Happy Birthday Shout out #5

Wow. Two birthdays in a row. This is getting crazy!

Happy Birthday Maya

Maya is my first cousin, my mother's niece, whom I first met when she was a tiny toddler. I won't discuss my first memory of her because I was seven years old, and it might embarrass her, and it is her birthday. But she grew up in what my mother referred to as the "backwoods of California" in a one-room log cabin house. Which, of course, made her the coolest kid in my eyes because she was living what I pictured as a Little House on the Prairie life. 

She was shy and very quiet as a youngster. She was home-schooled by her mom, and that was SO fascinating to us public school kids. Her mom would send us some of her stories and poems made into little books complete with pictures that would make me jealous because she was published, and I wasn't. Maya would make us small nature gifts from acorns, woods, and berries, and we thought her life so mysterious and worried it might be a bit pitiful since she didn't have crayons or paints. Of course, we had no clue, and it wasn't until their visits to us became more frequent that we discovered her life wasn't much different from ours. 

It was cool to have a cousin who loved to read and write as much as I did. I always felt a connection because of that despite being older. Pretty soon, having her and her mother each Christmas was something we counted on and looked forward to, and we still do to this day.

 

When I got married, I worried because I had so little family next to my husband's large contingent. One by one, my family representation grew to nothing as people could not travel or were off living their own lives. When Maya said she was coming, I cried. I am so grateful for her presence on my big day.

Since then, I've seen her get married, we've vacationed together, and watched one another become mothers. She's grown from the shy, quiet, stay in the background kid into a beautiful, funny, caring, and capable woman.

 

We might be cousins, but I like to think we are also friends. 

Happy Birthday, Cousin Maya. I hope your day is quiet with a nice glass of wine. I love you dearly! 

Super Bowl Pick

Ah, the final day of football season. The big game. A newbie team against an oldie team. An aging quarterback against one just entering his prime. A great defense against a great offense. For the first time in a long time I care, but I don't care. I like both teams. I like both quarterbacks. For sentimental reason I want to see Peyton Manning ride out with a Super Bowl win on the 50th anniversary of the game if only to shut up those critics who believe worth is measured in how many rings are on the finger. For annoyance reasons I want Carolina to win because John Elway gets on my nerves and he thinks this game is all about him. I would love to see a great game that isn't one sided.

How bad does Manning want this game? If it is great he needs to step up and be the Peyton Manning of old. The defense needs to crush this Panther offense. I suppose I lean more heavily toward the Broncos, but I'm not sure I'm feeling it. Perhaps I too am caught up in Manning's lack luster performances in the big game. Perhaps I am too caught up in Cam Newton's arm and rushing ability and sheer joy of the game. Maybe I'm secretly pulling for the Panthers because Denver has already won several rings. Or perhaps it is that my daughter now resides in the state of North Carolina (and had no clue the Panthers were even in it). Either way....

Carolina over Denver

Or wait...

Happy Birthday Shout out #4 - Susan

Happy Birthday Susan

I've birthday shouted to my sister-in-law Susan before. I even did a video for her. Which I will admit that I thought about just re-posting, but every time I see pictures of her from the past I think, "Who is that?" because to be honest she isn't that person anymore. I mean, she is, but she isn't. While she has retained a lot of her old self there is SO much more new self that I find her to be a different person then just the change of her hair texture and length.

It took a long time for me to get to know my SIL, and I've written about our past on here before, but the thing about her is that she doesn't dwell on the past and so in this shout out I'm not either. Because now we are besties and that's all that matters.

 

This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month as well as Susan's birthday month and it is fitting because she is a breast cancer survivor. She found the lump right before she came to visit us in the summer of 2014. I can remember looking at it, touching it, and thinking it was the oddest shape. I worried about it, but after she went home I just didn't think it would be anything. I was wrong. She had triple negative cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy treatment and she fought the disease as she fought everything else that tried to block her life and bring her down; with strength, faith, and humor.

Now cancer free she approaches life with the same attitude she always had, but with a little more enthusiasm, a little more grace, and a lot more laughter. She can pick me up when I am down, and if I'm being more stubborn then usual she reminds me that she had cancer and I need to suck it up. She doesn't take herself so seriously and she fights harder for things she wants now. She is a great mother, a good neighbor, a wonderful friend, and a patient wife (which she has to be putting up with my brother these past 100 25+ years).

For her birthday this year I wish for her sunshine and some warmth because deep down she is a palm tree loving, flip flop wearing, sunshine soaking, beach going, pool worshiping girl living in the frozen tundra. 

Happy Birthday my dearest sister-in-law and friend.

Sending hugs and kisses your way.

Love ya!

The bobby pins are invading my house

For years Darcy has worn her hair back in a tight bun and because of that her hair started breaking off. Our hairdresser told her this was the issue, but she didn't stop the bun until a few months ago. Now the fly around her head wisps are driving her crazy and she uses bobby pins to hold them all down along with several different bottles of hair gunk. I've purchased several packs of bobby pins, but have told her that I'm done buying them. The reason being is that everywhere I go I find bobby pins. It's like they are following me, taunting me. I literally cannot go into a room without spotting one lying somewhere, and so this week I decided to photograph them so other people would understand.

Sunday - Floor of her bedroom

Sunday - Entrance to the bathroom

Sunday - On the kitchen table

Monday - On some homework

Monday - On some books in the Steelers room

Tuesday - Hallway

Tuesday - On my dusty coffee table

Tuesday - On the couch in the Steelers room

Wednesday - On her desk

Wednesday - On Madison's dresser

Wednesday - On the pink chair in Maddy's room

Thursday - On the back of the hall bathroom toilet

Thursday - To the side of the toilet by the shower

Thursday - In her bed

Friday - On the back of my couch

Friday - In the shower on the ledge

Friday - On the window sill above her desk

She got her haircut this week so I'm hoping her hair is on its way to better health. Be gone wisps before I lose my mind!

Delivery Crew

After taking down the waterbed in The Condo I've been searching for a replacement mattress. I went to Sears because I've purchased all of my mattress, sans those filled with water, at Sears. Plus they were clearing out their old mattresses to make room for 2016 mattresses, and I'm all about the deals. Especially on a bed that I don't plan to sleep on.

I was very honest with the sales guy telling him my story of changing out beds for a place that most likely would be a rental. I only needed a mattress and not the box springs and so he showed me several floor models. I climbed into bed more times than I could count with him standing over me looking down as I tossed and turned. I felt very exposed doing this, and when I didn't find anything at Sears I left. I decided that mattress shopping was better with two people and so I arranged a shopping day with my friend SueG and her daughter Sydney.

We set off on Saturday and went to the closest shopping area by our house. There were three mattress places on one corner; two of them Mattress Firms. We went inside and again I told the sales guy my story and what I wanted; a decent mattress for a decent price. Austin agreed he could find me that and explained the store color code; green is firm, orange is medium, blue is soft, something along those lines. Sydney and I hopped on beds, rolled around on beds, pretended to sleep on beds. We inspected those with memory foam and those with springs. Mattress Firm also sells back mattresses that have been returned after a certain day trial run at a discounted price. I made a comment about things that might have gone on on those mattresses and Austin was quick to insure me that the mattresses were thoroughly cleaned, disinfected, and sanitized as required by law. Uh huh.

Austin went off to check the computer and returned with the bad news. No warehouse had that mattress in stock. We went back to examining mattresses and found another one only to find that the one they had in stock wasn't all that nice looking. So much for the cleaning, disinfecting route. We thanked him and left. We spent the next couple of hours visiting various stores that sold mattresses. I found a kitchen table I wanted at a furniture store, but their mattresses were too expensive and the used ones smelled smokey. We finally headed back the way we had come and ended up at the Mattress Firm across the street from Austin's Mattress Firm. Supposedly he had checked their inventory, but since we still didn't have a mattress we decided to check for ourselves.

Paul was very helpful, but once he found out we had been across the street he called Austin to get the scoop. That was probably something we should have discussed among ourselves before giving up, but the damage done we went about climbing up and on mattresses. Eventually Paul found us a mattress, in stock, for the same price Austin had given us for the other mattresses. Uh huh. Our bad. But at this point my back was hurting from all of the trying out of beds and so I said, "Sold! Ring me up." (the mattress above is the one I bought) We sat down and he went about trying to sell me covers that would ward off everything including cancer. I turned him down and then he told me it would be a $70 delivery fee and it wouldn't be able to be delivered until  February 7th. WHAT? SueG and I tried to dicker with him, but he said it was a logistic issue. SueG then said we should save the money and tie it to the roof of the car.

SueG: "Think what a good blog story that would be."

SOLD. Paul let us try to move the mattress in the store so we could see if I was able to do it, but Sydney and SueG could do it and so we set off to pick up the mattress at another Mattress Firm. Apparently Mattress Firm is on more street corners than Walgreens or CVS. Who knew? The fact that there are two or more across from each other had to do with buying out other mattress stores and agreeing to take over those stores. Strangely, we didn't question that and headed south. At the store John, sales guy number 3, had us drive around the back down an alley where he attached the mattress to the top of SueG's van.

While John was tying it down with rope with our verbal help Madison face timed me on my phone. I answered so that I could tell her that I would have to call her back.

Madison: "Where are you? It looks very suspicious like an alley."
Me: "We are at Mattress Firm tying a new mattress to the roof of SueG's van to save $70 in delivery fees."
Madison: "It looks like a very shady deal."
Me: "Well, it is and now we are going to tie Sydney to the mattress and the roof to hold it all together."

I promised to call her back later and we thanked John, signed away our lives on some forms he had, and headed to The Condo...without Sydney on the roof, although we agreed that would have made a better blog entry. About halfway to The Condo I realized I didn't have keys to the place and we had to make a detour to my house to retrieve those. Every few minutes SueG would ask if the mattress was still attached, and I would look out my side of the window and Sydney would look out her side of the window and we would give SueG the thumbs up.

Once at The Condo it took me longer to cut through John's ropes then it did to haul the mattress up the stairs to the second floor condo. My mother's neighbor, who is a sweetheart, immediately popped out of his condo to assist in the carrying. He and SueG took an end and up the stairs they went with me following behind snapping photos.

Neighbor: "Why's you taking pictures?"
SueG: "For her blog."
Neighbor: "I don't know what that is, but I hope she gets my good side."

From there it was a breeze into The Condo and on to the box springs where Sydney and I promptly jumped on it to make sure it was as comfy in there as it was in the store. Once we agreed it was going to work just fine we left it there to breathe.

And then we went out to dinner where we spent $70 and agreed that food and booze was a better splurge than a mattress delivery.

And the ending isn't so happy

So while writing yesterday's entry and reading the newspaper clipping I decided to see if I could locate the girl that I rescued. Stacey was a part of my life while I worked at the pool just as she had been before the incident. We were all friendly with the parents and kids on the swim team and we hung out with them and went to events with each other. Sadly, the child's mother died. She contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion and didn't know it until it was too late. We were all there for her and her husband as she fought the disease, but she didn't win. We all attended her funeral. Before she died she thanked me again and reminded me that saving a life makes you a guardian angel over the person you saved. I took that responsibility to heart. The children's father would not allow the stepfather to have custody of the kids so they went to live with their aunt who continued, along with grandpa, to bring Stacey to swim practice.

Eventually the drive to practice was too hard and the kids transferred to another pool closer to home. I followed her swimming career in the paper and I kept in touch with the stepfather who would give me updates on Stacey, but eventually he too lost contact as she and her brother grew up. She and her grandfather were always at the back of my mind any time I passed by the pool or thought of the relationship between grandchildren and grandparents or passed by the street where she had once lived. I always wondered what had become of her and since this trip down memory lane brought her to the forefront of my brain I set about to find her.

She was nine when the incident happened and so I figured she would be on Facebook, and I started there. I typed in her birth name and immediately someone else's page came up mentioning Stacey in a tribute BECAUSE SHE WAS DEAD. What the hell? What kind of ending to a story is that? I did some more research online and read her obituary and found she died in 2011. I don't know how. I found her aunt on Facebook and through her page found Stacey's husband's page. He had pictures, and I got to scroll through them looking at the adult I never got to meet. In many of them she is in water, at the beach, or on boats. I like to think I helped give her her love of the water. She looks very happy in the pictures and so I'm taking that with me instead of anything else. I'm sorry that her young life was cut short, but I'm also glad that I knew her.

As for the junior coach who was with me that day...he became a lifeguard and worked with me for several summers. We had a friendship born from that day and experience. He finished college and became a pediatrician, is married with children of his own.

Keepsakes - to a time when I did something right

Yesterday while searching through my filing cabinet of old files looking for something, I stumbled upon something else; a file of my "working" days as a city lifeguard. In the file was an envelope full of accolades and papers regarding an incident that occurred one day while I was on duty. I opened it and went through it, and when I was done strolling down memory lane, I put it aside to blog about it because one, while I remember the incident very clearly I hadn't remembered all of the nice cards I received from it, and two, because while my girls have heard the story about what happened they haven't seen all of this stuff.

As I go through my mother's keepsakes and memories I wish I knew more of the story behind things. As a kid I knew my mother was once a teacher, but to grasp who she was or what she did as a teacher wasn't something I could fully understand as a child. And while I got it more as an adult and listened more to her stories, I still don't know it all.

I know the same holds true for my girls. They see me as "mom" the woman who cooks and cleans, carts them around town, and loves them unconditionally. I'm not a working person in their eyes and so to understand who I was before I became their mom isn't something they spend a lot of time thinking about. I get it. I understand because I'm not that same person that I was back in those days either. Finding these keepsakes, and not remembering a lot of it, got me thinking that I really should share the information with them so that someday they too wouldn't wonder. And then I thought, "What the hell, I have a blog. I'll toot my own horn on it and they will then be able to look back on it!" So here is a new theme: Keepsakes and here is the first entry:

To a time when I was at the right place at the right time and I did it right:

I was on deck lifeguarding in 1993. The swim team was practicing with its junior coach while the head coach was off in our shelter having a meeting with parents. The junior coach had the kids racing to see how far they could get without taking a breath. It's one of the things I hate that swim coaches do, and it's something I did not do when I was coaching. I hated it before then and I really hate it now. In fact Darcy doesn't usually tell me when they do it because she knows it makes me come unhinged.

One of the swimmers, a young girl that I had taught a few years back and had recommended for the swim team, dove off and started swimming. I watched her swim 25 yards without a breath, flip, and start back. More than halfway through the second 25 yards I think she lost her breath, but her body kept on going. When she got to the wall her arms kept moving, and I can remember the junior coach leaning over the block to yell at her, asking her what she was doing. That's when she began to sink. I will never forget the look on the coach's face as he looked up at me with a huge question mark.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was out of my guard chair, kicking off my sandals, and blowing the whistle for back-up from the guard house. I remembered yelling that I needed help. I remember yelling at the coach to grab her arms. I remember running around the diving area, pushing the coach, who was frozen, out of my way, climbing over the rope that hadn't been taken down from across the starting blocks, lying on my front and reaching down into the pool for the child's arms. I remember talking aloud as I went through the procedures that I had taught so many times to students in my lifeguarding class; pull out the child, watch her head, get her on land. I had to pull her under the stupid rope and over the ledge of the pool. I got her on her back and knelt down to assess her. She wasn't breathing and her lips and the skin around her lips were blue. I remember thinking that she could not die on me as I had known her too long.

The junior coach, and by now the head coach, and the other swimmers were crowded around us. I tilted her head back as I had practiced so many times before, and I went through everything I had been taught and that I had taught for so many years. As I bent over to begin breathing for her, the opening of her airway by my tilting her head gave her enough air and she sucked in a breath, but there was too much water and she choked. I turned her on her side and helped her expel the water, but she wasn't breathing again. I turned her back and repeated my opening of the airway, pinching of the nose, leaning over to breath, and suddenly she inhaled. Her eyes popped open and she sat up her arms taking over in the crawl stroke as if she were still in the pool.

Everything after that is a blur. My co-workers got her to her feet and took her inside to the guard station and called 911. The fire department just across the parking lot and the paramedics were there in an instant, but they didn't have a pediatric cuff and had to call another squad so that our parking lot was full of fire engines and ambulances. I remember shaking so uncontrollably that the paramedics took a look at me. I remember them shaking my hand and telling me I had done a remarkable thing; that most of the time when they got those calls it was too late. The child's grandfather, who was always her ride to swim team was there, but was very confused about what had happened. The one thing I will not forget is the girl's mother arriving.

She came into the guard room running, screaming her daughter's name, her eyes wild. She threw her arms around her daughter, and then when she realized her kid was just fine, she looked around the room quickly. When her eyes landed on me, she was running again, and she threw her arms around me and hugged me tighter than I have ever been hugged before. She thanked me and thanked me and thanked me. I remember feeling embarrassed and telling her it was my job. I remember her pulling back, looking at me with tears running down her cheeks, and telling me I had saved her child from death. She told me she would never forget what I had done. Then I was in tears and we stood that way for a long time hugging and crying.

I had nightmares for several days. It was certainly not my first rescue, and it wouldn't be my last, but it was by far the most serious one. I was nominated and then honored as the city's Employee of the Quarter. The newspaper wrote a blurb about it, misspelling Cara with Kara. Eventually I would be honored as the city's Employee of the Year and have to travel around to various organizations to accept certificates and plaques and eat a lot of rubber chicken. I used it as a platform to speak about lifeguarding, something I don't think other winners had done. I gave multiple speeches and they were damn good and wouldn't you know it, those aren't in the file.

What was in the file were the clippings, the program from the banquets, my commendation letter, the various letters announcing my selections, and congratulation cards from family and friends. I didn't remember any of it. There was a nice card and message from my brother. A card from my sister. And a card from a former co-worker and a friend who wrote this:

"You're mom called me Thursday to tell me about your rescue. I thought I was going to cry --it's just so scary when you think about how close a child has come. I can't even imagine all the things you must have been and still are feeling. (I hope I never really have to find out for myself). "Congratulations" didn't really seem like exactly the right word...I always felt like you could handle it...you always worked well under pressure or in a panic. I'm just so glad you were there! If only all lifeguards really took this job as seriously as you do (as they should) it'd be so much safer! Really, Cara, I've always felt like you're the very best lifeguard I've ever known (and we've gone through quite a few, huh?). I just get so choked up when I think about that little girl's parents an how they must think of you. You should be so proud of yourself, Cara, you've been through the scariest thing of all and you did it! On the days when things don't seem to be going as well as you'd like, perhaps if you think about this time, all the other worries won't seem so big and you can feel good about yourself and the job you do and know that you are and what you do is very important! I hope I do half as good a job as you. Thanks!" Love, Joan.

I have no memory of this nice card, but I'm sure glad I kept it. I suppose that is why we keep this stuff so that we can go back and relive those nice moments when things were good, or we did good. While I have kept more than my fair share of nonsense I will hold on to this stuff so that my girls will see it someday and maybe feel proud that their mother did work at something and did accomplish something more than being just their mom.