You Call This Sam Adams?

I'm a history purist.  Or snob.  Take your pick.  I love my history anyway I can get it, and I don't mind historical fiction at all.  I love it in fact.  But when you are THE HISTORY CHANNEL, and you are producing a program called "The Sons of Liberty" based on well-documented real-life people about actual events that happened in our country which caused our country to become a united nation, then freaking get it right!  These are not fictional characters.  These are not made up events.  I get the idea that you have to condense/combine/omit things, but for goodness sake, at least get the main people right!

Don't get me wrong.  I am enjoying "The Sons of Liberty" as a piece of historical fiction because I know the real truth.  What bothers me is that many people who watch this will think this is how things really happened because it was on THE HISTORY CHANNEL.  I think when you bill yourself as that, you have a responsibility to get it right on shows that are about real people and real events.

For example, Samuel Adams.  I will freely admit that Sam on SOL is very easy on the eyes and his badass ways make the show really exciting to watch.  He is smoking hot, HOWEVER, in real life, Sam may have been a badass, but he was born in 1722, making him in his 50s during the Revolutionary War period.

Here is a picture of Sam Adams from SOL.  Does this guy look 50 to you?

This is a portrait of the REAL Samuel Adams, painted in 1772, when he was 50.  Do you see any resemblance between the two?  No, me neither.

I'm watching the show the other night as Sam is chased through the streets of Boston, and it looks like Kyle is playing Assassin's Creed 3, with all of the jumping from rooftop to rooftop.  The chase was fun to watch, but real? No way.  The actual Sam would have thrown his back out doing something like that!

Then there is the way that THE HISTORY CHANNEL plays up all of the stereotypes and mythology surrounding the American Revolution.  The homeless, alcoholic Sam Adams...The clandestine love affair between Dr. Warren and Margaret Gage...The brutality of the British soldiers...George Washington showing up in his uniform to the 1st Continental Congress (it was the 2nd)...Paul Revere's midnight ride shouting, "The British are coming!" No, he didn't get into a fight with British soldiers BEFORE getting to Lexington.  He was actually arrested AFTER warning the citizens the Regulars were on their way.

And there is so much more!

I realized after the first night that THE HISTORY CHANNEL'S promo, "To learn the real story behind the Revolution, go to thehistorychannel.com," was a clue that this was not exactly a factual show, and that just really irritated me.  Americans know precious little enough about the men and women who risked it all to make this country.  You are THE HISTORY CHANNEL.  Please don't add to their ignorance.

Thinking About a Job...And Feeling Sick

So Kirk tells me the other day that I may need to get a job.   There are a lot of moving parts right now, and an additional income, no matter how small, would be a nice buffer.

I was like, "WTH?"

I haven't worked a "real job" in 17 years.  I taught from 1991-1996 around the country and then one miserable school year in 1997-98 here in Louisville.  My teaching certificate has now expired, and I would need to get my Master's Degree in order to teach again, and I don't want to do either one of those things.  I was a facilitator for Catholic Charities' Insights program for awhile.  I took pictures for Louisville Catholic Sports last year, but I have done nothing for which I've gotten paid a decent salary in almost 20 years.

This is not to say that these past 20 years have seen me sitting on the couch and eating bonbons.  No sirree.  I have been a busy, busy mother, wife, daughter, sister, and friend for the past two decades.  I've volunteered at schools, both grade schools and high schools.  I've volunteered at historic homes, church, and charity events.  I've raised money, raised awareness, and raised hell.  I've made costumes, painted houses, refinished furniture, landscaped yards, sold homes, canned food, resettled refugees, and taken care of elderly relatives.  I've helped both of my parents move from this life to the next.  I submitted hundred thousand dollar budgets and represented a dozen committees at the parish council.  I've spent hours in doctors' offices with loved ones, run errands for sick friends, and made countless meals for people who were sick or sad or lonely.  I've fought a government entity and took some pretty freaking amazing photographs.  I've written blogs and poems and letters to the editor.  I even wrote a song once, but that is a story for another day.

Now I'm told I should maybe think about getting a part-time job, and I'm thinking, "What the hell am I supposed to do?"

Despite all that I have done, I really have no skills that I can market.  I am technologically illiterate.  I have no idea how to use a smart board or a smart phone or Dropbox or an iPad.  If I did go back to teaching, I'd be so far behind the times that I'd be asking for the overhead projector.  I don't want to work retail or substitute teach (pull my fingernails out, please).  I need flexibility for my kids because they still need me.

I am spoiled, and I will admit that I love being able to be home with my kids when they are sick.  I love being a room mom and going to awards' ceremonies and prayer groups.  I like having the days off that my kids are off.  I want to be home for them and drive them where they need to go.  In a mere 3 years, yes, three years, Emily will be driving, and my Mom's Taxi Service will go out of business.  Wow.  I just now realized that.  I have been driving kids around for nineteen years, and in three more, that chapter will close.  Well, that makes me sad.

So, what can I do?

I'm trying to think of some skill that I have that I can market, but I have no idea what that would be.

Any suggestions???

January 6, 2015: The Day That Changed My Life

I have no excuse.

Well, that's a lie, because I do have an excuse, just not a very good one. Actually I have lots of excuses and none of them are any good, but that doesn't change the fact that the last mammogram I had on record before January 6, 2015 was done in 2009.

Straight up...I hate mammograms. But I hate going to the gynecologist even more, and I didn't think I could get a mammogram without orders from the gynecologist, and since I didn't go get my annual, I didn't get a mammogram either. Stupid, I know, and the reason I didn't go to the gynecologist has less to do with the prodding and probing than the fact that I had to get on a scale.

I used to weigh a lot more than I wanted to. After Emily was born, I weighed more than I had in my life. The nurse at my OBGYN scolded me a year after Emily was born because I didn't drop the baby weight like I did after Claire. The next year, she commented again, and I decided to get serious about it, so I went on Weight Watchers and lost a lot of weight. Then after my mom died, I started gaining it back. At the last visit to my now GYN (no more OB for me, thank you very much), the nurse said my weight out loud and commented, "You're up 15 pounds from two years ago. You'd better get on top of this, or it will become more of an issue than it already is."

I knew that already, and what I felt was shame.

So I didn't go back. For five years.

Stupid, I know, but I admit it. I feel like an alcoholic in the beginning of sobriety saying to the world, "I am an alcoholic." I feel like if I own this shame and this reality, I can start to do something about it and make some positive changes in my life.

Last March, I decided that I had been avoiding my "annual" long enough, and I made an appointment to go in for an exam. When I went to get weighed, I told the nurse, "I know I've gained weight, and I know how much. I haven't been in for a long time because I am ashamed of myself. Please don't say my weight out loud when you weigh me," and I closed my eyes when I stood on the scale.

She just looked at me funny and moved the weights and wrote down the number. I had my exam, and my GYN noted that it had been awhile since I had had a mammogram, and wrote me orders for one. I meant to go, but I never made the appointment, and since I wasn't in the habit of getting one annually, I just forgot about it.

Kyle had his prom and graduated from high school. I went to Florida with the girls and got Kyle set up in college...October rolled around and I saw pink crap everywhere and thought, "I need to get a mammogram," but I hate pink so much that I didn't do it in October just to prove a point. Nobody noticed, but I felt better. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas, and with the turn of the calendar year, I decided to make a change in my life.

I thought, "Someday, you will miss this very body you are ashamed of now. Someday, you will wish you looked this good." So I decided on a change of attitude. I decided to get my mammogram first then my annual then a complete physical. I was going to go to the dermatologist for a skin check and start to exercise a little and take my life and my body back.

So on January 6, 2015, I went to the diagnostic center for the mammogram. As I signed in, I thought to myself, "I wonder if today is the day that will change my life forever."

When the call came from my GYN the next day that there was a suspicious cluster of micro calcifications on my left breast and I needed to come in for a biopsy, I knew the answer was, "Yes."

The thing was, my regular GYN had retired since my checkup last year, although I didn't know it at the time. So I had this totally new person giving me advice on what to do. I was trying to listen and process what she was saying, but I only heard "5" and "micro calcifications" and "suspicious" and "biopsy." Immediately, I went to the computer---wrong thing to do---and googled those terms. It didn't matter that what came up said that 80% of calcifications are benign. That worst case scenario, it would be ductal carcinoma in situ. What I read was "cancer."

We left for New Orleans, and I began digging around my armpits and breast. I sat in the car the whole twelve hours trying to slyly feel a knot or bump. I didn't feel anything unusual, but my armpits began hurting, especially the left one where the calcifications were. I kept digging and digging and the panic began to rise. Did I feel something? I'd check both sides to look for symmetry. Yes? No? I couldn't tell. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I kept looking anyway. I would be walking around New Orleans thinking about this. Sometimes my mind would wander and I would be enjoying whatever it was we were doing, then I'd snap back and think, "cancer."

My friend, Amy, kept texting me, "Don't touch," and she reminded me that the more I touched, the more they would hurt and the more I would worry. I did my best to keep hands off, and it did help ease the pain some. I also stopped looking online for clues. That helped a little too. I stayed scared, though.

The biopsy was Friday morning. When I saw the mammogram hanging on the wall, the tech showed me where the calcifications were. I had one spot, not five like I thought, with five tiny calcifications in it. She reassured me that it was very, very tiny. It is also located in a part of my breast that has dense breast tissue. She said that is much better than having it in the fatty part. She said that dense tissue has more fibroadenomas than fatty parts, and often the calcifications are leftovers from when the fibroadenomas "die off."

During the procedure, I laid on my stomach on a bed, with my breast in a mammogram machine. They numbed my breast and inserted a hollow needle with a vacuum attachment. They sucked out the calcifications to send to pathology. Then a titanium clip was inserted into the spot to mark it for future reference. Then they cleaned me up and put skin glue on the spot. They took another set of mammograms of me to make sure they got what they needed. I got to see the mammogram of the tissue samples, and there were about 5 calcifications that were bigger and a few more that were much smaller. By "bigger" I mean the size of a piece of sand. They were very, very small.

I told the tech how scared I was and she said that it was probably nothing, but worst case scenario, if it was cancer, then it was very, very early and very, very small. It would be something that would be easily treatable with no negative consequences. I asked the radiologist to give me a percentage what he thought about it being cancer, and he said he couldn't say, obviously, but if he had to guess, he'd say maybe 30%.

I prayed. Kirk prayed. Kirk and I prayed together. But I thought surely other people more worthy than I have prayed this very same prayer. Why would God listen to me?

So all weekend, I laid around. I tried not to think of the possibilities. I felt nauseous. I was starving. I wanted chocolate, mashed potatoes, and cheese. I planned my funeral. I thought of all I had to do before I died. I cried about my kids. I saw signs everywhere I looked. I heard "cancer" on TV, the radio, at Kroger. I worried about insurance. I thought of our vacation plans getting cancelled. I wondered how Emily would get to play practice or who would help Claire pick a college or Kyle celebrate his love of living history?  I tried to stay off the computer, but I googled every possible combination of breast cancer, micro calcifications, and stereotactic biopsy that I could find. I went to the very darkest places even though I knew, I knew, I shouldn't. Amy said that if I worried and it was nothing, then I had worried for nothing. If I worried and it was something, then I had lived it twice. I couldn't help it. I was just. So. Scared.

I carried my phone around with me all day yesterday waiting for the call. It finally came at 4:30.

Benign.

I bawled my eyes out.

I have a new GYN. I have found a new general practitioner. I will remember the fear I felt these past two weeks and celebrate with gusto this life that I have. My imperfect body. My muffin top. My husband and children. My future.

Socks

After my mom died in 2005, my sisters and I began the long process of cleaning out her drawers and closet.  We started with the sock and underwear drawer because those things were the least sentimental, and we had to start somewhere.  I was always needing extra socks, so I claimed a pair that were still in the wrapper that Mom had never gotten the chance to wear.  

I brought them home and put them in my drawer with the intention to wear them that winter.  But then every time I got ready to put them on, I'd think, "Mom bought these," and I'd leave them in my drawer.  

They stayed in my drawer for years.  Nine to be exact.  Tucked back in a corner somewhere, surfacing every once in awhile to remind me they were still around, waiting to be worn.  I just couldn't do it.  The little hanger fell out at some point, and the paper holding them together started getting ratty, but each time they'd show up, I'd push them to the back again to wait for another day.

On Friday, Halloween, I needed some socks for my Lucy van Pelt costume.  I had found yellow ones for Kirk's Charlie Brown, and I needed some white crew socks for Lucy.  I went to my sock drawer and opened it up, and what do you think had worked their way back to the front and center again?  Yep, my mom's socks.

The wrapping was significantly worse for wear, but the socks were perfect for what I needed.  I could hear my mom in my head saying, "Sharron, you are being ridiculous.  You've had these socks in your drawer for NINE YEARS!  Don't you think it's time you wore them?"

So, with my mom in mind, knowing that she'd get a kick out of contributing to my costume, I took the socks out and put them on.  The sticky label almost didn't come off all the way, but I got them on, and they looked great.  

It's nice how people can stay in your life long after they are gone with something as simple as a pair of socks.

Almanzo and Jamie

Ahhh..Jamie Fraser...

Not since Almanzo Wilder have I had such a mad crush on a character from a book.

I was 11 years old, and I had just finished These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the last big book in the Little House series, and I had fallen head over heels for Almanzo Wilder.  He was gallant and strong.  He came without being asked to pick Laura up from her hated time at the Brewster homestead where she boarded while teaching school on the prairie.  He braved the blizzards so she didn't have to spend miserable weekends away from home.  He dug his horse out of snow drifts and made sure Laura had heated bricks to keep her feet warm along the way.

The first time he showed up, she didn't know why he had come to get her.  She was just thankful for the chance to go home.  Then after a couple of trips in his sleigh, she began to look forward to seeing him, not just her family.  He was so non-challant about it around her that her students figured out he was courting her before she did.  I was disappointed with her when the weather was too bad for him to come get her.  I was excited when she heard the sleigh bells jingling in the distance.  And then when he came to call one Sunday afternoon to take her for a spin around town in the sleigh...I swooned as much as any 11 year old could.

What I liked so much about Almanzo was that he treated Laura like his equal.  I fancied that had I been born in 1867 like Laura, I would have been her, and I would have wanted a boyfriend who allowed me to be smart and assertive and brave in my own right.  I especially loved when they were discussing their wedding.

Laura says, "Almanzo, I must ask you something.  Do you want me to promise to obey you?" 

Soberly he answered, "Of course not.  I know it is in the wedding ceremony, but it is only something that women say.  I never knew one that did it, nor any decent man that wanted her to."

I remember thinking, "That is my kind of husband!"

The night I finished These Happy Golden Years, I cried myself to sleep.  My mom came in my room to kiss me good night and found me sobbing into my pillow.  I wouldn't tell her what was wrong at first because I knew it was silly to cry over a man dead many years by then, who would have been old even if he had been alive when I was born.  But I couldn't help it.  My mom sat on the side of my bed trying to figure out what was going on, if someone was hurting my feelings at school, if my sisters had been mean...Finally, I couldn't hold it in any longer.  I blurted out, "Almanzo's dead!"

I can imagine my mom flipping through the card catalogue in her head, "Almanzo...Almanzo...Who the hell is Almanzo?" as I'm crying into her shoulder.

"What do you mean?" she asked cautiously.

"Almanzo!" I sobbed, "from Little House on the Prairie.  He's dead, and I'll never get to meet him!" and I started wailing even harder.

My poor mother.  I'm sure she had no clue what was going on.  Puberty?  Probably.  Drama? Most definitely.  But to her credit, she didn't say anything to make me embarrassed or try to help me realize the silliness of my tears.  Crying over a character in a book who had already been dead for 30 years by this time?  She didn't say anything.  She just let me cry until I was exhausted, hiccuping, and broken-hearted.

And until this summer when I discovered Jamie Fraser, I have never fallen for a character in the way I fell for Almanzo.  Oh, I've liked many of the leading men I've read about.  I've found them charming and attractive and considered what the real man would be like.  I may have even swooned a bit at some of their lines or a romantic scene or two.  But none have have "melted my brain," as one commentator said, like Jamie.

He is gallant and strong.  He lets Claire be smart and assertive and brave.  He is there for her when she needs him but he lets her be her own woman.  He does what needs to be done, even when it is hard or painful or dangerous, and he puts her and others' well-being ahead of his own.  He is protective but not in a smothering way, and never shames Claire when she does something foolish.  He is funny and sweet and gentle, despite the roughness of the times.  He is kind and selfless and aims to please.  And on top of it all, he's gorgeous and has a crooked smile and mischievous eyes.  He's perfect!  What's not to love?

When I read the books in the Outlander series, I feel once again like that 11 year old girl, who thinks life will be just as she imagined.  That marriage is easy.  That men are perfect.  That she can have it all.  I am not jaded by the reality that life is hard.  Marriage is work.  Men are fallible.

I'm not delusional.  I know the men in these books are not really like this.  They too would have their issues in day to day life.  The benefit of having them in books is that their irritating faults get left out, and all we know is what makes them so good.  It's too bad that we can't do that in reality.  I'd love to leave out all of the things that irritate me about Kirk, all of the little things that after 23 years of living with him drive me absolutely crazy.  I'd love to condense all of his goodness into a 800 page novel and read that. It would be awesome!

I've put the Outlander books up for now.  There are 8 in the series, but I've only read the first 3.  Part of me wants to continue, but part of me wants to save the stories for another time.  When I finished the Little House books, there was no more Almanzo, and I also grieved over that.  If I don't finish reading the Outlander books, Jamie is still alive and young and perfect, and I am still 11, and life is full of infinite possibilities.

Grandma's Angels

Nine years ago this week, my mom was preparing to leave this earth, and my sisters, Dad, and I sat vigil with her so that she would not be alone when time came for her to pass.

Emily and Ethan were little, just 3, and to make things easier with child care, they stayed out at my parents' house with Colleen and me instead of us trying to find babysitters for them.  Emily and I slept on a pallet on the living room floor, and she and Ethan entertained each other during the days of that long week.

On the Thursday before Mom died on Saturday, it was my turn to sit with her.  I got up quietly so as not to wake Emily and was sitting in Mom's room sewing when I saw the door slowly open and Emily poke her head in and smile at me.

"Can I come in?" she whispered.

I patted my lap, and she crawled up onto it, and we sat with her back to my front and her head nestled up under my chin. We were quiet for several minutes, just sitting there snuggling.  Then she turned her face up to me and whispered,

"Did you know that there are angels in this room?"

Goosebumps on my skin, I replied, "There are?  What do they look like?"

I expected her to give me the typical description of an angel to a 3-year-old...white with wings and a halo...but instead she said,

"They're gold!  And they have light!"

Barely able to breathe, I asked, "What are they doing?"

She looked over at my mom, sleeping in the hospital bed, and replied, "They're waiting to take Grandma to see Jesus!" and she smiled as bright as the sun and snuggled back down into my lap.

For the life of me, I could not see anything in the room that would make her say that.  It was not for trying, because I looked all around, but all I saw was the dresser and the windows and the closet door...I wished I could see what she saw.

One of my friends had the presence of mind to suggest that I have Emily draw what she saw that night, so a few days after Mom died, I gave Emily a piece of paper and some markers and asked her to draw the angels she saw in Grandma's room.  She got down to work and this is what she drew:

My mom is red with brown curls, lying in a bed with green covers.  The angels are the yellow faces.  Two have wings and two don't.  I don't know who the green person is.  Whenever I get down, especially this time of year, I get out this picture and remember the faith of children and what they can see with their untarnished eyes, and it gives me hope.

Keys to Nowhere

When I was at Lowe's the other day, I finally remembered to have keys to the front door made for the kids.  We've only lived here for 12 years.  I thought it was time!

I was working the front door key off the keyring and joking with the Lowe's guy that I didn't have any idea what half the keys unlocked anymore.  He was an older, Indian gentleman and raised his eyes at me and said quietly, "Why do you carry them around, adding weight to your life?"

"I don't know.  I never really thought of it.  Laziness, I guess," was my reply.

"Well," he suggested, "when you get home, why don't you take off the keys you don't know and put them in a dish?  Don't throw them away, in case you remember where they go, but just simplify your life a little."

I said that I thought that was a great idea, and mentioned that I have a lot of things I don't really know why I keep, and he said, "This is just a suggestion, but maybe if you take 10 minutes each day and rid yourself of what you don't need, soon you will find your life much improved.  I don't mean to tell you what to do, but just to suggest."

I replied that I thought that was a great idea and promptly came home and forgot.

But then today I got inspired.  I took a little more than 10 minutes to clean out our utility closet in the kitchen.  I bagged up years worth of end-of-the-year school supplies like blunt scissors, partially used crayons, colored pencils, and eraser tips.  I threw away things I no longer had any use for like old lunch boxes and torn Kroger bags and a tablecloth I was going to tear into rags 6 months ago and never did.  I organized our emergency bag full of batteries and flashlights and candles.  I cleaned out our kitchen cabinet that, now that Kyle is gone and they are not gathering in his backseat, is overflowing with mugs.

And in one cabinet, I found a dish of keys that I have no idea what they go to.  I remembered my conversation with the guy at Lowe's and went to my keyring, took off the other keys that I don't know and added them to the dish.

I only kept two keys on my key ring that no longer unlock anything anymore:  The key to my childhood home and the key to my grandma's house.  When my mom sold Granny's house, she kept the key to the front door.  It had been attached to a UofL Cardinal bird, and I can vividly remember her opening the door, and that bird swinging back and forth on the ring.  Mom finally gave it to Kyle when he was a little boy and loved keys.  I snagged it about 15 years ago and put it on my keyring.

Then when we sold the house on Northridge, I kept my key to the back door.  I could not for the life of me give it up.  I remember getting that very key when I was a freshman in high school 33 years ago.  My mom handed it over with gravitas saying, "Be VERY careful and don't lose this key.  If somebody finds it, they can get into our house!"  I have never taken it off the ring that I put it on way back when.

Today, my keyring contains one of Kirk's dog tags that he gave me the last time I saw him before he went to the Gulf War in 1990 and a St. X heart charm that I got when I joined the MOMS club when Kyle was a freshman.  There are keys to my house (both doors), 3 cars, a P.O. box, and those two keys that unlock only memories now.

My keyring is lighter now, but somehow today my heart is a little more heavy.