Showing posts with label getting ready for normal life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label getting ready for normal life. Show all posts

Feb 25, 2012

Yuck

I feel like dealing with life after cancer has been WAY harder than dealing with life during cancer.  Sure, I pooped myself a few times, was constantly tired, made several trips to the ER, and felt like I was suicidal toward the end.  However, now that the drugs have worn off, I'm having a hard time dealing with the fact that I was looking forward to things going "back to normal," when "normal" isn't what it used to be.

I hate going to church on Sunday because it reminds me that "normally" I would be spending time with my Iowa family and friends afterward.  I don't feel I'm very good at my sales job, because instead of doing something I love, I'm graded on how much stuff I can sell people.  I still have plenty of days where I feel I wouldn't mind if someone shot me or crashed into me and I died, but now I can't blame it on the drugs.  Now it's just me.

Once upon a time it felt like life was fairly simple and straightforward.  Now it's complex and confusing.

But... what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.  Right?

Jan 29, 2012

C'est La Vie.

Work, work, work.  That's what this past week has been.

The funnier part is that the amount of work I did wasn't even really that much.  I used to put in anywhere between a 40-60 hour week without thinking about it, but this week 30 was pushing my limits.

I know I'm going to get a lecture from my "cancer moms" telling me that I shouldn't try to push too hard, too fast.  But believe me, I've already picked up on that.  When I'm tired after working for only 7 or 8 hours, I have no other option than to believe it's a residual effect from the chemo and radiation.  'Cause normally, that'd be no problem.

Some women I've talked to told me it might take up to a year for me to get "back to normal." Whatever that may be.

For now, though, I find myself yawning at 8pm.  Granted, I rarely go to bed that early because there is still a part of me that feels like coping out that early is just wussy.  And I don't like to be a wuss.

The plan for today is to make it out to either Lakeside Mall or The Somerset Collection to hand out my cards and strike up deals with the pretty faces behind the counters so that I can get my name out there.

I was talking with one of the girls that I work with last night and asked if she wanted to go with to hand out cards at Somerset soon and I'm not sure I understood her response.  It seemed she was worried that we would be stepping on someone else's turf or that maybe we were inferior to the resident mall salon.  I was confused.  Actually, I still am.

Either way, I'm not worried about it.  If their work is better than mine, it will show and their clients will stay.  However, if it's not...  well, that's how the game goes.  I won't badmouth another stylist or salon to gain their clientele, but I'm not going to sit back and just hope people appear in my chair, either.  I'm going to get my hustle on and let people know that if they'd like, I'm here: talented, able, and willing. (And in a lot of cases, more budget friendly, too!)

The ubiquitous "they" say that if you gain about 50 clients in a year, probably expect to lose about 10-20% of them in that same year.  Some people just like to jump around, while others die, move, go off to college, etc...  Regardless, your client's lives are not static, so they won't be either.

Anyway, that's enough of that.

Isaac has been studying like a madman, making sure that he's ready for everything that his Cardiology class can throw at him.  He's definitely a little bit stressed, but I suppose a little fire under everyone's behind does some good.

I've been getting little love-notes from him recently, which I adore.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm working a little bit now.  Or maybe it's because I've been conscious for a couple of consecutive months instead of doped up on the chemo drugs.  Whatever the cause is, I'm a fan.

I've been enjoying my time at Nordstrom so far too.  It's a very interesting place.

Dad got home from Africa today!!  I haven't talked to him yet because I think everyone is together hanging out, talking about how the trip was over lunch and stuff, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to chat with him soon.

It's weird, not being home in Iowa for his homecoming.  I can picture in my head what's probably gone on and I can remember what the emotional atmosphere was last time he got home, but it stinks, not being able to be there and share it with them.

I've been having weird dreams, too.  Really weird, and REALLY vivid.  Almost every night.  Even weirder, Jessica and I both dreamt that I was pregnant a couple of nights ago.  Glory, I hope not.  I know, I know, His timing is perfect.  I have complete trust in that; I just would be extremely curious how it would work with our present life situation.

C'est la vie.

Dec 25, 2011

Home For The Holidays

It's been a little while.  Sorry about that.  I'm guessing that a lot of you, like Isaac and I, are busy with Christmas being tomorrow.

This past week and a half we did Christmas with my dad's extended family in Nebraska and then when we got back, Isaac and I headed to Iowa City for Christmas with the Hintons.  Howard (Isaac's dad) and I are in a weight loss competition, so I was glad to hear that Lynn (Isaac's mom) made him a couple batches of fudge.  Unfortunately, it looked so good that I wanted to try it, and I ended up loving it so much I'm sure I ate more than Howard.  I guess that effort to trip him up backfired.

The last two full days we've been in the van with my Iowa family--and my brother.  Glory sakes, heaven spare me.  I've wanted to kill him less this year than in the past few years, but he can still get on my nerves faster than any other human being I know.  I don't even know how his brain works to think up some of the things he does.  I guess we're just wired differently.  VERY differently.

We stopped in Tennessee last night and visited with some family that we don't get to see very often.  It was fun to get to hang out with them!  The boys (Isaac and Ike) are on a weightlifting kick right now so they were super excited to learn there was an in-home gym.  They spend at least an hour seeing how much weight they could bench, among other things.

Courtney and I lifted a little bit too, but not for long.

While we were there, Isaac and I slept on an air mattress upstairs.  Nobody realized it had a small leak in it and so midway through the night I went to roll over and just about fell off because so much air had escaped.  I felt like I was sleeping on a waterbed without any outer boundaries.  Mom came up to wake me up in the morning and said that both Isaac and I were sleeping with our backs/butts on the ground and our legs were up in the air.  And apparently when I got out of the bed Isaac sunk to the ground and the bed kind of caved in around him.  Poor guy.

Today we were in the van for another eleven hours and thankfully nobody killed Ike.  Sometimes he makes it his personal mission to see how many people he can get riled up before we gang up and beat him (not literally).  He's pretty good at getting to the edge of everyone's patience.

We arrived in Orlando at 1:00am and the plan is to make our way down to Miami tomorrow.  Then we get on the cruise ship and will be floating in the ocean for the next five days.  Ahhhh...  Hopefully it will be relaxing.  I'm looking forward to it because not only is it a vacation, it will kind of be like a honeymoon for Isaac and I since.

The plan had been to go on one in August this year when he had a break in his school schedule; however, the appearance of the cancer prevented us from going anywhere and doing anything, so this is kind of like our fake honeymoon--but we'll have guests!




Dec 9, 2011

Ladies' Night

Last night Kim and I got all dressed up to go out to J. Barbaro's ladies' night.  Not red carpet dressed because it's too cold, but nicely dressed--which included heels.  We assumed it'd probably be a good idea to arrive fashionably late, since that's what people on television do, and headed out toward the mall around 6:30pm.

In my head I had visions of lots of fancy, classy ladies wearing designer clothes sipping mimosas and cosmepolitans while browsing the latest men's fashions for their husbands.  I thought it'd be one of those events where I'd have to keep my eyebrows raised the whole time in order to appear like, yes, I'd had plastic surgery too and I would need to be careful not to smile too big because according to Tyra, it makes your eyes squinty and emphasizes wrinkle lines in your face and that's not considered very attractive.

Before heading to ladies' night though, we headed over to Nordstrom to visit Karla, Kim's mom.  Karla is one of those tiny, very fashionable mothers, who, while not a "housewife" herself, probably has a lot of insight on how to deal with those who are.  (And when I say "housewife," I'm referring to women who possess similar traits to Danielle Staub.... just a little bit crazy...)  She helped me get mentally prepared and even more important, helped me realize that my pocked on my blazer was sewn shut and could very easily be opened for use (aka, holding my business cards).

Kim and I then proceeded to head to the party.  We arrived at the storefront and for a moment, wondered if we'd arrived on the wrong night.  There was literally nobody in the store, aside from the workers.  Well, I guess that's a little bit of a lie... there was a couple that was leaving as we walked by the door.  And yes, I did say, BY the door.  We were so thrown off that we didn't even stop in.  Clearly we were mistaken about this event.

After talking for a minute, trying to figure out what in the world was going on, we decided to go eat pizza instead.  However, getting to the restaurant required walking by the store again and so as we made our way to devour a delicious plate of carbs and cheese, Kim asked if I was going to go in.  It felt kind of like a dare, so I did.  In a spur-of-the-moment decision, I decided that instead of networking with the absent fancy ladies, I would network with the store owner instead.  Unfortunately, he was in a meeting, so the sales associate recommended we come back in about a half hour.

To the pizza shop we went.

By this time, our feet were on FIRE, as neither one of us regularly (or even irregularly) wear heels and so the booth in California Pizza Kitchen was greatly appreciated.  I had a 5-cheese and tomato pizza and Kim had BBQ chicken.  They were both extremely delicious.  I probably appreciated it even more than normal too, since I hadn't been allowed to eat carbs or sugar yesterday for my PET/CT scan.

We stopped back at J. Barbaro and very awkwardly were introduced to the owner.  I say awkwardly because when we first walked into the store, we said hello to a man on our way toward the sales associate, thinking he was a customer since he wasn't really dressed too snazzy.  Then, when the associate went to introduce us to the owner, we went back to that same man, interrupted his phone call with his child, and said hello.  Embarrassing.  To make matters more confusing, there was another man in the store who looked a lot like Santa Clause dressed in a very nice suit and if I had walked in there blindly, I would have mistaken HIM for the owner.  I felt like I had no idea what was going on.

Karla hadn't taken her break at work yet so we made our way back to Nordstrom to report on the night and visit with her for a bit and then picked up a movie at Redbox to finish off the night.

Lesson of the night: go big or go home.

And since they hadn't gone big, we went home.

Dec 8, 2011

Business, Business

I had my PET/CT scan this morning.  I think it went pretty well.  The biggest upside to the immediate experience is that I only had to get poked with a needle once!  Hallelujah!

Tonight Kim and I are going to pretend that we're really fancy folk and go to an event that is being held at Partridge Creek at J. Barbaro Clothiers.  It's a high-class (or at least, high-income) men's store that sells pretty nice ties, shirts, suits, etc. for a pretty penny.  Isaac and I happened to wander in there last Sunday after church while we were mall-walking because he was hoping to get ideas for clothes for when he has to start dressing up for clinical rotations come this next school year.

It was a little bit comical, in my opinion.  Neither one of us were dressed nice, my hair looked all crazy, and Isaac is in dire need of a cut himself.  The sweet lady at the counter either must have been blind and didn't realize that "no, we can't pay $125 for a tie," or she did a killer job at following that rule of business which states that you should never assume your client's income or spending habits.  Either way, she was leading us all around the showroom putting together combinations of shirts, ties, and jackets in hopes that I would "get ideas" for Isaac for Christmas.

As we were heading out the door, she stopped us at the counter and invited me to attend a ladies' night later on in the week.  I'm not exactly sure what those events look like, but she led me to believe that it will be cocktails and snacks of some type.

We left and as we neared the car, I told Isaac that I was considering going to the event, simply because it would be a good networking opportunity where I might get the chance to hand out my card.  Plus, I'm assuming that if the women attending this event are going to pay $125 for a tie and upwards of $195 for a button-down shirt, they're probably not going to be all that opposed to investing some good money in their hair.  We'll see.

I had to create a new temporary business card (partially for this event, partially for my own sanity) as well because the one I was handing out didn't quite portray what it is that I do.  To me, a business card is something that, if executed well, will draw in new clients to you almost on its own.  Here's what I ended up doing:
Back side of original card
Front side of original card
New card front, back is empty
I got some tips from a friend on how to hand my card out in a non-tacky way as well.  I've never really had to hand a card out to someone I don't know, aside from college students, who are generally very un-scary, and so I'm a little nervous.  Plus, I'm not sure if there are business card hand-out faux-pas...

Anyway, Kim and I will be attending tonight and I'm sure I'll have some interesting stories about our experience.

And in even cooler news: I get my port out on Monday.  I'm super psyched!!  YES!!

Dec 7, 2011

Fail.

Yesterday I realized that I was NOT a very good blogger throughout the month of November.  Not. At. All.  I'll be honest though, I have really been feeling much lately.  I've just been... being.  Existing.  Waking up, breathing, eating, and then going to sleep again (albeit, at extremely odd hours).  And it's really hard for me to blog if I haven't really felt strongly about anything.

It's kind of like that relationship that you have that all of the sudden seems like it's at a standstill.  Sometimes you break up because you think surely there should be more to it, whereas other times you simply endure because you trust that better things are to come.

Obviously I can't break up with my life... although there are certainly times when I want to.  Like this morning when I was getting frustrated about my income situation.  It's probably not actually the "situation" that was frustrating me, but more that I don't like the fact that I'm coasting right now.  And when I say coasting, I'm dead serious.  I know some of you have probably had moments in your life that felt like coasting, but imagine waking up EVERY SINGLE DAY and doing nothing.  Maybe watching television (brainless), cooking (kind of brainless), laundry (once a week max, and again, brainless), and napping.  I don't think I could be "coasting" any more.  Unless I were in a coma, which is probably actually more comparable to breaking up with life since you're no longer conscious.

So, I had yet another meltdown and just needed to cry it off.  And then I talked with Meg about being homesick.  More tears.  So then I wondered if my period was coming soon.  Nope.  It's over two weeks away.  Maybe this is residual cancer stuff?  I don't know.

Either way, I'm just exhausted from it.

Oct 15, 2011

Renovating

For the past five months, Isaac have been spending a majority of our time in what I dubbed "the hospital."  We had white carpet, white walls, white ceilings, and white hospital-like light.  It was making me crazy.  Actually, a lot of things were contributing to my mental issues, but I truly believe that this was one of them.

It just didn't feel like home.

Mama-Lynn came out for my last chemotherapy treatment (YAY to both!!!!) and I was feeling exponentially better than I had for any of the treatments before.  Thank you, thank you to all of you who prayed that this one would be easier.  I appreciate it so much, and it WAS!

Because I was feeling so fantastic, Mama-Lynn and I spent a good chunk of Thursday painting the longest wall in Isaac and I's apartment this lovely green color.  The problem was, it wasn't the shade of green a person (other than my dad) would want to live in.  It was a slightly muted version of John Deere Green.

I miss the tractors and such, but not enough to have our living room that color.

We hadn't anticipated this problem, so we'd purchased four gallons of color, planning to paint the entire living room this color.  Thank goodness I belong to a merciful God who knows we're trying to keep our expenses down and who is also aware that sometimes I'm an idiot.

Mama-Lynn and I went back to Lowe's and they refunded us all but one bucket (the one we had used) and even were kind enough to exchange the ones that we brought back for much lovelier shades.

That sweet, sweet, lady at the paint counter.  She worked a miracle for us.  We went in with John Deere Green and came out with "Covered Wagon," "Earthy Cane," and "Willow Tree."  Colors that were MUCH easier to work with--and they matched the rug I'd found on sale the week before!
The rug that started it all :)
We gave up Thursday night and Friday morning spend the ENTIRE day taping and painting.  We learned quite a few tricks--but hopefully neither of us will be needing to utilize them again in the very near future.  I'm still a little high off the fumes.

The goal was to turn our giant "hospital" room into a room that was kind of split into two, but not definitively.  We created a beautiful workspace for Isaac and got him a comfortable office chair and mounted a corkboard on the wall for him so he can stick all his notes and such into it (until now, things have just been getting pinned directly into the wall).  His workspace is also close to the kitchen table, which is lovely, because when he gets tired of his desk, he likes to switch it up and study at the table sometimes.
Already putting it to good use....
The most dramatic change was in the living room.  We now have an area rug that breaks up all the white-ness of the carpet, we invested in an entertainment center/electric fireplace that is a piece of "Iowa home" for me, and we re-arranged the furniture that we already had to create this cozy little nook.  Mana-Lynn and I spent probably a good two hours trying to assemble the silly thing... but in the end it was worth it because not only do we have this cool-looking fake fire, now we actually have a REAL entertainment stand, which means that my coffee table (what we'd been using) was now free to actually use as a coffee table!!

It was also fun to finally be able to pull out of storage all of the little candles and wall decorations I'd kept away, simply because before, they'd have looked awfully funny on our white walls.
Where I will probably spend a lot of my time from now on.
I feel like I live here now.  Like... I live here, with my husband, and it is our home.  Not a hotel room that we're renting for an extended period of time.

God bless the man who invented paint and fake fire.  They does wonders.