2020, hope and why I have tickets to Louis Tomlinson World Tour

 Hope.  2020 has challenged hope in a big way.  We don't have anything to look forward to.  We never know what day it is.  Bay loves Harry Styles.  He doesn't even have a concert scheduled.  Louis Tomlinson does though.  We bought tickets.  Everyone needs hope.  She mightn't get to go to school for the rest of the year and next year is too far off to make any assumptions.  But she DOES have four tickets to the Louis Tomlinson World Tour.  She booked the tickets and mine and Trent's seats are a dignified distance from her's and Jessica's.  

Heartbreak

 Fuck me.  We all go the way of heartbreak when one of the kids does.  The long relationship is impossible to detach from or detangle from when both children involved have been your children for ten years.  It would be easy if we could just reverse out and align with the birth child but it's impossible.  Hannah is my girl and Neil is Mikela's boy and that won't change.  I know over time it will become something different and the relationship will become whatever it becomes when families shift and whether we like it or not change is essential to move forward.  Fuck me though. 

We need to address how we've underfunded our retirement.

I started the new drug.  THE new drug.  On Day 3 I stopped coughing.  Now I don't cough.  I don't wheeze or crackle either.  Nor do I nap.  The no coughing is amazing.  People notice.  Shawn, my Crossfit coach has noted the lack of cough numerous times.  My lung function was 64%.  Now is 82, and holding.  This is a headfuck.  There are things I never expected to anticipate (things like grandchildren or retirement) and I didn't mourn the lack of that anticipation, but now it's firmly planted that I might actually live to be 70. 

How did I get here??

I am 50 and had a brain bleed two days after my birthday.  What started as a horrible headache, quickly became "the worst headache in my life" and those words usually mean aneurysm. When uttered as you check in to the ER, they contain the magic whereby you find yourself fast tracked to a room and then fast tracked to radiology for a CT scan.  It took a lumbar puncture to diagnose a brain bleed and from there I was life flighted to Harborview Medical Center.  Everything became physically and mentally calm for me once they gave me some good pain meds, enabling me to obnoxiously take a picture from the helicopter.  My week in the ICU there was marvelously uneventful as each day proved that I wasn't going to have a stroke (one of the worst areas of risk following a bleed) and that I did not have an aneurysm, and that I had no deficits following the bleed.  Things I love: nurses..... nurses fucking rock!! (Good doctors are amazing too, but nurses make it all happen.)   Warm blankets.   Warm blankets make the pain go away.  Good insurance.  It's a conflict for me because everyone should have equal access to good medicine but insurance matters and I wish it didn't.

Nothing to see here

There aren't as many people at my house as there used to be.
Gene is in the Navy. Neil is in the Air Force. Travis is at WSU. My house is quiet. Gus is a senior.  Bay is a teenager. I have no kids in elementary school. I am a Crossfitter. I'm a bit bad ass but not as bad ass as people like to think.  My lung function is either "stuck" or "stable" at 57% depending on how my mood is.

As for the rest of us:

Eldest boy: very nice.  very kind.  very sarcastic. very swears a lot. very outdoorsy.  very happy living at home.  very waiting for his parents to move out.
Next boy: very nice. very kind. very in love with his Hannah. very outdoorsy. ready for a big adventure. said "mom, whether you like it or not I'm joining the Air Force".
Youngest Peppard boy: very nice. very honest. very likes to party. very mechanical. very speedy. very ready to make money and buy toys. very very social.
Youngest and smallest girl child: very wants a ferret. very likes animals. very sweet. very, very funny. very would move away tomorrow for adventure.

And here we all are

Years later.
The boy did indeed have spine surgery to fuse his C1 and C2 due to them never having fused.  Evidently, he has been a bit of a ticking bomb all his life and it is quite literally amazing that with all the crazy stunts he has done and mishaps which have befallen him and roofs that he has scaled that he didn't (quite literally) drop dead with this never-fused thang.
He had the surgery at Harborview.  Trent and I survived the whole thing and then a month or two later I found myself in a bit of PTSD territory.  We all made it through.  Gus healed at a ridiculous pace.  Apparently 15 year old boys do do that.