"...no dead end in sight..."

still here

I realized this morning I haven't updated in almost 6 months.

Still here, still in Abilene. More later as I'm not used to blogging, you know :)

half day

I had a moment this morning where I thought, you know what, given everything I think things have turned out pretty well. We are just fine.

It was a pretty surreal moment of being content and optimistic and disregarding the other paths that could have been taken. I still say everything happens for a reason.

Time to get ready for work...! Just thought I'd share.

link dump

So this weekend somehow I ended up being pulled into the lovely whirlwind madness that is StumbleUpon. I wasted hours upon hours stumbling various things, and now that I have 2940672496 windows open I need some place to put them all. I'm pretty sure the website stores these links for me but 1) I am lazy, and 2) these are too good not to share. So here is a cross-section of the best of  what I'm stumbling upon right now:

• 30 Outdoor Beds for a Romantic Summer I saw the first pic on this site and went HOLY HAMMOCKS BATMAN. To heck with outdoor beds, if I ever have a backyard I am putting a hammock in it. I also had an idea where this design could operate on a pulley system and patio furniture could be placed under a hammocky shade structure?
• Planet eBook My current obsession with someday having a giant library room in our magic Barbie dream house is parallelled by my obsession with having a giant ebook collection to carry everywhere on my ipad. This does not help this any.

• Lace Lamp DIY I want to do this but I don't know which room in my house I'd prefer to be lit in creepy doily light. It'd be a fun project to make a light to read by though? OH or a tiny nightlight. Yeees.

• Scallop Carbonara with Asparagus I mean, just look at the photo. OM NOM NOM.

• American English Dialects I found this to be pretty interesting because of the various places in the country where my friends and relatives live.

• Tokyo City Guide (Japan-Guide.com) This one isn't from Stumble Upon, but I've had it open because lately I've been thinking about saving tons of monies for planning a week in Japan; ie: our honeymoon that we've never taken. (Although we can safely call any extended vacay since our wedding a honeymoon now, right? XD) Jay is down for the Yebisu beer museum and I'd like to see the Ghibli museum too.

thinking about bailo

This week has been a rough week. I know I whine a lot but this has tested me and my family like nothing has for the better part of five years, I'd say. Certainly no one in my generation of my family has gone through this before, on this level.

A week ago last Wednesday we flew back from five days in San Diego. Beaches, museums, perfect weather, great food - it was relaxing other than getting there and back. Almost the proverbial calm before the storm.

Monday I called my mom and we were talking and all of a sudden her voice gets serious (like in the "somebody died" tone) and she goes "so [my aunt] hasn't called you?"

Me: "...no. Why?"

Come to find out, a week ago today/last Saturday/three days after we saw them, my cousin woke up blind in her left eye. Like bam, out of nowhere. They went to doctors and specialists in San Diego who diagnosed a brain tumor.

My cousin? Little B - not so little now, taller than I am, fluent in Mandarin Chinese, first chair in the clarinet, who succintly told me she wants to be an architect and study abroad in Beijing and build skyscrapers and go to Stanford like her dad - who dances randomly like the penguin from Madagascar on that one Intel computer chip commercial when dancey music comes on the TV - I held her on my hip when she was a baby - the quirky teenager who beads necklaces for her future empire in her spare time now couldn't see out of one eye.

So they drove back to San Francisco on Wednesday after the MRI in San Diego confirmed a glioma.

I got the news Wednesday morning, and Wednesday night at church I brought it up in our class when they asked if anybody had any prayer requests. It's odd for me to talk about things that I feel need to be prayed for, partially because I've been so skeptical about religion in my younger years that it makes me feel awkward, and partially because there's always somebody who has something much more horrible going on in their lives so I feel bad for bringing up my own worries, and partially because I'm not used to letting other people help me with my problems. It's hard enough sometimes to lean on my own husband because I am so used to just freight-training my way through my stress which I realize often ends in an emotional implosion.

We prayed. I remember hearing them say in prayer to lift her up, and in the earnestness of those words I felt tears coming to my eyes because they aren't Christian, and I hoped in my heart that God would somehow bless them even though they don't believe in it. Work your magic, deity, and please God make her be okay in spite of this. I felt my true desperation, of someone who can feel someone else suffering, and it breaks my heart in my own helplessness and my lack of control of the matter. And I cry because I am afraid, and I cry because the tragedy of it is that she is a really sweet kid in spite of how spastic her behavior is sometimes. She doesn't deserve this, I keep thinking over and over to myself. But then, who does?

I also got upset because it occurred to me that it's just her and my sister that I have on my dad's side. Our family isn't big like some, and we are close-knit when it counts, but at the end of the day it also occurred to me that my sister and I are all the cousins she has, and we need to be there for her like no other. I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

To be fair, I haven't called my aunt since then because to think too hard about it makes me break down and cry, and I didn't want to make her any more stressed than she already is. When I talk to her I want to be strong in my voice and right now when I start to talk about it sometimes my voice sounds like a record scratch.

I got an email from my dad yesterday, and my email goes to my phone, so of course I read it during the thick of work and misread it, and thought he had actually gone out to San Francisco to see my aunt instead of talking to her on the phone. I called my mom during my lunch break and my dad picked up her cell phone and I what the hecked a little bit. And then, a split verdict.

The good news: some head honcho cancer specialist in San Francisco has ruled that this is not a glioma. It's some big fancy name for what is essentially severe inflammation of her optic nerve.

The bad news: her other eye is starting to show symptoms.

So - a mixed bag? The inflammation they are thinking they can cure with some sort of steroids, and there is a possibility she could get her sight back within a few months. I don't know how to feel about this trial but I do feel that the prayer has done something. I've never experienced this before but it seems like when it counts God will in fact take control of the situation.

In the middle of the week when I was feeling really low and really unable to cope with this situation I found one of the psalms online and thought I would share. When I start to think about it and need to calm myself down (say, doing payroll at work and about to cry) I read over it on my phone and I think it helps:

Psalm 146
1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
2 While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.
3 Put not your trust in princes, [nor] in the son of man, in whom [there is] no help.
4 His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.
5 Happy [is he] that [hath] the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope [is] in the LORD his God:
6 Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein [is]: which keepeth truth for ever:
7 Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners:
8 The LORD openeth [the eyes of] the blind: the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down: the LORD loveth the righteous:
9 The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.
10 The LORD shall reign for ever, [even] thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the LORD.

Again, this is a part of me that I don't really talk about and yet I feel like I've done that a lot lately. Growing up, Christians seemed like "those crazy biblethumpers" or looney evangelicals, highly offensive and oppressive people, and I don't consider Jay or myself to be in any category like that. I don't know. It tends to comfort me and I know as human beings we are presumptuous to think we know all the mysteries of the universe. But I feel like given how this week has gone, I needed to explain how I'm getting through it because that is just as important to me as the raw facts of what is going on.

c'est la...

So I am probably going to be heinously late for work today (read: on time) but I figured I should update seeing as how the next time I turn around it will be August. Or Christmas. Plus Enzo is being so quiet in his room I feel like I should use this peaceful time to my advantage.

I know I keep saying I'm going to update about my health. I would love to say there is a definite something wrong with me but nope. I went in last week to get a sonogram and drank a ton of water and felt the left side of my pelvis hurting. It's like having a full bladder was squishing whatever is in there hurting and it was like OW x1000. After doing the peepee dance, paying monies out of pocket to get this done, and having the tech go "oh, it looks like you have a cyst! :D", the doctor came back with...

...nothing. He said the sonogram was perfectly normal.

I just don't understand. Then why am I hurting every day? Can you at least tell me that?

I was, and am, still angry that I can't be 100% diagnosed and that all my doctor has right now is a theory of endometriosis simply because he has now ruled out an ectopic pregnancy (which is another story-slash-adventure entirely), tumors, and/or cysts. Also angry that the nurse's response when discussing a laparoscopy was "well, he might not [read: probably won't] find anything!" I don't need to hear that. If this is in fact endometriosis, which doesn't show up on a sonogram, I need to know that he is going to go in there, find out why I'm hurting, and make it stop hurting. So much for confidence in my physician.

I hate doctors to begin with. I think they're all out to make a buck and don't really give a crap whether or not I'm cured, because if I'm fixed then they can't put me on a medication for the rest of my life or keep making money on inconclusive exam visits or labwork. I think the entire healthcare industry in this country is a racket. Having no insurance right now does not help assuage this any, either, except that my lady doctor is being kind enough to offer us discount rates because he knows we will pay as much out of pocket as possible. (But maybe he's actually making more money upfront than if he had to run me through the insurance wringer, anyway. Who knows.)

On top of all of this, my grandmother is out in California right now and I would LOVE upon LOVE to go out there to visit her. I NEED a vacation. Work is my obsession right now and I have vetoed so many fun weekends because at this point they NEED me to work on weekends just so the week goes smoothly. I want to ask off but I know the laparoscopy is inevitable so I have to be a grownup and budget time for that. But I feel like my brain is overheated and I just need time by the pool and at the beach and weather that isn't 105 degrees on a cool day. I'm sick of feeling burnt [out] and crispy every day.

But anyway. Ultimately this is all to make sure that my body is a good host for babies and hopefully I won't have problems having babies like my mom did, when we get to that point where having babies would be an option. Lately I have been kind of baby melty, like that feeling where I see one and I go B'AWWWWW and I want to hold it and just get a hug from this small creature and smell its gorgeous little baby smell. Is that bizarre? I don't even like kids some days. I don't know if this just means I need a stuffed animal or what.

I'm sure there is some psychoanalysis that could be had but really I think my hormones are just going HEY MAYBE YOU SHOULD PROCREATE. But we aren't at that point financially or emotionally as a couple, I think. Maybe in a few years? I don't know. I just wish I could quit having these lovely dreams at night and then I wake up and we are still an even number and my kneejerk reaction is to feel so...what, empty? Like a shell of a person, of a woman. Like I'm insufficient as a woman or as a wife. I don't know what I will feel if they come back and say my insides are irreparable. Almost as bad as if they were to say there's nothing wrong.

Hello, anxiety! I tell myself, you will be just fine thereisnothingwrongwithyou. And most days it works.