Friday funny

One of the other teachers comes into preschool to do art projects when her own students are having a special class like PE or music. The red paper with the black C for cat was the example, but it was not shown to the preschoolers. 

They were given verbal directions.

Maybe that's how Salvador Dali got his start...

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The kids were told to color three apples: one red, one yellow, and one green. I received several which were varying shades of red/orange (okay), very pink (hmm), and most definitely blue (BLUE!) 

One of our students who didn't use red, yellow, or green looked right at me as I assessed her blue, purple, and magenta apples and asked, without batting an eye, "isn't that hilarious?"

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Take your teacher friends out for ice cream and let them tell tales. You'll be hard pressed to hear funnier stories. Have a good weekend, everyone!

 

A change of season

 Happy first day of Spring! WaaaaaHOOOOOOO!

I'm looking forward to warmth and green, growing things. I've had enough of gray and bleh.

As of next week, I'll have had enough of chemo, as well! As the kids at karate say, "LAST ONE, BEST ONE!" Looking forward to being done with chemical infusions and holding bags of ice to help prevent neuropathy whilst rocking my compression socks for the same reason. Truly, I'm a sight to behold. Especially as my hair is coming back like duck fuzz. Again.

It always cracks me up how inventive nurses are. I ask for some ice chips to suck on to prevent mouth sores and some ice to hold. I've been given small, sealable bags of ice, a big bag of ice with a buffer around it for more comfortable holding, and multiple rubber gloves filled with ice. Bless their sweet hearts for making things interesting!

So here's hoping and praying that next week's chemo will be the last one I'll ever need. Dada's going with me to kick this all to the curb for good, God willing!

I love my nurses and will be sad to be seeing them less regularly, but even they have said, "we love you but we don't want to see you here anymore!" Talk about a sendoff, hehe. I'll also miss some of the little old people who go for iron infusions and so forth. Some are such characters and I'll miss the back and forth teasing. 

But it is springtime and time to move on to the next thing!

It's been encouraging to see my blood count numbers come back up slowly. I'm looking forward to better energy. I've gotten to sub some and it's been so fun to be back amongst my friends big and small. I'm blessed to be somewhere with such a caring staff and fun families. 

I feel like I've been stuck in a holding pattern, so am very much anticipating seeing what's next. It's been hard to blog when everything is stuck in the same gear... just grinding along. I think the end of winter feels like that for a lot of people. 

Anybody thinking about a garden this year? What are you planting? Anybody have seeds started already? I am still debating if I want to do all that work this year or stick to some pots on the deck. Most likely that's the route I'll take. I love playing in the dirt, but I feel like, right now anyway, that we have enough going on in enough different directions. Plus, do I really want to be weeding? Hmm. I'm not good at that! I feel like Fagin in "Oliver"... "IIIIIII think I better think it out again!"

Chins up, everybody- winter is on its way out!

Yet another dump o’random

This is Precious, Pap's dog. This is not her bed, it's Bosley's. He barely fits into it and she is larger than him, so it's especially funny to see her curled up like a rolypoly in it. She doesn't seem to mind and he knows better than to complain. 

Damon, waiting his turn at the eye doctor's office. It used to be a play area but thanks to Covid there are no toys or games in there anymore. So he just bounced around and flopped until they called him. Such a nut. Look how big those not-quite-12-year-old feet are. Sheesh. 

I especially love the light green of this tree against all the darker green surrounding it. I'm normally not a yellow-green fan, never have been, but this little tree makes it look glorious in the morning light or right after a rain. 

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Found a new recipe that Dada and I enjoyed which the kids wouldn't touch- chicken breasts with tasty cherry tomatoes, baked garlic and chickpeas. It was easy and reheated pretty well too, wins in my book.

Bos loves being outside in the sunshine. He doesn't care how hot it is. If he finds a sunny spot, he stretches out and turns into a sun dog. I think he must be related to me. Of course there's the added benefit of chasing any squirrels stupid enough to come into his reach, and we have an amazing  number of stupid squirrels. I don't know if he knows what he'd do with one if he did actually catch one...

Speaking of dumb, we had a mourning dove I named Heather make a nest in the gutter outside the boys' bedroom. The father, Herbert, would come check on her. I think that's him on the edge and you may be able to see the top of Heather's head in the gutter if you click on the picture. The screen makes it hard to see. Sure enough, they had a chick that the boys couldn't agree on a name for. Damon voted Hershey and Liam wanted Hogarth, I think? Hrothgar? Hmmm... at any rate, Heather was smart enough to build her nest on the far side of the downspout, but she did look pretty silly sitting there in the rain with a waterfall coming down on her head at times. Good thing the baby didn't get washed down the drain!

And the robins also had a little one, who is out of the nest and was perched all alone, beak agape, in the middle of our front landscaping. I'd sit on the porch swing, hear rustlerustlerustle and a robin would hop up into the landscaping from lower down in the yard, wrestle through the bushes, feed the baby and take off again. I suppose that's one way to try to be stealthy and not draw attention to the sitting duck...?

Goofing off with the firstborn

Marvin the Martian goofing off on my oven controls

The firstborn and I went to see the senior art studio downtown and discovered there was also elementary art in a separate venue down the street. I'm ashamed to say I didn't get the artist's name in this photo to give proper credit, but we both giggled over the adorably smiling bug. Such cuteness! Well done, artists. 

 

Bogota photos

Here are some about-town photos. I'm sorry I don't have better labels of what buildings are or which streets we were on or anything, but it'll give you a taste of how varied and colorful the sights were. I am a big fan of street art and graffiti, so you'll notice samples of both. I wish I'd gotten some of the multiple stories high mural headshots of women with their long necks, big earrings, hair, and backgrounds, but as we were often in a moving vehicle I didn't get the chance. Had we walked past any I'd have taken a million pictures!

Why wouldn't there be bagpipes in the middle of the street?

We were told that generally the higher the apartments got, the more expensive because you'd be paying for the view. It was interesting to see how the closer the buildings marched  to the mountains, the taller they got. Then behind them and even higher up would be all these colorful small homes. I loved the variety and the color everywhere. Bogota is impressive to me in that it has 3200 "pocket parks" spread throughout the city. They're trying to combat the pollution from 9 million people living together and at the same time offering green places to get away for a bit. Everywhere we saw people playing with their dogs, kicking soccer balls around, playing field hockey, walking, sitting, rejuvenating. It was delightful!   

Dada and his street vendors, haha. He can't resist an auction, estate sale, flea market... we didn't purchase any of the leather goods from this particular vendor, but on the left is our new friend Jorge who hails from Mexico and came to Bogota for the training Dada was giving. We had a great time getting to know him and were extra thankful for his fluent Spanish, haha. 

Autumn showed UP!

I wanna show you something. These were taken last Tuesday, October 30, 2018. I love the early morning light; to me, it looks bewitching:

See how green everything still was? We had lots that were naked already, yes, but the remaining leaves were mostly green or yellow-green at best. 

I took these this morning, November 5, the first school day after the time change, but not even a whole week later:

Can anything say Fall better than mums and pumpkins? All we need now is some hot apple cider.

"Liam's" tree, above, and one of our majestic oaks, below:

Happy autumn to those of you (Aunt Chris) who are far-flung and perhaps missing the turning of the leaves. It may have begun late this year, but it's sure making up for it in beauty. Happy birthday to Grammy in Heaven. Maybe she got to help paint some of these colors for us. I know she'd have liked that. Now to soak it up before it's all gone!

Decisions

Where to begin?

Titles are hard for me. I either have one in mind before I write the actual post (rarely) or I struggle to sum up what I've written into a concise title. I dislike reading passages and "telling the main idea" because, for me, life is about all the little things more than it is about the big things. Big things, to me, tend to take care of themselves whereas little things can be wrangled and finessed and pondered over. 

They say the devil is in the details. I am firmly in the camp which knows it is God who is in the details. 

A tiny for instance? My bedroom growing up was wallpapered in Holly Hobbie forever. Like from second grade until about 9th, maybe even longer. At some point, you couldn't see any Holly Hobbie because I had so many animal posters and Johnny Depp posters and my own artwork up that there was no wallpaper visible. My parents finally caved and repainted it Bermuda Blue, which is exactly the gorgeous deep blue of the Caribbean, and they let me paint a mural on one wall.

We weren't in our first home long enough to do any painting, but our second home PaPa helped paint Carrie's room a lovely blue. Our third home, we painted our master bedroom Mountain Lake blue. PaPa quipped about it being the third time he'd painted blue bedrooms for me. I remember musing, "I might like a green bedroom next time."

Guess what color our bedroom is right now, and has been for the five years we've been here? A soothing green. We didn't do it. Details. I've heard it said that God cares about the things which concern us. I believe it, because he loves us, and when you love someone, what worries them doesn't usually sit well with you either because you don't want your loved ones to be stressed out. Sure, it could be a coincidence. It could be the previous owners thought, "green is soothing in a bedroom and we're trying to sell, so... green it is." I prefer to think that God used them to get it ready for us. 

At any rate, I am one indecisive chick. It takes forever for me to pick out a movie (don't even get me started on the endless choices Netflix offers) or a meal at a restaurant. Oddly enough, I manage okay at ice cream shoppes- just a small hot fudge sundae, please. I judge books by their covers constantly and often end up with colorful, captivating outsides which may or may not reflect the quality of writing within; then I can't decide which one to begin with. 

So you can pretty well imagine how hard it was to make a decision which will affect my next 40 or so years, God willing. Yes, here she goes again with the talk about boobs. She's like a junior high boy! For those of you sick of the subject, feel free to Prince Humperdinck, "skip to the end."  And for those of you scratching your heads, you simply must see "The Princess Bride" for your own sake. How many fun references are you missing out on if you haven't seen that classic? But I digress...

The final consensus is that later this month I'm going to go flat on both sides with no reconstruction. In more medical terms that is called a bilateral (both sides) mastectomy (loss of boobage, I guess). Those of you who want to be done reading now have your answer and may be excused. Thanks for the prayers: please keep them coming as surgery is kinda a big deal and we're back to school so that means lots of germs coming home and it'll take time to heal including exercises and lifting restrictions and all that. Seriously, huge thanks and please don't stop. 

If anyone wants more details, here they are. It was a really hard decision that took way longer to make than I thought it would. I had a strong feeling from the get-go that I didn't want manmade materials inserted into me (implants) which had the potential for extra surgeries down the road and/or leakage. After consulting with a plastic surgeon who had us hold them, squeeze them, see what they actually looked and felt like, I felt better about the options but still no great desire to go that route. We were especially reassured that the "gummy bear" ones wouldn't leak even if we squeezed them. However, I'm not enthused by the fact that they're new enough that I can't be sure they won't leach anything into me over time. Those suckers gotta last me into my 80s hypothetically and they simply haven't been around long enough in this form for me to feel like anything other than a guinea pig. Not a great feeling. At what point do small statistics of problems make it okay to try something, you know?

We initially met with him to discuss a procedure where he would potentially use only skin and fat from my abdomen to shape me a new right side boob. He had me stand there and he pinched my excess and said, "you don't have enough you to do what you want to do, which is good because you're thin, except that you only have enough here to make about a third of what you have up there." So there went that option. Since I couldn't make one from myself, and I have never wanted only one- and to those of you (not my term) uniboobs out there, ladies, you are amazing. I don't feel I would be happy like that. I feel there'd be a lot of pressure to wear a fake one and I don't have any desire to go that route either- because I think having one would be harder on my personal self image than having none at all. Having none means no bras,  no underboob sweat, and perhaps I'll weigh less, haha. 

Reconstruction would mean sticking an implant in, layering  an acellular material over that, then replacing the layer of fat and skin on top of it all and then create a nipple out of, I guess, whatever is left over? No idea. But mine are beyond saving, so they'd be newly created nipples. Apparently they can be tattooed, also. Who knew? The whole thing is fascinating. And not for me. The feelings and sensations would not be the same as the originals I have now and it can take (depending what you're reading) two to five years to restore most feeling as it is. What you have then is pretty much what you'll have forever. I'm hearing that massaging the area as much as possible helps keep things looser instead of too tight and keeps the scar tissue from being hard and weird. Let me state for the record that I am no expert on any of this, but I am learning a lot. The amount of information out there is amazing. What we ever did before the Internet, I'll never know. I can't imagine going back. 

Reconstruction from yourself takes the longest time to heal because you have more than one incision site. I was seriously thinking about it because I liked the idea of all the raw materials coming from myself. They nurse explained that thin women and very large women both often walk out disappointed; the thin women because they don't have enough material to work with and the very large women because fatty tissue is not the best replacement material. They said the ratio needs to be more than one to one. Oh well. 

So I decided that:

I've already nursed my babies for 15 months, 20 months, and 22 months, respectively. We're not in the market for any more, so I don't need them for feeding anyone else. 

They've never been that big of a deal for me. In fourth grade, my mother took me to my annual doctor's visit and I was asked if I wear a bra every day. My mother answered, "yes" and I angrily piped up, "nuh uh! I wear an undershirt as often as I can!" It was true. I preferred the undershirts with the tiny strip of lace along the front and the skinny little straps to any of the training bras I had. 

I don't want anything perky and bouncy and ridiculous when I am 80 and everything else looks like... I'm 80. That would be weird. Ew, no thanks. 

I don't want anything leaking or leaching into me. I don't want more surgeries. Yes, I understand they can put them in during the same surgery my originals come out. They're still manmade and I don't trust them. I am not in the market for fake.

I feel relieved that the decision is made and that, since I can't have the ones God gave me, I won't have any at all. I don't see me having a change of heart and desiring them down the road. I simply don't feel like fake ones are worth the potential risks down the road. I am not convinced that I need boobs to, one, look womanly or, two, feel sexy or, three, to be me. 

Three strikes and you're out. The girls are being banished. I reserve the right to mourn them and I'm sure there are moments or times or seasons where I will miss them. That's how life is. God won't love me any less if I have boobs or not. My family and friends won't either. Dada is supportive and plays an excellent devil's advocate to help me think everything through. Have I thought of everything? No, I'm sure there's aspects which haven't occurred to me. Am I scared about it? A bit, but most of the fear was about making the right decision. I am convinced this is what is best for me and my long term health. In the end that's what all of this is about anyway- my best shot at living my life while becoming and then staying cancer-free. PaPa pointed out that I can honestly say, "we threw everything at this health crisis and held nothing back." If I have a recurrence, God forbid, it will not be out of negligence on the part of my medical team or out of holding back and simply hoping for the best on my part. I will have gone through 6 rounds of chemo, surgery to remove the troublemaking breast and the at-this-point "good" breast, five and a half weeks of radiation five days a week, an entire year of IV meds roughly every three weeks as a preventative, plus an additional 5 to 10 years of maintenance medication. If you put that in terms of kids, I will be done with meds either when Carrie turns 20 or when she turns 25. She could be married by then. Liam will be almost done with high school or almost done with whatever college or vocational school he heads off to. Damon will be Liam's age now in 5 years and will be 18 in 10 years. That's a long time. I have a lot to do in those 5 to 10 years and am not willing to be popping back in for surgery to fix things back up should they fail or should I decide they're not working for me and need removed after all. I have better things to do.

Thank you to all of you who have been praying so faithfully as I waffle over what is, still, to me, a ridiculous choice. I told Dada that we are not meant to have to make choices like this about our bodies. If we were, when we're born we would come with a kit like Mr. Potato Head and could add pieces and parts however we chose. How do you balance "your body is a temple and belongs to the Lord" with "insurance will cover whatever because there is so much psychological weight attached to these particular body parts that society says are important"? Thank you for praying for wisdom and for being there to bounce ideas off of and for knowing when I was tired of talking and thinking about it and changing the subject and just for being your wonderful, supportive selves. I am blessed beyond measure, boobs or no boobs. So I'm going flat and not looking back. 

         

Stealing lines from fictional characters

"Ain't often you see a guy that green have the blues that bad..." muses Rowlf the Dog about Kermit the Frog after they finish singing "I Hope That Something Better Comes Along." At least, that's how it went on the tiny little record (!) my parents used to let me play. The other side featured, of course, "Rainbow Connection." 

I've been feeling greener around the gills than usual these last few days and once again it is hard to determine what is psychosomatic versus what is really happening. Am I greener because it's back to school and I'm now inundated with three buildings' worth of germs? Am I greener because "it's cumulative"- probably my most hated words at this point- and I'm full of chemicals I need to continue to flush out? Am I finally just worn down enough that the smells of grease from yummy bacon are overwhelming? Does it perhaps not help that Bosley ate one of Liam's pink erasers yesterday and then threw up his breakfast? Well, perhaps we all know the answer to that one... Ick.

At any rate, can we get a big hoorah that chemo is over?!

I continue to be struck by how closely my time in chemo resembles pregnancy. I'm probably beating a dead horse, but the smells/odors/aromas and the brain fog/tiredness are especially rough. I have no problem sitting down with a good book, but to be told repeatedly to behave myself and be still and let my body heal is hard. I'm an impatient patient. All I can hear is Inigo Montoya: I hate waiting. 

But that's where I am right now, in a season of waiting. I have to wait for my numbers to come back up before surgery. I have to wait for my kids to get on the bus and then off of the bus. I have to wait in lines, for replies, for the bus to get here so that one kid can turn around and hop in the car of a friend who's helping get said kid to the next destination, for bedtime, for the microwave to beep or the toaster oven to ding, for the surgeon's office to call me back, for a turn in the bathroom (and never mind that we have more than one). 

I still hate waiting.

I remember being told during each pregnancy to be good to myself and to not do too much because I was growing a human being and all that. It's still waiting. And boy, was that waiting. Waiting to see who each child would become. Waiting to see if they were healthy. Waiting to see the gender of our third child. Waiting is work. Waiting can make you feel like you're going crazy.