Be right back

Super busy right now with prom and awards ceremonies and weddings and a million other special events coming up.

Had a scare last week, my mother in law fell and we needed to take her to the hospital to check things out. She had every intention of going home from ER, but I would have bet money her hip was broken. I guess she showed me... We got her home about 4 am, which made for a long, fabulous workday.

Milestones

About a week ago I tried to explain to my daughter that yes, you are looking forward to your prom but so am I; I am your mom and it is a milestone for me too.

Most parents dream of prom dresses and wedding veils, but when those things become something you might miss out on, the realization that you made it after all becomes even sweeter.

I walked to church today; it's only a mile and I knew that First Communion parking is mayhem. (I had to sing...) It confused the hell out of my family and at least three of my friends who drove by me, to see ME, walking. Because I never, ever, walk to church. I haven't, in 22 years of marriage.

It was fine. The weather was perfect and I picked the right shoes and really why didn't I do this sooner???

I want to see my new baby nieces make their first Holy Communion. I really want to see their prom days. I don't want cancer to come back, now that I think I've won, and fuck with my plans to live to be 95 like all of my father's aunt and uncles.

So I need to get back into shape, and today I walked two miles. (And one whole mile was uphill.)

Suck it, cancer.




(in may 2010 I was finishing up chemo... I can hardly believe two years have gone by )

A mother of a day

Today wasn't my best; I stomped and raged and struggled.

I railed at the frustration of someone changing a schedule THEY had set (and they changed it at the very last minute, with no regard to how much of a difference it could have made in our day. )

I tried so hard to visit my mother and just be nice, but other frustrations crept in and I ruined the visit and I felt guilty.

I'm also so MAD that she has a sweet new granddaughter and won't go visit. Excuses. Blah.

I cried, eating pancakes that my son made for me, because I want to go see my sister so badly. And I didn't save up for a plane ticket (in the madness of the past few months, which isn't a fail therefore, but still makes me sad...)

I went to the market which is SO not my favorite place, but my sweet daughter put up with my stomping and storming and helped me get groceries and bring them in.

Then I went out to water my garden and the hose isn't right so it spritzed me over and over and I got all covered in grass clippings and my favorite flip flops broke and... Ugh.

Then she put on Big Bang and it soothed me with funny, and after watching the wedding I went to my porch and played with my flowers until I could act like a normal human again. I drank wine and we ate steak and DIDNT get calls from the aides with drama - silence for the win!

And I tried to write bills and sort papers and do real work that people pay me for and felt like I made a dent. Sometimes, that's as high as you can jump. Barely getting off the ground That's it.

I go walkin in my sleep

It's right about the time that I finished up my chemo, two years ago.

I was mulling it over on my way to work today... out of nowhere I found myself thinking about the nights I spent alone in my room.

During a chemo week (I had a round every three weeks) my husband would sleep in my son's room, to try to give me peace and quiet. The steroids destroyed my ability to sleep through the night. Any sound at all might wake me up, and then I'd be unable to find Mr. Sandman again.

And yet... I hated being alone. I flitted between scared, lonely, bored... sometimes aching from head to toe from the Neulasta, and sometimes tossing and turning in the painful misery of what chemo did to what we'll just call my stomach.

I longed to be cuddled, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to lie still and would actually keep HIM from sleeping enough to continue to work, deal with the kids, etc (all of the things I wasn't doing).

I wanted my back rubbed and my forehead kissed and to be soothed to sleep, but didn't really know how to ask for that, because I had retreated, and assumed everyone in the house was almost afraid to touch me, in the same way you might be afraid to touch a tiny bird who has fallen out of a nest. The bird is already broken, and you don't want to hurt it more.

This was an accidental photo; I did an Ombré manicure tonight as a way to clear my mind of this week's work and elder care duties/drama / what have you and I took a photo of THAT to try to decide whether I like it. (not really, i used green tones to fade and I now appear to be ready for st Patrick's day)

But the photo in this post captures some of the same restlessness that I felt back then, all of those nights two years ago. That fleeting blurry feeling where the minutes drag but in the blink of an eye, blend into one another and suddenly rush by.

Cheap therapy

Stressed out? annoyed with the universe? Plant some seeds that you bought on a whim, and a few more that you actually managed foroncein20years to harvest from your own flowers in late fall, and managed to keep track of all winter, and no mice found them and ate them. Poor sentence structure aside, this made me pretty darn happy tonight.

Let's hope my black thumb takes a year off and I don't kill off all of these poor little seeds.


(and, I know... Two posts in one day? Wow)

Ready Set Go

* I am delighted to share with you that my newest niece was born this weekend, a few minutes before midnight on Saturday evening. She is  ADOR A BLE and I am once again sneaking in photoshop collage time whenever I get a new picture of her. *

Today I volunteered at my daughter's track meet; the school hasn't hosted one in a while and the track coach had asked a few parents to help.  The official, bless his heart, didn't blink when he realized he had six timers, but none of us had ever clocked a race. He very patiently proceeded to train us during the meet.

Luckily it was a VERY small meet - two schools that are small, and they didn't even always have runners from both schools in each race. (Racing against yourself really sucks, but is done all too often in smaller towns )  So we could double up and have multiple people timing each runner so that we could get a sense whether we were hitting too slow or too fast.

I screwed up the first one... I was supposed to time the 5th place runner,  but I got confused because he was neck and neck with the 4th place guy. So I stopped my watch too soon.  Gah! Luckily for me the person who was SUPPOSED to time 4th place instead timed the runner in the 4th lane... who finished fifth.  Got that? Oh, it was comedy. But fun. 

The starter was laughing at us.  Quietly, but I could tell.  I didn't argue with him; dude has a gun.