i choose

hello friday. good to see you. you are looking pretty good, compliment intended.

i have spent time this week really focusing on the words "i choose". thinking about the choices that i make with how i spend my time. i am trying to calm my anxiety about feeling like i have a million things that i want/need to do, with never enough time. i have felt this way since my original diagnosis, and at times it is worse than others. these three month stretches in between scans are the worst it has ever been.

so i am trying really hard to think about choices.

i choose to take an afternoon off work to spend time with a favorite friend.

i choose to leave work on time to maximize time with malena and barrett.

i choose to make it a priority to get all of our pictures from 2012 printed (i am 3/4 of the way there - proud of myself) so i can get them into an album.

i choose to set time aside every week to keep our 2013 photo album up to speed.

i choose to give myself some slack that i don't get thank you cards out immediately. if you know me well, you know that i am a big thank-you-card-sender-outer. not sending them out in close proximity to the kindness i am thanking someone for really, really bothers me. i choose to focus on the fact that acknowledging the kindness is the priority, how fast it gets there is not.

i choose to put my phone and blackberry down and play. no phones. no tv. just me and malena playing restaurant and beauty salon.

i choose to put myself in the picture, so that malena has a lot of pictures of the two of us. selfies like the one above are our current favorite.

i choose to take it easy on myself when i am just too tired to put the effort in to making a green smoothie.

i choose to eat a piece of chocolate when i feel like it.

i choose to make time for date nights.

i choose to not read melanoma related information on blogs or facebook when i know that it will upset me. i choose to not feel guilty for sometimes not being able to read about the stories of people who have finished their fight with melanoma. i choose to know in my heart that their story matters, and it is ok that on those particular days i just can't carry their story in addition to my own.

i choose to focus on the fact that i love our home, and if there are times where there are some socks on the floor for no particular reason and laundry waiting to be done, they are signs that we are living in this space. i choose to remember that socks will always get picked up and the laundry will always gets done.

i choose to remember that it is ok to sometimes do something by myself for myself. it is ok. it really is. i choose to not feel guilty about it.

i choose to give more hugs.

i choose to say more i love you's.

i choose to continue to send good karma to chase:
+++ "Last night I had some of my girlfriends up for a girls night with pizza and laughs but clearly Chase had nothing to do with it. He fell asleep at 5 o'clock woke up for a brief moment for a tubby and fell right back to sleep. He didn't even get to show off to the girls all the new things he has learned to do. I was alittle disappointed but what can you do, when your tired your tired. I guess it is good, he needs his sleep, his brain has been working nonstop. However he did wake up at 4 am (so I was told, mom was still sleeping) and stayed awake all day except for a brief nap during rest time. His full night sleep did him well........He had a great day of PT,OT, and speech. In OT the therapist hooked Chase up to the E-stem machine. They put it on his biceps to stimulate the muscle for movement. It worked and Chase tolerated it well. They even hooked it up to me so I could feel what Chase feels. It felt weird. It doesn't hurt it just pulsates. You have no control of the movements. There are different levels of intensity. They cranked it up for me but kept it at a moderate level for Chase. I told the therapists "no pain no gain" Right? Ha!!!!! In speech it was dinner time and you could tell, Chase was swallowing like crazy. He had his favorite strawberry (pink as Chase would call it) applesauce. In PT Chase had to show off to mom like he did for dad yesterday. He kicked over all the bowling pins. Truly amazing how the therapists can get Chase to do what he does. These people are fantastic. They love Chase like he is one of their own. I can honestly say we have made some great friends through all of this. Although we are excited to go home I am going to miss the nurses, therapists and all the workers at Gillette. We have come so close with these people. Everyone is so friendly, we can't even walk down the hall without stopping to talk to someone. It is a great feeling!!!! I know Chase feels the love just like mom and dad do.

We did have a scare last night. His J tube was clogged from one of his meds. That means he didn't get his feeds through his J but he was still getting his small amount through the G. The doctors met this am and decided to start putting all of his meds into the G to see how his stomach can tolerate it. So far so good. He did great all day with the meds. They also decided since the J was clogged and wouldn't be fixed until later in the afternoon why not take advantage of it and also increase the amount of feeds into his G, since he was tolerating the meds why not increase the formula. He had been doing great all day until tonight. He threw up twice now. Too much too soon. We are not giving up just slowing down a tad bit. His J is fixed now so we will continue to use it and give his stomach a break and start up again in the morning."

i choose to be grateful for each and every day.

i choose to ignore that clock that is ticking in my brain towards 7/29 and 7/30.

i choose life.

happy weekend peeps.

friday, saturday, sunday.

you choose.

something that makes your heart happy. xoxo