Tuesday, May 20, 2025 - Day 280
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
📣 LIVE EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT 🌻 Season’s Sunflower Hour — Special ALS Episode. TODAY!!! We’ve got something real to share.
🗓 Tuesday, May 20th - that’s today 🕖 7:00 PM CST 📍 LIVE on YouTube Join me and the family for a candid conversation about life with ALS — or as we’ve come to call it, that shitty disease.
We’ll talk about the hard stuff, the funny moments, and even those questions people haven’t had the nerve to ask out loud.
💬 Got questions? Bring them. 🎥 Tune in live, interact in real time, and be part of the story.
Show will be recorded and available for viewing on YouTube
Good morning!
It’s going to be a great day.
Both kids are coming to Crystal Lake and joining us on tonight’s livestream. We’ll be talking about this ALS journey — which, let’s be honest, includes all of you. Our host, Season, is engaging, energetic, and empathetic. It’s going to be real, brutally honest, probably tearful, and definitely filled with love and hope.
Now, a quick recap of yesterday: The bracelet brigade rolled into Crystal Lake to crank out more of those beautiful Andy’s Army bracelets. This part of the Army is growing — we’re now mixing in Waukegan friends with Crystal Lake friends, and the laughter in the room said it all.
We started around 11:00 with Cindy, Carrie, Chrissy, Cathy, Barb, and Joy leading the charge. Ric and Bill showed up too — mostly to keep me company, but I had other plans and put them to work in the garden. The mission was simple: have fun, get creative, and make cool, sparkly bracelets. Cindy and Barb have been bead-hunting around town, and my sister Lis keeps sending us packages with rare and exotic beads from faraway lands. Then again, aren’t all beads technically from foreign lands? Anyway…
Joy came up with a gem of an idea — bracelets that read “F ALS.” Yes, please. I want one. Actually, I keep “wanting one” a lot and now have a personal collection that rivals a merch table, even though we’re supposed to be raising money for ALS United.
By early afternoon, we broke for lunch. Soon after, the corks started popping. Wine flowed in proportion to the laughter — maybe productivity dipped, but creativity definitely soared. Around 4:00 someone asked, “Are all the words spelled correctly?” Cue more laughter. Answer: “Yes!”
As the group began wrapping up around 4:30, Chrissy had other plans. She suggested we finish off the open bottles of wine. Nobody objected. More laughter, more love, and soon, not all glasses were equally filled… so naturally, more wine was opened. Before we knew it, it was 5:39… and just before 6:00, every bottle and glass was empty.
We hugged, and hugged again. There were so many whispered “I love yous” in my ear that I had a hard time responding — emotions took over. There was talk of doing another bracelet brigade day, depending on demand. If the creativity keeps rising, the orders just might, too.
Since I couldn’t get the words out then… “I love you too.”
And then came the cherry on top… Chrissy surprised me with a hand-painted gift — not just any gift, but a painted goose egg. One side was the Waukegan Bulldogs and our friendship. The other side? The Grateful Dead’s Steal Your Face logo, with the dancing bears wrapping around the middle. It was stunning. Chrissy, thank you! I promise not to pick it up — my hands are officially all thumbs these days. 😉🥲
After the laughter quieted down, it was time for dinner. I’m sorry, we should have fed everybody before you left. Although we would been opening more wine…never knowing when to call it. Then we’d be working on blowup mattresses and looking for sleeping quarters in our two bedroom townhome. It would have turned into a slumber party…just like high school. Although we rarely slumbered back then…we just stayed up all night, followed by a huge breakfast at 4:00 am!
In the afternoon, Mary F. brought over dinner for us. It was crockpot pot roast and mashed potatoes. It was absolutely delicious! And the heat of the spices was perfect! I had seconds, which made getting off the couch a near fail. Thank you Mary for a great meal!
What a day. What a crew. What a life
Have a great Tuesday. See you tonight.
Love you guys!❤️
