March Madness

Wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? In the last few years since I posted, my wife was diagnosed with a serious chronic condition, my family learned to love the cruise life, the whole world went through a pandemic, and the Cold War rides again.

For starters, Margaret was diagnosed with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, so basically her lungs are trying to overwork her heart. This is a serious condition that is still very mysterious in origin (her variant is ideopathic, which means that there is no definable reason why she has this). She is on all the medicines and on oxygen and is doing well, although she gets very tired easily and has to ride a scooter when we go out.

Even with her condition, we have learned to love the cruise life! This is something that I never thought I would like, or even do, but we’ve been on two cruises in the last 2 years. Our first was Spring Break 2020. Margaret and the kids and I went to Mexico on Carnival and although she couldn’t participate in some of the activities, we had the best time we could. She got her diagnosis a few weeks later so we understood why the trip was so hard for her.

She and I took a “do-over” trip last November and repeated the same itinerary on Royal Caribbean. We had a much better time and decided not to do any of the excursions. We spent most of the days in port sitting in the pool drinking frutiy drinks and meeting people. It was a blast. We are scheduled to go on an Alaskan cruise soon and we can’t wait. Truly a bucket list item.

Speaking of Spring Break 2020…I wonder what else happened in March 2020…

Oh, yeah. COVID-19. That was not fun at all. We had to obviously be extra careful not to bring COVID home since that would have been a very bad situation for Margaret’s lung condition. The kids were home doing remote school and I was home doing remote work. That’s partially a good thing, but we all had trials and tribulations with remote learning/work. Enough said about that!

Bringing us to this month. Wow, I can’t believe all the Cold War shenanigans are back. Russia invaded Ukraine and the whole world remembered why we all made a collective sigh after the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR broke apart. Gen Z hopefully understands a little bit about what the Cold War Kids like me went through, and hopefully the world can see why a lot of people have been worried about the rise of authoritarian right-wing movements over the last couple of decades.

“History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it often rhymes” – Mark Twain