32 all over again

Happy Birthday Nana!

You are the only woman I know who can take a Friday the 13th birthday and make it magnificent!

Love you!

Climbing out

Good golly, I’m sot sure what has happened over the past few weeks or was it just a week or maybe a day?  Ok, I guess I might know what has gone on, but it is a little hazy so bare with me.

The trip to Ohio was great!  The highlight for the kids was the pool at the hotel on either side of the trip and the artificial hips and pace makers they got from my cousin who owns five funeral homes.  There was a good amount of time spent at funeral homes.  Oh yeah and then there was “Clyde’s Funeral” that the kids (and my parents) played out and we got it on CD.  How do you get that on CD do you ask? Well, I come to find out that people steel stuff off of dead bodies during wakes.  So what is a funeral director to do, but put in hidden cameras to catch all the sheenangens.

In all my great smugness of being THE BEST DAUGHTER ON THE FACE OF THE PANET for having brought my parents and three children on a 28 hour car trip to see The Relatives, on the way home I got sick.  And I remained sick, with fever and cough, for SEVEN days.  I just know it was God’s way of taking me down a peg or two, you know that smugness I referred to earlier?  However, PJ got sick too.  Upon reflection, she does need to work off some of her evil ways, so she wasn’t spared either.

During my week of ill, I was crawling out of bed trying to help Omar plan a fairly substantial event called Darkness Day at Surly Brewing Company.  If you did not make it out this year, you should certainly try it out next year.  The food, bands and of course beer were amazing.  So by Saturday, the sick was gone and the party was on!

This week has been filled with catching up on all the other things that happen when three weeks of your life have vanished and you actually forget what your name is and what day it is.

Hi I’m Mary and today is Wednesday Thursday.

Middle of somewhere and nowhere

Last week we got the news that my dad’s cancer has spread to his liver.

It was the first time, in the past 2 1/2 years, that I “lost it” in the room with the doctor and my parents as she shared her fine news.  As I continued on with my award winner performance, the doctor said in her oh so very cold oncologist trying to be warm and trying to help kinda way said, “At least he’ll make it through the Holidays.”

WHAT?  AT LEAST WHAT???  ARE YOU KIDDING ME…WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?  The voice in my head was screaming.  As I calmed that voice, I found my voice saying, “He better fucking make it to Easter!”

Yeah, the F-bomb and crying and new metastasized cancer all in one visit.  That was something.

So with the kids off of school for a week, I decided to throw out the idea of a road trip to my parents at Sunday dinner.

And tonight, after a 10 hour car ride filled with movies, candy and 326 Johnny Cash songs, I find myself sitting in a pitch black hotel room in the middle of Indiana, listening to my three kids snoring away and my parents sleeping across the hall.  We are on our way to Cincinnati to visit my dad’s sisters, my cousins and my dad’s old friends.

Oh the stories we will bring home.

What timing

The one day I don’t have my camera with me, KP decides to become a big boy.

We were at the pool yesterday.  He has never gone down the body slide or the tub slide by himself.  And yesterday, not only did he feel it was time to do this by himself but he also decided to add the drop slide and the diving board to his repertoire of bigness.

He was absolutely sure he could do it.  Swim all the way to the edge.

I was not so sure.

So what does a mother do?  Let them try.  Even though it might make me feel like I’m drownding just waiting and watching at the edge of the pool.  Let them try.

I can always jump in and grab him from a watery tomb right?

So off he goes, on his own, all on his own.

I sat in the reclining chair watching as he circled back to jump and slide again and again and again.  All I could think of was how funny the timing was.  The diving board today and off to all day Kindergarten next Tuesday.

As the sun warmed my body, that was simply resting on the chair (not grabbing limbs, not helping to swim, not playing with) I knew I had gotten to the next chapter.

OMG…what happens in the next chapter?

By the light of the teenage moon

This past weekend our family traveled to Wisconsin to hang out with Adam’s dad’s side of the family.  We do this annually and it always proves to be a great time filled with family, golf, copious amounts of alcohol, usually some type of water entertainment for the kiddies and then anything else we can seem to drum up.   And this year was no different as we hung out by Lake Michigan for four days.

Before we left town my book club picked a new book, Twilight.  As we took off in the car last Thursday I found myself reading for almost 5 1/2 hours straight while the road went whizzing by my window.  Sucked straight into the world of vampires and teenage unrequited love.  I, a 39 year old woman with three kids who has been married for let’s call it many years, swallowed that shit hook, line and sinker.  I downed that book in three days and could not keep myself from wanting more.

There were several people at the reunion who had also read the book and then we were lucky enough to have Ryan (a non Sellke for those wondering) in the house to do a dramatic reading for us by the light of the moon, can’t you see the smoldering eyes?

The day we left I asked Adam to swing by Shopko before we hit the road to see if I could find the second book, New Moon.  Bingo, and there went 5 1/2 more hours with the vampires.

If you need a little candy this summer, pick it up.  I promise, you’ll like it, but please don’t expect great literature with this one, just a good time.

Dads

Dad, husband, father-in-law…whatever kind of daddy you are, have a GREAT day.

Happy Father’s Day!

Put a fork in it

Today marks the day of my Dad’s 12th round of Chemo, the final round. A day to celebrate, be happy, take note that things are going well. His bone scans are better than when he started nine months ago, yet another cause to roar.

It hasn’t been an easy road. Chemo is a drain and the longer it goes on the harder it is to rise back up to its next invitation. But to know that he gets a break is worth a cheer. The thought of a touch more energy…fabulous.

The agony for me is in what lies ahead. The unknown. The monthly visits to the cancer center to see if you are going to get hit in the stomach again. To see what the next course of action is.

But today is a day to put those thoughts away. We must celebrate this day and this moment, for we have made it through this tunnel, all the while watching my Father tell cancer to Fuck Off!

Way to go Dad!

Dogs are funny

There are a bunch of dogs in my neighborhood.  I actually knew this fact before I was a dog owner.  However, now I not only know the dogs in the neighborhood, I know their owners too.

You see, we meet everyday at the same time and the same place.  The only difference between me and them, I’m the one with kids.  Kids who come with me all through the winter to the park, just so the dog can play.  When they complain about going to the park, I simply tell them that this is what owning a dog is all about and please remember…you are the ones who wanted this cute little dog so badly.

At said park, we get to see all sorts of dog behavior that I know nothing about.  A couple of our doggy friends are stick chewers.  Lucy was not a stick chewer before she met these characters.  But now that she has watched her buddies chewing the living tar out of sticks and enjoying it so much, she clearly decided that that was something dogs do.  So now, Lucy is a stick chewer.  She is also a stick pooper.

Today I witnessed, along with PJ and the rest of the kids at the bus stop, a poop made entirely out of stick shards.  As we watched on, you could see it in the little kids faces as Lucy was trying hard to get this thing out;  first disgust, then fright, a little bit of shrieking ran through the air from PJ and then when she finally birthed it out, utter amazement.

Yes, I should have taken a picture.

Ok, apon review, naw.

Me and my VERY part time job

I teach swimming lessons on a very part time basis, like 1 to 3 half-hour classes a week depending on the session.  So really, it does not take up much of my time and the added bonus is a free membership that feeds my beloved addiction.

All that said, when a kid goes down sick, it just so happens to be during the smallest increment of time that I am suppose to be somewhere earning a minuscule amount of money.  But still, it’s a commitment.  A commitment I take seriously and want to find a solution to the problem that does not impact anyone else negatively (like getting sick).

We have been battle coughs for two weeks now (Adam, CT, PJ and KP).   Yesterday KP spiked a temp.  After a day of movies and Tylenol I was hoping he would wake up with no fever and he could go to school and I could go teach lessons.

Instead, he slept in until 8:30, woke up glassy eyed, still coughing and still with fever.

So what to do with the job?  The following is the email I sent to my boss:

Hey Y,
I have a sick kid who can’t go to school today (cough and temp).  That leaves me with canceling classes today, you or some one else doing them for me or me bringing him into the gym daycare and infecting kids.  Thoughts?

M

She called 5 minutes later telling me should would call everyone and cancel them.  Hmmm, that was easy.  I clearly spent too much time worrying about how I was going to fix that problem.

Ashes

Today is Ash Wednesday for those of you non-Catholics out there or recovering Catholics or Catholics who like to forget all about Lent in general.

For the past few years I have been meeting my parents at church for Ash Wednesday services.  Two years ago, we knew there was something wrong with my dad, he had had all his tests and scans but the final report had not come down the pipe line yet.

Two years ago, I remember sitting in church watching an old grade school classmate and her family on Ash Wednesday.  Her father had esophageal cancer.  He was not doing well.  His three girls and his wife where there with him.  After mass they went to the back of church, lit candles, prayed and cried.  I remember those girls so clearly being so distraught at what was happening to their dad, their family, their lives.

I strongly remember the feeling of dread that came over me that day.  Knowing there was something wrong.  Wondering how bad the news was going to be and wondering how many more Ash Wednesday services we would have left together or how many more Ash Wednesdays it would be until I found myself in the back of church lighting candles, praying and crying.

My classmates father died last year.

My father will die too.

Just as yours has or will.

So on this Ash Wednesday, I not only see the start of Lent but I feel all over again the fear and the dread of how my dad’s battle with cancer will continue.

Thank goodness on most every other day, I can set that aside and realize that we still have time, hopefully a lot of time.