Check in

 Just checking in. How's everybody doing in the relentless lead up to Christmas? Those of you missing loved ones due to distance or the afterlife, are you doing okay? Text if you need to talk. I'm here. Church workers, do you have the support you need? We appreciate all you're doing to get ready for Christmas; thank you. Teachers, you hanging in there? I've been hearing varying descriptions of the classroom craziness and am praying for all of you heroes, haha! You can do it. Just a few more days. Keep breathing!

Another reason to celebrate: I am officially done with my Red Devil side of chemo! My doc said all my blood cell numbers were good to go, told me I looked wonderful, asked if I was up for it, and I declared, "let's get it over with!" I had a good day with my Zita- thanks, babe! Hooray for another thing crossed off the list. Whew! It has been a YEAR of ridiculousness, no doubt. And as for 2025...

My next appointment will be in January when my Taxol treatments kick off. Doc claims that one will be easier all around though I should expect neuropathy in my hands and feet for a few days after each treatment. Always some new wrinkle to add to the learning curve. We'll see how that goes. Right now, I'll just be over here pumping myself full of water and salad to keep things flushing out and moving along and doing small things as I can accomplish them. Looking forward to Thing Three's holiday concert, I have a visit with my plastics doc and PT this week, and otherwise it's real life and Christmas prep. 

Hang in there, everybody. Be safe, stay off the egg nog, sneak a cookie when nobody's looking, and take care of yourselves, not just everyone else. You're allowed naps. You're allowed coffee with a friend out of the house. You're allowed to decorate the tree with every ornament you own or just leave it lights only if that makes you happy! Go for a walk if the temps and the ice aren't intimidating. Play the Christmas carols or blast you own favorites. Have a bubble bath- when was the last time you had one? The only thing in our tub is spiders... it is sadly neglected and I may need to have a date with it after evicting the small predators since NOT all drains lead to the ocean...

My point is, the year is rapidly drawing to a close. I know you parents with kids at home are overwhelmed and everyone is counting down the days for school to be done for awhile. Wash those hands and eat real food and remember to hydrate. Breathe. You are all so loved. Enjoy your holidays the best that you can and don't stress about perfection. Be merry and bright! xoxoxxo

3700

 No, that's not an amount for a bill for any of my surgeries or chemo or insurance for driving Ori onto rocks, though good guesses all. That's the number of posts on this blog! Can you even believe it? It's like I have something to say... or something. Who'd have thought? (Nana, in the afterlife, is chuckling to herself and snarking, "anybody who ever met you! Are you kidding? All those times I had to separate you from Tammy at nap time because you wouldn't stop talking?!" Yes, well, there is that.

I'm sort of just checking in. I miraculously have zero doctors' appointments this week and am on the upswing after mostly a week of chemo crumminess. To say I'm not looking forward to next week's treatment is an understatement of epic proportions. However, it IS nice to know that I will sort of be feeling myself come Christmas, AND the AC part of chemo will be over with. Hooray! Merry Christmas to ME! As they used to say in karate, "LAST ONE, BEST ONE" though I'm not sure that quite applies here as the results are cumulative and I felt like... well, to quote our youngest, "dogwater" would be pretty applicable. I'm not sure if he means dog pee or the scum in their drinking water from their backwash because I'm afraid to ask, but either way, yeah, that kinda fits. To have the inside of your mouth feel sandblasted, to have the chemical roiling of your stomach, to feel like you've been dragged through solidifying cement with the accompanying pounding of your heart when all you've done is climb up a single set of stairs... I'd say dogwater fits. 

Yes, I am taking my anti nausea meds, though I could take more of them, though they come with their own side effects and I'd rather limit all that nonsense. Yes, I'm climbing back into bed (YAY, BED!) at every opportunity. I'm even feeling less guilty about it because my brain knows healing is hard work even though my spirit wants to Go Do Stuff. My Lisa says, "go back to bed for all of us who can't!" I figure I'm taking one for the team. Teehee. I should be drinking more, so if you talk to me, ask where I am water-wise and tell me to go take some sips. *Reaches for her glass of water whilst rolling her eyes* 

No, our Christmas tree isn't up yet, but our wreaths are, so that's progress. At this rate, once we get it up it might have to stick around until my birthday. Those of you who know us are asking, "how is that different from any other year?" Hush, you. 

For those of you asking about meals for us, bless your sweet hearts. As I was telling my friend the other day, food is tricky right now, though this week should be better. Dada is still doing no carbs, the kids are pretty much all carbs, and I am absolutely all over the map like a pregnant woman. I will have a sliced baby cucumber. Then an hour later maybe cheese and crackers. Then another hour after that perhaps a little bit of meat or some peanut butter toast. Last night I was eating single Cheerios out of the box, one after another, while I watched TV. For lunch, I plan to devour an entire head of butter lettuce* with veggies and cheese and croutons (Thing Three is at school so I'll only have to fend off Thing Two since Thing One doesn't emerge for awhile yet) and maybe a can of tuna on it and it is going to be DELICIOUS and then my mouth won't feel like I've licked a salty camel straight from the Sahara. 

*In a text from Dada, that came out "butthead" lettuce so we will be henceforth calling it that.

All in all, and my doc is in agreement with this, I'm doing well. It doesn't always FEEL like that, but as I'm also not praying to the porcelain god, I'll take it. I may look like a drunken sailor on land who is using the wall with one hand to stay stable, but I'm still moving, thank you, Jesus. Today I'm actually on my second load of laundry**, have swept the kitchen floor, made phone calls which I despise (who's with me- where are my "I'd rather die than talk on the phone" peeps?), renewed Pepe's license plate, got some mail ready to go out, and some other stuff. I'm hogging 2/3 of the couch with paperwork and have displaced Thing Two completely. I have a pile of Stuff on the floor in the Old Lady Room that I need to deal with, but we are getting there.

** The second load is dog towels and blankets. Miss Honey, who will be at least 10ish years old this week, relieved herself on the hall rug before Thanksgiving and we didn't have time to deal with it other than baking soda and vacuum it before we travelled, so we lugged it outside where the weather could rain and snow on it to it's heart's delight. We brought it in a few days ago, still smelling of baking soda. The Idiot Bos decided to lick it in a bunch of places last evening while we were having dinner, then proceeded to barf on a different rug when his stomach realized it couldn't digest dog hair, dirt, and baking soda. Hence the load of towels. How he can manage to NOT throw up rat poison when he needs to but CAN vomit other stuff remains a mystery. Dumber than a box of rocks. Seriously. That's insulting to rocks. He's no smarter now than he was when we got him 7.5 years ago. Somebody save us. I am never picking out a dog again. And if Honey doesn't quit pooping on the deck, I am going to ask Santa not FOR a dog, but to kindly take both of ours!

So I'm off to make my salad. Have a wonderful hump day!

Twelve years of the Damonater

Another school year on the books; last day of sixth grade for the Damonater. Dada and I had to perform the traditional we-must-embarrass-you-at-the-bus-stop ritual which included sign and pirouettes from Dada. He threatened to wear a pink tutu while he did them... methinks I should find elastic and pink tulle and call his bluff. Watch out, Damon- Dada might actually have a tutu for the last day of seventh grade next year!

So then this kid went and had a birthday. Yes, for those of you keeping track, I didn't forget the firstborn's (again), but these pictures were easier to access and therefore get to go first. Since this kid loves A) anything water related and B) sugar, he got a fair amount of gifts relating to one or the other. 

Yes, that is indeed the Christmas tree still up in the sunroom. Don't judge. Let's talk about that: Honey is terrified of not just storms but also precipitation. We have a metal roof. It is incompatible with her terror of water coming down from the sky. Especially if there is lightning or thunder involved. Therefore, if we leave the tree on like a big nightlight, she is a little bit less affected by the variations of darkness versus darkness with lightning. We also play music through multiple rooms if we know it's going to rain. And we leave the basement door open. Any mixture of those actions may or may not invoke a night of sleep for the rest of us, or she may still decide to bull her way through the baby gate into the kitchen with an almighty racket which then leads to sleep deprived family members staggering downstairs into the light and music to reinstall said gate and grumble. I actually spent a night in our playhouse out back this week so that I could sleep through a rainy night and not have to deal with her. So yes, tree is still up. 

Or the short version, we're supposed to keep the Christmas spirit in our hearts all year long.

Or the shortest version, we like it lit up.

Yes, that's an 8 on the cake along with four red candles. Dada was in charge of the math and he declared that two red candles plus the 8 equaled 10 and then two more red candles makes twelve. 

How can our baby be twelve?

He was laughing about the difference in our skin tone and I told him I've been sitting at his baseball games and working in the garden and he'd been in a shirt in school, so it wasn't a fair comparison. He'll get there. While we protected his arms and neck and ears his first day at the pool this summer, his nose burned and then his mask rubbing made it blister which he then peeled off, hence the scab(s) on his nose.

I was tremendously pleased with his cake. I figure it's Grandma Barb worthy, and that's high praise. It's all gone now, so I must have done something right!

 

Freezing Fog Advisory

Our area had a Freezing Fog Advisory today. Yes, that's a thing around here. We used to be known as the Great Black Swamp. Swamps are, shall we say, damp. Add in cold air and you get freezy trees, wheeee!

Some schools around us cancelled. Some were on a two hour fog delay. Not us. They actually posted, "Virtual Learning Thursday; No Transportation" for our district.

Well, duh. We've been remote learning this entire school year so far, and just like the rest of the country, we'd finished out the spring semester in the same way. Which means these children, These People, have been home for nine months. I could have had an entire pregnancy in the amount of time everyone's been home together. Yeeeeeesh.

We are hanging in there. Not much decking of the halls yet, as we are slogging, chugging, soldiering on through school, but we do actually have two Christmas trees up for the first time ever. And my Leon elves. There's been little time to bake or shop as I'm supervising a certain fifth grade student who makes it his personal mission in life to sneak into other screens the second he thinks his particular assignment is done. It's a lot of lassoing and reeling back in. He has made a lot of progress and gotten grades back up where they should be after quite a slump, so yay for progress!

Must get back to it, so stay warm, stay home, stay safe! 

 

Thanksgiving 2016

We are blessed with incredible neighbors who watched Triskal for Thanksgiving so that we could travel over the river and through the woods to Uncle Kelly and Aunt Becky's house. Thank you SO much, you guys. 

We headed out there Thursday morning and there was hardly anyone on the road. It's not a bad drive by any stretch of the imagination, and we had small cousins waiting on the receiving end.

There was far too much food for 7 adults and 8 kids, and everything was yummy. I think one of my new favorites was a simple 3 ingredient dish which consisted of sliced strawberries with sliced green grapes and chopped mint all mixed together. It was sweet and simple and summery and I couldn't get enough of it! Kind of like the cucumber, tomato, feta cheese salad I had the other day while on a lunch date with Dada, "but that's another story, never mind" ("Into the Woods" reference). 

We had a great time catching up with cousins we hadn't seen since March. Sweet Rosalina is mobile and charms everyone she meets. The cousins played games inside and out and even had a night together with babysitters plural while the adults headed out for the Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith Christmas concert, which was amazing. We had an excellent dinner and enjoyed every minute of the concert while the kids watched "Finding Dory" and had popcorn and played more games. 

Uncle Kelly took all the boys and Carrie on a hike at nearby park to burn some of the stink off. It was cold but it was perfect hiking about weather with several six year old boys, including a classmate we picked up en route.

It was fun to have hills in Indiana, hehe!

Aunt Becky enjoys directing the raising and decorating of the Christmas tree after Thanksgiving, so we got to be part of that this year. Here's the mostly finished result, including Pap:

We headed back home Sunday morning and again had very little traffic. We didn't get dumped on with awful weather, there weren't accidents blocking the highway, everybody was on good behavior and we all made it home safe. Thanks for hosting, Kelly and Becky, in your lovely home, and for doing all the work. Hehe. We had a super time! We love you all and hope you have a blessed Christmas and New Year!

Unhappy Camper

I didn't fall off Earth, I promise.

There's been a lot of chatter in the Google Help forums about how Picasa (the program I use to organize photos) and Blogger (the host of my blog) are not working together. I have plenty of snowy pictures that I can't show all y'all because the link from Picasa to Blogger isn't working. I get an Error 503 message which essentially translates into, "you're out of luck."

So we'll have to do word pictures instead, never mind that it's been most of the month of January that this technological problem has been going on. Get it together, Google!

Okay, setting my soapbox aside. Now I am going to get it right back out again and do some more blasting.

Mother Nature, enough is enough. While some of us mind snow more than others, not a single person I have talked to or read about or otherwise encountered has had one positive thing to say about these ridiculously cold temperatures. The school children have had longer weekends than school weeks. It is only January, and we're already used up our allotted 5 snow days. At this stage, we have permafrost and tundra going on. Snow dunes. And the wind is enough to probably power the entire Midwest. If I wanted to live in below zero temperatures, I'd move my behind to the north side of Canada. However, I do NOT want to see one more snowflake or experience one more second of temperatures below the freezing point. That Groundhog in Punxy is going to be KEBABS if he says spring is right around the corner and then we get Arctic Blasted again. I think 99.99% of the population is revolted. And we still have February and March to go. Hooray.

For those of you who are blessed to live in warmer climates, let me fill you in on what you're missing. Outside my window right now are sidewalks blown clear of snow in places and heaped in others. The bushes and naked trees appear to be shivering because of the wind that is snaking through them. There are bunny hops and bird prints in the crusty top of the snow. There are icebergs along the driveways and curbs where the plows and shovels have shoved acres of white shroud. It's dazzlingly bright against the clear blue sky. Yesterday and today we've actually had sunshine. The thermometer in my car read -2 when I pulled back into the garage after lunch.

Triskal, with her double-layered coat, dashes outside, sniffs the air, does only what is absolutely necessary, and is back on the step wanting inside before I can even doctor up my cup of coffee. I haven't seen a dog being walked for days.

The kids haven't had school since last Thursday, and I'm not sure if they'll have it tomorrow. There's a planned 2 hour delay already, so at least I know we can all sleep in.

Some of the trees still have their brown, crispy leaves, because it got so cold so fast they didn't have the leisure time to drop them. Talk about shivering out there. They look so brittle that I'm surprised they don't shatter. We've even done the toss-boiling-water-outside-and-watch-it-make-snow experiment. It works.

You know it's bad when your nurse, doctor, receptionist, and other office personnel ALL tell you to be safe driving as you leave their office. You'd have thought I was in a snowmobile. I can only imagine what my best friend's mother and grandmother think as they prepare to leave the house for any reason. It's probably not fit for print, though they are much to well-bred for any of it to leave their mouths. I know that I certainly was glad I didn't have my kids in my car as I cursed out the idiot who passed me as I was passing a car that had its flashers on. Clearly they hadn't watched the same video clip of the massive pile up in Wisconsin on Sunday.

The forlorn Christmas trees are piled at the curb, losing needles on top of the icy crust of sludge. Our cut branches and storm-downed tree litter have been sitting at the curb since October, so only the tops are poking out of a pile that is mid-thigh high. They're probably solidly frozen together.

My pink plastic flamingo had been buried up to its neck earlier, but now it's shuddering and swaying back and forth like it's freezing to death. My garden gnome has given up and is staying down for the count. Maybe he's frozen to the ground as well. I haven't wanted to stay outside long enough to check. I clump out to fill up the bird feeders so that I don't get admonishing looks from the mourning doves and the sparrows and then I clump back in as fast as possible.

Since Rick Warren has declared, "it's not all about you," I guess I can't claim full responsibility for the sheer ridiculousness of the weather. I think I might have had something to do with it, though. I confess. While decorating for Christmas, I used every snowman decoration we own. I hung up the snowman windsock. I displayed the snowmen candles. I propped up the snowman sled from Grandmama.

I never put snowmen out, as a rule. This time I did, and look what happened.

So unbelievably sorry. My bad.