Nearest Distant Shore

What's the Buzz?

This is the scene at my house these days, as Liam freaks out over going outside in this gorgeous weather because he is afraid of bees.  Never mind that he's never been stung by one, he knows what bees like and our back yard, awash in clover, is Bee Heaven as far as he's concerned.  So given that part of our plan for spring break involved getting him good and solid on his bike, which of course will require being in the yard, I had the yard-service guys come and cut the grass today.

The yard looks great, there's not a bee in sight, but Liam is not convinced. 

I guess I'm going to have to revert to the mothering methods of my childhood, whereby we were basically booted to the yard after breakfast and told not to come back in until lunch, bees and other wildlife be damned.

Sigh.  The  ways this child finds to confound me are many and varied; they contain mulititudes.  But at least it's never dull.

Thursday Thirteen: Spring Break Edition

1. The best thing about spring break (besides the fact that it's SPRING) is not having to get up so early.  I'm loving our leisurely mornings.
2. Today we're going to spend gift cards from here, then we're going to the Big Box Bookstore (where I have a discount card) to feed my magazine sickness addiction.
3. And while we're in the neighborhood, we're going to stop in at the new(ish) location of our favorite toy store.
4. Liam is obsessed with all things Webkinz, and he wants me to see his newest favorite, the Google.  He's hinting broadly for one to show up in his Easter basket.
5. When I asked him did the Easter Bunny normally take requests, he said, "No, but this is a good time to start!"  Wise guy.
6. With Easter on the way, our local JDRF support group is hosting an Easter egg hunt this weekend at one of our favorite parks.
7. Liam and I are also going to color some eggs this weekend. We have tie-dye, sparkle and speckled.
8. April in Wilmington means not only Easter but Azalea Festival. There are few things more beautiful than Wilmington in the spring, and Azalea Festival is a wonderful showcase for it.
9. In other local news, Kure Beach turns 60 this year!  Any excuse for a parade, I say, and there's lots more fun stuff to do, too.
10. The weather this past week has been fab.u.lous.  I've sat out in the sun every day for at least an hour, which has helped to get rid of the winter blahs.  I don't give a damn what the experts say, I feel better with sun on my skin.  Of course, I do use SPF45-no sense in being an idiot.
11. The lovely weather does have a down side--time to start paying the lawn-service guys again.  I was trying to hold out til at least April, but they're coming on Saturday (the 31st).  My back yard is awash in clover, which leads to bees, which freak Liam out, so it has to go.
12. My most recent treatment was this past Monday, and that was about the halfway mark for me.  Thankfully this one didn't kick my ass quite as hard as the last one did.
13. The Relay for Life is in less than a month.  I'm looking forward to walking with my fellow survivors and raising lots of money to support cancer research.

Welcome, Springtime!

Oh, how glorious it is when the weather starts to turn warm!  Today it was 78 and gorgeous and the forecast for the next few days is more of the same.  The winter here was (mostly) not particularly cold but has been exceptionally long, and I am so so ready for spring.  And yes, I know I say that every year, but every year it's true, varying only by how early I get spring fever.  This year I've had it since about New Year's Day. 

Liam is on spring break, and it's been really nice to have some hang-out time with him.  Right now he's at Camp Grandparents, no doubt eating like a king and staying up til all hours, just as a kid should on his vacation.  He and I had a really lovely afternoon on Wednesday, when we celebrated the first full day of spring by going to the beach. It was a little chilly for me but I did still manage to get my toes in the sand, which does me at least as much good as seeing a therapist.

One of my wonderful invisfriends sent me a flash drive full of music files and between that and a generous iTunes gift card from another friend, I'm having tons of fun listening to new music and revisiting some old favorites.  Technology is a wonderful thing; how I do adore my iPod!

And speaking of adoring, have I mentioned lately how much I love my friends?  I don't have much money or much in the way of material possessions, but I am sinfully rich in friendship and love.  I am so lucky, and so grateful for it.  This has been a long hard time and I still have a ways to go, but my friends are unflagging in their support and love, and this journey would be unbearable without them.

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Shamelessly stolen from Jennifer, who always finds the cool stuff.

Thursday Thirteen: Tidbits

1. This morning I overslept for the second time this week.  Whoever thought I would live in a world where sleeping until 6:20 AM was considered oversleeping?
2. Since I'm not working full-time right now, I don't really mind having to drive Liam to school, but he actually likes riding the bus.
3. The not working full-time is a problem in other ways, though.  It isn't something I can do right now, but I need to make damn sure it doesn't become something I don't do.  Beyond the financial (which is not inconsiderable), I need the grounding that a full-time job gives me.
4. When I went to pour my first cup of coffee this morning I found that my coffee maker had thrown a fit at some point and there was coffee all over the counter and grounds in the pot.  Not my favorite way to start the day.  Thank God for the Magic Eraser, which removes coffee stains from my white countertop so beautifully.
5. My house is a sty and I have not had the energy to deal with it.  A friend gave me a gift certificate to Molly Maid, which I was holding onto for when I move, but I'm thinking now might be a better time to use it.
6. Stupidly, I didn't make that decision earlier in the week so that there was a possibility of someone coming this week.  I may have to suck it up and do most of it myself. 
7. In my ongoing quest to make Liam's life more fun, tonight we are going to observe a karate class at the YWCA with an eye towards him joining the class.  He is very excited.  In a lovely little bit of small-worldness, the sensei is someone I've known casually for 20 years or so, although I haven't seen him in a long time.
8. Liam's beloved preschool was housed at the YWCA so I had to be a Y member to enroll him there.  I've let my membership lapse, but I'm going to rejoin-only $40 a year.
9. Consequently, I'm quitting my gym.  I rarely go and I really can't afford it, and I've only held on to the membership so we could use the pool.  The Y has a pool that we can use on either a pay-per-use basis or we can buy a season pass.  It's also closer to where I'm moving than my current gym is (not to mention right across the street from Krispy Kreme).
10. There are exercise classes offered there if I want to get my sorry butt over there and take them.  All evidence currently available says that I won't, but you never can tell. 
11. They also offer some fun classes like tap dancing and belly dancing.  I always wanted to learn to tap dance!
12. The latest PTA fundraiser at Liam's school was selling cookie dough, and today was to be cookie-dough distribution day.  Guilty Mama TL volunteered to help out since I have some free time.  Awful Introvert TL is thrilled that the cookie-dough delivery has been delayed, and is hoping fervently that it doesn't arrive until Monday.
13. I'm sure it says something not terribly flattering about me that I would rather have chemo than help out with cookie-dough distribution.

Springing Forward

Yeah, I know I'm a little ahead of myself, but I am sooo ready for this weekend's change to Daylight Savings Time.  Actually I'm ready for winter to be GONE, and two weeks from today it will be, at least by the calendar.  This has been a hard winter, and I can't wait to celebrate the equinox.  Meanwhile, I'm going to really enjoy the lingering daylight of an evening. 

In early celebration, I bought myself a beautiful peach-colored shirt yesterday.  It's a great color on me and such a nice change from the ubiquitous blackblackblack of my winter clothes.  I'd lost 20 or 25 pounds over the course of the year due to the upheaval in my personal life because I'm one of those people who doesn't eat when she's stressed, and of course I lost a bunch more weight in the hospital (NPO for two weeks is good for that).   Now I have a closet full of clothes that don't fit, and not much budget for shopping, so I was very happy to find such a pretty spring-y shirt for only nine bucks.

Liam seems to be doing better.  We haven't seen his counselor in two weeks-she couldn't fit us in last week, and this week Liam came home sick the day of our appointment, so I cancelled the appointment.  But his general disposition has improved and we're working really hard on getting him back on track with his school work.  Both of us had gotten very lazy, but no more.  I know from painful experience how hard it is to get back to good habits once the laziness is established, so I've set some pretty tight parameters for him.  He needs to work hard on everything: reading comprehension, math concepts, even handwriting.  He protests mightily while having to do it, but I can also see the pride in him when he's done a good job.

I'm also pushing him pretty hard to try some new things.  He has been really averse to learning to ride a bike.  He's had his since he was five and he has never even tried to learn to ride it;  in fact, it still has the training wheels on it.  He's old enough that not knowing how to ride a bike going to  cause him problems socially and I want to nip that in the bud, so our project for his spring break is for him to learn to ride.  I have very unfond memories of my daddy teaching me to ride, and I don't want it to be as traumatic for him, so this should be interesting.

He asked for and received Heelys for Christmas, but hasn't spent much time learning how to navigate while wearing them, which was making me crazy since they cost a lot more than I would usually spend on his shoes.  So I've been encouraging him to practice on them a lot (with my heart in my mouth-he's really not very good yet!).  He also asked for a scooter.  He wants a Fusion and I've promised him one once he masters the Razor.  I'm hoping that learning to balance himself on the Heelys and scooter will help him with balancing on his bike.

There is a method to this madness.  Beyond helping him to push his limits a little bit, all of this is designed to get him outside and away from the ubiquitous screens.  Again, we had gotten lazy over the course of the winter, and I finally realized how much time he was spending in front of the television, the Playstation, the computer.  I am certainly not anti-any of those (well, I don't love the Playstation), but I can definitely see a deterioration in his behavior when that's all he does, so it's time to severely curtail them.

Being an only child has its benefits, but I worry about him being lonely.  His best friend changed schools after Christmas break and while they still see each other occasionally, he misses him.  He has a pretty good variety of interests, but has never been much of a joiner.  While he did play t-ball for two seasons, he's not interested in playing baseball or soccer ("Mama, I'm lazy and I hate organized sports.").  The Boy Scout troop for which I signed him up in the fall turned out to be so badly organized that they still weren't having den meetings in November, which really left a bad taste in both our mouths.  I've been sort of preoccupied lately and that's led to not being quite as proactive as I should be about arranging play dates for him.  God bless his friend Sophia's mother, who has invited him over often to play during this time. 

His spring break starts at noon on Friday the 16th and goes through the Tuesday after Easter.  I have only one treatment during that time, so I'm really hoping I feel good and the weather cooperates so we can spend lots of time outside.  Both of us need to clear the cobwebs.