12 More Hours

I've been sort of consumed lately with projects around the house. I've been busy painting Randa's room and the kitchen and I've been mucking through and organizing the play and craft rooms. I've also been trying to decide on fabric for new shades for just about every window we have. We haven't changed them since we moved in 4 years ago and I really hate what's up right now. I'm also almost finished with Joey's Easter dress. Oh yah, and I've been Feng Shui-ing the hell out of this place.

It feels like I'm pregnant and nesting, but I know that I'm not. (Seriously. I'm not.) It's just that feeling that I can do nothing but paint and sew and clean and get rid of extra crap.

There's lots going on, and I've been taking pictures of the disasters in progress (which is how I do this sort of thing- I'm a tornado trashing and cleaning everything in my path until one day, it starts to fall into place), so hopefully I can get them posted one of these days.

Unlike Aurora, I haven't even found time to blog, much less to pine for my soon to be gone tresses. Though 'tresses' might be stretching it- with my hair this long I look a lot like Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich.


Any pictures that I've shown of my long hair have been snapped immediately after much brushing, curling, etc. I hope Locks of Love doesn't send it back.

Anyway, the reason I sat down at the computer was to talk one last time about St. Baldrick's before I go under the knife (OK, just clippers, but still). Which, by the way, will be at 8:45 tomorrow morning.

We're really doing this in honor of two people. The first is my mom (thus the team name) and the second is a little girl named Alyssa Rose Hemmelgarn. My mom died on March 15th, 1997. Alyssa passed away on March 8th, 2007 at the age of 9, just 10 days after she was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

Yes, I said 10 days.

Just thinking of that gives me a lump in my throat and makes me feel ill. Before she had any idea she was sick, Alyssa had grown out her hair for 2 years to donate to Locks of Love. Three months after she cut it off, she was gone.

A week or so ago, Joey was reading over my shoulder as I typed up an email about Alyssa and St. Baldrick's. She quietly went to her room and returned with $30 of her own money. It was about half the money that she'd managed to save up for a Wii and she wanted to donate it to help fight childhood cancer.

Knowing that we've managed to raise a kid who could do that makes me more proud than I can say.