After a somewhat exhaustive effort, a referral to a non-plan geneticist was finally approved by my HMO. The importance of going to this non-plan geneticist?—he was the very same such professional that saw my mother two and a half years ago...and as a testament to her winning personality, both he and his assistant remembered her fondly, offered sincere condolences on her passing, when I spoke with them over the phone. We weren't thinking the approval would go through, and from the side of her mouth, an administrator at the hospital relayed that chances were that the geneticist would slip me under the door, free of charge if that be the case. See, my family doesn't just have a rare genetic disorder—oh-ho-ho!—we have the distinction of having a rare mutation of a rare genetic disorder. My mother is somewhat famous in the medical community's library—you might know her under the stage name "Subject X". Good read.

I took the above self-portrait last Thursday I think it was, planning to display the new hair, stating how Nick didn't seem to be overly gaga with the darker shade and chunky highlights...and how I didn't care because I got a totally unsolicited compliment on it from Brenda the other day and that's all I care about. (Gotta go with the fashionista of the family on that one.) I didn't get around to posting it, though, because I was so taken aback by the change in my blue-with-a-bit-of-hazel eye...which has now become my hazel-with-a-bit-of-blue eye. Sad. Every girl of Scandinavian descent wishes for the eyes...the icy Norwegian blues of my father. It isn't often that one looks at their own eyes, and I did not notice the transition.

So, along with my long list of questions—Can we get a group/family discount on pelvic scans? Do I really have extra organs, and if so why couldn't I have gotten an extra inch or two of height as compensation? Where do tailbones go when they run away? And the eyes, dear lord, the eyes...please tell me they aren't going to go all mustardy or orange one day. My grandmother, the 100% Norwegian biddy, always thought I should get a blue contact lens to hide the icky hazel DOT in that right eye...thank God she hasn't seen me lately. Honestly, if I've got no choice but to be all messed up on the inside, can't I at least look normal on the out?

"What causes an echo?" she once quizzed me.
The persistence of sound after the source has stopped.
"When can you hear an echo?"
When it's quiet and other sounds are absorbed.
When it's quiet, I can hear my mother's echo still.

Thursdays, typically my half-day of the week—providing a medical appointment doesn't force me to muck my schedule up...you know, like that date I have with the CT Scan machine penciled in on the first Monday in November. Today, I wanted to dive into Mitch Albom's latest offering—For One More Day. You see, I so dearly loved its predecessors Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I read them both in one sitting—and I'll grant you, they aren't exceptionally long pieces to read...but I couldn't have put them down to save my life. It's rare to find a piece of art that awakens something so deep and raw within you, so deep and raw that it begs for a salve that you cannot provide without knowing how the story finishes, how the ache goes away...and perhaps how it never will.

I meant to read a portion of the book last Saturday before Jeff and Kara's wedding. I arrived at the church early with Nick, who was one of the groomsmen. I figured I would have a few hours to watch the sand seep through an hourglass...but it was not to be and I found myself instead with the taller, fuzzier, more male members of the wedding party...drinking beer and playing euchre. How girlie am I?

So today was the day I dedicated to Mr. Albom, in a locale that called not for me to tidy up, to hit the gym, nor to scale mount dirty-clothes. At the heartrending conclusion, I was only too relieved to have read the story in a public place which was perhaps my rescue from an afternoon enshrined in a weepy wistfulness and longing for what can never be. It is a story of a man who lost his mother, a man who's made choices he's not proud of, a man who tries to kill himself—and then he sees her, his mother, again. He spends a day with her, he says the things he never got around to saying and learns the things he never got around to learning. I never wanted to be a suicidal, alcoholic, baseball-has-been so much in all my life—or at least not in the last few years. Oh what I wouldn't do for one more day.

I sipped on cappuccino and read...it was one of the best afternoons of my life, and I am filing it away with another reading afternoon that I treasure, one that Mom treasured and mentioned often. It was so simple, too...an early summer Saturday afternoon, we spread a blanket beneath one of the trees in the backyard...brought our beloved house cat out on a leash, and the sweetest, stupidest, most loyal dog ever, Blondie, rested next to our assembly. The four of us sprawled there under that tree, the gentle breeze stirring our hair, and my mother and I read...and we talked...and we read some more...and we enjoyed. Simple, but idyllic, and everything one hopes for life to be, all in this simple moment.



My mother gave me eternity in an hour.

The lessons we learn with life are nothing when compared to the lessons we learn with death, and it is perhaps only with loss that our eyes open to all that we have. I lost my husband two days shy of a year ago, and my spirit broke. Nursing me back to a smile, Mom blessed me with those more profound gifts during her life.

It's just a sound, really. A hum interrupted by open lips. But there are a zillion words on this planet, and not one of them comes out of your mouth the way that one does.

Mom.

Read. This. Book.

I became a pop culture sponge towards the end of my high school career, markedly later than my peers who had been carrying around magazines with the glossy images of prepubescent heart throb Jonathan Taylor Thomas when I was otherwise occupied with The Beatles Anthology.

Multimedia was my poison, and I built an impressive collection by the day I moved into my dorm. To this day, I attest, my friend-making ability existed solely on my highly borrowable amassment of both VHS and CD entertainment...of course, regular care packages from Aunt Debbie filled with homemade cookies or muffins that smelled so good one was forced to cry didn't hurt, either. You have to share food in the dorms—mandatory...or they kill you. There is nothing scarier, mark my words, than a craving deprived, under-rested, over-studied female who smells chocolate. Oh, I took plenty of hits for the team.

College was my first exposure to broadband internet. I had a laptop that I loved so much I almost dressed it up and held conversations with the device...ok, maybe I still held conversations, but I left the doll bonnet in the drawer. I remember buying what seemed like a 1,000 foot ethernet cable just so that I could walk around the perimeter of the shoebox we called home for nine months and remain online. Woo. I was big into that daredevil excitement stuff.

Needless to say, early aughts, high speed internet...what follows can only be Shawn Fanning and the glory of Napster. God I loved Napster. I loved free downloading. I loved absorbing new music without liability—I purchased a staggering amount of music during my foray with Napster, just staggering. Oh, Larsy-boy...I'm so disappointed in you. You were dissing Metallica fans when you criticized those that downloaded your music...tsk tsk. Bad for business. Besides, aren't you rich enough anyway? Because of you, I wanted to denounce my Danish heritage...luckily Hans Christen Andersen trumped you, drummer boy.

Shawn Fanning was my age. A guy my age did this, brought music to the world in a free context. Take a hike, JTT...my heart is taken.

I so clearly remember Sarah and I embracing our love of rock, head-banging to Disturbed...then swaying with fake lighters to the Fred Durst/Staind Family Values Tour of "I'm on the Outside". New CD mixes were created weekly-plus, and Sarah expressed disdain often that I never created a CD without a Creed song somewhere in the line up. We spent a lot of time together in a car, Sarah and myself, and she had this kick-butt stereo. We carpooled every weekend, the hour-plus ride home every Friday night...and the two-hour plus ride back to school every Sunday. Her foot always seemed to lose the lead during our time at home.

Then I moved away, RIAA got all pissy with the free downloads and put this major kibosh on things. I became a cultural hermit and watched Golden Girls marathons on Lifetime.

But this year, my former self has reemerged...partly due to Nick's own love of music, partly because of my puppy dog love for James Blunt. It is fitting, then, isn't it, that Nick gave me an iPod for my birthday...and that I discovered iTunes. And, darn that Amazon.com free shipping on purchases of $25 or more! That's like three CD's at Amazon prices! Oh well...one does what they must.

But this has created a new quirk in my relationship with Nick, a one-upmanship as I complain that my CD case no longer fits all of my CD's. I tell him I must have well over 200 discs, and he, with his dander visibly up and at attention, proclaims he has that and then some. It feels a bit like Yours, Mine & Ours...two large collections living on different floors and unwilling to so much as look at one another. I'm not too bothered...he bought me the new Five for Fighting album a few nights ago...and while one might say that should be grouped in a "ours" collection, I'm adding it to mine and getting a leg up on 'im.

There are perks to working in the same building as my aunt, but perhaps none so singular as my ingression to that twinkling beacon on the top floor known to the laymen as her desk.

I've mentioned the drugs before, haven't I? Brenda has a stockpile of drugs...everything over-the-counter-treatable from heartburn to headaches. One will find neither a shortage of chewing gum there—nor of lipstick, gloss, balm, and salve.

A lint roller, anti bacterial wipes, and deodorant are stocked in her wares, and I've been known in the past to steal a granola bar here and there. I use "steal" lightly, naturally...as when I met with her last week and admired her box of Lipton Herbal Peach Tea (Me: "Mmmm. I bet that's delicious!"), she said in her virus laced hoarseness, "I think it's yours." She chuckled, picking up a bottle of the Tylenol cold syrup I first romanced last January and have pledged faithfulness for all the viral attacks of my life. "And I'm finishing your cold medicine," she taunted. That's ok...I figure it's only fair. She has this splendid pair of minty-lime green sandals that clothe my feet like a dream...I used to borrow them all of the time, even when I wasn't wearing a speck of green, minty-lime or not. I wasn't so hot at asking first.

Today, frustratingly enough, I noticed a nail beginning to tear. I do not typically have a problem with taking a machete to my nails and hacking them down to size, but I have a wedding to attend this weekend and dude I totally know everyone is going to be staring at my right thumbnail. I quickly emailed Nick: "IS THERE SUPER GLUE AT HOME!?" His reply was sketchy and I considered my options when inspiration struck: Brenda.

I emailed my aunt, pleading for a rescue attempt. Finding her fully equipped with nail glue, I sped to her desk and nearly genuflected in my gratitude. Excitedly, I rushed back to my desk and contacted Nick to relay the continuation and subsequent conclusion of my saga—because he has nothing better to do during the day then listen to his girlfriend get all upset over a broken nail. Like, duh.

In his reply, he seemed to understand the extent of my aunt's stock, and even went so far as to inquire what she didn't have stocked at her desk. I was forced to reply—as it is a glaring oversight on her part that I have noted many a late Friday afternoon at work—, "Beer, sadly enough."

It's Monday night, and even I can admit that saying, typing, thinking, and even romanticizing the word "Monday" followed by "Night" feels wrong with out a "Football" to bring up the caboose. Not that I watch the games, mind you, but because of where I was raised. Ah, Wisconsin!—the lesser known Canadian annex next to Minnesota—Wisconsin that might as well get giggly on punch between Christmas and Easter because there's seriously nothing else to do. I grew up in a place full of drunkards and die hard Green Bay Packer fans.

The Packers in the eighties: can you say, "suck"? Like worse than now? When they used to have The Battle of The Bays as a tongue in cheek tourney because nobody seriously cared who won: the worst team in the NFL, or the second worst.

Perhaps the scent of rancid ale and the shouting of slurred profanities contributed to my modern-day forced-disinterest in sports. That being the case, I showered as Nick began watching tonight's game. When finally I quit the bathroom—after the myriad primping things women must do—I found the quiet of the condo disturbing.

No shouting, no ear splitting volume of a washed up sports has been dissecting the play all uppity like he was Moses staring down the Red Sea—I mean, I loved it, but was Nick all right? This silence from a man who yelled so loud at a Badger game a few weeks ago that I had to leave the house was unsettling. I hastened to finish moisturizing my face and neck to get to the bottom of this incongruity. Then, something happened that allowed me to breathe easier.

A yawn. A loud belly-yawn.

That's right, I remember now...The Packers were playing tonight.