First: A Little Catching Up

So I last left off with the end of the Cancer Retreat. Which I enjoyed, in case you weren't paying attention.

Moving on.

The Monday after the retreat, I met my beloved Lacey and her husband, Todd, at Fairview Hospital at Oh-Dark-Thirty in the morning to hold her hand until they booted me out as she went in for the scheduled c-section for her second (and final) baby boy.  I had not been inside Fairview Hospital since the day I left there with the fresh news of my cancer diagnosis.  It was a little creepy being back there, I have to admit.

After several hours of waiting around with Lacey's awesome parents, I got to meet Sullivan Richard Skywalker Gansert.  He is thankfully adorable.  I say thankfully because I have promised Lacey to be straight with her and let her know if her children are ugly... but THANKFULLY both baby #1, Spencer (love of my life) and fresh Mr. Sully... both are super cutie cutes!  Whew!!!  I even held that fresh little pot roast only about an hour after he popped out of the oven.

I could do without the goofy hat. Otherwise this is a perfect picture.

So, yeah.  That is why I didn't get around to the second half of the Cancer Retreat story for a couple days.  But you can't get mad at me... I had it on my calendar for THIRTY NINE WEEKS that I was taking off work to be there with Lacey during Sully's birth.  I was there for Spencer's.  It was a necessity.

I went back to visit once more while they were still in the hospital.  Got some quality gossip time in with my Lacey, not to mention a little love session with the coolest kid in town, Spencer.  God, I love this guy...

I just want to eat him, he's so cute.  Further proving my theory that the witch in Hansel & Gretel was just misunderstood.

Now, I suppose you might be wondering how my aching, sterile heart was doing through all of these baby shenanigans.  And I'll tell you how.  Pretty damned surprisingly alright.  After all, I basically have two fantastically adorable nephews that I an see whenever I want, whom I get to spoil madly their entire lives, and get to watch grow up in a beautiful, perfect, loving family... and I get to give them back when they poop, pee, puke, cry, sneeze, or make any other liquid.  I totally win.

In all seriousness, though.  I can't say it wasn't hard to see Sullivan's newborn hand around my thumb and know that I will never actually HAVE that for my own.  It's hard, but it's also right.  And as I've said before, on the whole, I am ok.  It makes things more bittersweet, but it's also opened me up SO MUCH more to letting these beautiful little loves into my heart.  So if all my friends want to keep on breeding - you go right ahead!!

As for the other thing I was looking forward to in a previous post... the whole Andrew W.K. speaking at the My Little Pony convention... WHAT A WASTE!!!  I have never been to any sort of weirdo convention before.  No ComicCons.  No Dragoncon.  None of it.  I do not like cosplay or cosPLAYERS.  Yet somehow, it escaped my radar that that was what I had signed up for with the Pony Convention.  There was nothing about their unassuming website that might have prepared me for literally HUNDREDS socially maladjusted men in their twenties and thirties, all wearing some strange, sad combination of seemingly unintentionally perverted My Little Pony costumes crossed with polar-fleece tails, dad jeans and grandpa shoes. Most were carrying pony toys and would stop to "kiss" toys with strangers as they crossed paths.  Ryan and I almost bolted.  But I REALLY wanted to see AWK speak, so I ponied (wah-wah-wah) up the dough for a couple of overpriced thimbles full of bourbon at the hotel bar and we waited.

Once they started letting people into the auditorium, Ryan and I blatantly jumped the line in which hundreds of nerds had been patiently waiting for hours.  We were safely the only two people in the entire place no one was going to talk shit to.  We grabbed some seats and I was so excited just to be IN THE SAME ROOM with this awesome dude that I almost forgot I was surrounded by creepers with pony tails.  And then his lecture began.  The lecture that I was so excited to hear - about following your dreams and doing what you love and loving what you do and all of that jazz that I really felt I needed to be inspired about!  And it lasted... oh... about 90 seconds.  And then somehow it just opened up into a nightmare of weirdos asking pony related questions of this amazing motivational speaker / pop-metal icon.  Seriously?!  Andrew W.K. is here and this is happening?  I feel like, while he was very good natured through it all, he may have been making just a LITTLE fun of the whole thing.  In a clever, non-confrontational, oh-so-tongue-in-cheek sort of way that was MILES above any of these weirdies' heads.

But I gotta say.  I was pissed.  The lecture I paid good money to see essentially didn't happen.  Nor did any opportunity to meet my hero, Mr. W.K.  This will change, though... because I've learned that when you put it out there... it comes.  In magical ways.  Always.  <3

Now pardon me.  I have a second post to write.
Xxo, Phoebe