This has been kind of a bad week. After a survivable weekend at home, I came back here with no meals prepared for the week. Then I had a series of obligations to fulfill. On Wednesday I finally got some food cooked but was completely exhausted. Today I tread lightly.

I’m tired from a number of things. A lot of it is from essentially having taken 2 weeks off from life (because really, the rest of it didn’t matter) and then trying to pick everything back up at a time when things have to get done. 2 weddings by the end of Labor Day weekend, grad school stuff to get finalized, everything all over the place.

That’s why I nearly had a meltdown this morning when I opened a letter to find a bill for a doctor’s visit that I think was miscoded & should’ve been covered by the insurance. I already dealt with a collections agency + hospital billing department earlier this year to straighten out a bill from another medical place and I do NOT have the energy to do that again.

It was only $40, so I was thinking of just paying it. But that made me feel bad because I don’t like spending chunks of money I don’t have to. I decided not to think about it and just go to work.

While at work, I was telling a friend about this issue and wondering where in the budget I’d get the $40. Suddenly I remembered—some friends of ours had given us $40 in a sympathy card. I hadn’t been familiar with sympathy money, so I put it aside. Nothing had occurred to me as a particularly good way to spend it. But voila!

And so, serendipity.

Unrelated preface: from visitor logs, it looks like a family member may be reading my blog. If so, can you shoot me an e-mail & identify yourself? Thanks. Or if you’re an old friend from my hometown, can you write & let me know you’re not a family member. Again, thanks.

Unlike some of the other awesome girls I follow on Twitter, I don’t normally post pics on #boobiewed (when girls post reminders to check your…boobies, obviously). But when talking with Natali – @UberDorkGirlie about her epic calendar project, I started thinking about my mom’s story and how breast cancer and screenings fit into it.

Sometimes I completely forget, because breast cancer was such a small part of my mother’s cancer battle. She died after battling carcinoid cancer for over 8 years, 5.5 knowingly and another 3 before it was properly diagnosed.

But almost 7 years ago (after she already had carcinoid but pre-diagnosis), Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was good about breast self-exams and taught me to do the same. She also started getting annual mammograms when she was 50 (or thereabouts, I was young).

Because of her screenings, the cancer was caught early and things went smoothly. The treatment wasn’t ideal, the cancer required a full mastectomy. But she lived. She didn’t even need follow-up radiation or chemo, because the cancer was only in one breast and didn’t metastasize elsewhere. So after a few stressful months, it was essentially over. We were thrilled with the results.

The breast cancer never reared its ugly head again.

This would be a happy ending story except, of course, for the darker & harder-to-see-and-diagnose neuroendocrine cancer lurking in her intestines. That was found far too late to prevent it from being terminal, though she found life-prolonging treatments that got her through another 5 pretty good years (and the last half-year…not so good).

She got to go (back) to England, France, and Canada. She continued teaching Latin to middle school students and took Latin classes at the local university for the sheer joy of knowing Latin better. She read, she planted gardens and trees, and (to be trite) she taught us a lot about making the most of the time we have.

What if the breast cancer had been found later? I don’t know how long she could’ve battled 2 full-blown cancers and the treatments’ side effects. I don’t know what would’ve happened if the breast cancer had metastasized and where it’d have gone. She was a strong and determined woman, but she only had so much energy. Even if she’d lived, I don’t know if she’d have been able to live as fully.

I am very very grateful that Mom was willing and able to get herself properly screened so we had more of her for longer.

Another week of being grateful for my LAFK friends, online friends, and excellent husband. With the heat in DC & PMS-induced moodiness, it wasn’t a great week, but it’s ended pretty well.

Since I battled serious depression 4 years ago and pretty much won (never all the way better, but much much much better), I’ve got some of the tools & mental resources I need to help deal with depressive episodes. The tricky thing about grief is determining what’s appropriate grief and what’s something more. I don’t want to squelch appropriate things or bottle them up.

But on Tues and Weds things got much worse. I could feel a familiar ache in my bones. It seemed to be a combo of hormones, heat, and slowness at work (my brain likes structure & activity!) making the rest worse.

Things that I’ve been doing which have made me happy include:

1. Watching more 4th series Doctor Who. Watching the Doctor is tricky, since people die a lot & RTD has a bleakness to his worldview. Despite that, the stories are good escapism and nothing too dreadful happened.
2. Making hats. I posted a pic of me in one of them. I’ve made a few more with some yarn I found that my mom had been going to use to make hats for herself. Now I need to give them away somewhere.
3. Working on theme stuff. I’m still perfecting Vera and I’ve started another project using some of the same structure but with a bit of a different layout.
4. Crocheting Cthulhus, of course. More yarn from friends = more fun colors! Also a little Cthulhu Fhtagraphy.

And the thing that made me happiest this week was playing more Dark Alliance with the boy. We beat the first level of the Thieves Guild, I got up and did a little dance and realized that I was actually truly happy. It was awesome. Score for video games.

I want to write about how the Buffy episode “The Body” is actually amazing. Have not yet been able to pull myself together to do so. Didn’t rewatch it and haven’t seen it again since the first time a few years back (too close to home). But I found myself thinking about it without any external promptings. Then I found a really good post someone else had done about it. At some point I shall pull myself together and write. I think it’s probably the closest thing in pop/geek culture to the experience of actually losing a parent.

This weekend I’m spending back home with my dad & little sister. There will be more cleaning, hanging out, and being together. Hoping it goes well.