Been a long while

Hi y'all,

Sorry I haven't posted in quite a long time, but I have very good reasons. In November, I headed to New Orleans for a convention. My parents came to watch the baby. During this time, mom got sick and we took her to the hospital (she was being treated for ovarian/peritoneal cancer). Long story short, I drove back to NY with her and dad and decided to stay home until after Christmas. After a couple other hospital visits, mom was told she had a puncture in her bowel and if they did surgery, she had less than a 50% chance of surviving due to her reduced blood pressure. Also, there was no treatment that was working, so doing a surgery like this was not necessarily recommended, since she'd just have to do it over and over. So she took the alternative option and decided to have the time to say goodbye to her family and close friends. Mom passed away on December 21, 2009 at 11:55 am. I have spent the past couple months upkeeping her caringbridge blog, and ignoring this one. (www.caringbridge.org/visit/jojo44)

So now the storm has calmed, for the most part. I'm still in NY with dad and Jacob, but will be heading back to Dublin on Wednesday. Unfortunately, all the work I had done to be more comfortable in that bulkhead row has been in vain... I've gained it all back and then some.... partially the trip to New Orleans, partially the holidays and partially mom's illness. I'm starting to feel my own mortality, now having lost my mother way too young. I worry for Jake, that he will lose either myself or Rob too young too.... but for us because we are too overweight. I hope that Rob and I can use this to get our arses in gear and get healthy. We'd like to sometime in the near future start planning for Jake's sibling, but it'll be a difficult road if I don't get at least some of this weight off first.