Friends and fresh air today. The new swing at the Sharecropper’s Cabin made the morning perfect. Matt took these photos. I celebrated four years of AVM-ness by driving home.  I didn’t like it, and was beyond grateful and relieved to finally pull into the driveway, but . . . I did it.  I’ll try again [...]

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Despite all the grousing about 2009, there were a lot of things this past year to appreciate, like: (Oct. 13) The way they talk.  Carmen saying Cinder-re-wra and lello (yellow); David building wooden block fences for his hossies.  I wish I could follow them around with a recorder all day.  "You scrubbled in my book!" [...]

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I’m sitting in Matt’s new Honda Fit.  We bought the Fit when we realized he had been driving our 2001 Saturn SL without gear oil for, oh, who knows how long?  Ever since the babies came (and the rest of the chaos that happened after) checking the Saturn’s gear oil level had fallen low, low, [...]

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We chose to spend Christmas Day at home this year like we have since 2004, when I was too hugely pregnant to travel safely and comfortably.  Once the babies were born it wasn’t any easier; they hated the car and would cry until we scooped them out at our destination.  Post-AVM, now I’m the one [...]

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After lying low, zoning out on old movies, and napping all day, I thought I had the worst of the Carmen flu licked. Until a little while ago. It’s awfully hard to get a good night’s sleep when you’re coughing your throat raw.  It’s even harder when your fever, just about gone all day, is [...]

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Just before dinner yesterday evening I walked over to visit a neighbor and express my downright contrition about a mistake I made via e-mail.  She and her husband invited me in, and we chatted while they fed their toddler dinner and cooked a meal of their own. About an hour later, I sat down at [...]

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I was trying to prepare for tomorrow.  With just a few minutes left until bedtime, I sat in front of the computer, writing out a list while David and Matt worked on a large puzzle.  Carmen sat at the keyboard and “played along” to the MIDI of Carmen’s toreador song, holding her notes long and [...]

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