted.

At the gate, waiting for my (delayed) flight, I wondered if I should ask a flight attendant for an airsickness bag before taking my (middle) seat. I could no longer count on finding one in the seat pocket. Based on the restrictions placed on that $30 fare, I almost wondered if I’d even have a seat.

With its debut at Dulles and introducing new routes, Frontier airlines offered the public $30 flights (roundtrip) to a handful of destinations for a very limited time. One night in May, my Facebook filled with news of people looking for flights. Available dates were limited and hours even worse, but somehow, I found one. I managed to book a flight from Washington to Minneapolis late in October.

Of course, Minneapolis wasn’t exactly at the top of most people’s lists. I, however, had several great reasons for going – my mom, my sister, my nieces, aunt, uncle and cousin, friends, friends with a new baby. I would even manage to see my niece for a few minutes on the morning of her 13th birthday before heading back to the airport. Over the weekend, we could find her gift together because haven knows that I couldn’t bring a gift with me.

Everything required for four nights and five days needed to fit in a single small bag. Not a carry on. Not a checked bag. A “personal item.” A purse. A backpack. Something less than 18” by 14” by 8”. Laptop, charger and camera. Medicine. A toothbrush. Deodorant. Underwear. In the space that was left, I wedged something to wear, breathing thanks for the fact that my clothes are small and planning to beg, borrow or steal anything missing from my family. Mom even offered makeup and hair products, which I never use. We could play dress up all weekend!

My personal item, i.e. my whole world for the next few days, needed to fit under the seat in front of me. The middle seat in front of me. Where I would be eating my knees. Selecting a seat (like taking a carryon or checking a bag) would have added to the cost. I gave up the idea of something with leg room, something other than a middle seat, but at least it was a direct flight.

I didn't need a 30 dollar fare. I could afford to pay full price. Though, I really didn't have to pay anything at all with nearly half a million airline miles in the bank. The restrictions on the cheap flight almost made reconsider its "value" but on the other side, I would see family and friends. Temperatures would be unseasonably warm, and checking it out reminded me of other trips, places and stories.

In my weather app, the list of cities continued to grow. Washington. DC, of course, topped the list, along with Minneapolis, New York and San Diego. Next, though, Kathmandu brought a smile to my mouth. Melbourne. Bangkok.

A little bit of discomfort really didn't matter. I was lucky to have seen so much of the world and I have the chance to spend a long weekend with loved ones. Definitely a win, at any price.

That fact bears repeating. One year, one pill = 68 percent of the Census Bureau's per capita income WITH insurance.

Health care is the number one cause of bankruptcies in the United States. More than those from credit card debt and unpaid mortgages, bankruptcy from medical bills affected nearly 2 million people last year. Outside of bankruptcy, about 56 million adults – more than 20 percent of the population between the ages of 19 and 64 – struggled with health-care-related bills last year, according to NerdWallet Health as reported by CNBC, and having health insurance doesn’t save people from financial hardship.

My medicine isn’t supposed to fix anything. I have an incurable progressive and debilitating disorder. The capsule that I take is supposed to slow down the progression and disability. It won’t do anything to the damage I already have. It won’t make me better. The second pill that I take helps make me feel slightly better in light of that damage. (It calms my nerves to address pain and fatigue, and it keeps me awake in good ways.)

I did pick up the prescription that controlled some of my symptoms. I had only three pills left and hadn’t taken any for a couple of days, pacing myself, trying to make them last until the prior approval came through. When I realized the cost, though, I went home, sank into a chair and considered my options. I could use one of the online tools to find a pharmacy that offered the medicine for less. I could call my neurologist and ask for a cheaper alternative. I could just stop taking the medicine and give up feeling slightly better.

After a couple of hours of reading through paperwork, online with my insurance company and their pharmacy division, and a number of phone calls, I found a much more affordable option. I would still pay over $100 for the prescription that controlled my symptoms but the price of the disease-modifying one would drop from almost $1,600 a month to $35.

“Do people already know this?” I wondered. “How do people figure this out?”

It had taken weeks of coordination to get the prior approval (after months with my prior insurance) and hours of sorting through benefits and pharmacy information to find something I could afford.

We didn't expect it to be good, not in the "Academy Award winning, this is going to change the way we see the world" kind of way. We just wanted a decent scare on a rainy Monday afternoon. Unfortunately, outside of a few cheap thrills, Annabelle failed to deliver.

With a three-day weekend and gloomy weather, my nephew and I made plans to see Annabelle, the prequel to last year's horror hit The Conjuring. The boy and I had seen The Conjuring together, deconstructing it after the film and determining what we thought worked and what we considered poor execution. We talked it out. We decided we weren't all that scared. We liked it enough, though, to follow it up with Annabelle, the story of the evil doll shown at the start and end of it all.

In the new film, a dashing young doctor has found the perfect gift for his pregnant wife, a rare vintage doll in a white wedding dress to complement her collection. Unfortunately, the dolls draw the attention of a home invader, a member of a satanic cult intent on death and destruction. Gristly violence ensues with blood, shrieks and tears, and the invaders leave more than terror in their wake. They have conjured something purely evil, and all seem attached to that doll.

The movie borrows heavily from better horror films and depends on cheap jolts rather than building the story line, characters or plot. There were a few moments when we jumped in our seats (generally when someone was flying across a room) but the film soon passed from our minds. It didn't have staying power. We weren't really that scared.

Far more frightening were multiple signs saying that children under the age of 6 are not allowed into Rated R films. Frankly, I wondered whether I should be taking the 16-year-old and checked with his dad before we went. When he wanted to bring a friend, I asked if her parents were fine with it, too.

I could not imagine that any child aged six or younger could fully understand that the doll wasn't really the source of the terror. The doll was really only tangentially linked. Movies with things children associate with their own life - dolls, clowns, other children (like the little girls in The Shining) - could be particularly terrifying and hard to understand at such a young age. Nevertheless, there they were. In the seats down the row, a preschooler sat between a pair of adults. A few rows in front of us sat another.

While the movie itself didn't provide a proper fright, we still managed to find one in the theater.

Submitted by: (via BaronXRojo)

Tagged: racism , panda , wisdom , hacked irl , g rated , win

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Apparently, yesterday was the last of my happy days. In a flash, three months have passed. I have found and shared at least one happy thing for each of the last 100 days. I made it! I have not yet completely alienated family or friends with inane pictures plus a hashtag! Rather, a few people told me that my pictures made their own days brighter, and I want to keep posting, with or without a hashtag. I am not ready for my happy days to end.

If I had realized that yesterday marked the last of my hundred, I might have considered something with a little more flash. I might have found or tried to do something more than enjoy finding time to sort through laundry and my photographs, but perhaps the unknowing made it more real, more appropriate, more me. I really was happy with a little time for reflection and order on a cool rainy day. I don't have nearly enough of that.

I did not know I had reached my goal until I opened my calendar sometime late afternoon. As of today, I had a clear slate at six where once I had a reminder to post because 100 days ago I created an event just for me. #100happydays. For the past 99, my calendar sent me a daily reminder to find happiness.

Some days of the past 100, I struggled to find something to shoot and something to say. Some days, I couldn't think of a single happy thing and posted something small. The days weren't bad; they just were. Some days, I weighed all of the happiness around me and deliberated over which one to pick - just one! The project reminded me to be present and positive.

Posting a picture a day did not change my life. I cannot run faster or jump higher now. My head isn't fixed. I have not fallen in love or discovered the meaning of life (42), but maybe I have enjoyed and appreciated the world around me just a little bit more.

During the past 100 days, I have made my first foray into home ownership and moved from two bedrooms to one. It included the end of a relationship and the end of a job. I started a new one, a new job, at least, which was the old one with a new dynamic and employer, earlier hours and increased responsibility. I did not start another relationship. New medication yielded adverse side effects, and I fought headaches and nausea for 24 of the 100 days. Someone tried to steal my car. I traveled to Croatia. I turned a year older.

The past 100 days haven't exactly been easy. They have actually been downright hard. Maybe the project did change my life - I don't know where I would be if I hadn't focused on finding the good in life. (I imagine a big hot mess.) 

Even though the "official" 100 days have ended, I plan to keep searching for happiness in my daily life, even when it's really just finding the time to finish my laundry and sort through pictures of a lunar eclipse.