I just had to name this post “Boobs” mainly because whenever I use the word at all, my stats go up astronomically with all the google searches for boobs that must occur daily.  I love the ego boost.  And then there’s this side of me that smirks at the thought of some internet porn junkie sitting down with his search terms all ready and then getting all pissed off when he gets to my blog instead of his porno site – because Dammit, this blog doesn’t even have pictures!

Actually, it is rather unfair of me to be posting about this news now, as the drama is all over.  But now that it is over, I realize just how worried I have been this week.

So the news is I don’t have cancer.  And I knew I didn’t have cancer.  But I also knew that Riley was a little girl at 15 weeks pregnant so I’m not so successful on the oracle front.

Just over a year ago I found a breast lump.  Actually, I found a lump the summer of 2006 and had it biopsied and it wasn’t cancer so we just left it – all biopsied and non-cancerous right there just above the areola on my right breast.  But then last summer I noticed a new lump right next to the old lump.   I went to the Dr. to get it removed but insurance gave me grief.  First they said they wouldn’t pay for surgery because they believed that it was the former 2006 breast lump I wanted removed.  So the radiologist took a new ultrasound and showed that there were 2 lumps in there.  Then, insurance said that they’d pay to remove the 2008 lump but not the 2006 lump.  But at that point, the Dr. wanted the 2006 lump – though biopsied and non-cancerous to be removed at the same time as the 2008 lump.  Insurance called it a pre-existing condition and wouldn’t do it until I had the insurance for a year.  Shortly after that I ended up leaving my job which meant that I lost insurance.  I got new job/ new insurance in January and intended to get the lump out right away but then was informed that my new policy had – that’s right – a pre-existing clause to it as well.  So I waited the required six months and then made an appointment with an AMAZING breast surgeon who agreed that we needed to get both lumps out.  She also said that I needed to have a mammogram and another ultrasound as a “Baseline” so that in the years ahead of me, we’d have films that would show what these babies looked like when I was 35.  Well, mammography showed 5 (yes 5!) breast lumps, not just the 2 that I knew about.  And because of my age, and the look of the lumps, the doc wanted to remove all 5 lumps, so on Monday that is just what I did.

I thought the news that I had 5 lumps might swing in my favor as I asked hopefully, “Can’t you just chop ‘em off?  I’m done nursing my babies.  Let’s just get ‘em both and end this once and for all.”

The doc insisted that there was no need for “extreme measures.”

Extreme Measures.  I can’t even count the number of people I know who have suddenly had a double D package where a mere B existed before and no doc is saying, “I’m sorry.  I can’t perform that procedure.  There is no need for “Extreme Measures.”

So, Monday morning I went under general anesthesia and had 3 lumps removed from my right breast and 2 removed from my left, and I was told that the pathologist would biopsy the lumps and I’d hear in about a week whether they were benign or not.

The surgery went well and they sent me home with the same pain pills I got after my C-Section.  I thought it seemed pretty excessive, but by Monday night, I was happy for the pills.  I’ve been healing fine though and have had a lot of visits and help from friends since Kim is out of town at a conference.

Then, on Thursday night the phone rang.  The woman identified herself as being from the cancer hospital and my stomach immediately lunged into my chest.

“Why would the hospital call late on Thursday night?” I asked myself.

“Because you’re dying of cancer.” I answered myself.

I squeaked some sort of greeting then she informed me that all of the lumps were benign and how she wanted to call me right away so I didn’t have to keep worrying about it.

Worrying about it.  Worrying about it.  I realized that I had been worrying about it.  But no more, these uneven, dented, bruised, stitched, and scarred puppies are cancer free.

Moab – where redneck meets tree hugger.  And it doesn’t sound like it’d be a very good marriage, but here they are years later recycling their ziplock bags filled with deer jerky.  You don’t have to know what I’m talking about.  My sister knows.

My family spent this last weekend in Moab and we had a blast. My sis splurged so we could have a motel room and Kim was even able to go.  She also bought us tickets to the local Pumpkin’ Chuckin’ festival, and while I wasn’t too excited at first, it didn’t take long to get warmed up to the idea of full grown men in tights launching pumpkins from their catapults, trebuchets, and cannons.  It was quite a sight that I can’t quite put into words, but 2010 – Moab – Pumpkin Chuckin’.  Be there.

For us, the day was more about the other festivities than the pumpkin chuckin’.  I enjoyed my first pie eating contest.  As did Riley.  As did Casey.  It was homemade organic Youth Garden Project Pumpkin Pie so I was content to lose the competition and savor every last bite of that pie.  Casey was adorable trying to eat the pie without his hands.  He felt like such a big kid being called up for the competition.

Riley was a little too close to his neighbor’s hair, but I think he protected his pie the best he could.

Casey gingerly nibbled his pie.  He didn’t win, but the age groups weren’t set up in his favor (14 and under.)

Did I mention that Riley’s Halloween costume was “White and Nerdy.”  If you haven’t seen the Weird Al video then you’ll have no idea who he is.  Casey was Bob the Builder.  After the festival, they did a little bit of trick or treating and overall halloween was a blast.

The organic gardening adventure/experiment of 2009 is now complete.  Here are our results:

Cucumbers:  F

Most of them were so bitter we couldn’t eat them.  But it was okay because mom had so many that we had all we wanted.  Their eggplant, broccoli, and squash gets A grades for sure.

Tomatoes:  B

They tasted delicious especially the roma grapes, but they came on late, and we fought the snails all summer long.  In fast, those damn snails made me really really want to go buy chemicals and say “Take that you little bastards.”

Strawberries:  D

The few we got were tasty but we didn’t get nearly enough.  Rhubarb too.  But hey, we have next summer for these little guys.

Peppers: A

The serranos were a bit too spicy, but that’s what we have Doody for.  The fajita bells were tasty.  The Anaheim and Poblano peppers singlehandedly made the summer.  I’m a pepper roasting, skin-peeling expert at this point.  The banana peppers were good too but I have yet to try them pickled. (Thanks mom for doing that.)

Watermelon: ? Maybe the watermelon should get a good grade, and the gardeners should get failing ones.  I just don’t know.  We picked one too soon so we waited on another and it split right there in the garden.  The few we got that were ripe (but not too ripe) were good.  But with 3 watermelon plants, we expected more than 3 tasty watermelons.

Herbs: B

The cilantro was a bust but the basal and mint made excellent pizza and mojitos respectively.  But don’t get them confused.  Casey spent all summer cutting sprigs of mint and basal to put on his dresser “to smell good his room.”  It was an odd combination at first, but one we got used to.  Now that we know the cilantro/cardamon progression, I’m sure we can keep the cilantro longer next year.

Pumpkins:  A+

Our cucumbers may have been bitter and our tomatoes a tasty treat for the snails of the neighborhood, but our pumpkins were a blast.  How do you like them pumpkins?

Only 5 this year, probably because we cut a lot of the pumpkinflower for quesadillas.  Last year we had 13, but none as big as these.

Lifting with your waist and below might be good advice.  But it wasn’t enough to get me to carry these.  So I rolled them.

Casey’s masterpiece, with the help of Will and Mamma Kim and lots of other folks.

Riley’s working on a pumpkin that pukes.  If he ever gets it done I’ll post another picture.

There’s something really powerful and amazing about growing your own food.  This is the 3rd year we’ve had a garden – and this is the biggest garden yet- stay tuned for next summer.  I have no idea where we’ll be, but I imagine we’ll be gardening.

And the better questions is this.  How can he do this for 90 minutes without getting bored, but the five minutes it should take to clean his room typically takes a half hour or more because he’s “got bored” or “forgot” what he was supposed to be doing?

I’ve agonized for week now on my law school personal statement and have written no less than 14 introductions.  I’ve only finished two of them and I’m torn over which one I like better.  The first one is about my family, my partner and the boys and our little acts of activism and then ties into my desire to make a bigger difference through law.  The second one is about my background, being a first generation college student, not necessarily having a roadmap but coming to law through my desire for social change.  I’m worried that the first one will make me sound too “family” oriented and the second one I worry that the second one will seem like I’m saying “poor me.”  My babes are so important to me but they are nowhere in the second essay.  I will keep plugging away on both, but if one speaks to you in a more authentic way, please let me know which one.  And, no I don’t want to merge them together because the length is already a big issue and I think I need to keep the topic pretty tight.  Of course, you can e-mail me if you don’t want to post the comment on my blog.

Option 1:

The hairdresser hoisted my son into the booster seat that topped the parlor chair. She proceeded to comb out his rusty ringlets and looked shocked at the length once the tresses were wet and tame.  She twisted the locks into thick piggy-tail braids then stood back to admire her work.  She retrieved her scissors, glanced at my partner, then at me, then at Riley himself.  We each gave her a decisive nod.  She held up the bulky twisted clumps, chopped them off, and then sheared until only a spiky half-inch remained.

When my son Riley was three years old, a friend from daycare was diagnosed with cancer.  In response, Riley decided to grow his hair “all the way to sit on it” so he could donate it to another child in need. His friend with cancer received treatment and recovered.  Still, Riley grew his hair.  For more than two years Riley never wavered from his goal.   When he finally cut it, he donated twelve inches to Locks of Love.

Option 2:

I grew up in a small oilfield town that endured cycles of boom and bust correlated with the cost of a barrel of oil. My father joined the oilfields as a laborer alongside his brothers just like his father had done. My mother’s brothers worked the oilfields too and she and her sisters married men in the business. My dad progressed up the ranks and carried job titles that included worm, roustabout, roughneck, derrickhand, driller and finally, toolpusher. It was difficult, dangerous work and the dangers often struck close to home. One uncle lost the use of his arm in an accident, another uncle broke his leg, and my uncle Richard was killed.

It was shortly after my uncle’s death, when I was ten years old, I decided I was not going to marry anyone in the oilfield; instead, I was going to go to college and make it on my own. I came to that realization in a flash. I was standing in the emergency room at the local hospital after my mother received a frantic message that my father had been involved in an oilfield accident and was receiving treatment there. As she pulled me through the sterile halls of the hospital I accepted what I assumed was my father’s death and realized that my mother, whose only work experience was preparing meals in a rehabilitation center, was going to have to raise four children on her own.

Don’t worry, if neither one will do, I have a dozen more just waiting to be fleshed out.  Maybe I’m hyperobsessing because my test score gets released on Monday and there’s a big part of me worried that my score will take me out of contention for a good school before I even get any further down this road.

I talked to my dad on the phone tonight and he told me I was breaking my uncle’s heart.  Me?  Breaking my uncle’s heart?  I wondered what I could have possibly done. My dad said that I’m breaking his heart because I don’t blog anymore.

I made some excuse about being busy.  I am busy.  Very busy.  I thought I was getting some jab for taking August off as a vacation month and then letting September follow suit.

It didn’t even dawn on me that my dad thought I had QUIT blogging.

Then an hour later my brother calls and asks why I’m not going to blog anymore.  More specifically, he wanted to know why a person would write that she is quitting blogging and then post another post a few hours later.  I could see where he was coming from.  Maybe just the thought of quitting was motivating me to keep on writing.  Some sort of Pavlovian response.  Speaking of that – whenever I ever think of going on the Atkins diet, I suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to eat potato chips and crackers and pasta.  Just a minute.

I need to go get some carbs.  Apparently just writing “Atkins Diet” requires the same response.

Suddenly I realize that I’m a dumbass and by posting my last column, I made it seem like I was quitting the blog.

I’m not.

For the last 2 years I’ve been writing a monthly column for a local LGBT newspaper called the Q.  This month is my last column which I cross posted on my blog.  I’m know that I don’t post nearly as much as I should, but I’m not ready to give it up yet.  Especially because I can’t live with myself knowing I’d be breaking my uncle’s heart.

Uncle.  I’ll keep writing this blog as long as you keep reading it.  Deal?

I helped Casey out of his clothes a few minutes ago.  I intended to put him in pajamas, but the second I took his underwear off, I smelled the most overwhelming disgusting smell imaginable.  It was a tuna fish mixed with little boy sweat smell.  It wasn’t pretty.

“Dude, What is that smell?”

“Dunno.”

“Kim come in here and smell this kid.”

Kim assured me that with the cold she was fighting off she would not be able to smell anything.  She took a big whiff and tried not to let the disgust be too visible – the stinky kid didn’t need a complex.   Before you get all judgmental on our cleanliness over here, you should know that the kid took a bath less than 24 hours ago.  Whatever tuna-fish-smelling infection he was emitting was freshly grown.

Kim promptly ran a sink-bath and plopped Casey in the kitchen sink.

Moments later, I heard wails of laughter.

“Ruth, get in here and look at this!”

I wasn’t sure what Kim had in store, but I complied.

Kim was standing in front of the refrigerator reading the school lunch menu.

10/7/2009  Breaded Fish, Potato Wedges, Pears, Milk

The kid dropped breaded fish down his pants.

Whew!

So I’ve been as bad about writing for Q as I have been about writing for U. But this month I managed to put together my swan song – a note to Kimmie – for the love and support for the last 13 years. So here you go, my last Q column “Sharing the KimJoy.”

I’ve said before that if I knew how to have a nervous breakdown, I would. Some days, it feels like the only reason I haven’t already is that it is just another thing I am incompetent at accomplishing. Much like many details of my life, I just can’t get to it. Perhaps, a nervous breakdown does sound like a nice vacation, although I would rather prefer my break from reality to be on a beach in warm weather, a padded room where I can rock freely does have its appeal. So it sits, on my unfinished to do list – have a nervous breakdown – right next to – get prescription cost reimbursed – and return library books.
Of course I’m only joking, still I feel a rush of guilt just writing this, as if someday my boys will read this and realize that Mommy Ruth didn’t cherish every moment of their childhood like I am supposed to. Kim, on the other hand, has just as many things on her to-do list (probably more since item number 1 reads, write a dissertation), and she trudges through them one at a time, never letting on that there are other things she’d rather be doing. She makes cooking, and laundry, and dishes and gardening fun. She literally whistles while she works, and the boys line up – wanting to help. She makes them feel important. Casey’s grin of accomplishment when he does something as simple as matching a pair of socks when helping with laundry is the only reward she needs. I can only hope that I make them feel important too. It just isn’t as natural for me.
The truth is that I do cherish every moment of the boys’ childhood and that is part of the reason that I cannot get everything done. And I am getting better – much better – at letting the things that don’t really matter, sit. Those are the things that will be there tomorrow. As much as I’ve enjoyed writing this column the last couple of years, time is the commodity I just don’t have enough of, and so, for me, for now, I’m going to let this sit too. But I have a small piece of unfinished business I first need to attend to.
I started writing this column right after Casey was born, and when Riley was a cross-dressing pre-schooler. Casey is now a pre-schooler himself and Riley is ruling the second grade in traditional dress. I’ve written about the joy, the fun, the lessons, and the lives of those boys, I’ve written about being queer in Utah, I’ve written about schooling and working, activism and life, but I don’t recall ever really writing about Kim. She, like is often the case, blends into the background of many of these essays. She’s the one in class who isn’t the first to talk, or even the second, or even the third. But when she speaks, she has something important to say, and the babbling verbal processors like me at the front of the class really should listen more. I’ve decided that this is going to be my last column, and it is only fitting to dedicate it to Kim, for without her, I wouldn’t have been able to write these vignettes the last few years.
For those of you who don’t know her, Kim has worked tirelessly to complete a Ph.D in education while never putting her family behind her work, her school or her research. She has mastered the evening routine, of cook – eat – clean – bathe – homework – boys to bed – and then she starts in on her own to-do list. She doesn’t sleep nearly enough as she should and she doesn’t get nearly as much respect and thanks as she deserves. She’s a teacher and a learner and a motivator and a believer. Did I mention that she cute and sexy and sassy besides? I myself am considering going back to school next year once Kim is finished with her program. What a role model I have to follow for I can only hope I keep my priorities and values in line as well as she has. Next month we will be celebrating 13 years together – Kim’s favorite number – so the boys and I are excited to make this year even better than the last 12.
So while the family seems to be at the end of a very long race, if all goes well, I’ll be starting the marathon all over again. But I know I will have the easier path, for I have Kim running alongside, whistling with joy, and reminding me to have fun. Thank you.

A bunch of debt?  A big drought?  A boring discussion? Anxious bout dogs?

There are so many things that ABD could actually stand for, but here, in this household it means All But Done!  In truth, it is like purgatory, the dreaded pit stop on the way to heaven that can linger for years and years depending on how quickly your advisor (God) forgives.  Thankfully, Kim’s advisor isn’t a hell and brimstone kind of gal.

Kim is plugging along – Kim’s proposal defense was this week – which she passed of course.  I’m told it was exemplary!  All this means that the timeline is going according to plan.  Another week and a half and I take the LSAT.  Someday things may calm down.  I’m thinking it might not be until May 7th, 2010.

Yep!  May 7th.  It is when ABD Kim becomes PhD Kim

I’m not sure what a blogger is supposed to do when its been longer than a month since last writing.  Is the blogger supposed to acknowledge that she’s slacked for a month?  Is she supposed to justify it with excuses like, “My dog ate my blog post?”  Or is she supposed to simply get back to writing without any consideration to the fact.  My blog numbers have tanked, and rightfully so, but I’m also sort of impressed that there are still those of you out there that keep checking.  Or maybe its just my sister and uncle who repeatedly check in just to make sure I have any self esteem left at all.

Truth is, I’ve been in a LSAT class that been kicking my ass until 9:15 every Tuesday and Thursday night.

I’ve put on a 4-day orientation at work that not only went well, but even I will admit I deserve a pat on the back.

My parents also spent a week with us as my dad endured medical procedures and tests at the local research hospital.   Medically speaking, when it rains it seems to pour.  Casey’s foot turned red and black and what we had been treating as a fungus was actually a staph infection.  Thankfully the dermatologist was amazing and the infection is almost totally gone.  Last night at the playground, Casey went up to a perfect stranger and said, “Look my fungus foot is better.”  I looked at him like I had no idea what he said.  So did the woman.  It seemed better than translating.

Casey starts pre-school on Monday.  Riley has already been student of the month.  And Kimmie defends her proposal next week.  I read an article today where a woman compared raising children to being pecked to death by chickens.  I have no idea where I’m going with that except to say that I love my little chickens.  And I long for their pecks on my cheek.

Look, I’m gonna keep writing okay.  I have LSAT personal statement options to run by you, parenthood venting I need an outlet for, my last year in Utah to chronicle.  So no more e-mails asking me if I quit blogging.  I didn’t.  I just took August off.  Its a vacation month.