Sum-more Summer on the Eve of the Threenado.

Brace yourselves: it's summer! It's hot. It's sunny. It's a month away from official threenagerdom. It's about one week away from Chaya switching preschool days to thrice a week (3 for 3!). And that same week away from starting said three preschool days at 8 a.m. (in the morning! Ack!) That's gonna take some adjustment as her schedule has actually been shifting later over this summer. Whoops. 

For now, we're thigh-deep in a preschool break and all the shenanigans stuffed into that. 

Our preschool break began with a frenetic foray to Tahoe. Andrew's mom has had a ski cabin near Sugarbowl Ski Resort for years, but it's only recently been discovered as a summer cabin worthy of a strapping young child (and boisterous Betty-dog)

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It's everything you could possibly imagine a summer cabin being. There's a lake beach (I know, right?? in Tahoe??)

 There's a bunch of trails.

There's a BBQ on the front porch.

 Aaaaand there's a swarm of bloodthirsty bastard mosquitoes!! Some may have left their hearts in San Francisco, but I'm pretty sure I left my blood in Tahoe. Not even some generic mosquito repellent, compression socks and pants kept them from pock-marking my legs into infected itch. 

The highlight of Chaya's trip was probably the plane. 

She was so infatuated with planes that our worst travel moments were waiting on the tarmac to get on the plane. Impatience doesn't cover it. CHAYA GET ON THE PLANE!!! With thrashing and bolting and the like. 

She also enjoyed (with some trepidation) the affections of Betty the dog. 

And perhaps the greatest culinary discovery of the weekend was those ooey gooey sugar kebabs known as toasted marshmellons! Or something like that.

 There were also many moments of Chaya demanding to go back to the house, refusing to go inside the cabin, telling the dog to come and then screaming BETTY NO!!! LEAVE, hurling herself headfirst into a body of bruises from a bed, and otherwise being her vividly youthful self. 

And there was a little bit of recovery required for the whole family on returning. We all might have been a little tired and snappy by Sunday evening, and Monday was "fun."

 Travelling is still pretty brutal on my body, considering I'm hanging by a thread of "not dead yet" in an amorphous fashion with all of my various at-home accommodations. The stint in Tahoe alone was enough to erase a handful of weeks of PT, foment some reflux redux and bend the rules of space and time to rack up a few months' sleep deficit in two days! The plane and car were physically exacting experiences all their own. But we trudge on with happy memories and cute photos (and the number of a very good massage therapist!)

That was a segue? Clever huh? Adella's health! To celebrate not  having that preschool time for myself, I added a whole battery of additional medical tests and appointments to this week! No really, timing just worked out that way. Lucky Chaya got a whole lot of gramma time as a result. 

So as of the moment I can say that mammograms ain't no thing (though I felt a minor twinge of guilt presenting my eensy decolletage to the technician who had to somehow get those babies into the machine). I don't seem to have breast cancer. In fact, joy of joys, breast pain is a negative risk factor for breast cancer usually. I mean I was more concerned that the sensitivity was related to the abscess I had during that nasty bout of mastitis a few years ago, but still nice to hear. I have no idea what the EMG (zapping your body with lots of little shocks to see how the nerves fire, then sticking some muscles with needles for good measure) of my right arm will reveal because I don't get to hear about that until after the MRI of my upper back/neck. That's a complement to the MRI I had some months back of my brain and the MRI I had a different time of my lower back (yay bulging thoracic disc and spinal degeneration in my lumbar region!)

Next week I finally make it to a neurologist to add to my specialist bingo (do two rheumatologists  and two orthopedists count on separate squares?). And probably will get a few more neurodiagnostic tests run on my other extremities. 

Things that have been diagnostically excluded at this time: MS, scleroderma, lupus, sjogren's, mixed connective tissue disease, brain tumors, heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases (beyond a benign and occasional arrhythmia), most imaginable nutritional deficiencies, most thyroid diseases, and (this week) breast cancer.

A nice list of things not to have! Of course many of those aren't dispositive, but sometimes ya gotta take comfort in the "well if you had that, by now you'd be dead or way worse off" stretch of time with this nonsense. All my fingers: still intact! Still walking! Life is sweet. 

I do seem to have GERD/LPR (reflux, which seems a pretty common affliction), raynaud's with a nice side of chillblains and related eczema, low blood pressure, and a host of musculoskeletal issues that may or may not also be neurological. Oh and probably a vasovagal response that's a bit more acute than most. I probably have TMJ and lord knows about arthritis in other joints. We'll see.

My mother-in-law was commenting how she knew it was time for PT for her shoulder when the pain began to interfere with opening a jar. That just wasn't right. That struck me, I guess because I was thinking "opening a stubborn jar tweaks my wrists through my elbow through my shoulders and neck, which then seems to travel into my jaw and cheek... and somehow I'm sure it' then exacerbates my lower back through my feet and then I have headaches, reduced sensation and pain and... f- all those jars, I'll take things in bags, thanks!" So I'm a little less on the scale of "wow" when I see the PT forms that ask about various ways physical pain interferes with day to day activities. Don't get me wrong, I still can do a ton and I'm grateful for that, but it is a bit of a trade off in that it doesn't come free on my body. I'm still amazed at how well and quickly a pulled ankle healed itself. That's what normal healing is supposed to feel like? Astounding! And glad I'm capable of it.

And well, I've reached enough of an equilibrium that I can do mild walking daily, and several complicated PT exercises with a predictable level of acceptable pain/tingling. It's not without some discomfort (and reflux occasionally), but a tolerable threshold mostly. Especially as long as I have massages regularly. I'm surprised that I actually remain fairly strong and flexible even if I'm wonky as all get out.

We'll see, anyways. In the meantime, I have to find a balance of protecting myself and living life. So we're at least limiting plane trips to once a month! Chaya's gotta be a flower girl. That's just non-negotiable!

And the monster carries on with several bruises and the broadest multichromatic dazzlement of human emotion imaginable!

She's insisted on wearing the same pineapple pajamas all day long for abut a week straight.Our only respite is that if she gets any water or dirt on her clothes she MUST shed them and wear something new, and occasionally she's in such a panic about this that she'll accept other clothes than her pineapple shorts! I also couldn't tell you the last time she took a bath, but she remains surprisingly fresh and clean with the help of baby wipes and a wet comb from time to time. 

This weekend she's getting still more grandparent time, as her Grampa Tom has come to visit! 

So far, we've attended an Arts Festival together and created many many works of fine art that were left fluttering in the wind to dry. Chaya is very zen about her creation. It's about the act in the moment. Once a work is completed, the fruits of her tussles with the Muses may be sent back to the Ether. It was the moment of creation, not the created itself. 

True art, of course, is bobbing in a bouncy castle. And Chaya got herself into a rather large one of those. She liked it ok when the other kids were in there, but far preferred it once the time had expired and all the other kids dutifully heeded the call of the operators and left. Her very own private bouncy house!! Nothing like a special ops extraction mission to give you a little bit of bounce for day. 

It may have been a full morning, judging by the maniacal howling the predated lunch and naptime, but summer's too full to throttle back. 

So we rounded out the evening at a big farm-style gala at a preschool friend's house. Let the 3 year old birthdays heat up!

It was a fantastic affair, and Chaya managed to avoid the highly prominent water theme and stay quite dry.  After a typical Chaya wander into the netherlands of the property, she even occasionally interacted with her preschool friends, largely when one of them gently told Chaya to actually go DOWN the slide after she stopped at the top in order to ponder the meaning of life!

Judging by the twenty minutes of "dinner" in which Chaya ran around howling and refusing to come to the table, the moment of sheer crystalized frustration that led to knocking over blocks into her water and all over herself, and the way she then managed to climb onto my head and make alien noises at bedtime... it might have been on the extreme side of stimulation for the kiddo. 

Today's been a little mellower, though we'll see how my body feels about an afternoon mini-hike on the aptly named Little Mountain. 

And we hike onwards through another week of break towards August and the big birthday wedding bonanzas with maybe a transition from crib to bed thrown in there. 

Eek. Wish us luck and we'll wish you a cool breezy July weekend back.