Midlife Brownies

When is midlife?

Fifty?

That's seven years away. 

Which is almost a decade away. 

Which to my kids, that's like 200 years away. 

Then why is all of this midlife stuff happening before I'm even forty-five?

My neck is getting gobbly. 

My eyes need two lenses to see from behind my glasses. 

I sleep erratically at night. 

I sweat more. 

Wait!

Is that menopause?

Peri-menopause?

Damn, women have to deal with both midlife issues AND menopause!

I forgot about the menopause thing. 

Double damn!

My husband only has the midlife crisis thing to deal with. 

He wanted a motorcycle last year. 

And older road bike that would make him look uber cool. 

A big departure from his Trek bicycle. 

He said that urge is over.

Maybe his testosterone will begin to wane. 

Probably not.  

But, my eyes are still unfocused, I'm still using more deodorant than I did in my third trimester of my second pregnancy, and I want a women's shed to steal away to and ponder life and the existence of all of us in it. 

Or just a place to hide in to eat brownies in secret...

A Sweeping Choice

As I've gotten older and as I've had to hold my heart way down deep inside when my daughter got sick, I've started to learn that my life is just that, MY life. 

I don't need affirmation from others in how I attack each day that I wake up.

Or maybe I don't want to attack anything some days. 

And that's okay. 

A few of my very wise girlfriends recently posted some articles on FB about just this idea. 

The idea that who we want to be and what we want to do on this planet is OUR choice. 

Not family members, not other moms, not society as a whole. 

My choice. 

I choose to be a stay at home mom. 

I've worked hard in the past before my kids were born. 

Now they are my job. 

My youngest will be in school full time in the fall and it's been suggested that I go out into the world to work again. 

I do work, though. 

At home. 

We don't have a small suburban yard. 

We don't have one cat to feed. 

We have a few acres and 22 pets. 

22 pets!

We have lived on one income for the past 9 years. 

And 2 1/2 of those involved taking care of a very sick child who required numerous hospital visits and expensive trips to the pharmacy. 

And we have survived. 

We are whole. 

I may not spend money the way you spend money. 

And that's okay. 

What has happened is this...

I have learned to "be." 

To be...

Content with what we have. 

Thankful for our love, not our stuff. 

Okay with who I am. 

Which is a mom who's always available to my girls. 

If they are sick, I'm here.  

I'm the first face they see at 3:00 when the hardships of school are over. 

I'm the caretaker of a pony and goats and cats and dogs and chickens. 

Who need attention everyday as well. 

This is who I am. 

A 43 year old mother who waters her garden, bakes bread for dinner, advocates for childhood cancer awareness, and sweeps the floors with a good ol' broom. 

And I also am a 43 year old woman who enjoys putzing around at the library for something to stimulate my imagination.

Who can proudly say my husband is my best friend. 

Who smiles every time I hear his laugh. 

Who gets a kick out of planning our family's next travel adventure. 

I make sure to make time for girlfriend lunch dates and I like to photograph the everyday moments at hand. 

This is me. 

And I'm okay with that. 

Waiting In Line At Camp

We dropped off our eight year old daughter who is in remission with leukemia at summer camp.
She is in her third summer of sleeping in a cabin for a week, playing games, running around wildly, and eating pizza all while supervised by college counselors and a full medical staff including her oncologists.
It's something she looks forward to all year long now.
It's something that always makes me both nervous and joyful all at the same time.
A mama always gets nervous leaving her child somewhere that isn't under her own roof.
The "what-ifs" always creep up.
But she's in exceptional hands while at camp.

2011

I just wish other parents who drop their kids off were as informed about where they were leaving their children at for the week.

Okay, saying "other parents" is a very vague term.

I'm refering to the group of two parents/families that stood in line in front of me while we checked in at camp.

I've heard that there are some parents, when their child is diagnosed with cancer, who want to learn NOTHING about the disease, the treatments, the procedures.
They come to the hospital when told, they do what the doctor says, they never ask questions.
This was brought to my attention when I would come in with my notebooks filled with questions and folders full of leukemia medication side effects and copies of lab work that overflowed over the top.
The nursing staff told me that some people just don't want to deal.
Deal with the hard stuff.
But the hard stuff was coming and I wanted my family to be prepared.
So, I read everything I could (some I should not have read!) and I now have a vast understanding of what t-cell leukemia is and what effects we can expect from the treatments.

Back to those people in line at camp.
They knew one another.
From the Peoria branch of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
--The camp that we were in line for is Camp COCO and it's for children in Central and Southern Illinois who are treated at St. John's Children's Hospital and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Peoria Affiliate Clinic for cancer and blood disorders.---
It's great to know another family from the hospital that you spend/spent so much time at.
But they had no idea at all what they were dropping their kids off at.
Camp COCO is a camp that was started by Zoe's doctor and it's a SIU School of Medicine affiliate.
We get papers throughout the year about Camp COCO and Dr. Brandt's name is always on these papers.
He's the camp Director and Head Pediatric Oncologist at St. John's Children's Hospital.
Here's what I heard in front of me while in line to check Zoe into camp...
"This is a St. Jude Camp, right?"
"Oh yeah, only St. Jude kids are here."
"I thought so"
"My daughter (who was standing next to this woman and who had been at camp for the first time in 2012) said that there was another camp by this one last year that had some other kids in it."

Needless to say that my eyes bulged from my head and I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
A St. Jude Camp?
I was once again in the company of people who didn't have a clue about what was going on around them.
I call it the St. Jude Blindness Syndrome...which is a whole other blog post! 
Maybe I can kind of understand that when you are in the perils of your child's cancer that you wouldn't be on top of things and your brain is all fuzzy and spent...believe me, I understand that.
But these people were doing okay now with their kid's diagnosis.
They had already taken big fancy Disney and Hawaii trips from Make-A-Wish (something else I had to listen to while in that line on Sunday!)
The bottome line is that they are completely oblivious to what Camp COCO is all about and it made me pretty sick to my stomach.
No, I didn't say anything.
Sometimes I have no desire to speak with such self-involved people.
People who had never inquired more about what this camp really is all about.
Maybe they loved the idea that it was a free camp.
Maybe they are the kind of people who don't walk around the hospital with their folders crammed full of lab work and questions and a desire to know what's going on around them.
Maybe they want to get in and out and enjoy some perks of their kid's cancer along the way.
I don't know.
I don't know those people (thankfully!) and I'm sure I'm being harsh in my thinking of them.
But, we know what hard work EVERYONE puts into the camp experience.
We know the people who give up a week of their lives to give these amazing kids who have had to suffer through so much an amazing experience.
Who have dedicated their lives to the Camp COCO motto...Until There's A Cure, There's Camp.

2012

I just wish everyone who was in that line to drop off their child knew exactly what they were dropping them off at.

Even in the world of childhood cancer, amidst the terror and pain and tears, there are people like these adults.

People who can't see the forest for that lone tree they have stuck themselves behind.

2013

Learn more about Camp COCO

A Marriage

I've been married for thirteen years this month.
Thirteen glorious, funny, heartbreaking, amazing years.
All because I've taught my husband the rights from the wrongs of our married life.
And throw in two kids and the teaching keeps on comin' on.

Here are some things that my husband has learned about living in our life...

Do NOT give your wife a dust buster as an anniversary gift.

If Gigi ever asks you if we have some rope, always answer no.

Yes, popcorn and fried foods can be acceptable dinner entrees if mom is tired.

The Real Housewives of Orange County really ARE funny if you watch them long enough.

My friends are your friends.

Zoe does well in math because of her inherited dad-math smarties.

Don't let your math smarties go to your head.

It's great that you have a love for horror movies, but the children should not watch them at night until the years 2016-2018.

Having a child with cancer brought out the best in you that I don't think you knew existed.

Make all of the hot sauce that you want as long as you are alone in the house. Please don't asphyxiate the family.

Happy wife, happy life.





Parents Say The Darndest Things

When you have kids you hear yourself saying some strange things.
And we have had our share of strange things said around here.
Not just the regular parent things like "because I said so!" or "don't put that in the toliet!"
We have said the following things to our kids lately...

"Take that cat back outside Zoe!"
"Why?"
"Because that's not our cat!"
"It's not?!"

"Please do NOT spray air freshener into your hair so it smells like apples and do NOT spray it on the dog because he smells like a horse."

"Somebody get a spatula!"
"There's something strange in the crabitat and I'm not gonna touch it!"

"You may NOT put a potty seat in the living room so that you can pee and not have to miss watching Max and Ruby!"

"We do not put food up our nose that we will then put in our mouth!"

"Yes, that is a good hiding spot, but don't hide in the dryer with the door closed again."

"If you think the Orange Dreamsicle yogurt tastes like barf, then stop eating it!"

"Hold you head still or I'll never get these little pliers around your tooth!"

These things have all been said to my kids in the past two weeks.

It's going to be a looooooong summer...

I'm Perpetually Soggy

This has got to be the worst start to summer that I've ever been alive to witness.

It's been raining steadily since February.

It became snow at the end of March and left us with 16 inches of joyous white crap to deal with for a week.

It quickly melted back into the earth because the rain returned.

"Oh, hey rain. Where have you been these past 48 hours?"

"Bowling? You don't say?"

"Maybe you should have joined a traveling league and hightailed it out if here for the next 8 months...jackass."

So, I'm sure you can tell that this rain has bothered me a bit.

I have been trying to stay busy, though.

My laundry is caught up and I've sharpened all of the pencils in the antique Mexican bowl in case anyone wants to poke out their eyes from looking at the dismal weather radar again.

I can't believe the suicide rate isn't up in this area because of it.

Unemployment has nothing on dreary, rainy weather.

I have a friend who's the local news anchor and I can't believe she hasn't done a story on this yet.

But, then again, she's lost her mind for a totally different reason.

She has a growing baby sucking her brain away in what many moms call "baby is sucking my brain away syndrome."

i.e. she's pregnant.

I feel bad for the farmers around here.

I feel bad about all of mankind really.

Without the crops that the farmers around me are trying to grow, y'all are gonna starve this fall.

These crops of soy and corn that block my views at rural stop signs in July and that the deer like to munch on are this country's (as well as the world's) bread and butter.

But this rain is preventing crops from being planted and then what does get planted can get washed directly back out of the soil.

There goes the bread and butter.

I may have to eat my goats soon.

When you are a parent and it is constantly raining you get two scenarios to deal with.

Scenario One:

The kids are inside too much and in your hair.

Like, really in your hair.

I have been "the lady who visits Zoe and Gigi's hair salon which is really the kitchen table" one too many times.

I can feel the hairs being pulled put of my scalp from super pointy bobby pins being plucked out by chubby 4 year old hands in my sleep.

Not to mention the makeup job I get from my makeup artist daughter who runs Tramps By Zoe.

Scenario Two:

If you keep sending kids out in the rain you get children with foot rot and it starts to smell like wet dog in every room.

Yes, wet kid and wet dog smell the same after awhile.

Especially if it's been raining since February.

I'm half expecting the Cullens to move in next door.

Check out my friend Dawn's blog as she chronicles being pregnant with her second kid.

Growing Up

Zoe seems so determined by her idea of what she wants to be when she grows up.
If anyone, anywhere asks her that proverbial childhood question, she quickly responds with "an artist."
She's sure.
I've told her about art historians.
The words "art historian" seem to conjure up ideas in my head of job stability.
There will always be a need for people to tell others about art.

When I was a child and anyone asked me that ages old question I would respond with "ballerina or veterinarian."
I loved animals more than myself and I always took dance class.
No sports, no drama class, I couldn't draw a circle without one side going all lumpy, but I could dance.
So when I entered college and didn't know what to major in, I decided that veterinary school would be too hard (because of the math. I am horrible at math.), but that I could dance.
So I did.
And ended up with a Bachelor's of Science Degree in Commercial Studio Dance.
What a crack-pot idea that was.
But with my experiences in the college dance world I was able to take a trip to NYC (when I finnegaled my way into the Theatre and Art Department's annual trip which is ONLY for the aforementioned theatre and art students, not the dancers) and I got to dance at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
The Kennedy Center!
It's my dancing history pride and joy moment.
But, I moved to Chicago and started teaching dance and could only find a job in the burbs teaching snooty girls who didn't want to be there.
So I quit.
And entered the veterinary world.
I was hired (for reasons I still don't get) at a brand new clinic in the South Loop and there I was taught everything I wanted and needed to know about being a veterinary technician.
Because of that I met my now husband and was a veterinary technician for almost 15 years.
And a great time it was.
So, I guess I did get to be what I wanted when I grew up.
Kind of.

Then I had babies and I've been solely taking care of them since they popped out of me.
I thought briefly of becoming a midwife.
That probably stemmed from the fact that I was always watching "A Baby Story" on TLC.
Especially since I was breastfeeding Gigi for 12 months.
And breastfeeding for that long AND watching TLC shows makes a lady lose her mind.
Then one got cancer.
She was diagnosed exactly one day before I was to re-enter the dance world.
I was going to start teaching a class where the girls' dance.
But, that couldn't happen.
My next stage in life was to be inundated with leukemia information.
Chemo do's and dont's.
I was on fever patrol (still am actually) and became best friends with hand sanitizer.
Not what I planned for my life.
Certainly not what I planned for my child.

I now wonder what I am going to do with the rest of my life.
I don't really want to teach dance.
I don't want to be attacked by dogs and cats.
I don't want to go to school again unless I'm taking a class I really want to take (like when I took a class on bees a few years ago.)
It's hard to be this age and not know the answer to the "what do you want to be?" question.
I like photography.
I like baking.
I like animal husbandry (I'm going to get chickens sometime soon.)
I like helping the childhood cancer world.
Do others have problems with this?
Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?
If you figure things out for yourself give me a ring and let me know how you came to that conclusion.
Growing up is a tough business.