Je ne sais pas pourquoi.

I'm leaving tomorrow to go back home as soon as the Time Warner people leave my apartment, and I'll be staying for a few weeks. My mom's condition has rapidly declined and she now has an obstructed bowel. She has decided not to go forward with chemo and the doctor has estimated 2-3 weeks. Therefore, I am going home to be with my family.

We appreciate all of your prayer and support.

Much love from;

Emily

More Snow. *sigh*

Once again Cincinnati is feeling the full wrath of winter before everyone else in Ohio. At the end of work last night I got an IM from my boss telling me to work from home tomorrow (today). I was like, Time Warner is coming today to install my internet, I can work from home!

Alas, Time Warner let me down.

Oh, they came! They came, they just couldn't do anything because they came after the leasing office closed and they couldn't get into the maintenance room to set it up. So here I sit, an hour late for work, waiting for a return phone call to let me know whether anyone is coming to install my internet this morning because if they don't I have to go to work late and stay late and then deal with driving back home in the crappy weather.

On the upside of this, though, I called Time Warner about the pricing for my internet and I was able to downgrade to a slightly slower internet that is a good $15 dollars cheaper! Go me!

Here's a picture of just the beginning... having had so much crappy weather already this year the parking lot was pre-salted last night in preparation.

If you look closely you can see the white streaks... that would be snowflakes falling so fast my camera couldn't capture them.

Time Warner, don't fail me now!

Let's talk about the clothes vs age phenomenon.

For any of you who have ever watched What Not To Wear, the main thing Stacey and Clinton tell everyone is to dress age appropriate. My question is, what is age appropriate when you're nearly twenty-five and right in the middle of still being a student and being an adult?

Though I have to dress business casual for work four of five days out of the week, I tend to be most comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt with a hoodie and chucks. In the winter, at least. In summer I have a growing collection of summer dresses. The main problem is that it's hard to dress cute when you're uncomfortable with your body and it's one of those days where everything just looks wrong.

I would like to tell you that the jeans I am wearing in this photo are too big. By kind of a lot.

There are some people who can just put on anything and still look like an adult. Then there are those of us who are 5'3" tall with a family tradition of large hips and thighs, a size that does not work well with today's popular styles. Skinny jeans just enhance the thigh, and those tunic shirts don't do much for the hourglass figure except to make it look thicker than it is. Also, as Kelly Osborne so wisely stated in an article about her weight loss, one pound gained on a short person looks like five so, for a former anorexic, one pound gained really looks and feels like five and suddenly everything tried on does nothing but enhance the excess.

So moving back to the issue of age vs dress, I in my self-conscious world often feel most comfortable in clothes that make me look seven years younger than I am, while dressing more my age makes me feel like a five year old in mommy's clothing. There's no even ground. Sometimes I get very lucky and find something that makes me look older, or I get just the right haircut... Does anyone else experience this?

I really wish I lived in the 50s. Those clothes were MADE for people like me. Cinch the waist, hide the hips with a large swishy skirt and enhance the calves with two inch pumps? Sign me up! If only vintage clothes were cheaper... and more comfortable!

Mirror Mirror

Thanks to everyone who posted about my mom. Quick update, she actually went into the hospital today because of fluid build up and some abdominal pain and her hemoglobin wasn't where it should be. As she was supposed to start chemo tomorrow they wanted to get it under control. However, apparently her protein levels need to come up before it's safe to do chemo so she's being released tomorrow and won't start till next week. Frustrating, but there's really nothing can be done except pray and wait.

On to the regularly scheduled program.

I love to write on my mirror. 

Seriously. With dry erase markers. And I know I'm not the only person who does this because I got it from a mission trip I went on back in 2006. You almost couldn't see your face in the girl's bathroom due to all the writing. Ever since then I've written on my mirror, everything from quotes to Bible verses to reminders. I figure that we as women tend to use our mirrors a lot so what better place? 

As I only put up my mirror a couple of weeks ago after much time without my own mirror (my mom would not take kindly to me writing on her good bathroom mirror) it took me until yesterday to write anything on it.

This was taken with my phone and isn't very clear. Just wait until I've lived here awhile, there'll be all kinds of things scrawled across there. In case you didn't watch the video I posted of Justin Bieber the other day, this is a line from the chorus of a song I just cannot get out of my head. "I close my eyes and I can see a better day." Sounds prosaic enough, but not if you've heard the Biebs sing it. I swear all of heaven sings along. 

What about all of you? Do you write on your mirror? Or is there somewhere else that works for you?

And one was beautiful.

Meet my mom.

My mom loves to sing and act but hates to slow dance because it makes her dizzy. She has three sisters, is blind-as-a-bat without her glasses, has dyed her hair for as long as I can remember, and is always concerned about her weight.

She has an identical twin, spent an entire semester of college in Wales, and got engaged to my dad four weeks after they started dating.

She's a teacher, loves to read and play games, and one of her favorite movies of all time is Somewhere in Time. So much so, in fact, that she and my dad spent a few days at The Grand Hotel early last summer. This May they will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary.

She is also the most loving, caring, giving, kind, faithful, Godly, beautiful person I have ever known.

And she has cancer.

A really, really nasty cancer.

The week before Christmas mom went to the hospital to have fluid removed from her body, as it was creating pressure and causing her a lot of pain and discomfort. In order to do this they have to do an ultrasound to find where the water is. So the technician starts to do her thing and suddenly stops, goes to the nurse and whispers. The nurse found the doctor, who came back and looked at the screen. They then turned it and showed the screen to my mom.

Her entire abdomen is completely full of tumors. There is at least one that is the size of a football. So the ridiculously expensive drug they had her on did nothing at all to help, and she was given three choices: palliative (sp?) care, where she's just made comfortable and no treatments are given, some other drug that's similar to the expensive one that didn't work, or go to the hospital once every three weeks for six days for consistent sessions of chemo. The side effects for the last option are not pretty, and it'd be inpatient, which she hasn't done before.

She chose option number three, and goes into the hospital this Thursday for the first round.

I went home this weekend for New Year's, to spend it with Johnny and to see my family, and before I left for Canton on New Year's Eve Mom and Dad sat the three of us down and laid everything open and bare. They told us the option she chose.

They also told us that this option will not cure her. All it might do is buy her some time.

And according to the doctor, his best guess is that she won't make it to the summer.

She hopes she'll be able to be at Anne's wedding, which is on May 28th. But it's doubtful she'll make it to mine.

And all I can think is that this isn't fair. Why MY mom? Why NOW? Why not in a few years when we're all married and have grandchildren who get to meet their grandmother and get to know her? Why did this all have to happen after I moved, first to Connecticut and now to Cincinnati? I'm far away, and gas went up to $3.19/gallon and I have to work so I can't be home. I asked Johnny to please not be mad if I don't go up to Canton anytime soon.

But then I realize that I'm being selfish. That God has a reason for this, and just because I don't know what it is doesn't mean it's bad. And then I wonder what God wants to teach me through this, if He's doing this to prove a point, but then I realize that it's not all about me. God doesn't allow people to die to teach one single person a lesson. Through this illness He has strengthened my mother beyond all reckoning, He has tested my father, and He has given my sisters and me and every other person my mom comes in contact with a strong, faithful woman to lead us and comfort us and be an example of faith and peace and joy. I mean, when she told the extended family the bad news on Christmas she said she felt bad because she was ruining our Christmas!

Mom, it's not OUR Christmas we're concerned about right now. Not even close.

In some ways it's all so hard. Hard to comprehend, hard to grasp. I thought she'd always be there, and I don't want to let her go. Not this soon. But in other ways I'm glad it's happening the way it is because it means we can make the most of every single moment we are given, and that if by some miracle she pulls through and is with us for another thirty years we can look back and see how it altered us, changed us beyond all recognition. Remember when?

This is my mom, and I love her. Johnny told me once that out of all my sisters I'm most like my mom, but I can only pray that God will make me half the woman she is.

Not Ashamed Anymore

So, remember last week's post where I admitted to liking Justin Bieber and being ashamed of it?

Watch this video.

SO not ashamed anymore. I wish we had more just like him.

Christmas Tradition

My family has a million Christmas traditions, and I love every one of them. It doesn't actually feel like Christmas unless we do these things.

It starts, actually, two weeks before. My mom makes a bajillion and one kinds of cookies and chocolates. Fruit foldovers, mint brownies, almond crescents, chocolate turtles, chocolate covered pretzels, peanuts and raisins, ginger snaps, white chocolate peppermint sugar cookie snowflakes, pecan tassies, snowballs, buckeyes, etc, etc, and then she makes a plate for every family/friend we have in the area as our Christmas present. Usually the plates are delivered on the two days prior to Christmas. I'm amazed mom managed it this year, though my sisters helped out a lot.

Then, on Christmas Eve, we all go to the church candlelight service while chili cooks on the stove so it's ready when we get home. This year we didn't make chili because everyone else is sick of it, so instead we had baked beans. Which i think we have more often than chili, but whatever. I made my own pot of chili when I got back home. ;) Anyway, we eat dinner and watch the best Christmas movie ever: The Muppet Christmas Carol. By this time my sister and bro in-law have made it, and my younger sister's fiance and Johnny were both there as well.

Since my mom's cancer she and dad have stopped setting out the presents after we go to bed. It used to be that we'd put out our presents to each other, hang stockings and go upstairs.
While we try to fall asleep, unsuccessfully, my parents would set out all of the presents and fill stockings so we're surprised the next morning. However, this year we all trooped upstairs and brought all the presents down since Mom was so tired.

On Christmas morning, a ribbon blocks the opening to the stairs, something my parents started years ago to keep their four daughters from sneaking downstairs before everyone else. We are supposed to stay upstairs while my mom makes breakfast. Latkes, a family favorite. And we aren't allowed to come downstairs until it's all ready and my dad is up. When we get down to the table, it's set with lit candles and Christmas music playing in the background and we all have breakfast together in our PJs. This year mom slept while Erin and Jennie, my two older sisters, make the latkes and blueberry muffins, and the rest of us came down and just chilled while we waited. As we are all over the age of 21, it just doesn't make sense to cram all of us into the hallway upstairs.

After breakfast we clean up the table and put dishes in the dishwasher and then comes the big revealing. All of us head downstairs and see the tree for the very first time. This year, obviously, isn't the same, but it was still a good time. Plus my parents waited until Christmas morning to stuff stockings so that was a new addition.

We always sit in the same place, though every time we add a boy it gets a little more difficult to cram all nine of us in the family room, and stockings are always first. Once we've opened everything in there and put the candy into a large communal bowl for later, Anne and I pass out all of the presents since we sit closest to the tree. Once all the gifts are out, all but my mom open. Mom likes to wait and watch us as we open the gifts she spent so many months finding and purchasing, and once we're all done and the paper is cleared she opens her gifts while we all watch.

And once all of this is done we clean up, go get ready and drive up to Cleveland to hang with the extended family and have a huge meal and open more presents.

It's all just wonderful, a wonderful time, and it's beautiful to spend time with all of us together at the same time.  And soon we'll add children to the mix and oh, the times we'll have!

I, unfortunately, did not take as many photos as I would have liked so I stole some from previous years, but you get the basic idea. Plus, I found an app that is very similar to the hipstamatic for iPhone and it makes me look like I can actually take good photos!

So to finish, here are a bunch of photos from Christmas Day, everything from Johnny and Derrick spending ample time with their phones to a bunch of us playing Balderdash, to my cousin's children pretending to eat a turkey whole.

I hope you had a blessed Christmas, and I'll be back to regular, shorter posts here soon. :)

 Derrick and Johnny in the hallway, while Erin and Jennie make breakfast.

 We had a semi-white Christmas.

More cooking.

Anne and Derrick wait. 

 Our new cousin, Lydia, falls asleep in my mom's lap. Johnny and Derrick with their phones. Again.

 Noah and Silas play Don't Break the Ice. They also got Don't Spill the Beans, and Ants in the Pants.

the family.

Corbin waits patiently and then tries to eat the turkey when he thinks no one is looking.

This is Hannah. Lol.

We started playing Balderdash.

My beautiful Mom. 

<3