goin' home

Many of you already know that my mom is fighting a recurrence of breast cancer. We just found out this week that she is still cancer-free. Yeah!! Her cancer is super aggressive so everytime she gets this state-of-the-art roaming tumor cell blood test, we hold our breath and say lots of prayers. The chemo she gets is specifically made to fight this little protein that makes the cancer so aggressive. That's cool.

Over the past 2 years, I've spent a lot of time in the south suburb where I grew up. After this ordeal was juxtaposed with the experience of having a kid of my own, I have fallen in love with my hometown- a town I've never been in love with.

I took Alex to the park down the street from our first house in the OF (yes, my parents bought two houses in Oak Forest). This park happens to be at the elementary school I first attended-the same park I played at as a young child. So there I am with Alex, watching him play with tons of kids surrounded by homes that look like the Brady Bunch house (but, not as nice). I was finally thankful for the place my parents chose to raise us. It's a place full of working class, family oriented people. No pretensions. I'm glad we are raising Alex in a town with the same qualities- minus the Brady Bunch looking houses (forgive me, there are a few in DeKalb).

On the way to the park I told Alex we could buy a toy because he did such a great job helping Gooey at the doctors and keeping her company during chemo. He wanted gloves from the hardware store. Then, when we got there, they had vinyl gloves like the doctor. So, there we were, driving around the OF with doctor gloves on- yes, I was wearing them, too. I did refuse to wear them into the restaurant. He didn't. My little OCD son. As Steener will atest, he even wore them the next day out at lunch. And, thanks to old dog's ocular surgery, Alex received another pair while visiting Uncle Ogy. We love Aunt Steener and Uncle Old Dog!

I don't know how ot use spell check on this thing- sorry.

second

I picked the worst time of year to start a blog. Oh well. Part of the reason why I started the blog was to take a break from the craziness that is my life in May/June. It gave me a bit of a break during the most difficult tasks of the school year. I love the day to day stuff of being a teacher. I love the kids, the lessons, moving around the classroom helping solve problems- it's a very physical job. I even love the end of the year organizing and cleaning up. It's the paperwork that gets me. I have files upon files to check, recheck, staple, sort etc. I literally go berserk trying to get these things done. I have to take lots of breaks and play lots of mind games to get through it. Now that it's all done (when is it ever all done, really), I will hopefully have some time to blog.

On our first official day of summer, Alex and I went to the library to sign up for the summer reading program. Before we left though, we had to burn his underwear in the grill. Potty training was rough for the little guy and we decided to burn the training pants. After the ceremony, we hustled on over to the library. The summer reading program has some sort of pirate theme like "Ships Ahoy" or "Reading Adventures." That worked well because Alex happened to have a sword tucked into his boxers. Since he had shorts on, the sword came out the bottom of his shorts. To top it off, he was wearing his "i-pod." It's this yellow clay pumpkin necklace (teacher gift) that Alex uses as his pretend i-pod. As I was thinking about my day, I realized that I burned underwear in a grill and then went to the library with a sword weilding, pumpkin-i-pod wearing kid. What a great way to start out the summer.

first

I read the HH dress code yesterday. I shouldn't have. As I was standing on the altar today waiting to give out communion I kept wondering if my outfit was appropriate. The HH dress code said that if you wondered if your outfit was appropriate, it probably wasn't. Oops.