The Weekend Was All about the Bathroom, Really

I won't be the first one to tell you that life has a funny way of turning itself upside down on you.

For, it turns out, those infants you lost so much sleep over . . .the toddlers you chased about . . . the tweens you drove from pillar to post. . . those very teenagers you blogged about just to save your sanity. . . One day you turn around and find that they indeed grow up and become beautiful, determined, and successful young women.

Drip Dry and I took a trip to visit our three daughters who happened to be together this weekend.  Veggie, a first-year medical student; Trigger, in her first year of a master's program in school psychology; and Ponzi, a very-recent college graduate - the completion of her undergraduate degree hideously delayed by the onset of various autoimmune diseases.

I just love seeing them together.  United.  Supportive.  .Optimistic.  Confident.  Those girls have overcome so many obstacles life has placed in their way.  I don't believe that there is another feeling that can compare to it.

Except my love of the bathroom at my hotel.

Now I know that I am supposed to be practicing Zen detachment techniques.  But how can any living, breathing human being remain detached about a hotel bathroom as beautifully Zen as this?  The simple square sink?  The gorgeously shower with special side jets?  Those washcloths fashioned into a lotus design?

I believe I was in love.  So attached/detached to that hotel room that I'm scheming ways to go back.

In love with my family.  And in love with my bathroom.

How Does One Blog These Days?

As many of you may realize, I've been out of the blogging business for a while now and feel just a bit like a fish out of water.  How does one blog these days?  And what happened to all of those other blogging voices I used to hear?  I carefully searched for the 109 blogs which I used to follow on a daily basis and, to my dismay, discovered that a mere 36 of them are still up and running.  Think about it.  The majority of these were humor blogs.  Has life become less humorous?  More serious?

Or did my fellow bloggers encounter obstacles like I did?  Did life rise up and hit them with an enormous whammy?  Do they find it now impossible to write about their experiences with illnesses?  Grief?  Loneliness?  How would the funny lady talk about an alcoholic husband?  Drug addicted teenager?  How would a dependable jokester admit to the world that his wife has left him?

Maybe we were always blogging to cover our different sadnesses in some way.  I know that I was writing to save my own sanity.  Perhaps the same is true now.

But part of our human-ness is that we change and grow with life's experiences.  There is no fixed or unchangeable self.  We cannot control what comes our way, but we can control our reaction to it.  Adversity makes us stronger, more compassionate, and allows us to rise above our circumstances.

No comparisons, no advertising, no comments.  This is what I hope my bloggy life will embrace now.  I hope to convince you that, although my disease has limited me somewhat, my disease and I are not one.  I intend to advocate at times, inform at times, and certainly complain at times.  But I hope to still be able to find the humor in life again.

Aaaaaah, humor. . .