I believe the last time I actually showed y'all something I made was the diaper cake. And I just saw that baby last weekend, and she is now two.

However, I tweeted a picture of the little angel's new handband holder and someone wanted to know where I bought it, which was hilarious to me. 

First: The Hair. My daughter has really, really long hair. That she hates to have brushed. But yet, every day it must be brushed, because I have a thing about her going out looking like a member of 1989 Bon Jovi. She screams, even when I use a Blondie-approved amount of conditioner when I wash it.

I've been trying to come up with a way to get her to take more ownership of her own hair. I've also been trying to come up with a way to get the drawers in her bathroom open. They are (were) crammed with hair accessories that she never ever wears.

Then on Sunday it rained.

The culimination of the rain and the hair accessory issue led to the creation of a few items.

First! The headband holder of Twitter fame.

I made mine out of a roll of paper towels covered in scrapbooking paper. I have tons and tons of scrapbooking paper even though I have never scrapped in my life. It's pretty and my girl loves it and it comes in big, yummy books. I love paper, all kinds of paper, I'm sorry, trees. 

The problem was how to get the pretty paper to stick to the paper towels. I tried taping, no luck. Then (and trust me, it made total sense at the time), I tried stapling, with the staple open up like elementary teachers do with their bulletin boards (they do still have those, right?). It looked AWESOME! And then I took the pressure off and all the staples went shooting out. But then I realized I had a hot glue gun! So I hot glued the paper to the paper towel roll and that worked and there was great rejoicing. Unfortunately, I had no cover for the part on top, so I stuck that flower in there and glued the petals down. Then that looked like shit, so I hot glued a pink ribbon around the top. Now, if you are in my house and you look closely at this thing, you will see it looks like a second-grader made it. However, once you load it up with all the headbands, no big. CRAFTS!

Next, I took all the combs and brushes and soft head bands and put them in a box that used to hold greeting cards. I buy a lot of greeting cards in bulk, because I always forget people's birthdays or events until the day of, and then I have to run downstairs and search for something appropriate. I also love the boxes they come in, which are super sturdy and usually pretty, too. This green one was a little blah so the little angel stuck another one of those pretty pieces of scrapping paper to it, and then I hot glued some more junk on the front to bedazzle it.

Finally, I made two of these hairband holders out of paper towel rolls. Since the little angel requires hair bands not only to put in ponytails but also to tie back her tshirts so they look correct with her skinny jeans (don't ask), she needs two a day and we can never find them. Now we have one of these hair band holders upstairs and one downstairs and please stop asking me where you can find a ponytail holder, child.

Of course it is covered with more pretty scrappy paper. Just because!

So this morning, my girl was almost late for the school bus because she was messing with her hair. And when she came down, her hair looked like Marcia Brady had brushed it 100 strokes on each side. She had used two different hair brushes to get out all the tangles. And she was wearing a headband that hadn't seen the light of day in months.

I WIN!

I first felt it when I was pregnant with the little angel. I got scared, even though I know legs are often filled with random lumps that mean nothing, because my mother found lumps in her leg twice when I was just a little older than the little angel, and those lumps turned into years of fear, chemo, radiation, vomiting, pain and shuttling back and forth between friends and relatives.

I went to the dermatologist then. I was hugely pregnant. Because of its location on my thigh, the nurse told me to depants and sit on the chair. So I did, feeling vulnerable and exposed, for an hour and a half while I waited for someone to see me. When the doctor finally arrived, he poked at my leg, told me it was nothing and smirked at me. I started crying and insisted he take a baseline, which he did, but I never went back or called him again, because I was so mortified at the experience.

So then I tried to ignore it, because it's nothing.

This past winter, I was doing one of my aerobics DVDs when I had to do a weighted squat and tap my elbows on my thighs, and I happened to hit The Lump. And it HURT! I felt it and it was noticeably bigger than it had been before. 

For months, I would feel it in the shower. I noticed another one that kind of hurt near my knee, but it felt different. I worried.

Finally, over Easter, my family convinced me to go to my doctor with my laundry list of minor complaints. My gastro problems. My neck and back pain. And The Lump.

My doctor took them all seriously. She felt The Lump and sent me to get an ultrasound, where I saw The Lump. The ultrasound tech said it looked normal. My doctor said based on my family history and the fact that it was growing, she wanted it out.

Yesterday, I went to see the surgeon. I had to explain my life history to the med student -- the past surgeries, the eating disorder, the anxiety, the gastro problems. I had to take my pants off and I had to wait an hour for the doctor to come see me. When he did, he explained that cancer of this type is very very very very very very rare and the fact that I had someone in my family with it made it just very very rare. 

Then he told me BUT he had a friend who'd had a lump at a lipo incision and it turned out to be some other very very very very rare and bizarre form of cancer and she'd had to get chemo and radiation and the whole nine yards. I think he was trying to help me justify the expense and inconvenience of removing something that was probably nothing, but instead he just freaked me out even worse, which isn't hard when something very very very very very rare has already happened to your mother TWICE.

Fuck your very very rare.

So then he asked me what I wanted to do. And I said "I've been worrying about this for nine years. Get it out of me." And as I said it, I realized I was going to start crying again, thus completing the humiliating flashback to pregnancy. All three of them -- the doctor, the nurse and the med student, watched me try to make it through the doctor explaining what would happen next without letting the tears actually fall off my eyelashes. I made it to the last sentence, and then I couldn't contain them any more. 

Nobody said anything. The nurse handed me a box of tissues and they all filed out the door. I wondered what they were saying about me in the hall, because I've been listening to med students whose voices are louder than they think discuss whether my problems are serious a lot in these past few weeks. 

It's pretty awful.

But I'm getting The Lump taken out, because it's growing and it hurts and the little angel is almost the age that I was when I found out my life was going to get derailed for a few years. Now on the other side of things, I know I would probably handle cancer even worse with an existing anxiety disorder and no family in town to shuttle to. I've been kind of a shitty mom in the past few weeks anyway what with trying to handle adjustments at work and Beloved being on the road and the little angel and me getting sick for a week. I've yelled more than usual. I've looked up from email and realized I didn't know which yard she was playing in. I've made dinner late and it hasn't contained vegetables. I've gone in to check on her after she went to bed and realized I hadn't said I love you that day. 

I'm sad and I'm scared and I want it out. So it's coming out in two weeks.

I have to go to the doctor today. The surgeon, actually. I might post later. I might not. It's nothing serious, I don't think. I hope. I'll feel better once I know more.

Since I'm not feeling chatty, I finally put up my Get Moooooving gift pack giveaway on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews. Hint: contains Cuisinart and iTunes, get on over there.

After my whinefest on Friday afternoon, I ended up falling asleep on the couch Friday night at around nine. But on Saturday, the babysitter came! And she hadn't been here since it was freezing cold! Even though she had hurt her back! And we thanked her and thanked her and toddled off to see Jimmy Buffett in the Power & Light district of Kansas City.

It was a gorgeous night, and the P&L was packed with an older crowd sporting grass skirts and hats shaped like flamingos, and everyone was happy. As Beloved and I sat listening to the cheesier songs by Jimmy, I found myself thinking how much I love him (though I really love his ballads more than Cheeseburger in Paradise).

Why do I love him when he drives so many people crazy?

Because he loves life. This is a guy who made an entire career of pointing out how nice it is to be outside when it's warm. How little you actually need in order to relax. How to live in the moment. When I was anorexic and cold all the time, I became a bit obsessed with Jimmy Buffett music, traveling in my head to a beach free of self-induced pressures and mental anguish and problems. When I was in college, I got a tattoo of a sun on my left foot so even if it wasn't in the sky I could still see it and think about what warmth and light means to me. 

Jimmy Buffett makes me go through my list of tastes and sensations that make me happy, things that are so easy to accomplish it's ridiculous. I love flowers. At Walmart right now, you can get a plant for less than a soda. I love the feeling of wind on the soles of my feet. All you need for that is a warm day. 

I needed old Jimmy so bad this weekend, and hearing all that old music pulled me out of my slump. He reminded me that as an adult, I have been true to my love of sunshine. I didn't wait for someday. I married my also-beach-loving husband in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Even as not-rich, family-in-the-Midwest people, we have managed to get air in our hair. We bought a bank foreclosure near water. We have Vicki, the 1997 Sebring convertible. We have a 1974 AMF Puffer sailboat we bought from my friend's dad for a dollar. We eat outside almost every night in the summertime.

I listened, Jimmy! I am reaching for the sunshine! Onward! (I'm barefoot.)

The little angel went to school today after puking for two days. Puking, then feeling great and wishing I wasn't working. Of course, I felt horrible for her, but I also felt horrible for me because it is so hard to try to write and meet deadlines and participate in meetings while simultaneously entertaining/caregiving of a sometimes-feeling-sick-but-mostly-not eight-year-old who insists on playing Zhu Zhu pets while bumping into your laptop because she must sit RIGHT ON TOP OF YOU. 

This morning, she cried for almost an hour because she didn't want to go back to school and be in the school musical this afternoon that I worked late last night to be able to take off work to attend. She'd missed a bunch of rehearsals due to being sick and is worried because she has a speaking part. Beloved tried one approach and I tried another, and either way she was wound for sound five minutes before the bus came. Finally, she calmed down to sniffles and sat on my lap while we waited and I seriously considered just declaring it Saturday and being done with everything.

Because I am so done with this week.

I'm done with the four-day headache. I'm done with the doctors' visits for me -- I found out this week I have to get new doctors and more tests for two different health problems. The tests will be uncomfortable and expensive and I'm so done with that. I'm done with cleaning up barf. I'm done with my cat who won't stop sneezing in my face. I'm done with my endless lists. I'm done with the laundry and the house that has grown dingy again and the thought of spending my entire Saturday cleaning it, again. I'm done with the tears and the fears and the effort of dragging myself through this week. I'm done with wishing and praying about my novel. I'm done with trying to be upbeat and stop whining. This is my blog, and today, it's a whinefest. 

I know I have many blessings and should be happy my body is mostly working. But right now, WHINING FEELS GOOOOOOOOOOOOD. 

Thank you for indulging me. I feel better already.

---

One thing I'm not cranky about: notebooks. See my share of Miro notebooks on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews.

Today my co-worker Denise pointed out this post on the unimportance of stuff. This was my favorite line:

 I chose not to mourn stuff and save all my sorrow for people. 

My family has always been rather divided on the importance of stuff. There are some of us who hold items very near and dear and are devestated if anything happens to them because the stuff reminds them so much of a good memory or a lost beloved. And then there are others of us -- like me -- who delight in getting rid of stuff and actively work toward not forming attachments to it.

I wasn't always like this. I had very stong attachments to stuff as a child and young adult. A few months after my grandparents died, my roommate in Chicago threw away a blanket from their house. (He claims it was an accident; I claim it was part of his oversight issues.) I freaked out on him. FREAKED OUT. I remember spending hours searching through all sorts of apartments and houses when I would randomly remember a possession and didn't know where it was. Oh, how I cried when I couldn't find (insert possession here -- there were many). I was very, very, very upset a few years ago when I lost my wedding ring. I kept my grandmother's extensive shoe collection for years after she died, even though I never wore one pair. I used to carry a day planner around in Chicago filled with quotes and pictures and cards -- one of my friends actually expressed amazement that I would haul around so much with me every day. I couldn't imagine going anywhere without it.

Somewhere along the line, I became concerned about my attachments to stuff, especially my writing. I made back-ups of back-ups (and still do) and worried so much about what would happen if I lost all those poems and short stories and novels. Right now I have all my notes on my next novel in one notebook that I have ferreted away behind my printer. I haven't typed them up anywhere, and it would be pretty bad if I lost that notebook. 

But I'm actively working on not forming an attachment to it, or to those exact notes. I'm not ready to start that novel yet, not when the one I'm on is out with editors now.

I think it was my grandparents' blanket that got me. Before I left Chicago, I sold the antique three-quarters bed of my grandmother's that I'd been sleeping on to a friend. I realized the depth of my despair over the blanket was really my grief for the people I loved so much. Their stuff is just their stuff, even the stuff made by them. I love the stuff, I cherish the stuff, I place the stuff in positions of honor around my house and celebrate the stuff, but I actively work not to get too attached to the stuff, because something could happen. A tornado. A fire. Just an accident in which said stuff gets broken. A robbery. I just don't ever want to feel that hurt by the absence of a thing again. 

I understand this is just me working against my anxiety, and it's  perfectly fine for other people to feel a different way about stuff. My daughter is so attached to her stuffed animals that she mourned a bunny she gave away for months until I finally asked for it back from the neighbor and offered to replace it with something else. She's displaying a super-strong attachment to stuff, and who knows, maybe she will always feel that way. That's not wrong, and I won't discourage her from attaching to stuff. Especially when you're a kid, I think it's really helpful to have comfort objects.

I'm constantly reminding myself every time the sky turns green that the Corolla was just stuff, and now I have Vicki the convertible. If something happened to Vicki, something else would appear in her place. If my computer's hard drive gets wiped or I lose that notebook behind my printer, my writer mind will come up with a new story, maybe a story even better. I can't worry about losing things all the time. I have to trust I can create anew every lost story, I can replace every lost possession, I can grow and change to fit any new scenario. My people have to be the most important, and all my energy is going into them, because they cannot be replaced.

I will save my sorrow for them.

This morning, I was starting to think I was imagining the vise around my head and general body cramps as a virus. I decided to blame some new medication.

Then school called. The little angel had been in the health room twice, but she didn't have a temperature and the nurse suspected there was actually nothing wrong.

This is the kid who has never asked to stay home sick in her entire academic career. 

And I still felt like shit.

"I actually think I know what is wrong," I said. "I'll come and get her."

When I got there, the school nurse still looked puzzled. She looked, actually, as though she suspected we were both playing hooky (working from home means I'm often still in yoga pants at 11 am, and guess what? I was still in yoga pants at 11 am). I put my arm protectively around the girl and guided her outside. 

"You know this means you can't play with friends, right? You're really sick?"

When she met my eyes, it was like staring into my own aching self.

About five minutes ago, she threw up for the first time since she was about four years old. It's been so long since she's been sick, I think we'd both forgotten what that was like. I remember always bawling after barfing, but she just asked for a Kleenex and said she was hungry now that her stomach felt better. 

She is sometimes so me, and sometimes so her father. This would be inherited from her father, who would probably barf and then go chop down a tree if he were here. Lucky for him, he's traveling for work and gets to avoid the stank that is now our living room.

My poor little duck. And I also feel a little vindicated for moping around the house all week groaning as though I might die.

As promised, a photo gallery of the little angel's eighth birthday cake.

This was obviously not made by me.

I chopped off the top because it had her name on there and I'm still not into sharing that online. I'm bad with photos, but not that bad.

The number was made from white chocolate, I think.

Mr. Octopus sits on a bed of brown sugar sand. The entire cake was edible except for the toothpicks holding in the treasure chest. Note the suckers on the underside of his legs.

Coral and shells

The treasure chest was made from cocoa Rice Crispie treats.

Nemo. I know -- when she brought it over I just sat and stared at it for twenty minutes, asking her how she made all the parts.

Absolute best part: how much she loved it. Happy birthday to my sweet girl.

I'm still feeling pretty gross, so this is all I've got today. If you're a Kansas City local and are interested in contact info for my amazing baker friend, email me at ritajarens(at)gmail(dot)com.

Over at BlogHer my interview with Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess) is up -- Jenny's book comes out today, I think, and I'm so excited for her! 

This weekend we had the little angel's bday party, and the neighbor made the coolest cake I've ever seen in my life. Like it belongs on Cake Boss. But last night I slept like hell, the cat has a cold and keeps sneezing in my face and I have body aches I think I caught from the little girl who got puking sick the day after my girl's bday party. So, instead, here's a link I wrote to a post on BlogHer for today on why glasses are so damn expensive. Back tomorrow!