The Epilepsy Pipeline Conference High Wire Act

Almost every morning I sit in a chair in The Dining Room That Is Not a Dining Room But a Receptacle for Stuff and look out the window that faces the side of the house. The light comes in just so, a stray bougainvillea has artfully arranged itself over the gate and alongside the fence, and despite the junk that lies there, clearly visible, I am at peace sitting, sipping my coffee.

That's all I've got this morning as I ready myself for the trip to San Francisco. As I mentioned a few times, I will be participating as a speaker and panel member on Saturday, discussing medical marijuana and our story. If you're so inclined, you can watch the whole conference at epilepsy.com -- they will be live-streaming it. I am scheduled to appear at around 11:15 or so, I think. While I wish that it were me doing a high wire act instead of droning on about the past frustrating and filled-with-despair nineteen years of anti-epileptic drugs, I will try to do justice to the incredible turn-around we've experienced as Sophie responds to cannabis. I will do this so that others might have the courage to try it on their own children, so that the Powers That Be might wake up and get busy making cannabis more accessible to the Desperate and Perhaps Not Desperate Yet, But Soon Will Be Desperate as they navigate drugs and systems of care and insurance and family strife and exhausted marriages and anxious siblings and side effects, destruction and even, death.

Perhaps it is a sort of high wire act after all.

First Thoughts

When the sprinklers come on in the morning, they ache and groan under the house, the whoosh of release comes later.

It seems, each morning, that the sky is black, then blue then gray and finally, white, through the slats of my bedroom shade. Between sleep and wake I wonder if this is true for everyone.

The girls next door have high voices that reach over the hedge. Their father pulls them down with his own low one.

The air-conditioner kicks on, and the sweat on my neck cools.

I know that when I go into the boys' bedrooms, one will smile at me and the other will growl.

My soft bathrobe of green apples hides what's underneath, ripe for the picking.

Coffee.

Blueberries stain the floor on Mondays, but it's a new world

William Blake

So far, it's about 11:20 in the am and the refrigerator/freezer has already broken and been fixed by a very nice man; I've mopped the floor where the bag of blueberries fell out as I was emptying the freezer and stained it, two loads of laundry are in and out, Nina Simone is singing her song (thank you twisted knickers), and I've filled out some camp forms for Oliver. Summer is coming, I think, which is a good thing because I'm really tired of pumping these boys of mine up each morning to do their best. Nina Simone says it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me, and I'm feeling good. I'm not sure I feel as good as Nina Simone because I need to do a whole lot of stuff, still, but dragonfly out in the sun you know what I know, but this old world is a new world --