Somehow it's been 3 4+ weeks since we last spoke. It's almost like when I'm not on vacation and/or on strong enough pain meds that I can't do legal work, I never open my personal computer. (Me, last weekend, not on my personal computer.) A mere two days after my last post, I was back at work and off to the races with all the kid, work, travel, and school things. I felt great. Really once I actually logged off my computer for two days like I probably should have done in the first place, I recovered very quickly. The hardest part was the two sad weeks where I was eating as little fat as possi ..read more

We're on Day 5 without a gallbladder and I feel pretty good, though my bellybutton is still not talking to me. For reasons I truly can't explain, I went into this surgery thinking it was very small and minor and I'd be back at work the next day. Because of this, I had to do a lot of actual work on Wednesday between regular (if accidental) naps, but I course-corrected and basically hibernated all day Thursday. I think I was awake for 2 hours total that day. I took Froday just as slow, but I was awake for all of it and got to have a few friend visits to spice up the day. I woke up this morning ..read more

For someone who really does try to be relatively healthy, I feel like I come to you with a lot of PSAs. Like getting your dermatology checks for skin cancer, which I've somehow already had three times (2016, 2019, 2021, though nothing in the last 3 years!). I try to eat well(ish), I stay (relatively) active, I see doctors regularly, get my blood work done every year, and try to speak up when something is concerning me. Which is why it was a shock when I signed up for an Executive Physical, expecting to get some helpful baselines for the future, and instead left with a referral to a surgeon to ..read more

It's happening! I'm finishing a travel blog! I've also published more blog posts this month than I've managed in a few years, so huzzah to me. It helps when you don't do much each day so it's mostly just posting pictures and talking about how beautiful everything is. Speaking of, here we are at Day 8! The day we explored our last National Park! Number 3 on this trip and number 19 as a family. We'd driven through Grand Teton on our way from Yellowstone to Swan Valley, but we weren't able to stop and explore. We started our last full day of vacation by, you guessed it, sleeping in! Once awake ..read more

I spent much of this week on DC. Work is good, 2/3 of the kids are good (Cora is sick), Dallas is far too hot, and the joy of the DNC is taking over my whole life. Let's go back to my new favorite states that are much closer to Canada than I am. Day 6 was the day we were in all three of the states that we'd touch on our trip! We slept in later than planned (this is a theme of the trip on any day that didn't involve an alarm clock and I'm not mad about it), woke up in our little cabin in Gardiner, Montana, packed up our minivan, and drove 200 miles southwest through Yellowstone and Grand Teton ..read more

(Days 1 and 2 are here. They both involved waking up before 6 a.m.) On Day 3 we finally got to sleep in! This is a vacation after all and at nearly 9 a.m. I found myself sitting on the back deck of our little rental cabin, the only one awake, wearing long sleeves, drinking my tea, and flipping through pictures from the day before. We ate breakfast at home, packed lunches, and headed out to drive the famous Going-to-the-Sun Road across Glacier National Park. As mentioned in previous posts, you need a vehicle registration pass to enter the park at west entrance and drive the road from west to ..read more

I already wrote our high-level overview of the trip and now we'll dive back into each stop! Day 1: Travel from Dallas to Montana We woke up early on Tuesday to catch the one direct flight from Dallas to Kalispell, MT out of DFW (and drop our car in the uncovered far remote parking and take a 20 minute bus ride to our terminal, something that would come back to bite us in the end for sure). The flight was easy and uneventful and we landed in Montana, 30 minutes from Glacier National Park, marveling at what that drive from Dallas would have looked like (long, mostly). We picked up our rental m ..read more

I know I've written about this a few dozen times at least, but I LOVE vacations. I love traveling with the kids and James, love being somewhere new, love spending time together... I may love my regular life (and I do!), but I love checking out of all its responsibilities and being with my family in a new place even more. James and I have always been 100% together on our priority to go on adventures with our kids, even when they were young and we had very little money and we just drove to neighboring states and stayed in state park cabins and spent less than $500 per trip. Making memories with ..read more

Hello from beautiful Idaho! Yes, this is Idaho! We are on the last day of our fabulous summer adventure through three new (to us!) states and three National Parks. I thought I'd summarize our itinerary here and then have posts for each park. (I hope; we know how my plans usually go for post-vacation posting, particularly here where we fly back today, all 3 kids have school orientation events tomorrow, everyone has to renew their passports on Friday, I have one million work calls scheduled for those two days, and school begins ON MONDAY which feels sad and impossible and I usually love the fir ..read more

Not long after publishing my last post I dragged myself to Urgent Care for a nearly immediate diagnosis of Covid. So, that explains why I felt like a congested piece of warmed up garbage. The only other time I've had Covid was also in late July, but 2022 instead of 2024, so I don't know what to make of that. The urgent care doctor told me that nearly every person she had seen that day tested positive for Covid so it's clearly running around. I am living in my isolation chamber (my room) with only my nurse for comfort (Milo) while James runs the rest of the house and children. Everyone who is ..read more