My days have been full.  Of lots of medicines.

These three in particular have taken a huge toll on my cognitive function, my ability to concentrate… and all three require additional other drugs to control their side effects.  Chemo brain is real, for sure. 

Three blue ones, one big white one, five little white ones.  Yuck.  Almost as yucky as this:

That is my boot, for my broken foot.  Six weeks out, and there is no evidence of any new bone growth.  See those pills up there?  Chemotherapy works because cancers are usually made out of fast growing new little baby cells, and the drugs are engineered to kill fast growing new little baby cells.  Guess what heals fractures?  Fast growing new little baby cells. 

So much of my day is spent dealing with my drugs, and their side effects, and trying to stay off my broken foot… trying to save up strength to really be present for my children when they need me… still teaching my Sunday School class, with lots and lots of help …  but every once in a while I manage to pull myself together to do something interesting.

This picture was taken at the Allegro Foundation Ambassador’s Ball.  The Allegro Foundation provides movement education classes for children with disabilities.  Danny, who started their classes in the fall, was chosen to be one of the dancers to perform at this REALLY fancy black tie fundraising event.  And they asked me to talk.  In front of all these seriously important people.  Who paid thousands of dollars just to sit and have dinner.  And who then gave way more thousands (adding up to about a zillion) in contributions. 

Danny and I both have so many stories to tell from that night.  I got brave and went to buy mastectomy prostheses to wear with my ballgown.  And had resulting technical difficulties.  That deserves its own post for sure   .  There was a whole contingent of big deal people from Washington DC, and I was so proud of Danny when he introduced himself to the ambassador to the US from Turkey (photo above) and all the other dignitaries.  So I gave my speech, and then afterwards had to talk to a whole line of people…. and for more than halfway through, this lady was standing next to me with her arm around me… I don’t have personal space issues, but it seemed rather odd.  Turns out it was Sue Myrick.  She wanted to tell me her breast cancer story. 

Then much to my surprise, Esther emailed me this morning, with a link to ME giving my speech.  A video on the Allegro Foundation website.  It was very awkward to watch myself  – crazy just regrown hair, fat face from steroids… needing the MC to haul me up the steps to the podium because it is quite difficult to walk in one fancy shoe, one boot and a floor length gown… but I watched it anyway.  Then I made the fatal mistake of emailing the link to my parents. 

The video is fourteen minutes.  They called me after fourteen minutes and two seconds and my dad asked me to please, please put it on my blog.  He never asks me for anything, so no matter how awkward and anxiety provoking it is to think about a video of ME talking about one of MY children, I figured I should do my best.

So here it is.  My speech from the 2012 Ambassador’s Ball.  I can’t embed it directly, but if you go to the Allegro Foundation website and click the link under the photo, there I am. 

http://www.allegrofoundation.net/event/amb2012.html 

Thanks for listening.  I’ve missed you.

Here’s ours so far… I’ll take a photo with the kids and our notebook tomorrow when we finish…. it’s simple and kid-friendly, but certainly nothing fancy. 

If you can take a picture of yours, and mail it to esdehority@aol.com , along with your family name if you want it included, or just the photo if you want to be anonymous…  I’ll collect them and put them up on the 26th as a little thank you for Ann.

Thanks!

My particular kind of broken foot is called an “incomplete jones” … and you can read about this injury, which is more common in big deal athletes, right here:

http://www.theacc.com/genrel/092005aaf.html

We have two big problems with this injury.  The first is that up to 50 % of the time, they just don’t heal by themselves, and the the orthodudes have to go in an put in a really big screw to hold it together.  This would be bad anyway, but with some of my drugs, I first have a higher risk of non-healing, and then have a higher risk of nonhealing after the surgery.  This is why I haven’t had parts of my spine fused yet… 

(this is not my X ray.  but they look similar, my fracture is a little more crooked and the periosteum – the skin on the outside of the bone) is all bunched and buckled) but the break doesn’t go all the way through to the other side… it stops at about 3/4 which is amazingly lucky.

The second problem is that to get this to heal, you really need to be non-weight bearing for a while.  Well, crutches are totally bad for arm lymphedema after having axillary dissection with cancerous lymph nodes.  Bad, bad, bad.

So he put me in a big tall boot, with all this heavy stainless steel folded around where the fracture is. He told me to do my very best to stay off of it, and if it’s not better, to return thursday, if it IS starting to get better, to come back on january 3. 

There is no doubt that if I can be good about staying off it, it will heal faster, and as much of a pain as it will be for everyone for a while, the net total time of immobilization will be lower than if I don’t stay off it and we need to have surgery.  I know the kids are already pretty used to my resting a LOT, but it’s hard to be down all the time… i am obviously not going to be doing ANY entertaining over the next couple of weeks, the housecleaning just isn’t going to happen and besides, this boot and I take up the WHOLE couch.  Skype.  That’s it.  We can do our holiday visiting over skype. 

Because see that screw?   (and of course that’s not my foot either) we don’t want one like that.  Ick.  so I’m hanging the do not disturb sign on the  front door, finishing my christmas shopping on amazon, and I’m going to just let it heal RIGHT NOW.

Actually, George didn’t interrupt the concert, but only because Dixon was standing in the back with him…  

But even though I really and truly was going to upload the video of Emily’s big night, these photos just can’t wait.  Neither could George’s birthday celebration.  He doesn’t actually turn four until Monday, but we had cupcakes with his little preschool class today, because Friday is their Christmas party and the last day of school before break.

We’ve been practicing for weeks:  How old are you?  FOUR!  And he knows the answer to the question, but he can’t say the “F” sound and he can’t get his thumb to stay tucked in, so he puts his whole hand out for you to help him fix it and says “How!!!”  It definitely doesn’t sound like “three” so I think he’s getting the concept.

But he needed his candle back on his cake.  He is definitely one of those “a place for everything and everything in its place” people.  This is a mixed blessing.  Back to the candles:  we have been working on birthday vocabulary, and he just can’t get all the signs for birth. day. cake.  all together without help.  he has decided that a better term for it is “hot cake” … because candles are hot, you know…

He knows the sign for candle, but often uses the word “Hot” for it instead.  For example (and this took us WEEKS to figure out) his word for children’s chapel at his preschool is “music hot”  …  totally makes sense, nobody’s ever taught him the sign for chapel, and there are candles and songs, therefore “music hot” it is. 

AND George got glasses today.  He’d had them as a baby, but then the ophthalmologist decided he didn’t need them anymore.  We knew better… we could tell from how he tilted his head and squeezed his eyes that something wasn’t right.

But it wasn’t until he could say the letter names well enough to read the chart reliably that he could prove it.  His visual acuity was 20/80, which just isn’t good enough, especially for a child with hearing issues, too.

He looks so grown up, though.  Like a four year old or something.  Sigh.  There’s something about birthdays and my last baby that are so bittersweet.   I’d better appreciate these last few days of having a three year old while I can….

I am so proud of my baby that I can’t even find words to tell you about it.

Tomorrow.  Video editing, more photos, flower arranging.

They fill the biggest pasta pot

But right now I just want to go stretch out on the bottom bunk with her and tell her how proud I am.  Fourteen years of practice, study, practice, lessons, practice… and one smile tells the rest of the story.

tomorrow, all day, I get to go to catechesis of the good shepherd training and learn how to help very small children fall in love with Jesus.  

it doesn’t get much better than that… except that Emily has to miss the class tomorrow, she is totally overwhelmed with school and college applications and scholarship auditions and interviews and more school….  so dixon and I decided for her that she would actually SLEEP tonight, have this unexpected time to catch up a bit tomorrow (dixon and the boys are under strict orders to pretend she is not home.  no matter how much george wants her…)  and then she might even be able to sleep again tomorrow night. 

but i will miss her.  I LOVE taking this class with her, thinking together about our sunday school students and putting our new learning into practice right away each week. 

i have several sessions worth of photos, with more tomorrow, no doubt.  maybe I’ll try the “just pick ten” principle for these so that they actually get posted   but for now, good night.

George is sleeping.  Right next to me.  Every once in a while, still sound asleep, he reaches his hand out to touch my face to make sure it’s still me there, keeping him warm.  He has NOT had a good day… his left ear drum ruptured this evening, despite oh-s0-many antibiotics.  There must be a weak spot in the drum from all his previous surgeries.  But obviously the infection wasn’t controlled, either.  I worry so much about his fragile hearing, that comes and goes with all these ear troubles.  his spoken language is SO delayed, and I know it’s not all due to the hearing loss, but still, it can’t help!  So tonight, I keep him tucked next to me, in case he has pain or a fever in the night.  I worry less when he’s close to me, right where he belongs.

But I still can’t sleep.  So i pull out my trusty headlamp, just right for working in bed without letting any light disturb little earache man.

Next from the pile of insomnia supplies on my bedside table is socks.  Ready to Kitchener.  I find that process tedious and boring, so it should help with sleep,yes???

but just in case, we add a sung rosary on my ipod.

It’s not conducive for speedy knitting, but that’s not what we’re trying to accomplish here.  I’m trying to quiet my mind, settle my spirit, and get to sleep.  Plus, it’s beautiful, beautiful, beautiful….

one essential part of this plan for getting to sleep is to expect that youu might drift off right in the middle of something… so a rosary without hard pointy crystal beads is good.  You wouldn’t want to go through all this effort to get to sleep and then wake up thirty minutes later with a Pater bead poking your eye…. 

And George still sleeps… maybe after just a few more stitches on that sock, I can just turn off my headlamp and try to follow his example.  No worries, no concept of the future… just taking things as they come, happy with each new interesting day….

What do YOU do when you can’t sleep???

George turns four this month, and is years, I think, from being ready to start lessons, but the other 80 % of my children play enough to make up for the delay…  plus, this year, Emily, Sam and Brian are studying with a small chamber music group.  Their director decided at the last minute that she wanted their quintet to play at a Community School of the Arts piano and guitar recital… and her boss even offered to iron my boys’ shirts if they could go. 

My children will never be professional musicians.  They practice well, study hard, and have amazing teachers.  They take advantage of opportunitues for master classes, honors orchestras and special performances.  Emily makes her conducting debut on December 13, and we are ever so proud of her.  But they all have other interests, career-wise.  So when they got the chance to be in this chamber music group, despite our vow to add NOTHING to already over-full schedules, we said yes.  Even though they’re not going to be symphony members when they grow up, if they can find a small group to study and play with, their minds and souls can continue to reap the benefits of so many years of work.  Learning this skill was worth it, we decided.

And it brings me such joy to hear them play together.  They tease me sometimes when their music moves me to tears… “was it that awful, mom?”  But they know that there are few things as important to me as their relationships with each other.  So when three or four of them practice, play, perform together, it just makes me happy. 

So today I ironed Brian’s shirt (Sam claimed that he had a freshly pressed one and I didn’t learn better until it was too late ) and we went to the recital.  Because it was last-minute, they only played one simple tune, and from where I was sitting I couldn’t even see Brian.  It made me cry anyway.  Dixon couldn’t be there, he’s right in the middle of his work week.  After plenty of coaching from Emily, I brought the video camera along, because Dixon’s like me… it really makes him happy that our kids love each other, and that they enjoy working and playing as a group.  I figured even a disaster of a video would make him smile.   Perhaps you remember my last violin video disaster?  With poor Sam and his recital a while back?  The time when I honestly thought that green meant the camera was GOING and red meant stop? 

So let me be honest with you.  The only reason I’m really putting in this video is to prove to you that I have now learned to use my video camera.  AND I have even learned to cut and paste video parts.  It’s just an easy little song.  The kids obviously played for longer than thirty seconds, but even if I thought it was beautiful and all, you’d probably get sort of bored with the whole thing.  But watch:  when the little light on the camera is RED, you can capture THIS:

Music for a lifetime, relationships for a lifetime.   I think it’s a valuable investment. 

First, let me introduce Rowena.  We have been online friends forever and ever, and IRL friends since sometime in the 90′s when we discovered that we had a special mutual friend… my mom and I went to a fiber arts convention together, and we both had other friends who would be going, and we were looking forward to introducing each other to one particular wonderful creative artist… how I wish I had photos!!  

But I do have photos from the last time she was here….

Go see this post for the rest…..

After a long career as a professional ballerina, Rowena turned to textiles and costume design.  Her first book was a 360 page textbook teaching apparel designers how to use CAD to make flat patterns…  http://www.wildginger.com/products/dfp.htm  But now she has a far better job, and I’ll let her tell you all about it. 

Guest Post – Rowena Aldridge

sweet elizabeth, thank you for inviting me to share the story of my book with your readers!  i feel like a groupie, getting to play with the big kids. 

this whole thing started the year ella was in kindergarten.  it was 2008, i quit work so we could begin homeschool, and that was the first time in her life (and in my entire adult life) in which i had a chance to really invest in the season of advent.  she and i went all out, we made an advent calendar and strung it up on the mantle and each day she would wake up and run to the fireplace to see what was inside that day’s pocket.  i was very unsure of what the advent calendar should include–i wanted it to center around the scripture story of the nativity but i also wanted to keep the element of treats in it too.  a friend had posted a list of suggested bible quotes with ideas of some small trinket to include with each one, and i dutifully printed out the quotes and gathered the trinkets and by the time christmas came, we had spent the entire season of advent with our various bibles, comparing and contrasting how the different translations treated the same verses, ella had a small collection of items that reminded her of each verse she had learned along the way, and the true message of the season had started to take shape in her mind.

the next year, i knew she wouldn’t fall for the same thing again.    so i started early, studying the nativity story, looking at a concordance and reading commentaries.  during this period i was very much struggling with my new role at home–before, i had always had a job and a career to give me some self-definition–but that first year oh homeschooling and housewifing was so new and it had not gone as i had expected (in other words, it was not perfect, which is how i imagined it would be.  oh, how we learn….)  that year i decided our advent calendar would follow the daily mass readings, which was fine but frankly somewhat impersonal, even though i was careful to choose little tokens to go with each reading.  ella still enjoyed the process but it felt “cold” to me.

it was at that time that i took to heart these words from the second chapter of luke:  “mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”  i so sincerely, desperately wanted advent to mean something beyond the words, beyond the story–i wanted it to invade and infiltrate and conquer my heart.  i began to write down little thoughts about the story and the verses and the season–whatever they were, whenever they came to me–believing they would somehow take shape and start to make sense. 

the third advent, i decided we’d have a jesse tree, like we did in our parish when i was a kid.  each day in the advent pocket there was a bible verse, a short reflection, then a jesse tree ornament craft for ella to make to remind her of what she had read.  by christmas day, we had walked together thru the cliff notes on the story of salvation–working with our hands, being makers–reflecting together at length, side by side, on the meaning and the purpose of the season, of our circumstances in life, of our place in the history of god’s plan.  that was when i realized that it was time to share my story–because i had finally begun to understand my story.

the real work of putting the book together began with me re-reading everything i had written and praying to be enlightened as to how it might be of use to someone else.  LOL  who wrote this:  rowena the wife?  the mother?  the person who used to be someone else but is now someone new?  it came to me that the writer was actually the person i wanted to be:  rowena the homemaker.  so with that in mind, i started organizing the material around what another wife or mother might understand and relate to.

originally there were meditations for each day of advent but the message was not clear enough yet for that structure, so i scaled back and chose to offer just one meditation for each week of advent, and to use the ones that gave me the most confidence and peace in my desired role as the maker of a home.  i decided it might also be helpful to include a few of the passages that had resonated with me, and the questions those passages caused me to pray as well.  often we don’t say our real fears or hurts or angers out loud and we divert attention by complaining about the things that don’t really matter, so we don’t know that there are others out there that struggle with the same things we do.  i hope that by being transparent on my journey, other wives and mothers might know they are not alone. 

this first edition of the book includes the weekly meditations, several journaling prompts for each week, and suggestions for how to put the reader’s reflections to work in daily life.  already, i’ve received feedback that the meditations are resonating with other women.  as a gift to my readers, i created a set of printable journaling pages to go along with the book. 

it is my hope that this book is the beginning of a conversation, between myself and my readers, and amongst the readers themselves, that will help us support and comfort each other through the story that begins with one special young woman whose life as a mother and wife unfolded in ways she had not imagined either.    “

You can find Rowena’s book at  www.aneverydayadvent.com

And you can follow Rowena’s journey as a mother, a wife, an artist… at her blogs here:

www.romesticity.com
www.rostitchery.com

www.the-ella-echo.com