Hope4Peyton

Before I get into this too much, let it be known that I am an incredibly social person….in REAL LIFE TOO.

I’m not one of those online entities that rolls up into a little ball upon face-to-face interaction…I actually like people.  I have friends!

In fact, this is the year that my very best friend and I will offically have been friends longer than we haven’t….did that make sense? We’ve known each other longer than we haven’t in our total lifespan.

I have friends from three high schools I attended…middle school even!…friends from my single-wild-and-crazy days…most of my ex-roommates…even a few ex-boyfriends…I have mommy-friends AND daddy-friends…friends from the cancer world…I’m almost a better friend to Peter’s friends than HE is…blogger friends…I have LOTS of freaking friends! <—dude. ego much?

But the whole point of expressing how well-adjusted *snort* I am is to say this:

I have this strange non-urgency about making any more friends here in teh GEORGIA.

Ten years ago Peter and I and a wee bebe Nathaniel picked up our meager possessions and moved cross country from Florida to Colorado.  It was traumatic.  We had one car (that Pete took off to work every day), a tiny apartment (that he seemingly never came home to because he was off enjoying his new job where they had grown-up conversations and played foozeball tournaments on Fridays) and a new baby (who was staggeringly cute, but not so much a great conversationalist at that point).

There may or may not have been some curling-up-on-the-closet-floor type weeping bouts…followed by those wonderful, loving conversations that involve the words “I” “hate” and “you” and the gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes.

I was desperate.

Desperate for people to talk to, women to connect with, someone to be a friend to me.

And I met a group of the ugliest, mean-spirited, back-stabbing gaggle of  wretches to climb out of the rotting crypt of girlfriendhood and waved my arms and screamed “OOOH MEEE!!! Pick MEEEE!!!”

It took a few months before I backed off and gave them the stink eye, letting them know in no uncertain terms that I thought they were totally and utterly C.R.A.Z.Y.  Which I might have said in THOSE exact words, directly to their faces.

Did I mention these were all the wives of the guys Pete worked with?

Yeah. Good times. Corporate Wife FAIL.

They made me appreciate the art of not having to have someone in your back pocket all the time.

I’ve made tons of acquaintances over the years, people who I enjoyed for the time we were together…but I’ve made some tremendous friends that I’ll hold onto forever….friends that are like the Louises to my Thelma, Ethels to my Lucy, the Daytime Emmy Awards to my Susan Lucci and my own personal brand of Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Sisters of my heart.

And thanks to the wonderful world of the interwebs, I have them….all day, every day, five thousand times a day in forty-nine flavors! Calls, texts, emails, IM’s, Skype, Google Groups, twitter, facebook, carrier-freaking-pigeons…I am NEVER alone.

I like it.

I’m good with the fact that I don’t have to see my people all the time for them to still be my best people.

So, it’s been three weeks here and I haven’t even tried to make more than mildly pleasant small talk with anyone I’ve met.  I barely make eye contact with the kid who hands me my Starbucks…I just can’t…it would feel too much like I’m cheating on Jim back at the Brandon Starbucks…I MISS YOU, JIM!

And I wonder if when I start meeting people I’ll even be interested in taking the time to get to know anyone.  Will it feel worth it to start weeding through to those particular people I’ll actually connect with?  I don’t even feel like I have the time, energy or motivation to go through another Colorado fiasco. Am I officially just too damn lazy to make friends? Or is there a point where your dance card is full and it’s OK to feel complete in the ones you have?

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Oh, and on a totally different note, I’m also over at Deep South Moms today, irconically enough, writing about my newbie expectations of BlogHer09 and how I’ll be meeting lots of new people.

I  was going to write this whole post and leave a little added blurb about Peyton’s clinic visit today.

But it deserved space all it’s own.

Counts were INCREDIBLE!!

Still cancer free.

Possibly the best three words ever.

I so want to get this made into a shirt for her to wear. EVERY. DAY.

Yeah. My kid is that awesome!!

My worries about Peyton’s upcoming clinic visit and my excitement about the upcoming trip to Chicago for BlogHer collided in my dreams.

I dreamed that she relapsed and I couldn’t go on my trip. I was suddenly plunged back into the world of chemotherapy and treatment and being a fulltime nurse and you know what I did?

I spazzed out about not being able to go on to my blogger convention.

Oh yes.

My dream self threw a monumental hissy fit in the face my child’s disease and got ugly about not going to CHICAGO.

For real.

Well, not REAL, but in-my-dream-real.

And I woke up wanting to punch myself in the face.

Is it possible that I could truly be THAT selfish?

Is there a special place in hell for parents like me that resent their sick kid for being sick?

PUNCH.IN.THE.FACE.

But after thinking about it, searching deep, I had to admit that I would be monumentally unhappy if she relapsed and I missed the conference.

Why WOULDN’T I be?

It’s not just the conference, it’s the life we’re starting to have again.

It’s the world that doesn’t revolved around daily medications….making plans only to know that chances are good that we won’t be able to see them happen….having Nathaniel and Rachael’s lives turned upside down as their needs are always put on the backburner while we take care of the life and death issues Peyton faces.

It’s nothing exciting, but it’s just….simple….plain….normal.

Things normal families take for granted. Things it wouldn’t occur to them to even think of as extraordinary.

“WOW, we really ARE all sitting around the table having dinner again.”

“It’s been six months since we’ve been to the hospital.”

“Her hair might need a trim.”

Replaced with cancer…steroids…shots…surgeries…hospitals…watching my girl lose her oh-so-very-proud-of-it hair…with tears this time around…the pain and fear in her eyes…the pain and fear in mine…the unknown…the unthinkable.

Yup. Angry. I would be angry. I would be boiling with rage so fiery it would threaten to consume my very being.

And I think it’s possible that if I were able to channel all my anger into one measly missed trip?  I’d be entitled to it.

But it was just a dream.

And I still sort of want to punch myself in the face.

Peyton looked like crap last night.

Walking through the store where she started complaining that her tummy hurt, I looked at her.

REALLY looked at her.

Her skin? Sheet white.

Her eyes? Deep grey circles under.

Just overall feeling like a bucket of poo.

Of course, my heart sinks to the tips of my toes.

And I know that she was tired because we were out and about way too late….and her tummy hurt because we ate at Ci-Ci’s pizza…and she’s still adjusting to the move and the summer schedule.

But WHEN do I get to start NOT automatically going there?  I’m ready to stop looking at every little thing as a sign, a symptom.  Crazy train? I’m ready to get off!

She gets to just feel like crap.

She gets to just be tired.

She gets to run around like any other kid and be all banged up.

One day it’ll stop being cancer everywhere I freaking look.

I’m really trying.

She goes to the new clinic on Tuesday for her monthly checkup and bloodwork and it’ll soothe all my craziness for another thirty days.

Right?

I have this thing about trying to find something good out of a situation, even when it’s mostly crap and the good sometimes has to be really lame, like “well, it could have laid eggs in my ear!”

Sometimes it’s not so hard to find the good thing.

When my dear friend Heather lost her daughter this year, I would have been hard-pressed to say anything good could come out of it…but I will tell you this, I got to meet Meghan for the first time, I got to see what an amazing person she is {and so dang tiny and cute and pocket-sized and I wanted to put her in my carry-on luggage and keep her forever} and know that there is nothing she won’t do for a friend and THAT was a very good thing.

It’s not often you get to see someone in action and think, “THAT’s the kind of friend I want to be.”

I got to see that in Meghan.

And? She’s teh funny! So, enjoy.

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When Anissa asked me about guest posting, my first thought wasn’t YAY! It was “SH*T. What in the hell am I going to write about?!”

So that’s pretty much what I said to Anissa. With a lot of “WAAAHHH” and “The PRESSURE!” added in.

To which she replied:

“Write about anything you want…ANYTHING…your first kiss, the last time you had a waxing, chicken nuggets, 105 things you can do with peanut butter, the time in high school when you….”

So, of course, my logical response was: “I’m going to write about ALL THOSE THINGS!”

My first kiss:

I don’t actually remember my first kiss. That’s kind of sad, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve seen pictures of my first *technical* kiss, with PJ Carosella, when I was a toddler. But as for my first REAL kiss where I was all fluttery and nervous and AWESOME? I don’t remember.

The first boy I remember kissing is Billy Lilly (Yes, that’s his real name, and YES, his parents knew what they were naming him, he was a Junior). He was my boyfriend in 8th through 10th-ish grade. We had a long, occasionally stormy relationship. His mother hated me, his sister once described how she was going to kill me (something about bashing my head into her knee, if I remember correctly). But OH, how I loved that boy. He was Captain of the Football team (a running back, #23), and a track and field super star. An all around, nice, good, goofy boy. He could always make me laugh. This is us one Homecoming:

I’m petite, he’s anything but. What of it?

We were both on the Homecoming Court. Adorable, no?

He’s married now and expecting his first baby, a girl. I commented on his Facebook status that I shouldn’t probably laugh as much as I did about that. Heh.

Waxing:

The only thing I get waxed is my brows. And I LOATHE doing even that. Not because of the pain, but because the damn waxer spends 95% of the time breathing on me. And I HATE when people breathe on me. I’m getting the chills just thinking about it, so I’m going to move on.

Chicken Nuggets:

My boys are obsessed with chicken nuggets. They’re a dinner staple at our house, and most often come in the form of dinosaurs or mickey mouse. YUM-O. Yesterday at the grocery store, I noticed something called “Chicken Rings.” Chicken in the form of an onion ring. Now, I’m ALL ABOUT the chicken nugget and the onion ring. But chicken as a ring? Kinda creeps me out. I shuddered a little and walked away.

When I got home, I talked to my mom about what food the boys would eat at her house when we’re there this weekend. And she told me that Grandpa Dick had JUST purchased some Chicken Rings for the boys to enjoy. Suh-weet. I guess we’ll let them decide!

105 Things to do with Peanut Butter:

Don’t worry, I’m not going to list 105 things. In my opinion, there are only TWO things you should do with peanut butter:

1. Eat it (a big old spoonful is one of my favorite ways, or on some bread drizzled with honey.)
2. Use it to get gum out of your hair.

That time in high school when I:

Called my friend’s parents because she was drunk and throwing up and I didn’t want to have her in my mom’s leather upholstered car for the 30 minute drive home. They were cool about it, but I’m pretty sure she never forgave me for it. Oh well, I’d do it again.

Sigh. Now I’m nostalgic about high school.

Sadly, I’ve eaten one too many processed chicken nuggets since those days to look this good in the dress anymore:

I rocked the bangs, yo.

But if my mom still has it, and I can fit into it, I’m totally wearing it to the MamaPop Sparklecorn Extravaganza at BlogHer. Keep your fingers crossed the my considerably larger ass doesn’t bust the seams.