Spring!

This was, as usual, a pretty nasty winter in Philadelphia. Wind chills that make you feel like your face is going to tear off, a couple feet of snow that just didn't want to melt, like I said, typical. But it is Spring At Last! It's sunny and green and just so encouraging. I've been sprouting vegetable seeds for by garden. Bf built the garden for me this week. We're doing a raised garden so that Bf doesn't have to dig up all that space for a garden that's really my thing, not his. He's always available to help me out when I need him to, but I do try to make things simple and less back-breaking-labor intense, if I can. In a couple weeks I'll get to plant my seedlings. I'm growing peas, lima beans, green beans, broccoli, spinach, shallots, peppers, and cucumbers. It's my first attempt at having a vegetable garden in like fifteen years, but my dad and I did pretty well back then.

We're also finishing up the renovation of our house and unpacking all of the boxes that've been hanging around waiting for the renovation to be finished. Yesterday, we went and picked up the rug we'd picked out for the living room. It's cool. It's an oval with lines on it, kinda like a watermelon, but in shades of brown instead of green. And any day now we get our new sofa and love seat in Ivy (which they don't have a picture of). I'm so excited; this is the first time BF and I have bought real, good quality furniture. Not that the IKEA stuff is bad quality, it just always ends up falling short of our expectations.

As far as my health goes...well...it's a mixed bag. I've been getting chemo once a month, which leaves me really exhausted for the next week or so, but the third and fourth weeks of the month I feel pretty great. The big problem for me right now is my G tube. It keeps getting infected and that hurts like hell. It's really just a giant pain in the ass; I don't know how I'm supposed to live with this thing. If I drink too much it comes out of the hole, same with food, smelling like vomit. So I'm always cleaning it, changing the dressing, changing my shirt; it's ridiculous and I hate it.

In other, better news, we just had the little man's fifth birthday party! He's getting so big, it'ss scary how fast he's gone from being a baby to really being a little boy. We shop for clothes now that are fitted neither for a certain number of months or for toddlers. He starts kindergarten in September. He's learning like a sponge. He reads words, adds and subtracts, it's just wild to be a part of. I also found out that I went to high school with his teacher, which was an odd but good revelation; I always liked her, she was a really good person then and it doesn't seem like anything's changed.

Alright, that's all for now. I'll check back in soon.

I Keep Forgetting!

I keep forgetting to mention that I''ve started a charity!

It's called Knit for the Needy and it's a group of people using loom knitting, or whatever other knit-craft they enjoy, to create hats for the homeless in the Philadelphia area. This way people can give their free-time, time on the train, little bits of stolen time here and there, and work from they're home , office, or wherever else they please.

I don't have many volunteers yet, but I'm hoping to get plenty between now and the Fall, so that we can have plenty of hats by the time next winter rolls around.

The charity website is www.knitfortheneedy.org and I'd love to see anyone who's interested check it out and perhaps volunteer themselves. Loom knitting hats is a very easy process that usually takes between five and six hours per hat, so you can really see the results of your work immediately!

I know, I Know...

I know. I said that there was another post coming, like soon, after that last purge of an entry. Things have just been, well I guess very productive and a little exciting, but mostly boring.

After I left the hospital I went to my most-excellent-Mother’s house to rehab, and there was plenty of rehab. I couldn’t walk or stand. My legs were like Jell-o. But with the help of my physical therapist and my own strength-of-will I got up and walking with a walker in about a month. By the middle of February I had already been walking around without the walker for a while. At the same time we were still controlling (and are still controlling) my GI issues. I have to suction my stomach through a gastronomy tube that goes through my abdomen and at night I get feedings through a jejunal tube that bypasses my stomach and feeds me directly into my small intestine. Lovely, eh?

Anyway, by the end of February I felt well enough to get out. In fact I felt that it was imperative that I leave the state and do something fun. After all, after six months in the hospital “cabin fever” doesn’t ever begin to describe it. So we booked two tickets to Vegas and flew out there. The trouble is, we’re not really the “Vegas types”; we don’t really gamble, go to dance clubs, drink, or pay highly inflated rates to fly over the Grand Canyon or the Strip, but we still thought that there’d beplenty to keep us busy. And there was a lot, just not enough. We had a great dinner at a nice restaurant, saw two Circue du Solieil shows. But we ended up taking a five hour drive to the Grand Canyon only to find that there was a very localized snowstorm that had whited out all of the “scenic vistas” we’d been waiting so long to see. And other than that and a couple little side trips, we spent a lot of time sitting in our hotel room watching Olympic curling and fighting over whether or not it was my fault the vacation was going so badly. But, great vacation or not, we got away and it actually did wonders for our relationship. It was really hard for BF to deal with me being hospitalized for six months and essentially being hospitalized for another two months at my Mother’s house.

Once we got home from Vegas and I moved back home with BF, things got a lot better between us. I’ve been able to do a lot more to help around the house, and BF is more understanding about the things that I can’t do. And not to get too intimate, but things have been a lot better in that department as well.

So now we’re just living life as best we can. The house is still not-quite-renovated, the laundry never ends, and half the boxes are still packed from the move, but we’ve got our own house, I’m building a vegetable garden in the side yard, BF’s building a deck in the back, the little guy’s about to turn five and he’s getting a great big play set with swings and a slide for the back yard. Things are good. We’re happy. I’m doing a round of chemo a month; I’ve had three so far and they’re not so bad. Oh and before I forget, my step-mom’s pregnant again, so I’ll be getting a new baby brother in six months. It’s pretty exciting.

Well, I guess that’s it for now. I’ll write again. Can’t promise when, but hopefully soon! Thanks for bothering to read!