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I read a harrowing book about early-onset Alzheimers Disease. It was horrifying and frightening. It was about a 50 year old professor at Harvard who very rapidly lost her cognitive function. I thought of my mother and then I convinced myself that I too was losing my memory and that I had only two or three years until I would lose my mind. I could not remember the word for a vespa. I thought of motoped and motorbike and motor..... and I could not figure out for hours and hours that the right word was 'moped', at least that is what I finally decided the word for it was. I started reading at the airport in Santa Ana and then throughout the flight to Atlanta and to Baltimore. I tried the trivia game on the console while I was reading and finishing the crossword puzzle and did not do particularly well, so I became more and more convinced that I was losing my mind. Multitasking has always been my forte! Of course, in truth, there is no indication that I am losing my cognition, at least I don't think so, not yet.

But what I am aware of is time passing and that more than half of my life is over! How did I suddenly become so much older? I think that returning to Newport Beach has reminded me of the time that has flown by. I left almost 17 years ago and so much has happened in those seventeen years! Why does it feel like I have lost those years? I have lived and worked and had another child and traveled and tried all sorts of new things! And Ecuador is one more adventure!

My house is less cluttered than when I left, so that is a relief, but it needs cleaning and a mouse ran across the kitchen floor as I walked in. I wonder if the mice know that we are leaving and starting to take over the house! I did see one a few days before I left. We have had mouse issues in the past, but the creatures had disappeared for a while. Perhaps all the boxes and clearing out the closets has moved them from their former hiding places. I do not like mice and they do not belong in my house. I wonder if we will be living with rodents in Ecuador. Perhaps we will have to live with bigger and scarier rodents than we have here ( although the rats in downtown Baltimore are as big as they come!). What a delightful thought.

Maya and Eric are sleeping. Maya has grown during my absence. She has a week or more of school and then we will get focused on learning Spanish and preparing for school in Quito. I have to send off her medical records and birth certificate along with photos, so that will be first on my list along with ten hour days at the office to make up for having been away. In a little over a month I will no longer be working at my office, so ten hour days for a few weeks are fine. I look forward to seeing my patients but not saying good-bye. I wonder if I have been avoiding that this past week.