lumps, bumps, and trials.....

Is it just a cyst? A harmless little bump? Or is it....the dreaded "C-word"? At this point I am honestly not very worried. I have gotten all out of sorts about things in the past, like the terrible pain in my lower side, which totally disappeared, making me wonder if prayers were answered or if I had a rare and fleeting disorder never before diagnosed.

So it's just a little lump. A hard little pea sized lump, in my left breast. I wanted to do my usual Ignore-It-And-Maybe-It-Will-Go-Away thingy, but after reading lots of scary stuff online, I decided to call the dr. A mammogram is set up for Monday morning. Hopefully it will be nothing...but you know, my mother had breast cancer which spread to her lymph nodes, resulting in the lovely radical double mastectomy. And she survived several more years. Her mother died of cancer at the age 35, and my father's mother died of cancer in her fifties. My own father died of a stroke but had leukemia too.

Anyhow. This is what I'm dealing with today, and I just thought I'd share. Life is interesting. 80% of lumps are non-cancerous.

Tonight, I have to call in to see if I have to report for Jury Duty tomorrow morning. I already did my 6 month deferral, which is allowed once in a lifetime in our county. I was supposed to report last September when we would be in Seattle with the kids, and um, we saved for months for those plane tickets. Anyway, I have to possibly report tomorrow. I called and pleaded my case with like five people before being connected with the commissioner of jurors. I told her I homeschool my kids, and asked what I am supposed to do with them. She said, "Do what you usually do with them when you do something else." So I am tempted to just bring them all to the courtroom with me, and say, "This is what I usually do with them." The thing is, I also watch little Annika, and Davian...I hope this is viewed as a good enough excuse to be excused, although I would actually like to sit on a jury. I hope I don't have to blurt out that I have a mammogram scheduled for Monday.

Yesterday we had our sunshine, but it just wasn't warm enough, although it hit 60. The wind was chilly. The kids loved being outside and running around. Today, it's raining...and this weekend...we are getting more snow. Spring snow for central New York. Paul is leaving for France on Saturday, for two weeks. I thought I was done with driving him to the airport in the snow for the year.

"Don't put the cart before the horse", my mother used to say. I was in tenth grade when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She tried to hide it from me at first, when I confronted her, she said she had a lump on her WRIST, ha. My dad tended towards being miserable and grumpy a lot, and when he missed work and drove my mom to chemo appointments, he wasn't always the pleasantest. He was responsible and caring in his own way, and would always do what he had to do, but he simply wasn't always kind about it. He would feel bad later, and give someone twenty bucks, he didn't WANT to be that way. My mother used to keep track of his moods, she swore he was what used to be called manic depressive, or bipolar. He refused to believe it, and never got help for it. Anyway, sometimes I would skip school and go with my mom, on the bus from our house in the suburbs, to the big city, to her chemo appointments. The first time I went, I went in the room with her while she had the i.v. hooked up...the blood snaked up the clear tube before the medicine found it's way down, and the whole room swayed...down I went, thankfully into a chair.

Anyway, my mom used to make everything as fun as possible, in case you wonder where I came from. Those trips to the city were actually good times, but of course my mother was suffering and not letting me know it. She had cancer before there was Zofran for nausea. The chemo was harsher back in 1982. But she never ever complained. Her beautiful red curly hair fell out, and she wore a wig bought from the wig counter at Kmart. Do you believe that such a thing actually existed, a wig counter at Kmart? When we went there for her to try them on, we laughed so hard we were falling on the floor.

Her own mother had died when my mom was only 14 years old, and she seriously thought this cancer was the end for her. I just remembered how she loved us so much. She was so unselfish, as if she just wanted to use her time to be good. It wasn't the end for her, she lived to be 69.

Anyway anyway.

None of us knows how many days we have here on earth, so it's a perfect opportunity to place our lives into God's keeping, and let go of worries. To trust in the Lord with all of your heart sounds like a good plan, but it requires saying a firm NO to those thoughts of anxiety, and to pondering all of the What-Ifs.

Well, I just got a call from the IRS! (Internal Revenue Service). Apparently we owe lots of money are in danger of a lawsuit, if we don't call them back immediately with our tax information. Now, I'm no Einstein, but I wasn't born yesterday, either. Scammers...calling and threatening...it's sick. So many older people, and foreigners, fall for it, and actually pay them. My sister was on the line with an Indian guy who threatened her with jail time if she didn't pay her back taxes immediately...she talked to him for quite a while, played along, before asking him if he thought she was that stupid.

My sister has some health issues too, some serious chronic kidney infections...she has some big tests coming up to determine what will be done. We're praying for each other, her and I.

While I sit here and write, and put things out there for the whole world to see, I wonder...do I share too much? I am not looking for pity, or for attention. I just like keeping it real, as much as possible. Life isn't easy. And when I'm going through different trials, I feel fake sitting here writing about rainbows and puppydogs, when really, I'm struggling with something.

Here's another thing: Duke is reaching the end of his rainbow. I am getting to the point where I wonder if he's ready to go to doggy heaven and chase the bunny rabbits. He keeps peeing in the house. He pees in the hall, when we came back from Florida we were greeted with piles of pee on our bedroom carpet...plus he lifted his leg and peed on clothes I had hanging, you know, draped nicely, ha. I had to do so much laundry. Then he peed in the little girls' room the other night, and in the downstairs hallway. Now I'm hearing that he pooped in the downstairs hallway last night. He goes out plenty of times during the day...and going up and down the deck steps is getting more challenging for him. What point does a dog have to reach before we put him out of his misery? I am making myself cry. I love the Duke-ster. He's the kindest, most gentle soul. He follows me around the house and breaks my heart. I go from one room to another, and he so painstakingly gets up and relocates. He has lumps and bumps of his own, but no more surgeries for Duke. I just don't know....

And now the kids are up, the little girls want to go shopping with cousin Danielle...Grandma gave them $20 each to buy something when we went to Disney, but they saved it and want to go somewhere. Hmm. Maybe we will.