On Friday as a large portion of the northeast prepared to be buried under copious amounts of snow, our Direct TV service started acting up. Now I know generally that Pittsburgh is considered to be part of the northeast, but if we are being geographically honest, our area is closer to the midwest. As such we weren't expected to get much in the way of snow at all and it looked like a pretty normal winter night outside. Inside, our TV was freezing up and searching for signal about every two minutes.
Jamie and I were through the snowpocalypse in 2010 in Baltimore. We saw the impact that much snow had on so many people. We felt helpless as we saw the homeless man curled up on the steps of a building with a blanket that clearly wasn't going to offer enough protection once the snow starting falling. A warm meal and hot cocoa probably wasn't much in the grand scheme of things either, but we felt like we had to do SOMETHING.
I knew this approaching blizzard was going to cause a lot of trouble for a lot of people and though I felt kinda like an asshole I still called Direct TV to see why I hell I couldn't watch the Clippers play the Heat or a rerun of Chopped on Food Network that I had most likely already seen five times.
We went through some basic trouble shooting steps and one of the things that the tech support agent kept asking me was what the weather was like. I told him it was cloudy but otherwise a normal winter night. "Bad weather and really heavy cloud cover can cause these kind of error messages" he said. I felt like he was just trying to get me off the phone without having to schedule a technician to visit. I was persistent though and finally ended up getting a service call for Tuesday afternoon.
The next morning I turned on spongebob in the morning and the service was still freezing and throwing up messages about not being able to communicate with the dish. I looked out the dining room window (which is the side of the house the dish is on) and though it didn't look unusual it was still pretty overcast with relatively heavy cloud cover. We switched over to Netflix on the Roku box.
At some point during the morning I noticed sunshine spilling onto the dining room table. the Sun was out and it was a beautiful day and wouldn't you know that a quick check of the TV showed the satellite was now working pretty much without a hitch (still the occasional pause but much rarer and not enough to really complain.)
Apparently our Direct TV dish needed a good dose of sunshine. It's been the same for us. We've needed some figurative sunshine lately and luckily we got some this past week/weekend.
Aidan finally made it through an "off" week without ending up back in the hospital for a fever and though we had mixed feelings about making or missing his scheduled Chemo last Wednesday, delaying chemotherapy for a week ended up being a really good thing. Aidan got delayed because of his platelet count which though decent (no where near transfusion levels) wasn't high enough to receive chemo. All his other numbers were great, especially his white blood count, and ANC and that meant that the odds were greatly in our favor that he was going to have a nice easy relaxing week in which he felt good and didn't really have to worry about ending up in the ER with an unexpected fever.
Aidan was able to go to a matinee showing of a movie with Jamie and Dylan Friday afternoon. Friday evening a friend of ours, Joe, came over with an old drum set which we setup in the basement. Joe then gave Aidan his first drum lesson and Aidan did really well. Aidan is generally pretty low key and isn't the most expressive or excitable kid. I was a little concerned that even if he was really interested or was really enjoying the lesson and the idea of future lessons that he wouldn't really show it. Thankfully that wasn't the case at all. He was all smiles, engaged and determined. It was really nice to see him that way. He's been practicing a little bit every day since. He goes down to the basement at various points in the day for 10-15 minutes at a time to work on the basic groove Joe showed him.
Saturday the whole family, including champ, was able to get a little sunshine. Champ got to spend a little time at an off leash dog park with us and then a bath at Woody's dog wash in South Park. It was a really nice day and we had a good time. When bed time rolled around both boys went to grandmas house and Jamie and I were granted two nights and a full day to ourselves with little concern about an unexpected hospitalization.
We had some much needed lazy time and then Sunday afternoon we gathered with our core group of friends for our regular "card club." We were short a few members but still had a fantastic time and a lot of laughs. Though I'm sure it happened at some point, I don't remember specifically talking about Aidan or cancer in any detail. We focused on funny stories, food, and games.
After card club, we were able to grab dinner with a dear friend who we haven't seen in a really long time. Since the boys were once again staying overnight at grandmas house we didn't have to rush and watch the time. We had a really nice visit. By the time we got home last night I had this strange conflicting sense of being exhausted and rejuvenated at the same time.
We're gearing up for another 5 day admission coming up on Wednesday and I'm sure that by Friday or Saturday we'll all be feeling a bit down but for now We are all feeling pretty upbeat and positive. I guess we all just needed a little bit of sunshine.
