Barnes & Noble

Haven't been in a while, so I stopped in today after lunch with Bridget (gotta love an extra day off!). I picked up Florence + The Machine (craving Kiss With a Fist) and think that may end up in heavy rotation in the car. I think this is the year I continue with the trend of reading biographies / autobiographies, so I grabbed two. "The Pact" is about three guys from inner-city Newark who decide to beat the odds and become doctors, and "My First Five Husbands...and the Ones Who Got Away" by Rue McClanahan. What the guy who cashed me out must think... I think this is worse than when I bought "The Diary of Anne Frank," "Grandma's Dead: Breaking Bad News With Baby Animals" and a Flogging Molly cd.

Why I Love Mom...

Email from Mom on New Year's Day...no wonder where I get this personality from...

Hi,

Just wanted you to know that we got bad pizza from Jets tonight. I have a piece of the pizza we originally got in the refrigerator. We returned the rest when they brought us a second pizza. The second pizza smelled bad so we didn't even taste it, just put it in the garage. I called Jets back after the second bad pizza and of course no one else has complained. I spoke to Candace who said she is the owner's daughter on the second call. I also sent an email to their customer service on their web site.

Nancy was here too and had some of the bad pizza. If we die or become incoherent, you know what's going on.

Love,

Mom

Amazing...

...how a few small steps can be so incredible and significant.
...how three short months can seem so incredibly long.
...how I'm reminded constantly how determined and stubborn he really is.
...how that determination and stubbornness have seen him through this far this fast.

It's amazing that everyone's acceptance of a horrible incident comes at such varying stages. Limitations I accepted when it first happened are ideas that others wouldn't consider. But their belief that everything would be just fine is one of the few things that allowed them to get through the first giant phase of hard parts. It got them up the first hill only to be left staring up at a mountain.

How do you recover from every limb in your body being broken except one? How are you able to soldier on with hardly ever questioning why this happened? How do you accept that you'll probably never be able to do certain things with your son when those things are such a huge part of your relationship with him? How do you stay strong for everyone? So many questions I'll probably never ask him because I already know the answer is the same to each one, and it's so ingrained in who we are and how we've been raised. You just do.

Congratulations on the most recent milestone. There're many, many more to come.