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

Get Ready for Random...

Last weekend I went to Canton to hang with Johnny for roughly 24 hours. Somewhere during our Sunday we stopped over at his best friend's house and I finally met the younger brother. We've been Facebook friends for months but have never before met. I actually have quite a few of those, including friends from Wales, Scotland, and Russia. Not bragging, that's just how it is.

Anywho, my knees came up into conversation somehow and I showed them how my knees have eyes. They then grab a pen and made smiley faces.

New subject.

Yesterday was a food day at work, and I didn't know it until about two hours after getting there. Had I known, I definitely would have brought something. As it is, there were four different kinds of meatballs and more dessert than real food.

Glad to see my co-workers have their priorities straight.

This is a picture of just the regular food table, not including the bags of chips on top of the cabinet, and that was before it was all set out. I would have also taken a photo of the dessert table, but this picture was taken surreptitiously by me while sitting at my desk so people wouldn't think I'm any weirder than they already do.

Yes. As luck would have it, all food was right next to my desk. This means Emily did very little work and gained back any and all weight she lost over the past month in just one day.

Johnny came down to Cincinnati yesterday. He applied for a bajillion jobs in the area and the Apple Store called him. My fiance is a total Mac guy and used to have the iPhone until he found out it didn't work at his parent's house. So they called him about an interview, which he had yesterday at 3pm. He stopped by my office building to get my apartment keys on the way there so that after the interview he'd have somewhere to go and relax until I got off work at 5:30.

In other news, here's an update on my mom.

WARNING: Here is where I get serious.

For my new readers, my mother has been battling cancer for the past year. There are tumors growing in her abdomen, and they have gotten so large that she actually looks like she's pregnant, and she's in a lot of pain. Her doctor has her on this new pill that costs an arm, a leg, the Empire State building, and a couple of Jupiter's moons, but apparently it's the miracle drug. Anyway, she ended up making a surprise trip to Columbus yesterday to give a plate of her famous Christmas cookies/chocolates to her special staff at Riverside Hospital. While she was there they tested her for fluid retention and today she went to the local hospital to drain her a bit.

They extracted 3.5 LBS of fluid from her body.

This helped with her pain, but she's still creeping around the house slowly. It really makes me feel guilty for complaining about having to work so much extra or about minor pain or just complaining in general. It really puts things into perspective. And this drug had better by golly work because it hurts to see my mom go through all of this.

On a happier note, tomorrow is Christmas Eve and we will have the ENTIRE family together tomorrow night for our annual Christmas Eve traditions.

Sorry for all the random! I hope you all have a glorious, beautiful, and blessed Christmas. :)

"For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders and he shall be called Wonderful Counselor. Mighty God. Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace." ~ Isaiah 9:6

Confession

Okay. I give. The truth is finally coming out.

I actually like Justin Beiber.

*covers face* I am ashamed.

In other news, here's the picture of the ornament I made.

Have a great Christmas, y'all!!

Happy Christmas!

So, I feel like everything I do in this city is a fiasco of some kind.

It all began with a gloriously amazing weekend. I spent Saturday evening and Sunday with Johnny and we really had a blast. We even braved going to the mall to find his mom a gift. I'm thrilled that we made it out alive.

So I drive 3.5 hours home and I leave all the stuff I brought home with me in my car because it's too cold and I'm too tired and lazy to drag all of it in.

As a temporary employee with hourly pay, when everyone else gets paid to take Thursday and Friday off this week, I get to work three ten hour days and then work from home on Thursday for eight hours to make up for the time lost. This makes for an exceptionally long, boring day, especially since all I do is key insurance claims into the system.

Anywho, I'm late for work yesterday, I forget why. It was a slow morning and I was tired and I actually found myself falling asleep at my desk no matter what music I listened to. I'm not the biggest fan of arriving to work in the dark AND leaving in the dark. Which was yesterday and will be today and tomorrow.

While I was working I was also taking a few breaks to find a) an Aldi's nearby so I can eat for the next few weeks, b) a Hobby Lobby so I could buy the stuff to make the ornament for the ornament exchange at work, c) a Goodwill so I can find mismatched picture frames for my sister for Christmas and d) a Barnes and Nobles or any music bookstore so I can buy my brother in-law HIS Christmas present. All of which I intended to take care of after work last night.

Get off work at 5:30 (FINALLY) and headed out to my car to drive to Aldi, which I found without too much difficulty AND which has a Hobby Lobby literally right next door! Very excited. I found almost everything on my list (and a couple things that weren't *cough*cookies*cough*) and I go through the checkout and I'm below budget, which rocks, and then my debit card wouldn't swipe. Swiped it. "Bad Swipe, try again" the keypad yells at me. Over and over and over... even the two employees tried and it wouldn't work. Then I find out they don't accept credit, only debit or cash. So they hold my order as I rush out to my car, annoyed, and drive down the street to the nearest Chase bank to withdraw cash, come back and pay for everything and finally, an hour later, leave that place.

Next comes Hobby Lobby. As I used to work at a Hobby Lobby I know what they have, especially at Christmastime. I managed to pick my boss out of the grab bag, and after asking everyone I could find what on earth to get him I discovered he loves the Bengals. Die hard fan. So I'm like, okay, well, if I don't find a Bengals ornament of some kind I'll just make him one.

No Bengals ornaments. Go figure.

Scrapbooking, here I come! Browsed the paper aisle searching for tiger print. There's zebra print. Cheeta. Giraffe. Leopard. But no tiger. Well, that's a lie, there was tiger print in a huge packet of paper that would cost me upwards of $20, and pink/purple/green tiger print in a small package of cardstock. No thanks. I did find football paper, and then I grabbed the zebra paper, figuring I have an orange highlighter and I can just color in the white parts. Run to the other aisles and grab a glue stick, gold glitter, and ornament hooks, purchase it all and leave.

By now it's going on 7pm and I'm exhausted and had no interest in finding the B&N or Goodwill so instead that's today's after work excursion. More on that later. So I drive home to kick off my heels and put on jeans and boots and make seven trips to and from my car with clean laundry, bags of groceries, a giant scrapbook my grandmother gave me, boxes, etc, etc.

Still no rest for Emily.

On go the shorts and tank top in my swelteringly hot apartment and I proceed to put things away, reattach the doors to the entertainment center after propping it up with blocks of wood (dad and Johnny broke off the wheels on their trek up the stairs. That sucker is HEAVY), organizing my books, etc etc (sorry for all the lists, it was a crazy day). Of course Johnny called somewhere in the middle so I'm holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder as I set up the DVD/VCR/TV. Once all of THAT was done (groceries still not put away) I got my laptop and found a tutorial on how to make origami stars, colored in the zebra paper with an orange highlighter, made three stars (two tiger, one football) in different sizes, strung them together with thread, glue-sticked them and shook them around in a baggie of gold glitter, and finally boxed and wrapped the final product after taking a pic of it to show Johnny.

And then I collapsed on the floor and relaxed for the first time since 5am.

Rinse. Repeat.

Today is the same, only it's B&N and Goodwill, I did major organizing before I even left for work, and I left my phone at my apartment so I'm without directions and I was late to work AGAIN... but in seven minutes we are having our ornament exchange and hopefully my boss doesn't sneer at my handiwork.

Once I have my phone back and am sitting at home, I will post a less hectic story and show y'all pictures.

Deep breaths... and scene.