Checking In

I'm at an emergency vet with Milo.

We've been struggling with him throwing up frequently for months, have been to our vet many times, had blood work done, and have been on anti-nausea meds. Those have helped substantially, but starting Thursday night he's thrown up every meal even with the medicine. I realized this last night, when he threw up his dinner, that that was 3 in a row, and now it was a Friday night and our vet was closed. James and Landon are out of town for a swim meet. I worked until midnight almost every night this past week and we leave for our 2-week-long bucket-list family-trip-of-a-lifetime to South Africa for tomorrow.

Of course.

I took him to a different emergency vet last night. They took x-rays, reviewed his last round of blood work, and did a quick ultrasound. He was so brave.

The vet thinks she saw a mass in his stomach. Her words said there were a couple different reasons one could be there. Her eyes and tone said it was probably the reason you immediately thought of. Cancer.

They couldn't do a biposy at that vet, so I took him home, where he snuggled with Claire all night, and now we're at a larger ER that has an internal medicine docter who can do a more thorough abdominal ultrasound and biopsy if needed. I don't know what to think or do. He isn't keeping anything down, even the tablespoon of wet food I gave him this morning, but he is otherwise happy and fluffy and perfect. He is the BEST cat. We leave tomorrow.

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I love my new job. Well, same job really, but new firm and people and stucture. I love it so, so much.

Everyone is so lovely. I was able to transfer all my active clients and am already on several new matters that weren't originated by me, which is SO nice. I'm busy. I feel happy and valued and like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. My associate who came over with me is equally happy and equally nonplussed at the depth and genuiness of our warm welcome.

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Landon turned 18 ten days ago.

I will admit it's the first birthday I mentally struggled with a bit. 18? That feels so truly, officially next-level old. He's an adult. He can sign his own forms. He can vote. He can buy lottery tickets. He can be drafted. It's wild.

I know he still has his senior year at home, but the age really did make the "he's leaving the nest in a year" hit home. And I mean HIT.

He got home late one weekday night after an afternoon spent on the lake with some buddies on his team and he walked in our room while James was showing and I was reading and my first thought was "there's an intruder." How could there be another adult male in the house?

It's my blog so I'll just say it, he's literally the best. He is so smart, so funny, so kind, so chatty and fun. He is 110% himself. He made his three friends sometime during freshman year and has only reluctantly made more. He gets VERY into random things, and shares that love loudly and frequently with the rest of us. It was fishing a few weeks ago, and now he has a crew from his swim team who will fish with him at the lake by our house. It's also currently Pokemon cards, for reasons I can't understand, and he stayed overnight at a teammate's house in Frisco the other day so they could have a team poker night and then be at this one card shop at 5 a.m. to get some special release box. He adores the cats, loves his little cousins (and sisters) and is simply part of the heartbeat of our house.

He had his first job, lifeguarding at the YMCA, this summer and is enjoying his new swim team in Frisco. He looks up recipes on the weekends, buys his groceries, and meal preps his breakfasts and lunches every Sunday.

Any night I'm working late, he's usually stretched out in some manner on the couch in my office. Sometimes silently, usually quite chattily, filling me in on his day and random thoughts.

His birthday was lovely. We decorated his table (the girls felt strongly about the dinosaur theme) while he was at his early morning practice and he had pancakes for breakfast (his "dessert").

Maggie was on theme.

For dinner his much-deliberated food selection was: Kraft "shapes" mac and cheese, smoked turkey sausage, mixed frozen vegetables, and Red Lobster cheddar biscuits.

He was delighted by it all.

18. I've been a mom for 18 years. I've been blogging for nearly 19 years. It's the cliche of all cliches, but man, does time fly.

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The girls are great. Claire seems ready for sophomore year and Cora is ready for middle school. Unfortunately, Cora is still #1 on the waitlist for the public gifted and talented middle school, which is a strange place to be now that we're 2.5 weeks from school starting.

She has some sweet friends who still like to build forts and play and watch movies, though now they always seem to need to make cookie dough or do something in the kitchen when they gather.

I got a dress on The Real Real that has pink and orange giraffes all over it. I wore it on a date night with James last weekend. Like a little safari-preview.

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I had some of my favorite women over on Wednesday night this past week. It was the only night I didn't work until midnight, the boys were gone at their swim meet, and both Claire and Cora each had a friend over.

We sipped wine by the pool and snacked on gluten-free things and my one friend, whose kids are 2 and 4, couldn't get over my life with big kids.

Claire and her friend had walked about a mile to a nearby shopping center to buy dinner and get fro yo. Cora and her friend were making bean and cheese burritos in the kitchen (and cleaning it up, doing dishes, etc.). When Claire got home she was clutching a little big with a white chocolate mousse frozen yogurt with Reeses, my absolute favorite thing, because the person at TCBY had accidentally put Reese's on her cup instead of Reese's pieces and she piped up with "actually that's my mom's favorite" when they were about to throw it away. So they put it in a bag for her to carry home and somehow it survived the mile walk in July Texas heat and it was the sweetest. Also delicious (pic below from a different trip).

I do adore my big kids. (And husband, which is a whole separate thing, but this is a good picture of the two of them from a random dinner a week or so ago.)

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And that's all I can think of while I sit in this waiting room with a Milo who wishes he was home as much as I do.

New Chapters

[Just a note that like so many, I have spent the last week absolutely devastated by the tragic flooding and deaths in central Texas. So many of the lives lost are 1-degree of separation from friends, neighbors, and colleagues, and the news, the hope, and the utterly heartbreaking updates have filled my feeds and text groups for days. I am just so deeply sad, it's been hard to know what to do with the heaviness beyond donating to support rescue efforts, put green ribbons around my trees (our Dallas streets are full of them; honoring the Camp Mystic and all flooding victims), and remembering how very precious life is.

I've wanted to update on the exciting and happy updates in my life for a few days, but every time I get a moment to try, I'm overwhelmed by the blank page and the seeming falsity of not acknowleding this huge and horrible thing that is happening in the lives of people all around me. So this is that, I guess. I wish I could say something that would make it feel better, but even this feels better than not saying anything at all.

A Texas Monthly writer was caught in the terrible flooding and wrote a heartbreakingly brutal and beautiful article about it that came from an email he sent his colleagues. Words don't fix it, but I'm glad he could write them so we could read.]

- - - - - - - [Abrupt tonal shift I can't make better.]- - - - - - -

As I mentioned in the last post, I started a new job!

I am now a proud partner at Reed Smith in the Global Regulatory Enforcement practice.

And I got a new headshot! Complete with hot pink and both my grandma's pearls.

This was my first day of school outfit.

My last day at VE was Friday, June 30th and my first day at Reed Smith was Tuesday, July 1st, so I got one whole Monday off between jobs. I made the most of it, with a workout and poolside reading and lunch with a dear friend.

It was kind of great to start on a Tuesday of a holiday week. A lot of people were out of the office, so I actually remembered the names of (most of) the people I met. And I only had to work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday before the holiday weekend, so I set attainable goals like "find the printer" and "learn the quickest routes to the kitchen and bathroom."

I unpacked my boxes, which I had just packed up days before and my new firm had couriered to my new spot.

It felt like home very quickly.

My 3 babies and 3 career stages: Chicago law school baby, Austin law firm associate baby, Fort Worth government attorney baby! (and no Dallas law firm partner baby!)

My first week in outfits. I was doing a lot of walking and moving things so flats were key.

This week, with more people in the office, I've discovered that jeans and sneakers are common, so I will be embracing that for the rest of summer.

It's been a really great transition. The associate who worked on most of my matters also came to the new firm! She started this Monday:

Everyone has been so welcoming and inclusive, it's really been lovely. Reed Smith is a much larger firm, about 1,800 attorneys to V&E's 700, and 31 offices (20 in the US), so it has a more global and fully national reach. But the Dallas office, which is only about six years old, has 40 attorneys, which is about 1/3 the size of V&E's, so it's a bigger platform with a smaller local feel. The firm was founded in Pittsburgh almost 150 years ago, so there's a very gounded industrial midwest vibe I enjoy, but again, juxtaposed against a fairly new and very busy and vibrant Dallas office. Every partner here lateraled from somewhere else and all seem determined to make this spot the best that BigLaw can be.

The Global Regulatory Group is large and contains a diverse array of government practitioners. I'll still be doing my SEC defense work, but also expanding my internal investigations practice, and doing far more corporate governance and compliance work. I'm staffed on two IPOs right now and it is so great to get to give SEC-related advice before someone is in trouble with the SEC!

I did a couple of interviews in my first week: Law 360, Texas Lawbook, and Bloomberg. I also transferred over my clients and matters and dove right into a few new ones here, so it's been a busy 10 days so far.

In the middle of that was the 4th of July weekend, which was devastating for the reasons above, but happily busy in our little corner of Lakewood.

First, James and I went to buy Landon a new car. We had bought him a 6-year-old car two years ago, and have since replaced nearly every part of it, spending double what the car was worth by the time his car completely died, in the middle of the highway, when coming back from swim practice Thursday afternoon. It was towed to a shop, which declared the ENGINE needed to be replaced and we said no. We are done. We had it towed to Carmax where we received $700 for a car we had now spent a total $20,000 on (which makes me want to throw up, but you hardly have a strong negotiating position when you have to have the car towed in), and James and Landon spent Friday going to four different car dealerships to find something practical, well-priced, under the longest possible warranty, and could last through all 3 kids.

They settled on this Kia Sorrento and it is beautiful and Landon loves it and literally nothing that goes wrong for the next 10 years can cost me any money. He drives over 100 miles a day to his swim practices, so honestly, out of all of us, he needs the most reliable car, something I wish we'd just done from the start. But it's here now!

Cora had gone to the 4th of July parade with a friend, Claire had some friends over who were impatiently waiting for us to return so they could swim, and then I got to enjoy my dream grown-up day off with 4 wonderful girlfriends, all of whom are badass professional woman in their own right, several bottles of champagne, all the snacks, and my pool.

By 9 pm the sun was down, the pool lights were on, and we were doing "walk offs" down my diving board to our chosen theme songs. It really was so fun. James and Landon were watching a movie inside and said they could hear us giggling so loudly they thought a window was open. James did come out at one point to bring us all waters and make sure everyone was taking an Uber home or needed a ride from him.

On Sunday Landon drove me to Costco in his new car, and let me tell you, if you've never done Costco with a nearly-18-year-old swimmer manchild who meal preps his own breakfasts and lunches and loves to chat, you've never done Costco. The enthusiastic running commentary for the hour we were there was maybe my favorite thing of the last week. As was the "hot dog to go" upon departure.

And that's the last few days. Sad in the macro, exciting and happy in the micro, with lots of little things in between, like Cora loving horseback riding camp, Claire doing her volunteer hours for high school, and Milo's vet visit where he got diagnosed with a UTI, yelled loudly at everyone, and slept in my arms for hours when he got home, to name a few.

I had to buy a new work-from-home set up and Moose has been helping me get settled.

And Maggie is just very tired, but tries to keep an eye on the neighborhood anyway.

I'm really really excited about this next chapter of my career. A little anxious, a lot busy, and still trying to connect faces and names and learn all new IT-everything, but excited and hopeful, and looking forward to the days ahead.

Actually Currently!

I'm actually blogging about things that happened in the last 7 days!

As I mentioned on the last one, my sister visited us in Dallas with her girls on Tuesday. After my grandmother's funeral in San Antonio the weekend before she drove to Fort Worth to hang out with her sister-in-law and family and then came to us, and then flew out of the airport by our house.

It was so fun!

Made even better by the fact that a friend told me about a Farm Rio sample sale that was starting the very day she arrived!! I have never done a sample sale, and had definitely never done one in Dallas, but my sister is the one who introduced me to the brand Farm Rio a couple years ago and she was SO excited to seize this shopping opportunity together.

After a bit of cousin swimming time, we sent the girls upstairs with mine to watch a movie and get out of the afternoon sun, while we drove to a mysterious address to stand in line to get a ticket to turn in our purses to see the sale.

Only to find out that the internet was down and no purchases could be made. Undeterred, we searched for treasures, tried them on in a horribly lit group dressing room, and carefully placed our winners in a bag that was stapled shut with our name on it so we could return to purchase if the computers started working again. Which they didn't.

We popped in my beloved underground Marshall's so my sister could experience its hallowed grounds where she picked up a suitcase to get her Texas treasures home and we both got a 2-piece outfit because "2-piece sets are having a moment right now."

Once home we swam more, ate a yummy Taco Tuesday dinner on the patio, and then let the girls swim yet again.

The next morning I took Maggie to the vet, Landon had morning swim practice in Frisco (he changed club teams), Claire had to babysit, and my sister and the girls headed to the airport to fly home to Colorado! It was a lovely little visit. I then stalked the sample sale Instagram page only to see that the internet was back so I dashed over to the store after work, had to wait in line AGAIN, but got some really great items for ridiculous prices and all I could feel was joy and satisfaction at a sample sale well done.

I shipped my sister's items to her and we're both still flush with victory.

Meanwhile, Landon has been in Santa Barbara at a swim meet for the past 4 days where he had the best time, fell in love with California, and we all had concerns about him coming home. His top few swim schools are in California, and I knew he'd love it, but having him there for even a few days made his impending departure all too real.

No one left in the house liked that at all, so we're back in denial for a bit.

He sent me pictures of him on a roof, then explained why he was on a roof ("I like roof tho"), pictures of an Hibachi dinner, some seals he kayaked past, and a couple random updates about the actual swim meet he was there for.

I picked him up at midnight last night from the airport and I loved having a chatty Landon in my passenger seat.

Meanwhile, I had my last day at V&E on Friday (I know! just kind of sneaking that in there). I packed up my office, said goodbye to my 38th floor view, and ate a genuinely tasty cauliflower crust frozen pizza at home for our Friday night pizza night with James and the girls.

Today was my one day off work between jobs. It's extremely strange to not check an Outlook app every 10 minutes, but I adjusted quickly and became the lady of leisure I have always wanted to be.

I woke up whenever (6:45, but whatever, I'm 42, that is sleeping in), read in bed, did my walk and a little barre workout, and got lunch with a dear friend on maternity leave. Then I got my nails done and drank champagne at 2 pm.

I sat by the pool and read some more (I'm really enjoying The Bridge Kingdom series; currently on book 3).

Maggie, the ultimate lady of leisure, helped show me the way.

(Honestly, I don't know that I need help; this is why I can't have more than 1 day off between jobs. I very much enjoy not working.)

We went out to dinner, all 5 of us back together, and now I'm picking out my first day of school outfit for my first day of work at the new firm tomorrow! I'm so, SO excited and can't wait to share more.

In the meantime, this was my last day of school treat on Friday. Did you know that frozen yogurt and Reese's peanut butter cups are gluten free?

It might have to be a first day of school treat too.