Reintroductions

It has been such a busy July that I have barely had time to post. Chuck has been gone the whole month and being a single parent is hard enough without all the traveling I have done this month thrown in!
Friday afternoon Loren dropped the girls off at my office and we headed to Tulsa for the annual Oklahoma Hemophilia Foundation meeting. The kids went to the Aquarium and Children's Museum on Saturday while the adults attended the meeting. Last year's meeting was right after I had surgery and most of the people at the meeting have not seen me since then. So many people walked right past me without a word and when I went up to them to say hello I had to tell them who I was, or I could see them look at my name tag with a shocked look. After dinner Friday night I was standing outside the room waiting to talk to one of the pharmaceutical reps as I had an issue I needed to discuss with him. Afterwards he told me he had to tell me something -- he is in our office quite often and he said there he always knows it is me because he sees me come out of my office and knows I am supposed to be there but standing in the hotel he did not realize it was me until I actually started talking to him.
It is still hard for me to get my arms around all the compliments. One of my support group buddies even told me today that she was especially jealous of my transformation as I had not only gotten thinner, but younger. Now, that is a compliment I can appreciate, even if I don't see it!
I am traveling again this week -- Tuesday and Wednesday to Chicago. Many of the people at this meeting will also be people I have not seen in a while, or who even know I have had surgery. I am sure there will be lots more shocked looks.
On a side note -- I went to get my hair color redone and my hair trimmed today. The hairdresser was commenting on the amount of baby hair I have coming in. After highlighting she toned it to cover the new growth. She was blow drying my hair afterwards and panicked -- she had left the toner on too long and the bleached areas turned violet! Luckily, she was able to fix it with some stripping shampoo. I remember the reaction when I showed up at work with blond hair and I can only imagine the reaction if I had shown up with violet hair!