It's Halloween, Y'all!

 My favorite time of year is here!  We've got a very busy weekend ahead.  Yesterday at work was costume day, and I dressed as "new school Cruella".  If you haven't seen the new movie, you need to.  My parents even like it because of the soundtrack.  It was what we were all watching together right before we lost power when Ida blew in.  

Today was a Witchy Luncheon at Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse with girlfriends and tonight was Trunk or Treat at little one's school.  I was a witch all day.  At school, she dressed as Mal from The Descendants, and tonight she was a Saints cheerleader.  Tomorrow night we're trick or treating in a school friend's neighborhood and I'll be a bat. She's going to be Elsa from Frozen 2.  Actual Halloween night in our neighborhood I'll be Cruella again, but a different version and she and her dad will be Dalmatians.  Bonus that the weather will actually be fall like, and they won't sweat to death in their outfits.  

Costuming has always been my jam, but I'm extra happy that she and my husband get into it, too.  In fact, he's diehard family costume guy.  A couple of years ago, we talked about him being Willy Wonka, her being an Oompa Loompa, and me being one of the bratty girls from the movie.  He's still bitter that it didn't work out.  

The amount of candy that has already been accrued just from tonight and today at school is impressive.  I can't imagine how much the next two nights will bring.  We moved with leftover candy from past holidays between the condo and here.  So much of it was stale and should have been trashed long ago.  It just got finished like a month ago.  Never again.  If there's leftover candy from this Halloween, it's got to be gone by Christmas.  Then the leftover Christmas candy needs to be gone by Valentine's Day, and Valentine's Day needs to be gone by Easter.  No more saving it for months - that's disgusting.  

We're all looking forward to Halloween in our new house and new neighborhood.  Apparently, it's quite a party with everyone setting up at the ends of their driveways and handing out candy to the masses; like, supposed busloads of trick or treaters.  It's also been awesome to decorate inside and outside.  I had to throw away a lot of decorations this year because a glass globe full of glittery water broke in a tote (assuming during the move) and mold grew on just about everything stored in there.  Turns out, I didn't need all those decorations anyway.  This house is twice the size of the condo and I had plenty of décor to space around.  

Cheers and Happy Halloween, y'all! 

Holiday Traditions

Y'all, I could have sworn I'd done a post on this another year, but hooray for you and me, this is a first!  

A lifetime ago, my college boyfriend's mom asked what my family's holiday traditions were.  I didn't know what to say - we didn't really have any!  She seemed to think I was an even bigger weirdo after that. The only thing I can think of to this day is that I remember my parents having the entire family over on Christmas Eve - aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, great grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and so on. There was a dining table literally full of food and my cousin and I were in heaven with all of the presents that were just for us (our younger siblings hadn't been born yet).  I have no idea how many times that happened, but it definitely all stopped when my maternal grandmother passed away (I was 8 that year).  

My husband and I are pretty fly by the seat of our pants people and by nurture so is our girl.  Nevermind that I plan programs for my day job; it's like I'm two different people when it comes to work and home.  Anyway, the last ten months have really put a damper on our weekend adventures.  I don't know that our former lifestyle would be considered a tradition of any sort anyway.  

Thanksgiving and Christmas both have our extended familial gathering traditions, though.  Thanksgiving day is always spent with my in-laws and the menu is identical from year to year.  Whichever day we get together with my side of the family (see where the non-commital trait comes from?) post-Thanksgiving day, my sister-in-law is the main chef and we gather at she and my brother's house.  Christmas Eve is always spent with my family in hopes of my future house becoming the hub for that event.  Christmas Day is always spent at my in-laws with the identical meal that we have at Thanksgiving.  

This year my side of the family is trying a tapas approach to the holiday meal.  My sister-in-law grew up in southern Florida and her family incorporated a lot of Hispanic culture in their holiday celebrations.  They used to do a late-night dinner with a spread of Cuban food.  I guess it's the Hispanic version of the Creole influenced midnight Mass and Revillion dinners that many people do in New Orleans. 

On that note, I'd like to try a seafood Christmas dinner one year.  When I was pregnant many years ago, my husband and I drove to see the Christmas Eve bonfires along the river.  That is definitely something I want to load up the kid cousins for one year.  Oh, and Celebration in the Oaks is an annual event that I have brought from my childhood into adulthood.  

Other than that, I like some non-traditional Christmas tunes and I am totally open to goofy Christmas card photos and some kooky ornaments, but I also love the classic songs, vintage looking cards and decorations.  Is your family traditional or do y'all change it up a lot?  What is the magical ingredient that makes it feel like the holidays for you?  

Scary and not in a Halloween way

I wasn't sure if I wanted to blog about this, but then I thought, why not?  As with any of my posts, maybe I'll help someone in some way who may be going through a similar situation.  

Full disclosure, I haven't felt "right" in over two years.  Each year I get my wellness exam and have a full workup of the blood tests that go along with that.  Other than thyroid levels being slightly off one time, things have looked pretty good so the not feeling right wasn't making sense.  For the majority of the last two years, I just figured the thyroid medicine wasn't doing its job and I was frustrated with Hashimoto's and hypothyroidism in general.  

This year, my GP spent more time with me at my annual visit because she had a resident with her.  I was able to mention issues that I normally forgot to bring up and would subsequently wave off. Those "little things" led her to add a few different orders to the panel of bloodwork, which ultimately led me to see some specialists and get to where I am now.  

I have had asthma for most of my life so being short of breath wasn't something I was overly concerned about except that getting up the stairs at work had become more challenging (I live in a two-story but don't get winded at home).  My allergist had given me a new inhaler to try at the beginning of the pandemic but it wasn't always doing the trick. That led to me having a chest x-ray, a CT scan, and seeing a cardiologist. None of that showed anything he was concerned about, which seemed to be the end of things with the GP.  Frustrated, I took matters into my own hands, and I made an appointment with an endocrinologist.  She and I didn't hit it off the first visit, but after lots of questions and more bloodwork, I also had a brain MRI and an adrenal CT scan ordered. That triggered a phone call from my GP wondering if I was handling all of the news well enough.  

One of the findings was that I had a baseball-sized cyst on one of my ovaries. I also had some hormones out of wack. Finally, things started to make sense and fall into place. Within about three months I also had an endoscopy with a gastroenterologist, surgery for the ovarian cysts (yes, there were more that hadn't shown up in the scans), a visit with a surgical oncologist, and a visit and exam with a vision specialist. That visit with the oncologist is exactly what you think - for about a week or so, I thought I had cancer.  Technically, all of the tumors in my body that showed up on the scans can grow and spread like cancer cells do which is problematic for the surrounding organs.  I'm not Googling to get this info - one of the specialists actually said, "technically, this is a form of cancer".  

We cried a lot, I told most of my close friends and close family. If you weren't in that number, please don't be offended.  It's not easy to drop that bomb on anyone and the last thing I wanted to do was be Debbie Downer for your day/weekend/vacation.  We never told our daughter because how do you explain something like that to a little person?  Thankfully, when I directly asked the oncologist, "do I have cancer?", he said, "no", but if I want to consider genetic counseling at some point he would back me on that.  

The current status is: I have a tumor in my pituitary (enlarged gland and headaches), a cyst on one of my lungs (labored breathing at times), a tumor on my pancreas (no symptoms), and a benign tumor on one of my kidneys that's been getting watched for the last three years now.  The pancreatic tumor will also get watched annually, and my next eye doctor visit is in 6 months.  In mid-November, I will see a pituitary specialist for the first time.  New medicines, more scans, more blood tests, and possibly more surgery are in my future.  Did I mention that the endoscopy and the laparoscopic surgery were on the same day?  

So, that's what's been up in our house. We are relieved that I am currently cancer-free and although things are still healing from the laparoscopic surgery, I feel much better now that the giant cyst is gone.  The thought of not being around my child or my husband at any point is incredibly sad to me, but thinking you may only have a few years left with them is utterly heartbreaking.  I hope the second chance I feel like we've been given is long-lasting and not a false sense of hope for something worse to come.