Hutchbec's Musings: Catching Up

So, it's been a while. Or is it "awhile"?

Okay (or OK?), restart.

As most/all of you know, mom's had a long road these last two months. Soon after their trip here she had a routine CT scan which showed the tumor had grown and eroded more of her spine. Based on the amount of pain she was in while here, this wasn't completely surprising, but it was heartbreaking. She made it through the 10+ hours of surgery and the two weeks of inpatient recovering and rehab, and started chemo again a couple of weeks ago, which she has tolerated pretty well. I am very proud of her for her strength and hope through all of this. I am hoping the chemo is able to interrupt the tumor's growth and give her years to do the things she wants to do in this world. Hi Mom :)

I've been traveling a lot - (or alot?) since my last update. I was in Austin for almost 3 weeks - given the nature of my trip I didn't really think much about taking photos, but I did manage to get a few of Max before I left. (How could you not?)

Sleepy in the car:

Playing with Mama in toyland, aka the living room:

While I was in Austin, I learned I was going to receive an award from HRSA, so before returning to Seattle I frantically bought a new outfit (thanks, Mom!) and flew up to DC to attend the ceremony. Here's a pre-ceremony headshot...

The ceremony was nice - I stood up in front of about 50 of my peers from throughout the country, the NQC manager said some nice things about me, and then I shook hands with two men in sharp suits and a public health service woman in full white military garb. I didn't catch their names. They then gave me a nice inscribed plaque that now sits on my bookshelf at work. Here's kind of the best I can do to get it on film (sorry, just tilt your head or the screen):

I flew back to Seattle and was back for a week before flying to Boston to visit my cousin and go to the wedding in Provincetown of my friend Jenny and her (now wife) Kate last weekend.

Provincetown is a very pretty town - on the cape, with lots of flowers and water and sand dunes. It is also a very, very gay town - and it happened to be leather weekend - which meant there were a lot (alot?) of gay men walking around everywhere in leather outfits. All I can say is I'm grateful that it was 40 degrees out, because otherwise there would have been more skin sticking out of the leather outfits - which, depending on physique, can be interesting or traumatizing.

Anyhoo - so there was a dinner at the Lobster Pot, a long walk through the dunes and trees to the beach, the ceremony in the afternoon, some shopping, then a reception on the beach - complete with clam chowder on the beach to watch the sunset, then a lobster dinner across the street (which I found out I just can't deal with the brutality of eating a lobster), then a return to the beach for s'mores, which doubled as their wedding cake. It was a gorgeous weekend, with lots of sun during the day and stars at night. Here are some photos from the weekend:

Rissa, me, Helen

On the way back, I had a 90 min layover in Dallas (yep, Boston to Dallas to Seattle) and it just so happened that the Cowboys were playing. I have never been in a more quiet airport in my life. All 3,000 televisions in DFW were showing the game and every single person there (well, excluding TSA staff) was watching it.

So I've been back less than a week and am starting to get back into my routine. It went from summer to fall while I was gone. I'm a little overwhelmed with how behind I am at work, but it'll all come togehter.

Last night my dear friend J'May threw me a dinner party to celebrate the award. It was great to have people from different parts of my life in the same room, enjoying one another.

Me & J'May