Pray, forgive the extended holiday from the blog. I kept holding off, wanting to post news of my hitting the lottery, but it still hasn't happened. Perhaps I should buy a ticket.

Life goes on. Cole starts String Project this week. Linda's web design consulting firm is working feverishly on the "Alliance for Human Life" web site for the Diocese of Corpus Christi. Rupert is trying to learn how to sit.

As for my status, I'm starting to be inconvenienced by the weakness in my left arm and especially my left hand. I have to hold my socks and pants in a modified way because of thumb weakness. Cutting food is more of a challenge, too, due to both weakness and cramping. Cedar fever is wreaking it's usual havoc on my sinuses, which probably led to a mild brush with diverticulitis last week (but from which I've fully recovered). I'm definitely getting around slower, too. Walking through the grocery store this week made my legs feel like bags of wet cement hanging off my hips. Speaking and swallowing are still slipping away slowly, but their decline seems more steady, though not as pronounced, as some other muscle groups. I continue to watch with excitement the research developments that will lead to one day freeing me of this decidedly inconvenient disease.

I've never had my lunch money taken by a bully (that I can remember), but I imagine that's what living with ALS feels like, on some level. There's this big, dumb, strong, can-outrun-you, completely uncompassionate kid who demands you hand over your means to an afternoon meal. "But I'm gonna need that," you want to explain to him. "Can't we talk about this?" you want to ask him. "Do you really need all of my money? And why are you picking on me, anyway?" But you recognize the certainty that any words you offer would be as ineffectual as running away. He just looms over you, with that cruel grin, one hand gripping the lapel of your jacket, the other thrust out awaiting your last $2.50. Can't be reasoned with. Can't be escaped. He's gonna take it today, tomorrow, and every day following until...you don't know when. And that's my trick for living with ALS. You'd better be able to live with hope that the "when" will come. You need the belief that the some day will come when you will stop getting worse, and eventually, get better. You need to guard and preserve the belief that some day, a day that you'll live to see, this mean kid named "ALS" will stop eating your lunch.