A Roiling Boil...

Do you ever have so incredibly much going on - good or bad - that you just feel like you are in a bubbling whirlpool? I'm in the whirlpool. Between my very long and scary surgery tomorrow, Jack turning four, my baby girl just changing immensely every day, my grandparents house, a house that I pretty much grew up in, being almost emptied and up for sale....I'm just overwhelmed. They aren't all bad changes, but they are big life changes all at once and my goodness, for someone who does not like change at all, well...I was driving home from my grandparent's house this weekend, singing loudly with my Mumford and Sons and streaming tears - some happy, some sad, some grateful, some freaked out.

 

So now I will try to go to sleep until 5 am tomorrow morning when I get ready to go to the hospital, and kiss my sleeping babies heads, and get ready to put one of the big life changes behind me.

My little man

 

 

Somewhere, somehow...in a mélange of blinks of an eye and interminable days, you turned from this small helpless baby to my little man. You are so steadfast and determined - you do not absorb, move, learn, react, engage, until you are ready to. On the other hand, you are so incredibly full of energy, sometimes to a frenetic extent, that you continue to grow my patience quota daily. You are sassy, and so very sweet. You are hilarious. While you are full of a pre-schooler's disregard for others at times, you show moments of such sweetness and kindness - moments that you don't know that I see - that you make my heart balloon.

 

Oh my heart, I love you so very much. I am beyond thankful every day that I get to continue to enjoy the privilege of hearing you call me mama. Happy happy birthday my love. 

Insomnia...

So, I'm sitting here at 11:59 pm, which if you know me, is ungodly, watching the season premier of So You Think You Can Dance (umm, yes, I still harbor delusions that my few years of ballet in grammar school will translate into, I don't know, admission into the Old People's Ballet Company? What of it?) writing out a list of things that I have to get done in the next three weeks. Before I have the big big big surgery, on June 17th. This one is keeping me awake. This will be my 5th surgery (in my life, not because of the cancer), and it will be a doozy. Almost 8 hours, likely 5 days in the hospital. Six weeks of pretty ugly recuperation. Dealing with a 19 month old who I cannot in any uncertain terms, lift for 6 weeks and who loves to be picked up by mama multiple times a day.

And this one sort of scares the crap out of me. Yes, I've wanted this surgery forever - yes, I was completely theoretically prepared for it. But now that there is a date and a time...holy crap. Because you know what? Yes, childbirth can kill you and cancer can kill you, and hell, getting in your car can kill you...but surgery can kill you right.then.and.there. And this is elective...there is no medical reason to have this surgery, only my own vanity and comfort. I'm putting my own life at risk and putting my family through a large period of disruption...for my vanity? Does it really come down to that? I know it's much more than that and I know I have absolutely no reason to feel guilty and I know it will be a distant memory soon but you can't help but to think. And then maybe I need to remember, like everyone else has been , some wise words by a woman we lost today...

 

Pinterest

 

 

Yes, this all has changed me - mentally, physically, emotionally - but I need to remember that I should be damned if I let it make me feel guilty for wanting to feel somehow whole again; to somehow, after the Frankenstein scars from this surgery fade, feel semi-comfortable in my own skin again. I am worth it. I deserve it. I will have it. It will be good.

Check in

Sorry, I've been holding my breath as I always do when I have a scan and I received the all clear today, so now I can breathe again. Couple posts in the works and have also been working on reopening my Etsy store (Moose Country Crafts on etsy and facebook) aaannnd as I've talked about, getting my grandparents house reaaaaaalllly close to the market. Basically I have been keeping myself busy trying not to think of getting results! Be back soon!

Mother's Day 2014

 

Mother's Day now, to me, is not a day to be feted. In fact, oftentimes I'm so frustrated and disappointed in my own mothering skills that the last thing that I think I deserve is any sort of congratulations in the matter. What it does represent is a day to be so thankful that I was gifted these two beings. I don't always remember this in the throes of another dinnertime where Jack is refusing to eat or when AR decides to scream and cry for half an hour because I don't give her the 300th cracker before lunch, but I am well aware of many fellow cancer ladies who have been stripped again of one of the most basic of human rights - the choice of whether to have children or not -  as a result of this completely unfair siege.

 

This is a day to thank God again that I get to be here. A funny thing about Mom's with littles who have gone through this fight - while most other people (and I do NOT in any way begrudge anyone this, it's just a difference that I have noticed) talk about their bucket lists and places they want to visit and things they want to do (and yes, I am not in any way saying I still don't see myself sitting in my little coffeehouse at the end of the street in the Salzburg Altstadt, sans kids, sometime soon), we make deals with God about time. And not time for us, time with our kids. I can't count how many of us have told each other that we have tried to bargain with God by asking "Please just give me 5 more years so I can get them into elementary school" and then "Please God, can I just have 10 more years because then they will be in high school" etc etc etc. Things that don't occur to other Mom's swarm our brains every.single.day. So these holidays, Mother's Day, birthdays, etc., are not just holidays, not just breakfast and flowers and cards -  they are milestones.

 

 I don't need to know how much they love me - I desperately need them to know how much I love them.



Happy Cinco de Mayo!

How time passes so quickly I have no idea. I write something then turn around to write again and find it's been over a week. Amazing. Anyway, just a stop in on this May 5th to show a tribute to my own familial Cinco de Mayo...

 

 

My Mexican Nana (my great-grandmother) and my French Pops who joined forces to create a whole bunch of dysfunctional family members! I didn't get to know them much...Pops died quite a few years before I was born. I knew my Nana but she was sick and bedridden which is a bit of a scary prospect to a 3 or 4 year old. She died when I was 4 and as any good Mexican family would do for any occasion, her after-funeral reception was filled with tears, laughter, fighting and lots of alcohol, not necessarily in that order. But these two people raised 5 kids in a house that, from my memory, had to be less than 800 square feet (we bemoan having 4 people in our 1280 square foot house quite often). When my grandfather and his twin sister were born, my aunt was so tiny that they kept her warm by putting her in a cigar box in the warming oven. Their 5 kids went on to have 14 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren, and 7 great-great grandchildren so far. Their house still stands on the next street over from my grandparents house. They are remembered.  Salud!

 

You keep living.

Pinterest



A facebook "breast" friend of mine posted this the other day - it's from "Call the Midwife" (I watched a few episodes and it was very good but I didn't keep up, do any of you watch it?)...anyway, I have no idea what the context of the quote is but it about absolutely perfectly describes what I've been going through, and probably most anyone who has gone through some traumatic event.

 

You just keep living until you are alive again...you keep going every day until you don't see that black veil behind you because you are just too busy to even think about it. And then you keep living until you don't see that black veil because you are too happy in this moment to think about anything ominous. And you smile because you realize that you haven't been able to feel and embrace that happiness in a long long time because you were terrified to... because if you let your guard down and think that things may just be okay, that maybe you don't have to worry every single minute of every day, that if you dare to have the audacity to plan ahead, to dream again, to recklessly believe that you are actually okay - that that moment will be the one that invites shit to walk right back in the door. You keep living until one day you don't internalize and personalize every bad story that you hear, and you hear entirely too many of them in this club. You keep living until someone offhandedly saying "Wait until she's a teenager" doesn't make your heart shatter - because you know you will be there to suffer through it and you will cherish every fight coming your way. You keep living until there are more and more minutes and hours strung together in which you actually improbably forget that you have had cancer. You keep living until there is a day when you feel pretty again, when someone looks at you, like they used to, and your first thought is not everything that is wrong and scarred and mangled underneath your clothes but what is still present in your face and your eyes and your smile.

 

 

You keep living until one day you realize that you do have permission - you have a right - to feel alive again. I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it.

Happy Easter

Wishing you and your family a wonderful, peaceful Easter.

 May you find joy and happiness in whatever you are doing and whomever you are around.

 



Craigslist encounters...

 Sounds salacious doesn't it? Well, I meant it to because you really wouldn't want to read about my Craigslist rantings otherwise would you?

For the past 6 months (and sporadically the past three years) I have been one of two main people cleaning out my grandparents house. Doesn't sound like a big deal does it? But if you've ever done it, you know. Sixty years of stuff in one house is a LOT of stuff. And if you have ever had dealings with any Depression-era folk, you realize that you have to look through everything because they are so adept at hiding things all over the house that truly, Jimmy Hoffa could still be in the garage (I haven't looked in the rafters yet). You cannot, in any uncertain terms, just toss bags of stuff like you would say, at my house, because there could be important documents hiding within, like car titles, stock certificates, tax documents, cash, Christmas cards from 1968 (not even joking), your grandfather's pay stubs from approximately 1948 through 1983, receipts for oil changes from 1973, etc, etc. Anyway, the process of cleaning out the house and my feelings on it, that's a post for another day. But now that we are almost cleaned out there are a few pieces of larger furniture that we either need to sell or give away and I have been using Craigslist quite a bit for that. Don't get me wrong, I've used Craigslist sporadically before for both buying and selling, but not this much at one time. And it has proven to be a usually fruitful relationship, considering it's free, which is an automatic winner in my world, and considering it's usually very easy. You want it, you come see it, you buy it.
However, apparently that's not how it works for everyone. Apparently there are people out there that choose to flout the rules and make this lovely free platform of buying and selling into a frustrating hell. Therefore, here you go-

1) If you say you are going to show up...SHOW UP!! I realize things happen, but things do not happen to 10 people on the same day. If you say you will meet me at a certain time, especially to pick up a FREE ITEM, then have the courtesy to drag your lazy ass out of your crack den into the bright sunlight, get your coffee, get in your car, and get over here. Though you may not believe it, or mommy may not have taught you this, other people's time is as valuable, if not more so, than your own. If you cannot make it because said car broke down, your bed is just that cozy, you scored a big hit the night before and need to smoke up, have the decency to text/email me to let me know. I have 30 other people that could have come but no, I did the fair thing and offered to the first response. Thanks for being a tool.

2.) If I say pickup time for something is between 8 and noon, do not text me at 11:50 and say I just got in my car and I'm on my way. No. This is L.A. Unless you live on the next block, you won't get there in 10 minutes. Thank you for assuming that all I have to do on a weekend is sit around and wait for your rude entitled millennial ass to waltz on over.

3.) If you are coming to pick something up that is of the large-ish persuasion, and usually have trouble lifting the 5 lb bag of sugar at home, bring help. Do not assume that the person you are picking it up from is capable and/or willing to help you. You could be  picking up from an 80 year old lady, or a paraplegic, or hell, from me. As an aside - people younger than me who are picking things up, for goodness sakes, put down your damn phones and facebook and iPads and lift a weight or two every once in a while. Your general weakness is pathetic. I'm a pushing-40 year old women who has had recent cancer and has an arm I'm not supposed to seriously exert. If you can't carry half of a TV 30 feet...really???

4.) If you are coming to buy furniture - large furniture - don't bring a tiny car. Really. I mean, I just... really.

5.) When you respond to a Craigslist add, do more than what basically amounts to a grunt. Don't just say interested. Okay, that tells me nothing. Be polite enough to say, Is this still available? If so, I would like to come see it, etc, etc. Also, don't just send me a phone number or say call me. No. I'm not here to call you. I don't call anybody. If God had meant for people to be talking to strangers on the phone then He never would have gotten rid of the 90's party lines and invested texts.

See you on Craigslist - anyone need a free couch?

 

Constant battle

Source: Pinterest

It has been a bad few weeks on the news front as far as our facebook group of girls and some other people that I have heard about as well. It just saps the heart out of you some days, and your already semi-constant anxiety grows and you have to consciously, almost physically, stop your mind from spinning like a hamster wheel. It's tiring, exhausting actually, but you do it. You contemplate running away, singing while your fingers plug your ears and not looking back but then you remember that you would not want people to run from you if, there but for the grace of God, something should happen.
So you make sure to soak in the sound of the rain that's fallen for the past two nights. And to stand in the ferocious winds that blew today, with your face toward the sun and the sound of hyena-like child giggles in the background, and breathe.