Tuesday, August 12, 2014

End of Summer

Summer ends for me on Friday. That's my first day back at school. Monday and Tuesday are teacher work days, with kids coming back on Wednesday. With that in mind, here's what stands out from my summer.

1. Camping. Zane accuses me of a bait-and-switch with regards to camping. He claims I said I loved camping when we were dating, but then never wanted to go. Here's the deal: I am sure I never said I loved camping, and even if I did, it can easily be explained away by dating insanity, which is different from lying. Then we got married. Then I was pregnant, had a newborn, pregnant, had a newborn, pregnant, had a newborn, had cancer. So we didn't really have a good time to go camping until this summer. We went to Goblin Valley and to Zane's family reunion. Now I can happily not go camping for a few...okay, fine, I'll do it again next summer. If I have to.

2. Having really cute kids. I love two-year-olds when they're not throwing tantrums. I love how Raiden runs, his little words, and the excitement in his eyes when I understand what he says ("Donut? You want a donut?" "Yes!") Sasha is getting so big and self-sufficient. He dresses himself with shoes on the wrong feet only about 50% of the time and can help a lot with cleaning up once he stops pouting. Sabrina is getting so big. I can't believe she's a little martial arts student and will be testing for her yellow belt on Friday. Although she occasionally torments her brothers, they also cry when they can't be with her. She's always planning games for everyone to play.

3. Being done with treatment. I've been looking forward to the end of this summer since I was diagnosed. When I charted out my treatments, I knew by the time school started in 2014 I'd be done with Herceptin, be reconstructed, and have hair. Check, check, and check. It's been tough to get back on any type of routine this past week since school is starting soon, but I think I'm getting used to my new non-cancerous, perky life. It's actually pretty paradigm-shifting to be done with treatment. My life has largely revolved around treatment for the past 15 months, so being done is weird. Good weird, but still weird.

So that's it. I'm back to work in three days, and my legacy of the summer is camping, cute kids, and being done with treatment. Not bad, but next summer look for the post titled "Molly accomplishes world peace through Being Fabulous."

Friday, August 1, 2014

Ogden Temple Open House

Finally, after many long and difficult years of having to drive to BOUNTIFUL to go to the temple, the Ogden temple is about to open. Today was the first day of the open house, and I volunteered to help out. I was assigned to "disability services" which meant pushing wheelchairs. Now, I probably wasn't supposed to do that, what with only two weeks since my reconstruction and all, but it was totally the best assignment. Other people put booties on patrons, pushed elevator buttons, or pointed with a smile. I got to go through the temple with cute old ladies! Also, there were a few places where the wheelchair route diverged from the cattle corral, so we could spend as much time as we wanted looking at the floor, mirrors, stained glass, paintings, or whatever. It was great.

When I didn't have a patron needing help, I fluffed booties. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably not that. The little plastic booties that everyone has to wear in the temple for the open house came in packs of 10 -- nine booties inside another one. In order to expedite the process of getting them on 2000 people an hour, we volunteers would take the nine booties out of the tenth and fluff it up, as it had been vacuum packed or something. Since they need 4000 an hour, it's an ongoing job.

One of the other volunteers had clearly had a boob job. In looking at her, I noticed that her breasts looked unrealistically perky for a 60-something woman. Then I realized, Hey! MY boobs are unrealistically perky for a 36-year-old breastfeeder of three! Awesome. May that be the most lasting physical effect of the past year and four months.

Oh, and incidentally? Today is my first day of not having Herceptin. That is, it's been three weeks since my last dose of Herceptin. Yay for me!