7 Months

Seven months ago, I was sitting in a room in England and I got some of the most unexpected news of my life: my mom had been diagnosed with colon cancer. Friday, December 3 and the next 11 days before I left to fly to Ohio to meet her were some of the most emotionally trying days of my life.

Seven months later, I'm sitting in my room in Lake Forest, in the house that my mom and I rent now. A lot has happened in the last seven months. The house that we lived in for almost 14 years sold. We moved. My dad doesn't live with us anymore. My parents' divorce is almost finalized. Nathan went through a whole semester of school, and is spending his summer in Ohio playing baseball. I've visited Texas and Ohio for a week each. I spent a weekend in San Diego. I made some trips to LA to visit my friend Ashley and see a friends' band play a few gigs. I booked a flight to visit San Francisco for the first time in over a year. Sparky stopped using his back legs, and then started using one again [he's like the comeback kid, really]. I've applied to over 70 jobs via Craigslist. I got three of them [and am GLADLY only working one now]. I watched two girls who are wild and drove me a little crazy, but are so much fun. I worked 3 photo gigs. I registered for two online classes through a community college that started the same week we moved and I started working a second job. I dropped them a week into them, coming to terms with the fact that I didn't need to do EVERYTHING at once. Mom and I went to a Ducks game [and they won!]. I stopped blogging. My mom and Nate both started. I reconnected with home and people from home. I reconnected with ranch dressing [clearly the most important part]. I've started to learn how to navigate through the world of divorcing parents. I realized that I still own way too much stuff. I bought a new car.

But most importantly, my mom went through six months of every other week chemotherapy treatments, sold a house, moved, and is working on finalizing a divorce. She has been so brave, positive, and calm [at least outwardly] throughout all of it. She amazes me all the time with her strength through everything that the universe has thrown at her in the last year and a half. Through my frequent job changes, "Nate being Nate," Sparky's last-minute miracle recovery, and getting a divorce she hasn't lost her mind completely. I probably would have. Several times over.

It hasn't exactly been 100% rainbows and butterflies though, either. The move was a hard transition. Mom lamented that she wasn't completely unpacked a few weeks after we moved. I told her "anyone who comes over and has a problem with the fact that we haven't finished unpacking can just leave and never come back. They don't need to be in our lives." And, what do you know, no one said a word. We're adjusting to small-neighborhood living, where we have an ice cream truck and a dozen or so kids play outside most afternoons. Chemo for colon cancer hasn't been as brutal as we've heard that it can be for breast cancer. Mom didn't lose all her hair [but it thinned out, and looks wonderful!]. She's lost a lot of her appetite, but has handled it well on non-chemo weeks. She's still working, still sees friends, and still gardens. She naps a lot, but family has always been full of excellent nappers. Napping is one of my many inherited traits that I'm very proud of.

My dad has done really well too. He's learning to do things for himself [*ahem* most of the time *ahem*] and is really putting in an effort to still see me...even when I'm not so open to it. Plus, I can be a little scatterbrained, so it helps when someone else tells me to do something! He has his own independent schedule going on and is working really hard and doing really well over all. I know moving isn't his favorite thing to do in the world, but he got it done. Now, to work on sorting through all this STUFF that we all have in storage! Also, if any of you know him, ask him to tell you about the episode of True Blood that he watched. His description is absolutely hilarious.

Nate is doing great too. He's had an awesome summer full of baseball in Ohio in our dad's hometown. A lot of our family still lives there, so he's been staying with them, and from what we can tell they're loving having him. He's played really well, and I'm incredibly proud to be his little-big sister. He'll be home again for a few weeks before his LAST school year starts. He's smart and good and nice, and he has a good head on his shoulders. I'm interested to see what he does after he graduates.

I guess, when it comes down to it, there are a few reasons why I'm writing this now. One is to say how incredibly proud I am of my momma, on the eve of her LAST CHEMO TREATMENT. Another is to record just how much things have changed since that day seven months ago. And finally, I'm writing this to officially finish posting on Amanda Abroad. Hopefully my mom and I will make a trip to Paris and maybe a few other places in the near future, and I'll maybe blog here then. But right now, home is where the heart is, and that's where I'm at.

Where in the world is Amanda Tom?

I'm currently, believe it or not, sitting in my bedroom at my parents' house. This is not somewhere I thought I'd be for a year when I left in August, but 4 and a half short months later, here I sit...And here's why:

The last time I posted, Penny and Kevin were out of town on a week long trip, and so it was me and the girls at home for a week. Like I had said, it was snowing, which was great. I loved it, I've never lived somewhere that it snowed before, only visited, so I thought it was really, really awesome. On Friday the 3rd, I Skyped with my mom and she dropped the biggest news on me that I've heard since she and my dad told me in April that they were getting a divorce...she had a colonoscopy a few days before, and they discovered a mass that looked bad. She had a doctor's appointment, and while she did that, Selena and Kiv were over and we did holiday arts and crafts with the girls and started a super long Star Wars Monopoly game. When I talked to my mom the second time that night, she told me that the doctors told her the mass was malignant...my mom has colon cancer. And I immediately hated that I wasn't close enough to give my mommy a hug right away and be there for her.

I had an emotionally tough week and a half between that time and when I was scheduled to fly to Ohio for Christmas. My mom's doctors thought that the had caught it early, and that she should be "cured" by just having one operation to take out the mass, and that she could wait until after Christmas, since my mom and I had plans to maybe go to Washington, DC or New York sometime after Christmas before I went back to England on January 4. We didn't really see much of a reason to change those plans, so on December 14th I flew to Ohio, and was there until December 29th. We decided to come back a little earlier than planned [January 4th], because there was worry that there might be something in my mom's liver too, but she had an ultrasound and the doctors said they're just cysts, nothing to worry about. Over the time we were in Ohio, someone made an [really, ridiculously low] offer on our house, which is for sale. They ended up not liking our counter offer, and moved on, but with that and cancer, my mom and I wanted to be home sooner than January 4th, since her surgery was scheduled for January 7th. We just relaxed and enjoyed being in our own house before the surgery.

I had a great time in Ohio for Christmas. We went to Chicago for a few days to visit some cousins, and got to see my grandma a lot, who is doing absolutely phenomenal. She has come really far from where she was when I saw her in August. She's walking with a walker, and has leg exercises that she does every day...she nearly gave my dad a heart attack I think when she started to do them one day while we visited! But, it is hilarious to see her standing next to my brother, who also sort of looks like a woolly mammoth right now. Also, I got to meet a new baby cousin, and see almost all of my other cousins, plus almost all my aunts and uncles from both sides of the family.



I'm only saying this because Grandma called herself a shrimp after she saw this...
"The Woolly Mammoth and the Shrimp"


Me, Grandma and Nate!


My mom had her surgery almost a week ago now. It was about 4 hours long, which was on the long side of their estimates of how long it would take, but the doctor said it went well. It was Nate's last weekend at home, and we visited mom the last days he was home. Monday came and we were expecting the pathology report, and Nate flew back to Texas that day, so I went to see mom alone and we waited...and waited...and waited...for the doctor to come in and tell us what the report said. We had been told that the report was there, but that "he who removed it has to tell you about it" and her doctor was in surgery. Patience is not our strong suit, but we waited 6 hours before finding out he was gone for the day, but he'd come Tuesday.

I'll be adding Tuesday to my list of "days I heard news I was not at all expecting." We were really hopeful that the surgical cure we were waiting for had happened. But, that's not the news we got. The mass had gone through the colon wall, and 2 of the 14 lymph nodes they took out were not clear. Since it went through the wall, that made the cancer Stage 3, which was scary to hear. The doctor didn't think the cancer had spread anywhere else, but, in "an abundance of caution," my mom will be getting chemo starting in about 4-6 weeks. She has to go back to the doctor next week to talk more about it, but it's looking like probably 4-6 months of treatment. This chemo is supposed to be very well tolerated, and he said she probably won't lose her hair, which is good. Although I did volunteer to donate some of mine if she did. ;)

So, what does this mean for my time abroad?
Well, in short, it means that for now, it's over. Very well tolerated or not, I don't think mom's going to be driving herself around while she's getting chemo. Of course, I also am just feeling that this is where I need to be right now, with my mom, while she goes through this. So, I'm home, for good. And I will say, it's great to be home with my mom again, there's nothing quite like your mom!

London Weekend + I Grew A Monkey

Hello there blogworld! Thanks for being here today!

On that note, I never know how to start a blog. Any tips would be greatly appreciated...here goes!

Last weekend I went to London on Sunday with Marika, the Finnish au pair who drives a Fit aka Jazz. We also went out on Saturday night to Beaconsfield, to meet up with a Canadian au pair named Stephanie that we met. [This is relevant, I swear...] Saturday night we got to the train station to take the train ONE station up, and found out that there were NO TRAINS running this weekend out here. They had planned closures for repairs to the lines, so they were running buses that left once every 20 minutes, which was kind of lame.

Anyway, in the early afternoon on Sunday we trekked back to the station to take a bus out to Hillingdon, where we would be able to get on the tube to take to London.
It had been raining a LOT last week....this is what the road near my house looked like Sunday morning on the way to the station...flooded all the way across both sidewalks and the whole street:

And just for some reference, here's an extended map of the tube station, and I put a big X where GX is, just so everyone can see!

The tube system has SO many lines that go so many different ways and have different ending points/offshoots. It's going to take me a while to get this one down the way I have Muni down...I *think* that if you click on this it will get bigger...or it might just go to the site I got the map from in the first place, where you can make it bigger anyway!


Instead of a 30-45 minute ride on one train, we had a 15-20 minute ride on a bus, then a 30-45 minute train ride. Oh well. While we were on the bus, another passenger caught our attention. While we walked into the train station I told Marika that I thought she was an au pair, because I'd over heard her at the station and on the bus that she was an Australian and she wasn't sure if she was going to move to GX or not, and she wasn't familiar with the area yet. We ended up talking to her at the Hillingdon station and it turns out she was going to be an au pair in GX pretty soon. We exchanged contact information and are now Facebook friends, and I'm excited to have someone else near by who is an au pair!

So, Marika and I had plans to meet up with her friend Caroline, also an au pair, who is from Germany. Caroline wasn't/isn't happy with her house family, so she's actually leaving this weekend to work in France instead. Marika and I both wanted to go to the Tower of London since I haven't been since my People to People trip nine years ago and she's never been. It turns out Caroline had been already, so she didn't want to go, but we decided to go to Harrod's, a huge, fancier-than-Nordstrom's department store, which is a biiiiiiig deal, just to look around. We got there after a number of train changes and waiting, and also ended up eating at McDonald's. It's cheap and fast and the same in every country, what can I say! =]


Marika outside Harrod's


Me and Caroline outside Harrod's. [Hi mom, see, I am here! ;)]


Some of the sweets in Harrod's...SO MUCH CANDY EVERYWHERE!


Santa candy already!


Cupcakes!


Marika resting on a display in the store.


Olympics souvenirs...even though they're almost 2 years away...


I might have to go back and see if they make this shirt in my size...this was the kid's department. =]


What I thought was the best part about Harrod's was at one point while we were on the escalator, all of the sudden I thought the music changed a lot. It turned out there was a LIVE opera singer in one of the balconies singing. It was AMAZING. I'm crossing my fingers that this video uploads before I'm done writing this, because she was really good! [UPDATE: Okay this uploaded but I can't tell if it's working or not...someone let me know! Thanks to everyone who let me know it's working!]

My first video upload success!!!!! [I hope!]


We also went up to Notting Hill to see where the movie was filmed/set, even though I've never seen it. It was nice to see it without all the carnival madness going on! There was supposed to be a tube strike that night, so Marika and I needed to head back to GX before about 5, and we got home just fine, luckily. 


Clouds here were beautiful!


And the houses are so colorful!


Cute wellies I saw on Portobello Road!


Hi again Mom!

This week I had somewhat of an adventure with Bindi on Monday. I went to the wooded area down the street to take her for a walk. It's an enclosed area, and usually we let her off the lead when she's in there and she's pretty good about not going too far away from you...almost like she's afraid you're going to leave her there [which is a good reason to be afraid, I think!]. I was taking her lead off right outside the gate, and usually she walks right through the gate just fine, but this time she didn't, and ran off down the street. I felt like I was chasing Sparky, it was awful. Luckily she didn't go TOO far away, but it was still a nice little run I took!

This weekend both of my parents are in Texas to see Nate for his birthday...the big 2-0 for him this Sunday! My brother is living on his own for the first time this year, and he seems to be...well...he's surviving, but struggling. He hasn't had lights in his bathroom or half his kitchen since he moved in in early August because he had to flip surges and didn't know. That's my brother for you! I do miss him a lot and am excited that my parents are there for his birthday and the beginning of his baseball season. I'm looking forward to reporting highlights for everyone as Nate continues to kick butt on the diamond this season [last season he was the division record holder for doubles!]!!!

While Nate turns 20 on Sunday, I'll be going to London with Selena, who's also Ellie's tennis coach, to see a local band play a show. It turns out Selena and I have pretty similar music taste, so hopefully we find more shows to go to!

I also have dates for going to the States for Christmas. I'll be in Ohio/the east coast from December 11-January 4, and hopefully my mom and I are going to take some kind of little road trip while I'm out there. No California trips though, sorry guys!


Oh, and the "Amanda Grew A Monkey" bit...Ellie likes to hang on me like a monkey some days...see?










Then she falls and can't get up because she's laughing so hard.


And finally, one more picture for mom...Proof I'm here again! [I post ONE picture on Facebook mobile and suddenly she thinks I'm not here!] This one's by Ms. Ellie!

Best Skype Chat EVER!

My dad is spending this week and the two surrounding weekends on the East Coast. In Ohio both weekends to visit family, and in Toronto during the week for business. The BEST part of this for me is that I got to Skype with my Grandma, who is 88 years old. Just this past week, my cousins Matt and TerriLynn had a baby girl, Madison Lynn, bringing my grandma's great-grandchild count up to 9...Then more cousins, Lex and Lindsey, announced that they're expecting their second baby! Very exciting!!!

My dad's not 100% perfect at aiming the camera, so he cut Grandma's head off a few times, but honestly this was the best Skype chat I've ever had!!!
She didn't entirely know what to think, I think...She thought it was super expensive, then dad told her it was free..and she tired to kick me off a few times "okay well you have a lovely time and I miss you and I love you" type things, then we'd stop her and say I wasn't going anywhere yet. It was funny. Hopefully we'll get to do it again when dad is there next weekend.


Grandma and Dad.

Uncle Bob, Dad, Aunt Monica, Uncle Terry and Aunt Chris around Grandma's head.

Dad giving Grandma bunny ears...how rude! ;-]

And bonus: two shots of what I sent dad for his birthday...


He was moving it around in front of the camera and singing the Jaws theme song.....Yup, this is my father...

Last US Night!!

I left California Sunday night for Ohio to visit some family before I leave for England. Got in EARLY Monday morning and have had a great stay EXCEPT for the fact that I am apparently the tastiest thing EVER to mosquitoes. I have 30 bug bites, at least. Feet, legs, hands, arms and ESPECIALLY my back. I have about 15 on my back alone. It's horrible. Luckily I'm not too itchy, but the presence of them is still annoying! I also had some new shoes I wore while I was here that gave me some bad blisters that I'm not excited about either. I just want the bites and blisters to go away!!

Other than that I've been visiting with some cousins and my grandma, who's in a nursing home and is about to move into assisted living. She broke her hip about two months ago and seems to be doing great, she's walking again and I'm really glad I got to see her before I left.

Nothing else to report, just wanted to talk about my trip to Ohio a little bit before I leave the country. My next post should be from ENGLAND!!!! Some pictures should be included from there too!!