Life, Death and the Pursuit of Happiness

At the end of May, I had no idea that the next month would mark the largest roller coaster of my life.  I received a phone call telling me that my mother was sick.  Tests would be done, and results were being waited on. The next week we found out she had Lung Cancer. I called to talk to her because it had been a couple weeks since we talked.  In fact, I think Mothers Day was the last time I had talked to her.  All the kids wanted to talk to her and they chatted and laughed, each of them told them they loved her.  At the end of the conversation she was winded and had to go put her oxygen on.  This was the last conversation I had with my mom.

A week later, My dad called and let me know she was being taken to the local hospital.  She needed more care than she could get at home.  After a few days at that hospital, it became evident that she was very, very sick.  She was resisting all the doctors in Tullahoma and many other things began spiraling downward.  She was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Nashville and my dad wanted me to come home.  On June 12th, I flew back to Tennessee to be with my dad, sister, and brother as we sat with  my mom at the hospital.

It was so hard to see her all strapped to the bed with tubes and IV's stuck all in her and her being so sedated that she would only rouse every once in a while.  We kept vigil by her side, taking shifts, waiting for more news from the many doctors hoping she would pull through this.  There was one glimmer of hope. On June 13 th, the doctors wanted to attempt to take her off the ventilator to see if she could handle it.  The sedation was cranked down and within minutes, my mom was there.  Only my brother and I were there when they did this, and I am ever so thankful that this day I was there.  She smiled, squeezed my hand, and laughed at a joke my brother and I shared (although she couldn't laugh, her eyes were smiling).  It was truly a gift that I was there for this event.  After 20 minutes, she had a coughing fit and then a panic attack.  I told her she was ok and she shook her head telling me that no, she was not ok.  The sedation was cranked back up and she was gone into that space between awareness and sleep.

The next few days brought nothing but bad news and then, the worst news.  On Friday the doctors revealed that the cancer had spread in her body.  She was too weak for treatment, cancer or other wise.  She was too weak to live off the ventilator.  On Monday, there would be a meeting and decisions would have to be made.  This was the most surreal moment of my life.  I was scheduled to go back to Idaho on Sunday.  I would miss the meeting.  I left the hospital on Saturday knowing it was going to be the last time I saw my mom alive.

I went home on Sunday and spent time with my kids.  Waiting for the call.  The decision was made, it was out of our hands now.  On June 19th, 2012 my mom passed away.  She fought til the end, but it was just too late.  She was just too sick.  Another plane ticket was bought and this time I had to go help plan a funeral.

I have been fighting with so many emotions through all of this.  I have been angry, sad, depressed.  All the normal emotions.  Even today I have a hard time believing that she is really gone.

The funeral was exceptional.  My brother, sister and I really pulled together to plan the best service for her.  She deserved the best.  The amount of people that showed up really symbolized how truly loved she was.

I am happy she is not suffering anymore.  I am happy that she didn't suffer for long.  I wish I could have seen her again the way she was, the way I remember her.  A year ago almost to the day she and my dad had come to Idaho to visit me and my family.  I am glad the kids were able to remember a happy time with them.  They have lots of great memories of the horses and visiting Tennessee and I hope this is they way they remember their gramma.

Now that I am home, and I am trying to regain some normalcy in my life, I have began to appreciate so many things.  I have an awesome family.  We really pulled together.   We shared stories and memories and laughs. I realize how lucky I am to have such a great brother and sister.  My dad is pretty amazing.  I can only imagine how hard it is to lose the person you spent nearly 43 years with.  Since the funeral, we have been keeping in touch a lot via text, and email.  It's something we should have been doing for ages but I am grateful that we are doing it now.

Iv'e begun thinking about my future and my life.  Life is really precious and we have no control over when it will be snatched away from us.  We need to cherish our loved ones, and keep family close.  I have a pretty awesome husband.  He held the fort down here with all 5 kids by himself while I was gone for almost 2 weeks.  It was tough I am sure, but he came out alive.  It was a wonderful sacrifice he made for me so I could be with my mom and family.

My heart is still very heavy, and I really miss my mom.  I used to call and chat with her when she was working just to see what was going on, just to chat.  I don't have that anymore.   I feel life is so unfair, she was far too young and far to wonderful to be taken so soon.  The world lost a great compassionate, caring woman that day.  I have a long road ahead of me and I don't suspect it will ever be easy, but I hope it allows me to appreciate my life a bit more.

life interrupted

It seems I have slipped a bit again.  So much has happened since my last post and I don't really know where to begin.  On May 12th, Taylor and I ran in the Race for the Cure-Boise.  It was a gorgeous day and I felt really good.  I beat my first race time by 2 minutes and of course Taylor was waiting for me at the finish line again.  She is a speedy little thing.  It was a lot of fun and I look forward to my next one which is probably in August.

Boise Race for the Cure 2012

My friend is a nutritionist and I decided to work with her and try and get my nutrition on track and I am so glad I did.  I also took progress pictures for the first time since last September and all I can say is I was so shocked at how much my body has changed for the better since then.  I attribute it to beginning weight lifting.  Even though the scale hadn't moved much at all, I have definitely lost a lot of inches.  The first week of working on my nutrition I lost 5 pounds.  Its a 30 day program intended to help me become a "cleaner" eater and eliminate added sugar and processed foods.  It has been challenging and I will have to incorporate a lot of this for the rest of my life but I am happy with it so far.  I am officially coffee-free and have been drinking green tea instead.   For anyone that knows me... this is HUGE! I can't wait til the end of the 30 days so I can compare it again.

My garden is doing wonderful!!  I have four types of tomatoes, jalapenos, bell peppers, cucumbers, Lemon cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, summer squash, lettuce, scallions, spinach, wax beans, green beans and carrots all growing now.  I have room for two more cucumber plants and then they will all be full.

My first radish

The radishes I have picked since this are a bit bigger and the plants in the beds are a lot bigger now.

Mother's day this year was great.  My husband (and children of course) thought of the perfect gift.  When we bought this house, the front landscaping was a MESS.  There were three huge nasty rose bushes and I wasted no time digging those up immediately and I pulled out all of the myrtle that had taken over.  I uncovered a truckload of river rock and listed it on craigslist for free so it would get hauled away.  The bed has sat empty for over a year now.  On Mother's day I woke up to this beautiful sight-

Mother's day 2012

This wasn't enough to fill the area so the next week I went and bought some more to fill the space.  I am so happy with how it looks.  It is different than most people have around here with their bushes and daylilies.  I wanted lots of color so I have it now.  Now all we need is some mulch and it will be complete.

Summer has officially started and we are going to have a busy one.  My son graduated from kindergarten, my oldest is officially a middle schooler, we have two kids in tee-ball and games or practices 4 of the 5 days a week.  I have decided to cut back on work so I can be more available at home.  It was a hard decision to make but one that was needed and I think it will really help on many levels.  As it was before, I would have missed every single game of theirs and that was just not acceptable.

I am sorry I was neglectful and I hope I have been able to play a little catch-up with this post.  Thanks for visiting!  

Run, Forest, run!

Last year I had signed up for a 5K and was unable to participate in it when I injured my foot. I stayed off my feet for a few months and it began to heal.  When I resumed exercising at the beginning of the year I learned to read my body's cues and when I felt my foot was beginning to hurt I would lay off it and let it rest.  It seems to be working because since getting a real pair of running shoes and resting when needed, I have very little foot pain.

A week ago our little town held a Fun Run, which consisted of a 1K or 5K through town.  The best thing was that it was FREE.  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do it and my oldest two girls were excited to go too.  Anytime there is a social event where they might see someone they know from school is too good for them to pass up.  Oh the joys of having tweens.  Registration was at 8am, and the race began at 9.  We got up bright and early in order to get there and register.  Because of this, we were registered numbers 1,2 and 3.  We all decided to do the 5K.  I have ran/jogged/waddled 3 miles  before so I knew I could do it.  I had a personal goal of making it under 40 minutes.

The weather was great and when the gun went off at 9, we were off.  I had told the girls not to worry about staying with me.  That they needed to go at their own pace.  I know from past experiences that the first part is hardest for me.  I have a hard time regulating my breathing for the first mile or so and slow down frequently.  I had my Runkeeper app going so I knew my pace the whole time.  Surprisingly my pace was quicker than any I had done before.  Taylor was out of sight by the first mile and Bridget started to lag behind me.

As I neared the end of the race, Taylor was waiting for me and already eating her finish line snack.  Bridget was somewhere behind me.  I ended the race at 42 minutes.  Just barely over my goal.  Taylor said she was finished in 35 minutes.  I think Bridget came in about 5 minutes behind me.  I was very proud of all of us.  It was a good race and it was fun to do it with my girls.  Now I have a new personal record to try and beat.  And this will happen sooner than later.

Post-race with the girls

Next week is the Komen Race for the Cure in Boise and through work, registration is paid for by the company.    I will be doing this one alone though and all I hope for is to beat my last time.  I have three more races lined up for the summer and now that I finished one, I know I can do it again and just improve with time.  I don't care about finishing the fastest, I just like knowing I can finish and not be last.

My own worst enemy

I have been going to the gym now for a good 2 months.  I have lost 5 lbs since January.  Out of context this seems great.. but guys.. its APRIL! Even if I only lost a pound a week, I should be down about 15 lbs.  I have really been struggling with this lately but I can't beat myself up about it.  I am eating the best I have ever eaten.  I finally feel ok with eating very little processed foods.  My daily diet consists mostly of : almonds, eggs, greek yogurt, chicken, tilapia, broccoli, salad, whole grain bread and peanut butter.  I'm learning to like other things like hummus, and chickpeas.  We eat more beans and brown rice.  I bake or pan sear nearly everything and only treat us to a "fried" food occasionally.  Even the kids are adapting.  They are eating fruit, popcorn,  and homemade granola bars for snacks, I hardly buy packaged snacks and stopped buying chips.  I make homemade tortilla chips baked in the oven instead and my oldest LOVES them.  I know its time to get groceries when the refrigerator is getting empty.

After meeting with the personal trainer, I have been trying to incorporate more weights with my exercises but for the last month, the scale hasn't budged.  I began researching and realized that likely my 1400 calorie diet was too LOW.  It seems odd, but I needed to increase how much I was eating in order to jump start my weight loss again.  I am still in trial mode as I only began this a week ago.  Although the scale isn't moving, it hasn't fluctuated up either so this keeps me hopeful.  Like I had said this was really dragging me down.  It is so frustrating to watch your husband literally decrease his food intake and start dropping pounds every day.  I have to keep going to the gym even when I don't feel like it.  I did have my body fat percentage evaluated though and I have lost between 3-5% body fat so that makes me want to keep chugging along also.

Today for example, I was going to skip it.  I was tired, had a headache and just was feeling down.  Right before I went to pick my son up from school, I told myself , "Who am I kidding? Jessica, get off your butt and go to the gym."  So I did.  After picking him up from school, off we went.  While I was warming up on the treadmill, a couple moms from the school showed up and they invited me to come lift with them.  I thought sure.. why not.  She set up a circuit training routine and said we were going to do 4 sets.  When I got off the couch today.. I had no idea this was in store for me.  This was THE hardest workout I have ever done.  I burned more calories in that hour than I ever have before.  It was so hard but I am so glad I got up and went today.  It looks like I now have my own personal trainer and workout partner.  She invited me to join her anytime she was there and gave me her schedule.

I really hope this is what I need.  I realized today that maybe I just wasn't doing enough or pushing myself hard enough and I just need to keep doing it and keep being patient.  In time the weight will come off, for now I am enjoying my victory of defeat over the old me and becoming friends with the new one.

A place of my own!

 Finally! I have something I have wanted for a LONG time.  I have a real garden area.  I have a reputation for not being able to grow things due to my own negligence and frustration and it is often a topic of humor around the home.  I have never successfully grown a vegetable in all the years I have tried and even my flower pots wither away by the end of the season.  I really hope to change things around and actually get something to grow.

Last month we finalized the design of the beds and off I went to Lowes to pick up my lumber.  I managed to successfully pick out un-cracked and un-warped wood and Brent went on and put them together.  Our original 2-bed plan was swapped for 4-4x10 ft beds that stand 9 inches high.  He really did a fantastic job and I am glad we decided to double the amount of space because it doesn't seem like a whole lot of room.  I may be a little over ambitious though with what I intend to grow.

On Friday a HUGE pile of dirt was delivered to the house and most of my Saturday was spent filling up the beds.  I thought I would be extremely sore today but to my surprise, I felt really good when I woke up this morning.  We still have a lot of work before the area looks like we want it to but the most important this was I am now able to plant some things.  Which is exactly what I did this morning.  The back right bed is now holding  seeds for carrots, radishes, scallions, and two varieties of lettuce.  I left about two feet on that bed to plant some more lettuce in a few weeks in order to extend the growing season.

When I was perusing around the net one night, I came across a blog that had introduced a nifty free online program that will help you plan a garden.  This is exactly what this Master Gardener wanna-be needed.  It is called Smart Gardener and tells you pretty much everything you need to know about planning and caring for a garden.  It starts you off with the design, and takes you through seeding, sowing, planing, care and harvest.  it provides information such as climate factors, plant compatibility, pests and control, diseases, how and when to plant and harvest.  It is an amazing tool!  Here is what our garden will potentially look like when it is all planted.

I love that it gives me a weekly to-do list that I can check off as I complete it.  It goes so far as to remind me when I need to water.  I am terribly unorganized and very forgetful.  This little program takes all the guesswork out of my garden.  Now I am just crossing my fingers for some sprouts to show up in about a week.

We decided to omit the potato bins this year and just concentrate on the main beds and getting a compost bin set up.  We are going to take out all the grass around the beds and along the back fence and possibly put some sort of curbing or barrier between the lawn and the garden area.  We still have quite a bit of work to do but I think we will be able to get it done eventually.  

One of reasons we never did this before is because we just couldn't afford it.  I think that is part of the reason why this is so gratifying. Thanks to Pear Budget we have been able to purchase the supplies we needed without having to worry about it cutting into the grocery bill.  Since we have set aside money since January each month for this project and others that we plan on doing throughout the year, it is a huge burden lifted.  Knowing we are going to be growing natural, fresh produce for our family in an affordable and responsible way is so rewarding.  I'm still going to keep my fingers crossed in hopes that something makes it past my black thumb!