First Post

What a week. Just found out that my mother's breast cancer has metasticized to her lung. She's having a PET scan in the next few days to see if has spread anywhere else and help determine what type of treatment will be best. All I keep thinking of is the number 14%. That is the survival rate of women with metastatic breast after 5 years. In 5 years my son Michael will only be 9 and Cait, my daughter, 14. How can my mother only live to know them for 5 more years? I know that these are statistics and no one knows how long they have, blah, blah, blah, but it's hard not to let these thoughts in. I am not a good wait-er. I like to know what to expect and we don't know what this will look like and I hate that. I also don't love going through things. I like to get through things - don't fool around, let's just get it over with - and this is definitely not like that. Guess I'll get used to the discomfort of not knowing and going through this with my mother and husband and family and children. At the core though, it's me and her. Has been since I was a little girl and will be to the end, whatever that end looks like.

Anyway, the initial impetus for this blog was to support the book I'm writing. It will be called Extarordinary Tips from an Ordinary Mom and it's filled with ideas, thoughts, suggestions and, obviously, tips, on everything from child care, cleaning and recipes to sanity-savers, finance and friendship. They are ideas that I have developed or collected over the years and I thought it would be helpful to finally get them all in one place. This blog will be a combination of sharing my own life and sharing about the book. I've never done this before so we'll see how it goes!