I’ve been sooo busy. And since I can’t work because I have Kira here all week and the TV is on and the washer is running (for a clean uniform for tomorrow) and the stove fan is on, here I am.

First there was Ignite Phoenix 12 on the 4th, then a bunch of friends of Jack Mangan got together the next day.

My sister got here last Thursday and we and the rest of my family got together that night to work on banners and posters for our Music and Laughter Benefits Brittany thing. Beth got to spend time with my whole bunch. I taught about 40 AmeriCorps kids what podcasting is at Gangplank on Friday and then went to #EVFN. Saturday morning we took a drive out to Saguaro Lake and I wasn’t even tempted to leave her out there. Saturday night was spent getting everything ready for the Benefit so Sunday morning we did NOTHING. Napped even.

Sunday night. Well, I was disappointed but we still made some money. I had hoped for a couple hundred people and we didn’t come close. Maybe it was the location. Maybe it was because it was Mother’s Day (which I don’t give a shit about) or maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. My friends Tyler and Katie, Vinessa, Ruth, and Dani all came through with raffle items or promotion. And although some the comics were… local-for-a-reason the bands were pretty good. I’ll admit I didn’t particularly care for the screaming band, but the people that did show up seemed to like them. Oh well. We all walked away determined to try again.

My visit with my sister went better than I expected. There wasn’t any mean or snarky and we had a lot of talks. About our childhood and our parents, our kids and husbands but I never did find the right time to ask her about the big one. We skirted around about the time Brittany was here but I still don’t even have a hint as to why she cut me off for so many years. I haven’t forgotten but maybe I can just let it go for now. I told the kids I would take the high road while Beth was here and I did. Who knows how our relationship will go from here. At least we can come together for Brit.

I’ll tell you what, all those years I worked in Kindergarten our kids never learned a third of the things this kid has learned at Learning Foundation and Performing Arts charter school. The conversations we have!

First of all, they let her in a year early even though she has a late September birthday. She loves her teacher and though I don’t particularly care for the way they’re teaching her to write her letters (some sort of “monkey tail”) everything else is outstanding. She’s bringing home spelling tests (which she aces) with words like this:

• act
• grin
• blue
• Sunday
• five
• six
• rock
• duck
• swim
• picnic

These are not Kindergarten words. In fact, when I worked in Kindergarten we didn’t even DO words yet, just letters and sounds. And next week’s word list includes words like fantastic and and jumping. Who does that at 5 years old?

Plus she has art, music, PE, and Spanish. There are only 7 kids in her class compared to the 20+ kids in the public school where I worked and my kids went to. I have completely revised my thinking that public schools are good enough. I’m excited to see what she learns next. I’m so proud of her.

LAST Sunday I went to a birthday party for my friend Dani at a roller skating rink… and I didn’t fall or break anything.

Wednesday was a great day! My friend Tyler and his wife Katie took me to a Diamondbacks game! We got to go out on the edge of the field and in the dugout before the game. We had great seats and great ball-park food. The Phillies beat the ‘Backs, but it was still fun! He tells the whole story better so click that link. And I still have a bit of cotton candy left!

Thursday morning I met with friends for the monthly #EVTM at one of my favorite restaurants. Then I picked up Kira from school and Ginnie and Jack and we had a nice evening. Spent most of the day Friday with Ginnie and Jack too.

Friday night I went back out with Tyler and Katie to the Phoenix Improv Festival to see my friends Jose and Nina in action. That was fun!

Yesterday, after my weekly meeting with the Ignite Phoenix crew (Yay! Ignite 12 is this Friday Night!) I went downtown to the Capital building and held up my sign in support of Unite Against the War on Women. Then out to dinner with Crystal.

Whew.

Today is starting slow. I had and issue with my cable that started last Friday and the tech came this morning and replaced the box. The problem is, the “new” box keeps rebooting itself. We’re up to 14 reboots since he left about 90 minutes ago. Wait, it just did it again.

I’m supposed to meet friends for breakfast – everyone is waiting on me – and then get my hair colored and meet with the whole family at Max and Krystal’s place for dinner. We’ll see how the day turns out.

Happy Birthday to me!

And the cable box just rebooted again.

For the last couple of years we’ve been getting together as a family along with some of my children’s friends. We have pot-luck at a park, have activities for the kids and just have a pleasant day in what is usually a great time to be outside in Arizona.

I got there just in time to miss the water balloon fight (oh gee darn) but got lots of wet hugs. What, water balloons are egg-shaped! I grubbed up on a variety of food and watched the kids play. Daughter arrived with baby so I got to show him off and then the egg hunt started. Little Jack even got one plastic egg of his own. Kira did great too. Unfortunately some of the candies were chocolate and melty which ended up all over many little faces.

So of course I did the Grammi thing and scooped up a fingertip of melty chocolate and offered it up to Jack. His little bird mouth opened and then the little shit did the ungrateful thing. Hey, guess what? Jack has his two bottom teeth coming in and I now have a sore spot on my finger. It was adorable how he licked his chops and wanted more – of the chocolate or my finger I cannot guess.

OK so I don’t really care for other people’s children (even those I have known since their birth) but this is the one time and place where it’s appropriate for kids to be filthy and running around having a ball.

Plus I didn’t have to stay very long.

My friends Katie and Tyler are getting married tonight. I remember Tylerthedouche before he met Katie and he’s such a better person now. Apparently a good woman CAN do wonders for a man.

Their wedding is kind of different. I think he’s wearing toe-shoes and she’s likely to be in a sundress. They met through social media so most of the planning has been online, open to all. Quite a bit of crowd-sourcing!

Another friend Corey just posted his list of things he hopes doesn’t happen on their wedding day (that may or may not have happened on his) so here’s mine:

• When the hairdresser found out who the bride was marrying, she proceeded to tell her stories about how she and apparently the receptionist AND the shampoo girl had fucked the groom in high school.
• Best man borrowed a fancy car for our “limo” and nobody told him the gas tank leaked so the car sitting outside the side door made the entire church lobby reek of gas.
• Flower petals ordered turned out to be a small bouquet so flower girl was crushed. She’d practiced tossing petals for days!
• Groom’s brother (usher) sported a black eye after a poor ending to the bachelor party.
• Half the groom’s family pissed at the other half of the groom’s family, hence the black eye.
• Bride’s mother vocally unhappy about bride’s father bringing his new wife, her ex-best-friend.
• Plywood dance floors in the not-quite-finished small town “country club.”
• Best man puking in the back seat of the “limo” shortly before we left for the night.
• Wedding night spent at the Detroit Metro Airport Hilton (paid for by bride’s ex-boyfriend) where the fruit basket consisted of one apple and one orange sliced up on a paper plate.

High class, I’m telling ya. One good thing was a beautiful sunset behind us for great pictures.

If you want to follow Katie and Tyler’s wedding, watch twitter for the #storiedwedding hashtag and go to their wedding website.

———————————-

I’m going but I’m having a personal pain problem so I probably won’t be there long. I barely lasted an hour at Katie’s bachelorette party last night. Damnit.

So she called me Monday night. I’ve been dreading it because I knew it wouldn’t go well.

She told me Brittany called her and said she might try to visit because Mom had to turn her car in before it was repossessed.

I said “oh really? I’m surprised she called you.”

Mom wanted to know why…

“Maybe because the last time you visited her in the hospital where she’s fighting FOR HER LIFE you proceeded to bitch about YOUR current financial situation and even asked the poor girl when she was going to pay back the $500 you loaned her years ago. It’s not about you MOM, it’s about Brittany. Anything and everything she’s done before is NOTHING compared to what she’s going through now.”

Mom responds with much whining and crying about how SHE always helps people and SHE always gets screwed. That she’s in a hard spot too and nobody seems to care.

JEZUZ FUCKING CHRIST, what a selfish bitch.

“Mom, there’s a hell of a lot of difference between her getting a sudden diagnosis of STAGE 4 MELANOMA of the lung and you having YEARS to plan ahead for the day your husband dies and leaves you broke. Did you think to save even a dime for the last 10 years?”

Nope.

“You made choices Mom, Brittany has no choice here. And it’s beyond tacky cruel to lay any of your issues on her right now. I’m so pissed at you I can barely speak.”

Well that shut her down a bit. Then came the whining if I was going to cut her off like Beth does.

“No, I’m not my sister. I’ll get past it but I’m not happy with you right now.”

And when I told her we all were planning on going to Florida in late May she used her little oh-poor-little-me voice and asked “Are you *sob* going to stop by *sob* and see me?”

Don’t ask me that right now.

A few weeks ago I posted an update on my niece Brittany, right? So she posted this on Facebook today:

Finally got the test results back from the lab. It is Melanoma in my lung. Although Im scared, Im glad that I finally got the results back so I can start treatment. Hopefully I will be starting treatment tonight or tomorrow and be home by this weekend. Thank you to all my friends and family that have been coming to see me. You guys keep my spirits high and I love each and every one of you for it. ♥

She’s 23 and this ain’t her first battle. She also had skin cancer at 16 among other trials and tribulations in her young life. Here’s the thing: she doesn’t have insurance. Florida doesn’t appear to have a health back-up plan like our AHCCS so she’s going to end up footing the bill for likely hundreds of thousands of dollars. She’s already been in the hospital (two actually) for almost a month.

So I’m asking you, and I’ve never really asked anything of you guys before. If you can would you please go HERE and donate what you can to help her out.

Please.

I will be as soon as payday comes around next week. There’s not much else I can do.

Please.

Brings on much introspection.

I’m so much happier. I feel like a more complete person than I have in years. I have peace within myself, I have financial stability, I volunteer much of my time, I have a great bunch of kids that I’m really close with, and I bought myself a brand-spankin’ new HDTV and a pretty cabinet to set it on.

But I have this constant nagging thought that my kids should have some sort of relationship with their father. I periodically suggest to one or the other that they should make contact. He should have some relationship with his granddaughter but Casey’s not interested. Max’s wife would like to meet Buck but Max has no desire to have that happen. Ginnie, well she has her own reasons not to. I really had no idea back when I was married that the kids were already so estranged from their father. How could I not notice? None of them want anything to do with him. Maybe I’ve painted him badly here but he really wasn’t a bad person. Just set in his ways and distant. Sort of anti-social. It was only in the last few years that the drinking (and the personal shit that went with it) got too bad for me to tolerate.

So… is it just because of some old-fashioned blood-is-thicker-than-water reasoning that I keep pushing this? I mean, I still maintain a relationship with my mother and I don’t even like her. Or maybe deep down I’m just proving to myself that it’s not my fault they’ve chosen to cut him off. My issues with him shouldn’t be their issues but apparently they have issues of their own.

Whatever, I wish I could let it go. I’ve always thought that blood didn’t mean anything to me but that’s not how I act. I wish I did. Maybe it’s too ingrained by society.

Other than that I’m doing great.

I’ve never had anyone physically close to me have cancer, so I really don’t know the hands-on effect on the stricken or those around them. Oh sure, cousin A or far-away friend Z has had it and I get snippets, but to be right there witnessing, helping, supporting? Not so far. A person can only empathize so much from a distance.

My beautiful niece Brittany (Miss B) had skin cancer when she was 16. Of course, with her living in Florida and me being here I had no real connection to that process. And except for the wicked scar in the center of her back she seemed to sail right through that experience.

But just as all thoughts of it fade away, cancer strikes again, as it is wont to do.

Last Thursday I noticed on Facebook that she was in the hospital and within hours she called me to tell me what she knew at the time. She had 3 spots on her lungs – one the size of a tangerine – and they’d scheduled a biopsy for later that afternoon. After a shitload of text messages between me and my kids, calls to my Mom (grrr arg) and a call from my Dad, my (surprise!) sister actually called me. The biopsy was done and another surgery to help her breathe better. Although they have to wait for the biopsy results to be sure, the doctors think this time our Miss B has lung cancer. Inoperable. Plans (apparently) to try chemo and stuff are in the works but who knows how it will all turn out. Don’t tell “our mother” or post anything online right away. Hey, I waited a few days. The last thing she said was Brittany is a strong girl and she’ll come though this just fine.

Well… now… she’s certainly strong willed. When she lived with me we butt heads all the time. But she’s also very sensitive. That girl has had so much shit in her life already. I guess that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or as the tattoo across her chest says:

Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat

We’re all pulling for her to get through this. There’s not much more we can do at this point. I’m not certain of her health insurance status so maybe at some point we’ll be raising money. I can surely help with that.

Hang in there Miss B. I love you and miss you and wish I could be there to… do something! I can’t do shit across the country, but you’re in my thoughts hourly and I know you’ll fight this as hard as you can.

Me? I just want to punch somebody. The fact that my family has lousy communication skills means I keep up with the news via Facebook status updates. Today she’s in pain and the meds aren’t cutting it anymore.

Shit. Fuck cancer.

Well, apparently my grandson was baptized over the weekend. My daughter asked me weeks ago if I was okay with it. Sure, it doesn’t mean anything to me. She’s mentioned it a couple of times since but I thought it was later in the month.

Her boyfriend’s family is very Catholic and she’s been living with them, so it was a given. If it makes them all happy it’s fine by me. I’m sure Jack won’t be any different when I go see him tomorrow.

I had my kids baptized Episcopalian back in the day, even though I never actually joined the church and never went back. Maybe I thought it was a fail-safe at the time.

But even now I still don’t get it. What’s the point again? The child won’t remember, the child may or may not ever decide to follow that or any other religion. Baptized babies aren’t any healthier or happier.

There is that godparent thing. So Tyler’s brother and his wife? girlfriend? I can’t remember are now Jack’s godparents. That means they’re in charge of his spiritual upbringing (whatever that is) and supposedly take custody if anything happens to Tyler and Ginnie right?

Let me tell you now, if anything happens to my daughter and that child needs care that family is in for a big awakening. None of us may have been invited to attend his baptismal or even invited to visit him (only me) but when push comes to shove we’ll be fighting to keep him. It’s her choice now to go along with their religiosity in order to keep the peace where she lives, but so far deep down inside she’s still an atheist just like the rest of my family. We’ll share, but we won’t give up.

And when he gets big enough to question I’ll make damned sure he does. Just like Kira, when she asks me questions I tell her what I think and that other people think differently and she needs to make up her own mind.