What NOT To Say

The past couple weeks I've been binging on Poldark (Masterpiece PBS).  I watched all four seasons, sometimes 2 or 3 episodes a day because it's intense!  I'm not ashamed, I loved it!  It was a great diversion from the chaos and stress we've been living with.  Season 5 doesn't come out for another year, so I may have to watch them all next summer so I remember what happened.

I stained our kitchen countertop today.  There's one piece that is a titch too long and needs to be cut one more time,  but it looks amazing!  Too long is better than too short, am I right?  A couple of years ago my friend called me from IKEA and told me that they had their solid birch butcher block slabs for $25 (normally over $150).  I got down there as fast as I could and bought 4, knowing that eventually we'd remodel the condo kitchen.  Since we never did that, we used them in our kitchen here.  We literally had less than 2 inches of waste, just barely enough to get it all covered.  I used gel stain which was super easy.  After getting that end piece cut and in place, we'll seal the surface, call the plumber to hook up the dishwasher, the fridge and the sink, assemble drawers and put all the doors on.  It's such a relief to be so close to a finished project!  More pictures to come!  Or maybe we should just have a big party here and y'all can just see it in person.  😁

Brooklyn thinks we should either move the piano to her room,
or get another one and move this piano to her room.  Um, no.
I'm very proud of her!  She's been learning the piano on her
own.  She can play all of the simplified hymns and has picked
up The Feather Theme from Forrest Gump too.  This girl needs
more music!  We sure love her!

Our resident termites.  We found them when we tore the work bench
out of the garage. It appears they only got to the one stud, although the
whole house was treated.  They are dead now and we are putting the garage back together.  

I have talked several times about my great friend Sharla on here.  She's a great friend and I love her and her family to pieces!  Her daughter, Kenzi, was diagnosed with a rare form of Sarcoma a couple years ago.  My heart just ached for them, Kenzi was only 24 when she was diagnosed stage 4 because it had spread to her lungs.  After I was diagnosed last year, Kenzi became a great support to me, answering questions and helping me realize that I didn't have to let cancer dictate how I lived.  Kenzi passed 9 days ago.  I knew her time was getting close so I stopped by to see Sharla and her family.  Her husband, Mikayel, came and embraced me.  I said "how are you?" and immediately realized the stupidity in my question.  His wife lay in the next room, hooked up to oxygen, unconscious, living what turned out to be her last day on earth.  HOW SHOULD HE BE?!!  A better statement would have been, "I'm so sorry."  Or "We love you guys."  Or "We've been praying everyday for your peace."  In situations like this, it should be obvious how family members are.  But I asked the one thing that was obvious and felt so bad for saying it.

Kenzi got exactly the Life Celebration she wanted.  It was a potluck dinner held in a reception center. They had a lot of tables set up for guests to sit around and talk, with music playing in the background and a slide show of her amazing life on the big screen.  My friend Gidget designed and assembled beautiful floral centerpieces for the food tables and the guest tables.  And there was a lot of food, all brought by the guests in attendance.  It was quite informal, people (including her parents) in jeans and mingling.  

Friends, this is EXACTLY what I want to!  I want people to see me before I go, not after! If you care about me, come visit and tell me.  I don't want to be "viewed" (except my immediate family and a some close friends who won't talk about how my embalmed self looks).  I want a party, I love potlucks!  I want people to remember they were happy to know me!  I'd love those happy memories written down or recorded for my kids and Mat to have something special.  Then let's just do a graveside service instead of a long funeral with musical numbers.  There's nothing wrong with funerals with musical numbers.  But it's not how I personally want to go out.  I've made my wishes known to Mat and others.  This isn't a statement of my impending doom, just a statement of my greatest wishes in regards to what I want my exit to look like.