Saturday, February 11, 2012

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Tonight's picture was taken in December of 2008. Mattie was invited to his "girlfriend,"  Charlotte's 7th birthday party. Mattie had never been to a Japanese restaurant before but he had a good time, enjoyed the food and his time with Charlotte. As you can see Mattie sat right next to Charlotte and was trying to help her blow out the candles from where he was sitting!

Quote of the day: Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same. ~ Francesca Reigler


I find tonight's quote to be very interesting. Because I would say I highly disagree with it! Under certain circumstances misery just comes upon us. Such as, and this is certainly not an exhaustive list: childhood cancer, other diseases, natural disasters, and traumas. We do not have to work very hard to achieve misery, especially when these factors are out of our control. Whereas, quite on the contrary, striving for happiness and remaining strong under life's most challenging circumstances takes not only work but superhuman efforts at times.

It was a strange weather day in Washington, DC. Peter and I worked most of the day away on Foundation items, but by the afternoon, we decided to take a walk on Roosevelt Island. Our timing was quite interesting, because as we began walking, it started to snow and the wind was whipping. As you can see, Peter snapped a picture of me in the wind and snow. In the background, which you can barely see are the spires of Georgetown University. Because of the white out conditions it was hard to see this landmark building on the University campus.

At the end of our walk, I snapped this picture of the bridge leading over to Roosevelt Island. To me there is a magical quality to this picture, with the snow drifting through the air and a tree branch reaching out toward the bridge. To me this bridge symbolizes a passage over to a peaceful part of land, land which Mattie used to enjoy exploring and traversing.

I appreciate the emails of support and tomorrow, Sunday, I will be up bright and early to be at Georgetown Hospital at 7am. Really not my time, and naturally I can't help but think back on all the times we took Mattie for an MRI at this exact location. Too many times, and each time, we were always the recipient of bad news. Seems to be a trend with us and the ironic part about all of this is if I never took a ct scan on February 1, no one would ever know I had an issue.