Oh hey there, 2012

2011-5053, originally uploaded by AnnaPasq.

One minute, I’m doing a little NaNoWriMo victory dance, and the next it’s the middle of January and I haven’t posted a single post. Man, how time flies!

Anyway, hope everyone’s holidays were awesome (though, I guess to be fair, even if they sucked enough time has passed now for you to be over them…so really, we’re good either way and my slackerdom has payed off). Ultimately, mine were as well, though they were preceded by a pretty weird winter, which I guess could explain the lack of posts if I were a smoother liar. As it stands, I am a terrible liar who, in the process of making up a good cover story, will probably just get flustered and tell you the true but embarrassing fact that I have gotten into the habit of plopping down in front of old Law and Order episodes with my knitting and a beer when I run in to some free time. In fact, I will probably go do exactly that as soon as I crank out the writing that I’ve been kicking myself for not being more consistent with over the last few months. So there we are. But I digress.

So! Since we last checked in, many things have happened which, in retrospect, I SHOULD have written about, but at the time I got a little preoccupied with just getting through them:

-Recovering from my immigrations-based ulcer, and getting used to having a full time Dan in the house. I guess there was a bit of an adjustment period (probably mostly when we were both trying to figure out job situations whilst crammed into a tiny studio apartment), but honestly it’s just been awesome being in the same place. I guess the novelty of not having to fly cross-continent just to have breakfast with my husband will wear off eventually, but for now, hello honeymoon period!

-Trying not to get a new ulcer while navigating MommaPasq’s epic health saga. First that one cancer spot was gone. But now it’s back. No, wait wait. THAT one’s gone, but there’s another seven in a spot where we didn’t even think you could grow cancer. Okay, now take this pill. No no, the other pill. And I’m sorry, but yes, this shot will have to go there. Survival rate? Well, if you had this uber specific disease track record it would be 14% percent, but turns out you have a strain normally only found in East Andean Yak wrestlers…yeah. Short version, Mom’s still in treatment. We still don’t know what comes next. It’s still scary. But she’s still very much Mom, very much going about her daily business while everyone else tries to figure that craziness out. Which is not a terrible state of affairs, if you ask me.

-Transferring my Seattle life to my Los Angeles life. I finally got back up to Seattle for a visit, under the sad pretense of having to move the contents of my storage unit down to LA. We’ve got a big place. We needed the furniture. I missed my books. It all made sense. But still, aside from the taxes I pay, that unit was my big tangible link to the place I called home for a lot of years, and that I never really expected to move away from permanently. I don’t know which was sadder; handing over the unit keys or the realization that I was sending my stuff home, not taking it away from home. Don’t get me wrong. I miss Seattle a lot and it kills me that I’m so far away from all my amazing friends up there, but when I visited it definitely felt like I was visiting. It took driving back into LA before I regained full comfy vibes. If you had told me three years ago that this is the city that would suck me in, I never would have believed you.

-Saying goodbye way before I thought I’d have to. Right around the time MommaPasq’s cancer flared up big time, my foster grandma Pat passed away from heart failure. I’m sure everybody says this, but she wasn’t that old and I really thought I would have more time with her. Pat and her husband George feel as much like grandparents to me as my actual grandparents–we were all military folk, so they’d take me out and spoil me whenever it wasn’t easy for my parent’s parents to come visit. Even though I lucked out and was able to be at the funeral, it still doesn’t really feel like she’s gone. Funny how the good ones find ways of sticking around.

-Switching gears at work. HR and I are still working out exact details, but it looks like I’ll be sticking around my BMT unit permanently once my travel contract runs out. Not gonna lie; while I’ll certainly miss the scheduling and location freedoms of being a contract worker, the idea of really invested in one place (a place, I might add, where I’ll have decent insurance and paid sick leave for a change) is pretty exciting. It’s time.

Hol-y Mol-y. Think somebody had a couple of pent up words? I’ve really got to make this a more frequent thing again. It’s really just cruel to subject people to this degree of ramblings.  My sincerest apologies.

Until next time.

Things I have been doing instead of posting

Starting my new job on the BMT unit, and realizing just how much I missed it there (even when things get crazy).

Arranging and re arranging furniture, in hopes that my in laws won’t notice how little of it there is when they come to visit next week. (Cut me some slack! I’ve been practically living out of my car for the last few years!)

Writing the shit out of my national novel writing month piece (and praying I don’t lose steam).

Buying my first rosebush, and takin care of it for a whole week without killing it by accident. This, I feel, is the biggest accomplishment of them all.

Scaaaarryyyy

Nifty writing environment in new place = completed. Commence NaNoWriMo 2011 (and panic!)

First of many sunsets from the new place (I.e. Why I’ve been so silent blog-wise. Moving’s a time suck!) Interior details soon, but for now enjoy the view

How’s that for timing?

Let me tell you, this afternoon, I was so ready to go on a rampage. The day was winding up to be spectacularly crappy, and I was out for blood. I mean, not only was I told not to come into work on a day when I actually WANTED to come into work, but I’d slept badly, started the day off with a fight and then finally crawled out of bed to be informed that my mom’s chemo isn’t working. Again. So we have to come up with a new plan. Again. And said new plan is going to involve much stronger treatment and most likely a return of the side effects she was trying so hard to get rid of in the first place.

So I was all, “Okay, ha ha, fates. I get it. I am equipped to handle troublesome things while still enjoying the little things in life, etcetera, etcetera, inspirational quote.” But the bulk of this whole year has been troublesome things. We were supposed to have just gotten PAST some of those. I mean, I acknowledge that life can’t be ideal all the time, but is it really so unreasonable to request more than one week of semi-normalness?

Anyway. I looked outside, and noticed some perfectly ominous clouds, and concluded a furious stomp through pouring rain was exactly what I needed. Except by the time I got out there, and by the time I’d hoofed far enough and fast enough up the hill to justify my already surging heart rate, instead of torrential downpour, I got this:

You can’t really tell, but there were actually two rainbows there, both complete, one right on top of the other. And all around me people were looking up from whatever they’d been doing and stopping and smiling and pointing, and it started getting sunnier and sunnier, and damn it, I was trying my absolute hardest but just couldn’t keep my mood down. I even tried getting mad that I couldn’t even stay mad when I wanted to, but THAT didn’t work.

I mean, sure, two rainbows aren’t going to solve all my problems, but they got me smiling and probably saved any kittens in my immediate vicinity from getting kicked. I’ll talke what I can get.

We’re back!

IMG_2878, originally uploaded by AnnaPasq.

Or, “Far more about the immigration process than anyone probably ever wanted to know.”

As in for once I didn’t have to fly back from Canada by myself! As in I didn’t die during the immigration interview! As in Dan is now a permanent resident! (Commence extreme happy dance)

How did it go, you ask?

Steady, men. Steaaaaady…

Cooling off, originally uploaded by AnnaPasq.

First thing tomorrow morning, I head to Montreal to complete the interview portion of Dan’s and my immigration case. If it goes well, we both could be back in the U.S. by the end of the week. If it doesn’t, we’re pretty much back to square one.

It will go well. Of course it will go well. All of our paperwork has been approved up to this point, we have an excessive amount of proof of our marriage, and, wonder of wonders, we actually are a legitimately married couple. Whether that’s enough now rests entirely on the decision the visa officer that interviews us makes. There’s a special brand of worry that comes with the knowledge that the outcome of such a big part of your life is completely out of your hands.

Regardless of how the next few days go, it’s going to be fine, I know (because, really, if we can’t be positive about this whole crazy experience, then what’s the point?). I just probably won’t be able to exhale until Friday.

An education

If you have never worked with a family battling cancer, you are both fortunate and unfortunate.

Fortunate in that, if you haven’t, you’re surrounded by people free of the disease, which is excellent! The more research that is done, the higher the number of people who can claim that rises. On the other hand, families dealing with cancer–especially the kids diagnosed with the disease–are flat-out amazing. Not just in the “oh, what a brave little dear” sense they push on television, but in terms of their honesty, their endurance, and their optimism. It’s unfortunate that the rest of the world rarely gets to see how hard they work.

As I was negotiating the contract for my next travel assignment over the past few weeks, I found myself getting seriously bogged down by minutia. I didn’t get the very specific terms that I wanted. I had to deal with too many people. It was taking too long to get a response, and when I did, it wasn’t the one I requested. I hit so many little walls and survived so many surges to my blood pressure that when I finally did sign, it was kind of anticlimactic. Sort of, “It’s not perfect, but it’s done. Whatever.”

Beware of office politics, guys (and here I thought I was avoiding them by traveling!). They can eat your soul.

You know what I was pouting about all those weeks? The relatively insignificant details of a PEDIATRIC BONE MARROW POSITION. I.e. my chosen specialty. I.e. the type of dedicated unit I’ve been trying to get a position in for ages, but haven’t been able to because they rarely hire travelers. I.e. a really kick-ass job. Which I had been offered. And here I was, whining about whether my Christmas vacation would start on the 18th or the 19th. Priorities.

Don’t worry. Now that I’ve given myself a swift kick in the pants (it is possible if you angle things just right), I’m actually really stupidly excited about this one. If there’s one thing working in units not solely dealing with heme/onc patients has taught me (okay, in reality it’s taught me a boatload of things, but this was the sticky one), it’s that I really miss dealing solely with heme/onc patients. When that was all I did, I was a little worried that I only felt like I loved my job was because I was used to it. Now that I’ve done some other things, I’ve realized that the reason I felt like I loved my job was because I loved my job. So to be given a chance to go back, to start on a fantastic new unit and learn lots of new things in what really is my field? Yep. Definitely fortunate.

(Coincidentally, September has been declared Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Donate or volunteer if that’s your thing, or just make a point to hug the healthy kids in your life. Here’s to making even more of them that way.)

Out of the loop

Just so we’re all aware, I got to see this guy do stand up last night:

He turned out to be the special guest for an improv thing I was at last night, and was even more kick-ass than expected. My seat was maybe twelve feet away from the microphone. I just about died.

This is what I love–okay, and kind of hate–about Los Angeles. On the one hand, I feel lucky to be in a place where at any given time some uber-famous person could just pop on stage during a show in a venue way smaller and cheaper than the place you’dve had to go to see them headline. On the other, I almost didn’t go out last night. I hadn’t checked a single thing off my to do list, and Louis C.K. certainly wasn’t billed for a little stage in Melrose, so…I could have just gone on with my apartment cleaning, completely oblivious to the fact that he’d gone on. Which means stuff like this could be going on ALL THE TIME and we just never hear about it! How many other cameos have I been missing? I hate not knowing things!

I need to get out more.

Whoa!

IMG_0793-1-2, originally uploaded by AnnaPasq.

I don’t know about your week, but mine has been full of surprises. The biggest one? That I really can run 13.1 miles without dying. It’s true! Note the finisher’s medal. And the fabulous hairdo. And the hollowed-out, totally exhausted look to the eyes. There’s no Photoshopping that awesomeness.

Weirder still, I actually enjoyed the run. Really, as long as I focused on the people watching or whatever was on my iPod instead of how many miles were left in the race, I was fine. Seems logical, yes, but as I walked to my starting point in the dark that morning I was genuinely worried that I was going to be picked up by the slow bus (this is a Real Thing they’ve come up with for distance runs, apparently. If you wind up going so slow that there’s no way you’ll finish in the allotted amount of time, a shuttle comes and whisks you off the course so they can start cleaning up. Race. Over.) Up until then, the most I’d ever run in one go was eleven miles, and even that had knocked me out for the day (seriously. I went home, downed some Gatorade, and slept until four that afternoon). I’d never really settled on an actual training program. I didn’t have any running buddies. As a general rule in the months prior to race day, I ate terribly (Yay, candy!) and slept even worse (Boo, night shift!). Far as I was concerned, not making it to the finish line was a far more realistic goal than a 3 hour finish time.

Big surprise #231: My body has a lot more get up and go than I give it credit for. I finished the race half an hour faster than I expected. I was able to sprint the last quarter mile. And then proceed directly to Disneyland and ride rides pretty much until they closed the park (okay, so maybe I started to feel a little bit wobbly towards the end of that last part, but my legs never ACTUALLY gave out, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s a win). All this from a kid who used to fake sick for every single gym class. And gym was three times a week.

Big surprise #574: This run left said body craving MORE runs. I may or may not have just signed up for the Big Sur Half in November (located, oh-so-logically, in Monterey). The scientist in me has to find out if the endorphine flood from Disneyland was just a fluke or if I’m capable of doing this running thing for reals.

Not-so-big surprise #8: The Disneyland Half-Marathon was an awesome race to do as my first. The course had some uber-interesting chunks (when else do you get to explore Disney and the set up areas before the park opens, or run laps around Angel Stadium?? I mean without being a baseball player. You know what I mean.) and even classier characters (there were some very hard-core costumes at the start…most of which were strewn on the side of the course by mile six, but I can’t really blame them. No way I’m doing 13 miles in a Mr. Potato Head suit).  They had bands and dancers and school cheer teams to fill in the more boring parts of the trail, and a swanky finish line spectator section for my dad, who flew in from Texas to watch the race, to watch the race, complete with swankier bathrooms (which, let’s be honest, we all knew were going to be my dad’s favorite part anyway). AND THE SUPPORT! I couldn’t go half a mile without someone I know cheering me on. To have people encourage you by name during that last mile, to run into Angel stadium where the players enter to find it full of smiling, yelling faces…awesome. It was just awesome.

Seriously, I’ve got to get my marathon-phobic buddies together (any takers?) and do this again next year. I mean, seeing as I’m not dead and all.