not speedy enough for sarah

A girl I went to high school with and played soccer with growing up passed away this morning. She was diagnosed with ALS six years ago and has steadily declined through the years. To say that she was my friend is a bit of an overstatement- we were acquaintances but she was always very nice. I do believe that she is the one who taught me and Mindy what blow jobs were during our high school chemistry lab our sophomore year of high school. Yes, it's true, I didn't learn what a blow job was until my sophomore year of high school. Oh, to return to that level of innocence!

I hadn't talked to Sarah in years but I followed her very well written blog (speed4sarah.com) which I really enjoyed. And I had heard last week that she had taken a turn for the worse and so have been thinking about her a ton.

What would you do if you knew you were dying soon? Travel? Engage in high risk behaviors like sky diving? Reach out to everyone you cared about and let them know you loved them?

I can't even imagine what it was like for Sarah knowing that her life was coming to an end, but with her declining health (wheelchair, electronic voice box, breathing tubes) she didn't even get to go out in a blaze of glory.

I can't stop thinking about her and her family.

What would I do if I had a week to live?
I'd take Mike and Teddy (and a nanny to help watch Teddy) and go to someplace really beautiful in nature. I want someplace with trees and mountains and a lake with waves. And I would do shrooms or acid. I don't do them now because I don't want to mess with my health, but if I only had a week to live you bet your ass I would be doing them!

I probably would write some love letters to the people I care about but I feel like for the most part the people that I care about know that I care about them so there isn't some rush to say it for the last time. It would be nice to see them again though so maybe I would throw a big party too?

Is there anything that you've always wanted to do but haven't done yet?

There are a lot of places that I would love to travel to still but on the whole, as I sit here, I'm realizing that I have done a lot of the things I wanted to in life. That's crazy. This started out as a sad and depressing blog post but it is ending with me actually feeling pretty good about my life.

Becoming An Adult

I'm back.

To say it's been a while is a bit of an understatement. Last time I posted I was pregnant and now I have a two and a half year old! Things have obviously changed a lot for me but that's not what this post is about. This post is about becoming an adult.

When do you really become an adult? I think it's different for each person. For some it's when they graduate college, or get their first job, live on their own for the first time, pay their own bills, buy their first car or house, get married, have a child, or have their parents die.

I've done a lot of those things and still didn't feel like an adult. I felt like I was "faking it." Or that the whole thing is just a big lie and you never really feel like an adult.

But I've changed my mind. Today is my first day as an adult because I DECIDED that I am now officially an adult. It only took 39 years.

Obviously it is just a mental shift but I also cleaned my back stairs.

What? How is that related? I've been meaning to wash my back stairs since I moved into my apartment. But when I moved in here I was six months pregnant and it just wasn't going to happen. I'm the only person who goes down the treacherously steep back stairs (once or twice a week to do the laundry) so it wasn't a pressing issue but it always bothered me just a little bit.

These are the dirty before pictures:

I can give you excuses but I just didn't wash them. And didn't wash them. And didn't wash them. And it hung over my head bothering me just a little tiny bit all the time.


Basically the stairs were the physical representation of my laziness and lack of motivation and inability to control my own life.


But I washed them today. Why? Because I'm an adult.