Chinese Homework 2.1

 

• 我最喜欢吃的：我最喜欢吃墨西哥饭。
• 我最不喜欢吃的：我不吃肉。
• 我最喜欢的运动：我最喜欢跑步。
• 我最不喜欢的运动：我不喜欢美式踢球。
• 我最想去旅游的地方：我想去中国。
• 我最不想去旅游的地方：别地方。

Happy Second Half of 2016

Hey, 2016!   Let's try to be a little kinder in the second half for the H-Y family, okay?


Here is some crap you accomplished in your first half, 2016:

*One more parent with a chemo port installed and used.
*One parent diagnosed with kidney failure.
*One major surgery perhaps a few decades over due.   I have stage 4 endometriosis.   If nothing else, my potential career as a belly button model is over due to scarring.  I'll save you the photos of it and the pictures of the super duper swelly belly.   I was wearing size large skirts when I usually traverse the world in size 4 US pants.
*One job that I am failing at due to many absences as noted above regardless of any actual protection I have under law.
*One husband with inflammation and fatigue issues that with unknown cause at this point.

So, 2016, let's be friends!   I swear I am cool and we can do great things together!

My February Plans

I had plans to stream-line my crazy life in February.

Here are some of the beautiful plans I had for the month.   Some of the insanity was spurred by Chinese New Year.   For CNY, you are supposed to start the new year off all clean, organized, and out with the old.

*No Facebook and that time suck
*No crap foods
*No flying.   I was going to keep away from cosmic radiation for at least 6 weeks and focus on my life without luggage all over my house.   I knew I had to be in Chicago in the beginning of March.
*Cleaning out my garage, closet, and jungle backyard.

Here is one thing I did't plan on and did not welcome:

*Another parent being diagnosed with cancer.

So, the first bunch of items are now disregarded.   My husband and I had a conversation about getting a gardner and I told him really didn't care how much it cost.

Sunday Unfunday

My dad is in the hospital coughing up blood and funkiness showing up on a CT scan.

Meanwhile, I'm 2000 miles away 2 blocks away from Super Bowl City.   I walked through it Thursday afternoon, but that was all I did as I'm not interested in standing in lines for exhibits about a sport I just don't care for or lines for way overpriced food and Budweiser products.   Being from Missouri, I'm used to people standing in line for the Budweiser products;   my sister and I used to joke that they probably have the beer piped directly into Busch stadium from the brewery.

I'm not okay with $10 grilled cheese, though.

Thursday afternoon I went to the Puppy Bowl by Animal Planet that was right outside of Super Bowl City at the Ferry Building.  Maybe someday I will post pictures, but just imagine a bunch of adorbs puppies wrastlin'.

Waiting is fun, and that is what I am doing with my dad.

Serious Conversations at the Pig Under a Roof

So serious my husband had to tweet them.

See?   These two braniacs can't stop thinking!

Can't Find My S*** (Clutter busting, part 1)

With all of the travel and chaos that has happened in the last 7 months, my house looks like it has exploded.   I still get it professionally cleaned regularly, which is necessary with my killer allergies, but the cleaners are getting to the point where they are cleaning around clutter in some areas.

It kills me.  About 5 years ago I swore off crap and went as minimalist as made sense for us.  

My favorite law of physics is the 2nd law of thermodynamics, because entropy, where a naturally  system naturally goes from organized to chaos, is applicable in all areas of life.   This includes socks in my house.

The "S***" in my title really refers to "sock" in my house as one of my dogs is a sock hoarder.   She just carries them around, which we admit is cute and call her our interior decorator, but the number of sock orphans seems to have increased exponentially in the 2 years we have had her.   Yes, yes, 95% or so of dogs' bad habits are really the humans bad habits, but she isn't harming anything (except my sanity), so it is what it is.

Socks aren't the only element of entropy.   The rest of my clothing has came along with it.   When I went minimalist, most things went, and basically all that was left was stuff that matched seamlessly that made me look like a walking bruise, i.e., most items were grey, blue, or purple.

About 2 years ago, after my 2nd failed IVF cycle, I felt I needed to stop hiding in blah clothing and at least pretend to look more like a lady.   This means no more living in t-shirts and jeans on weekends and at least casual Friday and maybe another day at work.  This is also coming from someone who would wail when her mom told her there were two days of the year I had to wear a dress two days a year, which was Christmas and Easter.

As an adult, I am okay with idea of a dress or skirt, but they also fall under "pear-shaped problems" as most dresses aren't cut right and even if they did, even when I was running 30+ miles a week, my thunder thighs rub together.   I know all women have problems buying clothing off the rack, but I really feel most items don't work for us fall-seasoned stone-fruit types.

I read decades okay that my set of genetics is fine as pear-shaped people have lower health risks.   Here's a brief verification.

So, for me, my clutter not only reflects on my mental state, it impacts my mental state.   I'm trying to use February to reset some areas of my life as I at least don't have to travel to the Midwest for family business.

Cancer is teh Suck

My mom has cancer.

The H-fam(ily) (mine) doesn't mess around with illness.   She went straight in with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.   If you need the fancier diagnosis, it a rare cancer, since the H-fam likes that which is exclusive, called apocrine carcinoma.

For what it is worth, even after she had a PET scan showing the metastases, she still had clear mammograms.   I'm not saying that you should avoid mammograms as they are crap, but in a rare percentage, like my mom, they don't catch it.

For better or worse, her cancer is HER2 positive, which means they have something to target with chemo.   She's been through 6 rounds (a round constitutes an infusion of the professional poison once every 3 weeks) of taxotere+ Perjeta+ Herceptin.   The latter 2 are for the HER2+ component, and she will continue those 2 every 3 weeks indefinitely.   She has had 2 rounds without taxotere and is starting to feel like a human again.