Black Oak's Daughter

Sometimes life happens and I don’t have enough energy at the end of the day to write anything but a recap, but I don’t really feel the need to recap everything, so here’s the short list and a new-ish musician that i’ve just discovered:

• Barfy cat is barfy again. She’s not as bad as before, but every time she has an episode, there’s extra meds, and close watching, and the worry.  I know she’s just a cat, but she’s my cat. I’m responsible for her, and I do what needs to be done to keep her healthy and out of pain.  Hopefully this episode was short. She hasn’t barfed today.  I got the meds in her yesterday, so we’ll see if just that one extra dose worked.
• Conan O’Brien is getting screwed, but he’s also getting $40 million, so I can’t feel really bad for him.  Jay Leno is just doing what the network tells him to do and everyone’s blaming him for the shake up. I kind of feel bad for him. I’m not really a fan though. Conan’s got amazing energy, Letterman is amusing and I usually watch him, but if there was a guest on the Tonight Show I sometimes watch that.  Out of the three of them, Jay Leno is kind of past his peak and not as funny as he used to be.  I hope Letterman gets really good ratings after the change happens, if it happens.  NBC blows lately anyway.
• and really, with the news out of Haiti, why is that such a big story? If you can spare even $10, please give it to the Red Cross, or other charity of your choice that is directly involved with the rescue and care of the people that were fortunate enough to live through the shake.  It’s been more than a week and the story is losing interest in the news. It’s up to us to keep the effort up until every life that can be saved, is saved.
• I’ve been doing the bodybugg thing, and it’s giving me good feedback. I’m still tweaking it because I’m losing more weight than it says I should be losing.  I can live on 1800ish calories a day quite nicely for long periods of time. I just need to up the exercise now. One step at a time. The exercise gets easier after I drop the first 10 or 15 pounds. I’m most of the way to 10 now, and I’m feeling better except sleep has been hell for the last week, so maybe a few workouts will help me sleep a little better.

OK, the new-ish musician is Matt Morris. He’s got a new CD out, so he’s been doing a press tour. He was on Letterman last Friday, and one of the Saturday morning news shows, and on Ellen today. Most of what I found on YouTube is acoustic, and he’s very good at it, but the band that he plays with totally fills out his sound. I don’t know how to describe his sound other than it makes me mellow. Sort of an easy jazzy carribeanish rock. That clip that I linked to is a decent representation.  His new CD is on iTunes. I have been listening to it for a couple of hours today.  He is a spiritual creature and it shows in his lyrics. It’s just good music all the way around.

Bedtime here.

Namaste

Comments Off

I’ve been a little busy so here are some random things that have gone through my head in the last few days.

Meip Geis died yesterday. Anyone who knows the story of who Anne Frank was knows who Mrs Geis was. She was 100.  This is from an interview that she did with a group of school children that I read on line today:

How does it feel to be a hero?
I don’t want to be considered a hero. Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary.

She was a beautiful woman.

Reading that whole interview got me thinking about another holocaust survivor. I’ve studied Viktor Frankl in depth when I was an undergrad studying humanistic and existential psychology.  He had everything taken from him and lived in a concentration camp for an extended period of time as a laborer. It was in that camp that he started developing his version of existential psychology.  He witnessed all sorts of people in that situation, and noticed that even when people are stripped of everything they own and people they love, they still have a choice on how to respond to the situation.  Dr Frankl’s whole psychology was based on that. Here are a few quotes from him that still touch me:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
The last of human freedoms – the ability to chose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.
When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.

Good stuff there. I miss school, and studying these people that fundamentally get it at the most basic human level.

next topic:

I got a cheaper better version of the BodyBugg. Minime turned me on to the bodybugg when she got one for free from a friend. It’s a cool gadget that basically tracks everything about how your metabolism works. It gives good feedback about what your body is actually burning, and with that info allows you to adjust things to get the most out of an eating and exercise plan. They use them on The Biggest Loser. They are the things that the people are wearing on their upper left arms.  You plug them into the computer every few days to charge and download, and the software analyzes all the data and gives you good info to move forward with.

This one also tracks sleep. How long you are laying in bed versus how much you actually sleep. That’s medically relevant for me because of the sleep issues that I’ve had. I can take that to a sleep specialist with my history of all of the sleep drugs that I’ve tried, and hopefully get some help.

I’m fortunate that my metabolism still works. I’m interested in what the data this little thing gives me. It’s still me doing the work. The extra exercise, the eating better, is all me, but I’ve now got something that gives me feedback a lot faster and more reliably than a scale that moves up and down for many mysterious reasons that don’t have anything to do with calorie deficits.

BTW, there’s a website called Fitday.com that does the same thing without the gadget. That helped me a lot the last time I lost significant weight. The softwear for my bodybugg thing is very similar, just with a little more feedback from the gadget.

It’s bedtime.

Namaste

Comments Off

We were very blessed at Christmas.  I got all the usual perks  from the guys that I work with, and my family seems to have caught the gift card bug.  One of the gifts that Minime bought Roomie was a gift card to Amazon.  He looked around on the site and didn’t really find anything that he wanted, so we traded. I got several gift cards to Target from co-workers and family members, so we made an even trade, his Amazon card for my Target card of the same value. I shop on Amazon all the time.

I put that one away for a few days, and went and spent other gift cards.  I got mostly practical with them, so I thought about it and I wanted something fun and totally not pratical. I’m too damn young to be this practical. I thought about it some more.  I haven’t gotten any new computer games for a while, so I looked around on amazon, and found that they have games that you can download and play for very reasonable prices.  I looked at the choices for a couple of hours over the course of a few days. Downloaded the 30 minute demos, and made my decisions.

I grabbed the card and entered the code, all set to extend the games that I wanted to play, and the code on the card didn’t work.

Well, crapola.

I entered it again.

No go.

grrrrr

I contacted Amazon customer support.  They have a link where you can send them an e-mail. They responded quickly, asking for the specifics. I sent them, and they responded quickly again, saying that since Minime bought the card at a retail outlet (Walgreens) they had no control over it, and I should take it back to Walgreens.  I wrote back knowing that Walgreens wouldn’t touch it, but they persisted. The card says on the back that a third party handles the cards sold at retail outlets, so I understood that Amazon is fairly helpless if anything about the transmission between Walgreens and that third party company, and then between that company and Amazon goes wrong.

I took the card to Walgreens, and the manager pointed to the big sign over the gift card section that said “No Returns, No Exchanges”

So much for that.

I’m not one to give up, so I read the card again. Then I got on Amazon’s site again. This time I chose the other customer service option where they call you back immediately.

I have to say, their support is excellent, except for the fact that I wasn’t getting the answer that I was looking for.  The rep on the other end of the line was a nice southern woman. I told her the whole history of this and that I really didn’t want to tell my daughter that she’d donated $25 to Amazon because I couldn’t get the card to work, or take it back, or anything.  The nice lady asked me to read the codes off of the card. There were 2 codes, the 16 digit one that is visible, and the one under the scratch off part. I gave her the first one, and then the second one, checking what I’d entered on the screen 20+ times already at the same time just to be sure.

I got two thirds through the second code and noticed something.   The “S” had a pointy corner.

No, that couldn’t be it.

Seriously???

No! I am not old enough to not be able to read what was obviously an S the first 20 times that I looked at it.

Heavy sigh.

I tried it.

The “S” was not an S.

I entered the “5″.

It worked. Dammit.

This is where I commenced feeling like the biggest dumbass on the planet.

The gentile southern woman that was on the phone laughed with me. She was understanding in a way that only someone that’s close to my age could be.  I hung up, and got my games with enough left over to get one more later, and everyone lived happily ever after.

I am a little freaked out though. My parents, at my age, both needed reading glasses. Their far vision was fine, but they were doing the “my arms aren’t long enough” thing in their early 40’s.   I’ve had glasses for far vision since my freshman year of high school. My near vision has really, noticeably  gone to hell only in the last couple of years. It’s not a magnification issue though, it’s just a little blurry. Holding it farther away like my parents, just makes it blurrier and far away.

The last time I was at the eye doctor, just a few months ago, we talked about the progressive lenses that I got from the previous place. He said that I don’t need reading glasses, my close vision is fine. I do, however, need glasses to correct the seriously screwy astigmatism that has affected my ability to distinguish details like the difference between an S and a 5.

I’m 43. I’m 2 years into surgical menopause. I’ve been fortunate in that I haven’t had a lot of the more serious issues that I could have had with that. I had minor hot flashes, a little depression, that all passed. Sleep issues are all I”m left with, so it could be a lot worse. I guess non-reading reading glasses are a small price to pay. I don’t know if he’ll give me bifoals or what, I’ll find out soon enough though.  I’m expecting an extra bit of cash in the next couple of weeks. Once I have that I’ll bite the bullet and call Dr Steve.

I feel old.

Comments Off

I don’t make New Years resolutions.  Deciding to do something solely because of the date isn’t reason enough for me to consider it, unless I was already considering it, which, this year, didn’t really happen.

I have discovered a few things about myself these last couple of weeks.  I started writing about it a few times and ran out of steam before I got it right enough to publish, so I’ll summarize them here and delete those drafts.

First of all, I’m very blessed. Apparently I have everything that I need, because when I went to spend the gift certificates that I received for Christmas, I couldn’t find anything beyond the practical.  At Kohls I bought socks with my $10 in Kohls cash. TJ Maxx was mostly new kitchen towels and I bought a matching salt mill and pepper mill for the dinner table. The $50 visa card went to Home Depot and bought things like furnace filters and light bulbs. Then I spent $50 on a game for my Wii, so I guess I could have done that the other way around so that I can tell my friend that I bought Mario Brothers and not a new toilet seat.  Although that friend might like the irony

I’m also blessed to have the man that I have in my life. He builds furniture for a living, and for Christmas he made me a beautiful new kitchen table.  I’ve never had anyone build me furniture before. That’s really cool.   It’s a little frustrating that he’s so non-verbal about how he feels about me, but then he goes and does sweet stuff like that.  He cares, that’s how he shows it.  The old broken down table went into the trash, and we’ve had a few conversations about the wood and the finish on the new one. It’s during those conversations that his passion for woodworking shows. He’s a master at his craft, it’s wasted on the monkey work that he does for profit, but everyone has to make a living. In any case, that is one of the coolest Christmas gifts I’ve ever received.

Now that the holidays are over and all the goodies are almost gone, I’m thinking again about taking steps to  improve my physical health.  Minime has a spare bodybugg that I’ll try for a month or two. It’s kind of a cool little high tech gadget that you wear 24/7  that measures metabolism.  That will give me some good information/feedback.  I’m also thinking about taking steps to control my finances a little better. I’ve been slowly creeping back into credit debt, so that ends after this weekend and I’ll take better measures than I have been to get and stay out of credit debt.

Hopefully the cats will cooperate with that plan. My old diabetic cat needs minor surgery if I can get his blood glucose stabile enough to do it, and my young one with the bad gut is in transition off of steroids. She’s on antibiotics, but they only cost $15 a month, so that’s not awful. This is the third time we’re trying to get her off the roids, we haven’t been successful yet.  She’s doing ok so far.  Fingers crossed there.

Another thought that goes through my head at New Years, and probably the reason that I’ve never really been into celebrating it, is that yesterday was the 34th anniversary of my father’s passing away.  In my mind it’s more of a private little commemoration of his life; a thankfulness for the time that I had with him, and that he gave me life.  He still gives me a lot to think about. Part of the reason I’m so diligent about carrying through with the doctors with my medical issues is that he died so young.  As of about a month ago, my cholesterol and triglicerides are excellent. Those two things are what killed both of my parents.  I’m still cancer free, and once I get my kidney fixed, I’ll be good to go for apparently a nice long time. All that I have to do to get healthy again is work at it. I am physically out of shape. My heart, muscles, and all of that are way too used to laying around recovering from surgery.  All of the things that are wrong with my body are fixable. Losing weight is not the priority, but the side effect of a healthy lifestyle is that the pounds will come off.  I won’t miss them.   I do have a goal, but that it corresponds with the new year is completely coincidental. Next year at this time I’ll be in the Caribbean with my daughter and son in law.  I’ll keep the goal to myself, but I do have one that corresponds to that trip.  It’s good to have goals, but goals require a plan, which I’m also keeping to myself.  There is a plan in the works though. It will be fully in place and implemented in the next week or two.  So if you want to call that a new years resolution, so be it. The date for the goal is next year at this time.

I’ve spent a lot of the time off over the holidays getting more organized. I’m still progressing toward a useful peaceful home for us to live together and enjoy life. The baby steps all add up, and it’s getting better all the time.

Happy New Year!

Comments Off

My company “Holiday Party” was Friday afternoon.  It was at a comedy club and they brought in Alonzo Bodden as the headliner.  I guess he was a winner on “Last Comic Standing” a couple of years ago. I’ve never heard of him, but he was hilarious. He did some current events routines that thankfully didn’t involve a lot of Tiger Woods jokes, and then for the last half of it engaged the audience. Our CEO makes a point of being front and center at events like that, so he took a large portion of crap. It was HILARIOUS. He takes crap from no one, and the whole crowd that works for him was dying laughing. It was awesome.  The food was good too, and I had a couple of drinks.  It’s kind of strange drinking that early, but they were free and they relaxed me a lot. I ran the rest of my errands after the party and was still home by 5. WIN!

The house is nearly ready for entertaining. I made the first cookies of the season this morning. I have 5 different kinds planned, we’ll see how many I get done.  I have three and a half days to get everything done. I ordered the last Christmas present from Amazon last night, everything else is wrapped and under the tree. Tomorrow I’ll go food shopping, and probably make more cookies. Tuesday I have a Chiropractor appt in the morning and a hair appt in the afternoon. I’ll probably fit in a couple of batches of cookies mid day too. Wednesday the cat goes to the vet and I have to pick up the ham. I’ll make the Lasagna and the pies, and finish cleaning the house.  Thursday I’ll finish whatever cookies I have to finish and plate them up, get the table set, and then stay out of Roomie’s way in the kitchen. He’s declared that he’s making his special green beans and another veggie. That’s fine with me.  We’re not the team that I’m used to being with someone in my kitchen, but he steps up and does his part quite tastily. (shut up, tastily is too a word)  My lasagna will be put together the day before and will  just need to bake, and with the ham, and his veggies and the garlic bread goes in last, it will be a good meal.  Once my brother’s family leaves, I can prep for brunch and make the wild rice salad that I’m taking to Christmas Dinner. I’ll be tired, but happy.

I really enjoy this stuff. And this year, for the first time ever, it really feels like there’s harmony in my house. Roomie has complemented me a few times on the decorations, and he sure liked the cookies that I made this morning. This is the first time that I”m really entertaining since my former life, and surgeries, and all that collective  negativity.  We’ve done Christmas Eve a couple of times since then, but it was a lot of work, and I wasn’t ready, the house wasn’t ready, it was stressful.  This year I’m enjoying it. I’m taking the time that I need to do things the way I want, and the work that we’ve done up to now in the house really shows. The living room and dining room are pretty, the kitchen is clean, my bedroom will be ready for kids that want to Wii, and the office will be straightened enough to be respectable.  I still have one junk room, but I’m working on it.  That one will be cleaned out by next Christmas.

All in all this is the first Christmas ever where I feel like I’ve got it together, organized, under control, and can enjoy it.  There’s a lot to do but I’ll find a way to get it all done. I’m not stressing.  Roomie will help if I ask. He’s got my back.   Today I took an hour and relaxed and watched a very cool version of the Messiah on PBS. If I were rushed or stressing,  I wouldn’t have done that.  I’ve been chatting off and on with minime all day too.  There have been lots of little things like that. Just moments. They would have gone unnoticed in my previous life.  I try not to let them go by unappreciated now.  That’s my Christmas gift to myself.

Comments Off

I’m in full blown Christmas mode now.  I am fortunate that my company gives us 2 free floating days a year and I’m the fool that forgot to take one. So I talked to my boss and he’s letting me cram 2 hours at a time in here and there this week because I’m off next week, and I have to be there the week after Christmas because my partner is out. Today I combined those 2 hours with my lunch and ran to Kohl’s, Bath and Body works, and Borders. Yesterday I left work early and went to Target and Home Depot.  The good news is that I think I’m 99% done with Christmas shopping.  A couple of Starbucks gift certificates for people at work, and that’s it. I’m done.

I addressed my Christmas cards tonight. Tomorrow I have to stop and get stamps, and sign and seal all of them.  The weekend will be spent prepping the house for company. Part of what I picked up at Target were things like a new shower curtain and bath mat, a curtain rod, and other assorted little projects just to spiff the place up a bit.

I also have meal planning and shopping to do, but since I’m off next week I’ll have time to think through that. I also have a trip to the vet with the diabetic cat,  cut and highlight my hair, pick up the ham, an oil change, and a chiropractor appt planned for the time that I have off. Oh, and Christmas

I love Christmas. I love the lights, all the pretty decorations, I love seeing my family and having them here to entertain a bit.  I love my roommate and how much more he’s becoming part of my life lately.  I love the party planning, food prep, and then relaxing and letting the entertaining happen.  I love that I have it more together this year than I have for the past several.  It feels like my life is finally restarting.

I’m enjoying that most of all.

Comments Off

Sorry for the gap between posting. Winter came to visit and things like getting to and from work took up a little more time and energy than usual.  The good news is that the snow blower started right up this morning like it hadn’t been sitting all summer with the gas from last year in it.  Thank goodness for electric starters too. My chiropractor would kill me if I even tried to pull start that beast.

So on to lesson number two:  Stuff is just stuff.

I was diagnosed with cancer a full month before my surgery. I had a lot of time to think in that month, and I needed to be really careful not to get sucked into a doom and gloom mindset. In an attempt to not think about the cancer that was growing in me, I spent a lot of time at work, or helping Roomie redecorate my bedroom and office, or “putting my affairs in order”.  As the surgery got closer I got somewhat responsible and did a lot of work toward that last one.

The more time and energy I put into writing my will and trust, the angrier I got. I struggled with a lot of it for a week or more. I wanted to get it done because my mother had done it long before she needed to and because of her efforts the state got nothing from her estate.  I at least wanted to do that. I’d already lost a lot to my divorce, I didn’t want to lose half of what was left to the state. But under all that rational thinking, this anger brewed. It hit me the day I finished my paperwork.

Who the fuck cares about my stuff?  Why did *I* even care as much as I did. It’s just stuff.   There I was, facing my own mortality, judging what was valuable in my life, trying to divvy up stuff between the people that I love, and it kept coming back to the same thing.  I wanted to make sure that my daughter and Roomie were both taken care of, and that they understood my intent, and that is all written into the paperwork. That was finished, and rethought, and redone a couple of times before I was satisfied with it.  The rest of the things that I was supposed to think about, who gets the things of my life, I couldn’t even begin to think about that.  Aside from a few valuables, some family treasures, and an antique or two, the rest of what I own can be classified as useless crap.

It was in that A Ha  moment that I realized just how little I cared who got 90% of the stuff that I own. They who would be left behind to deal with it could have a big bon fire for all that I cared at that moment. The most cherished part of my life is not the things that I own, it’s much more intangible. The most valued things in my life are not things. They are the people that I love, and that love me.

It was in that moment when I let go of my relationship to most of the things in my life.

I’ve written about my mother before. She had an emotional attachment to owning a lot of stuff. It didn’t matter what the stuff was, but she found security in being surrounded by it. I grew up with that. It was what I knew. I am supposed to keep things. That was what I was taught.  That afternoon, literally the day before my surgery, my emotional attachment to mostly crap changed.  Things in my life suddenly had a different place.

I have the essentials. My clothes, basic furniture, a fully stocked kitchen, a livable house, a car that runs. I’m very blessed that I have a comfortable life.  I try to live with thankfulness in my heart for that, because I know too many people that are struggling with unemployment and this economy and keeping a roof over their heads and a meal on the table.

I also have so many things that I no longer need, no longer cling to, and those things are slowly, too slowly, being properly disposed of. There is a term that I learned from playing D&D and other RPG’s  all those years ago. “Encumbrance”. There is a score for how much the things you bear hold you back. I was fully encumbered with rooms full of crap. Chaotic piles of stuff that I really had no feeling toward other than I needed to keep it because that’s what I was taught. The thing that I realized that day is that I don’t need to carry this load anymore. Since then, I am well into the process of shedding it.  There are entire rooms in my house that are virtually empty of any of that stuff. The peace, the sanctuary of that space that is empty of everything that doesn’t belong, is life changing.

In the process of getting rid of my crap, I am trying to be conscious of the planet and of people. Electronics that aren’t useful anymore are properly scrapped and things like that. I have a lot more stuff to go through and give away. Shelves full of books, games, craft supplies; drawers that are not currently useful because they are filled with things that I haven’t looked at, used, or worn, in years. It’s a huge process. When I first started, it was overwhelming. Now that I’m seeing progress, and it feels more right every time I get rid of another pile of stuff, to have a little less mess, a little more space, it gets easier.  I don’t worry about finishing huge cleaning projects, I just take small bites at a time. I tackle realistic projects. A drawer here, a box there.  It all adds up. Eventually there will be another unencumbered room, and as long as I don’t stop, eventually I will get through all of it. The best part is that I have so much fun giving things that I no longer need to people that can use them. A lot of what I’m getting rid of is still useful, just not to me. I don’t just toss most things, I work to give them new homes.  That is just as rewarding as reclaiming the space that they previously lived in.

The goal is simple. To be happy with what I have, to simplify my life to the point where I have useful things with a few extra niceties that bring me joy, and no real need for anything more.

Finally, I have to say, that I don’t know that I would have gotten to the realization about my stuff without having faced my mortality, so in a weird way I’m thankful for this huge lesson that cancer allowed me to learn.

There is a third lesson that I got from cancer, but it deals with the people in my life. If I can figure out how to write it without violating anyone’s privacy, and still somehow have it keep the meaning that it has for me, I will publish it soon.

Namaste

Comments Off

I woke up from surgery cancer free.  It was a long month and a half between diagnosis and removal. That time changed my life.  I found out how much I could trust my friends and family to stand by me. I am very blessed with love in my life.  In the inevitable process of evaluating my life, judging myself by what and who I value, I figured out quite a few things about myself. I’ll spend the next couple of posts going through the most important ones.

1. Never ever undervalue the people in your life or the love that they bring.They are not there just by mistake. Everyone in your life is there for a reason.

I have many friends, but the “inner circle” of friends in my life really came to bat for me. None of them heard the word cancer and ran away scared.

They are all my soul mates and I want to call out a few them here:

My best friend Pat dropped everything in her very busy life, and got here the night before I went into surgery. She stayed an extra day, ultimately, consciously, choosing family (me) over her job, and eventually moving her family back here from Tennessee because she didn’t want another important thing, good or bad, to go on in either of our lives where the other person couldn’t share in it.  When I think about how much we’ve been to each other in our lives, it’s overwhelming.  We grew up together. We’ve been friends for 28 years, through kids, marriages, divorces, and a lot of other real life events.  There was a time that we spent so much time together that we could finish each other’s sentences.  We’ve said many times that if one of us were a guy, we’d have been married, divorced, and married again by now.  We are the definition of soul mates. There is no one in my life who knows me better, isn’t afraid to have hard conversations with me, and who shares with me as I do with her, each and every joy, frustration, and everything in between in our lives.  She reads my blog too, so for the record, because you know I’m not good at saying it publically, I love you Pat. Thank you for being there for me that very surreal week.  No words can express how greatful I am to have you in my life, then, and now.

Roomie is also a soul mate.  It took me a long time to figure out that he cares about me because he is so very nonverbal about his feelings.  When I was diagnosed, and I told him, his concern was obvious. We sat there and talked a lot.  He had nursed both of his parents through particularly nasty cancers, and what I had was nowhere near that extreme.  He helped me figure out the questions to ask. He fed me nutritious meals. He made sure that I had a beautiful, peaceful place to recover by redecorating my bedroom and my home office in the month betweeen the diagnosis and surgery.  He cleaned house for the month that I couldn’t, did my laundry, bandaged my wound while it took it’s sweet time closing, and so many other things.  I didn’t ask him to do any of this. In fact, I felt bad because in the months since he’d moved in, I’d had 2 surgeries that he helped me recover from while he was doing his best to rebuild his own life and business. He never said one word about the extra work, or care giving when I’m sure he was at the end of his own rope more than once during that time.  Having been through all that, our relationship has grown closer and more comfortable.  We are very different people, from very different worlds. In three years of living together as friends, we’ve made our own world together. After each of us exited brutally negative relationships, and had enough time for our hearts to heal, we found a friend in each other. Now we are more than friends. The love between us is unspoken, but shown in so many other ways every day. When we met, I never would have expected to call him a soul mate, but he is.

My cousin Rae, who went through everything that I went through 6 weeks earlier than I did kept me sane too.  We had some intense, brutally honest e-mail and phone conversations about it all, and that helped me SO much.  She also made a nice little recovery box for me for Christmas with some fun treats and useful stuff in it. She is the woman in my life that has a true, deep understanding of what I personally went through inside my head with the cancer, and with the body parts that went away along with the tumors, and with the after effects of losing those parts. No topic was off limit and that is awesome. With all of the taboo around female cancers, she and I could discuss things because we’d been there and faced that demon down, on our own, and later together in spirit.  If there was ever a sisterhood, Rae certainly qualifies.  She, by the way, is also cancer free for two + years now.  GO US!

My cousin Don, who I have always adored from afar,  was there for me too.  We’ve always been cousins, but never really friends.  He’s a little older than I am and lives 8 hours away. We love each other because we are family, but our lives were very separate. During my recovery though, we got to know each other pretty well through some e-mail conversations that had absolutely nothing to do with cancer and I loved and needed that interaction.  He also stopped by while I was recovering, and we’ve gone for dinner a couple of times since then when he is in town.  I treasure the time I get with him. He’s such a cool guy, and we communicate on a very human level.  Honest, open, and with love. Those e-mails gave me such insight into him. After a lifetime of only having time with him when the rest of the family is around, it was wonderful to get all of the one on one time that we did.

There’s a certain cheesehead that I’m also soulmates with. He and his wife came down and made sure that I knew I was loved before I went into the hospital.  He and I have a lot of history. I won’t go into too much of it here, but he is also someone that I communicate with on a very human level. We’ve dealt with some hard truths in our respective lives together. The first time I knew there was a connection between us, was when his Mother In Law, who was my cousin, died of cancer many years ago, I had opportunity to cry on a few people’s shoulders, but I chose not to. I was close to my cousin, and she died when I was in the middle of a horrible 2 week long bout of flu. I never got to say goodbye to her and that tore me up.  I held all those feelings in.  I was able to hold them in, that is,  until I saw him at her wake and the floodgates opened.  I didn’t cry on my soon to be ex-husband, or on cheesehead’s now ex wife, who’s mother was in the casket. It was him, and whatever this connection that we have, that put me in a place that was safe enough to let those tears go. He held me, and I cried hard. A few years down the road, it was him that I trusted enough to ask to be with me the day I got divorced. He came down early in the morning, and stood by me through the manic depressive rollercoaster that the morning of my divorce was. We laughed, we cried, we ate lunch, and he went back to work after he knew I was OK. That was an intense few hours. I’m not sure I would have held up as well without him there, and I’m still thankful for that time with him.  It was also him that I cooked that first post divorce Thanksgiving meal for. Fortunately, there were no tears that night. There was a lot of laughter and love, and having him and my daughter there was the perfect Thanksgiving.  So him coming down from Cheeseland a couple of weeks before my surgery, with his new wife, to take me to dinner and make sure that I knew they loved me, well, that’s something that a girl doesn’t forget easily. Especially not with the history that we have.

Speaking of my daughter, she and I have gotten closer too. I think the cancer and surgery had a lot to do with it. Also her growing up and getting married and realizing that I have always done my best to give her space and time to lead her own life probably did too. I survived cancer with her in mind. My mother died when I was the age that my daughter is now. I didn’t want to put her through that hell when her life is just getting into the right groove.  I’m still here and kicking and I got to see her marry a pretty great guy because of that.  She and I have been through a lot, but we both survived my ex, and I survived cancer, and now we both get to do more than just survive. I get to live and see my daughter grow up and turn into the woman that I raised her to be, and she gets to have a mom that she knows loves her no matter what.

So that was lesson number one from cancer. I am surrounded by so much love. Love that is stronger than any miscreant cells that were trying to kill me. When I really open myself up to the love that is there, I am humbled. I am energized too.  The singular most powerful force in this universe surrounded me in the guise of my friends and family, and with that kind of positive energy, there was no way that I wasn’t going to be just fine.

If cancer had to come into my life, if there was a purpose for it, I believe that realizing how much love I have was a big part of the lesson that it was there to teach.

There was one other very large lesson that I learned. I’ll write about it tomorrow.

Namaste

Comments Off

I’m not usually public about the causes that I support. This one is worthy though. If you have a few spare dollars, how about throwing it in for the kids. The link is below, and on the far sidebar over there —>

Help Yourself By Helping Children . . .
The 9th Annual Internet Toy Drive!!

We are proud to be a partner with the official U.S. Marines “Toys for Tots” program in The Ninth Annual Internet Toy Drive. It’s a sad fact that millions of children in the United States will NOT have a single gift to open on Christmas Day! We aim to change that and make sure EVERY child has at least one present ‘from Santa’ under their tree. Help a needy child in YOUR community right now:
http://www.internettoydrive.org

Comments Off

This is the third year I’ve done this, and this is the third year that I’ve completed it successfully.

Overall, I’m in a much different place than I was 2 years ago.  It was about a week into it that I was diagnosed with uterine cancer. There was no shortage of stuff to write about that year.

Last year in November I was just to the point where I felt like myself again. Just cruising along alone, and trying to figure where I fit in the world, post divorce, post hysterectomy, going into the holidays hoping to get some energy back, see my family, and relax a bit.

This year, another year along, my body has mostly adjusted, and I’m mostly coping with it. My job is intense lately, leaving me less than motivated to use my brain enough to write intelligently most evenings.  There’s a man in my life again and that is wonderful and yet  terrifies me on every level that it normally would, plus a couple more just for good measure because of the surgery. We’ll work it out, I’m not too concerned, just nervous.  After a long couple of years, this year feels like things are coming together the way I’d planned. My house is becoming a sanctuary, there’s someone in my life that understands what love is, the job will ease up with time, or I’ll find a new one if it gets too frustrating.  Financially I’m in less debt. There’s still some, but it’s not overwhelming.

Overall, I’m in a much, much better place than I was two years ago.  This also means that I have less of a need to write than I used to, so 30 days straight is a stretch, but sometimes stretching is good.  I didn’t really get near the quality of writing that I aspire to, but there are a couple of pieces that are good enough to build on. I’m content with that.  I’ll probably take a few days off now that the forced writing is done. There is a lot to be done before the holidays and I really only have a few weekend days to get it all done in.

Comments Off