Three Quarters of a year

Dear mom, it's sure not the same without you.

I'm past the hardest part of my physical recovery.

Now I am at the point that I can drive by myself and do basically everything except shovel snow, lift heavy things and walk the dog (with my hands, I can walk him with the waist walker) I have been doing a lot of walking lately, trying to do 3-5 km a day, not drinking for February, and eating healthy.

The thing is, I miss my mom so much.

I missed her so much when I was recovering.

I missed her so much when she wasn't here on Christmas Eve,

and I even missed getting valentines cards in the mail for the kids from her.

Emmett misses her too, he misses uncle Kevin too and he's scared of more people dying, and I can't even blame him, grampa doesn't exactly dote on him, and granny and papa are in their 80's. He's scared of climate change, and forest fires, and he gets so down. Next week he starts a children's grief group, and if that doesn't help him process I guess we pay $400 a month for an actual psychologist.

I try to be matter a fact, I try to roll with the punches, I try to not actually think about how much my mom is missed, cause I don't like being sad. On the weekend I baked my mom's chocolate chip cookie recipe. It was as delicious as every time she baked them, and every time, Michelle, Darlene and I baked them (wasted at 17 years old, at 2am while mom and dad slept)

My mom was great. She was the best. I can only hope to be as great as her.

and so I let my six year old daughter get a mohawk ... why not? if you can't have a purple and pink mohawk in kindergarten when can you?

My mom would have HATED her hair, but she would have told her how cool she was.

She is cool, and kind, and loving, my daughter is wonderful, my mom knew that.

on that note, Today marks 1/4 of a year we have been without my mom.

Yesterday should have been uncle Kevin's 60th birthday.

Ten years ago we surprised him and uncle Stewart on their 50th, and arrived in Cornwall with a few Friends who put on a great show to celebrate, it was really fun and I'm glad it happened, no one would have guessed his time would be cut so short, but I'm so glad he's not in pain anymore.

Cancer fucking sucks.

Science is amazing, and I'm glad that since uncle Kevins 50th party enough work was done in genetics that I have now gained the knowledge of my chance of breast cancer and taken the steps to avoid it. Kent also had his PSA tests done to make sure he was at a good level and not currently at risk for prostate cancer.

Currently I have about 2 fills left, then a three-ish month wait, then another surgery.

I'm sitting at 530cc per spacer currently. (update pics, a few blog posts back) They are hard, like SUPER hard, and they feel heavy. Also these expanders are square and when I even wear a sports bra it rubs the bottom cause they aren't squishy. It's very hard to picture what they will look like when they are squishy and round shape.

I guess that's all the updates I have at this point. Oh except if I go to big or decide I hate implants all together changing them or removing them completely will still be covered by OHIP. So that's great. I've spent February doing dry February. I don't really expect people to give anything, (however if they do I’ll draw them up a family portrait) as honestly my friends and family have either lost someone to cancer themselves or have given so much to me, time, gift, food or flower wise over the course of a year, that I'm just doing it for me.

Challenging myself to be healthy and also to do more self care... AKA art therapy. With each piece of art I've done, I've also included info on a different type of cancer. Spending the month informing people, the same way I spent October doing art and teaching people about breast cancer. I've got an instagram going on if you want to check all the art and INFO. At the end of the month I'll do a post with all of the art somewhere in this blog.

and I'll post another update next week once my self drawn pin up, boob bomb girl is done. Thank you TestedMettle Tattoo co.

have a great day everyone.

Love you mom, and as Eva would say "love you more den dat"