I am not the healthiest person you will ever meet.  I have asthma, migraines, sinuses that drive me crazy from October to May, some strange auto-immune stuff going on and, on top of all of that, I don’t sleep much.  I am a blast at parties!  Call me!

I’m halfway kidding, because I am a blast (I’m modest too), but one of the worst things about being sickly is that your friends have to deal with it.

Sure, last year’s swine flu/pneumonia/suspected pulmonary embolism stopped my husband and his dad from leaving for a weekend trip and my mom was the one who rushed me to the emergency room when my doctor thought I was coming down with my SECOND case of viral meningitis, but it’s different when you have to put a friend out.

Like the time when I got a concussion a couple of years ago and my husband was out of town or when I went on my annual girls’ weekend and ended up with a migraine that made me so sick that I couldn’t keep my anti-nausea meds down.  I’m sure that watching me get IV drugs wasn’t on my friends’ lists of things to do when they were away from their kids for a few days.

But, maybe all of this happens to me for a reason.  Maybe it’s to show me that I have amazing friends, or to prove to the world that there really are good people who care about each other; or care for me…same difference.

In addition to being a creative outlet, a place where I have connected with other parents of children with medical issues, and being the board off of which I dove into a new line of work, blogging is a bonus because it has enlarged the group of people who would drive me to the hospital.

Photo courtesy of Mishelle Lane

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1. If you spend 13 days in five different cities (and six different beds), you will grow very weary of checking for bedbugs.

2. Manhattan in August is hot, dirty and smells a lot like pee.

3. The Eastern Shore of Virginia in August is hot, sandy and smells a lot like fish.

4. But, that smell is totally worth it when your brother-in-law takes your husband and kids fishing and they come home with fresh crab and flounder for dinner.

5. Busch Gardens Williamsburg is ridiculously expensive. Nine bucks for four mozzarella sticks and a cup of strawberries for the kids’ snack, on top of $55.00 admission tickets and $18.00 parking IS. JUST. WRONG.

6. If you buy a hotel room through Priceline, apparently the staff doesn’t have to guarantee you a room at their hotel…but rather, any room at any hotel. This means you might end up booking at a Hyatt and end up at a Quality Inn.

7. And, you might take your Ambien in the parking lot of the Hyatt just before you (think you’re going to) check-in, only to be told you have to drive 10 miles, through the completely foreign city of Pittsburgh, all while arguing with the staff and watching people who arrived AFTER you get a room because they’re paying full price.

8. You will never use Priceline or stay at a Hyatt again.

9. Then you will use your blog for evil paybacks. Mwah ha ha!!

10. The speed limit in West Virginia through the Allegheny Mountains is 70mph. This is also referred to as the “place where Momo gets itchy armpits and yells at her husband a lot”.

11. After non-stop travel to points in West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and almost Maryland…Ohio will never seem so good.

12. Because that is where your bed is.

13. And you don’t have to check for any bugs.

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I didn’t even realize it at the time, but my last blog post was my 500th. I had another post prepared for today, but as I logged in to type it, I saw the big 5-0-0 was hit a few days ago.

Five hundred posts and over three years of my life spent here at my home away from home. Momo Fali’s isn’t just a blog for me; it has been my journey through time. Even if most of that time was spent as an insomniac in an Ambien-induced haze.

You might think that I would be looking forward to my 500th post. Anticipating it, planning it and crafting each word carefully. Umm…nope. I haven’t even planned dinner lately.

As I have come to realize, anticipating and planning don’t necessarily mean that things will turn out the way you intended. I didn’t anticipate having two premature kids. I didn’t plan for a child with health and behavioral problems. My husband and I didn’t craft our (legitimate) careers in the mortgage industry, only to have the housing market come crashing down around us.

I know I’m not alone. Life throws curve balls at everyone and, sometimes, you just get blind-sided by a hit that you never even saw coming.

When my son was an infant, things were such a struggle that I continuously told myself, “Don’t take it day to day, or hour to hour…just take it minute to minute”. I knew I could do anything for a minute, so I taught myself to function for 60 seconds at a time.

This is probably why I didn’t see my 500th post coming. I have learned not to look too far ahead because what appears isn’t usually painted like the picture in my head. As a matter of fact, I try to imagine the worst so that I end up pleasantly surprised. That’s right. The worst. I can paint some seriously ugly pictures up in here.

This doesn’t mean that I am negative, just anxiety-ridden. I am a worrier. I am helped by medication, but I am still the woman who goes to therapy with her son and has the psychologist spend a quarter of the allotted time discussing my cuticle picking.

Given the course of my life, filled with twists and turns and sinkholes, I think it’s fitting that I am, instead, celebrating my 501st post.

In my case, it is truly something to celebrate when there was no fretting involved whatsoever.

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If you are getting ready to go out of town to a conference and will be in three different hotel rooms over a course of three nights and you’re an anxiety-ridden-worrier-insomniac who is freaking out about packing and bed bugs and making lists of instructions for home, make sure that the following happens in the two weeks before you leave…

1. Your mom moves…again.

2. You paint the interior of your mom’s new house.

3. Your mom has surgery.

4. You schedule surgery for yourself.

5. Your dog grows some weird lump on her chest and it keeps getting bigger by the day.

6. Your daughter goes to camp for a week.

7. Your best friend’s grandmother dies (not that you actually do anything for her, like make her family dinner or send a card.)

8. Your son starts behavior therapy.

9. Your son gets what you think is a urinary tract infection, but after a doctor visit and a pee sample you find out it’s a too-much-soap-in-his-bath-infection, but he gets a prescription for antibiotics anyway, because he’s that kind of kid.

10. You get chosen to have your writing honored at a gala reception.

11. You struggle to find something to wear to said reception.

12. You make sure to get your Ambien refilled.

13. You still don’t sleep.

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