Sweets

I just realized that I probably never posted a photo of the baby shower cake we made. (Yes, my sister helped decorate her own cake. That's how we do things. She is very artistic)

We can also discuss the cupcakes - I made frosting that was more like some chocolate milk so we injected it into the middle of the chocolate cupcakes. I broke out a can of frosting and we went on...

The last thing we made was cheesecake pops - melonballs of baked cheesecake, chilled on parchment paper, rolled in Graham cracker crumbs and shaped round. Then dipped in melted chocolate. Oh baby. Even I likes those.

busy, buzzy

I am running in circles these days (but not falling anymore, knock on wood)...

This week brought a triple-overtime championship basketball game during which I muttered obscenities several times. Such a role model I am. I wanted to get home to watch Dancing with the Stars... I am such a dork.

We also had the Learning Fair this week, which I fondly refer to as "Let's go see all the projects the other Mommies and Daddies made..." My son presented a slide show on concussions in soccer and missed winning a speaking contest by 0.016 of a point. But he beat out the two girls known for being "the smartest" in his grade, hehehehehe. I think it was the still photo of a soccer ball mashing into a player's face and flattening that sealed his success. Eeek.

I wasted time rebuilding a work pc that I had set up ALMOST exactly the way I wanted it. It's kind of funny, someone tweeted about origami patterns for the Angry Birds characters and like an IDIOT I went to the link and started downloading them to a jump drive. I'll miss that little jump drive. Grr. The virus software on that particular test pc started going crazy but in the duel the virus STILL managed to break everything on the pc - office, browsers, etc - nothing would run. So, THAT was fun to realize, and especially when I faced that I had to explain it to my boss. At The Bank I would have been fired. But in the New and Improved Job that I have now it was no big deal. :::sigh of relief:::: Two hours of reinstalling stuff.... I still can't believe I made SUCH a dumb mistake. Don't download shit off the internet, people!!! People are jerks!!! So smart and yet they just think of ways to mess with other people's lives. I don't get it.

Anyway, I have to go make a killer birthday cake for one of our best friends... it's going to be a very funny one (I hope) because it is based on his trash hauling business. So, I have to go break dollhouse furniture and litter it all over the cake. There is another championship game today that most of my family is going to (not my son's team, so I'll pass) and then we have the birthday party; tomorrow I have to go to mass with my nephew who is making his confirmation soon and then I need to go straight to the basketball banquet.... and then finish the yearbook and start the next lunch menu)

Since I haven't done much art of MY OWN this week (oh, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though! ) I will share this with you....

Sherwin Williams - Paint Chips from Buck on Vimeo.

500 miles

I had a baby shower for my sister yesterday. It was awesome and worth all of the extra work this past month (and having even less time to blog. Sorry!)

Then she left at 7am today to drive to her house, so very far away... It makes me sad.

I have fallen three times in the last two weeks. I tripped over a curb because it was snowing and I had a few things in my hands, and landed on one knee- the stuff I was holding somehow hit the ground before my hands did - saved me and absorbed some of the impact. Then I slipped in the lobby at work Monday because it was sleeting so my feet were wet, and they had polished the tiles, and I crashed down on the OTHER knee.

Today going out of my house I looked back in because someone said something to me, and I missed a step and fell backwards down a small flight of stairs. I somehow caught one of the railing posts and managed not to kill myself. I hardly ever manage a ninja move like that- -it was awesome but I did still hit with a crash, it just wasn't MY HEAD.

So I decided later to take my moody sad self for a walk - and ow. My leg ached.

When I saw this net sinking into the melting ice, it summed up how I was feeling about some stuff. The end of the season. It's sad.

(Especially during Madness when many athletes are playing their final games - and my son plays his final cyo basketball game tomorrow. Six years of games. Oy. )

What Pi Sounds Like

I know I don't blog as much as I used to... When I first started, right around the time of the OTHER big tsunami, I had time every afternoon to sit and wait for the kids to get off the bus. Now, most days I am usually driving to get them and they are waiting for ME, and the whole texting/typing while driving deal is just Bad. And there is Facebook and 'the Twitter' and ... You know.

Speaking of the tsunami.... Words fail me. Over 9,500 people may be dead in one region alone? Staggering. Makes me so profoundly sad, but deeply grateful for the roof over my head, the dirty dishes in my sink from feeding my family, the clothes I can wash if I get off my lazy tookus... Too many people don't appreciate how good their normal daily life is until it's cracked apart by cancer or fire and rain.

At any rate, I haven't really taken enough photos for this week, so for Sunday Art I will share with you something I got out of a very cool newsletter. Between this (Brainpickings) and Pat's Papers I am trying to get some new ideas into my brain.

I swear, I've played the first few notes of 3.14 a time or two on the piano... It seemed so familiar.

Check out this post: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/03/10/what-pi-sounds-like/

Rhythm

First photography assignment, rhythm and repetitiveness.

Every day I take my tamoxifen and promise myself I am going to try to live for a very long time. Unfortunately right now my memory is crappy and I was finding myself struggling to remember whether I had taken it each day. I tried setting a daily alarm on my iphone just about the time those started to not work. (That was pretty funny, actually.) So I went old school with this pillbox. It's ugly but effective.

This is taken with a new iPhone camera app, called genius. It can do a wide range of adjustments including add flash (brightens AND whitens in one step) and effects like this one (1970). I liked the combination of this clunky old so-not-modern pillbox with the crackled yellowing photo style.

I 'only' have to take tamoxifen for five years. Well, actually, four and a half years now. Right? Right.

Dear Universe

... thank you....

I had a pretty tough time driving down to the appointment. I was late and feeling very stressed... I'm surprised my blood pressure was close to normal when they checked it. I need to stop going to these appointments alone. Dummy. I have wonderful girlfriends who help me with everything I ask and I need to stop trying to be "tough".

I love my surgeon. Love, love love that woman. She walked in and said "How are you?" and I said "You tell me..." and she immediately said that everything looked good on the mammograms, and the 5,000 pound gorilla got off my chest and started dancing a little bit in the corner of the exam room.

We talked about the scarring I have and how radiation thickens and otherwise affects mammary ridges (don't google any of that shit at work, it could be so awkward for you) and she made me laugh by saying my scars look great and then LITERALLY patting herself on the back. She is so damn warm and charming. (To think that I almost let the little short bastard in cowboy boots who took out my gallbladder hack me to pieces. Lumpectomy + chemo / rad is the way to go if you can, ladies)

She also explained to me that yes, the wording on those letters SUCKS, but it has to do with the conditions observed in the mammogram and the need to prove that the medical requirement for having a mammo every six months.

::::seal claps::::::

Potato, potahto

Well it's been six months since I finished radiation and so I've had my first mammogrammmm-mmmowwwiieeeee you have no idea.

Next I get to go see the surgeon to find out if this "lump of scar tissue" is a new and very unwelcome tumor or if this "tumor" is just a lump of scar tissue that is more than welcome to stay if it just behaves. Long enough sentence? It has been a long enough wait since the letter from the radiologist, which had phrases like "findings which are probably benign". A long wait - the kind where you don't want to make something more real by worrying aloud to someone else about it. Good lonely fun.

Mr. Carly, who saw the letter, swears the surgeon said something about marking her work and needing to read the images herself because no one else would know what she did where. And this is the spot with the Incredible Bursting Hematoma and the margins I had to have redone and all the good times that come with visiting nurses and open wounds.

I would hope that if it WERE a new tooomah I'd already be getting ultrasounds and more giant hollow needles shoved into me. A funny thing to hope for.

But...I have a crappy track record as far as assessing my situation. I believed the "we just need to redo images" line from 14 months ago that started this all. I believed that it wasn't cancer even as they were tunneling in with a long needle to diagnose what kind of cancer it was. I believed that I could probably get away with no chemo. And we know how that worked out.

I'm sooo not wanting to get back on the Cancer Merry-go-round. MY SISTER IS HAVING A BABY. Do you hear me, universe? I want to tickle fat baby legs this spring, not do j-drains and reconstructive surgery. I have no wish whatsoever for more chemo and chicken soup. I never want to eat chicken soup again, thank you very fucking much.

So I'm on the edge of panic, and hoping I don't take a really steep fall again. Good times.