Birthdays and boredom busters

The one year Nick could have had pretty much anything he wanted for his birthday, he only asked for a couple of practical items – socks, a pumice stone. We wanted to make his birthday special despite everything that’s going on so Monday afternoon Ray and I came up with a plan – we’d get him a Danielle! (not just any Danielle of course). I emailed the proper Danielle and we set up a surprise visit for Thursday when we’d be having Nick’s birthday celebrations. After Ray picked her up at the train station, we told Nick one of his gifts was in the sugar shack. He was very pleasantly surprised to find Danielle in there (rather than, say, a pumice stone) and after he’d recovered from the shock they talked and laughed pretty much non-stop. It was great to see him so happy. Our tradition is that the birthday person chooses whatever they want for dinner, so Nick chose a shrimp ring, Ray’s vegetarian lasagne and my banana cream pie. We dropped Danielle at the train station this afternoon before leaving for treatment #6 (which is where I’m writing this).

Other than that, we’ve each been finding ways to occupy our time. Nick discovered a new PS4 game called Fortnight where four people can play on a team – each in their own home, communicating via headphones – so it’s been nice to hear him chatting and strategizing with his high school friends, knowing he’s not risking infection. He was quite excited to place first out of a hundred players when playing solo yesterday (since he rarely played video games before this, becoming a ‘legit’ gamer is a source of some pride). He’s also been filling out scholarship applications and doing a bit of writing.

Ray took advantage of a stretch of spring weather to do the first boil-off of the season.

Since 2007, when we moved to England, I’ve been documenting our lives in book form, but had fallen a wee bit behind. With nothing but time on my hands, I’ve now managed to complete up to mid-2016.

Other forms of entertainment have included playing table tennis with the miniature set my sister sent for Nick, and – on really slow days – watching Arnold the avocado plant grow. Go Arnie!

We were impressed that Nick was able to raise the required $1500 for the Make-A-Wish Rope-for-Hope event after just a few days (counting off-line donations that haven’t been added to the site yet), and I’m already 20% of the way there too. It’s a great cause and we really appreciate all the support.

Carolyn’s page

Nick’s page