Life at the Academy

I’m choosing today to write again after a bit of a hiatus for a reason.  It’s Fathers’ Day and I’m happy to say that my father seems to be doing well.  I stopped writing for a while because all I wanted to write about was my dad but I didn’t want to write about what he was going through.  It scared me and I had a hard time saying it out loud so there was no way I was actually going to write it.  Back in February, my dad called me to tell me that he was having a biopsy because his PSA blood test was high.  I’m grateful that he got tested like he’s supposed to.  The biopsy came back positive for cancer.  Yep, the C word.  I remember the phone call – I was planning on calling him that day to check on him anyway.  It was a hard conversation as my uncle, his brother, had just died from cancer back in November.  The word scared the crap out of me.  I wanted to burst into tears but felt like I had to be strong on that phone call.  He was very matter of fact about it all.  I was googling prostate cancer while I was on the phone with him.  I was relieved at the information I was finding on-line as most of it said that prostate cancer is highly curable when caught early.  I couldn’t help but worry though.  Some people do die from it and I didn’t want my dad to die from it.  I kept thinking positive and prayed every day for him.  He opted to have surgery to remove it and scheduled it for the day after Buster’s birthday.  He had the surgery as scheduled, came out of it fine although he was quite goofy when I talked to him that evening.  Biopsies of nearby lymph nodes came out negative, however some of the cancer cells were on the outside of the prostate.  Another PSA test showed that there it hadn’t spread (as of yet).  It’s been over 2 months since the surgery and he seems to be healing fine although he still has some progress to make.

On this Fathers’ Day, I’m especially grateful to have my dad to honor.

I’m also very grateful for my husband, the father of our children, who supported me through this and loves our children tremendously.

Dads Rock.

Am I still allowed to call him my baby boy?  He turned 11 today and is proudly claiming himself to be a tween.  I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or bad thing.  I do know that it’s a little easier to accept my 2nd born turning 11 than it was my first.  What seems really odd is that I can’t figure out where the past 4 years or so have gone.  How did he get from being the cute little 7 year old to the big boy he is now?  I can’t quite call him a young man yet because he still looks like a kid – still small, the cute face that younger kids have, the cute little booty, you know what I mean.  But the future is looking me in the eye when I glance at Doodles who is only 2 1/2 years older than he is.  And I mean glancing me in the eye because she is nearly as tall as I am.  There seems to be a huge difference between the two of them and it saddens me to think that in a couple of years, he won’t look like the cute little boy.  He’ll take on a new body of a gangly teenage boy.  He might even start to get body hair.  Eww.  And undoubtedly, his behavior and attitude will change with him as he grows, tests limits, and learns how to be an adult.  So, I’m going to savor these childhood days when he wakes up before me and comes to snuggle with me in my bed.  I’m going to appreciate all the times he tells me how much he loves me with no shame or embarrassment about saying it.  I’m going to get on the floor and play Bionicles or Playmobil with him.  I’m going to enjoy the time in everyway I can because I know in the not too distant future, those days will fewer and far between.  And I’m going to come back and read this post every so often to remind myself because it’s so easy to get caught up in the things that don’t matter.

Happy Birthday Buster.

Yep, it was just a matter of time before I would have to post something about Facebook.  I actually signed up for it a long time ago, but never did anything with it.  Then my sister-in-law signed up and added me as a friend.  My cousins started showing up on there too and before I knew it, I had 10 friends.  I never thought I would have 10 friends.  I decided to go ahead and look for some other friends and found what has become a growing list of people I went to high school with.  I went ahead and requested a few of those people for friends and was surprised to find that I was actually getting friend requests from some of the others!  This was totally amazing to me as I never really had that many people that I would have considered friends.  Before I knew it, I was up to 70 friends!  I was kind of excited to start with to see what kind of lives my old classmates were leading.  Deep down, I was hoping many of them had changed.  They haven’t.  The coolest people are the ones that weren’t in the in-crowd back then.  They stayed true to themselves and are kind, humble people.  The ones that were in the in-crowd in high school tend to fall into two groups – the ones that people liked because they were cool and the ones who did all they could to try to prove they were cool.  The ones who were cool still are.  The ones who thought they were, are still out to prove that we should all envy them.  I ignore most of what they have to say.

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about Facebook is seeing pictures of friends and relatives who live far away.  I’ve chatted with some of my cousins more in the last few months than I have in the last few years.  I’m getting to know my cousins’ wives even though I’ve only seen them a couple of times.  I was able to chat with an old classmate who now lives in Australia and cracked up when he greeted me with “Hey, hot momma.”  I heard the story about how another classmate adopted 3 siblings to add to their family.  I have fun sending and receiving flair and taking some of the little quizzes.  The best thing is the birthday reminders though.  Not that I would ever forget a birthday.