Now phase two

Family friend Katra returned to California really early yesterday morning.

Eight mylar balloons float against our family room ceiling.

Thomas participated in a swim meet with our neighborhood team Tuesday night, swimming as the sole O'Hannigan in the meet but acquitting himself well. Cathleen and Katra watched him race while I napped at home, exhausted. I hope to be all over next Tuesday night's meet.

Jane's collection of stuffed animals is perhaps a third larger than it was at this time last week. She naps a lot, too, and we're glad for that.

Stitches are coming out of my arm later today, although I didn't help things along when I slipped on stairs and landed on the already-traumatized elbow. The ER nurses who last chacked my arm gave me a package of "Steri-Strips" to bring to our family doctor. They said private-practice doctors don't always have them handy, but they're good to use on wounds around joints after the stitches are out, and they'll fall off by themselves eventually. Meanwhile, the monkey bars in the park will just have to keep misisng me until perhaps the Fourth of July.

Memory games like Taboo and Stratego now supplement family favorites like Blokus, and we're all making a point of playing more of them to help Jane along.

Everybody in the house has internalized the hospital's pain rating scale, so we can ask Jane "How's your head? How's your wrist? Give me a number." If we don't ask, she volunteers the information.

Sometimes I think I don't know what "normal" is any more. I'm learning gratitude, though. When friends sign email with phrases like "Big Giant Hugs," I can actually feel them. And yesterday at twilight I marveled at the slinky grace of a black cat who was herself studying fireflies while they blinked yell0w-green around her.