Happy Birthday!!

Hi everybody, I know I've been gone for ten thousand years. I really don't have an explanation, well I do but it will take ten thousand more years and really... who has time for that. I don't.

This is Happy Blog day!! Happy birthday to The Diva!! My sweet, darling, 17 year old girl! I love her so much, and I am so proud of her, and I am blessed to have been allowed to have been part of her life for the last 5 years.

She has grown so much in the last 5 years, I wish I had a picture for every day of her life. I wish I had been there in the pictures where she is chubby-cheeked and smiling for all the world to see.

I wish I had been there when my mother 'guilted' her 'new' granddaughter into smiling for the pictures she took days ago. I love the fact that she loves my mom and calls her 'Grammy' like she had grown up all her life with a Grammy. Y'all, I wish like hell I could put a brick on her head and keep her from growing any more. I know I can't stop it, but oh my... what it will be like in two and a half years when she has to go off to college and spread her wings and fly. I can't wait, and yet I'm scared to death.

I know this has been a sappy post, but I wish everyone could see our beautiful girl. So pretty inside and out, all I could have ever wished for!!

Times are changing...

When I first started this blog, I told you all about my parents and myself. I told you about my children, my wife, my job, etc.

Lately I have been loathe to talk about it. I don't know if it's just that everything that has gone on this year is scary for me, or if it is my continual reluctance to journal my feelings. I have always hated doing this, for me it seems to make things more real. As though I can ignore the issues if I just don't write them down.

I am happy right now, happier than I have been in years in certain parts of my life. The part of my life I consider to be real has changed. I used to view my job as the thing that I could count on for sanity and stability, stop it... yes I know I work in a prison!! It was always the stabilizing factor, always there, never changing.

In the last three months things have changed, first with the cancer scare, then with my mother, then with my job.

I don't think I mentioned anywhere that Mama is now living down here near us, and working here too. I love being able to see her almost every day. I love that my brother is home. I love the acceptance they have shown Crys and me. It saddens me that it took 4 1/2 years to find this acceptance, but overall I am happy to have it.

The job...ahhh, the job. When I took this job I naively felt that I could supervise anyone. OMG, I was so wrong. Also, I believed when I was promoted that it was their way of saying they believed in my ability to do the job. Now, I'm not so sure. After 7 months I sometimes feel that they just needed a body to fill a spot, and I was the only one they could find. I hate that. I hate losing my confidence in my ability to do the job and make the right decisions. I don't know why I feel this way.

You know what I've learned though? The job does not define me. It is the thing that I have to go do so I can live the rest of my life!! Not that I am consistantly unhappy there, but on the days when I am I think "It's okay, I get to go home and live my real life in 8 hours." I don't know when or why it became important to me to seperate myself from corrections, but I am glad that I have. It makes it easier for me to let it all go as soon as I step out the front door.

Have you ever felt this way??

Two Years

It has been two years today since my Daddy passed. I am still sad. Not everyday, but some days I wake up and think "I need to tell Daddy"... and then I realize I don't get to tell him anything because he is gone. I miss him, and some days it feels like it was just yesterday that he was here with us.

I hate that my Mama is still so sad, but I believe I understand. I hate to hear people say "She'll get over it." Really? I mean really, would you get over losing your best friend? I don't think I would after 32 years.

Things are better most days, but I still miss him. I grieve for the fact that he will never see his great grandbabies. I grieve for the fact that the first time my mother sat down to have dinner with my wife, he was not here.

I believe that he is still here with us in our hearts, and that is how we breathe in and out every day and keep on moving. He would expect nothing less.

"Life is about finding balance" - KNA

Love the life you have...

I used to tell Crys that I try to be content in wherever I find myself. I must say that in the last 4 months that has beein increasingly hard to do. I say all that to say this...

When you wake up in the morning and you are comfortable in your skin, you are where you need to be. Even if you have to take vacation to get there, try to find it!! I know that I am not comfortable in my skin every day that I go to work, I know that I am not comfortable in my skin every day as a mom. But, I know that I am comfortable in my skin every single day in my relationship with my wife. Crys is the best friend I never knew I needed, and she gives me everything I could ever want. My life may not be normal compared to some people, but what is normal? Why would we ever want to go back to 'vanilla'?

I love my wild, crazy, abnormal life!! Just my thought for the day!! :)

So, what happened??

I had surgery on the 20th, and they let me know Thursday that I was all clear. They took two pre-cancerous papillomas and a mass the size of a golf ball out of my left breast. Which begs the question, how can they take that much out and my breast is still the same size? I am now on a horrendous amount of antibiotics, because they believe that the two lumps they found under the nipple are infected lymph nodes. Then in six months I will have another mammogram and ultrasound. I seriously was really crazy by the time they told me because it took a long damn time!!

I am hopeful that this means the craziness is over in my house for a while. We are trying to move, spending time with the middle daughter who is home for the summer. I sure do wish she would stay.

Thank you to all my friends who spent the day with me, or called, or wrote to ask if I was alright, and a special thank you to Crys (my love, my wife) who held my hand and explained what they did over and over to a groggy crazy lady with too much anesthesia!! :)

What are you scared of?

I know what I am scared of. Some of you who have been reading my blog since the beginning know what I am scared of.

I am scared of death. When my Daddy died, I kept thinking this can't really be happening. I believe in feelings. When someone tells me to pay attention to the hairs on the back of my neck, I believe them. I used to think that was crazy, but I have learned. I learned through Daddy's illness and death, that those feelings are real. When you know in your gut, that something bad is going to happen, believe it.

It has been a long two years. I can't sleep, or maybe it is that I don't sleep. I wake up at all hours of the night, and then I am through. I hate that I can't really rest without the aid of chemicals. Don't worry, I don't take them often. I take a little white pill (ambien) maybe once or twice a month, and those are the only times that I really rest.

I am getting ready to have surgery this Friday, to have two lumps removed from my left breast. And now... now I don't want to sleep. I think I have the pain tolerance to do this without the sedative. I am scared. I have cried for three days. I don't think I would be so scared if I didn't have this gut feeling, but I do. I learned, Oh my goodness have I learned, that we as humanity are not immortal. It doesn't stop me from praying, from hoping, from thinking that I am crazy. I wish to God, Goddess, whoever that I could be dreaming, but I don't think that will help.

I have learned that none of our time here is infinite, and none of us know the time of our own ending. There is so much left to do, and yes you are probably all right, I am panicking for no reason. All I know is that I have this feeling, and I hate it, and I just want to be done with this now. I'm scared.

How do we teach our daughter's better?

I went shopping with the Diva today for the prom dress. She is going with a boy as a friend only, which I appreciate because she is still going to have a good time without all the boyfriend pressure.

What I really want to talk about though is the pressure that the Diva feels to be thin and pretty. To give you an idea, she is 5'3" and about 118 pounds. She fluctuates about 5 or 10 pounds, depending on when track season starts. Last year when looking for the perfect 8th grade dance dress she wore a size 4. This year for homecoming she still wore a size 4. Today we had to go up to a size 6. I seriously thought she was going to cry.

We don't focus on looks in our house. I'm a big girl, but I've always been a big girl so this is all I know. I remember the pressure my mom and Mawmaw put on me to diet while I was growing up, and I hated every minute of it. We try to make sure (as best we are able) that the Diva eats 3 healthy meals a day and that she doesn't skip. If I don't watch her she will occasionally skip breakfast, and of course I don't know that she actually eats the lunch she takes to school. I believe her when she tells me she does.

So my question is this, other than encouraging positive body image in our house, how do we keep her from worrying about her weight? Y'all should see her, she is so pretty. She is this tiny, petite little thing with an outstanding personality, but I hate for her to worry so about it.

I know I think "what's the big deal between a 4 and a 6, at least it's not a twenty." The dress was by a different designer, but she is still fretting about it. I want her to grow up with a healthy body image, but short of locking her in her bedroom and taking away her tv and computer I don't know how to keep her from worrying. Then I worry, what a vicious cycle.