After taking these photos while I was at a retreat in Union, I checked facebook and saw that a friend on holiday 35 miles away took the same picture at the same time. 🙂
Trillium are perennials, and picking the flower can damage the plant so much that it takes a few years to recover. In fact, it’s actually illegal to pick them from public lands in Michigan and Minnesota. So, just take pictures, friends.
yes, more pictures of my little adventure are on their way, but first: homework. The semester ends in two weeks, so all my procrastination is catching up with me.
Why is it that food purchased from the side of a truck always seems to taste better? We have some amazing food trucks in Seattle.
Seattle is making a name for itself with it’s foodie culture, but many may not know about the amazing food being served up on wheels around the area. There are, of course, the traditional taco trucks, but keep your eyes peeled for Thai trucks and Pho trucks, as well.
A day like this is heaven – Skillet and Molly Moon‘s Ice Cream food trucks parked right next to each other.
Hello Cholesterol!
And now, from around the interwebs…
Me: As Seen On…
GalTime: The Next Big One: How to be prepared – One of the best ways to help your entire community in time of crisis is to be prepared for that crisis yourself: learn first aid, get certified in CPR, and prepare a disaster kit sufficient to care for your entire household for at least three days. Each person, or family, with their own emergency food, water, and other supplies relieves the stress of support services trying to help those without. In this article, I give some guidelines and pointers for preparing yourself and your family for the next big emergency.
Awesome stuff I found while I was procrastinating on my homework
Hamster Central: One Month – I’ve been following Jen’s blog for a couple years now. She lives in Tokyo. This quick check-in, one month after the devastating earthquake and tusnami, came with news that the cherry blossoms are in full bloom. Cherry blossoms signify the ephemeral qualities of life. Hope Blooms.
All Adither: Mommy Blogger – Angie struggles with the label “Mommy Blogger.” I struggle with that, too. Sure, I write a lot about my kid these days, I consider parenting her the most important thing of everything I do, so naturally it will bleed in to my writing. But it’s not all there is to me. I also tend to struggle against labels in general, but I understand that, as humans, we like to categorize things. Where do you stand on the label?
Miss Britt: Everything you wanted to know about the big trip – I’ve written about this before, but it has really captured my imagination. Britt and her husband and kids are about to sally forth in a motor home, and explore the country for a year. Every time I think about this, my brain spins. So many questions. How to pay the bills? What about the kids? Here Britt supplies some answers, and even more fodder for my imagination as I ponder what adventure is next for my little family.
Not Martha: a weekend on Guemes Island – This post is actually a couple months old, but I’ve revisited it several times. I’ve been feeling the need to get away lately. To pack up my little family and go somewhere quiet, surrounded by nature – and the water. To hear water lapping against rocks, and birds singing and chattering in the morning. To let go of deadlines and due dates, even if just for a weekend, and sink in to a deep tub, or sink my teeth into a sinfully decadent yet simple dinner. To read a book for pleasure – without taking notes. Sigh. One of these days…
I like to think of myself as having superpowers. My favorite superpower is the ability to make things go away by not believing they are true. I’ve had a lot of practice using this superpower; I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer while I was still breastfeeding my baby.
That was practice using this superpower, but no success.
One of the first things that hits you over the head with a cancer diagnosis, after confronting your mortality, is the understanding that you are not in control. Control is an illusion. This is a very difficult concept around which to wrap your brain.
We’re constantly bombarded with messages about how we are in control. Make a plan and execute it. Just do it. We are the product of our own choices. Metaphors abound: in the drivers seat, steer the ship, drive to success, master of your domain (giggle, snort – if you got this Seinfeld reference, you’re old like me).
There is a lot of truth in these ideas. We are the product of our own choices – to an extent. But there is so much we can not control. The child with neuroblastoma did nothing to deserve that disease. They did not earn it. Neither did I.
For all this time we spend juggling – super-moms with all their balls in the air at the same time – we also live with this fear that one dropped ball will bring them all down. If we miss a ball, a deadline, a dental appointment, 50,000-mile maintenance check, the world will keep on spinning whether we pick up the peices and run to rejoin the party, or throw our hands up in the air in defeat.
Some of the balls are going to drop.
I worried so much after my diagnosis: How am I going to effectively parent my child, keep up the house, finish my degree, and battle this disease? I realized that I could not keep all those balls in the air. I made a choice. I decided that parenting and health were my priorities, housekeeping would get attention as I had any to spare, and I took a leave of absence from school. A year later my daughter is happy and healthy as she enters her twos, I’m nearly done with treatment though still battling fatigue, my hair is starting to grow back, and in January I returned to school full time. But, my house is still a mess.
I’m still making choices about my priorities. My house still isn’t winning.
Martha Stewart has a large staff of well paid employees that help her pull off all that magic. I don’t have to be Martha Stewart, and most of us have no hope of having a large, well paid staff to make us look good. What you see is what you get. It’s just me, Baby. Lovable. Imperfect. Flawed. With mutant genes running amok.
I am letting go of the illusion of control
I don’t want to give you the impression that I’ve got this fatalist attitude where there’s not much sense in trying because there is no hope of success. I don’t believe that at all. I try. I work my butt off. I pour blood, sweat, and tears into motherhood, and everything else I do. But I’m learning to distinguish between the things I can control, and the things I can’t.
I can control whether I provide a quiet time and space for my daughter to take a nap
I can not control whether she goes to sleep
I can control the amount and quality of the food that I eat, and I can control the amount and quality of my exercize.
I can not control my weight
I can control my own reactions to my toddler’s behavior, and I can control whether she has been fed, and provided ample opportunity to play and rest.
I can not control whether she has a meltdown in public
I can provide sufficient towels and a bath mat
I can not control whether my husband soaks the bathroom floor when he gets out of the shower
I can fight like hell, do everything prescribed, and more
I can not control whether this cancer comes back
Life got so much easier when I stopped trying to unbelieve what I didn’t want to be true. I can’t control whether or not I have cancer, I can only control my reaction to that fact. A huge burden lifted when I stopped trying to control things over which I had no control. I can’t control everything. I don’t need to control everything. The fact that I don’t control everything doesn’t make me less of a person, less of a woman, less of a mother. It makes me human. It makes me vulnerable. It makes me brave and scared at the same time. It makes me real. And it makes me more empathetic to everyone else around me.
Sometimes, the best things in life are unplanned. Usually, the worst things in life are unplanned. Either way, survival, thriving, requires the ability to adapt. In order to incorporate this new reality into my life, I’ve got to accept it. The more time I spend thinking it just can’t be true, trying to control the uncontrollable, the longer it takes to find a way to make the best of the situation.
I used to work for a cruise/tour company that was smaller, and a bit more intimate than most. This gave us the flexibility to chase rabbit trails, and make impromptu itinerary changes to take advantage of opportunities as mother nature provided. The director used to say “we have an itinerary so we have something from which to deviate.” That’s a little closer to the way I live my life these days. I make plans and set goals, I work towards them, but I try to stay flexible enough to change as necessary. That helps with crisis management; it also makes it possible to savor rainbows, and jump on opportunities as they arise as well.
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This week, the girls at SITS are discussing perfection and the art of letting go. Join the conversation (Linky included). We’re also using #SITSLettingGo on Twitter.
This is my first Ultimate Blog Party with 5 Minutes for Mom, and I’m excited about it. I’d love to meet more bloggers. I love the interaction and sense of community that comes with blogging.
I’m a breast cancer survivor. I was diagnosed a year ago, just before my baby’s first birthday. A little over a year later and she’s almost two, and I’m almost done with treatment, but cancer is still part of my every day life. If you want to know what this blog is about, that’s a good start.
Why is it so difficult to take a self portrait where you don’t look stoned? Or is it just me with that problem?
Before breast cancer, this was a mommy blog.
Before I got pregnant, I swore I’d never let my blog turn in to a mommy blog. It’s still a mommy blog, but cancer, and parenting with cancer weighs in as well.
What’s wrong with having a mommy blog, anyway? I write about what I’m passionate about. I write about my husband, too. But most of that passion is left off the page. No worries. This blog is mostly PG. But I can be snarky at times. Or sarcastic. Sometimes both at the same time.
I’m also a full time college student trying to finish up a degree in Social Sciences while my husband finishes up his Master’s Degree in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. That means, with cancer, and a toddler, that I’m really, really busy. I don’t post every day. Sometimes not even every week. But when I do post, I hope it’s interesting, or makes you think, or even better, smile.
Several years ago, a friend flew down to visit me from Anchorage. During the visit, she asked me if I had considered moving back home to Alaska. This was mid-February, it was bitter cold up North, the ground and everything else covered in snirt (gray, gritty, dirty snow). I looked around at all the flowers, and the fresh fruits and vegetables on the stands as we walked through Pike Place Market, mountains on view in the background, and ferries making their way across Elliott Bay. “Seriously?” We both got a good laugh.
Me: As seen on…
GalTime: The Pink Daisy Project: Helping Women with Breast Cancer – I interviewed Debbie Cantwell on how she found the silver lining in her own breast cancer battle when started the Pink Daisy Project to help other women with breast cancer
Its been a long… Happy Birthday Sweet Matt – Anna, a fellow breast cancer survivor, linked to my story about my brother Matt. Her story, based on her blog, was written as a play and presented by Coyote Rep Off Broadway at Wings Theater in Greenwich Theater this past October. See the clip below.
My favorite recent reads
The View From Right Here – not a read so much, but a picture that stopped me in my tracks. Photo of a homeless women in stark focus as the world blurs by.
Public Bookstore: Having a Crappy Night? – I loved this post on dealing with a crappy evening. Made me smile, and might have even made me feel better. Certainly inspired me to look in to Little House on the Prairie re-runs.
BlogHer: Olly Olly Oxen Free – My, this was the week for sentimental reads. This post took me back to 9 years old. Not the awkward, gangly, prepubescent aspects of the nine year old me, but the running through a field with the wind blowing through my hair, and nothing to prove to anyone just be free me.
The houseboats on Seattle’s Lake Union were the stuff of my daydreams, even as a child growing up in small town Alaska. I had never actually laid eyes on a houseboat when I was a child, that I can remember, but somewhere along the line, I must have seen pictures.
My husband wants to buy a boat. He wants us to live on a boat. I tease him about a boat being a hole in the water that you throw money into. But it’s ok. He can have his fantasy, his dream – and maybe some day we will make it happen.
I’d be a whole lot more on-board with the idea if he was trying to move us into a houseboat. Mama needs her bathtub.
here’s a bit of my favorites around the interwebs this week…
Me: As seen on…
GalTime: Things To Do If You Are Diagnosed With Cancer – I am now the Seattle Ambassador for GalTime Magazine. For my first post with them, I discussed a few tips for dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Hopefully, you will have no use for this post.
Awesome people who mentioned me (or linked to me) in their posts this week
One Working Musician: The Beauty of Collaboration – Jason Parker wrote this post about that magical night when Karen Walrond read from her new book, The Beauty of Different, while his band, the Jason Parker Quartet, backed her up. Jason very kindly linked to my post about this event.
Heather Christo: Chocolate Beet Cake, (otherwise known as “the BEST chocolate cake”) – I have NEVER liked beets. They are one of those vegetables that make my head and neck do this involuntary icky-shudder, even when I think about them. Of course, they are not one of those vegetables that you run in to every day, so they’re pretty easy to avoid. That might be too bad, because I’ve been reading about all kinds of wonderful things that beets do for the body. A body that’s been through what my body has been through this year could really use some beets. At first glance, the thought of this recipe, using beets to moisten up chocolate cake, sounded a little, um, iffy. But, the more I think about it, the more I think I might be willing to give it a try. We’ll see. I’m not making any promises, but if I do make it, I’ll report back.
Miss Britt: And Then We Bought An RV – Buying an RV and taking a year to explore the United States is another one of those fantasies of mine that sit in the back of my head, but I never actually do anything about. Miss Britt and her family are doing something about it. They are selling off their possessions and heading out across the countryside to see America. Watching the dream play out, step by step, over the past few months has been fascinating. The more I watch other people chase their dreams, especially when they give the play-by-play along the way in their blogs, the more I think I my dreams are achievable, too.
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