I am blogging to avoid all the things I really have to do

So I have become sickly addicted to blogging. One problem that I have is that my ability to be funny is squashed by my concern that I will hurt someones feelings. I never want to hurt anyones feelings. So my blogs may be boring at least until I find a balance between being funny and being kind.

I am blogging now because I should be reading my Health Psychology book or my Multicultural Social Work book, or the Life of a cell bio book. But yet I blog.

I blog because I need to paint the bathroom and the moulding. And I need to do laundry. I have potato salad to make and vegetables to grill. So I blog.

I am at the opposite end of last weeks hyper thyroid. I knew it wouldnt last and I am sad because I dont know when it will be back. For anyone who doesnt understand what I mean, its like being on speed one week and valium the next. Lots of caffeine versus lots of sedatives. I am exhausted and not quite finished with my home repairs.

So I blog. My family is watching the Olympics and it is so interesting that there are over a billion chinese people. It is interesting that the only people to ever violate the opening statement of the Olympics by saying things they werent supposed to were Hitler, Reagan and W Bush. Hmmm.... I will refrain from making comments about this connection but if the shoe fits.... or is it more like a joke, a nazi, and actor and an asshole walk into an olympics...

I have made my first comment on my friends blog. But I did it anonymously. Because I think she would take it more seriously if she thinks it came from someone her own age and not a 40 year old woman.

I have so many stories to tell about the kids, about my life, but when I blog at night I am tired and I lose my train of thought so easily,

What was I talking about??

Its about time for little candy bar eating and laying on the couch. I am too tired to blog, too tired to paint or read, its been a long week.

But I will return tomorrow I am sure, with more boring stories and more space to fill.

No not really, I will do better tomorrow. Because tomorrow I will be avoiding making 10 lbs of potato salad and grilled vegetables, I will be avoiding cooking dinner for my family and I will be avoiding all the laundry,

Since I will never be short of avoidances I will never be short of blogs.

Until tomorrow... or longer if blogs become the avoiding thing and something else becomes the "thing"..

its time for little mounds bars.

Oprah is a liar... and so is Dr. Oz

Ok so I am obsessed with dieting. Wait... I should clarify that. I am obsessed with diets. I have tried (and basically failed) at every diet I have ever been on. Actually in recent years the only diet I lost weight on is the "I had surgery and couldnt swallow" diet. It was extremely effective. Basically I would lick a carrot or suck on a blueberry muffin and that would be a meal. I think that was what I ate for Mothers Day. I lost about 28 lbs. Over a long period of time. Probably about 9 months. But once I could swallow... watch out. I went back to eating everything in sight.

So I have been a borderline diabetic for 15 years. I had gestational diabetes with 2 of my 4 pregnancies and was diagnosed right after my two older girls were born with blood sugar issues that made my sugar level totally out of whack.

My doctor told me to follow this diet or I could go into a blood sugar shock. So I totally went crazy. I followed that diet perfectly. I didnt even lick an m&m. I was so afraid. And then one day I ate a cookie, then a candy bar, then ice cream. And guess what... Nothing happened. I had an instant hangover but it was worth the sugar fix.

So off I went. I weighed 117lbs when I got married in 1985. Now 23 years later I weigh...


are you serious??? do you think i would put that number in print??? never!! Instead I just obsess about it everyday with a friend of mine.

We start a new diet almost every week. Sometimes we dont even make it to the start of day one before we quit. Somedays we make it until after lunch and then we eat a little tiny candy bar. We have tried the Fruit diet, the all salad diet, the 1200 calorie diet, and today we tried Dr. OZs diet drink.

And on Oprah yesterday she tried it and said "yum" Liar! It was your typical drink of stuff that doesnt sound completely revolting but looks like a small alien bled into your glass. You know with green alien blood???

So my friend shopped for all the stuff, which cost a fortune and made it for us today for lunch. It was supposed to be a drink but it was more of a slushy. We tried it with a spoon. It almost made me spit it out, but it was food and I very rarely give up a chance to eat anything, even something sososososos gross. So we made a salad and decided Dr. Oz and Oprah are idiots. Dr. Oz claimed to eat this every morning. I think his servants are lying to him. Just like in Seinfeld when everyone thought they were eating low fat yogurt and it was really so fattening everyone was gaining weight? Same thing. Dr. Oz has no idea what they are putting in his morning glass of fresh.

And Oprah??? really she has her own weight issues. Has she ever been skinny for very long since that episode where she dragged out all the chicken fat and compared it to how much she lost??

I have steadily grown over the years to a size that I am not happy with. I want to be a size 6 again.

My friend and I once went to a weight loss lecture where the guy said "if you cant follow something like this for 9 days you have bigger problems than your weight" That is most likely true.

We complain about our weight so much that another friend we worked with had to move to Florida to get away from us. He gave us so many tips and while he was here we were more likely to follow it but now... no .... not so much.

We are looking for the instant weight loss. The one that comes from just being good people, who spend their days running around with their kids and working hard. We cook dinner for our families and have trouble sacrificing when we have to cook for so many.

We were gonna do weight watchers but the amount of points in pizza deterred us. We were trying to count calories but apparently blue cheese on your salad makes it as many calories as a cheeseburger deluxe.

So Dr. Oz.... find me a drink that tastes like chocolate, that makes me lose weight like my mouth is sewn shut, with the only excercise being driving to sporting events and to the kids friends houses. And I will drink it and I will love it. If I could lose 20 lbs by this weekend that would be an added plus.

Until then I will just complain and feel a slight amount of happiness when I get a stomach virus that causes me to eliminate all that I eat from my body. Complaining should be worth about a couple of hundred calories,

Actually if it did I would be the size 6 that I hoped for.

For now I will just make it my lifes goal to make sure no one makes that gross drink we tried today.

so people Dr. Oz and Oprah , lying liars who lie. Stay away.

Today was a Ben and Jerry's kind of day....

I have had worse days. Oh my god I have had days that make this day look like sunshine but for some reason I am having a hard time with today. Maybe because secretly I think this is all my fault, maybe because I know it is. And yet I continue to do the things to avoid confrontation that got me into this mess in the first place.

We went to court today. Side note, I have never been to court. I have never had a ticket that I needed to fight or had any reason to be in a court room. Much less a criminal court building. I follow the rules, I am a rule worshipper.

We got lost on the way to court. I do not usually care about getting lost or being a little late but I was having such a panic attack from last night when the lawyer told me we had to appear in court that I couldnt take it. I felt like crying and screaming at the same time. My husband is a pillar of strength and thankfully he has taught me that in the end its just us and nothing else really will ever matter. If we retire in a cardboard box, that is ok as long as I have a refrigerator box to sleep in next door when he snores.

So we are late and I am sick to my stomach, probably from making myself mentally and physically ill the night before. I cant breathe and I dont want to go in.

We finally ask someone, find the building, park and go up in the elevator. Mikey G. or the Con Man as we lovingly call him in our house is sitting with his big fat ass and his 12 year old lawyer. No joke the kid cant be any older than 12. A high price criminal attorney from Manhattan who cant control his client.

We wait uncomfortably in the court room. My amazing attorney and his dear wife sit with me, figuritively holding my hand, physically if I wanted them too.

Then my lawyer and the 12 year old go into the back room to meet with the clerk. The idea is to come up with a settlement. Settle after 3 years, after losing everything I own and then some. Settle for less than he owes me? When I was sacrificing everything to start. ok sure take it all. I just want it to be over.

August 2002... my husband and I are on the way to a family wedding driving from Long Island to Albany and we are trying to come up with an idea for our own business. We talk and talk and finally come upon the idea of a girls sporting goods store. All of our girls play sports and we have found it near impossible to find girl related sporting goods. So we come up with a name, a logo that we sketch on the back of a napkin at Roy Rogers, ads, ideas, we plan it all.

Getting the money wasnt as easy as we thought. I had been writing a business plan for months and months but financing this kind of thing was almost impossible with no credit and a brand new corporation.

So we take out a home equity loan, blah blah blah hindsight is 20/20. And off we go to open our store.

It was amazing. Our first month we far exceeded our projections for sales. We had people traveling over 50 miles to visit our store which is the only one of its kind for hundreds of miles. We had pink batting gloves and bats, protective cups for girls and shirt that said boys are smelly. Everything in the store was specific for female athletes. We had christmas ornaments that were of female lacrosse players and softball players and all the others. The store was a huge success.

Time goes on, and the store is doing well. I cant go into the details now (cause I would be here for a year) but I began having weird health issues. Then tragedy hits our family as my brother in law is in a very bad snowboarding accident. The store starts to take a back seat. I cant stand being there when I know I can be of help elsewhere. I hate it, more and more everyday.

My health starts to deteriorate and I think the store is killing me. First my legs swell up so bad I look like an elephant. After months of waiting for a doctors visit, he finally does all these tests and diagnoses me with kidney failure. Um ok I looked on WebMD and I think its Lupus but if you ask House, its never lupus.

Then I wake up one day and the left side of my face is droopy. Badly droopy. My smile is crooked, my eye feels like someone has sewn the end of it to my mouth and I have no feeling in my cheek. I wait a day or so and go to my friendly neighborhood doctor. He doesnt cry, thank god, but he sends me to the emergency room. My neurologist at the ER is Eeyore and he isnt sure if I have had a stroke or not. Well ok i think his tail fell off. So after MRI's and Cat scans and all the other touch your nose crap they make you do, they give me Plavix for a stroke and tell me to take 4 and see me in the morning. Side note, I lost weight on that Plavix and I wondered if by thinning my blood I was getting lighter.

The store is holding its own and I am taking one day a week off to chill. Another story I cannot go into now(and maybe never) but tragedy strikes again as my other brother in law dies after routine back surgery. He leaves behind my favorite sister in law, more like my sister and my four year old nephew.

That is it for me. The store is in my way of being the support system for my sister and sister in law. I want out. It is too new to sell but I owe too much to walk away. So we put up big signs 40% off everything in the store. I mail flyers to all the customers telling them of our plans to close and we are mobbed as people come in and cry with me over our loss.

In walks our friend Mikey G. "oh my god my wife told me about your loss, I would love to buy the store, come up with a number and we will make it work" " oh you are grieving, let me have my attorney draw up papers for the sale" On and on he went being our friend and sympathizing with our grief.

He draws up the papers, he plans the sale, he gives me half the down payment and thats it. He steals the rest. This story is so endless and I am really getting upset about it even as I write. I will need to finish at another time but in the end he has stolen over 35,000 dollars and it has taken me over 3 years and 15000 dollars worth of lawyers fees to get to today.

Today, where we drove with gas costing 4 dollars an gallon, to a place that creeps me out to find out that once again he has screwed us. He had no plans of making an offer. For him, he loves to come to court and be an asshole. I think it is his lifes goal to kill me. And its working because I cant take it and even with lots of blood pressure medicine and remembering to breathe I am reverting back to the panic and the disaster I am when I focus too hard on this kind of stuff.

If he had stolen my car I would be in better shape. That is what my lawyers told me today. But he didnt steal my car. He stole my idea, my money, my business and left me with feelings of revenge and bitterness.

And now he wins again. Because I was in charge of the store. It was supposed to be my thing. And I dropped the ball. I didnt do what I should have when things were going bad. Its my fault and I am so sorry.

I forgot to mention that both my grandparents died within 2 weeks of each other that same summer of my stroke and the death of my brother in law. It was tragedy after tragedy and some man, Mikey G walked in and said " Well I have hit paydirt here" "I have found the two most grief stricken people on the Earth and they will sell me their lifes work"

I believe in Karma and I believe that someday good things will happen to good people and the reverse will be true for the people that hurt and steal and take advantage. I hope so and I hope I live to see it.

So even though it was a Ben and Jerrys kind of day, it was Wednesday. And Wednesday is Sundae at Carvel. So we went there instead. And yes I have to say... Ice cream does make it better.

Until tomorrow when I get on the scale.

The Muriel Rule

So every family has their "stuff".

We had Muriel.

Muriel was my grandma and she died last year after living 95 wonderful years working, driving around, putting on lipstick, wearing her silver shoes and basically insulting everyone she met. She was seriously vain and spent her entire life insisting her hair was naturally blonde. She used to say that she would just use a little "fluff" to brighten it up. PS "fluff" was peroxide and "naturally blonde" was out of a "fluff" bottle. She loved being blonde so much, my papa called her "Blonde" as her name her whole life. I loved Muriel and many people did not. Maybe because in my family I am the only one with light hair and blue eyes. I could be adopted but that is another story.

Did you ever see the Twilight Zone where everyone looks like pigs, so people thinks pig faces are beautiful and the attractive people are shunned because they are the minority? Or the Muensters with Marilyn? Now I am not saying at all that my family is ugly or that I am more attractive than anyone else, all I am saying is that Muriel, although she was Jewish, could have been a Nazi with her love of blonde, blue eyed people and I just happen to be the only person in the family that looked like that. She also loved my older cousin Richard but that is because he had a penis and she only loved blondes and people with penises mostly because there arent too many of either in our family.

So Muriel lived in Hollywood, Florida not far from Fort Lauderdale. She had a pool that had so many rules that you had to read the guide before you went in to swim. Shower to remove sunscreen, put hair in ponytail, no splashing the ladies who had their hair done on Thursday and needed it to last until next Thursday, no floats, no screaming, no having fun. Never mind the old men with poor bladder control or the diapered by day women who probably couldnt jump out of the pool quick enough to grab their walker and race to the bathroom. What are they doing? Using the pool as their personal toilet I assume. But dont let them see you with your hair hanging or they make you use the dreaded rubber band.

Another rule that we had to disobey all the time was moving of the lounge chairs. Being young sun worshippers, before the days of melanoma, we would soak ourselves in baby oil and spend the entire day in the sun turning the chair hourly to be in direct contact with the sun.

And then " the tan man" would come to scold us. He looked like the Crypt Keeper and about a hundred years old, but was probably just a regular 65 year old who had spent way too many hours in the sun. He was chocolately brown, shiny from his baby oil and meaner than the devil eating angel food cake. He did not want the chairs moved because his job as crypt keeper or should I say "Hillcrest lounge chair keeper" was to make sure the chairs were all lined up, facing the pool, thats it, no arguing, his face might peel off if he got real mad.

So this is where Muriel lived with all the other mah jong playing jewish old ladies and all the poker playing jewish old men. My grandma and papa lived there from 1974 to 1990 when my papa died. Grandma Muriel lived there until she was forced into a home, which killed her in 2007. Long story for another time, but anyway this was paradise for 2 retired jews to spend their retired days. They didnt mind the rules, it gave them something to talk about when someone didnt follow them. "Hey did you see Judy's grandkids ? They didnt shower when they went into the pool. Oh my god they splashed Mona and now she will have to pin her hair until next Thursday." And it went on and on in Hillcrest.They started there as the young retirees and then watched as they people they knew were taken away one by one by silent ambulances. Thus is the circle of life, you start out in the womb and you end up in Florida.

My papa was the most annoying man who ever lived, at least in his older years when I knew him. He would wait until we all sat down for dinner and he would be like " dear can you get me the salt" and when you would come back with the salt he would say " dear can you get me the lemon juice" My mother said when she was a kid she would set the table and make a game out of trying to put every single thing on the table, but I guess his game was to pick the one thing that wasnt there and ask for it. He used to cough into a napkin while we were eating and save it next to his plate. Eating with him made me lose my appetite. I wish he was alive now to cough at my dinner. It might stop me from shoveling in the food.

Ok so he is really annoying... he dies in 1990 and suddenly we finally realize that my grandma is just as annoying but has been hidden by the annoyingness of my papa. It is like a crazy revelation and quite scary actually. I think we would have been more scared if we knew she was gonna live 17 years longer.

So Muriel is visiting us now in New York on a regular basis, for a week or more at a time and she makes it about 2-3 minutes off the plane before she usually says the nastiest things. She pats me on the hips and says " oh are you watching your weight?" Yeah grandma I am watching it go up while I sit with my oreos and milk every night.

She farts everytime she stands up and we all ignore it, part of the Muriel Rule. She thinks her 80 year old body is a thing of beauty and often walks through my house naked. Muriel Rule I would say as my kids would be sickly grossed out and laughing at the same time. She reapplies lipstick after every bite of her food. She burps and says pardon me a million times while she is eating greasy, fattening crap. She orders water at restaurants and then asks for lots of lemon and then adds packets of sweet and low to make her own free lemonade. She eats half her meal, says its not good, sends it back, gets new food and then asks to have it wrapped. At this time I have little kids, but when I serve dinner, she practically knocks them out of the way to put her plate in my face to be served first. Muriel Rule. The kids know when they see the Muriel Rule look by this time, I dont have to even say it out loud.

The list goes on and on and when she visited we would all be under such stress that we would whisper and complain about her the whole time.

This practice made me sad although I participated in it often. I hated talking about her basically in front of her and the more we all compared stories ( when I say "we" I mean my mother, sister, aunt, cousin and I ) the worse we felt and the harder it was to put up with her visit.

So I made the rule. I called it the Muriel rule to honor her. Basically what it meant was that when you had an annoying story to tell about something terrible she said or did, you had to remember it and it could not be discussed until she was safely on the plane back to Florida. On the plane... that was the rule. Then all hell broke loose. We would freak out and be like oh my god how could she say that and then we would laugh. She would always call the next day and thank us for the wonderful visit and we were safe until the next time. But just like with giving birth , the longer you go without the pain the easier it is to do it again.

The Muriel Rule has since been applied to other situations when you want to talk about someone but they are right there. My family was big whisperers and it wasnt uncommon for someone to be whispering in the kitchen about you when you were standing outside the kitchen window. It was one of those things that when you walked into the room it got silent. You know... I personally cannot stand that kind of confrontation and so I applied the Muriel Rule to every family get together. These stories cannot be talked about until the person is at least in their car pulling out of the driveway. Believe it or not this has actually backfired when the person we were talking about immediately after they pulled out of the driveway came back for something they forgot,

Ok... so the Muriel Rule isnt perfect yet... but it works when you have a party where there are guests who are obligations and not completely welcomed and you need to tell all the gory details... but only after they leave. Every experience is an opportunity for a story I always say.

It made Muriels visits more bearable. It allowed me to enjoy her company and not find out that she thought my house was a pigsty until after she was safely back to the tan man and mah jong and 4 o'clock dinners.

I miss Muriel a lot. But I am glad she is finally with my papa in heaven. I am sure he is saying "Blonde, can you get me a hot cup of tea with lemon" and I am sure she is serving it to him with her silver shoes and her pink lipstick and he is asking for the sweet and low and she farts as she stands up and shuffles off in to the kitchen to get it. They are happy there and now the Muriel Rule is famous in our family all because of the rude annoyingness of two old people.

Parenting 101

I wanted my kids to be people that I would enjoy being with. I have a lot of great parenting ideas and I will be writing about them from time to time. But one of my favorite stories comes from a day when I almost lost my mind.

I had three semi perfect kids. They slept, they ate, they played and they were calm and behaved well. Then came Sassy Lou. Daughter #4.

She was a giant even before she was born. She used to hold things over her head when she wanted to keep something away from us, when she was 2, she just knew was going to be big. I felt like my stomach was filled with baby from my chin to my knees. When she was born the doctor said " Wow we have a 10 pounder here" She was dense, heavier than she actually weighed. She was only 8 lbs 11 1/2 oz and 21 1/2 inches. In those days they wanted you out of the hospital as quick as possible. I was home before she was 24 hours old. But she was fourth and I was anxious to be in my own home with my kids and my own bathroom. So home I went.

She was a difficult kid from day one. She never slept and she was so big she ate all the time.

Skip forward about 2 years. I am in the kitchen and I hear this weird noise. Pop, zip, pop, zip, pop, zip and I dont see her anywhere in sight. So I find her in the den with a butter knife... popping holes in the screen door and then slicing down the screen. Pop... zip. So I take the butter knife away and I stand in disbelief as I try to figure out how I am going to fix this. Suddenly I hear another noise and I realize she is gone again. So I race into the kitchen and there she is with a steak knife now sawing the head off a Kermit the Frog pez dispenser. I cant remember if this was also the day she cut up my jeans because I had cut hers when she was a pirate for Halloween. Or the day I found a pile of fur in the living room and I thought we had a mouse but it was really her hair, her blonde curl that she had cut, right out of the center of her forehead.

Those blonde curls were the only thing that saved her life on most days. That and the 2 hours she slept now and then. The stories of Sassy Lou are endless and I will spend more time on them next time.

Parenting 101... just when you think you are a great parent you realize that genetics plays an important role and that sometimes you just maybe got a little lucky.

So much time... so little to do

So much time... so little to do... check that, reverse it. Anyone ? Anyone? Bueller? No Willy Wonka. That line made no sense to me when I was a kid but now... I get it.

I am the mother of four amazing daughters. I loved being a stay at home mom over the years. I never had a desire to BE anything else. My life was so fulfilled with my family and friends. At some point I felt our need for money overrode my "wanting" to stay home so I went back to work, part time, doing all kinds of things and then it was more than part time and so it goes... life as a stay at home mom was over.

I have very strong parenting ideas. And I tend to be very judgemental about my parenting and other peoples parenting. I am not a confrontational person and it has been very hard for me always to speak up about things that are important to me. But my belief in good parenting has changed my relationship with quite a few people some even in my own family.

My family is so unique and I am sure you are thinking yeah so is everyones. But the more I get to know different people and their family dynamic the more I realize how special we are.

I got married when I was 18. We eloped actually. My husband and I started dating in the Summer of 84. He had just graduated high school and I was going into my senior year. I knew he had already joined the Navy and would be leaving in March but I had known him for so long and we had been friends and I just knew I wanted to be with him forever.

We had a great summer... And this is how it all started. We were at a graduation party and I was dating one of hubbys friends. Nothing serious just a few dates. So we are at the party and I guess mutually we realize that its not working out (the friend and I ). Hubby and I start talking and we sit in his car to smoke a cigarette. Honestly none of our friends smoked so were kind of sneaking I guess. We talked and talked, it was just us being friends.

So whatever my friends are there and we are just hanging out and everyone decides to go to this bar in Coram. Anyone remember City Scenes in the Pathmark Shopping Center? Great Kamikazes No ID needed.

So everyone piles in all the cars and we head over and we are drinking pitchers of Kamikazes and let me say that I completely do not condone underage drinking and I think what we were doing here was SO BAD but times were different, we seemed older, the drinking age was only 18 blah blah blah I am grateful everyday that I made it out of that part of my life alive.

Well its time to leave and I ask hubby for a ride home. We go to leave and suddenly hubbys friend is mad, he says something rude and uncalled for and we leave. Whatever.

Hubby drives me to my house and we talk and laugh and it is so easy and good. So I say goodbye but there is a part of me that knows something magical just happened. I am only 16 and way to ignorant of the ways of the world to know what it is but read on.

So the next day I wake up and my family is sitting around the breakfast table for hours, like is typical in my house, then and now. We eat, then we read the paper, we talk, we debate the news stories, we compare the sales, then maybe we eat again. Its the Jewish Italian thing. Both eaters, both talkers I think it is genetic so I go with it.

So I say to my mother "I wish Hubby would come over and take me out" and she is like " Why would he do that" Mind you I have known him for years, he has dated my friend, he has met my parents, and he has never randomly shown up to take me out before. And I am like " I dont know, he drove me home last night and something changed"

So its Sunday and we are in our pjs, eating bagels, listening to loud 50's music, dancing around maybe and there is a knock on the door. PS in those days it wasnt strange for there to be a knock on the door, we didnt have cell phones, instant messaging, text messaging, we just showed up at peoples houses and said hey can you come out?

So its Hubby and I am like Hi Come in and he is like " Do you want to have lunch?" And I am like sure let me get dressed, so I leave him with my parents and I could. That is point #1 in husband material, people. I could leave him talking to my parents and he could carry on an intelligent conversation and they liked him and I felt fine taking 20 minutes to get ready.

So we leave in his Moms Delta 88 and we go to Campus Heroes and it is so comfortable and easy and I order a meatball hero. A meatball hero. Who would order that on a first date? It was a mess, so delicious though and I get a coke that explodes through the straw. But we talk and have a great time and that is how it all began. And that is point #2. Sauce on my face, soda all over, it was still good.

Skip forward 2o years later, our anniversary. We wanted to go to Hawaii but long story about that another time. We have no money and we are big into celebrating, mostly because of the Cancer and we never know how much time we will have. So we meet after work at Ruby Tuesdays and hubby is like I have a surprise for you. So we hang out a little, do some christmas shopping and we leave for my surprise.

Guess what it was? He had gone to Campus Heroes, and had them set it up after they closed for us. My wonderful daughters brought our wedding candle, and cards and flowers and we sat at the same table as we did on our first date and we ate. ( I didnt get a meatball hero, mostly because it is so fattening and 20 years later I do not weigh 117 lbs) It was beyond magical and seriously 20 years later I looked into his eyes and I know that I still love him as much now as I did then. I know the magic lives on. Point #3 in choosing a husband, dont settle for less than this kind of love. It's out there you just need to find it. Someday someone will be a part of you that you dont know how you lived without.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life...or just the first day of my blog

Why would I want to start a blog? Well I made a list this morning of everything I had to do today and it was so ridiculous that I ended the list with four things... cook dinner, save the world, start a blog and lose 20 lbs. So being an insane listmaker and being on the hyper end of my thyroid condition I felt the need to complete the list. Needless to say I did not complete saving the world or lose all of the 20 lbs but maybe the blog will save the world and all I will have to do is stop eating little Mounds bars every night.



So again why the blog? Someone I know started a blog and I have to say we are a little bit obsessed with reading it everyday. Reading it is a way to keep up, to get to know what someone really thinks of themself. I am known as a talker. Ok really if you know me you can stop laughing now. I have a lot to say. All the time about everything. I wouldn't consider myself opinionated or a know it all. I just love to discuss things and tell stories; which is why I started the blog really.



I have always wanted to write a book about my life with my kids and my family. A friend at work would tell me to write a book or a sitcom about my life because it was so unreal. It does seem to get ridiculous at times but there is one thing you can be sure of. I never ever lie. I embellish when I think I need to make my point. Like I will say someone was 800 lbs when they were like 300 to make the point that they were really big. Or I say all the time that people are 12, when they are really like 25 because when I want to make a point that they are young I need there to be a visual, like oh my god he was 12.



A little bit about me... I am like 40, old I know. I think of myself as about 22 though. I am not your typical 40 year old. Long story but that will be another time. I have four daughters, 21, 20, 15, 13. I know you are thinking... yeah um how could you be 22 when you have a 21 year old. Yeah um if you can do math I did have my first child at 19. I was married at 18, had my first child 1 and 1/2 years later lots of stories and lots of blogs to fill.



I will start with one story now that hopefully will make you want to read more.



Ok when I started dating my husband I was 16 and he was 18. We went to the same high school and I had actually known him since 8th grade. He was cool I was not but that is not what this story is about. He went into the Navy, another story for another time , and he hurt his hand in boot camp. So for years the military claimed his pain was in his head, and they let it go and go and go. Years of pain and suffering. Finally someone agreed to cut it open to see what was wrong with it. Surgery #1 the military doctor operates and pulls out a large mass. He goes on vacation just hours after the surgery. He leaves no instructions. Common sense says that my husband will have pain killers and have his bandages changed but this is the military so no orders means no action. I arrive after leaving my 6 month old with a stranger just to visit him because there are no phones there and he is screaming in pain. You don't know him but he would never be screaming in pain ever if he wasnt in the worst pain ever. So he is begging for pain killers, pacing back and forth, crying, yelling, screaming and the officers there say " You need to address me as Sir" It was so insane that it is unbelievable but it happened that way. This story continues but I am fast forwarding 6 years later.



I give birth to daughter #3 and the pain in my husbands hand is so intense that just days after I give birth he has to go to the doctor. He is out of the Navy now and weirdly ( or not if you believe in fate) we go to Lamaze classes with our doctor. So we have our baby blah blah blah, he goes to our doctor who we have just shared these weeks of intense breathing and panting with and tells him about the pain. Our doctor has just sent his nephew to a hand specialist that he is friends with so he sends us there. He had just been at his sons Bris. The hand specialist thinks there is just a lot of scar tissue from 3 botched Navy surgeries. He thinks through surgery and physical therapy he can improve his pain and also his ability to use his hand again.



So he operates, crazy story there for another time, but he calls me at home after the surgery( I had to go home to nurse my 5 week old at this point)(hubbys dad is with him until he feels good enough to come home) I say how did it go? he stutters , he really stutters not just here and he is saying hard to understand things like mass, and margins and irregular shape and I am like are you saying there was a tumor in there? Side note,,, we had gone to StonyBrook Hospital years before , they never did as much as an xray and injected steroid shots into what we now know is a tumor.



Who has a tumor in their hand? And it can't be Cancer because this has been going on for almost 10 years at this point. Cancer kills you way before that right? Wrong Wrong Wrong!



We wait for the pathology report and we don't think much of it really. So we go for the checkup and I am nursing Number 3 in the car and hubby says he is going into the appointment and I am like No wait for me and he is like no big deal meet me in there.



The doctor wants to know if I am there. My husband says yeah in the car nursing number 3. He wants to wait until I get in but my husband is like No really whats up? The doctor is crying. Not a good sign by the way. If you ever see your doctor crying before they give you news, run away, join the circus, eat lots of Ben and Jerrys and never see a doctor again. You wont have long to live but you will enjoy your last days.



So its cancer, synovial sarcoma, a rare and deadly soft tissue sarcoma. In his hand... and it stays dormant in your body for years and then it spreads and kills you. We didnt know at what stage we were at. The dormant one or the say goodbye to daddy girls one.



I calmy say " Oh you are not leaving me with these 3 girls alone. I forbid it." And then I become superwoman. In my head I guess. I had a 6 year old, a 5 year old and a 6 week old at this point. We were at Sloan Kettering in 3 days. The crying doctor actually called from the office while we were in there. And his cancer is so rare at that point there were only 8 other people in the world with it in their hand like that.



Wow this story is longer than I thought and this is only my first blog so I will continue this story next time. All I can say is I dealt with the scariest moment of my life with humor and I had some sick Cancer jokes. It helped me get through the day and some days it was hard to laugh but laughing is cathartic and it really lightens the moment. My favorite part of the story is after his next surgery we were driving to pick hubby up at Sloan Kettering, me , my dad and my number 3, Being a seasoned mom of three and knowing we were just driving into the city and back , maybe 3 hours tops I brought no diaper bag, just one diaper, sadly with a child who was just waiting to explode on the ride there. So I change her in the bathroom and she is just in a diaper and I cared more than I should of about that being I was picking up my husband from having two of his fingers amputated.