Summer of bleah

Yeah, geez, I lost TWO WHOLE MONTHS there. I'd like to be able to blame some sort of computer crash or sunspots or something, but the bottom line is, well ... I just haven't felt very inspired to post.

Two whole months. During those months, I've eaten lunch on Chicago's Magnificient Mile, stepped out onto the rocks in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine, turned 37, and taken my family to Washington, D.C., on vacation.

I became the proud owner of a 1989 Honda Pacific Coast 800, putting me back in the saddle after a 10-year hiatus.

That was the cool stuff.

I also worked my ass off, slept very little, ate too much and walked through the time basically uninspired.

Alas, that wasn't the worst.

The Young Daughter's dread disease has begun to manifest itself in ways that are a lot less benign than the little spots on her skin.

She's 4. She's grown a half-inch in the last 18 months. She's begun to have mild seizures. She walked around last weekend with an ambulatory EEG device, a mass of wires glued to her head to try to discern what's going on in there.

As The Wife put it: "You know, it doesn't get any better from here. It only gets worse."

That's probably the case. In the best-case scenario, we listen to medical professionals tell us to "check back in 6 months" while they wait to see if anything changes. We buy medicine, we schedule doctor appointments -- four last month alone -- and we wait.

So, that was our summer. School starts Thursday. Life continues to move forward, and it'll move forward at the pace at which it always has. The Young Daughter doesn't cope. She just lives, with a smile on her face and a 100-decibel sentence at her lips.

Her favorite song is Travis Tritt's "It's a Great Day to Be Alive." She discovered the repeat button on her little CD player and sets it at night to play, over and over and over, all night.

There's a message in there.