Thanksgiving and the girl with the nipple tattoos

I have been on Thanksgiving break for six days and it has seemed like only minutes have gone by.  It has truly been the fastest Thanksgiving week of my life.  Friday night was spent chillaxin and all day Saturday we cleaned the house.  On Sunday, we left for Bastrop and came back on Wednesday.  On Thursday (Thanksgiving) we left for Austin for Thanksgiving lunch and then we came back to San Antonio for dinner. I ate so much I thought I was going to explode or have to have my stomach pumped at the ER...Today, I spent time with my brother and kids and I went for a bike ride.  It was a little too cold out to ride bikes, but I didn't care.  It felt good to be a little athletic and to be outside....working off some of the Thanksgiving blubber.

So, this is the point in my blog where I should be writing about how thankful I am for everything in my life.  And, don't get me wrong, I am thankful for many things.  Instead (for some reason), I am going to write about all of the bizarre ironies I have discovered very recently. Some of these things have nothing to do with my disease...I just feel like writing about them...Maybe the reason is that it's 3:34 in the morning and I am awake and my mind is racing...

When I was a middle school student, I was called Mushroom.  The name used to make me cry and it infuriated me.  I was called that horrible name because it apparently represented my body shape.  I had very thick hair that was cut in a bowl shape and because of its thickness, stood out from my head.  I was also flat chested and had no body curves...my shadow was a mushroom.  Many years later, I developed breasts and they ended up being quite large, a 36D or 36DD.  I used to get comments/compliments on them all of the time.  My hair actually became even thicker and wavier as I got older and I grew it out.  I had the hardest time brushing it because it would become easily tangled and I used to complain because of the amount of time it would take to care for it.

In some respects, it seems as though I am back to that awkward physical stage of middle school.  No breasts again, or as someone recently put it "NTAA" no tits at all.  In some ways I have breasts and they were made from the fat of my abdomen, but they are incomplete as my final surgeries will happen in the summer..They are incomplete much the way my breasts were as an adolescent..they are undeveloped.  (I have yet to have my nipples created and the areolas tattooed on.) The hair on my head and everywhere else has been reduced to a fine black fuzz.  When I look at myself in the mirror now, I see that underdeveloped adolescent again.  How ironic that the hair I used to complain about is no longer on my head.  Although I'm not a mushroom anymore..I instead look like one of those bald nippleless mannequins that we see without clothes in the department store.  I am awkward once again at age 42.

During Thanksgiving in Austin, I was struck with more ironies.  My husband's family is a great one with many kind-hearted people and a great history but very divided in a couple of ways.  Every Thanksgiving, many members of that side of the family attend the UT/A&M game.  They all show up in their college garb...some wear the UT shirts, some wear the A&M shirts and they argue in a very light-hearted way about who is going to win the game.  Even with all of this, it is obvious that it is all in fun and that they all care deeply about one another.  I was also struck, as I am every year, about the huge political divide that occurs on that side of the family.  Most of the family are democrats and some of them are republicans. And once again, there is some debate and argument about our current political era. Every year, I am blown away by a few things. 

First, one of the members of the family is one of the main authors of the "No Child Left Behind" act that we educators have to contend with year after year.  Although this man is a friendly and kind one, has children of his own, I find him to be a hypocrite.  He believes whole-heartedly in this legislation that I have had to deal with for years, and yet his children go to private school and have tutors.  One of the tutors attended the Thanksgiving dinner.  (There is also a rumor, which I have yet to confirm, that one or both of his children have been home-schooled for a time.) This man was also on the Dallas school board, but has spent absolutely no time in a public school classroom.  Is it strange and ironic that he is making legislation for us educators?  Absolutely....I also think that the fact that his children are not even in the system at all and have private tutors is not only ironic but disgusting....

I also found it interesting that these same family members, who are Republicans, wished me well in my healing.  They assured me that they have been thinking about me and hoping for the best.  Ironic that they just voted for candidates that want to repeal Obama's health care reform.  How do they know that I don't rely on help for my health care from the government?  My in-laws spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars per month on medications necessary to live.  Do the Republicans in the same family feel that my in-laws deserve no help from the government to pay for these necessary meds?

If it wasn't for the FMLA act created under the Clinton administration, I probably wouldn't have a job right now because of all of the time I have needed to take off. (Under normal circumstances, without FMLA, I would have been fired.  I am also fortunate that I am a government employee.)  I wonder if the Republican members of my family wouldn't mind repealing that legislation as well since it doesn't aid in the Republican agenda of big business and small government.  Do these family members really give a shit about my health, or are they just paying me lip service? When the prayer was recited by a Republican member of the family before the Thanksgiving luncheon, thanking God for all that he has given us, was he thanking God for the election results?

I don't have a clean large house, or great health, or monetary riches like many others.  I do have my my beautiful children, a job that I love, a sense of humor, and a few people in my life that I know truly love me despite my shortcomings.  Most of all, I have my mind and determination..A sense of myself that is becoming stronger every day. And for those things I am grateful...Amen.

Chemosabe