Who's the important person who died?

All our flags in St. Louis are at half mast. Last week, five officers lost their lives in a shooting in Dallas. Other officers lost their lives in other cities. Before that, two innocent men lost their lives to police officers. Friday, another police officer was shot just down the street from me. The shooter was captured in our neighbors' lawn. You can't escape violence. No matter what you do or how far you run, it seems to get closer and closer.

My son and daughter - 10 and 6 respectively - know that when a flag is flying at half mast, that means someone in important has died. When my son asked me who, I tried to be as honest as I knew how to be.

"Everyone is important. Every life matters. The lives of two innocent men were taken by officers who were meant to protect them. For revenge, someone took innocent police officers' lives. Not only in Dallas, but in other cities as well. I don't know if he was doing the same thing, but another police officer was shot in St. Louis, too."

When they talked about what a horrible thing it was, I didn't know what else to tell them other than all people are a mixture of bad and good. What matters is what you do. Everyone has bad thoughts. But your actions matter - your voice can speak only words; your actions speak volumes. Taking that step to thinking something bad, then doing something bad is one of the most dangerous things you can do - it's toxic. Mix that with easily-available weapons, and you have a deadly mix of willingness and the tools to carry out your intentions. And it doesn't matter who you are or why you're doing it - whether it's your religion driving you, your frustration, whatever.

I don't know what the answer is. Certainly I think that we should have far better gun control than we do now. But how do we fix a broken relationship? I'm about as white as white can be and even I can tell that there is a serious difference in how I'm treated and how someone with darker skin is treated.

I even see that sometimes in my children. "Oh, they're part Indian? I was wondering where they came from. They must be very hard workers." (Well, they sure as hell didn't come from the supermarket, and actually they're just about as work-averse as any kid unless you threaten their allowance.) Or my husband, who is apparently not supposed to sound like a Midwesterner, but a caricature on The Simpsons. I can't even imagine what being African-American is like in this country, where Donald Trump is for some ungodly reason on the rise while sanity seems to be waning. I guess that's what happens when people are afraid.

But until we air all our shit, important people - everyday people - will keep dying. And all our flags will keep flying at half mast.

I honestly don't know what the point of this blog post is. Venting frustration, maybe. Reminding people that someone's out there who's just as confused as everyone else, who's trying to find a way to explain to her children what in the hell is going on in the world. This may always have been happening - maybe we just didn't know until we had 24-hour media. But holy hell, we've got to do something other than what we're doing now. You want to make America great again? You want to make the world a wonderful place to live? Stop killing people. Stop giving people the means to kill other people and give them the tools to communicate.

Good morning, March!

Today is super Tuesday - have you voted yet? (Well, if you're in Missouri - if you're somewhere else, you might've voted already. Or maybe you haven't.)

Anyway, I did. I walked down to our local polling place and was astonished at how few people were already there. Then again, it was 7:30 a.m. and our poll doesn't open until 7. Whatever. I'm not going to go on a political rant. Yet. Suffice to say if Trump had been the only candidate on the ballot, I would've written in Elizabeth Warren. (I'm fairly liberal. What? It's not a dirty word.)

I walked for a while afterward to shrink my butt back to it's pre-transplant size. Taking care of someone with a transplant is not unlike having a baby in the house. Yes, she's an adult, but for a long time, mom couldn't lift anything, manage stairs or walk much. She required 24-hour availability, so I didn't get out much. Also, my more nuclear family (husband, kids, me) are mostly vegetarian. Since my mom had her transplant, I think I eat more meat in a week than I normally do in two months, which apparently equates to more junk in the trunk.

She is going home on Friday, though - we're both climbing the walls and looking forward to it immensely. Then the kids and I can come home and we and my husband will go back to our diabolically meatless eating habits and dangerously early-to-bed ways. For a month anyway, until she comes back for her next appointment.

So there. That's what is happening here. 

Hello, Stranger

We were told by my mom's transplant team she would probably never need or be able to get a liver transplant even though she made the list. She may be sick enough to qualify for the list, but she's comparatively too healthy, her blood type is too rare. It's amazing, isn't it, how saying something like that almost guarantees that it will happen?

Wednesday mom got a call from her transplant coordinator, then called me. About 15 minutes later, I was in the car on my way to meet her in Illinois. We got her to St. Louis, to the hospital then the next day she woke up with a new liver after a relatively uncomplicated five-hour surgery. She is getting discharged tomorrow.

I haven't slept a full night in about a week. When I have slept, I've slept in my clothes crunched up on a couch or a chair in the hospital. I've spent hours feeding my mom ice chips, swabbing her mouth with water, learning how to get her to and from the bed and bathroom. My sister has walked her, helped her change her clothes, bullied her and encouraged her and gotten her to follow her nurses' orders and to the breathing exercises that will clear her lungs. The nursing staff at BJC has been patient no matter how many times my mom threatened to call their mothers and has been upbeat and positive no matter what.

And my mom has a new liver. Someone out there was generous enough to give a major organ to a complete stranger so that stranger could live after the donor died. And that stranger happens to be my mom.

My mom was lucky enough to be transplanted while she was still "healthy." Regardless, it'll be a long recovery for her. She's staying with me to recover and I hope while she's here, while we're chafing at each other, while she and my husband snipe each other and she rolls her eyes at my kids and my sister and she argue that we all remember that some wonderful stranger donated something so vital so someone else could live. So thank you, beautiful stranger, wherever you are.

The difference a day can make

Again, not much going on in Andiland today. Or the last few weeks. I worked all through New Year's - 10-16 hours days for about 20 days straight, so it was nice to have a day off over the weekend. By the end of that run, I was so burned out I could hardly feel my face anymore.

Other than that, I've got nothing. My bum is not magically smaller, I'm not magically prettier and work sure the heck isn't easier, but I'm not dead yet. So that's good.

It's the little things, right?