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I start this post with cheer. I haven’t been writing like I’d planned due to the events of last year. So I’m feeling rusty putting taps to keys. But I’m filled with gratitude. Now that this has become more of an annual thing (that will change one of these days… I hope), it’s become my time to reflect on the previous 12 months. And that makes me realize how much has changed and the extraordinary growth that has happened to all four of us. Lucia’s struggles and subsequent diagnosis taught us some big lessons. And, as parents, they weren’t all easy pills to swallow. All of us gained so much from the going through. It’s actually pretty beautiful to think about now that it’s in the rearview. And I thank you all for bearing witness and supporting us through one of the hardest times we’ve endured as a family.

Okay. Time for the updates. The biggest change of the year was my return to the IT channel. My career path took another unexpected turn due to the very unfortunate state of mental health care in our country. Our insurance covered literally nothing of the extensive care Lucia required, so I started a job hunt at the end of January. With an amazing network of incredible peeps, I had a lead and then a job within a month. Miracle of all miracles. I’m now working at Comcast Business as a marketing manager supporting national and international partners in the indirect channel. And I love it. It’s been tumultuous as most corporate jobs nowadays are. I’ve endured two rounds of layoffs and am on my third boss since I started, but it feels like a family and I’ve made so many lifelong friends. I am incredibly fortunate.

We didn’t do much personal traveling this year outside of multiple trips to South Carolina and a couple to Montana. Kenny and I instituted ‘mama trips’ much to our mothers’ collective delight. We will make our third trip back for Christmas marking the first time we’ve been home for the holidays in 20 years. Really hard to believe.

Kenny and I took Sella to visit colleges in Oregon in February and she feel in love with the foggy, green moss-covered state and the craggy shoreline. We left with her heart squarely set on Oregon State and dreaming of ocean and snowboarding within easy daily reach. Though current focuses also include UNC Chapel Hill, Gonzaga and University of Colorado. (Guess which one is our vote? 🤔) Time will tell.

Kenny had a work trip in June to Prague and loved it so much. I was so jealous! But we will make it back together soon. A year without much travel has us set on getting as much in next year as we possibly can.

In March, we lost our sweet Mabel. That dog was just so special. It’s hard to put into words. She just had these eyes that felt like they could see into your soul. The week before she died, I was sick and in bed so we spent those days cuddled together spooning. She had to be touching you at all times. It was so weird because she was running the field one day and — literally — the next was gone. She had been making some odd noises, and that Sunday she just seemed really off. We thought she had a cold. Kenny took her to the emergency vet alone expecting to get her on meds and be right back. Hours later he came home while they ran more tests and did scans. I went back with him to pick her up and that’s when they told us. Lymphoma. The girls came and there wasn’t a dry eye in that place. Even in her waning hours she found her way into every heart on that staff. I held her alone with the vet when she passed. No one else could bear it. I’m crying again just writing this. We will miss her forever. Sweet girl.

Here is something really crazy. We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary in August. When I think about three decades it barely seems real. And it felt like a perfect capstone to the tests we’ve been put to over the last couple of years. We threw a big party in the newly renovated back yard, rented a fancy restroom trailer, made a huge pot of lowcountry boil, found a signature cocktail dating back to a 1700s Charleston military unit, got our friend Shayne to bring out the live music and had an incredible day filled with so much love. College roomie, Mellody, and her husband, Timmy, flew in and we put them right to work setting up and making homemade biscuits. (Mel brought her own flour and got some pretty weird looks from TSA.) It was such a festive day with friends dropping by to help. I felt like we were in the movie Steel Magnolias. We of course forgot to invite some pretty key people, which made us so sad to discover. But we are going to do it again and soon. The take-away was that life is meant to be celebrated. So much sadness surrounds us and it is so important to find joy. Thank you to all who made us feel so full to overflowing.

Lucia is still in Colorado and completed her Intensive Outpatient Program in July. She seems so happy and at peace even with the stress of work and supporting herself while she figures out her next step and career choice. She has found new love and they are currently living and working in a little mountain town called Allenspark. The community up there has embraced them so fully and it makes us so happy to see. I never thought I’d see that girl who loves the beach and hates the cold find so much happiness in a little Colorado mountain town, but wonders never cease! She is planning to get certified as a cybersecurity analyst while she decides on a degree plan. Which, I mean.. so cool, right?

Sella has a severe case of senioritis and is currently frying her brain for finals week. I seriously saw sparks when she was working on her physics homework. And she just desected her first cat in anatomy. It made her cry when she found pretty well-formed kittens. But she came home the next day all fired up about the heart and lungs. So, yea. I think she has a future in medicine of some sort. I was holding back gags and trying not to hurl. She wrapped up her softball career in the fall and it was bittersweet. And her beloved job at Murphy’s, the local watering hole, ended when the owners decided to sell. It was a rough start to the school year. But with college apps and a pretty full school course schedule, plus the many extra curriculars she is finding by joining friends on campus at CU (insert parental chagrin), we don’t see a whole lot of her. I’m in denial that we are going to be a kid free home in a few short months. How?

In July, I had one of my hare-brained schemes and found a puppy. When I scheduled the facetime with the breeder, Kenny knew there was no way it wasn’t happening. Born in Iowa, our next challenge was how to get her home. First, Kenny and Sella were going to fly there to pick her up. Then Sella saw on snapmaps that one of her friends was in Iowa on vacation. She jokingly reached out to see if he wanted to pick up the puppy, and his family was all heck yea. 24 hours later she was home. Hazel Mae, a flat coat goldendoodle. She is so freaking cute and also a special breed of demon dog. We pretty much all had amnesia about raising a puppy. This little one rarely ever has an empty mouth. Shoes (on foot, off foot, trying to tie), fire starters, wrapped Christmas gifts, cell phones, stainless steel water bottles full of water, coasters, socks, washcloths, pillows, candles, rugs, TV remotes, hats, gloves, sweaters, jackets, backpacks, calculators, pencils, pens, tape, paper, magnets, firewood, rocks, Gemma – poor Gemma, blankets, her foot, her tail, leashes, arms, ankles, shirts that you are wearing, pants you are trying to put on. And so much more. She’s a constant source of laughter and annoyance and a big ole bundle of love. She has definitely helped refill the Mabel-sized hole in our hearts.

So I will close with this. Being right here right now, living in his beautiful state where I can head to the mountains for hikes on the daily, surrounded by a mass of amazing friends and neighbors, with two girls who are both at last thriving and happy, and a husband who drives me crazy, but puts up with all of my willy-nilly that covers the porch with daily deliveries and my cuckoo “Look! We just bought a puppy!” zaniness – and has done so for 37 great years… well, I have so much gratitude and love and happiness in my heart.

I hope to have a humorous post to write much sooner than 12 months from now. But we will see what life decides for me. Wishing everyone near and far with sadness and grief or loss or emptiness, so much love and want to say that you are not alone in this. Merriest of holidays to you all. From us.

PS: Kenny wishes me to add that contrary to what is printed on our Christmas card, he is NOT 57. Yet. (Oops.)

TODAY’S THEME SONG: “And I wish you all the love in the world. But most of all, I wish it from myself.”

-Fleetwood Mac (From our first dance at our wedding thirty years ago.)

I promised a blog in my Christmas card post, then realized I could literally smear shit on a piece of paper and that would just about cover it. 

But since I have an aversion to bodily excrement of all types (except pimple popping and ear wax), this will have to suffice.

I’ll start with saying that by month three of last year, I was preparing to shed the skin of over-stressed marketing exec and was starting to manifest my lifelong dream. We had built a writing studio in the backyard and I’d let Martha loose on growing starts for the flower garden I could see from my desk inside.

I could already picture myself sipping herbal tea with the french doors thrown open wide. Taking mental breaks walking around the newly planted flower beds. My view of the mountains changes with the seasons, but is miraculous even with a power line obstruction.

We had celebrated Lucia’s 21st birthday together at heaven on earth. On the way to her birthday dinner, we ran smack into a MOOSE. And work had bubbled up like a sulfur burp on day one. Thereby cementing my decision to move on and implement decompression. I happened to have had one kick ass boss up until right before the very end, so I was feeling self-back-patty for finally having a boss for more than five minutes.

So after picking up the last box of belongings from the newly vacated job, I was settling in and ready to roll.

The bean, Kenny and I departed a few days later for spring break in Cali. As the sushi, seafood and sun fest was drawing to a close, our phones started lighting up with news of a fire starting less than two miles west of our house with flames visible. Given that only three short months prior, over 1,000 homes were lost in fire that started 1 ½ miles southeast of our house with flames visible, we started making calls. Our primary concern was that our house sitter and dogs were out of harm’s way. Amazing friends jumped in and items were grabbed, dogs absconded safely to a sleepover and we headed to the beach knowing that there was nothing more we could do but wait.

Ours was a happy ending fortunately, but returning home to the view of charred hills so close by was extremely unsettling.

About a week later we got the news that Martha had taken a turn for the worse and would be flown home from her trial in Boston. She arrived at Children’s Hospital via a private medical flight, but not before sending me video birthday wishes. Something I will treasure always.

My cousin, her daughter and two of her grand daughters arrived the next day for a few days of Colorado time. And this is about the time when everything became a blur. 

The hospital was letting Martha come home under hospice care. Margaret and Ned called asking if I would take on a 48-hour backyard renovation challenge. Martha wanted their backyard to look like ours where she’d spent so much time over the last couple of years since COVID. I accepted and my cousin and I flew into action. 

We made the backyard deadline, Martha was transported home and even had a chance to sit outside before she left us on April 15th. At age 20 after 7 years of showing us all the most kick ass strength imaginable and leaving us all broken and shattered.

Aunt Anne and I became inseparable over the next few days as we worked to put together the celebration of life – and we obviously had Martha pulling some strings from the other side because we fucking did it. And it was beautiful. April 24th at Boulder High Auditorium with a reception afterwards at Rayback. So many gorgeous souls showed up and poured their hearts into it. There was so much love.

By May 3 I was back in SC to attend the bond hearing of the asshole who sold Sarah the fentanyl that killed her. Emotions on overload. Everyone was a bundle of nerves and my uncle Jimmy spoke with such heart. I was so thankful to be there in spite of the stress, but once it was all over, couldn’t wait to get home.

I was so tired. So overwrought. So freaking sad.

Then more company came. Company who was in crisis. Company who was here in crisis for 10 days. Company who left for a hotel the day before we left to return to SC.

The hubby and I ‘whirlwinded’ our way through our home state: a couple of nights in Charleston for my cousin’s retirement from the FBI, then off to DeBordieu for a couple of nights with the in-laws, then on to Santee for a night or two with mom and Boone, then Chapin for the niece’s high school graduation and ending with the nephew’s Citadel grad party in Lake Carolina.

The bean almost beat us home… with COVID…acquired during her softball tournament weekend in Oklahoma City. Sooo quarantine. Followed by Lucia visit to finally get an MRI for her knee she injured the weekend Martha died.

Dropped her off to fly back to Texas with the new fractured tibia diagnosis and a PT plan. Waited at the airport to pick up the hubby from his work trip with a bloody mary while fighting back tears over the Roe overturn news flooding in. 

He meets me. Tired. Stressed. And we find out the next day… with COVID. 

*COVID Sidenote: I weirdly am the last woman standing of almost everyone we know. 

Luckily we were in the clear in time for the Avett Bros at Red Rocks — just so you know the whole year wasn’t tears. And our friends, who weren’t yet COVID clear, cancelled, meaning we went with the Brents… who asked again why we’d never gone to their Cabo house. Thereby planting a seed.. leading to…

Teary bean, fresh from no summer to speak of and staring down junior year, says, “I want to go somewhere to rest.” So.. CABO! Another huge summer highlight. So last minute and Lucia couldn’t finagle it… so the three of us went and it was the first time of real relaxation we’d felt all year.

Which was lucky because. August. Hubby rescue mission to Texas where Lucia was struggling. Her lease was up and we were done subsidizing. It broke our collective hearts for her to move home. But move home she did with her DOG in tow. So now we have THREE dogs in our very minimal-sized house. And the new one is HAIRY and weighs 90 POUNDS. 

Life as we know it is changed. In so so many ways. Everyone keeps asking about Jack. They are making it work long distance the best way they can. But it was so clear to us all that things had completely unraveled and it was time for a new path.

So. Here’s what that looks like:

• Move Home
• Establish Rules Appropriate for 21-Year-Old Living at Home
• Set Up Physical Therapy
• Drive to Every Therapy so Child Doesn’t Skip Appointment
• DON’T FORGET ABOUT BEAN!
• Psych Eval
• Neurodivergent Spectrum Diagnosis
• Scramble Scramble Scramble
• Research Research Research
• Start Psychoherapy
• DON’T FORGET ABOUT BEAN!
• New Diagnosis: Borderline Personality Disorder*
• Scramble Scramble Scramble
• Research Research Research
• New (Very Intensive) Therapy Plan
• Freak Out
• DON’T FORGET ABOUT BEAN!
• Cry Daily
• Calm Down
• Enjoy Holidays
• Start Job Hunt to Pay for Said Intensive Therapy

In between it all, I dug deep and have taken on a weight loss journey that as of today has me down 56 pounds. I’m hiking again. My back pain is gone. And I feel like a better me than ever. 

Lucia and I also tagged along with Kenny on a work trip to Europe. Finally made it to London. Got to have a nice visit with Carla who I’ve known since I was four. Then cured my 35-year obsession with the Chunnel (yep, it’s just dark) by taking the train to Amsterdam. We stayed in Utrecht and got to visit a functioning windmill in Isselstein. We also learned that Americans (mostly us) are stupid because we all thought windmills generated power… [face palm].

We met new friends. Reconnected with old ones. Lucia was in a documentary, My Sister Liv, that premiered in NYC then Denver. College roomie and her hubby shared Thanksgiving with us here in Colorado.

We’ve also found joy in the small things like a new cocktail recipe sipped by the fire pit or a home run score by now sweet sixteen bean. We laugh SO MUCH. We get outside as much as humanly possible. We say yes more and no less. Our house is full and hairy (SO.MUCH.HAIR.), but there are so many stolen moments over morning coffee or late at night when one or both girls come and crawl in bed. 

The moral of my story is, don’t cry for me Argentina. We are going to be fine. (“I’m fine. Everything’s FINE.”) 

Just let me have my clichés and my cocktails and we are all good.

TODAY’S THEME SONG: Phoenix. A$AP Rocky. Now I’m walking on my own, y’all, wish me luck.

*Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a condition affecting 1.4% of the US population. If you are interested in learning more, please visit nami.org or download I Hate You – Don’t Leave Me on Audible.

When the winds whipped up somewhat unexpectedly on Thursday morning, we were thinking “GD finally – SNOW!” We usually get a warning, but this one showed up like greased lightning.  Winter storms here usually blow in from the west like an ass on fire. This time, it shot out from the other end like a damn Godzilla breathing fire. Or would be soon. 

Where we live is like a cuckoo clock valley of shitstorm. And when that little birdie shoots out, it’s never on time and it always shoots out like a cannon. And since I’ve now officially twisted you in up metaphors, I’m going to pause that noise to say what I actually mean… that some of the winds clocked by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (which is also, interestingly enough, in my hood) are strongest near or within a mile of two of our house IN THE STATE.

So. We’re all home. A day off of work (hahahahahahahaha – yea, right). I attempt a bike ride on the stupid expensive indoor studio bike we bought during the pandemic. And about 17 minutes into my ride on the coast of Maui, the power shuts off. Fuck. I head upstairs in defeat and think that maybe we have some kettle chips somewhere.

But by then, the winds are freaking us the fuck out. A limb lands on the roof with a loud crack then thump then rumblerumblerumble as it blows right off. I talk to my mom and she’s like “Seriously? That howl noise?’ Yea. That.

My Poppy-formerly-known-as-step-dad texts and says, “Well, you lived through Hurricane Hugo. Maybe just try going to sleep like I did.” I seriously consider it for a hot minute. But then I find the potato chips in a bin in the new mudroom.

I keep looking out of the window and yelling to Kenny: “The chairs! The flower pot! The neighbors’ chairs! The neighbor Jane!” And he keeps running out to save stuff plus a close-to-blowing-away-70-something. Though in retrospect, he should’ve been wearing a helmet.

Then I’m like: “KENNY! My SHED!” The glass in the front two French doors of my new nest and favorite space in life had just shattered like my dreams of becoming a famous writer. And, yes, I’d been planning to write the PULITZER WINNER there. So.

Then at some point around 11? Something or someone (so much social media in our house – GAH) alerts us to the smoke due east. Sella says, “Mom! There are flames.” So we all gather at the new, not shattered door facing east in the mudroom. And I’ll be damned. So I jump in the shower.

Sella says, “Mom?”

From the shower I starting yelling for Kenny to grab shit. Not my finest moment. But if you’ve ever read any of my previous disaster-related blogs, you won’t be super surprised.

The texts from the neighborhood group chat start filing in: 

The people who are smart: WE ARE PACKING

The people who know shit: WE ALREADY LEFT

The people who are showering because they don’t want to go to the evacuation shelter with dirty hair: SHOULD WE GRAB SOME WINE

Suffice it to say, I am not the best in the moment. Then I read the WE ALREADY LEFT text and yell PACK A BAG NOW. Kenny shoots his finger into my face from across the kitchen bar and says (with gritted-teeth-tight-jawed-I-will-cutta-bitch-seriousness), “youneedtostopNOW.” And it calmed me right down.

Ha! Not really.. .but wouldn’t that have been a good story?

Instead. As I’ve texted a few of you, I was like:

Grab a random bag and throw shit in it

Turn sheriff scanner app on phone up louder

Google Map that address they said just burned

Assess distance

Grab: GUCCI SHOES APPLE WATCH STRAPS PASSPORTS CHOCOLATE COVERED CHERRIES

Go sit down and make sure a work email sent

Answer text from coworker about another email needing to be sent (soooo many emails and why do they ALL have to send TODAY which is technically a day off WITHOUT the fire <facepalm>)

Back to scanner

Google Map that address they said just burned

On. Repeat. All. Damn. Day. 

And we cried.

ON. REPEAT. ALL. DAMN. DAY.

And as the hurricane coming off of the mountain continued its relentless pursuit of destruction, we waited. And watched. And our hearts broke into a million little pieces.

Sella’s friend called her begging us to leave. She was in the shower (weren’t we all?) preparing for a night out in Denver with her family when her mom yelled they had to leave. She saw their backyard fence on fire as they fled. I could hear her voice through Sella’s phone, “It comes SO FAST.” She was scared, sad, worried, devastated. Sella hung up. Burst into tears. And we booked a hotel.

As we were loading the car for the hotel, the power came back on. Sella said, “If you guys want to stay, I can suck it up.” She was visibly calmer. The wind was clearly blowing east. Snow was in the forecast. So we made a plan. 

One of us would stay up on watch and we’d take shifts. What that actually looked like?

I fell asleep on the couch after polishing off the cherries and the emergency wine. Sella climbed into my bed and watched shows until Kenny woke up at 2am and watched the Carolina game he’d missed earlier. I woke up to the shrills and beeps of the scanner app off and on all night. And no one really slept. Except for Sella after 2am and the dogs. 

Then when we woke up and watched the news, and we stood in the kitchen with our arms around each other and sobbed.

Since Thursday I haven’t stopped until tonight when I fell onto my bed and laid there in the dark staring at the ceiling. 

Since Thursday I’ve been tracking friends who lost everything. Coordinating supplies for families for There With Care as we pivoted to coordinate with local schools to provide emergency meals, toiletry bags and school supplies for affected families (as of today we are TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY FULL – OMG YOU ARE ALL AMAZING). I’ve been on con calls with work and friends to coordinate. I even worked with a stranger to help a couple who was now homeless and living out of their van in a Walmart parking lot. I shit you not. 

No. I am NOT a saint. I’ve been cursing those fucking hippies where the fire allegedly started even though nothing has been proven. I just need to rail at something/ANYTHING.

And I set up web pages, GoFundMes, Google docs to track needs vs offers. I’ve reached out to every school with a contact I know. I’ve cried over lost pets. So. Many. Lost. Pets.

I’ve cried as I’ve read each of the 1,000 stories. But I cried extra hard when tonight our friends arrived back in Boulder to a rando hotel with a kitchenette and their other friends and I tried so hard to make it feel something like home. (FAIL)

Then I cried again with my friend when he called after he went to see the hole-in-the-ground that is their former home. He said he felt nothing. Just hollow like that burned hole.

We were shopping for our friends’ hotel room today and the shelves are fucking CLEANED OUT. And on our side of town there aren’t any freaking stores left anyway.

We are down to ONE newly opened and super small Whole Foods after losing our neighborhood King Soopers to the shooting in April and now Costco, Super Target and the larger Whole Foods we frequent to the fire and extensive smoke damage. 

Lucia’s former employer (before her bold move to Texas in August), Dog Tag… well… they had to set all 40 dogs in their care plus their own dogs, donkey and horses loose in an attempt to save them as the fire blew in hellbent and with no time to spare. All have been miraculously accounted for and reunited, but… the business is in very bad shape and the property damage from the heat and smoke is extensive. 

And how fucking strange is it that this happened in an urban area. A shopping center full of people shopping at CostCo, TJ Maxx, Super Target, Chuck-E-Cheesing (whatever petrie dish shit goes on in there but still). In the middle of the DAMN DAY.

One of my BFFs had to damn DUKE BOYS to get the shit out of her house – driving her SUV across her backyard and onto the bike path to get out as the flames encroached.

This constant barrage of tragedy is life-defining. And it wasn’t until I was lying on my bed in the dark staring at the ceiling tonight that I realized. It may not be a Pulitzer in the shattered shed, but it’s showing up and the people and the love that makes me love this life and this community to my core. Floods, Gun-wielding psychos, warts, Godzilla wind breath, and all. 

#BOULDERFUCKINGSTRONG

THEME SONG: With the lights out, it’s less dangerous. Here we are now, entertain us. I feel stupid and contagious. Here we are now, entertain us. – Smells Like Teen Spirit. Nirvana

The other day (well, at least it seemed like the other day in the angry way time is passing — almost like a recently broken buck whose reins were just ripped out of my hands), I was writing out the ad for your senior year book. I was thinking of how clever I am. Being a writer. And typed out ‘to the moon and back.’ Like all mums who think they have that unique and special memory bond. But then that book line started being quoted EVERYWHERE and I thought, “well hell.” BUT. Then. I realized. It doesn’t really matter, does it? The uniqueness of our lives? We all live. We breathe. We love our babies. We read them books. And, after it all, when we are suddenly ushering them away into their next stage, if we all quote the same book? Who gives a damn.

Then the other parts. All of us mums. We all did the feedings. The hand-wringings. The up-late-at-night pacings when you just wouldn’t go the fuck to sleep. Bottle warmings or breast barings. Rocking in the chairs while we prayed for your (and our) peace. That was WAY before we had to face the first hand off to a sitter. A preschool teacher. A kindergarten class. WAY before time took on its own character in our own life play. As the villain.

Even back then we were reading those Facebook posts, “Where does the time go?” From the mums who were where we are now. Thinking: “Poor saps. Don’t they have a life?” Well. They did. Just like I do now. But. Babies grow up. Start school. Launch into their lives. And from your arms. Oh those arms. So empty. So suddenly. And that’s how it is supposed to be.

I know this. I feel it. I am happy to see her go. Live, Breathe. Love. Oh but the bittersweet symphony that lies just beneath. In the feelings. The gut. The ache. It’s there too. The pushing and pulling that I felt even in those dark nights way back then. When she wouldn’t just go the fuck to sleep. Even then. As much as my body ached and my soul cried for rest. I would find myself looking at her. At her beautiful and finally peaceful face. Lashes curled. Baby breath barely audible over the sound of my want for sleep. As I slipped her quietly into her crib. Even then. My arms ached. Almost as if I knew then what is NOW. 

Baby bird fly. I know the nest is warm. But it will be here. If ever you need a place to roost. But for now… FLY. 

TODAY’S THEME SONG: And I wish you all the love in the world. But most of all, I wish it from myself. Fleetwood Mac.