I See What You Meme

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen.  If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life.  I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into

I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting room a few weeks ago. While I waited, another patient came out into the reception area to make her next appointment. The receptionist offered a few dates, including one on a Saturday. The woman (I have no idea who she was; let's call her Maude) originally said yes to the Saturday date. Then the following conversation ensued:  Maude: Wait! Is that Mother's Day weekend?  Receptionist: Hmm. You know what? I'm not sure. When is Mother's Day?  Maude: You don't know?  Receptionist: (nervous laugh) Well, I guess I should know this.... Maude: Are you a mother?  Receptionist: No.  Maude: But...you have a mother, right? You should know these things!  At this point, I was incensed with "Maude". This woman knew nothing about the receptionist. She could have recently lost a child. She could have been struggling with infertility. She could have had a mother who recently died. Or she could have a strained or just very compli

It has been almost one year since I announced to the greater world that I was diving into graduate school again to pursue my Ph.D . What has changed over the last year? When I announced that I was going back to school, we weren't sure if the "on-ground" components of the class would be in-person or virtual. For Fall and Spring, we had to stay virtual. This meant that even though I was in class one weekend per month, I was able to attend from the comfort of my spare room; no need to flex my work schedule or take the train to DC.  As classes started in September, I found a rhythm to my weekly load. Go to work (most days, 8:30-5ish), come home, get in a walk if I'm lucky, eat dinner with the family, chill for a bit. Then about 7 pm, I'd sit down at the computer to work on classwork. Some nights, it's reading (SO much reading). Other nights, it's posting to a discussion group or meeting up with colleagues for a group project, or outlining thoughts for an upcom