make glemonade

My sisters and I (those of us that have blogs) have decided to do a blog challenge together. Now, I have gone through the range of emotions about it, mostly landing on "too narcissistic", and I pinned it on pinterest with the idea of doing it in my physical journal, but my sisters helped overrule that. Not that it took much persuading. I should mention I got this from my friend Taryn's photography blog.  She is doing it for her business but I am tweaking it for personal use.

 We sold the jeep today. For some reason this song just keeps playing in my head.

They don't have to be Olympians, but I really want to be a mom. Hardest job in the world, best job in the world.

It simultaneously reminds me of the biggest and smallest things . With the deaths I have experienced, I find that I can suddenly contemplate the metal making up a paper clip. But I also gulp as I watch the starry universe expand in my vision at night. I see generations of families spilling onto pages. I see the future and the past, the afterlife and the premortal. Perhaps it is not the biggest and smallest things, perhaps death takes hold on my comprehension of opposites. It awakens my sense to the other side of things. Off and on, darkness and light, fear and faith. It happens early. No one told me how young I would be when it started to creep into my life. And I don't think I'm the exception. The first person I remember dying and it really meaning something to me was a girl named Maura at my high school (I realize this is somewhat incriminating since my Grandad died when I was in 6th grade). I remember the day we found out at school, I was devestated. I was embarassed ...

Many of you are aware that Eric had his (potentially) last scan at Huntsman last week. He has been getting them at least once every six months since his BMT. With this clear scan, we won't have to worry about cancer anymore. For the most part. I don't know if I'll ever not worry about it. This is an image from one of his very first scans back in 2009. When we left this week we asked to have them for our records. I saw it as a personal history thing, they saw it as planning for future doctors. Yeah, sure, whatever. Just as long as we have the pictures. The lighted up portions of the picture show activity from the cancer. Yeah. Scary?!?! We are ecstatic to announce that the scan this last week was clean and we will not ever have to do that again, unless he starts getting symptoms. Heaven forbid. Besides the recent infertility concern, we don't think about this part of our life together very much. It is like a sloshy, groggy, bad dream cloud that hung over us for awhile ...

I get equally anxious and excited everytime I think about the what some would call the Apocalypse. Maybe 98% scared, 2% excited, or 98%excited, 2% scared... I genuinely believe in the apocalypse (or in other words the Second Coming) but I, like everyone else, have no idea when this day will come. Eric does not think it will be in our lifetime. I think it might. I hope not when we are really old. Mostly because of this reason: I would like to be in that category.

So, when your husband gets sick, all you think about is him getting better. There are no other thoughts, so we quickly became grateful for doctors that simply told us what to do. We did it all. We bought flannel sheets so it would not hurt his head. They told us the best route for financial assistance, so we filled out piles of paperwork. They told Eric not to eat for 24 hours before [fill in the blank] test, so he didn't. They told us to freeze some sperm, just in case, before he started chemo therapy, so we did. It was a really awkward and amusing experience, really. One we are happy to tell you in person. I remember talking to the chemo nurses, particularly one, I don't remember her name but she loved 80s music, skiing, and Eric. She said people have kids all the time after they go through chemo. I don't even remember why we were talking about it. It was something at the very beginning that scared me, the thought of it causing infertility was one of my biggest fears abou...