Notes on my vacation...

Ahhh... traveling.... It can be so much fun. I had an awesome vacation this past week. I need to make myself some notes so I don't have a fit of chemo brain and forget what all I wanted to talk about. In short, I loved every minute of my trip. We had lunch with some friends. We had lunch with some family. We spent quality time with our cousins. We visited a vodka distillery. We hung out with aunts and uncles. We saw a beautiful wedding. I met new friends ( who now have been informed... by me, of course, that I am the most awesome person ever... hey... when you got it, you know?). I found some butter. I drank some wine. I was guarded by ferocious dachshunds at every nap. I video taped some silly things. But mostly, I enjoyed being surrounded by people who love me for me. So... I have lots of posts to write, but right now I am going to bed.

How a bad dress can be a good thing.

Ahhh... Vacation!  Don't we all love that word? For me, this has been a double vacation. I have been off the harsh chemo drugs for a month and I am in the bosom of my extended family for a week. For me, that has been a recipe for relaxation. And when I relax... I sleep. I think I have slept more since Tuesday than I have slept in months. I get up, I have coffee, I go nap. I get up, I have another coffee, we go out for a couple of hours to visit, I nap. Last night we came back from lunch with friends and I fell asleep. My cousins and I were going to go out, but at midnite when I finally woke up, I found them asleep on the couch... so I went back to bed. I think my body has decided that if it isn't wearing the correct colors of work, it has a license to sleep. And I am not fighting it.

I am back up north with Michele's side of the family, who I adore. Strangely, they like me too. I don't really know what I did to earn this love, but I am not complaining. The day before yesterday, we visited with a cousin for lunch, hit an Aunt and uncle for a brief visit and then stopped at yet another aunt and uncle's house for a much longer stay. I don't think Michele intended the visit to be that long, but see... there was this fiasco with a dress.

One of the cousins is getting married. It's going to be a Renn/Celtic wedding and the flower girls dress is supposed to be period clothing. Now... I have some experience with period clothing. Here are some pictures of my absolutely beautiful, perfectly made Revolutionary war dress.



Full Length shot of Revolutionary war era dress

Handmade Revolutionary war era dress.

For a brief period, My friend Nancy had me joining her family in Rev War re-enacting, and those dresses are complicated and they are made on the person to fit exactly. Those dresses were perfect to every last detail. This flower girl dress looked worse than something made for a Walmart costume section. The seams were puckered. The thread was black on the red satin, sewn unevenly. When we removed the hemline seam to re stitch it, we found extra material sewn into the hem for no reason. It looked like the seamstress had just folded the bottom over a couple of times, stitched it quickly with whatever thread she had and then cut off the excess. There were seams stitching nothing to nothing. The zipper wasn't anchored in. There was extra material everywhere, the black neckline was torn and hastily re stitched to cover the hole. Basically, I could have sewn this while under the influence of Chemo. The kicker... the family was charged $150 for this. I can only assume this dress was not finished, but was hurried because of a short time line. At any rate... the dress repair provided me some time to sit and visit with my In-laws. And I enjoyed it. For me... the terrible dress was worth thousands because it gave me a chance to sit and share an evening of closeness with one of my Aunts. I mean, I love crafting with people. And ripping stitches out of the same hemline makes you sit close, and as you seam rip, you talk. You share funny stories. You plan. You ask questions. you learn.

I kinda hope there are more bad dresses out there waiting...

Shake your Bon- Bon!

I am probably the silliest woman in the world. People who know me well know that I am missing  that filter that most people have that stops them from doing insane things in public. I have been known to sing loudly (and badly!) at work. I will break out into a rumba or swing if the song on a store's radio system is one that I like. I wear goofy hats, odd glasses and will happily show you my mismatched striped socks if you ask. I have no problem flashing my mastectomy scars at the curious. One of my favorite things to do, however, is dance. I love dancing. Michele and I took ballroom dance lessons for about 3 years before I was diagnosed.  With the cost of treatment, my up and down energy levels and other factors, we had to stop taking lessons, and basically stopped going to the dance parties. But that didn't stop me from dancing on my own.

People worry about how I am feeling with all that has been going on health-wise. Well... at the height of the really toxic treatments, I felt like hammered whale poop. But after the mastectomy and the change to different chemo treatments, my energy started to return. As it returned, I started trying to return to normal... Or at least my version of normal.

Let me set a little scene for you. We live in a small southern town. Everyone here knows everyone else. We watch out for each others kids and dogs (yep... if your dog gets loose and you aren't home, someone will just put the dog in their own yard till you get home, or in my case, since I work walking distance from the house, they just call me at work and say Hey! Cleo is on my porch. Should I just put her in the yard again?). As the weather warms up, we spend evenings on our front porches. You will hear guitars playing into the wee hours, sometimes accompanied by singing (One night my neighbors sang "Simple Man" by Lynard Skynard till 2am). Sometimes alcohol is involved and you end up with the incident we all like to remember as the underwear serenade (a Neighbor stood in his doorframe, in his tighty whiteys serenading us with "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" ... and this was the first night we were in our new home... talk about Welcome to the neighborhood).  No one here calls the cops on this stuff... we all just get along and sometimes shout out song requests when we get tired of the same song over and over (I swear... I do know all the words to every Skynard song now). So, my contribution to the neighborhood weirdness quota is my dancing. I dance anywhere and everywhere. Mowing the yard is a great time to practice your latin hip movements and also, if you have a stubborn patch... West Coast Swing will get all those stubborn weeds.  I am the Lady who Dances while Mowing.

Lately, however, I have added a new title.

See... I have my IPod. On that evil tool is a whole bunch of dance music. I walk to work listening to it. Okay... maybe WALK is not the right word. In truth, I dance to work and Dance home from work. Yep... my porch sitting neighbors have seen be bust out in triple steps, arm styling and many a twirl. They have witnessed many a West Coast spin as I dance with my imaginary partner down the sidewalk.  On one memorable day, a man walking the opposite direction with his groceries stopped to join me as we both displayed that , Yes, we DO have the moves like Jaggar.

So... almost two years into a Stage IV diagnosis, I am still feeling well enough to share my joy.