THE VIRUS THAT JUST WON'T DIE III

It's baaaaaaack! I swear, TVTJWD is the most insidious illness we've encountered in the 4 years we've been members of the kids germ club. I started feeling rumbly Wednesday night and just passed it off to too much seafood, but it is now clear that it is TVTJWD. Yesterday I was ill enough that Tracy stayed home for a half day so I could rest, but today he has too much going on so I am flying solo. Needless to say, no pictures of yesterday and that's a very good thing. Any pictures I take today will probably include the girls naked, eating dirt and performing dangerous feats on the swingset while I lay in the beach chair with a coke.

I can't decide yet whether I am feeling better this morning. I hope so, because we have tickets to a fundraiser tonight for the Hospital (where Tracy works); it's usually a fun event and my friend Sally is the Director of Marketing so it's her baby and I like to go and support her. It's also an expectation for Tracy that we go. Besides, any excuse to dress up and have grown-up drinks and conversation makes me happy. It's funny, when I was working I hated going to these things; I'd been listening to people all day and the cocktail thing just felt too schmoosy. It's still schmoosy but I just don't care! Schmoosy gets me out of the house.

The fundraiser is for our local cancer center. The Shore has a dispropportionately large number of folk with cancer (reportedly due to farming chemicals...people used to just love to run under the cropduster and get sprinkled by the DDT) and we built our own Cancer Center in the last 4-5 years. Prior to that eveyone had to travel anywhere from 1 to 2 hours for chemo...what an ordeal! It is a huge asset to our community and Tracy and I have tried to be supportive of this cause. Like most people, we have people in our families who have been cancer victims and/or survivors.

We also have scary, sad, overwhelming amounts of poverty on the Shore, and a big part of the Hospital's mission is to serve everyone regardless of their ability to pay. I've been in many homes to talk to parents of clients where there were dirt floors, no running water, and chamber pots under the bed. There are just no words horrific enough to describe it. And don't even get me started on the difference between "city poor" and "country poor"; we have no public transportation, people can live 30 miles from the nearest grocery, etcetera. So the fact that some of these people will receive cancer treatment that wouldn't get it otherwise is a very nice thing.