Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

Jennifer and I spent all of our 10 days in Utah visiting family and friends. We of course spent as much time as we could with our granddaughter, Rose. It was wonderful to see her again. Chelsea and Josh are settling into their new home on Ogden's East bench. Chelsea has started her residency (she delivered 10 babies in her first three days at the hospital), and Josh is working on the house and job-hunting. I spent a couple of days working with Josh rebuilding the steps up to their back deck. It was hot in Utah, approaching 100 degrees each day, but the humidity was below 15% which made it somewhat bearable. Nevertheless, my stamina was significantly lower than Josh's, and I was grateful to take breaks watching Rose while standing under the cooling flow if their swamp cooler.

Jennifer and I had rented a 3 bedroom condo in Ogden, and we were joined in Utah by my mom and stepdad, Tina and Ralph, as well as my sister, Ravonne, and Spencer. My brother, Art, and his family live in Park City, Utah. One of the reasons for our Utah trip was to pull off an 80th birthday party for my mom and Ralph. We 3 kids had arranged for an outdoor pavilion, sent out invitations to family and friends, arranged for food, and got the place ready. On the afternoon of Saturday, July 5, it all came together for a delightful afternoon. When my mom and Ralph approached, we three kids got down on our knees and bowed as if to the Pharoah. My mom snorted and said she had to have a picture. We said we'd do that once every 80 years. More than 100 friends and extended family showed up to visit and reminisce.  It was a wonderful way to honor two great people.

Earlier that day, Jennifer and I attended a 37 year reunion of the Valley Jr. High School class of 1977. Valley was a K-9 school in Ogden Valley, where I grew up. There were about 50 kids in our class, and we went to school together for all those years. Two of my classmates (Jodi and Scott) married and have stayed in Huntsville. Jodi read on my blog that I was coming to Utah in July, and decided to pull together a reunion of our class. Brad, another classmate, generously made his Huntsville home and yard available. About half of our class was able to attend. I had not seen many of them since 1980, when we all graduated from high school. It was nice to see everyone, catch up, and reestablish old friendships. Thank you to Jodi, Scott, and Brad, for pulling that together.

The rest of the time we spent visiting with Jennifer's family -- almost all of them were in town for the 4th of July weekend -- or visiting with my family. I also was able to catch up with other old friends. I have not lived in Utah since 1985, but childhood friendships run deep. Nevertheless, by the end of our stay, I was tired of traveling and ready to head home. The morning of our flight to DC, I awoke with an upset stomach. I had caught a bug that was going through some of our families, which made for a long flight home. It's still with me three days later.

It's always good to come home after bring on the road. There's nothing like your own bed, pillow, home, and stuff to provide a sense of normalcy. But home also brings its own issues: our clothes dryer stopped working the day after we got home, and I spent several hours taking it apart and testing every circuit and relay with my volt meter. It's either the printed circuit board or the motor, so I think fixing it will cost about the same as a new one. We got 14 years of hard use out of it, so I'm only slightly put out. And I still have a long to do list, should I ever find the motivation.

While Jennifer and I were gone, Kirsten and Garrett had to fend for themselves. Kirsten was used to it and did fine, she tells us, but Garrett usually would get so busy playing video games that he would forget to eat. Kirsten told us that she would get home from work at 11 pm and Garrett would look up from the tv, realize how late it was, and it would dawn on him that he had not eaten. He would then fall to the ground like a World Cup player taking a dive, rolling in the agony of hunger pains, and would beg Kirsten to fix him something to eat. Sometimes she would throw a piece of fruit at him, but other times she would cook him something. In her big sister omniscience, she has decreed that her 16 year old brother needs to grow up. I have not yet received Garrett's side of the story, because this week he has been attending the summer high adventure with his boy scout troop. In any event, they both survived the absence of their parents for three weeks.

While I get to be a homebody for the next few weeks, Jennifer unpacked and then immediately repacked to go to West Virginia, where she will spend a few days with a group of her friends. They'd been planning that gathering for a while, and she knew that there would be a short turnaround time. Hopefully she can get some R&R in the Appalachians.

My next CT scan is on Tuesday, July 15. I'll post the results when I get them. I've spent little time worrying or wondering what the results will be. I fully accept that I don't control my prognosis, so whatever comes will come. I no longer have the unthinking expectation or blase assumption, held by  so many Americans in their 40's or 50's, that they will live into their 70's, 80's, or 90's. As I tease a third year of life from metastatic cancer, I am increasingly grateful for each day that passes, each friend I can greet, each relative I can hug. The absence of something, or the demand for which there is no certain supply, increases the value of a good. So it is with life in the face of metastatic cancer.