Summer Mode

Days don’t get much better than yesterday. I was up by seven, doing laundry to start, but by noon I was ready to relax. Donna and Lindsay came to join me by the pool, where we lounged for a few hours before heading in for dinner. Donna brought ginger dressing for salad and some dumplings; I made halibut and spinach. For dessert we had a mini birthday cake they brought for me and some baklava I had in the freezer. They left around 7. After a long and refreshing shower I slept in my freshly made bed with clean, soft sheets.

It’s been a great weekend overall. I saw friends I hadn’t seen in a while, had dinner with my sister and niece and nephew the other night, got to do a little birthday shopping, and have had time to both be productive and to relax. And the weekend isn’t over. Today is Day Four of the extra long weekend, and it’s another spectacular day—sunny, high in the eighties again. I won’t have company today, but after another cup of coffee I will head to the gym before packing up to sit poolside again.

There are only 13 days of school left (9 days of classes and 4 of final exams) but with the wonderful weather and the extra time off, I am already in summer mode. My question is this: how—when it is summer in my head and my routine—will I ever finish the school year?…

With the grace of God, I suppose, who delivered on this fantastic weekend. And surely without your pity.

[Heart] Note...to Peonies

Every year around this time, when the peonies bloom in my friend Fran's yard, she brings them in to school to share with me. For a week my room is fragrant with peonies--in burgundy, pink and white. Unfortunately, I left two Erlenmeyer flasks full of them (who needs a vase if you're a Biology teacher?) at school when I left yesterday for the long weekend. I was disappointed that for four days they would sit un-enjoyed. And equally as disappointed that I didn't have them at home to enjoy.

But my mother's sixth sense must have kicked in, because when I visited today these stunnning flowers were waiting for me. She went over to a friend's house this morning and cut them for me to have for my birthday. Simply gorgeous.

Thanks, Fran. Thanks, Mom. I love peonies.

A Perfect Day

It's going to be a great day. How could it not? I have the day off--and it's not a holiday. The sun is shining and it is predicted that today will be mostly sunny, with a few clouds and a high temperature of 79. I brewed a perfect pot of coffee this morning, and have time to drink the whole thing if I want. Or I could save some of it to make iced coffee to have by the pool later, since my pool opens today. Perfect, right?

Before I park myself by the pool I'm going to go to the gym and do some housecleaning, maybe some laundry, and my parents would like me to stop by because it's my birthday. I'm 45 today, smack dab in the middle of my life--if I live to be 90. But that's too much to think about.

Today I'm going to focus on today, thankful that the sun is shining, grateful that I am happy and healthy and able to enjoy it.

[Heart] Note...to Watermelon

Every fall I rediscover that I like apples, but watermelon is my hands-down, all time favorite fruit. I could eat it every day in the summer. And I probably do. Starting now.

Watermelon is nature's candy, and even though it gets a bad rap of being nutritionally void, it actually has more lycopene than tomatoes! But who cares anyway? There's really nothing like biting into a cold, sweet, crunchy, juicy, refreshing piece of watermelon on a hot summer day. I don't spit seeds anymore, and I'm not afraid anymore that if I swallow a seed I'll grow a watermelon in my belly, but it remains a summertime favorite I'll never outgrow.

I [heart] watermelon.

Gearing Up

This time next week, if the weather is even remotely similar to this weekend’s weather, I will be marking my territory at the pool—although, of course, there will be no urine involved. (I’m turning 45 on Friday—not 95.) Perhaps then I will be staking my claim with my beach chair and matching bag and towel on the far side of the pool away from the bathrooms and water bubbler and, therefore, the path of children, who don’t really get the concept of quiet reading time.

I have not yet chosen what my first book with be, but I will start a new book from the pile that has been growing during the school year and will begin keeping my Summer 2010 list. It will be the first of many days I spend relaxed, melting away a long winter, dissipating a school year’s worth of tension while elevating my Vitamin D levels (which, by the way, are still low after two months on supplements). And, I’m not going to lie, I will be getting in touch with my inner sunbather, too, as Liz says. Getting my Zen on.

Initially I will be getting in touch with my inner sunbather in small doses—on weekends and after school when I can, but once I have corrected my last final exam on June 17 and handed in my grades, I intend to be by the pool as much as possible.

25 calendar days.

17 school days.

Ignorance is Bliss

At some point, perhaps when one of my sisters was tested for the BRCA gene, I decided I would not have the test.

Donna tested first, although for her it was a foregone conclusion really. She was already in the throes of cancer, fighting it with all her might. But testing and knowing that she is BRCA2 positive enabled them to tailor her cancer treatment. And it gave the green light for her daughter, and her sisters, and her cousins to be tested too. We can be tested and it will likely be covered. We have more than family history to report now. In addition to reporting to my ob-gyn that my paternal grandmother had breast cancer, my paternal aunt had breast cancer, and my cousin—my paternal uncle’s daughter—has breast cancer, I can say oh, and she knows she is positive for the BRCA2 mutation.

Which is exactly what I did. While she was gingerly doing her thing with speculum and swab, I updated my medical history.

I can’t quite remember the next detail, but I think she simply asked if I wanted the test, and I told her I didn’t.

“Why not?” She asked.

I was too busy trying to hold back tears to answer her—lying on one’s back on a table with your feet in stirrups not being an ideal place to cry.

She asked again, and I still didn’t answer, although at this point—despite my efforts—a few tears had leaked and were running down the side of my face.

She answered for me. “You don’t want to know?”

And there it was, the answer I couldn’t speak: I don’t want to know if I have the mutation. I don’t want to know if I have a genetic predisposition to cancer. I’ll deal with it if and when I have to.

“No, I don’t, “I finally said.

“Why not?” she asked, but instead of waiting for an answer gave me a litany of good reasons to find out.

Then off came her gloves, and she instructed me to get dressed and meet her in her office, where we would talk about it some more.

I was content to be happy-stupid and she gave compelling reasons to be tested. If, and it’s still an if, I were positive I would be followed by a surgeon, I’d have better preventative care—up to and including having my ovaries removed (because with the mutation is a high risk of ovarian cancer) if I know for sure I don’t want children.

I was moving along thinking Ignorance is Bliss. What I was reminded was Knowledge is Power.

[Heart] Note...to my Mother

I stopped by my parents’ over the weekend to visit, and walked away a recently ingested Krakowska szynka sandwich in my belly; a bag containing 4 slices of rye bread, more sandwich meat from the Polish deli, two red and two yellow onions, scallions and butter lettuce from her garden; and, last but certainly not least, a dozen pierogi.

Somehow, some way, my mother knew that I’d be in a sh*tty mood today. As if on cue, my mother’s sixth sense knew that despite my best efforts to be positive and approach everything these days with a Bring It! attitude, there would be nothing like a plate of pierogi today.

For everything in my goody bag and my belly, for not giving up being a mom who believes food is love and likes to take care of her kids, even though the youngest of them is almost 45 (me), I love my mom. Even more than I [heart] her pierogi.