Another Chapter Closed

It's strange to think that I closed another chapter of my life today, April 18th, 2007. It's also crazy because there's so much going on in my life right now, that it's hard to put everything in perspective. Today was my last day of work at Mirapoint, a company that I've now spent half my working life at. When I started work at Mirapoint in 1998, I certainly did not expect to be working for the company almost 9 years later. My track record up until then had only been 3 years at the same company.

When you've been somewhere for 9 years there's something very comfortable and very familiar about that place. It makes it so it's very difficult to leave. So maybe that's why it's so hard for me to put this all in perspective. I'm hoping a few months from now, I'll be able to look back at all of this and say I've made the right decision.

It's hard for me to think that Mirapoint will go on without me, but I know they will. There's a lot of hard working people there, and they will get on fine. I'm sure I will be missed, but as they say, time heals all wounds, and very soon, I'm sure I will just be a distant memory there.

My next life adventure doesn't start until May 10th. This was intentional, as I was supposed to take my mom and Lauren to Taiwan at the end of this month. Unfortunately, we've had to cancel our trip for now. I've decided to keep the start date for my new company as May 10th, rather than move it up, as there's still so much going on in our lives.

We successfully closed on our new home on Thursday, April 12th, and its already been a whirlwind of work on the new home. The new garage door went in on Tuesday, and the fumigation tent went over the house today. There's still lots to do to the house before we can move in, definitely a few months or more of work. It'll be hard to accomplish working at a new job, so I'm grateful for the few weeks I'll have before I start my new job.

So the reason, our trip to Taiwan is postponed, is that my mom's condition has worsened recently. It started with the discovery of fluid in my mom's abdominal cavity. This fluid has been accumulating, and is a direct result of increased cancer activity. This means the oral chemotherapy that she's been on is no longer effective in keeping the cancer under control. So for the last two weeks my mom has had to undergo a CT scan, a parcentesis, a PET scan, and today she had her first session of an IV based chemotherapy. IV based chemotherapy is much more toxic and has more side-effects that oral chemotherapy, so it would not have been a good idea for us to go to Taiwan given we were uncertain what the side-effects were going to be on my mother.

After her chemotherapy, Marie stayed with my mom during the day, and for the most part she has been resting comfortably. For the most part the only side-effects have been an uncomfortable feeling for my mom, and keeping her relatively weak and fatigued.

Lauren's been having a difficult week. I'm not sure but it may be because she senses something wrong with my mom. They say kids know intuitively when something is wrong. She's been very clingy and having a lot more meltdowns. On the positive side, her vocabulary is improving and she's been saying more full sentences. Her favorite phrases now include "I don't want it", and "I love you". She's still completely attached to her stuffed piggy that my mom got her in Tahoe, along with her pink blanket and pacifier. If she's got those three things I think she's in heaven.

On the aquarium front, the mommy platy gave birth to around 35 to 40 new baby fry on Tuesday, exactly 4 weeks after she last gave birth. The first six platy's are all doing extremely well and have been released into the main tank. The new baby fry are all in the breeder tank, and so far are doing pretty well. It will get to be a tight squeeze with that many of them together in one little tank, so I'm not sure yet, what we'll do to ease the congestion.

So as you can see life continues to throw us new challenges all the time, and many of these we create for ourselves.