The I Wanna's

Good Friday Afternoon! How is July treating all of you? Truthfully, it's treating me alright. We've had loads of sunshine and opportunities to explore outside.

I celebrated another birthday -- the big 3-5! I gotta say it was fairly well awesome. I got my wine and cheesecake. I made a page about it. It's gorgeous. I just have to find the will to photograph it to share. Until then, you can know....


For the sake of credit, I found this image thanks to this site here. It seems to be the top of my list of I Wanna's.

I wanna....

be crafty again. Before I got sick, I was able to whip out at least one, if not two, crafty items a day AND play with my son AND have a nice dinner on the table in the evening AND have at least one housekeeping item accomplished. It's the crafting I miss most. It's my creative and emotional outlet. It's my opportunity to learn and grow.

consistently create pieces that make other people say, "It's so fluffy I'm gonna die!" I want to make amazing cutesy kiddie pieces, vintage Victorian pieces, all out Rock N Roll pieces.

be focused and start in on an awesome card for my son's Pre-School Teacher. I'd also like to make a beginning-of-the-school year gift for her. I want to let her know she's appreciated from the beginning, because, well... I've met my son. I know what he's capable of -- amazing and dastardly.

participate in my son's upcoming education. I want to be "one of those mom's" who offers up the healthy snacks when it's her turn; comes to all the little events; is able to help the teacher in any manner necessary during the year. I think this is also because I'm realizng that I wanna...

still do all that fun teachery stuff myself. I used to teach; first through fourth grades. I got a wild hair this morning with my son to see if he understood WHY four was the "biggest" number (out of 1, 4, and 3) when prompted by Team Umi Zoomi. He couldn't tell me why he knew; just that he knew so I drew him to the table with the lure of chocolate goldfish, markers and paper. Once he caught on (like after the first attempt) that each number has a value attached to it, he was all good to go. It felt good to empower him with those details. It felt right. It felt like I wanted to do it again, but with more children.... just not a full classroom... nor a full night's worth of grading papers so I CAN'T spend time with my son.

I wanna have the best of all my worlds -- motherhood, career, crafting, being healthy and staying alive.

I wanna get back into a routine of cardio and strength training. It's clear I'm going to be fighting cancer long enough that being skinny but squishy is not going to be "okay" much longer.

I wanna be assured that this beautiful hazelnut coffee with caramel praline creamer AND two cookies are not going to strike back later. It's been a rough post-chemo week for me physically. It's been two weeks since I've really been able to feel like I've done something fulfilling with my time. I think that's why I just got all wiggy and started to create this rambling post.

That, and it's been long enough that I should point out I'm still alive. At the very least, I've got a starting point to create some objectives and plans for myself. I'm going to love the next six weeks of Summer and try to make the most of them. But I'm also already looking forward to Fall, and my son starting a new adventure of his own. It's been my survival mechanism -- looking forward -- to get through all the nonsense I'm dealing with right now.