The Young Cousin

Dear Reader,

You know how I've been saying at the end of my last couple posts how nervous I am about the Young Cousin coming? The above picture is of the Young Cousin and Grannee. Just look at them. They look so harmless and sweet in that picture right? Well, this picture is a shining example of how looks can be deceiving.

Don't get me wrong, Grannee is great! She does all the Grannee things, snuggles, hugs, cookies, and such, and the Young Cousin is very sweet, but.... well...

I am 15 years old (and really old mentally), she is 11. I am the older cousin, I am a female, I (no matter what I do, or how much she teases me about being nerdy or uncool) am the bee's-pajamas to her. Which is great! However it comes with responsibilities. I work hard to be a good older cousin to her, and sometimes it is really hard work, thus my anxiety.

The Young Cousin likes attention. She calls often, at least once a week, which is also great, she is the only person who calls me on a regular basis. I like that she calls, it makes me feel like I am special to her.

Sometimes all the attention she requires is too much for me though.

The Young Cousin is a victim of her own imagination, and also suffers from EDQD (Extreme Drama Queen Disorder) and YEEMS (Your Emotions Entertain Me Syndrome).

Tragic. I know.

She makes up tons of stuff to get attention so you can't really believe anything she says, which presents its difficulties. She is never wrong either. Like when she was telling me about the Twilight Series, she's read all 4 books you know, and how Jacob Black is a vampire. I have read all the books too (I don't recommend them, the characters are not consistent) and reminded her that Jacob was a werewolf. She said, "No. He's a vampire." and I being the mentally mature 15 year old that I am, told my 11 year old cousin, "No. He's a werewolf."

"Vampire!"

"Werewolf!"

"Vampire!"

"Werewolf!"

"Vampire!"

"Werewolf!"

"Fine! Let me skim through the book and find out." The Young Cousin finally says.

"Okay, try New Moon, it is all about Jacob." I say, thinking there is no way she is "skimming" through those books.

"Okay. Oh yeah!" She exclaims, "Here it is. I forgot, Jacob is a werewolf!"

*rolls eyes*

So anyway, I am a bit nervous about her coming. It is great having somebody crave your attention, but sometimes a respite is necessary. I just worry that I won't be able to stay good the whole week, but I'll try, and the Young Cousin is very sweet and good. When I mess up and lose it with her, she always forgive me. She's a real friend.

I hope you have a great weekend!

The mature, Miss E.

My IB Application Result and Babies

Dear Reader,

Sorry I haven't written in so long! You poor dears. I have news for you though that will hopefully explain everything.

I got an email from Mr. I'm-in-charge-of-the-IB-program on Monday. Here is what is said:

Attached is the official letter concerning your status in PIBS for next year.

Yes, you were accepted. However, there is one small provision to your acceptance for next year. Because PIBS and IB students have to attend school (there are some IB assessments that are given in an interactive group setting), the Application Committee has requested that you have a doctors approval releasing you to attend Lecanto High School full time. Because PIBS and IB teachers need specific training, it is not possible to do PIBS or IB on a homebound status.

Ta-da! So, I'm going to talk to Patch when I go to clinic tomorrow about it. I'm so excited, I signed up for Spanish immediately, and I am already active and activated in the course. I have turned in 3 assignments, so estoy muy bien! Besides those, I have turned in 3 assignments in my other FLVS (Florida Virtual School) classes too, one in each of Biology (Honors), Geometry (Honors), and Life Management Skills. So that is 6 total today. Since Monday, I have been doing very much schoolwork everyday. See even if I don't make it to school this coming year, Mr. I'm-in-charge-of-the-IB-program says that he will work with me so that I pick the best courses so I could start the IB program at it's official start date, which is the 11th grade year.

He also says, Miss E.,"you have struck me as a very articulate young lady with fabulous potential." He is a really professional kind of guy so this really means a lot and it made my week! Mostly because Mom kept teasing me about how much I had worked on my essay and that it won't win any awards and they aren't going to say anything special about it... bwahahahha!

Speaking of Mom...

From Thursday night until Monday evening, I was taking care of Mom and her dog, Baby. Baby wouldn't leave Mom at all. She wouldn't go outside or ask to go potty (she wouldn't mess either, she'd just hold it in), she wouldn't go to drink, and she wouldn't leave to eat. She was hopelessly devoted. When Baby had been in bed for a while I would have to carry her outside, because if I brought her to the door and told her to "Go outside." she would refuse me. I brought both Mom and Baby food and water while Mom was sick, and they had their meals in bed. Baby is a very good dog to Mom.

Mom is doing much better now, she is out of bed during the day and even managed to drop-off and pick-up Brother from school today. Brother, who by the way, got voted as the 8th grade male with the "Best Personality" by his peers. There seems to be sufficient hope that she will be able to handle my clinic appointment tomorrow. I'm very thankful for that. She was really sick from this chemo.

Back to the subject of babies, I thought you might like to know, Reader, that Springs first baby chicks have arrived! My Dad's hobby is chickens, and every year he says, "I am not going to hatch anymore." So, here are is the first hatch of the season! Sorry they aren't totally fuzzy and utterly adorable, they were already about 6 days old when I took the picture.

I hope you have a great day! God's blessings!

Miss Ellaneous, Future IB Student

P. S. The Young Cousin and Grannee are going to arrive here March 30th, which is only 6 days away! I am praying that I keep my head and am a good "favorite cousin" while they are here.

Busy

Dear Reader,

I've been very busy lately.

I maybe got 4 hours or so of sleep on Wednesday night. Thursday was Mom's chemo day. I got up at about 6:30am to get ready to go with her. I was taking one of my best friends (and cousin) with, she is on spring break from her boarding school in Massachusetts. We picked her at the middle school. I'll code-name her Pursey (she was Judge before, but I didn't think that was a good code-name). I'll tell you a bit about her.

I had a really hard time picking her code-name. I've known her for as long as I can remember and we were always friends. Her mom and my dad's families are friends. Our parents grew up together in the Philippines. Then we happened to bump into them sometime a long time ago here in Florida, and it was like a surprise family reunion. It turns out that their two kids were just about the same age as me and Brother, Pursey is almost a year my senior, and we've been family every since. Pursey's sister is Sleeping Beauty. Pursey has her name because I remember giving her that nick-name a long time ago, because she used to like purses a lot. She still does, but I think she likes what you can do with a well equipped purse more. Also, she could have that code-name because she really likes these books in the series "Percy Jackson and the Olympians".

So anyway, Pursey and I went to get chemo with Mom. Mom slept the whole time almost and Pursey and I watched the movie called "The Ugly Truth." There were a lot of sexual references in that movie and Pursey kept giggling because there was an old lady in the cubicle next to us who could very probably hear every word.

Anyway, we brought Pursey home with us and kept her for a bit. We wanted to keep her longer, but we had to return her eventually. By that night, Mom was already starting to feel pretty icky.

Now, Mom feels really icky. She's managed to keep herself from hurling, but she really feels awful. So we are praying for her healing, that this chemo will work. I've been pretty much hanging out close to her if I can. I bring her what she needs and keep her company.

So aside from all the Mom news. Even more has happened. My commercial thing for Florida Virtual School (FLVS) has come out. You can watch it HERE. I'm in there a couple times. The lady who sent it to me said that they will be making more versions, and to watch the channel if you want to see them.

Also, today I'm going to a golf tournament to accept a gift of money. There is a guy, who I think his name is Joe, and he raises money for leukemia patients who have gotten a bone marrow transplant. He gives it to them to help out. I'm hoping to go up and say some words of gratitude. Its actually a great way to network. People remember people who go up and say things often times, you can only benefit from it in the long run.

So, that is pretty much what I have been up to. It doesn't sound like as much as it is here, but oh well. Tomorrow, Rio's friend is having a birthday party at a park and I'm hoping to go with. I haven't been feeling super awesome though, so I don't know. I think I might have caught a tiny something at one of the meetings I went to Tuesday.

I got to go get ready for the tournament now. I'll write again later.

Miss E.

P.S. The Young Cousin and Grannee are coming to visit in less than 2 weeks. I'm still a bit nervous about it.

PIBS Application News

Dear Reader,

I got some news on my PIBS program application, and on Brother's application. Here is the news on Brother's....

Dear PIBS Applicant for the Class of 2014:

It is with pleasure that we can inform you that you have been accepted into the PIBS class of 2014 at High School.

Yay! That is so exciting for Brother! He is very happy about that. His friend, Angler, and The Lion King have also been accepted. The Lion King is his friend who has this big poof of fluffy blonde curly hair on his head. Brother seems to be pretty excited about being accepted, for Brother anyway.

Mom, Dad, and I are very proud of him.

They will have to wait to be proud of me though. Here is the news I got concerning my application...

Dear Applicants:

We had more applicants for the 9th grade class than we had expected.

Therefore, we have only just finished our evaluations of those students and will begin the evaluations for the 10th graders starting tomorrow.

I regret to inform you that we will not be able to notify you of your status in 10th grade PIBS at High School UNTIL next Monday at the earliest.

So there you have it! Those PIBS people sure are lucky that I am super good at waiting for things. I'll let you know when I know more.

Miss Ellaneous, proud sister of a PIBS student

Don't Worry, the Grass is Green

Dear Reader,

I know it is been a while since I last wrote and you guys are probably terribly worried by now. I hope I haven't driven you to insanity with the anxiety I have caused you. If I have, then my sincerest apologies belong to you.

Okay! So, quite a bit, but yet not too much, has been happening here in the past week. I know you probably want to hear about Mom and what the plan is for her, so I will start with that.

There is no plan.

Okay! So, now that I have alleviated your anxiety on that subject, I will move on. I had FCATs yesterday.

The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test^® (FCAT) is part of Florida’s overall plan to increase student achievement by implementing higher standards. The FCAT, administered to students in Grades 3-11, consists of criterion-referenced tests(CRT) in mathematics, reading, science, and writing, which measure student progress toward meeting the Sunshine State Standards (SSS) benchmarks.

I did the Reading and Mathematics test, I still have 1 session left for the Math but I will do it on Monday. Monday! Monday the 15th! That is the day that I find out the verdict apropos (apropos = concerning) my PIBS application.

Okay, I will tell you a bit more about Mom because I'm very intuitive and I'm sensing that you aren't satisfied with what I have told you. There really is no plan, I don't know why. There was a plan, but her doctor's office called yesterday (twice during my FCAT) and left a message for Mom to call them back ASAP (As Soon As Possible). By the time Mom got the message, it was the weekend and nobody was at the office. The plans are off for now, and the metastasized ovarian cancer is going to have to wait.

Back to my week. Mom and I made a new recipe on Tuesday! The same day, I watched my Dad shave a pineapple. So, now I know how. I learn well by watching, and I literally got a chair, sat and watched him. Since then, I have eaten all of the teaching pineapple and there is a new 'victim pineapple' waiting for me to lacerate it.

The new food that Mom and I made is pictured below. I only remembered to take a picture after I had taken a small bite, so that is the piece that is missing. It was chicken on top of yellow rice. Mom browned some chicken legs and thighs first. Then, we diced a red pepper, a green pepper, and an onion, sautéed it and mixed it with the yellow rice I had cooked on the stove top. We put the rice in a glass 9" by 13" pan and then put the chicken on top and then baked it. I sprinkled some pepper and parsley on the top of the chicken before sending it in the oven, so it would be prettier. It was really good.

Thursday I thought was a pretty exciting day because it rained all day and the whole county was experiencing very large puddles. I went with to get Brother that day and took some pictures. This is a picture of the river that was on the highway to the school.

When we got to the school, we found out that nobody was being let out because there was a "Tornado Warning" going on.

When the cops first came out with the megaphone, he said that they should be lifting the warning soon and the kids would be out. He came out a couple minutes later saying that the students would be allowed out at 3. So, we had to wait for about 20 minutes.

By the time we got to the school, the rain had stopped, and we were only left with puddles. Though I still thought it was all very exciting.

I hope you liked all my pictures. The ground has already soaked up all that water, and since then, it has rained again. The earth is loving it and so are the wildlife. Many plants are already bright green, and yesterday the frogs were singing very loudly.

I'm hoping that it is going to keep getting greener here. The Young Cousin and Grannee are coming to visit at the end of the month, and it would be so nice if the grass was greener for their arrival. I'll write more about that later though, the Young Cousin is really something else.

I hope you have a great weekend, and that your grass is nice and green,

Miss E.

The Girls Are Staying

Dear Reader,

Mom has been teasing me a bit since I posted my last post. I misunderstood something.

See, about a week ago, I went with Mom to Moffitt because she was having an ultra-sound of her breast done. Then, they found the abnormal lumps and she had a biopsy. The biopsy came back and said that was metastasized ovarian cancer present, like I said in my last post. So (silly, ignorant me) I thought that she had ovarian cancer in her breast. "How is that possible?" you might ask. I don't know, but taking the information I had known, that is what I had concluded.

In my brain, it made sense that Mom might need to pull a St. Agatha and get the girls chopped off.

However, Mom's ovarian cancer hasn't invaded her bosoms like I had thought. As Mom says, "Why would I need a mastectomy for ovarian cancer?" The ovarian cancer had invaded her lymph system a while ago and traveled up into a lymph that is in the side/chest area. I guess her melon isn't rotten after all, so there is no need to throw it away. The missile is not going to be launched at this time. I am not going to go shopping with Mom for custom bras, or get to see what I would look like with DD boobs anytime soon.

So sorry if you are disappointed,

Miss E.

Mom's Metastasis

Dear Reader,

Today Mom found out the result of her biopsy. She tested positive for metastasized ovarian cancer. For those of you who don't know what "metastasized" means here is a definition for you from my dictionary...

metastasize |məˈtastəˌsīz|verb [ intrans. ] Medicine(of a cancer) spread to other sites in the body by metastasis : cancers that metastasize to the brain.

for those of you who don't know what "metastasis" is, here is another peek in my dictionary...

metastasis |məˈtastəsəs|noun ( pl. -ses |-ˌsēz|) Medicinethe development of secondary malignant growths at a distance from a primary site of cancer.

So, there you go. My Mom is already a two time ovarian cancer survivor. She has a gene in her body called BRCA1. It runs in Mom's side of family, for generations women on my mother's side of the family got either breast cancer or ovarian cancer when they reached about 40 years old. My mother, her mother, her mother's mother and more were carriers. My mother's sisters aren't known to have the gene.

This is going to be Mom's 3rd time with cancer. Her kind of cancer is a kind that most of the time just keeps coming back until you die from it, but there are always some people who don't go with the flow. So, we are hoping that Mom is one of those. She is going to start chemo again soon, and we'll see how it goes from there.

If she has to get her boob cut off, I am looking forward to going shopping for those bras with the boobs in them with her. I've always wanted to try those on.

Please tell your Mom that you love her if you do,

Miss E.

The Sweet Lady

Dear Reader,

Sweet Lady was Mom's patient a few years ago. When my mom is working, she is an Occupational Therapist. My mom took Sweet Lady to be her patient for some extra work, it was her only patient at the time because I was sick. She was normally at home taking care of me. My mom hasn't had a patient since Sweet Lady.

I used to go with Mom to Sweet Lady's house. It was very clean and there was a carpeted living-room to the right when you walked in where nobody was allowed. It always had vacuum lines on it. I would just say "Hi" to her and either read or play Webkinz on her computer while Mom gave her therapy. I didn't really talk much to her, just the usual pleasantries, ask her about the pictures on her refrigerator, stuff like that, but I liked her. I was happy to see her when we went to her house.

My mom kept in-touch with her via email. When I got MDS (Myelodysplastic Syndrome) and had to get a bone marrow transplant and was living at Ronald McDonald House she sent me lots of cards. I think it is safe to say she sent at least one card a week, probably every time Mom got the mail there was a card from here there. I wrote her emails sometimes, mostly to thank her for the cards and the prayers.

Mom found out that Sweet Lady died about a week ago. A woman called my mom and said, "You were on my mom's call list..."

We went to the funeral today. Once we got in the church, we were quickly met by a woman, who I found out was the Lady's daughter. She looked like she had been doing alright keeping her tears inside her. She didn't have a tissue in her hand or a red nose or anything. My mom introduced herself, turned and started introducing me, "and this is my daughter..." and I said, "I'm ..." and as soon as I got my name out the daughter's eyes were filled with tears, and she put her hand on her mouth and said, "Oh. This is her." as if I was something so precious. She was so happy I had come.

We got into the church area where the service was to be held and I met the rest of her family, mostly all of them seem to know who I was. Sweet Lady had told them of me. They had kind of, "You're the one." reactions. Like I was something really great and lovely, much better than a celebrity.

Mom and I got into the church and got seated. There were 6 people besides us there that weren't family. It seemed like 4 neighbor kind of people, 1 friend, and that friend's daughter or care-taker. The 4 neighbor people were all quite elderly looking and so was the 1 friend, but the 4 neighbor people whispered loudly to each other before and after the service. I guess the weren't very close to Sweet Lady. They didn't seem very sad at all. Maybe they had been expecting her to die, she was 2 days away from 85 years old... I wasn't surprised in her death either, but I was a lot sadder. I barely talked the whole time except for introducing myself to family and saying, "Nice to meet you."

After the service ended, we went out of the church to give condolences to some of the family. They thanked us so much for coming, especially me. The daughter teared up again thanking me, but she is a person that dries her tears quickly, they were stuffed away by the time she turned from me. The grandson thanked me too with tears glistening in his eyes, he was very close to Sweet Lady. They made sure that I knew how much it meant that I came.

Mom told me that the Sweet Lady really loved me, and that is why her kids and those close to her were so happy that I came. I really meant a lot to her. I was quite confused. I expressed to Mom that I had no idea why that was, I didn't do anything.... Mom told me that I will never know or understand the effect I have on people. I'm quite sure that I agree with her on that, but I will always remember Sweet Lady, the cards she sent, the vacuum lines on her blue carpet, and the look that the people close to her gave me at her funeral.

May you have a great day,

Sincerely, Miss E.