Claudia's Birthday, Part 2

Do people ever contemplate ending their lives because a day is too good? If ever there was a day to inspire such life-ending thoughts, it was Sunday. I thought, more than once, that lf I were to die tomorrow it would be ok since I had been here for this day. I also knew that I most likely wouldn't be dying tomorrow and that this day's perfection would diminish in my mind until it was just like any old day. In hopes of keeping it around a little longer, here are the details.

We had the big blowout and the wonderful thing was, it was neither big, nor a blowout. There were no silly themes, no abundance of latex balloons, just simple crepe streamers, freshly mowed grass, and family.

We did the cake and gift thing inside and then moved the party to the yard where four generations of Simonsons played in the sunshine. We invested a whopping $8 in a bubble machine that turned out to be the hit of the party, both for the kids who got to play in 10,000 bubbles, but also for the adults that got to sit and watch without blowing endlessly or being covered in soap.

I felt, the entire day, that there would never be another day as perfect as this one. The great-grandparents won't always be with us, the kids will grow up soon and be too cool to play in the yard with their aunts and uncles. Soon birthdays will come and be about what cartoon character we can have plastered on every available surface and what gifts lie beneath the wrapping paper. But this one, was just about being together, about enjoying a nice Iowa spring day. And it was just about perfect.

Claudia's Birthday, Part 1

Here is Claudia on Friday, which was her actual birthday. That means that even though we were going to be having cake on Sunday for the big party, we HAD to have it on Friday, too. Poor, poor us.

Claudia tried to fool us with her, "I'm too cool to stick that cake all over my face" look.

But we won her over with our gooey chocolate on chocolate cake.

A very fine time was had by all.

Moments before one

The last moments before Claudia hit the big one year mark. She has no idea that it's all downhill from here.

Soon to come: pictures of the blowout. We had cake and everything.

I know, I know, I am the next Martha Stewart.

You learn something new everyday

And Friday it was how to make that "pop!" sound with one finger and your cheek.

See how far college can get you?

Who are you and why are you here?

Here is the thing, there is a counter on the bottom of this page that I put there as a reminder to myself that I should keep an eye on just how much I visit my own kid's page.

And while I do like to look at my kids, there is no way that I have been here 400 times. I also know that the great bulk of our family is internet-free, so that leads me to today's question: just who is visiting this page and why?

Is it people like me? Friends living far away that are curious to see how the kids, and Eric and I, are turning out? I have to admit I check the family blogs of our faraway friends a lot. Is is people that I went to high school with judging me and my kids? If so, I better put better-looking pictures of myself on here, the kids are pretty good looking already. Perhaps it is someone drawn in my my sparkling wit and poor spelling. Because really, who isn't drawn to that?

I'm just wondering, so if you get a minute, and I know you have one because you're here, drop a line in the comments to let me know.

Also, for Cynthia, who asked: katelyn107@yahoo.com

MRI Update

I think that my radiation oncologist has a boat payment due or something because Monday I got a call that the final reading of my latest MRI came through and they found something in the thorasic spine that has grown since my last scan, nine months ago.

So, it turns out that I will soon be off again to be put back in that very little tube. So much for my "no MRI for a year" dance. And I was even going to upload pictures.

Easter isn't what it used to be

Ah, Easter 2006. Did anyone else get cell phones in their Easter basket, or was it just Claudia?

The whole Simonson/ Zeka crew after church. Even the heathens go to church on Easter.

Emily decked out in her Easter finest. She can imagine no better holiday than one that lets her dress up, wear a hat, eat herself into a candy coma, and go to church with her parents. That's right, our child LOVES church.

Claudia decided that she needed two hands to get all the chocolate. Little does she know that she can't eat any of that chocolate. I guess her parents will have to. It's as if the Easter Bunny knew that when he filled Claudia's basket with a bunch of fancy, expensive stuff. Hmmm.

Here she is eating a chocolate carrot. Well, the foil from a chocolate carrot. Poor Claudia.

Twister

Photo ©2006 Miranda Meyer

Thursday night, the winds came and did terrible things to my home town. Maybe it is because I only lived there until I was 17, and then again when I underwent 6 weeks of radiation, but it feels like someone had done something awful to someone I love very much, someone I didn't realize was vulnerable. It makes me sad.

And I STILL couldn't afford to live there. Not even it this house.

Emily's music selection of the day

Emily saw me putting in my little book review and decided that she had a little rooftop-crying to do herself. She would like me to mention that she is a HUGE fan of Laurie Berkner.

If the history of cadaver disposal is not for you, maybe Laurie's dvd or one of her cds are. Or, perhaps there is a happy medium between the two.

Kate's little book club

It seems that I so rarely can be found reading anything that doesn't have pictures in it these days that I thought I would cry from the rooftops about the very interesting book that I just finished.


This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it was very much mine.

You can go home again... but just don't get too comfortable

I feeling better now, a little less sorry for myself since I got that last post out. I know that things are going to turn out fine. This just felt like someone throwing a wrench in my plans.



In other hometown news: it turns out that you CAN go home again, you just can't afford to live there. When the girls and I were in Iowa City I was taken by what a nice, liberal, academic place it seemed to raise the girls. I have such nice memories of growing up there. But, after a cursory look at the housing market there it seems obvious that we couldn't afford, on a county attorney's salary, what my single, part-time church secretary mother was able to afford.

How depressing is that?

My latest photo shoot

On Monday, I had a three-hour session in hell; I mean I had an MRI of my entire spine and brain, with and without contrast. After that, I met with my radiation oncologist, Dr. John Buatti, to hear the results.

It turns out that I had all sorts of misinformation floating around in my head, perhaps too many uplifting cancer-survivor movies on Lifetime, I can’t really say. For some reason, I had it in my head that five years post-radiation was some magic number, and since we are on year 3.5 it seemed to me that these appointments were soon to be a thing of the past. Not that I don’t enjoy chatting with Dr. Buatti every nine months, but the MRI (and the bill) I could do without.

It has been almost four years since my former oncologist told me that I would be, “…dead or in a nursing home (waiting to die) in nine months.” It has been just over three since my current oncologist gave me two years to live.

But, Monday things looked good. No new growth from the remaining tumor. No new tumor “seeds,” although there were a number of spots on the film of my spine that we are calling blood vessels. Our plan is to keep an eye on those in case we, meaning the doctors, are wrong. So, I found myself so thrilled that I actually started thinking about how I was going to miss these little visits. I started thinking about what a character-building thing this has been for me. Perhaps everyone should look death in the face at 29, I thought. I asked Dr. Buatti if we could put off our next visit a year or two, thinking that, really, we were so close to the magic five year mark that he might just go for it.

That’s not exactly what happened. First, Dr. Buatti and his sweet nurse, Kelly, looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Then he told me that while he couldn’t say with 100% certainty, he felt that I had a 70-80% chance of a recurrence, that as far as he was concerned it was just a matter of time until they came back. He said that these visits were not to get me toward some magical “no tumor” date, but were, in fact, to catch the ones that ARE GOING TO COME as soon as they can.

So, seems that my tumors don’t subscribe to the whole remission thing. In fact, just to be difficult, as I know many out there are thinking that I can be, my tumors decided to be of the “coming back no matter what you may have thought” variety.

So, since Monday I have spent much of my time reassuring my friends that, while this sounds like it might be bad news, it really isn’t so scary. I told them, and myself, that the doctors are keeping an eye on things, and that’s a lot. I told them that most people have no idea what is coming to get them, so really I am lucky to be able to keep a lookout. I told them that in the nine months that I was pregnant with Emily “they” came up with a whole new radiation treatment to offer, one that allowed us to have Claudia, so who knows what might be just around the corner?

But, the truth is, I am narcissistic. I can’t imagine not being here, in the biggest sense of here. How could things just go on with me gone? How would my kids do in daycare all of the sudden? Who would do the laundry, and the house cleaning? Who would make diner? Who would tell the girls how much my parents would have loved them? How much it would have broken their hearts to miss these sweet children? How could I go when I’ve only recently figured out how to life this life that turned out so differently that I always imagined.

For them to have never known my mom and dad, and then to lose me, it is almost more than I could bear for my girls. It just seems so unfair… and life isn’t unfair, is it? At least I hope it’s not. That’s what I have pinned my hopes to.

Better cross your fingers.