Hello again! It's been a while since I posted, but there's been a lot of 'life' happening to myself and my family. Some good, some not so much, but all of it made us stronger individually and as a family.
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In the last three years, I think my biggest accomplishment was beating cancer! I took a simple genetic test for one of my daughters because of a medical condition she has. That test not only showed a rare cancer gene but I subsequently found out I had two different kinds of breast cancer. Seven surgeries in twenty-seven months and all the other treatments involved and I am currently cancer-free!
Let me get up on my soapbox for a moment here...if you think something is wrong, fight to find out what. I had mammograms every year, none of them picked up one of the types of cancer I had. Additionally, one of my surgeries was botched and the doctor made it seem as if I was looking at it wrong. I gathered my courage and asked for a second opinion which was probably one of the hardest things I did because I felt as though I was questioning a medical professional. And I was. And that's ok. I learned that it's ok to advocate for yourself! It took five surgeries to fix the mistake but if I hadn't advocated for myself, I would have still been living with that mistake.
I also learned that I am surrounded by a wonderful group of friends. They enveloped my family with love and support throughout every bit of the cancer journey!
Some pretty great things happened along the way too. I earned my Masters degree and a Graduate level Teaching College Writing Certificate. My husband was also promoted to the Program Chair for his department at the college where he works. He was also the Master of his Masonic Lodge and our son was Master Councilor of his DeMolay group. And I got a new job at IUPUI.
Ahhh, the new job. I miss my work with TRIO Student Support Services, but I absolutely love what I am doing now. The work is very similar, just at a four-year institution. When I made the change, the new hours were 8:00 am - 5:00 pm. I haven't worked those hours in more than 20 years! Given my choice, I always took the earlier hours to be able to take care of errands, handle kid pick up, and have dinner at a decent hour. I'll be honest, the first month was a hot mess around here. The house was a disaster, sometimes we didn't eat until 7 or even 8 o'clock.
Years ago, when I was a single mom, I did pretty intensive meal prep every Sunday for the upcoming week. I had gotten away from that in the last few years...and it showed. Since we now spend a lot of time at our place at the lake most weekends between April and October, I have to rethink how I meal prep for the work week so we can stay at the lake until Sunday afternoon. Afterall, who wants to leave Nature's beauty to come back to reality any earlier than they have too? LOL
Over Christmas, I did some research and planned out some meal prep. I worked from what I had in the freezer and supplemented what I needed to create meals. The amount of food I had stockpiled in my freezers was ridiculous. Yesterday, I was able to put together 25 dinners. I mixed them up, some are crock pot meals, some Power Pressure Pot meals, some oven meals. I'll write more about this in the next post.
I want to...no need to...get back to writing for me. I hope you will follow along. I'll always work to be frugal but I'll also be working on time saving work night ideas and now, ideas for when we're at the lake! It's my happy place!
Thank you for indulging my ramblings...talk to you soon!
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