The Penguin Papers

I was looking at my blog stats and noticed that one of the keywords used in a search that found this blog is "an odd woman". Indeed.

Yes, it's another Freewriting Monday here at The Penguin Papers, another chance for me to blather on like I know how to write.  I've been laying low this past week. Remember the "I haven't cried yet" post? It happened and while it wasn't glorious or cathartic, it did get a fair amount of pent-up emotion released. I liken it to the aftermath of a decent dose of Milk of Magnesia - sudden and nasty. Not to mention that I am not a pretty crier and with my face already puffy from what I now know is a sinus infection, you can imagine how attractive I was that day. So, I took some time off thinking that I might get hit with it again, but so far I have retained the tenuous control over my emotions that I had before the purge. We'll call it a temporary emotion dump.  By today's count we are at T-21 days until Operation Kick Cancer's Ass. There's lots to do before the event, namely prepare for Christmas and wait for a certain young man in my life to ma...

I haven't cried yet. Am I supposed to? Will it make me feel better? What's the standard protocol here? I know the things to say to family members and patients when they  have cancer, but what's the etiquette for the patient herself? I don't want this to be the All Cancer, All The Time blog, but damn it, I'm out of my element here. If someone has a clue, I have a whole bunch of quarters.

Q: What did the cow say to Baby Jesus upon arriving at the manger? Wait for it........ "Moo" I can't help myself - inside my head lurks the brain of a 12-year-old boy. :D Got any good silly jokes to share? Leave 'em in comments!

And I really have no clue what today is about. But, it is freewriting Monday, after all, so no topic required. The last half-week has been surreal. Mentally I'm thinking a little more clearly, but as the day wears on I tire faster. Maybe I'm just trying to find a good excuse for the occasional nap. ;) I actually sleep better during the day the day than I have been at night. There's something about the light going out that makes the gerbils on the treadmill in my brain wake up. This isn't anything new; I had problems with insomnia before the Big C, now I just have realistic worries to cycle viciously in my head. The 2010 antler pictures have been shot and once they're edited will go up. I started this tradition last Christmas season, but with finals and other nonsense competing for my time, they didn't get posted. Anyone care to bet on whether or not I do it this year? Now it's time to toddle off and hit the melatonin. 'Night, all.

Waking up in the morning is a little different these days. As I said to Jim on Wednesday evening as we were preparing for bed, "I woke up this morning okay, now I'm going to bed as with cancer." Caregiver becomes patient. Life has changed. I have read others talk about "life before/after" as being two different concepts and wondered if it really felt that demarcated, but the answer for me, at least for now, is yes. The life in which I took my health (and sanity?) for granted is done, now it's time to sit up and pay attention. Half-time is over, it's time to play serious ball. This morning I received a lovely slap upside the head that was sorely needed. Miss Peyton  turns 7 today. Four years ago Peyton was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and is now a survivor. To my eye there are no physical reminders of what Peyton went through, but as I looked at her birthday pictures today I could hear her tell me to get over myself, to get on with it a...

I'd like to be able to quote Garrison Keillor, "It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown", but the truth is I can't. In fact, it may be a long while before I can use that quote and get away with it, or at the very least feel like I'm not lying as it comes out my mouth. This past Wednesday my husband and I, while sitting in a small exam room at my urologist's office, were told that the extra passenger on my right kidney is most assuredly cancer. Within an 80% probability. I had some presentiment of this appointment not being routine before we got there, which is why I had my husband with me but I thought it would be okay. Even when my lovely freckled, redheaded urologist walked in the room with a noticeable lack of his native buoyancy I still told myself that whatever it was, even if it was cancer, it would be alright. And then he said it. I sat there, holding Jim's hand and nodding at appropriate places in the conversation while my bra...

It's Freewriting Monday here at The Penguin Papers. In other words, I have nothing in particular to write about today, but still want to write. Which means that this may not be readable at all. Or may be very readable, but not worth caring about. Or worth caring about but... Okay, I think you get the idea. I have several ideas swirling around in my head, but nothing stands out as The Topic for the day, so you may get all of them or none of them, just whatever flows out from my addled Monday brain through my fingertips. One of the things rumbling around in the old brainbox is what I wish for in the coming year. Health and happiness, of course, for everyone in the household, good grades from the kids and maybe the possibility of seeing how far I can take the blog this year. It's just a baby blog, somewhat neglected over the last year, but it's something that's mine. All mine. And I can do with it whatever I want, within reason. The direction doesn't need to be spe...

I've had an ongoing flirtation with photography since I was a kid, starting when I got my first Kodak 126 Instamatic at the age of 9 or so. Pictures, to me, are a tangible memory cue to happy times in my life and a photographic chronicle of my kids and grandkids during their journeys to adulthood and beyond. And to be completely honest, I do like looking at pictures of myself as the skinny young thing I was once upon a time. To take a picture is to grab a part of a memory to store it away for safekeeping. That said, as much as I enjoy taking pictures, I fear I am not very good at it. I want to be, I think I can be, but when I take pictures and look at them critically afterwards, I don't like what I see. My current camera is a point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix L100 . It's a fine camera and easy to use, but I'm not very methodical about what and how I do things. I often don't remember what settings I use, so it's difficult for me to successfully edit my photos la...

I really don't know how the topic came up nor do I wish to delve into the odd psychology of this household that allowed such a tangent to occur but for some reason the ever-popular movie Oversexed Rugsuckers From Mars popped to the top of the conversational stack. And people wonder why I have issues.

The summer flew, taking me and my camera along with it. It was a busy one - a visit from our oldest daughter and our grandspawn, much pool time with any variation of 4+2 kids (four kids of my own, plus 2 "adopted" kids who spent a lot of time at our house over the summer), and certainly not least, the long-anticipated trip to the home of our hearts in August. Now school has started and we are all in a flurry of activity of homework, volleyball practices, clinical preps, exams, etc. I am in my last semester of nursing school for my associate's and anticipate being a (FINALLY) licensed RN sometime in late December/ early January. I won't know what to do with myself. Oh, wait - I do, too. Finally edit the pictures from our trip and other ventures and POST THEM TO MY BLOG! See what you have to look forward to? :D

For a while now I've been following MckMama and her MSC , especially Stellan who survived prenatal Supraventricular Tachycardia. Stellan is now 8 months old, but still battles SVT which has necessitated another hospitalization. You can read more here on MckMama's blog. MckMama can also be found on Twitter and will most likely do most of her updating there. In the meantime, prayers and good thoughts for Stellan, please! Oh, and if you think about it, wear orange and send me a picture at thepenguinpapers at gmail dot com so that I can pass them onto MckMama.

It has been, without a doubt, a challenging summer here so far. Oh, we're all healthy and happy, etc., except for one thing. We kill appliances. First, the hot water heater thought it required intensive care i.e. a new element. That necessitated several service calls before it was fixed. Then the fan motor on our water source heat pump went out. A week later. In the middle of hot, humid, mid-summer Mid-Missouri. Within the first 2 hours of the first visit with the second company we consulted, we had a fan motor ordered and a deal made. They came out, installed and we've been good to go since Monday. Did I forget to mention the dead dryer? That gave it up the day before Jim left for a 9-day backpacking trip in CO. The replacement "is on the way in 5-7 days" so Jim put a clothesline up for me yesterday and I used it for the first time today. Now I feel all earthmothery and slightly crunchy, which isn't a bad way to feel at all. I just didn't know a clothesline ...

I am, here and now, admitting that I am yet another number to notch onto Facebook's belt. I can quit anytime, really. I can. But wait - it goes deeper than that. I have. a farm. on Farmtown. Ah, yes, FT* toyed with me for a while, but it waited until a night of solitude to pull me into its web, as I screamed "Yes, I want to gift a friend!", and then finished me off. I love my farm. It doesn't have much yet, but it actually is soothing to play. And in just a few mouseclicks and a couple of keystrokes, entire fields can be plowed and planted, in about 10 minutes. It's just that easy. So, I'm harvesting a "field" and wondering how much time it would take a farmer to accomplish an equivalent amount in real life? And I'm not even breaking a sweat. Farmers sweat. A lot. Even with modern equipment, there's just no getting around the fact that a farmer's work is physically demanding, sometimes heartbreaking, and frequently challenging. They till ...

Erin*, our 13yo, is usually good about remembering birthdays. She was at her dad's during both mine and Jim's birthdays so she was unable to give us our birthday gifts until this evening. Behold I love it. *The Teen Princess

Yeah. So, tonight I took several pictures, including some of the Teen Princess, as basis for several blog posts. But, as luck would have it, they got eaten somewhere between my usb cable and the save-as dialog box. No doubt about it, this is a classic example of a PEBKAC* error, courtesy of yours truly. And I used to be so technical. *Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

My oldest kid, Meghann, and I have gotten into the habit of talking in the evening before bedtime, just hanging out, etc. Tonight as we were talking I was once again pulling my hair out over designing my new blog template, which I have yet to put up. (I've been wanting to do this for months and have finally decided to grab it by the, ahem, horns just recently.) During our discourse, this little lady made her way to me through email. Isn't she sweet?

Here is the rest of the story. Or pictures , rather.

So, sometime ago I bought a new toy, a Nikon Coolpix L100 and have been having great fun getting to know what it can do. Tonight I was bored, so I decided to take a twilight jaunt to our local lake which happens to be a mere 5 minutes from our house. Not all of the pics turned out as well as I had hoped, but the following are, if I may say so myself, not bad at all. There are more, of course, but this shutterbug needs to a)upload more to Picasa and b)convince myself to go to bed. I'm not sure which of those tasks will come first, though. :D

But I love silly.