What kind of a food name is Goulash?

Tuesday, January 19th 2016

I made Goulash on Monday. I am trying to plan meals better and I hate doing the same thing week to week. I have given up on my kids trying to eat all of it so I hit and miss or have alternate ideas for them on these kinds of nights but they generally only like knock off spaghettios for soup.

I think the word itself is completely unappeasing...I don't think that is a word but I can't think of a better description. I will tell you that it was very good and simple to make. I did do a search and according to the www.kitchenproject.com I found the History of Goulash. Basically it is a meat dish with vegetables of choices thrown in with paprika. And that is exactly what I made.

Getting my children to eat has always been difficult but I do have them eating mostly chicken dishes such as chicken curry and fajita chicken. I am trying to branch them out but I have to be careful. I did finally get them to eat roast and a hobo steak which is basically a hamburger wrapped in foil and baked. Since they are homeschooled I want to feed them better meals and also more wholesome and not packaged meals (although we do love our mac n cheese in a box!)

I generally try to make things but I am not sure how to get them to eat things such as goulash. The eldest loves meat, potatoes, and ketchup but not in the same dish heaven forbid. The youngest is more game to try things and will eat the carrots out of stews along with meats unless it is hamburger. She does not care for hamburgers in general but I can get her to eat a bit with lots of ketchup.

I never can seem to get them to eat and like the same meal. One loves taco night, the other hates it. One likes hamburger night, the other wants a hotdog. And then when I fix hotdogs in the summer, the one that likes hamburgers is all offended. I mean really. So I have learned to settle with 3 out of 4 in the family. Hubby loves it all as long as it is gluten free so he is easy to please!

Out of Control

This week feels like I am spiraling out of control. The closer I get to the next change in my work life the more panicked I become. I know I can be a good manager and want the opportunity but I am terrified and feel like an imposter to take it on.

Why do I feel like this? Why am I still struggling? Why am I so anxious and pissed off at the world...at God...at myself? I want to right this ship but not sure how or if I even care to right it anymore.

My sanity is being pushed, my faith is being pushed, my sense of being is being pushed. I woke up angry in the middle of the night because of the volleyball season. I NEVER do that. I was one to get angry but then let it go and move on and anymore I can't seem to move on and I don't know why. Everything I do it seems to point me back to that. I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to see anything about it, I don't want to hear about it yet it keeps coming up like bad food. 

This week has been hectic as usual but Wed I took my car in for a recall repair and got off the interstate and followed the rules of the road but someone honked at me. Normally I am like whatever but this day I flipped them off. So they chased me and rode my butt to the dealership. I braked hard and stopped short of the entrance to leave this woman's butt hanging out as she turned into the dealership to follow me. Maybe she thought I wanted to fight and was pulling over??? I had not thought about that actually that she thought I wanted to confront her. Instead I sat there watching her and she decided to get out of the car! As soon as she was fully out, I drove off to the garage bay to, what I had planned was to dive into the safety of the garage...only to realize they were not open yet. Luckily my husband was behind her and was annoyed she had stopped in the way and went around her so she took off. I was a bit worked up for awhile after that.

Today, I had drank my morning coffee and had my secondary constitutional after, only to stand up and feel my phone slide out of my pocket of my track pants and into the toilet with said constitutional. I quickly grabbed it before the water had time to do any damage. I washed the cover thoroughly and then clorox wiped the phone itself and let it dry to make sure it have any damage. 

Then I took my 17 year old to take her drivers permit test....for the 8th or 9th time...and she literally took 5 minutes to take the test. I understand the kid has test anxiety but you got to take longer than 5 minutes to take a 25 question test that only allows like 2 or 3 missed answers. 

The more I thought about it the madder I got. I ended up chewing her out which made her feel worse and me like a low life but I was able to explain that she needed to take longer than 5 minutes next time. 

Then I had an old peer reach out to me about a job opening. I am a bit bitter as this person NEVER said anything to me much after my layoff but then suddenly wanted to talk. I think on any other week I would have been fine but today I was already worked up and was just not into it. 

I called a peer to talk to her and I had told her about my car drama the day before and she very gently scolded me. She had me on speaker phone and my language was awful and she has a one year old that is picking up words and her husband heard us and asked if that was me and was I alright...as this was very out of character for me. I really appreciate her doing that as I needed that reality check. I was also a tad embarrassed about my mouth which has gotten bad and I need to control it. There is no excuse. 

I am also avoiding another friend...for no real good reason except she has done it to me, although not likely as intentional as I am doing, but because she just shuts down but then again that is what has happened to me. I have shut down emotions and she triggers too many and I see her and I get mad about volleyball so I am just avoiding her. It hurts as that is not my nature but neither is waking up in the middle of the night spitting mad...falling asleep crying quietly to myself...feeling depressed and despair over it...and then finding I was taken off the FB admin rights on the page three weeks ago...I don't care but the timing wasn't good as I decided to stop following the Falcon web pages and several of the parents as the only reason we were friends was because of volleyball but they screwed me over so I no longer have any loyalty to them so I unfollowed them and became almost euphoric with that step. I also missed my pills yesterday and I almost feel like that was not good for me after taking them again...not the missing them. 

I feel off kilter, out of balance, out of touch, out of control, lost, angry, alone, withdrawn, and desperately needing someone to talk to but refusing to reach out.

Then I had a call with a peer whom I normally enjoy talking to today and he wanted to talk to me about a topic that is very touchy with many. I listened to him but I don't want to be persuaded as I feel I am slowly in the minority with my thinking and will likely be persecuted before my life cycle runs its course the way things are going. I hope not as that is not a world I want my kids living in but I can't control that but I can influence their thinking by giving them facts to make their own decisions for. 

I feel like I am a half cocked gun ready to go off with the slightest bump and my safety is broken. I don't want that to occur as my friend said too many people are dangerous and my life and career is not worth ruining or shortening because of poor decisions. 

I am ready for this week to be over so I decided to take off work on Friday and just spend time with the family and get work done around the house and relax. I hope it resets my system.  

Life After Cancer

 Life moves on...whether you do or not. 2022 was extremely rough. I LOVE to read and I could not focus for longer than 15 minutes. I forced myself to read an entire book in the summer but my stress of not confiding in my friend my frustrations and isolating and suffering in silence was more than I could handle.

I talked to my doctor and got put on a low dose of Zoloft so I could function. I ended up speaking more to my friend but I still struggled through the year. We started the season and child 2 was a junior so she was told she wouldn't get to play much. She got played hardly at all so the season sucked...even when the team was winning by a lot or losing by a lot...she wasn't played and it hurt for both of us. She cried more than ever and I stayed so angry...and I was also was still angry from the cancer and the ups and down. 

Then work became increasingly more stressful to the point of massive layoffs in the spring of 2023 that gave me PTSD from being laid off myself in 2019. Work demands from dealing with 5 different asian countries plus the US and EMEA had me at my wits end. 

The layoffs affected several great people and close friends. I had gotten past my cancer woes by switching my care to the local cancer center instead of the local hospital and they explained my issues were just post surgical changes and were nothing to worry about. I am finally seeing the oncologist every 4 months vs every 3. I just had a follow up mammogram during the layoffs so that added to the stress but I got good news and no signs of cancer so I go back in another 6 months and then if that goes well I can move out to a year so I am hopeful that stays on track.

I have gained weight (I got down to 130 lbs) with the up and down stress and Zoloft. I am at 141 lbs now and that isn't horrible but I don't want to gain all of my weight I lost back so that adds to my stress so I have been watching my food intake and not stuff myself from stress which helps. 

Then to add to all of this stress I found out that due to parent drama several girls decided to not come back to play volleyball and go play for a rival team which caused us to not have enough kids. This shit has been brewing for a while. This parent screwed me over during a club year. Honestly, the coach also let it happen because she wanted her daughter to not be stuck on that team so we got waived down and screwed. This parent caused enough drama that he was banned from coming back which affected his daughter and his behavior led the refs coming up with a bad name for him. Now this year he tried to come back and then when told no he started shit and now we don't have enough kids to have an 18 or a 16 girls team. So my daughter get screwed her senior year. It affected the coaches daughter and another younger player. But turns out the coaches daughter can go play for a school that is not too far from them and she can coach part time so she gets to finish out her senior year. The younger girl, I found out tonight is ALSO going to go play for this school so yet again we get screwed. My friend wanted us to come watch games and spend time with them and #2 and I thought we would support them but if the other gets to play I am not sure I have the ability to attend games. I am still so angry that I can't see straight and I really hate people. 

I am tired of driving friendships and getting nothing back. I am tired of an organization that we got 2 good years out of 7 in and gave heart and soul to and have nothing but pain and angst to show for it. 

I have about decided that I just don't care anymore and it pains me because I used to care and do things for people without much thought to it because it made me feel good but now I just feel like a whore and invisible so why bother anymore. I am bitter. 

I feel like I pour my heart out and then I get ignored so I can't take that anymore so pushing people away is the only thing I know so I will likely only speak when spoken to and put my energy into my work and family and all others can kiss my ass. 

Cancer and its demons

Cancer sucks...there is no other way to say it or soften it.

I finished radiation treatment Dec 1st. I have a very busy corporate job that demands my attention. My workload began to be insane in Jan with two regulatory reports due with in 4 months of each other. Add to that I was developing a new analysis plan for a region that wants local data. This geography is in Asia and this country group is very demanding. They do not take breaks it seems. They work late hours and weekends. I would take a week or so to work through details with other staff and they would turn it back to me with more changes requested in less than three or four days. I also have presentations to prepare for to leadership plus meetings that took up my time during the day leaving me little time to get the actual work done. 

At this time I thought my workload was dragging me down and making me tired due to the demands on my time. I also took my youngest to basketball games, practice and then a tournament in Feb out of town in an ice storm. I saw the oncologist and for the first time I complained about being tired. Normally I don't complain because I don't see the point as I see people more sick than me so I don't feel like I have the right to complain. (I had sat in the waiting room for 4 hours that day so that didn't help). She felt it was radiation side effects. But she did check my iron, thyroid and said I was not anemic or low on any of it. I can not explain that level of tired I went through. 

Having a surprise mammogram scheduled for me that went long added to the anxiety because they were checking a sore spot on me as well as they noticed the cyst on the right side was larger than it was last year so they were concerned. The radiologist wanted me to have a biopsy but I refused as the cyst was just aspirated in Aug and was benign so they let me go. That was a Th. On Monday I got a call from the surgeon she wanted it biopsied so they called me on Wed that it was scheduled for Friday. We were due to leave town on the following Monday for our last basketball tournament in Missouri so the stress was absolute murder on me. Then a friend called me that her mom had just been diagnosed with cancer and wanted to pick my brain. My empathy has always been in tune and I hurt for others and have become a good listener but since my own diagnosis I was carrying everyone's pain and it was crushing my soul. 

Add to that my friend's dad had alzheimers and I worried about her constantly as I know that can be draining emotionally to her on top of her working in a tax office which is super busy in the winter leading up to April. Then I get a random text from her updating me on her situation. Her dad had been found beaten up, her MIL had gotten a cancer diagnosis in Dec and had just found out she had to have chemo at the last minute. The weight of all of this plus my own stress of work and anxieties and fears cancer has saddled me with sent me to very dark places. I had no more energy or will left to fight cancer again. If I did not have kids and family I would have gotten in my car and drove until the gas or the land ran out. 

The biopsy turned out fine and the cyst was still benign but the stress of waiting for that plus getting stressful information from a close friend was almost more than I could handle. The last tournament we went to was horrible so we were all not having a great time so we ended up doing things as if it was a vacation to make something out of nothing. 

Add to this there was a spring formal held and I noticed on FB that all but two kids went to the dance..a couple of which who never go to anything like this. One of those two not invited kids was my daughter. She had apparently known about it  as her friend had texted her about it but she didn't think she wanted to go. I was upset as a friend organized some of the girls to go...but never called me to ask if I was interested in my daughter going. I noticed that this friend always had drama around her but I didn't realize until then that she causes as much drama as she is involved in it. Seeing pictures plastered all over FB and knowing no one asked if we were interested hurt. I can take a lot and typically don't care we are not involved in things but seeing people whom I thought were friends not even ask us if we were also going hurt. It hurt like nothing I have felt in a while. This has caused me to close off again and basically hate people. I tolerate those around me and jest with them but I am not sure if I departed this earth if anyone would truly notice. It still stings now some two months later. 

Add to this my friend's dad died and the stress of going to that funeral was almost more than I could handle. It brought back so many repressed emotions and feelings and it was all I could do to get through it without becoming a sobbing mess myself. I fought it back. 

I still struggle with my emotions. I so desperately want to talk and share....but know no one really wants to hear about all of this crap. Unless you have been through cancer or have anxieties it is hard to relate to me. I have friends that have anxieties that can relate or friends that had cancer but don't dwell on the fear...so I feel like I can't find the balance I need. I feel like I do ok and then something makes me crumble. 

I dread our upcoming VB season. I see my friend more and it makes me happy but then I feel like a whore with my emotions and thoughts stealing time to whine about them and then feeling horrible and guilty afterwards. Then it is over as quick as it started and I am alone again with not much interaction. I wondered if I didn't ask anyone to lunch would I ever go out and eat with a friend again? I seem to be the one to instigate the lunches...so right now I am stopping that. I am also not making myself available as I once did during practice. I get so easily hyper-focused on that and then when I can't get that time with a friend I go through withdrawals like a drug addict. I can't do that to myself anymore. So I am pulling back with my emotions. On the outside you won't tell a difference but on the inside I am slowing dying and becoming hard hearted again. I don't want to but people let you down...they can't help it. And I no longer want to be dependent on people or the pain they cause. But my new found anxiety isn't letting me move on fast. And I can't move past cancer as I have to see the oncologist every three months and the surgeon every 6 months plus have repeat tests. I know they do it to keep me protected and alive but I don't have much mental strength left anymore. Cancer plants demons in your mind and even with a solid faith and belief in God I am struggling. I go between leaning on God and being angry that I got this diagnosis and that I ever met and got close to my friend. I saw her tonight and it is as if nothing changed...she literally has no idea of what I am struggling with because of her own stress with her dad and MIL and then she has her own demons she battles so she doesn't notice I stopped texting two months ago except for random things. I honestly wish I had not gotten to know her better. I don't have many close friends and I work remotely so I have no work colleagues I see. I am lonely and I never realized it. I try to spend time with my husband but I am not much great company as I am lost in thought often. I also struggle to talk to my girls as I am having ok moments and then moments I feel so dark. 

So here I sit needing to go to bed because I am tired as I tried to read a bit but my mind was wandering with all of this in my head that I hoped by typing it would not stay in my head any longer. But as I sit here feeling my blood pressure creeping up, the anxiety rising, and anger welling I am wondering if this was a futile exercise. 

Gluten Free cooking and lactose free milk-2016

Wednesday, January 20th 2016

So I have learned to cook gluten free (GF) now with hubby having a gluten sensitivity and the youngest doing better if I keep less gluten in her diet. I had been wanting to try pasta sourced in Italy as supposedly the wheat over there is not grown like we do and is still closer to the older wheat styles. So I did what any respectable loving wife would do..I experimented on my husband.

I bought pasta MADE IN ITALY and I used it for our spaghetti night. No what, we did NOT have cramps like he has with American wheat products. Now, he did still have some rumblings but not the roll in the floor cramping and screaming fits he used to have. So now we can have lasagna, and spaghetti and cold pasta dishes in the summer! I find it tastes better too.

Hubby is always doing research and reading and he found things called fodmaps or foods that can trick your body into thinking it is another food that is an offender. When he followed that and cut out lactose in his milk, and backed off chocolate, coffee (sorry I would take the cramps over giving up my morning hit of java) nuts and avacados he felt much better. Thankfully lactose free isn't what it was several years ago. Kind of like fat free foods....gross!
 I just buy lactose free now and use it in cooking and he drinks it with his cookies and he isn't hurting.

I also love King Arthur's GF all-purpose flour. I find that I can substitute in most cases one to one in place of regular flour. Breads don't apply b/c GF bread is just hideous unless you toast it but I have found a recipe that is good toasted and that I use when I make dressing at Thanksgiving.

He is a happy camper b/c of the variety of food I cook and the fact that I can make 90% of his favorite foods where he can eat them and they actually taste good. The kids don't run when I mention something is GF also. :)

 

**Update. Hubby didn't need to eat GF. We actually follow the FODMAP protocol and he avoids certain foods and that has helped his irritable bowel tremendously. We cook a lot so we can control the ingredients and the sodium and that has helped a lot. 

Mental anguish

 Everybody always says "Oh you will handle cancer fine! You are strong so you will get through this fine!"... I didn't want to be strong...I wasn't fine. I could hardly eat. I had to borrow my girls jeans so I would have something to wear. I had to have hubby poke holes in my belts so I could keep my pants up and use my belts. 

I had gone from a size 12 down to a size 6. I kept getting compliments on my weight loss but I couldn't always explain why I was able to lose it. I had become extremely emotional. I began to struggle with anger before radiation. I was mad at everyone. I was mad at God for putting me through this. I was mad I couldn't handle the constant blows that I felt were being thrown at me. It was like a roller coaster that I couldn't get off no matter how hard I tried. 

I began to withdraw a lot to my family and to my friends. I needed to talk but refused to burden my friends and I didn't want to go see a therapist because I knew if I could just talk about it occasionally I would be ok but then I would hold it in and not talk so I wouldn't burden anyone...

I tried to talk to hubby more and he tried to help me but he had no one to talk to about it so that caused tension for us. My youngest didn't make the club volleyball team she tried out for...which was a blessing as I would have had no time or energy to get her to the practices. But that was what set me off into a sobbing fest for 20 minutes. 

I felt bad for the kids because they saw me struggling but didn't know how to help me and I couldn't' talk to them except to tell them I would be ok just give me time. I tried to talk to one friend but she has her own demons and is bad not to text back some days when she is struggling herself. Unfortunately, those were the days I needed her the most as we had a knack for having crises at the same time. She did talk me off the ledge when I was so angry and withdrawn. I still struggle with that. I overthink things now and if I reach out and texted her and she didn't answer I read that as I can't deal with you right now...then I would fear that she also had something going wrong and I was being insensitive and whiney...I annoyed myself. 

I finally turned to another friend who doesn't live near me but works with me and vomited what was bothering me. She was able to talk me off the ledge again. My faith is strong and I turn to God for many things but I was struggling with this one but I kept praying when I could muster the strength and I read my daily devotionals as well. When I could I listened to online church as I did not want to go in person with my stress level for fear of contracting covid on top of all of this. 

I have had a spiritual battle going on in my head for weeks now. I know I will be alright and that everything is in God's hands but the right now has me stressed and the devil tells me otherwise and then I overthink texts and comments and I am a hot mess. 

Poor hubby hasn't had it easy either. He has not outlet so of course we fight and our fights are very heated. I talked with another friend and her husband and they also fought. I was so mad one night I went out side with light clothing on in 49 degree temps with the intent to just walk but I realized I only had slippers on so I just stood outside and was hellbent to not go back inside until I froze or they drug me in. Long story, I did get a tad hypothermia and they brought me back in. It took an hour for me to warm back up by the fire. 

I am at a point that I am either a tad psychotic about my actions, angry, emotional at the drop of a hat, or I laugh oddly at things...I am not sure that I am slowly losing my mind honestly.

During radiation, I couldn't forget I had cancer as every time I took off my clothes I had marks and stickers for radiation so I wasn't allowed to forget.At least now a month past finishing treatments I am able to have more and more stronger days. I can now talk about it with some family without getting too emotional. The problem is you end up comforting people...not what I want to do. So I do not like to talk about it much to those that don't know. I just need to get past the visits, and procedures to be able to move on and I am hoping that I can do that this year as the clock rolls over to the new year...

Cancer part 2

 Most of the late summer and fall were a lot of hurry up and wait...I talked with my gynecologist who I pushed to recommend a doctor she would go to as she is my age. She sent me to a breast surgeon who has been highly recommended by all who have seen her. 

So I saw this surgeon in August 17th. (My youngest had turned 16 at the Monroe tournament and we had made the decision for me to get vaccinated on July 30th due to the unknowns of my cancer and to also get her first vaccine dose on the 31st of July given we were going to be in a petri dish of germs for this tournament.) It was one of the hardest things to do to sit in the cancer center with a people you know all have cancer and many were quite a bit older. Thankfully my mom went with me given her past history hubby and I felt she made more sense to attend appointments. 

The surgeon be bopped her way in and said, "We can take care of this easy!" I was a bit shocked. She did an exam on me and declared she could not palpate anything so all I needed was a partial mastectomy (or a lumpectomy). She then spent the next hour explaining and drawing pictures. That reduced my stress almost immediately. We decided to schedule it on Aug 23rd as Aug 20th was a bit too soon for me to get my work and life in order to be off. 

I only took off that day for surgery. Youngest had a volleyball game that night that I attended. I think the parents (and my friend) thought I was crazy. I was awake and not sore and I did not want to miss any of my child's games. I probably pushed a bit too hard as I was extremely sore after that but I walked as soon as I could to get my strength back. I hate being slowed down.

Youngest and I also had our last doses of the vaccine that weekend of the 20th which was another reason to postpone the surgery so I could recover from the shot effects. 

At that point I had begun not being able to eat hardly anything due to the stress. My stomach hurt constantly so I only ate small bites of things. I had weighed 155 Sept 2020 and began using a program through work that helped me lose weight but Christmas derailed me from all of the food shoved at you during the holidays. So I stayed around 150 most of that spring and summer until the diagnosis. I lost almost 4lbs in just a few days from the stress. 

I was supposed to have a GI consult for the colonoscopy my NP insisted I get done on the 7th...the day after labor day. We had family over that Monday the 6th and I felt fine until about mid-day and then I began to feel bad. I took my temp and it was running 99 so I just took some Tylenol and drank water and didn't think much about it. My family went out to the pool to swim so I went outside to visit with my father in law and I realized I was parched. I had run out of water and was miserable but didn't get up to do anything about it until I was achy...which I realized meant my fever had come back and was now higher. I got up and excused myself which caused everyone to also get out of the pool. It was about 80 degrees outside and I was almost shivering. I went inside and got a sweater and then chatted with my brother in law's girlfriend. I had to excuse myself again because I needed to use the restroom from all of the water I drank and also I wanted to take my temp again. At that point it was now 101. I went and laid down and began violently shaking but had not brought the thermometer with me so I texted my kids to bring it to me. By then the fever had climbed to 102 so I had the girls bring me more Tylenol and some water and to discreetly let hubby know as our family was still there. By the time the kids got his attention and the family left it had climbed to 102.7. I knew I was in trouble and needed to do something else to get it down so the kids got hubby and he helped me take as cold of a shower as I could tolerate. It caused me to shake more violently but that and switching to some Theraflu helped the fever stop climbing. When I woke up the next morning, I had to call and cancel my consult as it was still hovering around 100. I had no other symptoms so did not suspect Covid. I rescheduled my GI consult for later in the month. 

I had also been set up to see the oncologists at our local center in my hometown. That appointment wasn't scheduled until the 20th of Sept. I was out of my mind on all of the scheduling and waiting. I saw her and because I was estrogen receptor positive she wanted to do a pathology test on the tissue sample to assess if I needed chemo. I almost broke down right there. I was not expecting to have to have chemo given it was found early and small. She said given my age and the unknowns of the pathology she felt it was safer to assess the tissue because she didn't want either of us regretting any decisions not made later on and risk it coming back. By then I had lost down to 138lbs. 

I saw the GI doctor on the 27th of September and he agreed that we needed to get the colonoscopy done and quickly given I might have to have chemo so we scheduled it for Sept 30th. My head was spinning from all of the decisions that were being made so quickly now. I spent two days doing a clear liquid diet then a 12 hour prep. I lost down to 133lbs but made myself sick when I could eat solids again! Thankfully the procedure went well and I had no issues so I am good for another 10 years so that was the only good news I had gotten in a while. 

I saw the radiation oncologist on the 5th of Oct to discuss setting up radiation. Thankfully because it was so small they would only do 3 weeks of radiation (versus the normal 6-8 weeks).

I saw the chemo oncologist again to get the results of my path test back and she said I had a 21 on a scale of 100 so adding chemo would not add any benefit to my treatment. That was only the second time I could smile and be happy at a doctor's appointment in a couple of months. 

The CT scanner was down at my center so I had to go to another one in the next town over on Oct 28th. I started radiation on Nov 9th. My only ask was to not start any treatments until Volleyball Nationals was over as I we had to travel for that and you can't miss a radiation treatment. 

I did radiation for a minute and a half. From the time I left my house, treatment, and to back home again was 25 minutes so I was able to work during it. I only began to feel the effects in the second week. I had some soreness and swelling the second week and then the third week I worked long hours to try and catch up on some work during the slow Thanksgiving holiday week and I was tired by 7pm at night. I didn't' do radiation on Thanksgiving day or on the first day so I didn't finish until Dec 1st. By then we had started basketball with my youngest so when they asked if I was feeling tired I told them "How would I know with my life?"

In the middle of all of this, two friend contracted covid and my mom's oldest sister went on hospice on Oct 28th and died Nov 2nd and we buried her on the 6th I had also had a freak fever again but not as high as the one in September. Stress was beginning to take it's toll on my mind heavily.