More cancer

The title of my last entry was quite appropriate, Blog for Sale. I have been trying to decide whether to start a new blog, horn in on Mother's Caring Bridge blog, use this blog or one of my other blogs. Another option is not to make a record of my latest cancer diagnosis at all.

I have stage 2 ovarian cancer. Now, I can hear the groans, "Cancer!!" Read the statement again. I have STAGE 2 ovarian cancer. STAGE 2! Stage 2 is still ovarian cancer, but it's not late Stage 3 or early Stage 4 when it is too late. There is a better chance at Stage 2.

I called all of my mother's sisters & told them. I told the last aunt I called that was the last personal phone call I was making. I didn't care who she told. My family & my mother knew. My employer knows.

Nick was in the car when I hung up & said with a laugh in his voice, "What? You're not going to announce it on Facebook?" He was being cheeky. I said, "No. I'm going to face it, not Facebook it." I've been struggling with going public with this. Public as in blogging about it.But then, if it is all in one place, I won't have to keep repeating myself.

I took Don out to the Preston Cemetery to break the news to him. It was the day I found out for sure I had more cancer, April 10, 2012. We didn't know much more than that at the time. I decided, with the wedding coming up, I was not going to actively pursue treatment. Don said, "I think we've discussed this before." I replied we certainly had discussed it before, I was just refreshing his memory.

I no longer want the epitaph, "I told you I was sick." Back in 2001, when I went in to have the acoustic neuroma removed, I told him I wanted "I told you I was sick." on my headstone. I had said for years I had a brain tumor & no one believed me. Of course, it wasn't a "brain" tumor, but it was a tumor & it had popped out of the ear canal & was pressing on the brain stem.

So, what color of awareness ribbon stands for ovarian cancer? According to Wikipedia, it shares the teal ribbon with a dozen other diseases & causes. It's definitely not as well known as breast cancer's  pink ribbon.

Blog for sale

I definitely need my eyes examined. I've known this for several months. Today I was waiting for a traffic light & through the intersection there was this 2-story building with a huge banner on it:

BLOG for SALE or LEASE

Below that in some indistinct red letters was a word & then in a larger size was a phone number. I couldn't read the numbers, they weren't big enough for me to see at that distance. I knew it was a phone number because there was a series of 3 numbers, beginning with a 4, a dash, 3 more numbers with a 1 in there somewhere, another dash & then 4 more numbers. Utah's area code, except in the middle of the state, begins with 4. I sat there waiting for the light to change & thought it was weird someone was trying to sell a blog. And of course, as I sat there processing this, I realized the O was a D. What it REALLY said was

BLDG for SALE or LEASE

Okay, that makes sense: bldg not blog. With my hearing loss, I mishear a lot of things, but now I can't even read the large print.

Things I Talk About

On my Quoghts to Ponder blog I have every label showing, which makes it really handy when I want to search for a quote by name or date, since those are really the only labels I use. So, it kind of bothered me that I could never find all the labels on this blog. I decided to do some research.

The guys had gone to Logan without me & I was a little upset. I need to go to Logan, but didn't want to run down for my two little errands. I can't justify spending the money for gas & wear & tear on my car. They, however, didn't want to take me & go out of their way to run my errands.

What has the guys going to Logan without me have to do with researching labels? It's MY thing. I can sit here at the computer & do this without being interrupted. It's soothing & I'm using this to gain control of my hurt.

I discovered I had a different gadget to keep track of labels on this blog than I do on Quoghts. I like the one on Quoghts better, so I deleted this one & added the other one. I discovered I have almost 700 labels for this blog, 700!!! I went through & chose what labels I would show. I thought I would show all labels that appeared at least twice. Still too many. I went back in & chose every label that appeared 3 times or more. Still a lot of labels. I also discovered I'm not consistent when I label my posts. I break them down too much. I have both pro-time & INR, basically the same thing. I have BratFactor & Brat Factor or whatever that website was. One with a space, one without. I think they've changed the name of it now anyway.

If I could start over, knowing what I know now, I would be more general when labeling an entry. I wouldn't label it Sunday dinner, Sunday School, Sunday paper, Sunday ride, work on Sunday. It would be either Sunday, church or work & Sunday.

Oh, well, today is the first day of the rest of my life & I'm glad the sun is shining.

Blog list title update

So, blog list titles, as they now stand, are Blogs I Like to Visit for family; More Blogs I Like to Visit for Friends & Acquaintances; and, Still More Blogs, which may change to Even More Blogs …

Blog list title

I laid in bed this morning before I got up, trying to think of new, clever names for my blog lists - hmmm, not many thoughts. So, I got up & decided to look through some blogs for some inspiration. I found some of my friends haven't updated their blogs for months &/or years!!! I found a couple of blogs I am no longer welcome at, either they've closed their blog or went private & forgot to invite me. I also found most people only have ONE blog list, then there's me! I have 5 blog lists & even thought of making one more!! Not only do I have 5 blog lists, I have 5 blogs!

Why FIVE blog lists? Well, 5 is my favorite number. I like things divisible by 5 too. But, why 5 blog lists? I also like to keep things organized. It's like filing things. If everything is thrown in one file (or pile), you can't find what you want. One is for the missionaries I follow, thus Called to Serve. That was a no-brainer. There is a hymn "Called to Serve."

Another one is for blogs powered by Caring Bridge, another no-brainer, Caring Bridge. One for miscellaneous blogs was titled Other Blogs I Like to Read, but in my quest this morning, someone had titled a list, Blogs I Like to Visit - ah ha - perfect. I immediately snagged it. This is the list I was contemplating dividing one more time - crafts & cooking figure heavily in this list, along with mental illness & just some fun blogs I like to visit. But … there is such a thing as having too many file folders too, umm, I mean blog lists.

Now what about Family & Friends, the 2 blog lists I was having grief over this morning? In my search I found there are LOTS of blogs out there for extended family. Wow! I spend a lot of time reading blogs as it is, I could spend a LOT more time! Family, hmmm, nice, but boring. Friends, another nice, but boring choice.

So, I guess I'll leave the dilemma & ponder on it.

OMG, I need a book blog

I found another reading blog AND another challenge. As if I need another one. I added it on "Other Blogs I Like To Read." At least I think that's what the name of the list is, LOL. The new blog is She Read a Book. It requires 250 points.

Another blog

I just found another blog to add to my list of favorites: A Garlic Story. I need to go over to Mother's & check on her. It's also my turn to cook tonight & tomorrow. I thought I'd do my cooking over there. The guys can come over & eat there. That will give me more time with Mother & I can cook in a clean kitchen :) I can also bake those cookies I was going to do the other day when I crashed & burned & took a 3-1/2 hour nap in Mother's bed with her CPAP machine.

Tuesday, Dec. 1

We made it home last night about 8 p.m. A day later than we planned. We spent a day longer at Disneyland than we had planned, but we're home! Mother did not come home in a coffin!! Woo hoo!! She's awfully tired, but you can't keep her down.

She almost had all of their laundry, hers & Don-Mike's, done & stuff put away when I got to her place this afternoon about 2:30. I, on the other hand, unpacked a suitcase. Before we could wash anything we had to get a bag of laundry soap.

I've caught up on Jonah, Sheila, Angela & Gwendolyn. It didn't look like anyone else had posted on their blogs in the last week. I also caught up on Facebook, but that wasn't horrendous, as I've been doing that sporadically this week.

I took my laptop with us, but the internet was always SOOOOOO slow. The only thing I could access was Facebook, so I was glad to check on that every day. Sunday night Nick & Don hogged the laptop. I was too tired & upset to fight for any time. I read.

Things change

About 10 years Kim Kent & I took a class on web design at Bridgerland Applied Technology College, only I think it was then Center. Whatever, it was & is BATC. So, for the past 10 years, I've dabbled in hyper text markup language, commonly known as HTML. I have made several web pages from scratch, have decorated web sites & thoroughly enjoyed it. It reminds me of DOS, digital operating system. And there is something satisfying in writing something, then checking it & see that all those commands strung together means something.

Then along came digital scrapbooking & another form of using computers to make something. Only digital scrapbooking uses GUI, graphical user interface. Still satisfying, but in a different way.

Then, every work day, I again use my skills of placing things on a page for about 3,000 subscribers to see my handiwork.

Things change. The only constant is change. The web sites I have been decorating changed to CSS.

"Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the the presentation (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language."

Lost yet? I am. That information came from Wikipedia's explanation of Cascading Style Sheets. I am honestly surprised that I remembered what CSS stands for.

So, what is this leading to? Yahoo! is now closing Geocities & there goes the hosting site for my personal web page. I took the Oneida Stake Academy web site down because The Preston Citizen changed hands & the employee handbook for the new corporation says something about not using their information.

So, my dabbling in HTML is coming to an end as I try to find another free web hosting site. I am currently trying to use Google Sites, but not sure if I like it. I can't just view my web page as I can with Yahoo! Geocities. I have to sign in, ick.

Anyway, yes, I am murmuring just like Laman & Lemuel did in The Book of Mormon.

But there is good news! I found a new blog to follow!! W00t! W00t! I love blogs. My cousin Earl's wife, Ginger, has her blogspot addie on her Facebook account. I followed it & there it is, Mi Vida Loca. I love the name. Under the name she has "Welcome to 'my crazy life.'"

April Rose

UPDATE: Now I found I was duped, just like thousands of others. This was a hoax. I had become emotionally invested in B's story. I found the answer thanks to a friend (thx CM) who blogged about it. She calls it the "ugly side of blogging." And yes, it is.

She changed her name & plans to "clean" up her site to no longer include her family's real names. I don't know that I will go to that extent, I'm lazy, but I think I will change the status of who can view my blog. I have found it very therapeutic to write. I have always found it therapeutic to write.

---

Little April Rose was born alive yesterday, Sunday, June 7 (see my entry about baby blogs). She weighed 4 lb., something. Today I hurried home from work to see how she is doing & there was an entry from April's daddy that he had closed the blog. I just checked now on my way to bed, as I have done for the past several weeks, & the blog's gone!!!! Gone! They took it down because of hateful artwork & emails. I just want to sit here & cry. I want to know how she's doing. I'll just have to keep praying for her family.

Thankfully, Jonah is doing well. He had some sweet potatoes today, his first food, & there was a sweet picture of a messy face. His Papa Jim, great-grandfather, can't go see him because of an ongoing cold. I saw Jim today, he stopped in at The Citizen on his way through town.

Another baby blog

Dave & Tanya's blog for their baby Jonah opened a whole new addiction for me - blog surfing. Is there such a thing? I "subscribe" to & read way too many blogs. And one blog leads to another.

One journey sent me to Little April Rose, a young single mother, whose unborn daughter is diagnosed with Trisomy 13 and Holoprosencephaly & isn't expected to live through the birth experience. This young mother, "B," is amazing. A few weeks ago she started a prayer register, if I may call it that. People were emailing her ASKING for HER prayers. So, she started "His Will Wednesday." Through yesterday's entry I found little Gwendolyn Strong who has spinal muscular atrophy or SMA. I have buttons for both of these blogs in the sidebar on my blog.

I try not to read through them all at once. I admit, I did Dave & Tanya's, I couldn't stop reading. Little Gwendolyn is 20 months old & since I didn't find her until tonight, there are almost 2 years of entries to read. Her parents celebrate each month's birthday, as children with SMA don't usually live past 2 years old.

Through a cousin's blog, I found a really cool website. Janelle writes:

I tend to read the emails that come to my inbox. I read my blogs. I read my facebook page. But I struggle "finding the time" to read the scriptures. I just forget. So this site sends me an email with the days scripture chapter. I can read it or listen to it. Then tomorrow it sends me the next chapter. Today it took 6 minutes for it to read the first chapter. If I have the time to spend 10 minutes on facebook (at least), 10 minutes on blogs (multiple times a day) and however many minutes on email, then I have the time to read 6 minutes a day before all of that.

So, I subscribed to Read The Scriptures & decided I'd "read" the Doctrine & Covenants, since Don & I are in the library & don't get to Sunday School, Relief Society or Priesthood. I tried listening to it, & found that I'd just as soon read it to myself. So, today I read the first chapter of the D&C.

I haven't really kept up on my "moving" since May is over, but I'm still thinking of it & still don't park close to the door, unless I have Mother with me. I walked the stairs at the clinic on Tuesday, but took the elevator down with Mother. June's habit is drinking water. Ewww :( that's a toughy. One I try ever few months, but Lent taught me something. I can focus on a "habit" for a set period of time. I've also kept trying to make it to bed at midnight & most nights I do pretty good.

Pickups, walking & babies

Here is Nick standing in the "new" driveway by his '69 pickup today, about 15 to 4. I'm glad it wasn't blurry. So many of my pictures turn out blurry.

This was a farm pickup & he found it out in Whitney in a field, sitting there rusting. Not sure what was wrong with it. He & Don-Mike fixed it up & he got a lot of years out of it. He traded it, plus some cash, for the Corvette, which they are now trailering home.

One of the T-tops blew off the 'Vette & the owner stopped, picked it up out of traffic, called Nick & told them to get off at the next exit. They did & he returned the T-top. They put all of the loose stuff in the camper shell on Don-Mike's pickup. They took Don-Mike's "new" diesel pickup.

On to walking. A friend had a link on her blog for a blog named Little April Rose. April's mommy has a link to Kayleigh Anne Freeman. In reading the condolences for little Kayleigh, I ran across a link, out of the thousands of comments, that intrigued me, Random Thoughts of a Great-Granny Grandma. See how blog browsing just kind of snowballs?

I read one of Great Granny's posts & thought it was interesting. It kind of summed up my day today:

1. Tell us how you sneak exercise in when you can't "get to they gym" or "the treadmill is broken" or whatever. What do you do at work/around the house/etc. to move more?

I certainly tried to be creative today. I knew I wouldn't have time for a straight 15 minute walk. I tried to get through work by 11:30 since we had DUP this afternoon & the books were being audited. I knew we would need to eat lunch. I parked out in the farthest corner of Stokes parking lot. For the local people, it was where the pink Victorian house used to be on 2nd South. I walked across the parking lot & down to Lewiston State Bank. Once I got my money, I walked down to the deli, opposite end of the grocery store & bought a couple of 3" sandwiches, a small bag of chips, a small macaroni salad & a small cherry pie for lunch. Back out to the car.

This evening, after supper at ChesterFried Chicken, we went back to Stokes to see if they had some postage stamps. I wanted to mail the DUP audit to the company secretary. However, I still have 42¢ stamps. The post office was closed because by now it was after 6 p.m. The post office used to have a vending machine, but no more. We went there & I walked in, only to find a metal sign over the wall where the stamp vending machine used to be. Stokes only have 44¢ stamps. I had Don park out quite a ways from the entrance & walked in & back out.

When Mother discovered that we were looking for 2¢ stamps she said she had some in the cupboard at home. Sure enough, she did. So, I took one & got the audit in the mail, woo hoo!!

Then, this evening, I walked down to feed the dog. Don walked with me & he watered the dog while I got the food out of the shed. Don had to make a special trip to the grocery store last night for dog food. He got the 50# bag. Now, tonight, I see the cats are almost out of food.

The second part of this was:

2. Let us know how your week went. Let us know your goals for next week. Not your long-term goals, just your goals for next week.

If you follow my blog, I let you know how my week went almost every day, LOL. Goals are to continue to walk daily, make the bed daily. One of my big goals for this week was to get MY wash caught up. I needed undies & socks. Undies washed, folded & waiting to be put away. Socks washed & in the dryer. I'm hoping I won't have any orphan socks. I have 9 orphans. I really wish I could find the mates.

Now, back to Kayleigh, April Rose, & Baby Jonah. Jonah is my cousin Loraine's grandson. He was born at 24 weeks gestation in September 2008. Loraine's dad, Jim, told me about a blog that Tanya & Dave were keeping of their baby Jonah. I started following Jonah's blog. I checked it morning & night. Dave & Tanya are sometimes very late in updating it & I couldn't go to bed without checking the blog. I was having a hard time sleeping back then. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle night &, almost without volition, start praying for Jonah.

Now that I'm off the femara, the new CPAP helps too, I'm sleeping better. But one blog leads to another & now I have a whole list of blogs to check. My main ones though are Jonah, Kayleigh & April Rose. I have my blog list set so that those blogs that have new entries rise to the top, like cream, LOL.

New template

I'm not sure if I like this new blog template. So, bear with me, I may be "changing the furniture" around a bit the next few days, when I have the time.

Time flies ...

when you're having fun. I decided my blog list was getting rather long & so was my archive list. So, I've spent the last hour or so doing some housekeeping. Not often I do housekeeping, but computer housekeeping doesn't bother me. I could spend hours computer housekeeping, which I do, & we live in squalor.

I was bummed when I found that Alashandra had wrecked her car, but even more so when I found out she was on her way to the Porter Family Reunion the last weekend of June 2008 & we weren't even invited. Always wondered if the rest of the family thought we were part of the family. I wonder who hosted it & where it was at? It's Mother's turn to have the reunion this year, guess we'll just let it go & let them have their own reunion.

I don't know Loraine's sons-in-laws names, so I had to do some reading. Found out that Alashandra's husband is Matt & Morgan's is Mitch. I only know Tanya's husband because I faithfully read Baby Jonah's blog. Sometimes I check it twice a day. Morgan's blog is private, so I haven't even tried signing up for it.

I left some blog names cuz I like them. Em's Blog is my cousin Edmond. I remember his dad calling him Em.

I had to laugh when I was talking to my friend Janene on the phone the other night. She said she remembers my blog name as Do-Re-Mi. I love it. I told her that works. Almost wish I had thought of it myself. When Don & I got our first email address we named it radon. We thought we were really clever. Nick thought it up, RaDon. Well, guess what? It says ray-don & is an explosive gas. The boys were always laughing at the ads of ridding your house of radon. They said they didn't want to get rid of their parents, LOL. I always said I was explosive, but only when set off :D

PDD-NOS is pervasive development disorder, not otherwise specified. Nick is on the autistic spectrum, the reason I have that bookmarked, but it hasn't been updated for quite a while & I don't know that diet is going to help with Asperger's syndrome anyway.

Computer addict

Hello, my name is RaNae Bartlomé and I am addicted to message boards, Facebook & blogs. I found this blinkie & loved it. She even has a hat!!! Hey, she's my kind of woman. That's another thing I'm addicted to, blinkies, emoticons & hats, LOL.

I just get online to check one tiny thing, see something & I have to check it out. I see an article someone has posted a link to in the New York Times. Now, I know myself well enough to know that my short term memory sucks, so if I don't read it right now, I'll forget where it was. I HAVE to read it right now. I click on the link, read it, decide, "Ewww, that's good. I need to send that to Don (or someone else that might enjoy it)." I then realize I can't remember Don's email address & also find that I can't email it unless I'm a registered member. I still want to send it, so I register, then I still can't remember the email addie, so I have to go to my email account, that btw, I don't check for days. It is so full of junk mail, I hyperventilate when I see how many messages I have in my inbox. Today I had 621 unread messages out of a total of 1,110. And, not only that, I just added one more place that will send me even more junk mail! But I wade through the first page, find that Don has forwarded some emails to me, so I pick one that is titled, "FW: How to fail school tests with dignity." & open it, find his email addie, quickly highlight & copy it, but, of course, now I have to read the email. It's not just text, it's been forwarded 7 times so I have to scroll down to find what he forwarded. It's pictures of actual school tests with the student's answer & the teacher's comment that you have to read to get the joke.

Ok, by now, I've been online, at least 45 minutes longer than I wanted, sigh.

And today, once I read the so-called article, I found that it wasn't just an article, but a blog!!! And now, I need to add it to my blog list, because it's not a new blog, but has been going on for quite some time & I know I can't read it in one sitting, so I come to Blogger & log in so I can add the URL to "More Blogs." I find that even though I added my cousin Loraine's new blog last night, I didn't comment & something one of her girls commented, struck me funny & so I HAD to comment. Yep, I checked it again. By now I've lost another hour and 20 minutes.

I have eaten, only because Nick was kind enough to cook me a pizza when he cooked his own. I'm still not dressed, haven't taken my meds, but I have made the bed.

Beginning my blog

I enjoy reading other peoples blogs. I keep track of those blogs in a folder on Don-Mike's computer under Bookmarks. I've been thinking for a while that I needed a place to store those URLs before I lose them. Where was the big question.

In our house, computer updates happen very frequently. I lose my bookmarks almost as often as an update happens. Nick is always telling us to back up. I can't even go to ComputerWise, our favorite computer store, without being reminded to "backup your data." They have a sign on their front door!! At work we're constantly backing up our work on a flash drive.

Today, I was visiting Janelle Bartlome's blog, Random Ramblings, & saw that she has a list of blogs. Aha! I could start a blog to keep track of my blog list. I blithely created a blog. Of course, there is a learning curve & I didn't plan on spending my whole afternoon creating a blog. I should have just put those links on my personal web page. That would have been a lot faster than starting something new. Besides, it would have let me add the blog that isn't BlogSpot. Oh, well. I'll try this for a while, I might decide I like it :)

And a name. They want me to name this blog? And what will I name it? I went to my personal web page to see if I could find a quote or something. As I opened the page, there was the title, RaDoMiNic. Of course! RaDoMiNic! Ra is RaNae; Do is Don; Mi is Don-Mike & Nic is Nick!