Alexis's Angel

I miss my mom a lot. I think about her every single day. Baby Alexis is due to arrive at any time. Erin is in the hospital as I write this and is being induced. It is very bittersweet. I am excited to finally meet Baby Alexis....but it breaks my heart that my mom is not here to see her first grandchild being born. She would have spoiled that baby terribly. Life is just so unfair. What did my mom do to deserve this? My life is so empty without her. Sure, I will have a baby neice to bring some joy into my life...but she will never fill the void that my mothers death has left in me. A piece of me is gone forever.

I love you mom. I miss you so much. I hope that you are watching over Erin while she is preparing to bring your beautiful grand daughter into this world.

A small step

Today I went to a fundraiser for a organization called Cornerstone of Hope. I dragged my friend Linda with me because I didn't want to go alone. It is an orgization for grief counciling. A friend of mine volunteers there and asked if I would donate one of my rock hall photographs for their silent auction they were having this weekend. I got to draw the winning ticket for my picture. More importantly....I signed up for classes. They have an 8 week session. Once a week for two hours. We took a tour of the building...it is a beautiful place and I think I need to go. The counciling in free. I know I need help. I hate admitting it. I needed to take that small step today...to get me closer to the bigger step I need to take in asking for help.

I have not been feeling like myself lately. I know that all of the stress and anxiety and depression has taken its toll on my body. I used the blood pressure machine at CVS last week and got a reading of 155/110. NOT GOOD! And I am already on blood pressure pills. So...I rushed to the dr the next day and my reading was 140/100...not much better. She changed my meds a bit. I have to go back in a month and see how it is working. I have other issues that need to be delt with as well...but I really I am not fond of doctors right now. My dad also has some new health issues arrising and all I can say is PLEASE LORD....NO MORE. I CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE STRESS AND SADNESS. PLEASE LET MY FAMILY BE HAPPY AND HEALTHY FOR AWHILE. DON'T WE DESERVE THAT???? I don't want to cry anymore. I'm so sick of crying. Please let me be happy for awhile.

Nostalgic

The Bash For Bev was a success. All (most) of my close friends and family were there to celebrate my mom. I passed out old recipes and forget-me-not seeds to everyone. It feels like a mission to do everything I can to keep my moms spirit alive. I hope everyone will try her recipes and plant the seeds and think of her. I think everyone had a good time. Frank manned the grill (THANK YOU FRANK), Dustin mixed cement so the kids (and Linda) could make stepping stones (THANK YOU DUSTIN). And everyone else just ate, drank, browsed recipes and old pictures, we toasted my mom. It was a nice day. I hope she was looking down on us.

I also had my 20 year class reunion the night before. It was fun. I wasn't excited about going....but went anyway. I told myself I'd stay an hour and stayed four. Oddly enough...I hung out with the guy who made my life hell in Junior High. He picked on me terribly, called me fat, said the ground shook when I walked. He was as fat as me at the time...so in defense....I had to call him fat. He came back to school after one summer break...he was thin, and he never made fun of me again. I never forgot that. He apologized several times for picking on me and we had a good time.

Since then...I've been feeling nostaligic and have been going through old pictures. I have boxes of pictures. I have artwork from my days in Commerical Art. I saved alot of things from my younger years. Yet....why am I keeping all this stuff? Who will want my things when I die??? If I never get married or have kids...what will happen to all my posessions when I die? Who will care about my photographs, all of my memories, my autographs of famous musicians? All of my belongings? I have cool stuff. Will it go in the garbage? To Good Will? My cats? Will they end up on the streets? I thought alot about my mom yesterday. I feel guilty about selling her things...I know she is probably furious that we are getting rid of her posessions. She thought everything was valuable...but there is just way too much to keep. I am hanging on to things that are important to me...but I can't keep everything. Nor can Brian and Erin. I took Erin to visit my friend Teresa who just had a baby girl on tuesday. I hoped it would ease her fears about child birth since she will be delievering soon. I looked at little Natalie and wonder what Alexis will look like. Does my mom already know? I ended up in tears on the drive home because I miss my mom so much and it breaks my heart that she isn't here to see her Grand Daughter. Life isn't fair.

I feel terrible

Awhile back...I remember my mom being frustrated because she couldn't find her apples squares recipe. She made them all the time. Loved them. She thought it got thrown out somehow...when she was going through her recipes. She knew it was out of the Plain Dealer. She even called there and had someone try and track the recipe down. I can't remember if they found it....BUT.....it seems I had the recipe all along. I have a few pages out of her binders and it was on the backside of one of the recipes I make. I started bawling when I saw it. I'm so sorry mom. I'm sorry I made you do all that searching for nothing. I wish you could hear my apology.

Erin came home from the hospital they other day...only to go back in today. She was released after a few hours. Her blood pressure was through the roof again. Her protien count is about 280 and over 300 is a sign of preclamsia (sp?). If they cannot get things stablized....baby Alexis will be arriving alot sooner than planned.

Now what?

I came home from work today only to find out that my sis-n-law is in the hospital. First thing I thought of was problems with the baby. Erin's blood pressure is extremely high and they don't know why. Her blood tests are fine. The baby seems to be ok and Erin feels fine otherwise. They are keeping her overnight to give her meds and monitor her. Please say a prayer that everything is ok.

Will it be a good day or bad day?

Tomorrow is a busy day. Gerry is going to be on Regis & Kelly. What time is that on??? I don't ever watch that show. I have to go pick up my car from the repair shop in Streetsboro. I want to take flowers from the garden to the cemetary. I picked a rose from my moms yard and have it in the arrangement. Then....dad goes for a colonoscopy. I have had a nervous feeling all week. I pray that everything is ok. It has to be ok. I can't take anymore stress and upset in my life. I just can't. Then I am meeting my girlfriends for dinner at Aladdins in Independence and then its to see my man Gerard Butler in "The Ugly Truth." I am so excited to see this movie. Everytime I see his face....I am taken back to the moment he and I were face to face, when I met him last Sept. at the Toronto Film Festival. OH...I love that man!!!

I am excited to get out of the house, be with my friends and have a good time.
I hope its a good day.

I found it!

I found the stuffing recipe! Well....at least I think its the recipe she used. The recipe is vague with ingredient amounts...and I think my mom always went by memory from having made it for so many years. I am going to have to have a trial run (or two) before Thanksgiving. That stuffing is family tradition. Everyone in the family made it, and still makes it. It was being made before I was even born. It needs to live on. I pray I don't ruin tradition.

I've been in tears for the last few hours as I sat going through some of her cookbooks. She had about a dozen binders of recipes she has cut out and collected over the years. Some of them take me back to my childhood. I look at all these recipes.....she wrote "Make!" next to the ones that she thought sounded really good. She won't ever have the chance to make them. My father will have to suffer with my cooking or worse...his cooking (which consists of bacon & eggs or Mrs' T's Pierogi's) for the rest of his life. He won't have my mom to make meatloaf or potato pancakes or roasts or all the other homestyle cooking she liked to do. I know how to cook...but my style isn't like hers. I don't think I can live up to her.

Bittersweet

Today was a hard day. It was a happy occasion because we were celebrating baby-to-be Alexis at Brian & Erin's Baby Shower. But it was also a very sad day for me and my family because I know my mom wanted more than anything to be there. We honored her by making a seat for her and lighting a candle next to a picture of her. A friend of Erin's was kind enough to buy a grandmother bracelet and we put it next to the picture. Needless to say....I've been in tears all day. It was a loverly shower. I was very happy that a few relatives, a few of my friends and several family friends came to represent my mom and our side of the family. She got lots of great gifts. Alexis will be dressed in style. I bought a bunch of cute little outfits, the baby bath tub Erin wanted and I re-finished my moms play high chair that her father built for her. My dad gave a toy box that Erin wanted. And then there was the cross-stitch from my mom. I couldn't even take pictures because I was crying so much. My friend Linda spent every night for the last two months finishing it for my mom. I told my mom when she was in the hospital the last time, that I was going to have Linda finish it and she was so happy that someone was willing to do that for her. I wish my mom would have been able to finish it...but things just didn't work out that way. It turned out beautifully and I am so grateful that Linda offered to do it. The last time my mom was in the hospital (I knew things were very bad), I took a notepad with me and asked her if there was anything she wanted to say to the baby. I wrote down her random thoughts. I took her thoughts and composed them into a letter to Alexis. The letter......is attached to the back of the picture and one day when Alexis is old enough...I hope that Brian and Erin will read that letter to her and tell her what a wonderful grandma she had.

I hope I made you proud today mom.

Not the same

My mom enthusiastically supported my Gerard Butler obsession. I think my love for him rubbed off on her a bit because she asked me for a picture of him and she put it up on her fridge. I'm sure my dad loved that. She was leary about me driving to Toronto last September to try and meet him...because even though I was meeting people there...I was driving up alone. I got to meet Gerry and my mom was the first person I called. He has a new movie coming out called The Ugly Truth and its getting alot of press. He is on the cover of Esquire magazine. After searching about 8 stores...I finally found a copy. I was so thrilled to get my hands on it...I wanted to show it to everyone! I brought the magazine over to my dads yesterday to look at while the garage sale was going on. I decided to show him. Sadly......he is not as enthusiastic about Gerry as my mom was. He said....."I don't think he's that good looking." OMG...he's only the sexiest man on the planet! Surely you can see that!!! UGH!!! I miss my mom. She would have drooled over the magazine with me. It's just not the same without her here. Everything in my life is different now. Everything.

Cookies

Teresa and I made my moms chocolate covered cherry cookies over the weekend. They don't look as nice as my moms. I don't know what we did wrong....we followed the recipe. My mom just had the special touch I guess. I pulled out all of her binders of recipes she has clipped and saved. I need to spend a day looking through them. She loved to cook. The amount of cookbooks and recipes she had was incredible. I don't think I'll ever be as good a cook as she was.

Happy 4th.

My dad and I spent the day with our former neighbors. They moved to Twinsburg...in a bigger house. I'm so sad they moved, but who can blame them....their new house is beautiful. We went to see fireworks in Solon. It was a nice day. It was good to get out and get my mind off things. I only cried a little today...which is an improvement over the last several days. Thank you Frank & Faith....for inviting my dad and I over so we didn't have to be alone. Everything was great. Tell Tyler to take good care of his new bear. I know my mom would be happy that he has it.

Don't care

Today.....I don't care if I live or die. My life isn't worth living right now. I've had chest pains all day today and almost drove myself to the ER...but I decided to go home instead. My nerves are shot and I think I've been having a panic attack.

I can't seem to do anything right. I've been fighting with my sis-n-law for what I feel is a legit reason for me to be upset. She doesn't see it that way.

I want my mom back. Nothing is right without her.