Room for improvement

So, I am a work in progress. My last and ONLY entry was Sept 2011. Life has been hectic and crazy. I did go on an amazing trip to Scotland and Northern parts of England in October with my great cousin, Ginny and hubs and many of my Mossman Ohana  I am just now getting privileged to know and love. Then the holidays hit, and Meg's birthday/my youngest baby turned 17. Joyful news came that our daughter, Rebecca and husband Max were pregnant with their first child, our second grandDaughter!! Over the moon with joy, we all are for them. We get to meet this sweet pea in July.

Feb and March are hard months for me and our family. 2 years ago, 2/13/10 we received a knock at our door, no military parent wants to get. Our son, Kale, was not deployed then however, he was home in the US "safe" at his base in Colorado. He was a passenger in a dui crash, in which another soldier, Pawell Serafin was also killed. The driver, their friend, survived and is doing a 10 year sentence at Leavenworth. Kale's birthday is 17 days later on March 3. This year he would have been 25. I will cover this more in depth in another post, but suffice it to say, no day is ever forgotten how much I miss my son. Every joy I have experienced since then is tinged with a sorrow felt deep in my heart. We also received word that the driver, Jordan Peters, has a clemency hearing May 17th. We never imagined after only serving 1 year so far, we would be dealing with this court stuff. I thought it would come much later into his sentence. So there are letters we must submit to the court for this hearing. For some of my children, they can barely talk about their loss, writing a letter about it is more than they can handle. 

In March I spend a few days with my sisters and mother in Las Vegas on our 1st annual SISTERPALOOZA! We were missing one sister, Valerie. It was not easy to get us all together but we had a great time, relaxing poolside, attending a magic show, a sad Elvis review, and watched Danielle, our youngest and most fearless sister jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

April was a whirlwind of festivities, all good, but even good things can be overwhelming. Bridal shower for Michelle, fiancé to my son, Jordan. Baby shower for Becca and her baby on the way. Then, Friday April 20th, my oldest son, Brian married his sweetheart, Tamran. The following day, Jordan and Michelle married. Yup, back to back weddings. It about done me in. I was a mess for the following week, comatose to life. 

We had family to visit with, Jon & Sara, my brother and his adorable tribe, Kassy and Julianna, my sweet little granddaughter was able to come out. She is growing up so fast and I am missing so much of it!

Jennifer, my sister and her two boys came. There was so much goodness, I was just in "overload".

Underlying all these good things was the worry I was dying. I just don't have time for that right now. I had been ignoring a bump under my arm, it was pea size, felt fairly surface, no insurance, so hence it is a "cyst. It decides to let me know I can no longer ignore it by growing to a golf ball size, swelling, progressively sore and then so painful I cannot sleep, which also means, no longer ignore. All right before the weddings. Seriously?? I figure I have to get it taken care of now, because if it needs surgery right before the weddings, I won't be able to stir bowls of food. I go see my nurse practioner and she says she things it could be a cyst or swollen lymph node. Reading up on the web, had me so scared for cancer. My grandmother died of this, so for me, that is a very real concern. A ultrasound is scheduled for the following week. But a few days later, this pain is so severe, I drop Meg's off at work, head to the ER to see if they can fix it and send me on my way. Antibiotics are prescribed, strong ones, so this thing doesn't go Mersa/flesh eating on me. Wednesday is the test, which after the tech does measurements she leaves the room, and then comes back telling me i have "won" a mammogram! Oh really, doesn't that sound fun! They take the most detailed pics, asking me lots of question about my grandmother, and by now, I am FREAKING out, just waiting to hear those fateful words. Instead, gratefully she says that it is a cyst. My practioner was going to remove it for me on her day off to help with the no insurance thing but after the report, it had it's own blood supply, she didn't feel comfortable doing that herself. So YAY!!! not dying, on to getting these weddings done. My family was beside themselves  that I didn't tell them what was going on. I just didn't  want everyone worried during really happy times for our family. Those great moments are so much the more precious after all we have been through, and we did not need any extra worries.

Yeah, did you count on the kids mentioned in this already? I will highlight my family in another post. I don't have cute nick names for them that many a blog I read does, so that feels like a let down to me already. 

So, that brings me to today, I am at a point where I am pondering who is Nancy Clay. I am a work in progress and God is not done with me yet. My role as mother is changing as my kids leave home and grow up. I am wondering, what is next for me? Where do I fit in?  I am learning to navigate in this technical world I live in feels like I am standing still on the freeway, watching things race by me, running me over. Life has been hard and I am exhausted. My sister has been at me FOREVER to write a blog. It has felt like such a commitment, and I am the ultimate commitment phobe. I do NOT need more stress in my life. No one to answer to. Somedays I feel lucky to get out of bed, let alone write something others would read about me. I have felt like "who am I, that the world would even CARE"? A feeling which has haunted me most of my life, having been the gate keeper to my self imposed exile I keep. I am flighty, and have many interests so I did not want to make " a cooking blog" or "craft blog". There are so many good ones out there already, I just didn't want to compete with any of that.  But I am on a journey, as we all are in life, and I thought what I do best is just be me. That is what I offer.  I want to combine my story with photo's. Which tell a story better than words alone. So, world, if you would care to know more about who Nancy Lorraine Clay is, what makes me tick, what inspires me… I will share my journey with you, the good, the bad and the ugly.