funsday night

This week was full of highs and lows. Lists and lots of pictures seem in order. Still, this is a long one. You might want to grab a snack.

- The father of one of my best friends passed away. Knowing one of your best friends is in pain and knowing there is absolutely nothing you can do about it is a horrible feeling, to put it mildly.

+ We went with friends Michael, Christy, Colin, and Miles to the George Eastman House, making it Greta's first visit (I'm guessing of many). Michael took some wonderful pictures of Colin and Greta playing in the gardens, and he will hopefully not mind me reposting some here.

This one I took with my phone during a moment of quiet. She looked like I felt (see minus above), which is why I let her get comfortable on a big bench in a room that was occupied but just us while we watched an old black and white movie for a bit.

+ My brother wears a suit all week long and then transforms into "Weekend Phil." Here is a great article featuring my brother and his latest obsession, cyclocross.

- I was in such a fog this week I completely forgot to go to my book club meeting. This is very unlike me. It's the thing I look forward to most each month, and I'm sad I missed it.

+ We have a new tradition. Pat has been staying late at work on Wednesdays as a focused effort to catch up on school work, and Greta and I have declared Wednesday night "Funsday Night." We have done something fun each week to really appreciate our one-on-one time together. It usually invoves some type of tasty dinner and some other fun activity, like going for a hike, browsing books at Barnes & Noble, a manicure, listening to live music, baking, etc. It's something I look forward to each week (even though we miss PattyCakes, of course).

-/+ We wrapped up what has been a process of more than three months worth of dental work for Greta. I lead a pretty damned charmed life, I gladly admit, so I will say that at the outset of this process, this felt like the hardest thing I've ever dealt with. We have a great pediatric dentist, though, and Greta was such a huge trooper that, all in all, it was actually fairly painless (in a this is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you kind of way, of course). And now I'm glad we're done - for now at least, and in the grand scheme of things, I feel lucky that everything was fixable and that Greta probably won't require therapy later in life (due to this experience, at least).

-/+ After a bit of a scary night Thursday night and an appointment first thing Friday AM, Greta was (finally) diagnosed with asthma and we (finally) got her some therapy/medication that is helping her. She's on three meds right now and we are the proud renters of a nebulizer/compressor, but my baby can almost breathe like a normal person now, thankfully.

+ We went to an awesome squash dinner. Our friend Ian has had an annual squash dinner for 10 years, and we were excited to invited to the 10th anniversary event. I've always been sort of "meh" about squash, but all of the food was so great that this week I have been having a love affair with squash. I can't stop preparing and eating squashy foods. Yum. Speaking of squash, if you don't mind some naughty lauguage and like to laugh a lot, you should check out this genius piece of writing.

+ We had a great day today. The highlights include walking around at RIT's Brick City festival and just having a nice low-key day. Pat and Greta carved a pumpkin while I cooked dinner (a pasta dish with two types of squash, if you must know).

Here are some pictures of Greta at Global Village (a new area in RIT that when I heard about it I thought sounded hokey as hell but which is actually a really cool place).

And here's the aforementioned jack-o'-lantern. Look how cute!

Fran