The Wrap Up

Here's what's been going on around here this past weekend.

Friday Natalie had half day of school to kick off her holiday school vacation that lasts till January 5th. She came home and immediately began playing with her friend that lives around the corner. It wasn't long before the girls asked for a sleepover. They played for a bit, then watched some movies - so the evening was pretty low-key.

Saturday was another chill day spent at home. This time of year we absolutely do not go anywhere unless it's a necessity - we HATE holiday traffic. We always have all our Christmas shopping done by mid November. We watched the Cowboys choke away another game. Then sometime after Natalie went to bed, Ruben pulled out all the gifts and we began the dreaded deed. I despise bulk gift wrapping! It's tedious and when done in bulk, it takes all the fun out of it! Ruben ended up wrapping the majority - I ended up doing all the boxes and bags. Once again it appears we over-bought for Natalie - and what makes it worse is that her birthday is just 10 days after Christmas, so she'll be getting even more stuff come the 4th! So we badly need to go through all her old toys - and clothes too, gather it all together and make a donation before the years end.
While wrapping gifts we caught The Bucket List while it was playing on HBO. Have you seen this movie? It is so good, yet incredibly sad! Of course you know the premise of it is about two men who are told they only have so long to live - so they make a list of things they would like to accomplish before they kick the bucket. What you probably don't know is that the two main characters (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) are dying from different types of cancer. After all this time I still cannot bear to watch movies about cancer and death. It just hits too close to home! At the end of the movie Ruben asked me what I thought and I was too choked up, with tears streaming down my face to even answer him. It took me several minutes before I could compose myself and speak. But despite the storyline/ending it was still an awesome movie - I would recommend watching it!
Also on Saturday, I found a lump on my face. Not a lump like the cystic acne I get, because of where it is located. It's right in front of my left ear, on my face where your cheek bone meets your ear. It's a good 1/4 inch in size - semi-hard (not too squishy), protrudes a bit, kinda wiggles though it seems like it's attached at one point - as I cannot pull and lift it off my face, only move it back and forth. It was quite scary to find - but from all my research online it seems like it may possibly be a lymph node or either a saliva or nasal gland. It seems reasonable to me - lymph nodes swell for various reason, and I have a bit of a head cold right now plus I've broke out with a rash and acne above my left eyebrow - it happened soon after Natalie and I went to the salon. My skin is uber sensitive, and I always break out following waxing or tweezing of my eyebrows. The rash resembled razor burn, and just got worse from there. My nervous, unconscious scratching habit probably caused it to get infected. I'm trying not to freak out about it, as stress always makes my acne worse! Aside from viewing the anatomy of the face, which shows 3 lymph nodes and a gland in that area - I think what is also helping me is that I read several questions from people who have found the same thing, and the answer that was posted to the questions was: as a general rule as far as lumps go - if it moves it's likely nothing, but if it doesn't then it should be checked out as it could be something, although I think generally speaking all lumps that stay longer than 2 weeks should be checked out by a doctor. I am tentatively scheduled to get a PET scan done on the 30th, so I will bring it up to the doctor then if I still have it. So I'm not worrying about it till someone tells me I should be - that's the plan!

Sunday was the usual - did some laundry, watched some football, relaxed at home. Nothing special, but it's just the way we like it!

Ruben's planned some time off for this week, but had to go to the office today to take care of a few things. We're hoping he won't have to go back till next week, but we'll play it by ear. It all depends what comes up at work. He'll have to take off for the 30th cause Natalie will still be on break and I'm supposed to have the PET scan done. I'm a big baby when it comes to these types of tests, so Ruben will have to go to hold my hand. It's just that I am an extremely hard stick and the test will require an IV so they can inject some radioactive glucose or something into my veins. With only having one usable arm for needle sticks, veins that collapse on a whim, and growing anxiety each time a stick fails. Yeah, these tests really aren't any fun - cause even after it's done, I still have the anxiety as I wait for the results and with the test being right before New Years, you know I won't get back any results till next year! Please cross your fingers and think positive thoughts for me. I really need this test to show no potential cancer clusters in my body so I won't have to do chemo. Other than that we don't really have much planned for the holiday - I plan on making dinner on Christmas Eve, a ham with all the sides. It's only right as we had turkey for Thanksgiving, and with it being just the 3 of us we really don't need both a bird and a ham! Besides, we don't want another possum in our back yard eating the oil from deep frying the bird!
After Thanksgiving Ruben drained the pot but left the container outside. the next day he noticed that half the oil was gone. Every day it disappeared even more. then one night we go to let Lexie outside before bed and here's this possum licking the bottom of the pot. At first we didn't see it till it raised it's paw to attack Lexie. I grabbed the broom and chased it out of the backyard.....there's a sizable gap under our fence so that's how it got in. Imagine that thing drinking oil for a week....ewww!
So other than a lonely holiday with just the 3 of us, our only other plans will be for Natalie's birthday. We plan on spending Saturday the 3rd at the Children's Museum and the Insectarium - then on the 4th we'll have a nice dinner out and will spend the day shopping. We don't plan on buying her anything in advance. We're going to let her pick all of her own gifts. So both days will be exhausting walking all over the place. She's not having a birthday party next year cause frankly the majority of the kids around here are treating her poorly. Besides it's not like anyone really buys her anything nice. We've spent some bucks on gifts for some kids, $80 on one....hell I've even gone as far as to buy things like shirts for the kids just cause I was getting Natalie one and I knew the other kids would like them......and what does she get in return? Re-gifted items, really cheap toys, and not even a second thought from the parents. So why bother, right?