ruth

so i went to see my aunt last night. i made chicken soup from scratch. and when you start with a frozen chicken at 9pm, you don't get finished until 1am, just so ya know. she's in a coma now and looks very peaceful. my three sisters and i went over. karen and i went in and held her hand and talked to her and put some yummy smelling mango lotion on her feet that she likes.

it was nice to talk to our cousins. they mostly live in georgia and this time some brought their husbands and all their kids. it was noisy and fun with lots of laughter. but there is a weariness in their faces, especially of the two that are pregnant. i cannot imagine the pain of losing my mother. someday i will and i know i'll have them to lean on. i love my aunt very much. she's lived 40 minutes or less away from me my whole life. i lived in her house, in the very room she's dying in, for a summer. then i was next door for a semester. i have only cried once about it, in the temple, soon after the doctor gave us the news. but there is a knot of tears in my chest that is building. im sure it will come out at the funeral. my best friends grandmother died about 10 years ago. she is the only person i've lost who has been close. i was fine until just before the funeral when the family gathered to hear the bishop pray. i lost it. i practically had to shove my fist in my mouth to quiet the sobs. im thinking it will be something like that again. but this time i'll be surrounded by more family, so maybe it will be better. plus my concern will be focused on my mom. i also cannot imagine losing a sister. mine are like appendages, myself not working right without them.

i guess i also just feel peace. i know she's lived a good life, had a wonderful husband, children, grandchildren and friends. she's touched alot of lives for the better. i feel blessed to know her. but oh how im going to miss that laugh. that loud, almost donkey-like, endearing, yet slightly embarrassing laugh. its making me tear up just thinking about it. that's how i'll remember her. loving her family, doing her crafts, and laughing. i know that she's going to be with those little grandbabies about to arrive and to see her mom and grandparents. and though we'll miss her, she where's she supposed to be.

i also have felt so much love from my friends. lots of texts and calls and facebook messages and facebook chat, to make sure im okay and what they can do to help. just the asking is wonderful. letting me talk. how truly glorious it is to have so many caring people in my life.

it felt good to type this. now to have some pleasant dreams. nite.

catch up

i haven't blogged in forever. for those of you who check up on me, you already know this. so busy. alabama, then the florida library conference and staying with the martinez family. mother's day, brotherinlaw's bday, visiting my aunt, work-evaluations and the summer reading program, hanging with the sisters. the craziest weekend of work, but had 26 people at my program, so that was good. memorial day, which cousins and my aunt came to. floating the itchetucknee with family and friends. my brother's high school graduation, hard to believe. the martinez's staying with me. a friend's bday dinner at texas roadhouse and some yummy ice cream cake from ben and jerry's. lots of people over after church, 2 babies, fun and very loud.

yeah that's the short version of what i've been doing. most of it has been fun, some extremely stressful, a few sad. but mostly i just feel really blessed to have such a wonderful life. i have soooo many people in my life who love me and care for me and want to spend time with me and let me help them and who help me. its the balancing of focusing on me and the things i really need to do for myself and being there for others, being a good friend and sister. sometimes i concentrate on one more than the other. finding the happy medium is hard.

no more not writing, so keep looking for more posts.

weekends of fun!

i did 11 programs in the last two weeks, so i haven't had time to blog at work. the majority of them went very well, puppets and stories and booktalks, and the kids and i had a blast. last weekend i had two bday parties. my best friend's boy turned 3 and my mom got another year older too (see mom, i didn't mention you're 57 :) it was a pirate party (not my mom's) and i dressed up! and yes you get to see me in all my ridiculousness. for mom's party i made lasagna from scratch (my specialty) and a trifle (my first one) both turned out to be quite delicious. then we played much wii, where i got plowed over by my brothers, in both bowling and golf. this weekend i went to alabama to visit a friend and her two year old. we spent yesterday and today at the beach with various friends of hers. beautiful weather and i'm only slightly red. tomorrow we hit the road for a tour of ne alabama. i know that doesn't sound very thrilling, but we found some fun, cool, interesting things to do there, plus there are mountains, which we seriously are lacking in our lives.

family is forever

so much has happened since i last blogged. so here it goes.... i didn't gain weight on vacation! i actually lost a pound. down 22.5. even though i didn't go to the gym, i made pretty good choices food wise and was pretty active with the wii and skate station.

update on my aunt. she has a glioblastoma multifomra or GBM brain tumor. she will start radiation/chemo in May. she's home from the hospital and has a nurse coming into help. the diagnosis isn't great. this is a very aggressive form of cancer and she will probably live 1-2 years. the family seems to be holding up pretty well, but is obviously very upset. her children and husband are having a hard time going on with regular life. jobs and school don't seem that important when you know you don't have a lot of time left with your mom. of course she wants everyone to just do what they normally do and doesn't want to be fussed over or be a burden to anyone. she's is much more optimistic than she was the day she found out, but i'm sure that will come and go. my my mom is doing okay. she sees my aunt every few days to remind herself she's here. her and her five siblings had a tripped planned to see their dad in pennsylvania in May and its my aunt's goal to be strong enough to go. when she comes back, she'll start treatment.on to happier notes. the first day of my 'vacation' my parents, brother and i went to my sister and brother-in-law's house and played games and watched movies. we got chinese takeout for dinner and made sundaes for dessert. it was so much fun! the next day all the same people, plus another sister went to a new bowling alley in town. we had a blast! we all made strikes at least once. i bowled pretty badly (i had beat everyone in wii bowling the day before, so this was kind of funny). then dad took all of us to ruby tuesday's for lunch. my parents went to visit my aunt and the rest of us went to skate station next to the bowling alley. we did go carts, batting cages, pool, air hockey and arcade games. it was a ton of fun! then my sis who works at the movie theater (free tickets!!) and i went to see confessions of a shopaholic. i never read the books, so i guess that was why i thought the movie was really cute. then we went to moe's for dinner and magic mike was there (he does shows at the library). he had us try a 3-D pyramid puzzle that totally stumped us.



the next day this sis and i went out to my parents house and my brother taught us how to use his archery set he got for christmas. then we played wii games and had a campfire in the front yard (my parents live on 20 acres of trees) to cook hotdogs and smores over. thursday my mom and i went to orlando to the temple. it was so peaceful and i had a good cry about my aunt. we went to the mormon bookstore and i got a cd and some scrapbooking stuff. then we saw my aunt and she was doing much better. friday it was back to work. not the vacation i had planned, but still lots of family fun.

my week off

well my aunt's surgery went well and they got out what they could of the tumor. the main point was to relieve pressure on the brain and they did. my mom and i saw her saturday and she was talking and joking and being bossy and grumpy. sunday my sister and i went to see her and she was very sleepy and groggy, but out of icu. this morning they found a blood clot under the skull flap the had opened for the surgery. so she's in surgery again. this one is easier and shorter, so a little less scary. we find out tomorrow if its cancer or not. i've got to see several of my cousins under these less than ideal occasion, but being with family is nice.

since the camping trip is cancelled, we are staying here and doing stuff as a family. today is a family game day at my sister's. she has a few days off before her next PA rotation. tomorrow is skate station with bowling, mini golf, go carts, and arcade. wednesday maybe movies, another sis works there and we can get in free. thursday my mom and i are going to orlando to visit the temple. not the lovely relaxing time of camping, but still not at work!!

things come in threes

last night my mom called to say my aunt has a brain tumor. i had just seen her last week and talked to her husband the day before. he told me she was feeling pretty bad, but i didn't know it was headaches. she had an mri thursday morning and they admitted her to the hospital last night. she has a large spider tumor, which means it spreads out in a spider shape. they took her into surgery this morning to get out what they could, this was to relieve the pressure on her brain. i've been on the phone with my mom and sisters off an on last night and today. it is pretty shocking. she has 5 kids, 8 grandkids, 2 daughters and 1 daughter-in-law are pregnant. i feel so bad for them. i'm scared.

my mom got a call this morning while she was trying to find out about the surgery (i found out about it before she did from my cousins on facebook, technology at work) when my brother's school called. brian was at a local camp for the senior picnic and while playing soccer crashed into another kid and hit his head on a small rock. he has a 2 inch gash on his forehead, but the bleeding had stopped. my mom had to go get him and take him to the hospital for an xray and stitches. we (mom, dad, brian, and i) are supposed to go camping for a week starting today. dad went ahead (it must be nice to be your own boss) to get a good site for us. when he got there, he found that the lake and trails were flooded from all the storms. they hadn't closed the camp, but he didn't want to set up the camper and then have to take it down again. apparently the river had risen 10 feet and was still rising. so dad turned around and came home.

so as if a brain tumor wasn't enough, a split open head and a flood were added into my crappy day. my aunt has been in surgery since 7am and it's almost 3pm. she's supposed to be out soon and i pray she's okay.

Thing 10 - Tags are Delicious

I've done tagging with photos on Facebook, but that's about it. I liked using it in Flickr to find pics I was looking for. I went and tagged all my blog posts. I used the tags: Me, 23 Things, Blogs, Mormons, Weight Loss, Travel, Family, I Love My Library, Emily, and Frustrations. If I need to find something I blogged about, hopefully these tags will do the trick. Tags are like cataloging (as the instructions said) but even better because you get to pick the keywords or language to find things. In cataloging you have to guess whether the keyword has an s or an ism at the end, for example. But since you make the keywords, you know what to type in to bring up what you want. Of course that is, if you've tagged it correctly.

Then I did Delicious. I made an account, very easy. I put about 10 sites on that I visit daily. I don't use too many sites and I am either on my work computer or home computer, so we'll see if I use it. I'm going to Alabama in April and would probably use it there. When camping I might use it, since my Dad brings a laptop, but you never know if campsites will have wireless or not. Sometimes the ranger's office will have an open signal and you can use that. I thing Delicious is cool. We have a Great Links page on our Library's website and this would be good to have on Delicious. With tagging, we would most assuredly find other 'Great Links' which could help patrons and staff. We had a staff member who use to go searching for good web sites and he would bookmark them on one of the Reference desk computers. However if you were sitting at the second Ref desk computer, you didn't have them there. So if it was web based on Delicious, then you would have traveling bookmarks. Get it, I was just talking about traveling, and the bookmarks travel too. Oh no! Dan is starting rub off on me. Help!