So now we are working on the boy's/guest bathroom. Everything is torn out right now, but the new tile floor is laid and we are going to replaster the walls (to cover up some truly horrendous wall texture) and probably paint and install the new vanity, new toilet, new light fixture purchased at Ikea yesterday. I may go look at the wall fixtures today (towel bars, toilet paper holder, etc). We are loving our new floors and spend an inordinate amount of time staring at them and saying how much we love them to one another. We just writhe around in our domestic bliss.
So this was an exciting week. Strangely, last week I came upon an ad looking for a medical transcriptionist for the new Cooper Clinic opening in McKinney at Craigs Ranch. I really have not been looking for work, but I have always wanted to work for Cooper Clinic..they are a world renowned research center and fitness medicine/weight loss/heart health clinic that people fly here from across the planet to get health assessed, go to classes on cooking and stress control and eating right and then they have this huge, wonderful aerobics facility, certify personal trainers, etc. A very respected, well known place and very hard to get a job there. I have tried before. So based on the temptation of this being the kind of place I would really like to work (and on Joe's firm urging) I sent in my resume (that I typed up in about 15 minutes without a lot of serious thinking, assuming nothing would come of it anyway). They called me the next morning, wanted me to come interview right away. Long story short, they called me at home this weekend to offer me the job. There are a lot of perks to this position, not the least of which is flex time. As long as I am there five days a week and put in 40 hours I can work whatever hours I want to. Joe and I both get memberships to the new fitness/aerobics facility and they offer bonus incentives for living a healthy lifestyle. Plus all the usual benefits I have now and a few that I don't have. Its a push in terms of my salary but the flex time will really come in handy for school and spending time with my kids, attending doctor appts and the like. I have decided to accept the position. I will turn in my notice where I am at now on Tuesday. I don't think they will be happy. Good full time transcriptionists willing to work outside of their home are hard to find.
The last day of August hit me so hard and I spent most of the morning weeping at my desk at work and not getting a whole lot done. Leaving that place will probably be good for me, giving me the excuse to finally clear away the Joseph Shrine my cubicle has become and start over at the new place. I am going to have to figure out how to answer the personal questions about my kids and family that come with a new set of coworkers. August 31 was the day last year we had the meeting with Joseph's team telling us what to expect with the transplant and Sept 1 was the first meeting to find out how radiation oncology works and to get the mold of his face made. I wish I had gotten to keep that mold now. Sept 26, my birthday, will be a year from his first day of full body radiation.
This time of year, through Christmas and the first anniversary of his death, is going to be incredibly emotional and hard on Stewart and I. We were so full of hope then. Scared to death, but hopeful. We just could not fathom a world without our Joseph in it. I really do miss him and I hope he knows how much I love him. He gives me so much inspiration to get through all these huge, life altering changes. Its so hard to move on. To step even a tiny bit away from his illness and death. Even moving to this new, better job can bring me to tears. A brand new building, one Joseph will have never walked in or seen. Brand new people whose only knowledge of what we went through will be what I tell them....and if I do not tell them, they will not know. It is such a hard decision to make. I don't want to carry that around as something by which people will define me....because I think it can blind to anything else. But I also cannot deny it is part of me, has shaped and changed my life, my personality, my goals, my thoughts. And it feels like a betrayal were I to say that I have two sons. I don't. I have three. But every time I say out loud that my oldest son died of cancer this past January, it gets a little more real, takes a little bigger bite out of my heart. There are so many challenges in the coming months. Yesterday I was at Big Lots and they have all their cheapie fun Halloween decorations out. My throat closed up seeing them, remembering taking $25 and purchasing a whole bunch of that stuff so that Joseph and I could decorate his hospital room in crime scene tape, bloody handprints and old fashioned cardboard cut outs of witches and skeletons and black cats to tape to the walls. What a wonderful memory. We had so much fun doing that and Joseph was so thrilled. Poignant. Heartbreaking. I'd give anything to live it again. I miss him. Hollowly, desperately. Lovingly, tenderly. Pridefully, determinedly. I miss him.
So this was an exciting week. Strangely, last week I came upon an ad looking for a medical transcriptionist for the new Cooper Clinic opening in McKinney at Craigs Ranch. I really have not been looking for work, but I have always wanted to work for Cooper Clinic..they are a world renowned research center and fitness medicine/weight loss/heart health clinic that people fly here from across the planet to get health assessed, go to classes on cooking and stress control and eating right and then they have this huge, wonderful aerobics facility, certify personal trainers, etc. A very respected, well known place and very hard to get a job there. I have tried before. So based on the temptation of this being the kind of place I would really like to work (and on Joe's firm urging) I sent in my resume (that I typed up in about 15 minutes without a lot of serious thinking, assuming nothing would come of it anyway). They called me the next morning, wanted me to come interview right away. Long story short, they called me at home this weekend to offer me the job. There are a lot of perks to this position, not the least of which is flex time. As long as I am there five days a week and put in 40 hours I can work whatever hours I want to. Joe and I both get memberships to the new fitness/aerobics facility and they offer bonus incentives for living a healthy lifestyle. Plus all the usual benefits I have now and a few that I don't have. Its a push in terms of my salary but the flex time will really come in handy for school and spending time with my kids, attending doctor appts and the like. I have decided to accept the position. I will turn in my notice where I am at now on Tuesday. I don't think they will be happy. Good full time transcriptionists willing to work outside of their home are hard to find.
The last day of August hit me so hard and I spent most of the morning weeping at my desk at work and not getting a whole lot done. Leaving that place will probably be good for me, giving me the excuse to finally clear away the Joseph Shrine my cubicle has become and start over at the new place. I am going to have to figure out how to answer the personal questions about my kids and family that come with a new set of coworkers. August 31 was the day last year we had the meeting with Joseph's team telling us what to expect with the transplant and Sept 1 was the first meeting to find out how radiation oncology works and to get the mold of his face made. I wish I had gotten to keep that mold now. Sept 26, my birthday, will be a year from his first day of full body radiation.
This time of year, through Christmas and the first anniversary of his death, is going to be incredibly emotional and hard on Stewart and I. We were so full of hope then. Scared to death, but hopeful. We just could not fathom a world without our Joseph in it. I really do miss him and I hope he knows how much I love him. He gives me so much inspiration to get through all these huge, life altering changes. Its so hard to move on. To step even a tiny bit away from his illness and death. Even moving to this new, better job can bring me to tears. A brand new building, one Joseph will have never walked in or seen. Brand new people whose only knowledge of what we went through will be what I tell them....and if I do not tell them, they will not know. It is such a hard decision to make. I don't want to carry that around as something by which people will define me....because I think it can blind to anything else. But I also cannot deny it is part of me, has shaped and changed my life, my personality, my goals, my thoughts. And it feels like a betrayal were I to say that I have two sons. I don't. I have three. But every time I say out loud that my oldest son died of cancer this past January, it gets a little more real, takes a little bigger bite out of my heart. There are so many challenges in the coming months. Yesterday I was at Big Lots and they have all their cheapie fun Halloween decorations out. My throat closed up seeing them, remembering taking $25 and purchasing a whole bunch of that stuff so that Joseph and I could decorate his hospital room in crime scene tape, bloody handprints and old fashioned cardboard cut outs of witches and skeletons and black cats to tape to the walls. What a wonderful memory. We had so much fun doing that and Joseph was so thrilled. Poignant. Heartbreaking. I'd give anything to live it again. I miss him. Hollowly, desperately. Lovingly, tenderly. Pridefully, determinedly. I miss him.