Day 244 - the results are in.

I bet you're interested to find out how my experiment in being happy everyone I speak with is alive went. It turns out to be too exhausting to communicate that level of thrill to everyone. I was able to think to myself about half the time in the morning, "Hey, look! [insert name] is here! Isn't it wonderful to see them?" and it was nice to think about that, but to communicate it to the person? I'm not sure I could do that and still have enough energy left to do, say, my job. By the afternoon, I was too desperate to be done working for the week to be able to bring the mental energy required. I think I will run the experiment for the rest of the week and see how it feels after I've been doing it awhile. Does it get easier? What will happen the first time I remind myself how happy I am to see someone I'm not happy to see (doesn't happy often, but from time to time)? Will anyone I interact with notice a difference? What about the people I interact with in real life who read this--will they notice or will it just make things weird? Enquiring minds can't wait to find out. I'll keep you posted.

Otherwise, today was a very pleasant day for me. (On a This American Life segment recently someone described a toddler's life as being essentially a long string of good days, each one pretty much like the others. Sometimes I wonder how much different my life is from a toddler's life as it is usually pleasant and most days go kinda similarly.) Home, House, hospital, home. Delivery pizza for dinner but tonight is a red-letter night because it's Music Man, Jr., the world premiere. Tomorrow is a matinee performance and then it's all done. All that work for two magic performances at school and two in public.

I do not have a segue into the cute picture that I found and want to share, but here it is:

Perhaps I should become a dog blogger?

Tomorrow, I am hoping for a successful finish to Music Man, Junior for Ellie. For all of us, I will wish for satisfaction from our activities.

Day 243 - labs

The big news for today is that I got labs earlier this week and spoke with Dr. Hill about them. You may recall, I had labs in mid Jan and my platelets were like 30,000 too low. We repeated them a week later and they were like 15,000 too low. We gave it two weeks this time and they were  a little bit better, but *still* not normal. What is their deal? John's best theory is that I probably am fighting off some virus or the other and my marrow is just very sensitive to these things (remember last August? September? where one virus was enough to cause my counts to drop; we did a bone marrow; everything was fine) which is neither good nor bad, unless we are talking about my general stress level. I wish I was the one with the equanimous marrow, but I have bone marrow that pouts if someone in an SUV muscles ahead of it at the toll booth. Perhaps I can get my marrow to start meditating. Anyway, the plan is to recheck the labs again in two weeks.

I didn't really talk about it much here, but I had gotten myself sort of worked up about that set of labs. I'm not usually one to get too worried about things outside my control. Really. I don't see that as conflicting with being a catastrophizer. I don't worry about a lot of things, but when I worry, I do an excellent job of it. It is actually really easy to see right now while I am in the lull between getting worked up because I am about to have labs and getting worked up because I just had labs, that it was actually not all that useful to be so worked up. It felt so clear when I woke in the middle of the night after talking with John: just don't be so worked up; it's really not helpful; next time just remember how much energy and time you wasted thinking about it and how much more fun it would be to think about something else and then you should be able to stop being worried. When I woke the next morning, it didn't seem like such a foolproof plan: just don't do it. OK, then, Nancy Reagan.

In news of the day, I worked another grown up length day today and felt like I did a bunch of good stuff. I still see people every day who are excited to see me just because I'm alive. It's really a nice feeling. I wish I could bottle some of it to distribute back out to the world. I mean, really, every time we see anyone, we're glad they're still alive and didn't get hit by a bus on their way to see us, but I don't have that same feeling. What would it be like if every time I saw someone I thought about how glad I was that they were still alive? I wonder how long I could sustain that in a day before my attention wandered off?

For tomorrow, for myself, I will wish that I can remember how miraculous it is that we are all here all day. For you, I will wish you can feel how happy I am that you are here.