The View From Here

It's been a very snowy winter here in western NL. On Monday we saw the sun, honest to goodness, for the first time since Christmas Eve! It has snowed and snowed and snowed. On the 3 days since Christmas that it did not snow, it was cloudy. Oppressively cloudy. It was getting rather depressing.

So I decided, "Well, self, can't sit around and be all depressed about something that cannot be helped." and I got myself up off my (increasingly round) rearend and started getting out snowshoeing.

Now, I'm not a big fan of winter. I much prefer being warm. But I have always loved winter sports. And there is nothing like cold fresh air in your lungs and a splash of vitamin D in your face to perk you right up and get you out of the winter funk.

And when you get to your destination - I really do live in the most beautiful and fabulous place in the world! - and it looks like this, you can't help but feel alive and happy and rejuvenated.

Hope you're getting out there skiing and snowmobiling and snowshoeing too! If you can't beat it, may as well throw snowballs at it :)

The Return

I've just returned from a trip to St. John's. For those of you unfamiliar with Newfoundland, St. John's is on the east side of the province and about an 8 hour drive away from me.

8 hours on a good day. But we left home in a blinding snowstorm. Couldn't see a thing is some areas and the wind was blowing so hard, we burned about a gajillion dollars in gas to get there!

And we had to go...HAD to! My mom, you see, had a recurrence of the skin cancer she had removed back in 2006. Unfortunately, the procedure did not remove the entire root of the cancer and it continued to grow. Basal cell carcinoma, luckily, is slow moving. But still, after 7 years, when she got out of the MOHs surgery,...well, if you can imagine what a nose looks like with no skin and only cartilage...then that's how she looked and that's how much skin they had to remove to ensure (with 98% accuracy) that they had finally gotten it all.

Not fun at all for her! I found it completely fascinating to see, however, because I'm rather morbid that way. She was not impressed and kept passing out when I changed her dressings! It's a good thing she wasn't the one looking at it.

The St. John's trip was for the plastic surgery required to reconstruct the nose. A skin graft was taken from the forehead, kept it tact only by the adjoining arteries, and then "tunnelled" under the skin at the bridge of her nose. Keeping the arteries in tact means the skin does not "die" and turn all nasty black like a burn. Despite the numerous stitches, it looks really good. I was quite impressed with Dr. Fitzpatrick. He did a fabulous job!

And Dr. Fitzpatrick, after years of mom complaining about that horrid bump on her nose, even chiselled away the offending bump, giving mom the added bonus of a rhinoplasty. She didn't expect or ask for that, but he said it was actually for the betterment of the skin placement from the forehead.

Skin cancer = bad! Free partial (forehead) face lift + rhinoplasty = good! Always gotta look at the bright side.

Now, I am back home on the west coast. (Also had to return in a blinding snowstorm!) My Dad has taken my place as the sitting-around-being-completely-bored bed-side companion. Mom will likely get her stitches out on Wednesday and get to come home too. Thank you all for following along with my FB statuses and keeping us in your thoughts and prayers. We so greatly appreciate it.

And, for those of you who asked about pictures...I have been absolutely forbidden! FORBIDDEN in all caps...to share! :)

Myrna

P.S. Oh, and I had another root canal, just for kicks, while I was there too. In comparison to her ordeal, it was nothing.

It has been nearly a year since I last blogged. A year has gone by so quickly. This morning, while reading Christa's blog, I thought to myself, "Self, you've been away for far too long!"

As I've said before, I do write. I have a journal that sits on my bedside table. I write my thoughts, my joys, my grievances, my daily monotony, my struggles with parenting, my self analysis, my inner workings, if you will; I sketch pictures of cakes, I pen poems, I figure out my schedule, I doodle hearts; I send myself little cryptic messages on the side so, when I go back to re-read something I had written long ago, I can smile as I remember the interpretation.

I stopped blogging. To be honest, most days, I could barely remember the keys to my car (still can't on many occasions!). Blogging became another chore. I didn't need more jobs to do. And it became a struggle to write something, to write anything. I didn't want my blog to just be a place where I elaborated on my facebook status, "Going snowshoeing today. Here are the pics". I wanted my blog to be about my experiences and how I relate to those experiences. I somehow lost the ability to get those thoughts out of my head and onto "paper" in any sort of way that made sense.

After continuing to write in my journal, no matter how much sense it makes, my writing is coming back to me in little pieces. I get severe brain-freeze sometimes. So you'll have to excuse me. But I'm going to attempt to do this again. I'm not going to make promises. But I will seriously do my best to blog once a week. And yes, sometimes the entry may have about the same level of content as a box of rice krispies - dry and flavourless without anything further added - but I will try to bring it back.

My apologies to those of you who did read. I hope you'll come back once in a while to check in.

Myrna