This Too Shall Pass

You'll notice that the blogging frequency has fallen off a little. You'll also be aware that Bambina is on vacation for a couple of weeks before her summer day camp starts, which means that my days and nights are now spoken for.

Talk about a kid who needs a vacation from school. I realized that she hasn't had more than a day off in a year, which would put most adults over the edge, never mind a 4 year-old. (Which reminded me of this short but sweet [and so true] post over at Dubious Quality). So we're having fun during the days, doing arts & crafts, going to the library, playing outside, pretty much staying busy all day. In short, we're doing all the things that will necessitate a vacation for ME after two weeks. Bambina was so sweet yesterday. We bought these cool people shapes, and were creating the Dan Zanes Band. I am notoriously bad at drawing faces, having them all come out looking like something out of a Nine Inch Nails video. So when it came time to do Dan Zanes' face I said, "why don't you do his face so Mama doesn't mess it up?" Bambina replied, "No Mama. You try it. Don't worry; you can do it! We will cheer for you!" She then starting singing "Mama Yay Yay" as I attempted to draw a nose on Dan, and then glowingly praised my "effort" when I was done. Very cute.

We're currently in the process of making dragons to take with us on Sunday to the Boston Dragonboat Festival: www.bostondragonboat.org, an event Bambina has been awaiting for months now. Due to the crowds, we'll probably go early to see the boat races but skip the cultural stuff "inside the big tent" for this year. The last place I'm heading on a 90 degree day is inside a "big tent" full of people. Not gonna do it. Not even in honor of Qu Yuan.

In other news, I'm still psychotically germophobic. Which at this point in my recovery is actually still a good thing. I did the math: if all goes well and my GVH does not flare again (necessitating another two months of high-dose prednisone, followed by 4 months of tapering), it will still be 2009 before I'm off all of my immunosuppressives. Bah. And then it will still be another year after that till I'm more or less "normal," in terms of immunity. My hottie nurse from NIH once said, "Don't get a transplant unless you absolutely have to, because believe me, you will go through the transplant, think you are done, but then spend the rest of your life managing the effects of the transplant." Damn. Hot AND smart, he was. I'm just praying (and will accept any you wish to offer as well) that my GVH doesn't flare again. I cannot tell you how sick I am of eating bananas, white rice, applesauce, white toast, scrambled eggs and mashed potatoes. No matter what I do, if I stay on that diet, things go okay-ish. If I deviate and tell myself it's only one slice of pizza, one piece of chocolate, one yogurt, one french fry, one slice of watermelon, whatever: BLAM. Ugliness on a scale I cannot describe. I have been eating that diet since March 26th, and I am completely and utterly over it. The only saving grace is that, moon face notwithstanding, I have gained minimal prednisone weight on my ass. Why? Because when you can only eat 5 things, you tend to not eat for no reason; in fact, I have to make myself eat even though I'm hungry because I'm thinking, "Oh god, not another bowl of white rice with scrambled eggs!" Bleah. Although as sucky as it is, I'll still take "crapping my pants while alive and otherwise well" over "sick as a dog and waiting to die from Aplastic Anemia."

As they say, "this too shall pass." Literally.