“If you’ve been marked by what might have been, you don’t forget. You know the day, the years… you know exactly what anniversary you’d be celebrating…you’ll never forget the…last time cancer was a word about someone else’s life, or the day that changed absolutely everything. It makes the calendar feel like a minefield, like you’re constantly tiptoeing over explosions of grief until you day you hit one, shattered by what might have been.”

-from Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist.

I met Mary and her daughter Hadley one year ago when Mary asked me to take pictures for Hadley’s second birthday. (I wrote about that here.)

March 14 is the start of Mary’s minefield. This is her story…

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Jim and I had been trying for awhile to get pregnant.  We found out we were expecting while painting the house we were moving into that fall.  We were both so very, very excited to have a little one on the way.  We didn’t do any of the major testing because we both said it wouldn’t make any difference what we found out, it wasn’t going to change anything.

My best friend gave me a baby shower on February 23.  In my mind, that is the last happy day we had together.  Jim left for a work trip the following Monday.  He called me from the hotel each night, always sounding extremely tired and kind of out of it.  I chalked it up to having too much fun.  He was going to sleep around 8 or 9 each night; usually he stayed up until midnight or later.  When he got home and it seemed as though he was a little sick.

Jim went to work the next week, telling me he wasn’t feeling very good and he hadn’t eaten much.  One day he vomited, however he had never really told me how awful he was feeling.  On Friday, March 14, he asked me to make him a doctor’s appointment.  I didn’t get to it, I had too much to take care of at work so he had to make the appointment himself.  I still feel very guilty about that. The doctor ordered a blood test and Jim told me he’d lost 15 pounds since his last visit to the doctor 5 weeks earlier.  Hadley was due the on March 24th, this was the last weekend to set things up and get the final few things for the nursery, so off I went while he stayed home.  The doctor called…on a Saturday…to give him the results and told him he wanted him to go in for a CAT scan on Monday the 17th.  On Monday afternoon, the doctor called to tell him they’d seen spots on his liver and he needed to go in for a biopsy the next day.

Tuesday he was feeling horrible and when we talked to the the biopsy surgeon he said if Jim had taken an aspirin he would be unable to perform the biopsy. We were going to have to wait.  Wednesday, as I was leaving for work I checked on him. His stomach was swollen and he was in pain.  I called the doctor to get him admitted to the hospital.  Thursday, they did a biopsy and confirmed that it was pancreatic cancer.  Thursday, the 20th.  4 days before our baby was due. The hospital was terribly worried I was going to go into labor.  I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that Jim was probably going to die in less than a year.  On Friday, they discharged him.  If he was going to be hospitalized, I wanted him in the hospital where I was delivering so at least we wouldn’t be separated for Hadley’s birth.

On Sunday the 23rd, I took him to the ER at the hospital where I was supposed to be admitted later that evening for an induction.  I delayed my admittance as long as the doctor would let me, but finally had to go up at around 9 that evening.  Monday, Hadley was born.  Monday night at 7, Jim started vomiting blood.  They discovered he was bleeding into his stomach and if they didn’t operate, he would bleed to death.  The operation had a 50% chance of success.  At that moment, it was possible that our daughter would come into my life on the same day that my husband would go out of my life.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

When I was discharged, I moved into a hotel room at the hospital and stayed there for a week and a half.  Other people took care of me.  I was dividing my time between an infant and a sick husband and I’m sure I didn’t serve either one very well.  Thank goodness for my sister who stayed with me for a week and then for my mom who stayed with me the rest of the time.  The rest of my family took care of all the other things that needed to be done.

On Thursday, April 3rd, the oncologist stopped in to see Jim at 10:30 pm.  As she left, she told me that he maybe had a month because the cancer was much more aggressive than they’d thought. Typical Jim…he had to overachieve on the aggressiveness of cancer.  Couldn’t be satisfied to just let it progress at a more controlled pace. Jim was supposed to have an operation Friday morning to drain fluid from his abdomen and relieve some of the pressure.  That was the last thing they could do; hospice was going to take it from there.

Friday morning came and his surgery got delayed…and delayed…and more delayed.  At 11, I told the nurse to call the doctor because we weren’t doing the surgery and Jim just wanted to go home.  I wish I’d told them that at 9, because it was 5 in the afternoon before he was discharged.  Another thing I feel guilty about…

On Saturday, my brothers came to finish replacing the fence around our new backyard.  Jim had built the first fence, but the architectural committee decided they didn’t like it and wanted it down.  Jim held on until my brothers finished the fence.  I’m sure he knew they were done; I’m sure he wanted to stay until he knew I was taken care of on this one last thing.

And then I sat with him.

I told him he could go, that I would be all right, that I was glad we’d had the years we did and that I’d rather have a few good ones than 60 mediocre ones.

I told him thank you and that I would take care of our daughter.

I don’t know if he heard or understood any of it.

I don’t know if it made me feel better.

I do know that I wanted everyone to be gone but I didn’t want to be there by myself.

At 3am on April 6, he was gone.

Hadley was 2 weeks old.

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Last year I asked Mary if she’d be willing to tell her story when she was ready. It’s one that deserves to be told and she is a woman who deserves so much support for everything she’s been through. Especially at this time of year. People with stories like Mary’s are around us everyday, everyone is damaged in some way. But everyone is unbelievably strong in some way whether they realize it or not, and strength needs to be recognized.

Dear Newlyweds,

I’d hate to speak for all married people, but given we’ve been doing this for almost a decade and neither of us have smothered each other with pillows in our sleep or ended up on an episode of Dr. Phil or Maury Povich, I dare say I’m somewhat qualified to hand down the following advice to you.

Your fights with your darling doodle lover bug are going to follow yearly themes. Some themes will carry over from year to year, others will end after a year only to reappear several years later.

Your first theme will probably revolve around sex, money or responsibilities. Such as “IT’S YOUR DAMN RESPONSIBILITY TO TAKE YOUR DAMN SOCKS OUT OF THE DAMN LIVING ROOM AND PUT THEM IN THE DAMN HAMPER.”

This fight will most likely follow you forever. Sometimes there will be twists thrown in such as socks shoved under the couch or piled into a heap at the bottom of the stairs…but let me tell you now, there will always ALWAYS be socks. Literally or figuratively. Give up while you’re ahead sister.

Money fights blow. Hard.

Sex fights, well, there’s a blow joke in here somewhere but I’m to afraid to commit to it.

When and if you have a child there will be a new fight. The “who’s life is more important” fight. I hate this one. Yes, I KNOW your job is not all fun and games and in our situation you make the money and I’m grateful for that but I’m the one at home that doesn’t get to pee by myself or eat a meal in peace or have grown up conversations or OH MY GOSH WHERE DID MY PERSONAL SPACE GOOOO???

Above is Cody’s and my 2006-2008 themed fight. There are so many variations on this one your head may very well explode.

The last year and a half have been pretty fight free. I’ve accepted the socks, we’ve accepted our roles in our family and we’ve had the money fight so many times beating a dead horse is an understatement. (It basically comes down to this one, if you (meaning me) don’t spend it, you don’t fight about it. As much.)

Generally speaking we are a very happy married couple. If anyone loses their mind it’s generally me and it’s generally because there’s something else going on (depression, booo or pregnancy crazies, yay!) However tonight I learned that even the most solid couple cannot survive one particular life event unscathed, no matter how good their communication skills are.

Assembling IKEA furniture as a couple is the leading cause of men sleeping on couches and women throwing power tools.

IKEA blinds you to these inevitable facts with ligonberries, meatballs and cramped allen wrench wielding fingers.

You’ve been warned.

Mozzi may have a dresser now but she almost lost her parents in the process.

I spent countless hall pass breaks in the bathroom of my jr. high and high school with my armpits under the hand dryers or neatly folding toilet paper into origami type shapes to tuck into my bra in a desperate attempt to keep up appearances that I didn’t sweat.

But the truth was (and still is) I sweat. And sometimes I sweat so much that it leaves pit stains.

I will never forget my friend Elisabeth admitting to sweating through her shirt during fifth period. Not only did this wave of comfort come over me that I wasn’t the only teenage girl who sweat so much it showed, but other girls who were sitting around silently nodded in agreement.

There have been countless other confessions from countless other women in my life since that moment and I wish I could kiss them all on the nose for their honesty. One confession was from Camille that warned me she had waited so long to pee that she was going to have a release fart once we finally made it to a restroom. My sister was the first one to admit to chin hairs, I think we all remember the friend who alerted us to the fact you can poop while pushing out a baby and nipple hair? Yeah. Nipple hair.

Then there’s the confession that catches you off guard. Like Lindy’s confession of an ingrown armpit hair so deep and painful that she had to have her husband dig it out with tweezers. Up until that point I had never heard of such a thing and like hell if I was going to let someone I wanted to make out with dig an infected hair OUT OF MY ARMPIT.

I nodded along with her harrowing tale and filed it away in the “LINDY’S CRAZY” file.

Two weeks later I ended up with an ingrown armpit hair so hurty that it made blinking painful.

Suddenly Lindy wasn’t so crazy anymore. Suddenly Lindy was onto something brilliant, she was so in love with someone that she trusted him to help her when things got embarrassing. So THAT’S what true love is! (However in full disclosure I had my mom dig out my armpit hair for me. Cody and I were still too new.)

I’m not saying you should sidle up to your seat mate on the public bus and tell them about the tonsillolith you dug out that morning, but there is extreme value in telling your story, the little quirky parts that make you who you are. (One of you just clicked on that tonsillolith link and went ZOMG I’VE HAD ONE OF THOSE!! The rest of you are just squicked and disgusted.)

I spent so long being someone different to so many different people that I never actually took the time to figure out who I really was. The truth is I am a flawed human being who makes mistakes, a lot of them. But I get up, dust myself off and make a joke about it. There’s no sense in lying or glossing over the ugly parts of my life because they have made me who I am today. However it makes perfect sense to share what I learned from the ugly parts, recycling my pain, anguish and embarrassment for the greater good of someone else.

That “flawless” girl you admire? She gets ingrown armpit hairs and sinus infections too. Those girls in the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition? You know at least one of them had to do a shoot on her period. Hollywood starlets get stinky gas and pap smears too. Hunky leading men get back zits and ear hair. And even more comforting? Taro Gomi was right when he said everyone poops. (Unless they’re me, then they just eat kiwis.)

Are you being you or are you being who you think you should be depending on who’s paying attention?

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” -Dr. Seuss

Maybe you’ve seen the commercial for the new Kenmore top loading washer where a woman with neatly coiffed hair and a perfectly fit little black dress comes out and does some fancy move with some piece of luxurious fabric in a spotless shiny room attempting to sell you on the new line of Kenmore Elite washers and dryers.

Well here’s me right before I did my laundry.

And here’s what a real (well, my) laundry room looks like. (Not pictured, Costco sized stacks of toilet paper, tissues and paper towels. And the little pink trash bin that overflows with various rainbow colored and glitter infused lint (I’m looking at you Addie.))

However the washer featured is the exact same. However instead of luxurious fabric I wash things like tutus, baby clothes with six year old mysterious stains and my husbands highly pungent workout wear.

Glamorous, no?

My clothes have been washed in Kenmore appliances for as long as I have been alive. I remember watching my teddy bear Snuffles swirl around in the giant black drum with the lid open as I sat on the dryer, making sure he was okay. I remember the hell fire I experienced the day I left a cherry Chapstick in my pocket and it melted all over my stepdads work clothes in the dryer. I remember screaming incoherently at Cody after he washed and dried my favorite wool sweater only months after we had been married.

I have mentioned before that I adore doing laundry as much as some people adore going to the salon. My sister and I both look forward to the day we get to replenish our fabric softener supply with some new scent. Sleeping in freshly washed sheets does make you sleep better and burying your face in a warm pile of freshly washed baby clothes will make your heart grow three sizes and your uterus go thump.

So when my decade old Kenmore washer made a horrible thumping noise and stalled leaving a load of darks sitting in a tub full of water a few months ago? The laundry loving part of me crumbled a little inside. Long story short through a flurry of emails, tweets and a couple of phone calls, Kenmore stepped in and allowed me to take on the task of putting one of their new Kenmore Elite washers and dryers to the test.

Like I said, it’s one thing to wash a sheet in a commercial, or be dazzled by an appliance salesman. It’s an entirely other thing to wash strawberry vomit out of a fluffy blue dress up. (Which I have done, successfully.)

Differences between my old Kenmore and my new Kenmore:

• Obviously the top loading washer isn’t anything new. I will be a top load washer girl until the day I die, it just makes more sense to me. However the new washer doesn’t have an agitator, allowing far more washing capacity and it has highly customizable settings for energy saving, delicates, a quick wash cycle and my new favorite for dish towels, sanitize.

• The biggest difference between the dryers? This one actually works. (Kidding, kind of.) Clothes come out dry, but not scalding hot nor ever so damp that they will start to smell in a week or two. It also has a steam refresh setting, I’ve had the most success with it on bedskirts, where you don’t *really* need to wash them but the iron is no match for the factory set creases.
• The dryer easily keeps up with the washer on normal sized loads. Meaning no wet loads on top of the dryer so you can start a new load while waiting for the dryer to finish…this happens in everyone’s house right?

Downfalls of the new Kenmore (you know there have to be some.)

• The wash basin is SO HUGE that I can’t reach the bottom. For real. I’m 5’3″ and when not pregnant I can stand on my very tippy toes and reach the tiny rogue socks stuck to the bottom. However in my current very pregnant state? I have to either get a stool or wait for someone else with much longer limbs to be around to fetch things for me. Regardless, there’s always grunting involved from me when moving clothes from the washer to the dryer.

• While I’m still working on figuring out all the settings, a load full of Addie’s clothes with all the tiny long sleeves, stretchy leggings and long pants can get very VERY tangled after the wash cycle. So far nothing bad has happened as far as anything ripping or tearing, but it can be frustrating when trying to untangle one dress that cannot go in the dryer from several others. It also happens if there are a lot of Cody’s work shirts in the washer at once. For very delicate/stretchy items you would have to use lingerie bags and a gentler setting.
• The glass top and door. It’s very distracting. All these features that are supposed to free up time in which you can get other tasks done? They’re negated by the coolness of watching your clothes swirl around. We stand around and watch every load of laundry for at least a few minutes here and there. It’s mesmerizing.

Perks of the new Kenmore.

• They work. I never realized how slow and lethargic my 10 year old appliances had become until I began using these ones. I was just thankful to have something that got my clothes clean eventually. The time I save now when it comes to laundry is sizable, and I’m so thankful for that.
• The sanitize setting, *insert something scientific here* but in layman’s terms the washer and dryer both have a sanitize setting, meaning when I get that bee up my bum to try cloth diapers? I’ll be well prepared
• It sings songs, not that this should be a selling point, but my old Kenmore let out the most disconcerting BUZZ!!! at the end of a cycle that was quite scary given our bedroom is right next to the laundry room.
• The money saved in energy and water can pay for the appliances themselves over their lifetime.
• Kenmore Connect. I’m going to have to link you to a video to explain this feature because I still don’t believe it’s true. Your washer and dryer can tell a service person OVER THE PHONE what is wrong with it so either you can fix it yourself or the service person who comes to your home is already prepared with the proper parts and tools.

No more time wasted on service calls! YOU WIN!

If you’re in the market…here’s the Kenmore site on my washer and my dryer.

Disclosure: I was not compensated for this review other than receiving a Kenmore Elite washer and dryer to facilitate my review. The opinions and experiences contained above are true and my very own. Especially the one about watching the laundry through the glass lid.

Two years ago my sister gave me my first lush bath bombs for Christmas. (Sakura and MMM Marshmallow Melting Moment.)

Addicted.

When we were in Cincy early last year I made Cody drive well out of our way to go to the lush store in Macy’s.

Cody stuffed my stocking at Christmas with bath bombs.

My friends Blair and Dawn both gifted me with lush.

There is a package currently en route full of things for my tub not to mention my linen closet currently houses a grand variety of tub goodies.

If you’ve never used one? You must.

If you have to get a gift for someone? They’re perfect.

If you have a big enough tub to fit you and your lover? It will end well. (*ehem* there is one that is called Sex Bomb for good reason.)

BUT!!!

My glowing endorsement comes with a warning…

Some of the bath bombs spit stuff out without warning.

I had a fourth of July bomb that spewed forth a red streamer (without my glasses I am twice legally blind, so when I came back into the bathroom with a giant red blob running through my tub…did you ever see IT? Yeah, terror is an understatement.) Red white and blue glitter and star shaped confetti also came out. The confetti was kind of pokey, not going to lie.

I had a love bomb that turned the water pink. Once I sunk into the tub (again, twice legally blind) I noticed floaters. I started to berate myself and my tub cleaning abilities until I noticed that I was floating in a pink sea of heart confetti. SURPRISE!!

Tonight…I had bought the Dragon’s Egg for Addie and me. It promised FIREWORKS!! and it smelled delicious. Addie threw it in and we sat at the side of the tub and watched it. Sure enough there were crackly somethings in it that sounded like fireworks!! Then it started spewing out an orange trail, JUST LIKE A COMET!! WE WERE AWESTRUCK! Next golden glitter began pouring out from the center of the bath bomb. SURPRISE AGAIN!!!

By the time I got my rotund body out of the tub I noticed I was covered, COVERED! in gold glitter. Head to toe, bum to belly. You want to see something funny? A naked pregnant lady coated in gold glitter is funny.

(This post wasn’t sponsored by anyone or anything but my own shame, or lack thereof. However if Lush needs product testers? Addie and I will be first in line, even the glittery, pokey confetti ones.)

So remember when I was all “OH MY FACE! SO SAD!” in regards to the petichiae that had flared up so badly as a result of all my vomiting?

(For anyone unaware, petichiae are ruptured capillaries just under the surface of the skin, some are raised and bumpy others are flush but bright red…they are most often the result of violent and excessive vomiting.)

Well it hasn’t gotten any better. And they’re not going anywhere.

I know darn well they’re there. And I know full well you can see them too. I know the lady at the grocery store could see them because she asked what was wrong with my face. I know every doctor I see can see them because it’s one of the first things they comment on.

I don’t care.

I have stopped trying to cover them with makeup every time I go out. It was not only getting expensive, it was getting ridiculous. I have well moisturized skin, lovely blue eyes, very well behaved lashes very few blemishes and I found a lip color that makes me happy.

All this red rashy blotchiness? It’s part of who I am now, my red badge of courage if you will.

It doesn’t hurt. It’s not contagious. There’s no long term damage.

Many women have stretch marks on various body parts. Many other people have scars from surgeries or marks from injuries sustained in the past. Some people have gaps in their teeth or different color eyes or gray hair. I have a mottled face, proof I sacrificed something worldly society holds in very high esteem in order to get something I wanted.

No one’s ever said “Your face looks stupid, I don’t want to be your friend.”

I mean, people have said mean stuff to me, but generally when people are saying mean things to you? It’s because they’re stupid.

Or something like that.

Repeat after me…

“Love me, love my __________”