Well, DARN.....

This morning, while thinking about colors, my NEW NORMAL, and such, I decided to play around with the format of the blog.

I thought I'd lost the whole darn thing.

I did lose my follower's list....so if you've been following, please click on the FOLLOW link again!

Guys that might be reading this, I hope you won't be too embarrassed to read a pink blog.

I also changed the name, as you can see.

My "new normal"!

This is IT!

While not the 1979 version of one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE songs,  it is still quite delicious to listen to as well as view the incredible Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins perform live.

When the song came out, the lyrics had a personal meaning to me that were QUITE different than what Kenny Loggins had written them for

His father was ill, about to give up.  He wrote this to help his father.

I was trying to tell Jonathan I was his miracle.

You probably heard this song and interpreted in your own personal way.

At any rate, ENJOY.

And if you have to, STAND UP AND FIGHT!

"If you're lucky enough to be at the beach......

then you're lucky enough!

(Photo of a Perdido Key, FL beach...the absolute BEST!!!)

I'm not lucky enough to actually be there but I've been playing my new sound machine on "ocean sounds"  all day.

I'm pretending it is too cold to walk on the beach and am enjoying being bundled up in a purple sweater over a yellow striped top.  Feet in FUGGS.  (Thank you, girls, for convincing me I needed them!)  Funky red "crazy tomato" folk art earrings on.

When Jonathan brought me those today, I felt "complete".

I like the simple things.

Healthwise, things are dripping along.  Doctors seem pleased with my response to the chemo.  No ill effects yet.  I continue to have appetite and fabulous sense of taste, for the time being.

HOWEVER, if you see this picture you will know things are not so hot.

I know, I'm not really supposed to use this picture since I didn't take it.

But you get the picture, don't you?

Birthday Greetings.....

Today is Pam Malone Miller's birthday, on December 26th, the "let down" day.

It is not a let down day for me, for she was born and became my friend!

Happy Birthday, Pam!

I always wondered how people with birthdays on the 24th, 25th, and 26th coped with this.

I know someone else who has a birthday within these three days.  She told me that she has always insisted on BIRTHDAY paper for her BIRTHDAY presents, Christmas wrap for the other.

Still, I would think it would be a bit hard.

We almost found out.  I was pregnant with a baby that was due on December 24th.  I remember thinking, first, "YEA!!!! A new baby!"   Then I remember the due date and thought, "OH MY!  A Christmas baby!" which of course, can have two meanings....a birthday lost in the shuffle of Christmas or a birthday shared with the most holy birthday in the history of the world.

We never found out.  I miscarried on Mother's Day that year.  How odd.

Not ones to waste time, we found ourselves expecting again.  Mary-Keeley was born on March 7th, and shares her birthday with my best friend, Jean, her godmother.

Some things are meant to be.

Oh, and happy belated birthday to Kay Sasser Jacoby, a Christmas Eve baby!

Edited to add:  This is also a "birthday" of sorts for my family and me.  Today is the day we start our "New Normal" life.   I've been looking forward to this day since December 10, the day I went to the doctor.  I knew if we could make it through yesterday, as close to "Old Normal" as possible, then things would be ok.  Happy to be sharing my "New Normal" birthday with Pam!

THE. BEST. CHRISMAS. EVER. WITHOUT. DOUBT. (Long Post)

If anyone had a better Christmas Day than I, it was only the young children around the world who experienced their first REAL moment of wonder when the room they saw the night before transformed into  Santa's magic land.  Y'all remember that feeling don't you?

The bicycle in the corner.  A train set you had longed for.  A doll you had only dreamed about.  Doesn't matter what it was.  You had a day like that and it will always and forever remembered as THE. BEST. CHRISTMAS. EVER.

I will try to share my wonderment of a day without being "too wordy".

1. Coffee in bed.

1a. Waking up to an comment on a post from Elizabeth from Creative Breathing, a blog I love to read and without whom, I might never have realized that I, too, had stories to tell, things to say.  When I first started reading her blog, I thought, "I wish I had stories like that!"  I do, they're just different.  One of these day there will be a whole post about Elizabeth.  She is amazing.  You will lose yourself in her life, her stories, her creative abilities that she only just discovered she had.

2. A fabulous breakfast with eggs that tasted (almost) as good as my Mama or Dad have always cooked for Christmas breakfast.  Oh yeah.  Served in bed.  Oh, and a moment of thankfulness for the food that came out of my mouth like nothing I'd ever said before.  I even told God "Thank you, for allowing me to go through this disease and trial."  There'll probably be a whole post about that later on.

3. Trying to be the first to say "Chrismuh Gift" to my Mom.  She beat me.

4. BEING the first to say "Chrismuh Gift" to Jonathan after he said "Hey" on and IM chat.  I typed it in real fast.  He said it wasn't fair.  (HUH?  He could have typed in "Chrismuh Gift" instead of saying "Hey".

5. Getting to watch my family as they opened presents via iChat on our computers, them getting to see me watch and react.  Though not physically there, it was pretty darn close.  (Again, Steve Jobs, thank you!)

6. While they ate their breakfast, I got to bathe, unhooked from my "Christmas Tree of Life".  It, fortunately,  needed to charge up RIGHT when I needed to go into the shower.  Priceless.

7. Choosing from my "Dr. Seuss" collection of new tops,  new leggings, and putting on my FUGGS. (Fake Uggs to you uninitiated.  15 bux.)   All of which made me feel like a person in a spa, not a hospital.

8. Putting on my "face" (make-up, guys, make-up), fluffing my hair, and perching myself in the corner chair in the room so my family wouldn't see me in the bed.

9, Hearing my little elves at the door. They bring in presents that are perfect for the hospital.  Long shruggy type sweaters from Chicos, from Mama.  (We LURVES us some Chicos!), jogging suits (not that I'm going to be jogging but I do plan on walking up and down the hall), a pretty scarf, a houndstooth wrap that will be worn not only on January 7th but for a LONG LONG time.   Oh, and a sound machine from my sweet husband, along with some really funky scissors that cut fringe into paper, for when I get out and don't have to worry so much about running with scissors.  And I can't forget these fabulous felted ball ornaments, dotted with red, from Katie, nor my Julie/Julia dvd from Mary-Keeley.  There was more, but I don't want to bore you with it.

10.  Dr. Jordan, who told me I could drink the communion wine.  No problem.  Wine is sterile.  More importantly, it has been consecrated and blessed (blessed and consecrated?) by a priest.  God wouldn't pull something bad on that wine, now would he?  That would be too cruel a joke.

11. Rev. David McGinnis bringing beautiful poinsettias in from church that I couldn't keep in the room but at least got to see.  He looked so snappy in his collar and red vest.

12. Fast on the heels of David, came Catherine Collier, bringing communion for the family in the room. The intimacy of the moment, the being more attuned to the words of the ritual, the saying of the confession, the closing prayer.  The. Most. Amazing. Communion. EVER.    P. S. Catherine had on her red sweater and when she asked what side of her liturgical scarf we wanted her to wear, we picked purple, though it isn't liturgically correct....but it look GREAT!.

13. Family helps organize Christmas presents, jetsam and flotsam, hangs up my clothes.  I am directing from the chair.  They pack up and leave to go rest.  I have on Pandorra to some nice low Christmas music and stay in the chair to read more in My Life in France.

14. Two brothers-in-law and a new girlfriend come to visit.  Nita "KNOWS" me even though we've only really met/talked once, though, we've texted, and she's visited the room twice.  She made me a compilation cd that had almost every song I danced through the early part of my courtship with Jonathan. How did this woman know part of my playlist of faves in my brain?  She also brought a cd of a reading promotional dvd she made to encourage kids to read.  MY. KIND. OF. WOMAN.

It was a fabulous visit.  Rogers looked great and from where he sat I gazed on his face, smooth, serene, with the most beautiful blue eyes.  (All my McBoys have beautiful blue eyes.)  We reminisced about our trip to New York in 1980, where Rogers snapped a photo of Jonathan and me, on the streets of NYC.  We wanted it because we have this great picture of his mom and dad, on the streets of NYC in the 1940s.

Holden brought me the makings for a compost tea brewer to use in the spring.  We are going to grow some KICK ASS tomatoes!

15.  My bestest friend in the whole world, Jean Gordon, walking in the room, seeing me decked out like in Katie's post below, sitting in the chair in the corner,  and then bursting into tears and declaring that THAT was the best Christmas present she could have ever gotten.  I had become "me" again!

She knows my penchant for hand made items and often shops for me in A'Mano in Birmingham. I've never been in the store (WHY???) but know that some of my favorite people, Kay Sasser Jacoby and Niki Quick, work there.  They "get" my work, I love their work.   From A'Mano she brought me this incredible bead encrusted, shell, and and jewelry pieces "hand of friendship".   It is amazing and beautiful, just like Jean.

While she was here, they brought in the "Christmas Special" dinner.  Prime rib, twice baked potato, broccoli with cheese sauce, coconut cake.

Here, may be the best part of the day.  The knock on the door.  "Room Service".  It was a new RS girl who didn't know me.  She looked around the room.

"Where'd she go?"
"Who?"
"The patient."
"Oh, that's me!"
"WHAT?????"  (Jean and are trying not to laugh out loud)
"Oh, You goin' home tonight?"  (Remember, I'm decked out in regular clothes, sitting up in the chair)
"Oh, GIRRLLLL, No!  I'm here for 30 days!"
"WHATTT?????  You don't look sick!"

Can you imagine how that made me feel?  Like a million, billion, trillion dollars!

When I sat down to eat, I was greeted with some of the most incredible tastes ever.  I will now be wanting the recipe for the cheese sauce on the broccoli.  The twice baked potatos were not only divine but the presentation was worthy of the North River Yacht Club dining room, and that, folks is saying TONS if you live around here.  The prime rib was perfect. The coconut cake, delicious but I was too full to eat all of it.  Otherwise, I was a member of the clean plate club.  Everything seasoned to PERFECTION.

After that, phone calls to home, a phone call from my Marlowe family (Rudd, from the earlier post) in San Antonio.

Then time for a benadryl dose before platelets, which made for a GOOD NIGHT'S sleep.

Ahhh.

Oh, and did you notice that I didn't rub in the fact that I didn't have to decorate, shop, cook, wrap presents, clean up, or drive near Mid Town village?  I just wanted to make sure you noticed I didn't rub that in.

Three words.....

Peace.  Happiness.  Love.

Mom's new Christmas scarf, sweater, headband, boots, houndstooth shawl, etc. Merry Christmas! New photos to come soon!!