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In addition to driving myself mad whenever I misplace something in the house, I am equally bothered by being unable to name songs (thank you, Shazam, even if you don’t help with humming tunes out) or place people.

The placing people thing really gets under my skin because solving the question means talking to the person and admitting that I’m trying to figure out how we know each other.  Or… more often than not… not really know each other because we’ve never actually met.  They’re just random people I’ve seen waiting for the bus on a daily basis or seen across the aisle at shul.  Anyway, sometimes the people are too far away to strike up a conversation, so I’m left staring at the back of their head and running through lists of possibilities.  It bothers me to be that close and that far away at the same time.

We went to see Evita, and a woman I couldn’t place was sitting two rows ahead of me.  I stared at the side of her face on and off throughout the show trying to jog my memory.  Where would I know her from?  Their old preschool?  Was she someone’s grandmother?

I left without figuring it out or getting to speak to her.  It bothered me all night.

The next morning, the ChickieNob and I went to get our hair cut, and THE WOMAN was sitting in my hairdresser’s chair, getting her hair styled.  It felt like the universe stuck her in my path again just so I could ask how I knew her.  When she went to pay, I admitted that I had sat behind her at the theater the night before and was trying to figure out how I knew her.

“The library,” she told me.  “I used to be a librarian.”

Mystery solved.  Huge sigh of relief.

The ChickieNob told me that she thought it was very brave that I would choose to look that weird in front of a stranger.  But… it isn’t weird to ask someone how you know them (right?) AND it bothers me a lot when I can’t place someone.

Doesn’t it bother you enough to ask?

I know I said I wasn’t going to write anymore about Truman… but then I got good news.

I’m working when the phone rings.  It’s our vet, calling to check on Truman.  I let her know that he was still the same.  Still eagerly eating, still the same personality, and still paralyzed with crusty eyes.

She told me that she had been discussing Truman’s illness with a radiologist who also sometimes worked with the guinea pig specialist she sent me to see last week.  She told him that both vets believed it was either a clot or spinal cancer.  He didn’t think so.  And he was willing to do an ultrasound on Truman for free to find out.

My vet promised that Truman would be awake for the ultrasound and it wouldn’t hurt at all.  I told her my fear was that they would definitively find something, and I would be encouraged to put him to sleep.  She promised me that she would never suggest that while he was still relatively happy.  All this would do would give us answers so if I had to make a choice in the future, I would do so knowing what we were dealing with.

Truman and I drove over to the vet, my stomach in knots.

A nurse took Truman back while I stayed in the waiting room, and came out to retrieve me when it was over.  She was sort of smiling, but I don’t know her well, so I didn’t know how to read that.  But when I walked into the examination room and the vet was beaming, I knew it was good news.

No clot.  No spinal tumour.  Nothing amiss found internally.

I know it sounds weird to be excited that we now have a completely unexplained illness, but taking the worst things off the table is a bit of good news.  She warned that it could still be lymphoma in his brain, but it could also be something else.  And while she doesn’t think that he will ever walk again, and she tempered my excitement by saying that every extra day is a blessing and she can’t predict how this will go, I drove home with a huge grin on my face and gave him so extra lettuce to celebrate.

Our vet shows such deep care for Truman.  But moreover, I cannot thank that radiologist enough for making that offer and giving us peace of heart.

Yes, I snapped a picture of Truman in the waiting room at the office.  So what?  (Okay, I may have snapped about 12 photos.)

As George Washington croons to Hamilton, “One last tiiiiiiiiime.” The kids reported from the White House one last time last week at the 2016 Kids’ State Dinner.

It has been an awesome experience, and while I’m hopeful that this won’t be the actual last time they step foot inside, it does feel like an ending of sorts with the current administration coming to a close.  Hopefully the next administration will invite them back, but in case they don’t, we used this visit to say goodbye to the people we usually see while we’re there and the building itself.

It’s a weird place to say goodbye to because unlike far away places that are difficult to reach again, this space is one that you need to be invited into in order to enter.  If I want to save my money, I can get back to Norway at any point, but unless they’re invited back within the gates of the campus or get a permanent job in the building, they are not going to go there again.

Weird.

Anyway, it was a wonderful day, as always.  The Obamas throw a great state dinner, and you exit wanting a garden of your own and vegetable sculptures.

The one amusing part came due to a game called The Silent History.  It’s an interactive fiction (sort of) game; a story told in pieces.  Supporting the main story are field reports that people have submitted that are scattered around the world (or, at the very least, around the US).

There is one field report in DC, and it happens to be in the White House.  I was talking about the game with some friends, and realized that I could open the field report the next time I was there and email a copy to everyone else so we could all read it.  It’s called “Wizards,” so I imagined it would be about magic, or something like that.

We got there a bit early so we plopped down in the Press Briefing Room.  Great!  It’s only a few doors down from the Oval Office, which is the location of the Field Report.  I’ll just turn on the app, download that part of the story, send it to my friend, and still have time to prep things with the kids.

Except I was about three feet away from the coordinate range.

I tried turning the phone, holding it out to various points along the wall, traipsing through the hallway, all to no avail.  It was maddening to be that close and not be able to open the story.

So I explained to a staffer about the game and asked if he would take my phone into another part of the building and see if he could download the report.  As I was opening the app to show him how to do it, leaning hard to the left, I ENTERED THE COORDINATE RANGE AND THE REPORT PIN TURNED GREEN!

The staffer would like it noted that he was good luck even if he didn’t actually do anything.

I was able to read it.  (It’s about the Washington Wizards… not actual wizards… which was a little disappointing.)  And take screenshots to send to my friend.  I apologize to the makers of the app if that wasn’t okay, but… come on.  You made it a ridiculously small range, and only a handful of people will ever be able to open it.

So mission accomplished.  I opened the only Silent History Field Report DC has to offer and helped the kids say goodbye to the White House.  And if you have a second, go read their post and cheer them on because they worked very hard on it.

Truman hasn’t improved, so the vet moved up his follow-up appointment.  He has been eating double the amount he eats on any given day, but he has lost weight.  His legs are still paralyzed.  His eyes are crusty because he can’t clean his face; doing so would mean balancing on his hind legs to use his front paws, and he can’t do that at the moment.

When she saw him, she gently told me that we should consider euthanasia.  This was my greatest fear; not just losing him but having to make the decision to lose him.  It was one thing when it was Cozy and his eyes were outside his skull — he was clearly in pain.  But Truman is still himself, albeit dragging his legs and very thin.

The other option was to go and see another vet for a second opinion.  I didn’t know if I wanted to go down that road simply because I know myself.  If that vet didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear, I would start going to another and another and another.  But our vet gently told me that the person she was recommending was a guinea pig specialist, and if she said that it was cancer, it was cancer.

So I took Truman to the second vet.  The vet was busy but was willing to squeeze him in between appointments as a favour for our vet.  But it meant leaving him there for a few hours so she could slip him in whenever she had time.  It meant going home and sitting in our quiet house, totally alone, worrying that I’d never see him again.

The other vet called in the late afternoon to go over options with me.  Without doing many more tests, she didn’t know what was wrong with Truman.  It could be his enlarged heart, it could be a clot, it could be a disc injury, an infection, cancer.  What did we want to do?  Did we want to be super aggressive, possibly losing him in trying to figure out how to help him?  Did we want to euthanize him since it was very unlikely he would ever move again.  She agreed that he was still his spunky self, and she admitted that she had never seen a guinea pig with a better personality.  (At our normal vet, all the techs came out to give him a head scratch before we left, and Truman lapped up all the massages and purred with his eyes closed in bliss.  He is such a love-pig.)  We didn’t have to decide to euthanize today, but we needed to know what we were willing to do.

She asked me to consider any possible regrets.  She wanted me to make a decision that helped me stave off any what ifs.

But here’s the thing; there is no amount anyone could ever do that would feel like “enough.”  I would always second-guess if there was a step we could have done at some point; something that would make the difference.  There was nothing she was going to do right now that would stop that from happening.

Euthanasia is meant to be a good death.  If it has to happen, then I want him to be home for his remaining time.  I want him to be eating as many cookies as he wants, and getting back rubs and tons of hay and long leaves of lettuce.  I want him to spend whatever remaining days he has left knowing without a doubt that we love him so much.  That he is an integral part of our family, and we will do whatever we need to do to make him comfortable and safe and cared for.  I don’t want him to be scared or alone or in pain or in an unfamiliar place.

So we brought him home.  The second vet prescribed a pain medication and told us what to look out for so we would know when it was time to bring him back.  This could go on for days or weeks or maybe months.

When we got home, I gave him dinner and his medications.  And then we gave him a bath.  He swam around the bathtub, doing laps, his legs trailing behind him.  It was the first time in days that he has moved around.  Afterward I swaddled him and then blew his fur dry with a hairdryer.

He is currently next to me, chowing down on his pellets in between hopefully nosing his purple food dish to check if I’ve magically slipped in something delicious.  In other words, he is himself.

I don’t know how much more I’ll write about Truman, though I’ll post an update from time to time.  It is really hard to talk about him now.

My sweet piggy boy

Last week, I got a PR pitch for Parents’ Day.  Well, for some product that somehow ties into parenthood that they’ve decided to tack onto Parents’ Day, but you know what I mean.  Parents’ Day.  Have you ever freakin’ heard of Parents’ Day?

I Googled it, and apparently it is a real thing.  I hesitate to call it a holiday because… come on.  But it has been around since the first Clinton administration.  (Like how I did that; assuming that there will be a second Clinton presidency.)

So on the heels of Mother’s Day in May and Father’s Day in June, you have Parents’ Day in July, which parents are supposed to celebrate together.  Clearly this needs to be followed by Parenting Day in August to celebrate the act of parenting (vs. the state of being parents), Being with Kids Day in September to celebrate those moments parents spend with their children, and Time Apart from Kids Day in October to mark those hours when parents and kids are not physically together.

This will take us into the busy winter, kid-focused holiday season which is immediately followed by purchasing cardboard Valentines for your child’s class. (And stuffed animals!  Do not forget to purchase dust-accumulating stuffed animals!)  March can include a celebration of Family Day.  And… oh… just for shits and giggles, let’s throw a Mommyhood Day into April.  How will this differ from Mother’s Day in May?  It won’t, but you will still need to get another card.

And flowers.

I actually have no problem with Mother’s Day and find it a lovely gesture as long as people keep it chill.  And Father’s Day, totally fine with it.  But tacking on ANOTHER parenting holiday that is supposed to just combine the sentiments of the preceding two holidays?  No.  I put my foot down.

Just no.

Politicians, stop signing empty bills that celebrate parenthood and create laws that actually protect and nurture families.  Paid family leave, equal pay, protecting reproductive rights, expanding education access, stopping violence against women — THIS is what we want.

So get on that.