Performance Index

      

Most people won't get this or understand or call it superstitious but for the first time since the surgery today my BPI (brain performance index) went higher than it's ever been on Lumosity. Confidence, belief, comfort, whatever you want to call it matters in how your brain operates in my book. As I’ve sat here and wondered what the hell is going on and still trying to absorb it, I still played the brain rehab games today. I emailed the letter to some doctor friends and still trying to process that this may all just now be an inflammatory tissue left but somehow that lumosity score was somehow higher than it’s ever been was heart warming. I’ve had some nice emails and comments on facebook and calls about being alive but, let’s be clear, I’m still going to die and all the way down to death I want to be the best I can be mentally, emotionally and physically every day in every way that I can. 

I traded some emails today with friends and family but I was surprised by one from a complete stranger and some of the stuff we talked about is probably left between “stranger friends” but it was an incredibly sweet email to start it:

Hi Iram,

Not sure if you remember me or not, but I found you through a donation to Livestrong and have been following your blog since about Christmas time. Reading your posts has been such an emotional adventure for me. Much more so than I could have ever imagined. I feel like we are old friends and that I have known you for a long time. The reality is that I just know what you have written and you know nothing about me. However I want to thank you for sharing your life so openly through your blog. Last night I was sleeping when my boyfriend woke me to read your latest entry. I was and still am completely shocked. I was breathless, confused, amazed, and overjoyed as I read your post. I was at a loss for words and could only seem to cry. I was so happy after reading your post I could only manage tears. I obviously have always hoped and prayed for the best for you, but never even thought about something like this happening. I am sincerely happy for you and just wanted to send my congratulations your way. Life is a certainly a mystery. So much to be thankful for and thank you again for sharing your journey. –

The rest of the emails interestingly enough were about the job and the girlfriend and she was telling me to be more and more open to the possibilities and thought I should visit her family with my family and do a race (apparently she’s crazier than me and runs ultra marathons). That idea of an ultra marathon hasn’t stuck in my head but the cycling, if I ever get a bike has gotten the idea of a triathlon or duathlon in my head. She appreciated the rawness of this blog which frankly it is because I am talking to me in case the memory ever fails and now that I’m less worried about it failing very quickly (be assured I’m still worried); there are in fact references in here that only I can understand to test that memory. But even if that massive failure memory never comes, going back and reading it, catching slices of time I think is worth a record of all this until/unless a “new normal” is ever achieved. She was kind enough that she can’t wait until the story has that new girl and those new job great elements. I hope she’s right.

But with that said, I realized after the emails that I had a conflict on July 23^rd of both the cancer and relationships class and the last track meet… and I sat back and forth on which one to cancel… and finally I emailed Livestrong and canceled my reservation so that in a couple of weeks I can go to the track meet but I emailed the counselor who works with a lot of these classes and asked:

1)      I think I mishandled the way I did this with my cancer stuff and relationships... since the divorce I had gone on a couple of dates with a girl and then my MRI showed something strange and I cut it off almost instantaneously... A few months later I went out with a girl from my running group and then I was found collapsed on the side of the road and literally, despite her coming with me to the MRI that night and starting to wear the Livestrong bracelet the next day, within 48 hours of that I told her that we were better off as friends. Maybe it's the same instinct I had that drove my wife away but it seems I keep trying to protect people when I'm reminded I have this thing in my head that I never saw coming and can't control, how, when is the right way to share this better? 

2)     

 As you know, I got some surprising news and am still trying phone calls and emails with doctors (by the way the medical phrasing is that all that's left is that now the findings favor an inflammatory process which can be followed by just a local neurologist. I've called my mom and my family but again from some of the poor phrasing I used with my daughter (I had a booboo in my left temporal lobe) being directly contradicted by your parenting with cancer class about not using the word booboo because it's not an everyday thing (they were so right about that and I wish I'd realized that you know not a year and a half later), what's the correct way to tell her about the new development. 

By the way, for whatever it's worth, when I called Livestrong I was offered medical answers and connections to Imerman, Wonders and Worries, Counseling etc. I took your medical recommendations and ended up at Duke and then tried to protect everyone else from it as best as I could. I eventually would do all the things you guys recommended and wish I'd listened earlier. Obviously living in the past serves no purpose but I keep attending your classes because I think you guys do amazing work.

I wish I could figure how to do things better with my ex to this day so that somehow makes me feel less guilty, maybe she just couldn’t handle the stress. She continue to fuel the fire of staying alive for my daughter by doing something that was to me so inadequate today. During the past extended summer visit (she gets 2 15 day visits), I went to visit Kiana and she literally tried to get the daycare to stop me from visiting or taking her out for lunch which them and I found bizarre. so for the two weeks she has her next time she won’t be putting her there or taking time off but putting her in one near her place. I am not sure what happened to a woman I so thoroughly loved but it continues to help that I don’t recognize her and I’m figuring out a way to stay here for this little girl whether I have 1 day or I get to live to be 88. I am never going to spend an ounce of effort to keep my daughter away from her mother but I am also not going to respect someone doing so with no gained time with their daughter. No one says on their deathbed I wish I’d spent less time with my kids.

Should I have gone to the class again instead of the track meet again? I’ll never know. The blogger got blogged about today by Livestrong, the other story is way cooler (http://blog.livestrong.org/2012/07/11/inspiration-comes-in-two-forms/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter). Somehow the track meet is a little easier because there’s more concrete goals… if there was someone I was with and trying to make my relationship with them more coherent I’d probably have missed the track meet (let me put it this way,  not too long ago I missed a running event in order to attend a Cancer and Parenting class).

And the job as has been their pattern wants to drag this out so tomorrow is the deadline I set for them. I imagine they aren’t going to be ready to do it on time and so on Tuesday I am signing something with an attorney and it will drag out because maybe sometimes thinking you don’t know everything and trusting someone else to help is smarter than you. It’s funny I’d set the deadline for July 15^th about job, house selling details, work details etc. This wasn’t on the agenda and it came a few days before that and messes with all that. My life is very very strange. But I’m going to keep going, keep keeping on, trying to get faster, trying to raise that BPI, trying to Livestrong, trying to remember that to whom much is given much is expected, and stealing that little girls nose and letting her chase me around the house to get it. And they don’t measure parenting but I hope that somewhere down the line I get some index that I did something right.

Shock and Awe

So traded some emails with Duke yesterday the first one which began from them with No Tumor and a bunch of pathological information that essentially states I don’t have cancer. I wrote back with a bunch of questions…and asked for a call and they responded with who did I want to talk to… I wrote back, in my always humble fashion, simply with someone smarter than me. They said I had so many questions I should think about coming in but I’m not sure I’m ready for a flight and more medical bills. The emails  just put me in shock with a few people asking what was wrong yesterday and me not really answering anyone because I was afraid, nervous, something or other to say it out loud… when the first email came I ran 5 miles… and just put my ipod shuffle on shuffle and over reading into the universe as I usually do focused in on one song that I kept listening to over and over, “Rain” by Creed came on (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k3jxi4JhXA ):

I tried to figure out, I can't understand...
What it means... to be whole again...
Trapped between the truth and the consequence
Nothing's real, nothing's making sense...

Fall down, wash away my yesterdays
Fall down, so let the rain fall down on me...

As the emails kept coming I wanted to call my mom or my brothers but it didn’t quite feel real. So I called Todd who organized the tournament, Susan who got my tattoo. I forwarded the email to Matt from Hawktober, called Kelly from the BrainPower5k. I talked to the headcoach of the marathon training group I’m part of. This wasn’t real right? This was inception where it’s a dream within a dream or maybe I’ve been in a coma for the last few months and this is all just not true. I’ve joked forever that if someone took me out with a two by four and just carved into the side of my head I’d know no better. I called the pastor I meet with and he thought it was great news. Susan said I sounded more shocked than when I called to tell her I had cancer, that I’d kind of assumed I was dying and that having this was something that I didn’t expect to not have.

I requested all my medical records than requested a letter and while the letter is not as cleanly phrased as I would like when that arrived it felt real. That letter arrived today and whilte it’s more awkwardly reading than I would call elegent, at that point it felt real. I called my mother and brothers at that point. Kiana was here but I still haven’t told her because I don’t know how to… I called wonders and worries to ask for some guidance. I drove off to drop something for a friend and then just was driving around… and around… and around… and finally I drove to Livestrong to talk to a counselor but I had no appointment so one only could talk to me for a few minutes. A couple of the people who knew me immediately asked if I was okay, that they’d never seen me look that off… I told them and they were just surprised. The woman who I’d gone to Davis with put their facebook status in reaction to it: (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151021881999916&set=a.55657659915.61916.6195089915&type=1&theater ). A thousand thoughts ran through my screwed up brain Is this true? Was it a misdiagnosis? At some point, I even told the guy from Hawktober has this all been a fraud should I return this Cancer Survivor trophy? Let’s just say that even as you read this you can probably tell I’m shell shocked. And I’m skeptical. I’ve sent the letter and the pathology report to the local neurologist and the guy who did my biopsy and somehow want a second opinion, a third one, a twentieth one…  Duke’s comfortable with me not returning and just following it locally but somehow if I get that second opinion I’ve asked about doing it somewhere like MD Anderson or John Hopkins… Somehow my inner gut is arguing more that this can’t possibly real more than I did about the diagnosis… (Speaking of Duke, disappointingly they chose not to be a center of excellence which would allow those with this in the future to go and/or reimburse me because they get a lower rate of reimbursement).

Before these emails had started, I was sitting there talking to the Travis County attorney about renegotiating my departure and we discussed an option that would theoretically keep me employed for longer and resign with a positive recommendation and keep health coverage a little longer . Who knows if any of this will come true but I think what they were most shocked about was that as part of the requests was that they make a donation to Livestrong and/or the Brainpower5k of $500. Who knows if I’ll get any or all of what I ask but oddly enough I got something from Duke that I never thought was coming.  If the job offer works out the way I want, I’ll probably take a trip to get a second expert opinion but I also want to take a trip where I just relax. Susan suggested I take someone and do something like climb the Grand Canyon but who would I take? As I talked to her I realize if I ever get my finances in order again, the one trip that I absolutely want to do on a bucket list is go to Brazil because that’s where I was going to go from the surgery and I literally changed that flight to the flight to Duke…

This is all overwhelming and I have to realize I still have to find a job and pay bills and do things that everyone does. Life on the moon couldn’t be any stranger, life on the moon couldn’t seem so far away, the life that I knew is through and I’m going to need you more than I’m ever. I’m alone in a crowded room, it’s like life on the moon.

I should be thrilled right? And I am but mostly I’m skeptical, relieved and confused… I hope this is true but I fear that today’s hope is just veneer for yesterday’s disappointment…  Ironically I’ve never said that I would beat this to anyone, just that I was hoping to get to 40 as the Duke neurosurgeon originally said… call it superstitious but I literally said on Saturday to someone for the first time ever, I’m going to beat this thing and then Monday I get the emails, today I get the letter with a signature that somehow made it feel almost real. I joked at Livestrong that cycling must cure cancer, I joked to someone from the marathon running group that I started coaching that clearly they were the cure to cancer, I played with an 8 ball, people told me I need to thank whatever deity (or their specific one). I wanted to celebrate but don’t know how so I went to a track workout… if you read this, today’s the right day to tell me how to celebrate because I am in shock and awe.

Old Writings

I've had many careers and fears throughout my short years and I foundtwo  old writings while looking through things... perhaps reflecting my damaged memory, I can't remember if I wrote these or found some of these (clearly remember on most). But the kid who is very much trying to find his way was fascinated by some of these old things... As I've kept a blog of the last year and a half I dug back a little further... and realized it's good to have slices of time that show us that unlike the naive idea that today's emotions, today's ideas were always true and will always be true, one of my favorite (and most scary) elements of Big Brother is that we think this, that whatever is true today was always true (Eurasia was always at war with...). It may be comforting to think that there is destiny, and that things are meant to be and maybe somethings are but maybe that's just how we get ourselves to sleep at night rather than live in the shoulda coula woulda's.

These writings have nothing to do with much of the present but just to go where have I come from and where am I going, what makes it worth it. We all change but that doesn't mean it's an improvement. Lance Armstrong is under investigation for whatever but the way he changed the sport was that he chronicled where his heart rate was, where his muscles were, how they ate. I did this once during marathoning and while nothing in life is completely predictable (trust me on this one), some of it has a strong pattern. Or as Mark Twain more eloquently put it, history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes."

These are not meant to flow but to make me remember to remember and to remember to keep writing:
From the days of being a pastor
In Lewis Caroll’s classic Children’s Story, Alice in Wonderland, the White Queen asks Alice to practice believing six impossible things before breakfast every days. Every year during Christmas time, I often think that Christianity asks us to do a similar thing by accepting the Nativity Story. Our faith requires us to believe that God traded power for pampers and glory for Gerber. It further demands that we believe virgins give births, wise men chase UFO’s across the desert sky, and shepherds are touched by an angel choir. In all this absurdness, we are asked to accept that manna became man, that eternity stepped into time so we could understand that God the father had a human heart. I am unsure as to when this would be harder to believe, whether it would be in our own present skeptical age which often dismisses religiosity as silly or if it would have been harder to trust as truth in the early ages of Christianity, when the Christ was just a snotty, crying infant. Although I am unsure, I would like to explore the idea that those who first accepted Jesus as a crying infant into their lives were giants of faith, great contributors to the redemption of the world. 



From the fears that the kid who brought his dog from the South Pacific, has pulled off a few firsts and has always been as a mathematician friend says an outlier

And so the attempt to make the world into a vision of one’s own

Turned out to be a myth, leaving one empty and alone

Big Brother never seems to lose, victory he always claims

And those who dare to rage against him find they are forgotten names

Conformity must be the rule to those who wish to reach success

Whatever falls not within in the frame the heart must not express

What a high price we all must pay to color inside the lines

And all the joy outside of that imagination confines

The power structures never shake, their foundation’s solid ground

Those who think they make a roar make but a momentary sound

We remember only those whose ducks were in a row

Who never wavered never failed the party line to tow

Whose lives were examples of all that we could be

Look how great your life will grow if you are just like me

Great minds may dare to have a single creative thought

But find that challenging certain ones is not something they ought

And in the end that which we’ve made first place

Is that we must all run the same to be in the human race

A hope that you might be different is a ridiculous token

They take the challenge, ignore it and your soul they leave broken. 

We like cheering on the non conformists... but their history often rhymes in that they lead challenged challenging lives...

Resting Place

So I got to hear that the regional vice president is weighing on this center of excellence policy specifically for brain tumors and Duke. The short version is that, I’ve come to learn, it had been handled at an incredibly low level despite me arguing about it for over a year but now if it gets approved then anyone with brain tumors would get to go there. I’d unlikely be eligible for any reimbursement but… it would be precedent and if I stay on Cobra then I could return there. I emailed them and tried to reschedule an appointment today… I am not sure how long I can keep up with that snake in the desert but while I have it, I ought to go for the check up I’m supposed to anyway and because they have a higher capacity MRI than anywhere I’ve been going.

Marathon kids let me know that they chose someone else. They sent a very classy nice email. And the self imposed deadline of July 15^th is now just over a week away… time flies when you’re having whatever you want to call this… There was a call back from only one job so far and it’s not a concrete offer but its looking likely… Monday-Thursday 10-9, decent health benefits, no time with my daughter, probably a slight raise. I tried to talk to my ex about it who was less than reasonable and didn’t seem at all interested in more custody of her child… My resources feel like they are running out if not already exhausted. Taking that job feels a lot like giving up to pay the bills. Having quoted Les Mis here before, it feels like taking a job for that and that alone, as a friend said, “you have to do what you have to do.” And maybe soon it will be that time. I traded some emails with the county attorney and made an offer that would buy me sometime and keep the health benefits immediately in place till September or so. I do my Lumosity tracking and the simple truth is that I do it and the plan is if it ever sinks below a certain level and/or when my doctors or friends thought I should do it for being less than mentally capable, I was going to sign over primary custody. This scenario where it happens primarily so I can hold a job down, like so many of the last 18 months, I just didn’t expect. If that’s where we go, I think I’m done running and training because that will kill the fire that keeps me going… (On a related note, there’s a level where I’ll disappear off this blog as well because I don’t want to be writing if and when my brain isn’t something I trust at all. ) Interestingly enough, daring to dream, I was able to also swap the weekend of the Odessa half marathon that my mom signed up so that Kiana and I can be sure to be there for it.

I applied for a few more jobs today but there comes a time soon to call it, to sell the house, to take the job, to sign the papers. So many things have hung up in the air for so long… there’s a reason we like the scenes in movies where someone lies suspended, they are exciting but there’s only so long you can hold that, right? In my rear mirror still lies that infinity necklace, in that safe place still lies that “hope” ring but I want to make a decision somewhere soon that I am either open or closed to the possibility of someone else in the future and live accordingly. And the guy who never watches movies twice, never goes places twice, never reads books twice,  just signed up again for Livestrong’s cancer and relationship class to sit and process whether or not that’s something I’m going to do twice. This won’t be a decision to necessarily get into a relationship but just whether that gate is open or closed anywhere in the future. As an old saying goes, relationships are like glass.  Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than to hurt yourself putting it back together.

It’s midnight and I have to get up in 5 hours to coach a marathon group but I can’t sleep even as I yawn writing this… I need a rest and I’d pay serious money to know what that would look like. Someone pointed out that maybe I should have used that at some point and I gave my answer of no one says on their deathbed they wish they’d slept more  but the kid who grew up Seventh-day Adventist and exercised every day until marathon training made him include a rest day… is feeling worn out. I know that my default happy position and keeping going has moved some people and I want to get back to it but there are days where I remember the old indian saying: To carry his load without resting, not to be bothered by heat or cold and always be content: these three things we can learn from a donkey. The problem is I just don’t know how to do it and especially how to do it under these circumstances…

I hope and will be comforted, even if it’s not personally helpful that access to Duke, the money for brain cancer research, the money for Livestrong will help the future of others and that of Kiana. Somehow on those laurels and having tried to be a good dad are the only laurels on which I’d like to rest.

A Snake in the Desert

Well, health care is an odd odd thing. Now that I have to sit there and figure out this COBRA thing which my absolute inclination is not drain resources when there aren’t many left, a twist gets thrown into the chamber. What motivates the human mind is fascinating. Someone who was incredibly helpful when my wife left was someone whose mother had left her with her father when she was real young. Now, someone in the county human resources department continues to be very helpful. I assume, along the path of the key to happiness being low expectations, that this like too will just be hitting my head against the wall on trying to improve things in my head but somehow I dare to dream. The person helping out, coincidentally, is someone whose father passed away of what I have. The universe continues to be strange. I asked the question point blank of what happens if I don’t continue to do Cobra which is of course that this insurance and healthcare game ends.

I am amused at that they call this Cobra. I am not quite sure why they thought that was the clever way to go, government always trying to find initials to make things easier to remember. But how can you hear that name and not think of the Moses story that the thing that had been killing you and the thing that may keep you alive look incredibly similar.

I keep thinking of Martin Niemoller’s remark about standing up for people:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

I am speaking up at least at this level because if it  holds and they find my doctor and duke to be a center of excellence (http://www.cancer.duke.edu/btc/modules/generalinformation19/index.php?id=3 )than anyone who ever works with UHC’s center of Excellence Cancer resource center would be able to go to Duke. Somehow it makes me feel better that may help someone else down the line though I'm not sure how. It’s something that continues to stick with me how little is done for brain cancer and at some level I both completely understand because it’s so rare and causes so “few deaths,” only 13,000 a year but that’s more than drunk driving causes (about 11,000) but of course with drunk driving, the solution appears simpler. If they get it to hold though anyone insured by UHC would be able to have the option of Duke be more feasible somewhere down the road. Not only that, things like neuropsychological rehab would be established precedent despite the fact it wasn’t covered for me. With all that said, I still want to help other cancers and things not related to cancer like I did before this...

But my own road is running out of some financial steam… I am not far from running out of resources, the last year and a half has drained a lot. Last night was Kiana’s first night back after being with her mom and knowing that she has me wrapped around her finger asked if she could sleep in my bed. It’s amazing the things kids know they can pull off and which ones to fight back are hard to know. Literally, she’s said things like come tuck me in and when I respond she can do it herself, she says things like yes but I like it better and sleep nicer when you do and she gets tucked in. She got to sleep in my bed last night. And after a week or partying and not exercising much and drinking a bit much… even lamely getting kicked out of a bar for the first time in my life because I forgot my license (due for renewal so it’d been left on the kitchen table)… I have to acknowledge that frankly if there was no one attached to me, I’d be okay with partying on the way out but with people attached… I want to exercise and fight back and dare to dream of having more years than I expect because I hope this little girl I’m raising will someday be someone who has enough independence to where we’ve managed to be friends.

I’ve gotta find a job but I think a couple of the interviews have gone bad because a lot of the last few scenarios have left me with far less confidence than you should probably present at interview, in myself in general, in my brain capacities. Why I doubt them more than anyone else I don’t know.

My brain gets donated to science when this is all over… I paid for one month of Cobra and not sure how many I’ve honestly got left. I wonder and hope that brain and that coverage are the snakes in what sometimes feels like my own desert but which snake, the one that drained something good from you or the one you looked to to save your life. I accepted the help of the “insurance” I’d paid into and took unemployment but you can’t pay cobra, a mortgage, daycare, food etc with that…

I don’t know how this is all going to go but I am headed to a track workout tonight, something encouraged by my neuropsychologist’s office today, tomorrow I am heading to a pool party to Celebrate the 4th of July with some strangers and some good friends. When feeling overwhelmed, it’s easy to notice the brain skills that are missing, the things insurance didn’t cover, the water missing from the glass, some of the people who didn't stay through the journey. Who knows how this all ends but over and over, I am grateful for that little girl, those moments where she's clearly a sleeping beauty that makes me realize I’m nowhere near close to losing the most precious thing in my life and to the people who remind me that the glass isn’t drained yet. 

What You Need to Say

I sat in the appeal last Thursday about the job. It was clear I was sitting with a politician who knowing the session was being tape recorded answered things like “I cannot recall” if something had ever happened once in her entire career. In the end, we’ll see how it draws out but the main thing I argued was why they hadn’t let someone know who they knew had health issues have access to life insurance and cobra benefits till almost a month after they let him go. There was an attempt to interrupt me and the rest of it was civil but at that point I said with an incredible emphasis “Look I have a 5 year old and I was found on the side of the road a few months ago and I have 4 days in the last 18 months of incredibly significant events I don’t remember so I don’t care how much it bothers you but I need to walk out of here with life insurance because if I collapse today, I want to make sure I can leave something with  her and in a few days, this time sensitive thing expires and I have no life insurance eligibility for the rest of my life.” To their credit, they sat me down with the head of the human resources department after the meeting and that’s where I cared more. There is an old joke that human resources was neither but she was exceptional at both. We filled out the application, faxed it to the insurance company and I asked point blank if I die today, my daughter’s going to receive this right. She stated that she would make sure it happened and I might have started crying a lot in front of a room full of women. Somehow, in those overwhelmed emotional moments, I told them about the frustration with their insurance. How a Duke doctor that does interviews on CNN, had done surgeries on Ted Kennedy was not covered the same as if I’d gone to someone no one had ever heard of… The head of human resources said she would look into it for brain cancer specifically and said that they had a similar problem to things like heart and kidney problems. She said you couldn’t promise anything retroactively but was glad to get the information. Somehow that was comforting.

The Supreme Court upheld the decision that pre-existing conditions don’t apply after January 2014 so if I can make it till then maybe I can have health insurance again. I offered something that if they would let me resign upon the expiration of my vacation and sick hours we could have a cleaner break up but there response seemed less than promising. But if that were true, then I’d have health coverage for a little while longer, maybe make that return trip to Duke. With one exception, the tears from the last 18 months have all been the same, trying to protect my daughter from any of this going bad or gratefulness for help. Some of those have left me as dehydrated as some of the races. But in one of those moments of impulsivity, I sent an email asking someone to come with me to Duke while listening to that waiting on an angel song because if I get to return well I don’t want to go alone… That may be naïve and I need to realize that when you have something that comes to 3 in a million people who a national network when you asked had no one else to connect with that sometimes you have to be alone even in very crowded rooms.

Perhaps showing some huge chinks in this armor, the last week Kiana was with her mother for an extended visit and for the first time in 8 or 9 months I wasn’t training for anything of endurance and I only exercised a couple of times. I went out with friends and drank several nights and tried to pretend like life was okay, one night even dancing, perhaps for the first time ever in my life trying not to dance to remember but rather to forget. But I gave myself a week of that and then Sunday morning I got up and applied for jobs and today I have two jobs interviews, a second interview with Marathon Kids which felt awfully short and I wondered if it wasn’t just a courtesy interview since one of their biggest supporters had said he thought they should interview me.  I ran 10 miles and then 5 miles realizing that I missed cycling because in the Texas heat it was literally cooler…

Anyway, off to a shower to that job interview where if I got the offer, it would be taking a job from 10 AM to 9 PM Monday through Thursday… How do you do that and parent? The latest song I’ve downloaded is John Mayer’s say what you need to say. A lot of the last 18 months senseless to me but I am still grateful for many parts of this story and writing it as a way to process emotions…because it lets me say what I need to say. Thanks for listening.

Take all of your wasted honor
Every little past frustration
Take all of your so-called problems,
Better put 'em in quotations

Say what you need to say [x8]

Walking like a one man army
Fighting with the shadows in your head
Living out the same old moment
Knowing you'd be better off instead,
If you could only . . .

Say what you need to say [x8]

Have no fear for giving in
Have no fear for giving over
You'd better know that in the end
Its better to say too much
Then never say what you need to say again

Even if your hands are shaking
And your faith is broken
Even as the eyes are closing
Do it with a heart wide open