November 2008 Archives

I should make a new category for my blogs: depressing stuff you probably don't want to read. ;-)

Liam is watching Elmo and Natalie Portman dancing while dressed up as elephants.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It was the last holiday we celebrated with my mother. It's when she officially stopped working. (she never actually "officially" quit - she had enough sick time that she remained an employee to the end is my understanding).

I can't tell you what I'm feeling because I'm not even sure myself. Besides, Ernie is drawing Bert's face in lavender. Little distracting, right? On to the ears, now.

Liam is officially potty training, I think. He tells me when he's about to soil his diaper (put as politely as possible). I'm still not really pushing it, letting him set the tone and it seems to be happening organically. It's kind of fun (who knew?) to watch the process evolve for him.

He's got boots he can put on himself, he wipes up the floor if he spills something, (he says, "wipe"), and he has started talking about memories from past events. Cool little kiddo (with some fairly obvious "first kid" stuff going on, heheheh). I know my mother would absolutely love hearing about and watching his development - telling me how he reminds her of one of her own children and what-not.

Yup, you guessed it. It has begun.

What is 'it'?

It is the beginning of my mother's dying season. We joked about it when she was alive, and my dad has talked about all the 'firsts' without my mother, and my sister has talked about remembering all the 'lasts' with my mother.

But here I am, as I think of the next couple of months - formerly some of my faves - all I can think of is "dying season".

And I have to get a mole on my foot removed because 'it could be cancerous', and I have to have a cyst looked at on my ovary ... 'cause it could be cancerous' ... and, for some reason, when I was referred to a psychologist, it wasn't for "GRIEF", it was for "anxiety". Huh. Wonder why. Somehow, I thought the cancer was going to die with my mother.

However, I am trying to be happy and think about stuff my mother loved to do - we're having a finger painting party tomorrow to celebrate her birthday. And now it makes me think how my mother managed to inform me of her cancer - literally - as I was welcoming guests into our home to celebrate Mark's birthday [here's where, if she were still alive, she would say, "guilt, guilt, guilt".]

Maman, happy 57th birthday. I'm pretty sure you're enjoying it more than I am.

I realized that, although I have been voting for ... umm, let's see ... 14 years, yeah ... this is the first presidential election for which I have been in the United States! Probably means it's the first time my vote actually counted. In any case, I had fun. I hope you (who are US citizens) did, too.