I truly appreciate those of you who asked where the hell I was and why I’ve been quieter than usual. It makes me feel good to know that not only did someone notice, but cares, too.

Here are some things you should know about me before we meet at The Blathering this weekend. Or, before we meet in person wherever. It’s pretty much an all-inclusive list.

1. I am loud. I’m super excitable and gregarious and I tend to get LOUD. This is normally not really a problem until it’s combined with #2.

2. I say offensive things. I cuss like a sailor and think EVERYTHING is funny in the right context. I am almost impossible to offend and I forget that other people don’t share that trait. So, here’s your apology in advance. I’m sure I’ll say something that pisses you off at some point.

3. I’m a former fat girl, current chubby girl. I had gastric bypass in 2008. I can’t eat a lot at once and there are things that make me violently ill if I do eat them. I get drunk on 1/2 a drink and am completely sober 30 minutes later. I’m pretty happy with my size now, but for sure I’d like to lose my last 30lbs.

4. I’m a nerd or a geek or whatever you want to call it. I’m proud of this fact and wholeheartedly embrace my nerdiness.

5. I’m not fashionable and I don’t know how to accessorize. I dress purely for comfort and any cuteness that happens is usually accidental.

6. My head is almost completely filled with useless trivia regarding celebrities, movies, and books.

7. I read. A lot. I’d love to hear your book recommendations.

8. I’m a complete ham and will do anything to entertain you. I love to make people laugh.

9. I’m afraid of small things. Small animals, small toys, etc.

10. I’m in love with nail polish and change mine every day or every other day. I’m bringing my supplies to give my roomies manicures, so let me know if you want one, too!

11. I’m a hugger. Tell me if you don’t want one and we’re cool.

12. I want to hear about your kids. I love hearing about your kids. Honestly.

13. I’ll be your friend for life, if you’ll let me.

Sam is at such an awesome stage right now. He’s trying so hard to talk and everything he says is adorable. His walk is more of a drunken stumble/ zombie lurch. He is, literally, the most affectionate kid I’ve ever known. He gives full-on hugs frequently and without prompting. When we play together, he stops roughly every five minutes to climb into my arms and hug me and then returns to playing. He brings me a book and curls up in my lap while I read it. He’s starting to be funny on purpose. His favorite joke is to offer me a bite of whatever he’s eating and then shove it into his mouth at the last minute. Which is my cue to shout “tricky tricker!” and he laughs like a loon.

It’s hard not to have a favorite child. Because while Maddie is completely awesome in other ways, she’s also a complete asshole sometimes. Sam is seldom an asshole. He doesn’t have a temper, he doesn’t scream at me, throw tantrums or randomly decide he hates his favorite food just to mess with me. I keep reminding myself that all too soon, Sam will be an asshole, too. It’s just the nature of children. But sweet baby jebus, how I want to stop time and keep him this age forever.

Tiny Cowboy. We start 'em young in Texas.

So, let’s just call this a post so that it’s out of the way and we can get back to business without all those feelings in the way.

So yes, I really did keep my pantry that organized. It’ll stay that way for a while and over the next two years will devolve back into a hot mess and will no doubt stay that way until I’m anxiously awaiting news of some sort.

Speaking of, the next update is about the Janky Boob™. Clever segue, right?

It actually took me a while to come to terms with my diagnosis to be able to talk about it. While waiting on the results of the pathology report, I had prepared myself for the worst and hoped for the best. I was in no way prepared for some sort of grey area bullshit. I was going to hear “Yes, you’ve got cancer,” or “You’re all clear!” and life would go on. Instead, what I heard was (LITERALLY) “Well, you don’t have cancer. Yet.”

I have Atypical Ductal Hyperplasia. Oooh, sounds mysterious and serious, right? Don’t get excited. It’s fancy doctor language for “Fucked up shit that might turn into cancer one day. Probably. Maybe.” I’ve never had a pap smear come back with wonky results, but I’m told that women can get “pre-cancerous” cells on their cervix and need to have them removed. That’s pretty much what these cells are. Only in my boob, instead. According to my oncologist, the average woman has between 15 and 20 ducts in each breast and I had ADH in six of mine.

Basically, this means that my chances of getting breast cancer went up yet again. Dr. G said that in her experience, patients who are diagnosed with ADH at such a young age are highly predisposed to getting The Big C. (Side note: The high-risk breast center I go to is in the same hospital as my OB/Gyn. I love how on the 1st floor, I’m SO! YOUNG! and up on the 2nd floor, I’m old enough to have “advanced maternal age” stamped on my file if I were to get pregnant again.) Anyhow, the course of action is to pretty much keep doing what we were doing; exam, mammogram and breast sonogram twice a year, MRI once a year. And she cautioned me to never, ever miss an appointment because my boobs would become riddled with The Cancer and fall the fuck off my body. Or something like that. I’m fuzzy on the details.

So, really, it’s not a bad diagnosis at all. It’s just not what I was expecting. I didn’t know how to handle the news that I would be continuing to live with the black cloud of cancer looming over my head for the rest of my life. Turns out, after my emotions settled down, I don’t even think about it. Except when Janky Boob™ acts up and decides to hurt for no reason whatsoever.

Since I found out that I might have breast cancer and then was diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma within three days of each other, I canceled all my other doctor’s appointments. The last thing I needed to was go to the OB/Gyn and eye doctor to be told I had Vagina Cancer and Eye Cancer. Well, I managed to reschedule my eye exam and can report there’s no eye cancer present! Woo hoo! I still haven’t rescheduled the other because come on. It’s not high on my list of priorities, you know?

Gerald and I have been together for almost 8 years, so our hypothetical renewal is coming up. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. I promise to love you even after I’ve had to pop a zit on your back.
2. It’s 100% your job to remove/kill any parts of nature that come into the house.
3. I will drive the majority of all road trips.
4. I promise to mostly mutter all the mean things I think to say under my breath and not scream them at you.
5. I will half-assedly return all shoulder/foot rubs.
6. It is 100% your job to investigate all strange noises in or around the house, regardless of time of day.
7. You will never have to mop the kitchen floor in your lifetime.
8. I will do 99% of all grocery shopping.
9. You will limit your complaining about the items purchased.
10. When I play with our children, you will find me loud and distracting.
11. When you play with our children, I will find you incredibly desirable.
12. I will never cheat on you because who has time for that shit?
13. I will forgive all your mistakes because I’ve got no room to judge, that’s for sure.
14. I will complain every single day, but I will rarely mean a word of it.

So, how about you? What will be on your list the second time around?

I don’t read news sites or watch the news or listen to the news on the car radio. I don’t know dick about politics, current events or whether global warming is real or bullshit this month. I’m not worldly, socially relevant, on the cusp, pulse or even the lap. In fact, I’m pretty damn ignorant. I don’t say this like I’m proud of it. More like… resigned. This is the way I’ve always been and I don’t really foresee it changing.

I do, however, love The Daily Mail. I know that it calls itself an online news outlet and pretends really hard to be a news outlet, but COME ON. It’s politically biased, celebrity-stalking trash. BUT WITH A BRITISH ACCENT. Which totally makes it classy. It’s a proven scientific fact.

If they’re not wowing readers with wildly sensational headlines, or scrutinizing every ounce of weight fluctuation within the female celebrity arc, they’re just plain making shit up as they go along and calling it “news.” The fact that they try so hard to pretend to be Real News just makes it better, in my opinion. Also, THERE’S A BRITISH ACCENT.

Check out the index. There’s a U.S. Celebrity page. Don’t bother looking for the U.S. Politics page. There ain’t one. And see what they did with that Femail page? First, they spelled it “femail,” like MAIL to be trendy and cute. And THEN they put all the stories about celebrities, fashion, make-up and sex on one page for us so that “femails” don’t have to get tired of searching the site for the things that are really important to them and maybe risk reading something about the collapse of civilized society in the U.K. or the plummeting stock markets. Stories like this and this are way more entertaining to read, anyway.

Today’s attempt to keep the Cancer Thoughts™ away was my pantry. When my son was born, my MIL stayed with us for a few weeks. She said she felt useless (which she was NOT) and wanted to do something. Could she please clean out my pantry? I’ve thought of this repeatedly and since my in-laws will be visiting in a month, I decided to clean the damn pantry so she’ll be proud.

Here are the shocking before photos:

There was a large dog food container and cat food container in the corner, on top of all that detritus.

My organizational system had devolved into "put it in the damn pantry and close the door."

So, I got out some large trash bags, a broom & dustpan, steam mop, and a magic eraser and went to town. I picked up all the detritus off the floor and swept up all the fallen animal crackers, pet food nuggets, and dead june bugs. At this point, my cat threw herself across the trash pile and vehemently objected to my harshness in judging these items “trash” and not “snacks.”

I found two small appliances that we haven’t used in the entirety of our marriage that other family members would love to have, and quite a few out-of-date canned goods. Can you tell I don’t use canned goods very often at all? I believe my supply is considered “ridiculous at best.” I threw away old cracker boxes with a handful of smashed crackers in the bottom, tea I never drink, etc. While I was doing this, Cancer Thoughts™ creeped in and started asking me who would grocery shop if I wasn’t around? Would Gerald know the kid’s favorite kind of Cheez-It? (Scrabble, fyi.) Would I outlast this can of black beans that expires in 2014? So, I kicked it up a notch and got out the magic eraser and scrubbed years of honey residue and god-knows-what-else off the shelves.

I stood back to admire my work and thought, “I may have cancer, but check out my kick-ass pantry! Who gives a shit about Janky Boob™ when you could eat off the floor in there?” Mission: accomplished.

After:

Check that floor, bishes!

So if you’ve got a home organizational need, call me. I’ve got about 30 more hours of waiting and a fresh box of magic erasers.

My first controversial topic is gender roles as they pertain to little kids. I’m lucky enough to have two children and to have a girl and a boy. I get the awesome experience of parenting both genders and all the cool things that go along them. I’ve been seeing quite a lot in the news lately about how some parents and schools are working hard to erase gender differences in children and I completely, wholeheartedly DO NOT AGREE.

Here’s the thing: boys and girls are different. Period. We’re not supposed to be the same. We’re supposed to be complimentary halves. We are not supposed to androgynous and homogeneous. Now, I agree 100% with teaching children that one gender is not better than another because I believe that to be true. But I categorically refuse to raise my daughter and my son as though they are the same gender. In so far as she is interested, I will teach my daughter to cook and to run a household and to be maternal. I will teach my son to be handy with tools, to be a gentleman and to change the oil in a car if those are things he’s interested in. This is not to say that I will not teach Sam how to cook or clean or that I won’t teach Maddie to change a tire or to mow the yard. I will. But girls and boys are different and I will raise them as such.

I’m fine with Sam playing with dolls or wanting his nails painted as a little boy. I’m fine with Maddie loving dinosaurs and pretending to be Hercules every day. But I want them to grow up to be an exemplary man and a woman. I don’t want to try and force them to go against thousands of years of genetic programing by denying who they really are. I don’t understand why we’re so afraid to admit that men and women are different and that it’s OK. Personally, I’m not a very “girly” girl, but I’m very feminine. I’m a stay at home mom, for crissake. It doesn’t get more feminine than that. And as a heterosexual woman, I am attracted to masculine men. (Do not get me started on straight men in skinny jeans and eyeliner who use more hair product than I do.) I love it when my husband fixes something around the house, or changes the oil in our cars. Just like he loves it when I make us a wonderful meal or when he comes home to a clean house and a closet full of clean clothes. We both take care of our family and are equally important to our family’s success, BUT WE DO THIS IN VERY DIFFERENT WAYS.

(This is not intended to be a slight toward gay or transgendered children or adults. I am speaking only as a straight adult and about straight kids. If one or both of my kids turn out to be gay or transgendered then my plan will change, of course.)