I know I know, I've been a bad blogger...

Hi y'all. I know you're probably tired of excuses, but for about a month there wasn't much positive stuff to post, so I figured not posting anything would be better than being a downer for everybody. But essentially I ended up worrying some of you anyways cuz of the absence.

(Btw, the IM's "from my blog" about it missing me were really cute, Joff.)

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For those of you who don't know, this past Tuesday was the anniversary of my Mom's death and it ended up hitting me a lot harder than I expected. Even though she died 8 years ago, it still hurts like it was yesterday. There's this weird thing that happened though. And it's happened in the past, also. It seems like whenever Mom's death is hitting me especially hard, or a situation arises that reminds me that she's gone, somehow "The Wind Beneath My Wings" ends up being randomly played on the radio. That was her favorite song, and I played it for her at her funeral because it speaks volumes for how I felt about her. Well, I basically spent this past Tuesday coccooning in bed with my kitties, alternating between crying and wallowing in self pity. I got tired of the silence so I opened Windows Media Player and set the playlist to "random". I have well over 600 songs in Media Player, but the first one that played was "The Wind Beneath My Wings". I realize it might make me sound crazy, but it's as if that's her way of letting me know she's still there, just not in the tangible sense. That didn't stop the crying and self pity, but it made everything hurt just a lil less.

I spent the day not answering the phone, and put up a kinda snippy away message up on AIM saying that I was going incommunicado for the day cuz I just wanted to crawl up into a little ball and disappear for a while. As an odd tangent, isn't it amazing how animals can pick up on human emotions? Both of my kitties spent the entire day not leaving my side. Whenever I started crying again, Sapphire would snuggle up on one side of me, and Emmie would lay on the other side. Like they were my lil furry tear absorbers. It's so weird how I never used to be a cat person 4 years ago, but now I am so utterly in awe of my babies and how much love it is possible to have for other living creatures. They give me unconditional love without even having to say a word. Pets really are a gift from above.

October and November both tend to be rough months for me because the leaves changing color and the weather getting cooler remind me of that time of year that everything went so horribly downhill with Mom's health. And when you add my own medical stuff on top of that, you end up with a person more prone to withdrawl and depression than usual.

It's kinda weird that Christina Aguilera recently released a song called "Hurt". I cried the first time I heard it on the radio. Not only is it a beautiful melody, but the lyrics are as if she was singing straight from my heart. The lyrics to that song were on my AIM profile for a while. For those of you who haven't heard the song, here it is...

"Seems like it was yesterday when I saw your face
You told me how proud you were but I walked away
If only I knew what I know today

I would hold you in my arms
I would take the pain away
Thank you for all you've done
Forgive all your mistakes
There's nothing I wouldn't do
To hear your voice again

Sometimes I want to call you
But I know you won't be there
I'm sorry for blaming you for everything I just couldn't do
And I've hurt myself by hurting you

Some days I feel broke inside but I won't admit
Sometimes I just want to hide 'cause it's you I miss
You know it's so hard to say goodbye when it comes to this

Would you tell me I was wrong?
Would you help me understand?
Are you looking down upon me?
Are you proud of who I am?

There's nothing I wouldn't do
To have just one more chance
To look into your eyes and see you looking back
I'm sorry for blaming you for everything I just couldn't do
And I've hurt myself

If I had just one more day, I would tell you how much that
I've missed you since you've been away
Oh, it's dangerous
It's so out of line to try to turn back time
I'm sorry for blaming you for everything I just couldn't do
And I've hurt myself
By hurting you"
~ Christina Aguilera

Just reading the lyrics really doesn't do justice to the beauty of the song, but I thought I'd share the lyrics for anyone else who has ever lost someone close to them.

On November 7th of each year since Mom's passing, my sister and I have taken a dozen pink carnations to the Cancer Center for the nurses to distribute to the patients. The reason for the pink carnations is because they were Mom's favorites, and the reason we even take them at all is because while Mom was dying in the Cancer Center she was receiving tons of flowers from people. She had me take some of the arrangements to the other patients on the floor who didn't get any visitors. So my sister and I both figured that would be a good way to memorialize her on the anniversary of her death. This is the first year my sister has decided she doesn't want to do this anymore. So that upset me, because I can't exactly get in my car and go take the carnations myself, and I liked the support of having my sister with me. I'd expressed my disappointment about this to my dad. The morning of November 7th, my stepmom Margaret knocked on my bedroom door and offered to take off early from work to take me over to the cancer center that afternoon. I was amazingly touched by the offer, and I realize how much of a gesture it was that she offered to do that. And I felt bad in declining her offer. I don't know why, but it just didn't seem right to do it without my sister. But I appreciated beyond words Margaret's offer to take me. In retrospect, I wish I had taken her up on it, but it's too late to change my mind now. Adam says he wants to go with me to do the carnations at the Cancer Center, so we'll probably end up doing it maybe this weekend.

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What else to talk about... ooooh, what did everyone end up doing for Halloween? I had a good suggestion from Joff about going as Stephen Hawking cuz of the wheelchair, but regretfully did not end up doing that. Halloween ended up being pretty low key. Adam and I actually changed out of our pajamas and put on nice clothes to go out for dinner on Halloween, so as my sister put it, we went as normal people for Halloween. Or at least as normal as we can get.

I know they're a lil late, but here are some cute Halloween-related smilies...

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My docs finally gave up on the Enbrel injections. So just when I finally get used to stabbing myself in the leg with a needle two times a week, they tell me I don't need to do that anymore. Woohoooo! The downside is that I had to wait for the Enbrel to be completely out of my system before I could start the new treatment. While the Enbrel wasn't completely stopping the pain, it was doing enough to make me semi-functional, so no Enbrel means that it feels like I'm turning back into stone like I was back in March. The new treatment they're trying is a drug called Remicade. It's an IV infusion that takes about 3 hours including the benadryl drip that has to go into me first to offset some of the side effects of the drug. They have to ramp me up to the regular dosage, so I started out with my first treatment two weeks ago, then this past Wednesday I had my second treatment. Now I wait four weeks before getting the next treatment, then I only have to have the IV infusions every eight weeks. The nurses were talking about how great a drug Remicade is and about how many patients start feeling considerably better after the first treatment, so stupid me kinda got my hopes up. I've had two treatments now, and have felt very little, if any, benefit from it as I continue to get more and more dependent on my cane and wheelchair. Speaking of which, I found the cutest wheelchair smiley:

<---- Isn't it cuuuuuute?

Adam's been such a trooper about everything. And we get some pretty awesome seats at the Virginia Tech football games cuz of the wheelchair, so there's some silver lining.

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All I gots to do is make it through PT this morning in a few hours, then Adam's coming to pick me up this afternoon so we can spend the weekend up in Blacksburg. There's another home game this weekend, so I'm really excited about that. No matter how crappy I may feel physically, the atmosphere in Lane Stadium during Hokie football is so amazing that it makes me forget about everything else for a while. Speaking of Hokies, I found some Hokie smileys!! (Ok ok, so they're supposed to be Thanksgiving smileys. Meh.)

<---- It's a lil baby Hokie!

<---- Giddyup!

<---- Less animated, but still cute.

Woohooo!

Just gotta make it through PT. Oh, speaking of which, it turns out Adam's going to have to be starting PT soon for his knee (nothing very serious, but enough of a problem to hinder playing volleyball and such). It turns out his doc referred him to the same PT-ist I go to! So starting next week we're setting up our appointments together so we can support eachother while we're there. I think it's kinda cool cuz it's something we can do together.

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Well, I think I'm out of stuff to write about, and this is probably gonna end up being a massively long post anyways, so kudos to anyone who made it all the way through. And I won't let my blog start to shrivel up from lack of posts again.

For those of you in school or in weekday jobs, SMILE! It's FRIDAY so your weekend's almost here!!!