Her next "return date" is November 8th. Maybe if she makes it back, I can boogie out for lunch.

That'd be great. My treat. Any old fancy place you like at the Ferry Building. We can sit down and work out our all-time A's all-star team, or whatever catches our fancy.

(And Dylan has a lot of meetings today, FWIW, so it may be some time before he's actually physically able to be here, see the response to his pre-apology, and say anything else. Not apologizing for him, not speaking for him, just stating the circumstance.)

Susan, I hope your pastor's advice turns out to be helpful. Good luck with the life stressors.

Susan, your pastor's advice seems sensible -- though scary to try to deepen acquaintances into friends. And -- it's AWESOME that you fought past your scaredness and called him.

Also, I think Plei's suggestion of talking to your NP again is a good one. I'm not a rush-to-medication person, but I know that when my life has been a shitstorm of stress, my doctor prescribed a very small amount of Ativan, for a very short length of time. And it really helped me to be able to dial down my stress response, which is, I think, a lot like yours -- I worry and fret and then I can't get out of my own head and so I'm stuck in my head with the worrying and fretting and it all escalates rapidly. The Ativan helped put a damper on the worrying and fretting in the first place, so it wasn't able to escalate.

(It certainly did NOT leave me complacent and unmotivated; it actually helped me to get stuff done, because I wasn't freaking out at the stress surrounding what I needed to get done.)

I think it's worth thinking about.

I hope that works well for you, Susan; it sounds very sensible.

I did a preview picture of Emmett when I got his costume together.

So freakin' cute!!!

Susan, it sounds like your pastor is giving good advice. And, he's there for you to call on, it's part of his job. You shouldn't feel bad for doing it.

Emmett looked so awesome!

That is SPECTACULAR.

He looked even better last night because we got the wig tugged down a little better to cover his hair. Several folks said he had the best costume all night, though I think they were really won over by his commitment to character (he didn't talk the whole time he was trick or treating, only whistled, mimed and honked his horn). He was able to get his whistle to sound like the cadence of "Thank you."

Most people knew who he was, but one of the funniest exchanges went like this.

Emmett walks up stairs to somebody's house for candy.

Candygiver: "Who are you? A hobo?"
Emmett: [shakes head emphatically "No" - whistles and mimes playing the Harp]
Emmett's Mom: "He's one of the Marx Brothers."
Candygiver: "Oh, I Know! You're Purple Marx!"
12 y.o. Black Kid standing behind Emmett: [shaking his head in disgust] "Man, he's Harpo Marx."
Emmett: [whistles, touches his nose and points at kid behind him. Honks horn.]

GO EMMETT!

Oh, that's cool.

"Oh, I Know! You're Purple Marx!"

Man, he's not a Teletubby.

Emmett: [whistles, touches his nose and points at kid behind him. Honks horn.]

That is *beautiful.*