GRANDPARENTING: IT'S PRETTY SPECIAL

This weekend we kept our granddaughter Taylor while mommy and daddy went on a weekend adventure.  This will be the last weekend together before Ben deploys.  (John did most the work, as I'm not quite up to three year old shenanigans yet)

  My kids were so very lucky to have wonderful grandparents.  I never had grandparents, I mean I had them, but they were way too old to take any interest in me or play with me.  So when our kids were fortunate to have a few sets, it was just fantastic.

It probably goes without saying that this is the house of no rules when it comes to Taylor.  As long as her "fun" doesn't include burning the house down or murdering us in our sleep (I sleep with one open) she can do whatever she wants. Friday night as Tay and I were laying in bed she told me her daddy didn't feed her at all that day and she had had nothing to eat all day.  Don't worry, I was onto her game.  The game of "I don't want to go to bed."  Here's the difference between my mom and I.  My mom would have TOTALLY believed the kid.  She would have had a frying pan in one hand scrambling eggs and the telephone in the other calling me and yelling about starving children.  I'm not exaggerating. 

I don't know if my kids did it on purpose (yes I do know and yes they did) they would get me in trouble about anything and everything.  If they spent the weekend at my parents I could count on a lecture by Monday morning about something.  It could be anything from "my mom won't buy me new shoes and mine have holes in them" to "mom didn't pay our school fees so we aren't getting our report cards"  The truth on that was we had written a check that never got delivered to the teacher.......NOT MY FAULT.  When they would go visit I would want to duct tape their mouths.  They had a knack of taking a thread of truth, something totally out of context and making it into something outrageous.  I could be screaming about wishing I lived in butt (bad bad word) Egypt and they would take that and tell Grandma we were going to vacation in a faraway land and planned on  putting them in an orphanage.  You get the idea.

With all that being said....I guess that's what families do.  We protect and love one another.  We are there in good times and bad.  Being a grandparent is totally different than being the parent.  I love watching my family gather around Taylor and loving her to death.  Is she spoiled?  probably, but in the end I don't think it will matter.  I thank God that she has two great parents and a lot of people who love her!

OH, I FORGOT....THE ONCOLOGIST CALLED

It's been two weeks since my surgery.  Here is something I guess I forgot to tell everyone and my BFF is not very happy about it and insists that I blog about it.

I received a call last Monday, OK not this last Monday but the Monday prior, from the oncologist office that
the results to all my biopsies were good.  I do not remember what I was doing or where I was when the call came through.  I remember thinking I wasn't going to answer the phone, but recognized the number as that of the oncologist.  I must have thought it best to answer.   The news was good, but at this point I wasn't worried because he told us the day of the surgery everything was fine. 

I didn't tell anyone about the phone call because I didn't know anyone was waiting on information.  the Ole BFF about had heart failure this week when somehow it came up in conversation and she asked when I would get the results. Then John chimes in that I didn't tell him either.  As soon as my mom reads this, she will also let me know I didn't tell her either.

Shelly, the BFF I'm referring to plays the game Tetris.  She told me that as she would play a game she would challenge herself ( I use that word "challenge" very very lightly)  that if her score would be something like 1500 I would be cured of cancer.  As much as I would like to thank her for fighting for a cure, I'm now finding out that you would have to SUCK at Tetris if your score is only 1500.  She has me hooked on it and I usually start failing around 15,000.  I believe my high score is 21,000 which probably isn't very good either.  So I'm suggesting if you have some life threatening problem you let me know and I will have Shelly play a game of Tetris for you.  PROBLEM SOLVED.

Bottom line:  I think I will just continue to rely on God for any healings...:)  Love you Shell!

I NEED SOME HUMOR AND I'M NOT FINDING IT ON TV!

I may have a malpractice suit....yep...in addition to my female parts and my appendix, I believe the doctor also stole my funny bone.  God knows he needs one....but he could have taken my mothers, it would probably be a better match for him than mine.   I guess he doesn't find anything funny about cancer. 

I would like my humor back though please. I like laughing and finding humor in things. My goodness the more TV you listen to the more depressed you can become.  The women of the view even get on my nerves, mostly  just when Barbara Walters is on.  I would like to just reach through the TV and throttle her.  Whoopie would like do more than throttle her I can tell.  She gets on her last nerve.

Then you have all the name calling talking heads.  The Super right and the Super left and I am declaring myself a Super I don't Give a Crap Somewhere in the Middle Party.  I tend to be one of these people who can see both sides.  (aka riding the fence, which gives you a very sore arse)  So as I sit in the middle I see that THEY ARE ALL NUTS.  I've had it with Rush and the Bill Mahers of the world.  The hate that is spewed is awful.  I will say the left have the best comedy shows though.  I give them an A+.   I enjoy the Daily Show....it's not exactly where I get my political views, but sometimes it does put things in more perspective and just plain funny.  I'm making a plea for the Right to gently, but firmly pull the stick out of their you know whats and come up with something funny. 

We received the bill for my first operation, that was quite funny also.  I believe once we add everything up it would be close to $30,000 if not more.  Then I get depressed again.....how do people who do not have health insurance pay for that?  Our company (John and I work for the same company) is self insured.  This means they wrote a check for this amount.  That's a lot on a small company like ours and I'm only one person and this was only the one operation. 

Then there are the social issues swirling around.....birth control, abortion, same sex marriage.  I have opinions on all these, but really don't want to blog about them.  All I will say from a Christian perspective is above anything, God has taught and preached for us to love.  He will do the judging and I'm not worried about the social issues as much as  I am worried about me and the judgement he may have for ME!  We tend to pick out what we view as "sins" and forget God doesn't ask us to judge.  He does tell us to remove the logs/planks out of our own eyes.  

The TV is now off and I'm trying to get back to my happy spot with a computer, coffee and my favorite new addiction Pinterest.  I MUST get that funny bone back!!

AN APOLOGY TO ALL MY ENGLISH TEACHERS

Sometimes.... ok a lot of times, I get a little paranoid knowing that there are English teachers reading this blog.  I feel especially bad for the ones that may have tried to teach me everything they knew only to  see I'm butchering the English language. 

Take heart, here is what I learned in 8th grade:    Is, Am, Are, Was, were, be, being, been, has, have had, do, does, did, shall, will, might, should, could.  Everything I learned from Mr. Vanfossen is right there!!  That's right....linking verbs.  I was not a total English loser!  I believe with Mr Vanfossen we learned linking verbs and the Alma Mater. 

I've always been good at spelling, but I still like spell check it's a life saver at times.  The one thing they haven't perfected is for a program that will read an entire document and fix the grammar mistakes.  I love commas.  I have to fight the urge to put a comma at any point a natural breath could be taken.  If you think I am using too many commas, take heart in knowing that there were at least 15 other instances I wanted to use one, but didn't.  Don't even get me started on colons and semi colons, I just throw those in if I'm feeling it. 

One of my most embarrassing moments (there are so many) was at a church ladies bible study.  I was reading out loud and I read the word misled with a long "I".  Example: 

I was misled into thinking this was a good idea. 

When you read that word with a long "I", it's not even a real word.  Everyone in the bible study was gracious enough to let it slide, E X C E P T......the English Teacher and she busted up laughing.  I believe I even argued with her that Misled with a long "I" was indeed a word and that I had heard it before.  Why would I argue with an English Teacher with a masters degree??  To this day, I believe the word should be hyphenated.  If I'm being taken down the wrong path I am being Mis-led.  If someone takes great advantage of you then you have been misled (long I).  Who do I talk to about this? I really think I'm on to something.  (or is that onto...one word?)

At any rate, if there are any teachers out there who cringe when they read what I write, and you would like a job correcting grammar, let me know.  Otherwise, I'm just going to continue going as I am.   (is that last sentence even a sentence?) oh I could second guess myself forever!!

TEENAGERS CAN DRIVE YOU MORE THAN CRAZY!!

Well well well, The Canton family soooooooooooooo could be a reality show.  I'm sorry to be so crass, but here it was the night before surgery and we get a call from Sarah that she wrecked the car.  (thanking God nobody was hurt and for the first time EVER the car is still drivable) I'm pooping like a goose from whatever liquid bomb they made me drink.  (It was like the fricking bottomless pit of a gator aid bottle.)  John had a couple adult beverages and didn't feel it would be polite to show up at the scene of an accident  smelling like Yuengling.  I have to say I was kind of irritated because I really didn't want to show up at the scene squeezing my butt cheeks together and hoping for the best.  That is not a good plan EVER.

 God really works in funny, sometimes convenient ways.  He placed the wreck right at the end of our road so I dropped John off, came home and did my business. I got a call they needed insurance information, so I left to go drop that off, came home and pooed more and waited on another call. 

While all this is happening, I have a phone that's ringing off the hook and texts coming in that I'm dodging like bullets.... My friend, John's mom, Texts from my friend, my boss, my cousin. and Sarah... Do you ever just want the world to STOP?  Just stop for a quick minute, so you can get off the toilet and catch your breath before the next crisis hits.  Maybe just stop so you can deal with the present crisis.  Had I known this little problem was going to happen less than eight hours away from surgery, I wouldn't have drank the concoction, this crisis would have cleaned me out just fine.  I know I talk about my toilet habits too much, but when nervous I tend  to well.....you know.....let loose.  I could have saved my self hours of discomfort of drinking that disgusting stuff had I just known.  God really needs to get a louder voice! (this is actually a joke, he probably has laryngitis from screaming so much and I'm hard of hearing)

I think God gave me extra humor because he said "someday this woman is going to have teenagers that if she doesn't have humor she will harm them or herself." See, he could have given my brother one of my imperfect children for one of his perfect ones........but NOOOOOOOOOOOO we didn't want to upset Roger.  ( Oh I am so kidding, I have to take shots at Roger  every chance I get it's pay back for all those times he beat the crap out of me)  Besides, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, there is not a one in this glorious trio we created that I would give up or do over.  Nope not one.....

We have owned enough cars with three kids to have a small used car lot and an insurance premium that mirrors the national debt. 

Sam had one major wreck and two other mishaps in her own driveway. She had two cars I believe. 

 Sarah, has now had  three wrecks and maimed one deer.  The deer story is kind of funny because she was coming home from a band function at 3am and hit the deer.  She came up to our bedroom and told us what had happened and in her words said "the van only has MINIMAL damage"  To me minimal damage is a broken blinker.  The car ended up being in the shop for approx ten days and the bill was in the thousands (I think)    She has had 5 vehicles. Now in fairness, not all of these cars were totalled out, it's just as soon as you total two cars, we start buying disposable ones. 

 Jonathan, the good son, has had one wreck and one scrape in the school parking lot and 2 vehicles.  He was smart enough that when he wrecked a car, it wasn't his it was his dads.

 This tally of accidents does not include anything we as parents may not have been told.   I hear around the ages of 25 to 30 you start hearing what REALLY went on under the roof of your own house apparently while I was in the bathroom.  Goodness knows, I was in there a lot.

So yea, when parents say their kids are starting to drive I just die a little inside for them.  It does not matter how old they are every time they leave the house I say be careful and they roll their eyes and say OKAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.....oh, this could make me mad, but see I know God is working on the ten kids they are each going to have and they will be paid back many times over........(evil laugh)

TODAY I'M WHINING.

I'm back....Not 100% back, but I'm at least back home.  This time pretty much mirrored the last time.  The Aultman hospital staff is top notch and nobody ticked me off.  I love medical people all of them from Dr's to STNA's to the student nurses.  They many times have a thankless job and I just want to give a shout out to all the nice people along the way.  They see a lot and deal with a lot and they do it with grace, patience and professionalism. 

I know I sound like a broken record, but the waiting and anticipation for procedures/operations is still the worst.  This time it was kind of entertaining because while in the QUE waiting for surgery there was a six year old on one side and a 2 year old on the other. They were having the typical, tonsil, adenoids and tube type operations, but this doesn't make it any better if you are the parent.  I loved  that while waiting, my anesthesiologist played with the kids and made them balloon "art" out of the surgical gloves.  I'm sure the parents appreciated it also.  One funny little story is the six year old overheard a surgeon telling an older woman with bad diabetes that they were going to take her big toe off.....he DIVED into that bed and covered his head as though he was going to have to witness it.  It was cute.  I wonder how he will remember that story years from now, when he is recalling it for his kids.  I'm pretty sure it will be worse than it really was.  He will be telling his kids that back in his day, they did amputations right in the waiting room......

As everyone now knows, I'm sure, the surgery was a success and I'm free of cancer.  Now we just have to recuperate for the second time.  These incisions are impressive as far as how far the pain goes.  It truly feels as though he not only cut me horizontally 6-8 inches, but he took the top flap above the incision and STRETCHED it and hooked it on the end of my nose and then the bottom flap he stretched down and hooked it on my big toe.   This, of course made it possible for the Dr to literally climb inside me with a coal miners helmet and football cleats to look around.  I'm just telling you in the most dramatic way possible what it feels like.  I know there are surgeries that are twenty times harder than this believe me I do, but this smarts a little. 

I think that's it for today.  I'm not seeking sympathy....just a nap. 

PLEASE HELP ME SCORE SOME HOSPITAL FOOD!!

I'm still in the hospital writing these under the influence of two percocets.These pills make you feel like you could go jump hurdles.
I love love the nurses here.   I had the same rotation of nurses this time as the last time and they all remember me because I'm so nice haha. See Superior Dairy co workers I am nice!!
I'm keeping this short today, but I just once again wanted to thank everyone for all the prayers.  You are all amazing.
Now can everyone please pray that I fart so I can be given real food.  Can you believe they are holding my food as ransom for gas?  How cruel.....
I will write more later......



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