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 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.

Today was the big day. Doodles was up and ready to go first thing this morning to the orthodontist. When they called her back, she went without me. I sat and talked to our old next door neighbor who was there with his daughter for awhile. I couldn’t stand it for long though and ventured back to check on her. She told me to leave. I refused until I got this picture of her.

I went and got a Starbucks then. When I got back, she was ready to go with her pink and purple bands on them. I just had to set up her next appointment when they’ll get her started wearing rubberbands. She decided on a Sonic grilled cheese and shake for lunch. It was fun watching her eat it.

So last night, after the kids were in bed, I was on-line on my laptop and noticed that Doodles was also on-line.  I had sent her to bed an hour earlier.  Her laptop was shutdown and sitting on her desk where I could see it.  I was puzzled for a moment before I figured out what she had done.  I went in to her dark room and she was “asleep” and even moaned a bit as I reached down her arm to find her iPod touch in her hand underneath her blanket.  The little rat.  As soon as I confiscated it, she spoke up to tell me that she couldn’t sleep.  No wonder.  I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I was in bed getting on the internet with my iPod either.  I started to think it wasn’t such a good idea to have gotten it for Christmas.  And then, as if to prove it’s usefulness today, it actually helped Doodles answer a question on a standardized test.  She told me there was a question about how many hours of sunlight there were in different places and she knew the answer because of the Sunlight app that she downloaded to her iPod.  She’s rather fascinated by it and was able to picture what it looked like to answer the question on the test.  Maybe we need to add more educational apps and take off the Facebook and Myspace apps.

I was having the usual Christmas day phone conversation with my brother the other day when I heard him ask his wife if she wanted to tell me.  Just hearing those few words made me hopeful that there was some good news coming from them.  After all, when they were married a year and a half ago, my sister-in-law, Allison, talked about having a baby sooner rather than later given the advanced age of my brother.  He was 37 afterall.  So we waited and waited for the good news.  Apparently they have decided it’s time to change their lives in ways they can’t even imagine.  The baby should be born sometime in August.  I think the 13th would be a very good day to have a baby.  Boxman and I have just been snickering about the whole thing, just as we did when his sister was expecting.  Having been there, done that, it’s just so funny thinking about all the changes they are going to experience and how clueless one is about it beforehand.  Bwhahahaha. 

I can’t wait to hold that sweet baby in my arms.

This is a question that has been discussed a lot at our house over the past month. I was told more than once by Buster that he knows Boxman and I are Santa. I even confirmed it multiple times. We looked up the “Dear Virginia” letter on the internet and talked about how we all are Santa. But somehow, he wasn’t really ready to give up on the jolly old fat man in a red suit. We were tracking Santa on the Norad Santa Tracker and he panicked when Santa was in Mississippi, yelling that we all had to get to bed immediately so that Santa would come. He was quite panicked at the thought of not being asleep before Santa hit Louisiana. I have never seen him get to bed so fast in my life. So, I don’t quite know where we stand with Santa right now, but we all did have a great Christmas. I got a new laptop since my old one is less than dependable. Boxman got some expensive tools that he bought himself, along with some goodies the kids and I picked out for him. Doodles and Buster continue to be spoiled rotten – I’m sure you can smell them from there.

I hope y’all had a very merry Christmas too.

When we were in Iowa for my uncle’s funeral, we spent some time with my grandma at the nursing home.  The first trip there included Kentucky Fried Chicken for 12. It’s not easy fitting 12 people in a nursing home room for lunch that is equipped with only 3 chairs, including the folding chairs stored in the closet.  So, to accomodate us, Grandma told me I could sit on her hand.  When I tried to do that, she pinched my butt.  I felt compelled to pinch hers back being careful to not grab her bedsores.  She told us a few stories from her younger days, including the ever popular one where her younger sister climbed the windmill, got stuck and when she tried to help her down, she got blamed for it and was in trouble for it.  Somehow, she got on the topic of going on a date.  I teased her about the boy picking her up in a horse and buggy.  She quickly corrected me and told me he picked her up in a kiddie car.  All of that paled to the next time we visited her.  We arrived, along with my sisters and their families, during dinner time, so she was sitting at a table with a couple of other women eating.  After a bit, it looked like she was getting uncomfortable in her wheelchair.  Boxman and my brother-in-law offered to pull her up a bit and get readjusted.  She surprised us all and said, “No, I have a hole in my ass.”  We all started laughing so hard.  The poor women eating with her were busting up as much as we were and I’m betting they didn’t know that she was referring to her bedsores.  The one even looked a bit embarrassed, covering up her face.  We couldn’t stop laughing about it all night.  My first response was, “So do I.”  While my sister remarked, “Well now we know where we got that from.”  We left the nursing home to go eat dinner with my mom, dad, brother, and sister-in-law, who knew nothing of the story.  In the middle of dinner, Doodles got up, proud to have my permission to say a swear word, and informed everyone that she had a hole in her ass.  Those of us who heard those words earlier were busting up laughing once again while the others looked in awe of Doodles wondering why on earth she would be saying such a thing.  We shared the story with everyone else and we all laughed some more together.  My sister had gone back to visit my grandma again before she left to go home and Grandma told her that she said it to make sure that the kids would remember her.  Oh, yeah, that one will go down in the family memories.

The past week has been draining to say the least. We left on Wednesday morning and went to southern Illinois to see some friends and break the drive up. The next day, we drove the rest of the way to Iowa, stopping in Galesburg, IL to have some spinach bisque and ice cream crepes at The Landmark. When Boxman worked in Galesburg after college, it was our favorite restaraunt. The waitress thought we were crazy when we let Buster order just an ice cream crepe for dinner. Eventually we made it to Center Point. The next two days were spent visiting with family, going to the visitation, and then the funeral. I found myself mourning not just for my uncle, but also for my grandfather who died 21 years ago. I also cried for my dad who was too stoic to shed tears, and for my grandma who couldn’t go to the funeral nor really come to believe that she had outlived another son. I cried for my cousins who will undoubtedly pick up the phone to call their dad countless times in the coming months and years only to realize he won’t be on the other end. And I cried for the loss of the family farm – the land cared for by my uncle, grandpa, and great grandpa that might not be in the family much longer. But through all my tears, I found hugs from aunts, uncles, and cousins whom I see too infrequently. After the service, some of the first people to come give me a hug were cousins of my dad that I hadn’t seen for many years and wouldn’t have known had they not been introduced to me the night before. Yet there they were with hugs and stories about my dad and uncle to share. It was nice to know that despite the distance and time between us, family is still family. Even my sisters managed to find peace with each other for a few days if not longer.