I'm Tight With The Universe

In my pursuit for all things hokey and spiritual, I signed up for daily affirmation emails from The Universe.

Yes. The Universe and I are friends. And every day (during the week. The Universe needs to get it's drink on during weekends too people) I get a morning email from The Universe with a little hopeful happy message and it just sets my day right.

Last week was my birthday and I received a special message, just for me:

A few years back, not so long ago, heaven and earth erupted into a major celebration with the news of your impending adventure into this very time and space. You see, someone like Susan Kent doesn’t come along all that often. In fact, there’s never been a single one like you, nor is there ever ANY possibility that another will come again. You’re an Angel among us. Someone, whose eyes see what no others will EVER see, whose ears hear what no others will EVER hear, and whose perspective and feelings will NEVER, ever be duplicated. Without YOU, the Universe, and ALL THAT IS, would be sadly less than it is.

Quite simply:

You’re the kind of person, Susan,
Who’s hard to forget,
A one-in-a-million
To the people you’ve met.
Your friends are as varied
As the places you go,
And they all want to tell you
In case you don’t know:
That you make a big difference
In the lives that you touch,
By taking so little
And giving so much!

Susan, you are so AWESOME! For your birthday, friends and angels from every corner of the Universe, including buddies you didn’t know you had, will be with you to wish you the HAPPIEST of Birthdays and an exciting new year in time and space. You won’t be alone!

I love The Universe. And the Universe loves me right back.

Have You Seen This?

My friend Cootie e-mailed me a link to this. It is brilliant.

Mom Strikes again

So I sit down to write and I forget. I had a specific topic in mind and I forgot. Within 35 seconds. I sat. I opened my file. All the while I knew what I wanted to write about. The email opens and I type, "So I sit down to write".

And thanks to $150 per session therapy, I know that what I'm doing is called avoidance. What I'm going through is apparently too much for me and I can't mentally handle it.

It's obviously, about my mother.And as I write more comes back. Like the part about how when I talked to my sister I was discussing how I thought Mom had actually started this whole thing with a Google on what breast cancer metastasizes to. She found pancreas. Then she found the symptoms of pancreatic cancer. Then she imitated those symptoms and took herself in for testing.

She starves herself so that she has the "losing weight" symptom.

She hurts her back lifting a concrete birdbath, but makes sure everyone knows that back pain is a symptom of pancreatic cancer.

She called me to say that she was having a PET scan to look for pancreatic or liver cancer and that she called only because I requested to be informed of all health-related occurrences.

"I hate to ruin your day, but you said you wanted to know."

I thanked her for keeping me in the loop and asked when she'd get results.

"December 10."

"Okay. Call me when you find out."

So, at 8 PM on December 10, I call her to find out what's going on since I haven't heard from her all day.
Mom's not there. She's at work.
My sister A is picking up pizza.
V - who answered the phone - is on IM with her friend.

I ask V to have A call when she gets home.
An hour passes. (My hometown is 1 mile square in area.) So, I call back.
V answers again.
Me: Did you forget to tell A?
Her: No. She's getting out of the shower.

I end up on the phone with A and find out that they got the results in the morning and that everything was fine.

I got off the phone and drank until I threw up.

Ho, Bitch, Slut

I talked to V, my niece, the other day. We talked after I had a phone conversation with my mom. Mom gave me the update on how she had gotten her shutters installed on the house for $10 a window. He did 3 windows which equaled 3 hours of work. Mom had to force this poor guy to take a $20 tip. Imagine the life situation that would make you feel $10/hour for manual labor was sufficient. Anyway. She went on to explain how she had been Googling to determine whether the pain in her back was from trying to lift the 150 lb. birdbath in my grandmother's backyard or from a pancreatic tumor.

[Side Note: This past week Mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told her then asked what she wanted. (I'm 12/9 and she's 12/11.) She said, not sarcastically, "I want to live." People. If there ain't drama, it ain't my mama.]

So, as we're getting off the phone Mom says, "Oh yeah. Some of V's friends called her a slut and a ho and a bitch. What do you think I should do?"
Me: Stay out of it, Mom.
Mom (to V in the background): She told me to stay out of it.
V (from the background): Uh!

I asked to speak with V and asked her why the girls were calling her a bitch. She didn't know. So, I asked if she thought it might be because she was being a bitch.

No. Of course not.

So, I proceed to talk to her about how girls can say mean things and that I was sorry her feelings were hurt and I encouraged her to realize that if these girls were the kind of girls who talked shit behind their friend's back (in G language, of course) that these were not the girls she wanted to be friends with in the first place.

And then. I swear to God. I hear myself ...
quoting Erykah Badu.

Yep.I used the Apple Tree reference.

See I picks my friends like I pick my fruit
My ganny told me that when I was only a youth
I dont walk around trying to be what Im not
I dont waste my time trying to get what you got
I work at pleasin me
Cause I cant please you and thats why I do what I do
My soul flies free like a willow tree
Doo wee doo wee doo wee

I explained the apple analogy. "If you were at Super Wal-Mart picking out an apple, you wouldn't pick the rotten apple. You'd pick the good apple. Right? So why would you pick the rotten girl to be friends with?"

V said, "Huh?"

I said, "Just try to ignore them, honey."

And Back to our Regular Programming

Well, we had a nice little break from Mom Drama. Hope you all enjoyed yourselves.

We're glad to have you with us today for the first episode of our second season entitled: Susan has the life she's always dreamed of, Mom has elevated tumor markers for pancreatic and liver cancer.

Now this does not mean my mom has pancreatic or liver cancer. These are simply markers that indicate the possibility of cancer. Or at least that's what I gleaned when I had a mental break and googled for a second.

You all know not to google diseases, right? Never, ever google a disease you or a loved one may have. There are two reasons and I'm not sure which should be number 1.
1. You don't know who wrote those pages. You know better than to read the webpages from schmucks who have crystals and unicorns on their blog, but for some reason, those are the articles you end up reading. You may deny this, but all of us are cynical conspiracy theorists at heart. We know the only accurate information we can trust is from the AMA and CDC and a elite group of hospitals and universities, but when it comes to the disease google, your rationale slips. And you find yourself almost believing that the government secretly has the cure to cancer. The government and Charlie from CharliesCureforCancer.com. And you find yourself thinking, maybe Charlie is right. Maybe just going strict vegan and practicing yoga with Puss in Boots twice a week is the way to shrink that tumor.
And,
1. The news is always bad. Very bad. And that's because the articles that attract us most are the extreme ones. And the last thing you need is Charlie saying, "Listen, I know how to cure you, but if you don't start right this second, you are totally fucked. As a matter of fact, you should have started six months ago." That is not a good time.

So I googled for a second, quickly came to my senses and blocked out the horrific bold blue headlines, and began to frantically clean. It's my thing. I stayed home from work today because we had three deliveries coming in. Washer. TV. Media Center. We got two out of three. Everything worked out except the washer. It was damaged. They're coming Monday AM.

Where was I? Frantically cleaning. And doing handy man stuff. While waiting for the various delivery people, I maniacally cleaned and organized. I used a straight edge to place items in my medicine cabinet.Yes. Your Princess is handy. But she is always careful to be cute when being that way so that she's not mistaken for those girls who go to Ginger's and identify themselves as couples by wearing the same flannel print. Like a Scottish Family's Tartan, but not. (Those lesbians would never be seen in a skirt.)

Cleaning. Handy-Manning. As I told you, I got a keychain from Tiffany & Co. for the new keys. One of my keys did not fit. So I drilled it. Now it fits.

We have a shelving space and we got new shelves from Lowe's and we asked a nice kid who makes about $8 an hour to cut them down to a specific size. He was off by an 1/8 of an inch. A seemingly inconsequential amount, but with my measuring skills, a disaster. So, I cut down shelves with a 18 volt DeWalt circular saw. I later installed those same shelves. I filled those shelves with my shoes in a nice orderly fashion. I put away photo frames that have yet to be hung. I put crap out on the street like my jacket that I hung myself on a fence with one fateful night when I forgot HRH had my only set of keys to my apartment and I sent her home with the intenion of staying out a little longer (I always did) and when I realized my stupidity, I tried to climb the fence next to my apartment building that enclosed the Bette Midler Green Up New York Park Project Park (or something to that effect), and actually made it, but not before slipping, catching my jacket on a fence prong, and hanging, literally feet off the ground, hung up by my jacket collar like a scene from the Little Rascals, and then scrambling physical comedy style, back up and finally over the fence.

Again. I digress.

So, what I was talking about was how Mom is potentially very, very sick and how I am driven to distraction after distraction in an attempt to avoid the whole thing.