Francesco, Tina, and Grace

I have a tumor.

I don't think I've mentioned that on here yet. It's a pituitary tumor and it's about the size of a robins egg. I found out right before Thanksgiving last year, and I've been on medicine for it since then.

When I got diagnosed, Sandy, a lady at Bingo, told me to name it. She said to name my pain so that it's less frightening. My friend named my tumor Francesco. My sister called it Tina once. I've seem to refer to it as Grace. I'm sure it's not the reason I'm so clumsy, but Grace seems appropriate.

The medicine I take for Grace makes me feel worse then I did before. When I first started it, I had a migraine for a week straight. I couldn't see or think straight. My eyes burned. My head throbbed. My balance sucked. I kept running into things at work. It was horrible.

After a few weeks, I got used to the side effects. They went away for the most part. Occasionally, I was still plagued with headaches or with a horrible stomach ache and vomiting. I missed a lot of school this semester thanks to my meds.

I went to the doctor a few weeks ago to get a check up on how my meds are working. My levels didn't change. He increased my dose--doubled it, actually. I wanted to cry the second he said to double it. I wanted to curl in a ball and just cry until there was nothing left to cry about.

I just want the surgery. How hard is that to understand? I want the tumor removed. I want it gone. I want it to be gone so I can just have a chance of getting better and living some resemblance of a normal life. I just want to feel good for once in my life. I haven't felt good in so long. I just want to feel better and feel good in my own skin. Is that too much to ask for? I keep gaining weight because I can't lose it because of Grace. My clothes don't fit right. I'll have to buy new ones soon, but I don't want to. I want to buy new clothes, but smaller ones--not bigger. In part, yes, it's about losing weight, but more than that is that feeling of wellness. I don't feel well. I'm getting worse migraines then before. My stomach is always queasy. I'm dizzy in the morning. I keep getting spasms across my body.

I just want surgery.

Is that so much to ask?

Feeling Melancholy

I haven't posted on here in a while.

I haven't had much to say.

I still don't. But, I find myself thinking about the past a lot tonight, which is never a good thing. I try to look towards the future as much as I can. Hell, usually I'm planning something that is still a year or more away. Perhaps, the future doesn't hold the answers I seek, but I don't think the past does either. It's the present that I need to start seeing.

With thoughts of the past, come a melancholy or depressed air. I think about what if I would have done something differently or handled a situation better? What if I had stayed with him? What if I would have stayed friends with her? A lot of what ifs.

I fully believe that the choices I've made bettered my life. The people I've said goodbye to are gone for a reason. I've either out grown them or became a better person without them. I do believe in my choices, but what if?

Perhaps, tonight is a night of thinking about the past because I finally see a future for myself. I see a beautiful niece to spoil and love. Work is going well. I'm writing again. I'm meeting new people. I'm reconnecting with old friends. I have only a year left of college. Soon, I will be off at grad school fulfilling my dream. Things are happening for me. I'm happy.

But even as things are getting better, I'm becoming aware of the things I have lost. A year ago, I lost my first dog. Three Christmas's ago, I lost my grandfather. I've lost my first love. I've lost my best friend of three years. I've lost some of my closest friends to the distance of college, some who I thought would always be there for me.

I don't know what secrets the past holds, and I'm not sure I care. I don't know what the future is going to give me. I could end up successful, or I could end up under an underpass selling stories for food. But right now, I need to focus on tonight, and maybe the homework that is due tomorrow.

Aubrey Elizabeth

Remember how I said I was going to be an aunt?
Well...I am!
Meet my beautiful niece (take that Jessie!) Aubrey Elizabeth.

Q1: If you could have lunch with 3 people (alive or dead)... who would it be?

If I could have lunch with anyone, I would first choose my Grandmother. She died when my mom was 8 so I never got to meet her. I've always imagined what life would be like if she would have survived. Maybe I would feel like I actually had grandparents. Maybe she would bake and teach me old family recipes. Maybe she and I would have done all the things that grandparents are supposed to do with their grandchildren, and all the things that mine did not do. I would want to have lunch with her.

Along with her, I would have lunch with John Green. He's one of my favorite authors. I would love to sit and talk to him about his books and where he gets his inspiration. He's such a great writer.

Other than that, I would really love to have lunch with David Tennant. He is one of my favorite actors. I'm not one of those insane fan girls that freaks out over meeting people, but I would love to just meet David Tennant.

To write or not to write?

Write everyday.

It's the basic rule to be a writer. We are suppose to write everyday. Ignore life, just write. Ignore writers block, just write. Ignore the dog barking at you, just write. Ignore that job, just write. Ignore your family, just write. Who needs a shower? Just write.

I love to write more than anything else in the world, but I fear I am not cut out for it. It's hard for me to shut out the world and develop my craft. It's hard to ignore the things screaming out for attention. More than that, it's hard to find words at times. I have so many ideas in my head but to get them on paper is somewhat of a challenge. I find myself writing characters, novels and poems in the shower or driving to class instead of at night at my desk.

To be a writer, I must write everyday.

My New Years resolution is to do just that, write every day. Write a blog post. Write a journal entry. Write a poem. Write a story. Write a book. It doesn't matter. I just want to write for the write of my life. Just write.

Christmas time is here

Gotta Get Away

I need a vacation. Somewhere nice. Somewhere around no one. I don't want to be with or by people. I just want to be by myself. Alone. Solitude. I need a break from being held together by tape and glue. I need to just be alone and heal. I need to stop putting on a smile, and just fall apart. I need to get away.

To here...

or here....

I don't care where. Just away.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I love Christmas. I love the happiness of the holidays and the colors. I love the decorations and lights. I love the music and the faith. I love Christmas. I love decorating with my mom and I love our traditions. One of our traditions is decorating the tree. So this week we decorated the tree. My mom collects the North Pole Series, and we usually put them up every year. The last two years we haven't put them up, so I was really excited when my mom pulled them out again.

A Little Better

Sometimes, you get bad news. Really bad news and you don't want to think about it. You don't even want to acknowledge it. So you do something else instead think about it.

Today, I got bad news. So I played with my dog, and took pictures of his cute face. It made me feel better. What makes you feel better?

Book Launch

This semester, I'm taking a publishing class at my university. This is the product of a semesters worth of work. It's finally published.

Bird Watchers

My dogs like to sit in the window and watch the birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and the occasional rabbits. They could quite possibly sit in the same spot all day and just watch these animals walk around and eat. To me, that's always seemed really boring. The way NASCAR is boring to me. I'm sorry, I just don't understand why people like to sit on their butts and watch a bunch of cars go around in a circle really fast. The only time it gets interesting is when there is a crash, and wishing for a crash isn't a very nice thing to do. 

 I woke up and my dogs were watching the birds again out in the back. I hopped up on the couch and watched as their eyes followed the birds from tree to tree, as the fed from the bird feeder and seemed to almost dodge the small drops of snow falling from the sky. 

I sat with them a while and watched the pretty red cardinals fly around. They swooped through the air gracefully. They sat and looked around at the world, perhaps watching me as I watched them. A woodpecker came down to the bird feeder, a bird I didn't even know we had in the backyard. He ate with the other birds and flew away to his home only to come back for more. 

Sure there were no bird fights or squirrels jumping around, but it was beautiful to see nature in a different way. Sure they weren't digging worms out of the ground trying to find their own food, but they were still amazing to watch just because of their gracefulness. I can see why men wanted to learn to fly. 

After this morning, I understand my dogs a little more. No, I don't understand the urge to smell someone's butt, but I understand what is so memorizing about bird watching. It's not something I would do all the time, and I'm sure it's still a lot more interesting to the dogs with the better eye sight and animal instincts.

Sickness

My brother-in-law was sick yesterday with a fever and a little bit of flu. My sister was worried about him. She put him to bed, put a cold compress on his forehead. She took care of him. She worried like a good wife does. She changed the cloth on his forehead and his neck a few times throughout the night until his fever broke. 

She came over yesterday and we went shopping while Jimmy was home sleeping away the last of his flu. She told my mom and I about taking care of her husband. We listened. I said, "Avoid him like the black freaking plague."

She ignored me. She got sick this morning. She's seven months pregnant and now she's sick with the flu. She texted me complaining that she can't hold anything down and she's so sick. I said, "Black. Plague. I told you to avoid him and you didn't. If I get sick from the two of you, I'm gonna barf all over you."

So now my sick sister and her germ spreading husband are up at the ER getting my sister taken care of. Meanwhile, I'm writing a research paper and sitting with my doggy. I sent her a picture of him and said, "Baker says, will my tweet make you feelz betta?"

Love

A year ago, I had three dogs. Shiner, Gunner and Brandy. Shiner is gone now. She's been gone for over eight months now, that's hard to believe. Gunner is still around, grumpy as ever. He's become even more attached to my mom if that's even possible. It's time for the holidays again, and I feel that he misses Shiner more now then ever. After all, it was her he spent his first Thanksgiving and Christmas with. It was her. They were friends, partners, pals before Brandy or Baker even came on the scene. If it's possible for a dog to grieve, to remember, to be depressed, I think Gunner is all those things right now.

Brandy is still trying to squeeze herself into the places she went as a puppy. She's digging holes in the yard and getting yelled at for tracking dirt into the house. She's still playful and fun. She's protective of Baker when Gunner gets mad at him. She's his mother in a way. She loves him as much as I do. Brandy and Baker are pals like Gunner and Shiner used to be.

Now, we have a puppy named Baker who keeps us so busy and crazy that it's hard to believe that so much time has past. He makes my heart whole again, after the loss of such an important part of my childhood, my past. I look at him and I immediately get this sense of comfort and love. My heart swells and it's hard to breathe for a second. I love this dog so much because he's helped me through the loss of another. He's helped me smile again. He's helped me deal with that pain. He's helped me remember the happy moments instead of thinking of those when she was so sick. He helps me remember her. He helps me.

First Snow

The first real snow of the season came today. By real snow, I mean something that actually stuck on the ground for a while. It started snowing Friday night, and when Baker woke me Saturday morning I was excited to see it covering the ground. Before letting him outside, I ran to get my camera. It was Baker's first snow. I wanted to see what he would do. Unfortunately, it wasn't anything too exciting, but he was still cute running around and trying to eat all the snow. He happens to love ice cubes, so why not snow?

It makes me want to remember the first time I every saw snow. The first time I played in it, made a snow ball, a snow angel. I wish I could remember these things. I was luck enough to grow up in an area that does get snow, so I lived with it all my life. Perhaps as a baby I had a moment when I first realized what was happening, but those moments are lost to everyone but perhaps my parents.

In a way, I envy people that have never seen snow. They get to stay somewhere warm where the snow doesn't, can't touch. They don't have to have bulky winter jackets or heavy snow boots. They get to just enjoy the weather all the time. 

At the same time though, I wish everyone could experience snow once in their lives. To wake up one morning, and see the ground covered. To see the white paradise that suddenly appears. The branches tipped in white beauty and the sun shining just enough to make the ground sparkle. The silence from the snow covering the ground and the critters tucked away safely and warmly in their homes. I love the beauty of snow.

Summer Beauty

It's summertime and my house is beautiful. We have so many flowers blooming that our gardens look amazing. Here are a few of the most beautiful. 

Lilies

Lilies are my favorite flowers. Can you tell? 

Change of Views

This week, I'm staying at my sisters place. She is at the beach with her husband and two friends, so I am watching her dog and her apartment.

At first, it was weird staying here by myself. I'm not a fan of being alone somewhere. I kept feeling like people were going to break in and kill me. Of course, I was over reacting. Now that I'm four nights into this, it's not that bad. It's kind of nice being by myself. It's a nice change of pace to living with my parents and going to school. It's also nice to have one dog instead of three. Don't get me wrong, I love my dogs. It's just nice to have less craziness sometimes.

I brought my dog, Baker over to my sisters house the last two nights. I wanted to see how Shiloh and him would get along living together. They are actually really great together. They run around and play and then sleep on either side of me all night. It worked out.

Here's some pictures of the two of them playing.