And the third reason I was distracted

 First, I remain gainfully employed.

Having said that, 89 people at my company do not, and we've been reorganized like crazy. We've flattened the organization, which is corporate speak for saying people leaders have more direct reports, and there are fewer of us.

A week ago Thursday, I had to tell a couple of my direct reports that while they, too, remained gainfully employed, they were being demoted back one level and were no longer going to be people leaders. Their pay and bonus structure remains the same, but make no mistake. This wasn't a great day for them (or for me).

In my larger group, our reductions made up close to 10% of those layoffs. That's a lot.

I've been through this so many times before; I worked for Sprint from 1997 to 2006, and beginning in 2001 after the dot com bust, Sprint laid off thousands and thousands. In early 2001, we had over 100k employees and when I left, we were about half that size.

So that's the last reason I have been too distracted to post here.

A second reason for being distracted

As I mentioned in my previous post, I did go to Nashville alone. That was pretty weird; not traveling alone (I’ve done a ton of that) but visiting family without Kent. Jordan and Amanda were disappointed but also knew that Kent made the right decision.

This was intended to be a little bit longer of a visit—I left Thursday and came home fairly early Tuesday. We didn’t have anything planned for Thursday, so we spent the day catching up and letting Grace come to me in her own time. Grace remains a ridiculously happy child, very good natured and affectionate so it took no time at all before she was chattering away, calling me Nana and generally being a sweetheart. The scotch in the photo is a really nice one we gave Jordan for his 40th birthday this year and he kindly shared with me.

We did get to the zoo on Saturday but it was pretty cold so the monkeys didn’t come out (apparently Grace loves the monkeys). But the kids petting zoo had baby goats and she enjoyed that a lot.

It finally got warm on Sunday so we spent some time at a nearby park, running around and swinging. On Memorial Day, we hung out with Amanda’s dad and stepmother—her dad is known for his hospitality and had invited a bunch of people over. We enjoyed the pool, the company, the food, just all of it.

I also got in a couple of runs, which was nice. Up until then, Kansas City had just been pummeled by endless thunderstorms. Even though it was chilly in Nashville (about 50 when I ran), it was dry. 

One reason I've been so distracted

My mother-in-law lives in Tulsa, in a pretty good nursing home, University Village. She's been there about four and a half years; originally she started in an assisted living apartment but kept falling and passing out. The facility had warned us that when people finally move into a facility like this, even if they'd been living in their own home (as she had) and driving (which she did), a lot of times all the hidden health issues they've got become obvious because someone is there to see them and notice.

So long story short, she ended up crashing and never really recovered from that. She moved into Skilled nursing but didn't make progress with the physical therapy. So that was no longer an option, as her insurance wouldn't pay for the sessions without some forward progress.

But she's been if not happy, then content. She's watched her shows, sometimes a little football, she's had friends and family visiting, also her former co-workers and we'd gone done periodically (Kent more than me). 

Then the pandemic hit, and we thought "well this will be it, she'll catch the coronavirus and since she stays mostly in bed, it will make short work of her." But she didn't get it, and in fact her facility did really well staying on top of the positive cases they did get.

Last fall, she had what ended up being a stage 2 melanoma removed from her arm. She was too frail for a PET scan, the gold standard to determine if cancer is elsewhere but had an MRI. That MRI came back clear.

On May 25, Kent's birthday, University Village called and said they thought she was having a stroke and they'd sent her to the ER by ambulance. The ER doctors said she wasn't having a stroke but something was clearly going on so they ran other tests.

She has a couple of malignant brain tumors. Turns out they are glioblastoma (GBM). GBM is a grade 4 fast-growing and aggressive brain tumor. She's been rated a health risk of 6 (the highest/worst rating) and her life expectancy is probably about six months-ish.

Kent ended up going to Tulsa the day after his birthday, and did not come with me to Nashville to see our family there. He made the right choice for sure, and I would have gone with him if he needed me. But he told me to go to Nashville, that it would be OK, he would be able to see our family again. I felt guilty but I went alone. 

Running behind

Hmm I’ve been a little distracted lately, sorry about that.

To follow up on my last post, I met with my new personal trainer, and this is going to be great. For the summer, I’ll work with him on Wednesday mornings and then go to the group class on Saturday mornings. And what’s even better—I asked Kent to go with me the first time in hopes this would be something we do together. And he agreed!

I will say, the day after the first group class, we were both sore but not where we thought we would be. Since we’re both runners, neither of us expected to be sore in our quads but oh my goodness we sure were. We joked about trust falls onto the toilet . . . only we weren’t really entirely joking.

Jerry had told me I'm to work out four days a week, rather than six. I tried to negotiate to five days but he asked me to give him two months at the four days a week and see how I felt. My biggest concern with losing a day of working out isn't overall fitness, it's my running base. You see, to be ready to train for a full marathon, I need to be regularly and easily running more volume than I am right now. Still, I agreed to cut back for the summer and work on the strength. He's fine with me having active recovery days, so I can cycle (as long as I'm not doing 20 mile rides--oh hey, no worries there!). 

This week, I cycled on Sunday (7 miles), ran 5.5 miles on Monday, walked I'm not sure how far but close to 3 miles yesterday, today I worked out with Jerry and I will run probably tomorrow or maybe Friday. We're in a brutal heat wave and the "low" temperatures the next two days isn't very low: 76 and 78. Then Saturday I'll be at the group class.

He also had me bring in my food diary (very easy to do since I've been tracking with My Fitness Pal for a few years), and then laughed at my protein. Yeah, he wants me to up that considerably. And that's not easy as a vegan. I'm working on it though.

I mentioned that Sami and Jerry own this gym and that she’s a nationally recognized expert in exercise for cancer patients and survivors. At the first group class (which she teaches), she asked if I wanted to stick around afterwards as she and Jerry were going to make a short video of other cancer survivors who work out there for an upcoming conference. So I did! She tossed me a logo'd tee shirt and then I worked out with the rest of them while Jerry filmed. It was so much fun and even more, I felt entirely normal there. I wasn’t the only person who had to pay attention to scar tissue or what have you.

Here’s a photo from the end—Sami is in the front row on the right, and Ruth is their adorable dog.