Winter Wonderland Or Something

Snow and more snow, I felt a tinge of the Donner party madness coming on me last night after a long snow day when the kids were being super loud and emitting teen pheromones in my personal space. Luckily (for them) no one was eaten. We settled for salad and mac & cheese instead.

After a week of self-reflection for the upcoming year, I’ve decided a few things:

1.      I still need that tummy tuck
2.      I need a project or cause to work  on, something that motivates me passionately
3.      I would gauge myself as aware of my issues, overcoming some and working on a few (don’t question my evaluation process- it’s very complex)
4.      One can never get the space between in hard wood floors really clean
5.       I need a new mattress-I’m thinking a memory foam or sleep number
6.      Waiting on things is very, very hard
7.      So is not knowing
8.       Peace in spite of all the unknown is the icing on my cupcake (and boy do I love icing)

Here’s hoping that sunny days are here to stay to melt all this snow. (I know, I know, snow in the forecast for tonight but a girl can dream, right?) Laters.

This Reminds Me........

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40885541/ns/us_news-life/?gt1=43001

I saw this on MSN the other day and it reminded me of a funny experience I had growing up.

The year was 1988 and I was rocking a spiral perm and a pair of leg warmers. Or maybe my dad’s old trench coat and a pair of black combat boots; I was always pushing the envelope of fashion. In our Christian community, the small paperback version of “88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Be In 1988” was making the circuit. Not that we were believers in the theory personally, but my dad liked to have his hands on the hot sheets as it were, to form his own opinions. The pros and cons, the possibility of accuracy was weighed in on by the faithful at many of the small bible studies held at my parent’s dining room table. I alternated between dreamy dozing on the couch and blatant eavesdropping on conversations I could only understand pieces of; though the parts I heard were enough to worry me. Based on my imperfect information, I began to worry that I would be left behind in the rapture.
The day of the predicted rapture dawned, and I woke apprehensively, tuning my ear so that I could hear the trumpet just in case the angel sounded. I gave myself a few testing sort of jumps to be certain that I could leap heaven bound at a moment’s notice if called upon. My parents were surprisingly blasé about the whole thing and didn’t mention it at all. Honestly, the day passed pretty uneventfully, until I got home from school. My mother was a stay at home mom. When I say, stay at home. I mean that she stayed there. She rarely went out, and hardly ever in the middle of the day. I suspect now that she spent most of her time taking naps and eating bonbons, but I can’t prove it. Throughout the day, I had been doing surreptitious checks on other kids that I thought might make the rapture too, just to make sure they hadn’t been called away without me noticing. When school ended, we were all present and accounted for and my brothers and I rode the school bus home.
Instead of the usual hustle and bustle of our home, dead silence greeted us at the front door. We let ourselves in and when I saw the vacuum cleaner standing all alone in the middle of the floor in mid sweep, I knew it, my mother was gone and I had missed it. The Lord had taken her up right then and there as she vacuumed. My brothers and I went around the darkened house calling in vain for our mother, who had clearly gone on with Jesus leaving us behind to fend for ourselves. As oldest, I didn’t want to let on to them what a mess we were in so I encouraged everyone to have a snack while I thought about what to do. I sat bemused on the couch for a while, wondering how such an event had transpired without my knowledge and what I could do to fix the situation. But then, sweeter than candy, the most welcome sound in of all my 15 years, I heard the sound of the turning door knob as my mother returned from her mysterious errand. We were saved! Laters.

Under the Influence

Sometimes when you have cancer, kind people from the hospital will call and match you with a “cancer angel.” Cancer angels are like minded in their suffering, breast to breast, pancreas to pancreas, throat to throat, if you catch my drift. It is a mentor who has been there, done that, to walk you through all the difficult decisions and tell you that things will work out just fine. I signed up for my cancer angel hoping to find someone who had faced my decision of mastectomy versus lumpectomy and lived to tell about it. I wanted someone who could give me a little information to sway me towards the decision that I needed to make. As it turns out, I had to think about my decision rather quickly and without any help at all from my cancer angel, I decided to go for the lumpectomy and pray that the outcome was good.


I think that I have mentioned this before, but while anesthesia and I are good friends and well acquainted, when we go out, I’m not left standing at the end. After arriving home from the procedure, still heavily sedated, I dozed in my room, essentially unaware of the comings and goings of my friends and family, my phone rang. I couldn’t tell you why I answered it, but I did, perking out a gravelly hello, that would have done a chain smoking truck driver proud. It was my cancer angel calling to chat with me and answer any questions I might have about my upcoming treatments. With a tongue that felt a mile long and twice as thick, I proceeded to explain to her that I had just returned from surgery not two hours before. She seemed taken aback and sweetly stated that she would call me back at a more convenient time. I kindly told her that it was a fine time for to talk, it wasn’t like I was going anywhere and using careful words and speaking slowly I began to share my story. I imagine that on her end, she felt the similar amusement a police officer experiences when pulling over a drunk driver while listening to proclamations of innocence, slurred speech, the painstaking use of signals, and driving 5 mph in the fast lane. I told her all about my diagnoses, my tests, my vacation, my surgery, any anything else I deemed appropriate for at the time. She listened, making commiserating noises at all the right times and when I couldn’t hold my eyes open or the phone any longer, she told me to feel better soon and said goodbye. I am now very embarrassed by all my ramblings and while I haven’t heard again from my angel, I suppose that times like those are what angels are here for. Laters.