Pushing Reset

Today was not a good day.  I got the kind of news that no one wants to hear.

My grandmother (Nana to us grandkids) has a mass in her colon.

The doctor thinks it’s cancer.  We’ll find out for sure on Monday.  Someone please tell me that the doctors are wrong about this at least 95% of the time.

All we know right now is that it’s ulcerated, and it is what has been causing her anemia over the last week or so.  My aunt is staying with her until Tuesday, and I’ll be going up there Monday to stay until Wednesday or Thursday.  After that, my aunt will come back and we’ll all figure out the next steps.

It all still feels like it’s not real right now.  Like this is something I’ve written in a book, or a dream I just haven’t woken up from yet.  I can’t reconcile my healthier-than-a-horse-for-always Nana with the idea of cancer.  There’s just no place within my petite energizer-bunny of a grandmother for the dark shapeless reaper that is cancer.

It’s just not possible.

Cancer doesn’t belong in this world.  It certainly doesn’t belong in mine.  It’s taken too much- a grandfather, a college friend, parents and grandparents of friends, a beloved childhood pet, and the brightest ray of sunshine to ever walk through my Sunday School classroom door.  It can’t take my Nana- I won’t allow it.

I’ve been consumed with selfish thoughts like these all day.  Thoughts of if it is cancer, how will it affect me?  What it will be like to be that close to cancer yet again, to know the change it means for my family’s medical history, to experience the terror of watching yet another person struggle with a disease that will ultimately do whatever the hell it pleases?  Only rarely have thoughts about my brothers, and my mother and my aunt, or even Nana herself crept into my mind.  It’s not socially acceptable, but it’s the truth of today.

It’s like that airplane safety talk, where the flight attendant instructs you to secure your own mask before assisting others with theirs.  I have to secure my own feelings before I can help my family with theirs.  At some point, we’ll all be able to take comfort in the knowledge that oxygen is flowing even if the bag doesn’t inflate, and that none of us is facing the unknown terror alone.  (That metaphor may have gotten away from me at the end, but  in my defense I’m not thinking entirely rationally right now.  I promise, airplane metaphor over now.)

So I’m pushing the reset button for tomorrow, and hoping it erases today.  Hoping it makes the truth change, the pain never set in, and reality tilt back onto its axis.  If you’re so inclined, I ask for prayers or good thoughts for my Nana.  It’s going to be a long weekend until Monday.

$1,200 And As Many Reasons Why

I did a bad thing this weekend.  I broke the cardinal rule of budgeting.  Actually, I broke three cardinal rules of budgeting.

1. I went way over budget on a non-emergency trip.  I’m still totaling up the damage, but it looks like it’ll be around $1,236.  That number includes a round-trip (late-booking) plane ticket to Pennsylvania, parking at the airport, a hotel room for two nights, food, and all the other expenses that come with out-of-town travel.

2. I paid for the trip using a credit card.  I put the plane ticket, hotel room, and pretty much everything else on my credit card.  I know that I’ve railed against doing that with credit cards before, and you’re all probably shaking your heads at me and my financial hypocrisy, but at least I know I can pay off the balance on the card this month.  Which brings me to bad move #3.

3. I paid off the credit card using money from my emergency fund.  My trip out of town was for a family wedding.  It was not an emergency.  As much as I would like to claim that the chance to see all my dad’s siblings and most of my cousins is a rare enough opportunity that it constitutes an emergency, the fact remains that it just isn’t.  By using the money from my emergency fund (and with a trip cost of this amount, it was a fair share of said emergency fund), I broke the rules.  Bad finance blogger.

Having said all of that, let me be perfectly clear on this point: I went way over budget to attend a family wedding for a cousin I have not seen in person since I was 10, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I had the best time this weekend.  I was able to catch up with family members I haven’t seen since I was a kid, be introduced to cousins I’ve never had the chance to meet, hear the “true versions” of family stories, discover definitive proof that my weirdness does come from my dad’s side of the family, and most importantly watch my beautiful cousin marry the love of her life.

See? I told you she was beautiful.

While I may have spent a lot of money on this trip, I don’t regret it at all.  For every dollar, there were at least a dozen reasons why it was money well spent.  The best example I can offer is this:

Ladies and Gentlemen- meet my family. 14 grandchildren, 5 children, and the woman who managed to get us all into one picture.

This past weekend, I got to reconnect with my family, and that is definitely priceless.