She is the planner of silly games and messy crafts for her kids' birthday parties. She used to love to read aloud to her children, her voice jumping octaves as she used all kinds of crazy accents and intonations for the different characters.

But she rarely reads aloud now; her speech is slurred, her voice is scratchy, and reading one short book wears her out.

She's trying to learn about Pokémon, but so far finds it beyond her comprehension—much to Nick's chagrin. She's a recovering sudoku addict. She's learning to play chess.

She increasingly turns to mind games as her body betrays her. One by one, her muscle groups will fail, but her brain will not.

Aimee is a reluctant warrior, drawn into the fight against Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig's disease—a disease that slurs Aimee's speech and erodes her strength, causes her to choke and splutter and stumble and fall. A disease that leads her oldest to use his third-grade math skills to try to figure out Aimee's life expectancy. A disease that leads Jim to work hard all day, then come home to another full-time job of picking up the slack with the cooking, housekeeping, errand-running, etc. A disease that leads her children to worry about whether wicked stepmothers really exist.