What is Buried in Your Front Yard?

The week after Brian died, I was out at the cemetery, and the mound of dirt just ticked me off. I went to the store and bought one of those cheap pinwheels, and decided then to always keep a pinwheel out at Brian's grave. I don't know what it was, mostly the movement and the colors, the feeling of knowing it kept blowing in the wind. As the months continued, we added and switched pinwheels several times. Some were just too worn from the weather; other times we found a fun pattern like a Spiderman pinwheel, and bought one for our house and one for Daddy's garden. These are usually about $1 so I just pick up any that I think look nice and swap them out. Tye often messes with the pinwheels when we are at the cemetery. I tried to move one the other day so it was closer to the monument, but he wanted it stuck straight in the middle of the rectangle of bare ground. I reminded him that the lawnmower would eventually run over it, but he didn't care. So I moved it when I was there later with Amberlea.

Put your lighthearted hat on or you won't fully appreciate the rest of the story...

I came home the other day and there is a pinwheel stuck in our yard. We keep one at our house a lot, so I didn't think much about it. But this one was stuck about an inch from the edge of the driveway. I just figured one of the kids moved it there from out of the flower bed.

He and I came home from school and I was sitting in a lawnchair reading a book. Tye drug out all of the toys from the garage. He had the wagons and scooters and tractor and a bike and a few trikes lined up. He was riding around in circles. He rode up to the pinwheel and jumped off and just squatted down and looked. I watched him examining the pinwheel.

Tye: Hey Mom, who's in here? (as he pointed at the yard)

Me: What?

Tye: You know, Mom, in here, who's garden is this?

Me: (I was a bit caught off guard and before I could answer...)

Tye: So is someone else's dad buried here?

Me: Oh, no...no one is buried here. They don't bury people in yards, they have to be buried in places like Daddy at a special garden called a cemetery.

Tye: Why is that wind thing here then?

Me: We just have it to remind us of Daddy.

Tye: Hmmm. Ok. (and he was off and running again)

I sure hope no one is buried in my front yard.

My Weekend

I had a busy weekend. We had a professional development day on Friday, and I accomplished a lot. Friday afternoon, I headed south to Overland Park for a Mary Kay Career Conference. For those of you who don't know, I am an Independent Beauty Consultant with Mary Kay. My sister is a director. I've been with Mary Kay since October 2001, but have dawdled around and spent the majority of time just enjoying playing in the makeup, having a very small customer base, and mostly selling enough to pay for my own products. I am looking to branch out a little, build a larger customer base, and build some consistency. I hope to be able to make some extra money to build up some savings for the kids and me, share some with certain charities and our church, and hopefully have some fun money to take the kids on some trips. I just have to figure out how to make it all work. One of the biggest draws for me is the social side. I always feel good when I am involved in anything with Mary Kay, and I love getting to know so many other women.

And I am actually stepping forward with a promise I made to Brian. He always told me I didn't have the confidence to do some things he knew I could do. In several of our many talks near the end of our life, he would tell me what he wanted for my future. Those were very difficult talks, to be discussing a life without him. But he told me he would always be there with me, and he would keep cheering me on. He said he wanted me to do all I could to do the things I wanted to do, and not to let anything stand in my way. Right now I don't know what I want really. I love my teaching career. I have no intention of stepping away from that anytime soon. I actually right now want both. So I've opted to do some exploring to see how it might work for me, as it has for so many others. Interestingly, there are a lot of Mary Kay consultants that are also teachers (either because they were burnt out or because they were broke!).

So my Friday and Saturday were full of a lot of motivation. While a lot of the conference did center around Mary Kay and this amazing company, and all the details that go along with making a business work, there was so much more...a lot of motivation to change my life...a lot of motivation to be happy in anything I decide to do...a lot of motivation to simply get my life organized and be efficient and productive. I felt a profound sense of closeness to Brian. I had a few times I had to just stop thinking about him, to stop thinking about creating a life for me and the kids that did not include him....and then I realized that the last year has not included him. I am doing a lot of going in circles. I want to move forward, move on. I don't ever want to move past. I just want to move in a forward motion, in a motion that feels alive. I have hopes and dreams for a future. That future has been shattered. I sat and thought, regardless if it is shattered, it is still my future. This was not an epiphany by any means. This isn't the first or 10th or 100th time I've thought that I needed to do something to better our future, my future. I can't tell you the number of times I've felt the urge to do something that spits in melanoma's face...something to show that melanoma is not going to continue to hurt us, to hurt me.

Time will only tell what manifests from these feelings. I have already decided to make a list of things I need to accomplish each day and go from there. Mary Kay, as they say, is so much more than lipstick. And I felt a great sense of encouragement, mostly just to be the best that I can be, to be proud of the work I do. I hope I can do my part to turn my life around, to know that Brian would be proud of how strong I am.

I ended up in Lee's Summit for part of the weekend, following my uncle being readmitted to the hospital. I spent a lot of time with my cousin, and I am trying to do all I can to support her in this cancer journey. My uncle's cancer has progressed some, but they already have a plan in place to keep up the battle. It was great to see them all.

By the time I got back to town, it was almost 5pm tonight. That makes it difficult to start back a week when you were gone all weekend! Denise was here with the kids, and they had a great time. My house looks great, which makes me that much more motivated to do something good this week. Hopefully I can tackle the garage now that the rest of the house is looking so great! Rachel has been an amazing help around the house, and I am blessed to have 3 gr8 kidz! (and a gr8 mothr n law)!

I found a nail in my tire tonight, and it was causing a rapid air leak. I'm thinking I'm even more blessed to have made it hope safely before that became an issue.

I have my white van for sale, if you know of anyone who is looking.

Enjoy your week.

Questions and Comments

These are all Tye conversations from today...

T: Hey Momma Mia!

Me: Uh, yeah.

T: Me and my friend Colby like to say Momma Mia! Isn't that funny?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

T: Can we go golfing?

Me: Uh, yeah, I guess.

T: I don't think we have any golf balls.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Tye ran up to me from the playground today with a worm.

T: I love worms!

Me: (I was playing it up.) Oooh, I hate worms.

T: What! This is my worm. I named him Wormy.

Me: I just don't know.

T: But Mom, I love worms!

Me: Oooh, gross!

T: But Mom, I love gross!

We walked for a minute up to school, as I still had work to do in my room.

T: You know what?

Me: What?

T: I don't think my worm has a head.

Even funnier, he eventually lost the worm somewhere in the building. We'll see if it is found tomorrow in the kindergarten room where he was roaming around.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Later tonight...

T: Mom, I'm going to have some bad news. You know what my bad news is going to be?

Me: What?

T: I'm pretty sure my worm is dead. I don't know, but I do know I losed him.

My Crazy Life

My life is crazy. I mean really crazy. Here are a few other things I have dealt with in the past few days.

My dad has his garden all tilled up and ready for planting. Tye and Don were out playing in the yard with the rest of the kids, while Erin and I were on the deck. Don ran into the garden. So Erin hollered...get out of Papa's garden. Don ran out, and immediately Tye ran INTO the garden and stopped and looked at her, kind of in that challenging way. So she said...you get out of the garden too! His response...he pointed down and yelled...my dad's in here! She said...no he's not! He pointed at a little garden sign and said...see? (The sign said BELIEVE, not BRIAN). Erin said...that says believe, now get out of the garden. He responded in a surprised voice and said...oh...and dashed out of the garden. Then he was off to play again.

Then tonight we ran to the store after a meeting at school. Amberlea was telling me that she had been to the cemetery today (a close friend of hers lives close to the cemetery, and they walked over to be sure none of the items blew away, with it being so windy). Her bunny had blown over and she had fixed it. So when a gust of wind about blew us away as we were going into the store, she asked if we could go out to the cemetery to get the bunny tonight. It is pitch dark and lightning like crazy. I said no a few times, and she kept saying she was worried it would blow away. I'm not afraid to go to the cemetery at night, I just never have. So out we drove, and I flashed my lights onto Brian's grave. I started to get out and she threw the door open and said...I'll get it. She ran across the cemetery (even with the night being like that in a spooky ghost story) and got the bunny, then even went back for the little shovel that had fallen out of his hand. I am thankful she wasn't scared either. She was just real matter-of-fact about it all. I sat and watched her for the 30 seconds she was out of the van. I just shook my head because she has come so far. Who would have ever guessed we would visit Brian's grave during a thunderstorm to retrieve a bunny? But it was important to her, so we did.

Life is just that...life. And it unfolds in the most unusual ways.

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog. I have thought long and hard on how and if I wanted to continue my other blog. I can't seem to find a way to stop fighting melanoma, as it continues to cheat, steal and rob people of time with their precious loved ones. So after much thought and consideration, I have decided to maintain that blog because it has played such a vital role in my healing process.

But...I have a lot of other things to talk about too. I struggle often with having really amazing and fun things to tell about the kids, while something somber is going on in the melanoma/cancer world. So the idea came to me to split the blogs. My intent is to post different information, so for the most part, what is found on one blog won't show up on the other blog. I can't guarantee that, depending on what I'm blogging about, but that is the initial thought.

This blog itself is under construction. I have lots I want to add.

For today I will just add some Tye funnies!...

We went to ride bikes at the high school today with Erin and her kids. After a long walk and ride and lots of exploring, we decided it was time for lunch. So Erin went and grabbed some food while I took the kids on to Judah park. Karis saw Erin at Sonic and ended up driving over to the park also.

Tori, Zeke and Tye ventured down the edge of the creek. The creek on the south end of the park had about 2-3 inches of water trickling through it. The kids were mostly throwing rocks in the creek and just exploring. They wandered on down to the north end of the creek near the walking bridge. We could see them at a distance. I was just getting ready to wander down there myself to see what they were up to when Tori came running.

Something bad happened to Tye!

From where I was standing, I could see Tye sitting on the bench on the bridge talking to Zeke. In my mind I was thinking, how bad can it be, his dad is dead...it would have to be pretty bad to be considered bad in my mind.

As we walked down the trail to get to Tye, Tori told me he fell in the creek. I just giggled. While I totally love having the girls and doing lots of fun things with them, having a boy is just so different. He gets into trouble in ways the girls never did! The closer I got, I realized she wasn't kidding, he really did fall in the creek. He was soaked from his neck down. Under the bridge was a slab of cement with that same trickle of water. But just beside it the cement stopped and the water was about as high as Tye's waist. So he had walked off the slab of cement and landed in that little pool of water. Tori had grabbed him and drug him out. And by the time I got to him, he was ticked.

And all I could do was laugh.

I am pretty laid back...I think that comes with dealing with what I've dealt with. I don't get nearly as wound up as I used to because I have had things happen that are big things, so the small things roll off my back more than they used to. The not-so-funny part was he had been with me the entire day, and I leave him for 2 minutes and he falls in a creek.

Again, I am laughing.

So Zeke and Tori walked back up the trail with Tye and me. Tye said he didn't think this was funny. Tori said that at least his hat didn't get wet! He stopped and patted his hat, realizing it was dry, and said...hmmph! So Karis helped me strip his shoes and pants off (I could ring water out of them) and Tori got him a towel from their van so he could make it home ok!

Now for another funny...
We were heading home from Dad's last night after a BBQ get-together. He made dinner after we went to Mass for Brian. As I pulled out of the driveway, this conversation started.

Amberlea, do you have your seat belt on?

Yes.

Rachel?

Yep.

Mom, how about you?

Yes, Tye.

So do I, because I would really miss all of you if I was in jail.

I guess I've gone a bit overboard about the importance of wearing your seat belt, but I'm ok with that!