RIP Daily Hilse Dwyer

It was an honor to know Daisy Dwyer. She was brilliant. I babysat for her son for three years while I went to college. I remember being in awe of the books she published. She was an anthropologist and an attorney – how many people do you know who had two amazing careers?  

She was vivacious and full of life. When she talked to you, she really listened. I had many talks with her about her work as an anthropologist and as an attorney. I really admired her.

She was beautiful and elegant.

She tried hard to do everything in life — a career  and a family. I remember the Christmas season coming and it was so important that she have marzipan for her son.

Her son, Ben was everything to her. She wanted him to have the best of everything and she just wanted him to be healthy and happy always. 

She was happiest when she and Ralph got back together. 

She ate healthy all the time and still got cancer. And it went away and came back again. I met her in Manhattan while she was in remission and was so glad to see her.

When I saw her obituary, it made me sad because it didn’t reflect the amazing life she led.   

RIP Daisy.

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Found a lump on my cat’s back leg

First, I am really sorry you are searching for information about a lump on your cat’s back leg. We know how scary, sad and strange it felt. Who knew cats could get his.  

Our cat of 14+ years, Herb  developed a lump on his back leg. Although I couldn’t see how large it was, I could see it protruding a bit and when I touched it, it felt like a hard lump or mass rather than a small bump or pimple. We took him to the vet and they shaved the entire area. The lump appeared to be a lot larger than it looked with the fur. Although the vet wasn’t sure it was cancer, {Ugghhhhhhh}  he was leaning towards amputating the cat’s leg {DOUBLE UGHHHHHHH}. Why amputation? Because cancer in a cat’s leg typically wraps around the bone and if it is cancer, there is also a large chance that it can come back. We have used this vet for many years and we have a lot of  confidence in him because he has done fantastic work in the past and he genuinely loves pets. **We didn’t amputate and 6 months later our cat is healthy and bouncing aroudn the house);

Herb has a lot of tests done and although cancer wasn’t ruled out for sure, the cat is in good health otherwise (heart, lungs,kidney, etc). Cancer can’t be ruled out until a biopsy is performed. We were given a decision to make about whether we were going to amputate his leg or not.  We inquired about having a biopsy on the mass, but the vet said that it might burst.  I did a lot of thinking and wanted to make sure that my decision was in the best interest of the cat and not simply because we love the cat and want to keep him around.

I found myself going back and forth on what to do. When you make a decision about another person’s health (a child or an older person through a health proxy), the decision is pretty clear – do whatever you can to help the person.   When it’s a pet, you realize that doing a surgery (or in this case) amputating the leg may significantly lower the animal’s quality of life. And if it is cancer, it may come back in another place in the cat’s body.

But after a weekend of thinking, researching and praying,  I came to the only conclusion – The cat loves Lee and just wants to be with Lee…..we should do whatever we can to save him. And after looking at the newly shaven cat leg for several days, I think I imagined that it was getting larger.

Lee brought Herb to the vet this morning and talked with the vet. He asked the doctor to remove the tumor and if it was possible, to save the leg. The doctor at this point said it probably wasn’t possible. But then he drained the large lump on the cat’s leg and the bump was reduced to less than half it’s size. Lee told the the doctor if he didn’t think it was possible to save the leg, then he should amputate it (even writing that sounds bad). I just wanted what was best for the cat and all day I kept hoping we made the right decision.

This afternoon, we were told that the cat is resting easy and still has his leg. Did I tell you we have an awesome vet? When I called him, he said he got all of the mass that he could visibly see. He explained to Lee that the mass may come back and that if it is cancer, it can even grow in a different place in his body. For tonight, we are grateful that are our cat in in recovery.

Update 1: The cat was running around as soon as we brought him home.

Update 2 – Four months later, the mass came back. The doctor took Herb’s leg off. Did we want to do that? At this point we did because we wanted to keep our cat. We still felt we made the right decision in taking the lump off first. We wanted to give Herb the best life. So now our cat doesn’t have a leg. The first day he hopped around. Every day after, he was scooting around – up and down the stairs, jumping, almost like he normally was with 4 legs. 

Update 3 – The cancer came back throughout Herb’s body two months later. We fed him baby food with a tube and he willingly helped. Even though he ate two cans of baby food in the morning and two in the evening, he continued to lose weight from the cancer. He stayed close to us, but he stopped purring.  We had to let our friend go, even though we didn’t want to.  I am writing this here because looking back, I just wish I wasn’t afraid to have cut his leg off right from the beginning. Maybe he would have had more of a chance – maybe not. We would have spent several thousand thousands if we didn’t think we were doing the right thing at the time  – this cat was a family member. He would speak to us and nodded his head upward at us when we came into a room and sometimes that all a person needs at the moment. RIP my sweet friend.

Good luck to you and your cat.  Do whatever you feel is right because that’s the right thing for your cat.

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Jonathan Montanez is a hero!

Watched the YouTube video of Jonathan Montanez….what a hero. Montanez’ parents raised him well. Stories like this should be shown on the news all the time so that people’s faith in humanity can be restored once in awhile.

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One Letter on my Keyboard Stopped Working

The letter X  on my keyboard stopped working. Just like that, I no longer had a letter X. Every time I hit the letter, it would give me 022 or 033. It wouldn’t type the letter X in any application or web browser. I thought I had enabled a macro or got a computer virus. Today I changed the keyboard and the letter X is working just fine. The solution was so easy – maybe even too easy. 

Life is easy too. When we overthink or over analyze it, it becomes more difficult. 

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No Bells Sound for the Important Decisions in Life (or Politics and Fracking)

The title above came from somewhere, but I am unable to identify the source. For the past seven or eight years when I (or we) have made big decisions, I’ve often thought, “No Bells Sound for the Important Decisions in Life.”  So Lee bought me a bell and we ring it all the time because there has to be bells and whistles for the important decisions of life, especially those that turn out REAL good.

And in politics, things are pretty much the same way. Politicians are constantly blowing smoke screens with small issues, but important issues are quietly discussed, don’t make the headlines of the news and laws are even pushed through at times when people are busy doing other things. NY’ers remember how city council gave Bloomberg a chance to be mayor for a third term?

And now the topic of Fracking is on the table, but is very low key for such a serious topic. Holy cow experts are going to try to convince us that it is safe and won’t harm us in the future, but how can they be sure? Even thought there are reports of water contamination caused by fracking in other states, the experts in NY don’t think there is any cause for concern here. CRAZY!

Double Rainbows aren’t so sweet with fracking under them.

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Stores Like Free People

We love the store Free People. There’s even a new Free People Store in Brooklyn on Smith Street. We were trying to come up with stores like Free People:

• Urban Outfitters  and Anthropologie are the same company as FP so they have similar items
• Brandy Melville
• Batoko
• BlueFly
• Ambrylane
• Brooklyn Industries
• Shop Planet Blue (sale section less expensive)

Somes Sells  Free People for Less:

•  Nordstrom Rack sells Free People sometimes for 60% off
•  Amazon Sells Free People
•  Zappos sometimes has Free People On Sale 

Stores Cheaper than Free People – have similar items 

• Charlotte Russe
• Social Butterfly House
• LuLus
• Tobi
• Rue 21 – cheaper type clothes

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If I Could Change One Day……

I know many people, if given the chance, would change things about their life. There really isn’t anything I would change about my life.

If I was given one day to change, I would have given the day to you and had a do over for 2/16/12…..I wish you had more time to enjoy all you worked for and time with your daughter. Happy 1 Year in Heaven.

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Sister Miriam Daniel Pender

Many years ago, I was a young teacher who desired a new job location.  I interviewed with Sister Miriam Daniel on a Saturday and I was hired to start the following Monday morning at St. Cecilia School.  Sister Miriam never met me before, but hired me after speaking to me for 10 or 15 minutes.  It’s not unusual for a person get hired after a short interview.  But in the weeks that followed, I knew I had landed a special position.

Sister Miriam really cared about he staff of teachers and school of students. Anytime she walked into my classroom, she spoke the kindest words over me. And although I didn’t believe what she said, I wanted to become who she said I was. And in the year that I worked at her school, I learned so much about teaching and life. It was a very powerful year for me – I met Lee that year too. 

The day after I started at  St. Cecilia’s,  another teacher came to me and said that every class was doing a song for the show. I had three days to teach a group of 8th graders I didn’t know a song and routine to be performed in front of the school. Sister Miriam came to me and said, “Don’ t worry you can do this – they are a class waiting for a teacher like you.” And the truth is, they were an amazing class of young adults. When I told them they were expected to do a performance, they started singing and performing. Sister Miriam stopped by on the day before the performance and complimented my new class. As she walked out of the room, she nodded and smiled. Her faith in me made me have faith in myself.

I learned about being part of community under Sister Miriam’s guidance. Days after joining the staff,  I took on a  project in the school library because I wanted to participate in their beautiful community. And I spent many hours after school working on it. I wasn’t paid for this, but the satisfaction the project gave me made me feel so alive.

Two or three weeks after working at St. Cecilias, Sister Miriam asked me to come to her office. I was scared she wasn’t satisfied with my performance and was going to ask me to leave. As I walked up the stairs, I was so nervous. As I entered her office, she was sitting at her desk. I sat across from her and she began to tell me how she wanted me to choose new computers and get the Internet for the lab. Back then schools didn’t have Internet so it was a new and exciting component. I couldn’t believe she was entrusting me with money to build the lab. As I left her office that afternoon, I felt elated.   

I left St. Cecilia’s to  go to my current position which I currently hold. If I hadn’t gone to St. Cecilias, I wouldn’t be where I am today. 

And Sister Miriam if you should ever stumble upon these words, please know that I am so grateful for you did for me as a teacher and as a person.

June 2017 Update- My co-worker and I were talking about places we worked prior to our current position. I told him about Sister Miriam Daniel and this was what I said: “I worked for someone who was like the female version of Jesus. She was selfless and kind all of the time.  She always had encouraging words, allowed teachers to be creative, showed love to towards the students and was an amazing boss.”  He said he never heard anyone speak about their old boss like that.  I was lucky to have worked with an amazing woman.

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Snow!

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Snow Joe to the Rescue

This weekend the Nemo Blizzard brought a little snow to Brooklyn, NY. We didn’t have a lot of snow, but I thought I’d try out my new toy. I picked up Snow Joe, a small snow blower when it went on sale recently. Best $109 ever spent. The snowblower is small, but mighty! It’s lightweight and the handles fold down so it’s easy to store it.

I didn’t do any shoveling with this storm and I had a great time using the Snow Joe! Some of my neighbors came up and were amazed that such a small machine had such good power. They asked if they could try it because they wanted to know how it felt to use a snowblower. I got it from Amazon and the UPS guy had no problem delivering it because it is shipped in a box that looks like this:  

There is virtually no set up on this machine. Everything including the wheels are already assembled on the machine. The only thing I had to do was take it out of the box, fold up the handles and tighten three screws. It took less than five minutes to assemble, plug it in and start using it. When I was done, it took just a few minutes to unplug the snowblower, fold down the handles and roll it back in. It’s a great Snowblower for NYC property owners.

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Mail Doesn’t Get Delivered When It Snows in Brooklyn

Whatever happened to the saying: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”   It’s suppose to mean that mail is delivered even in  harsh weather.

It snowed a little in Brooklyn last night. By 11 am, the roads and sidewalks were all clear, but the Post Office didn’t do any deliveries. Why? Because the Mayor told people not to drive.

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FFAA

I am come and remembered……………

…….that I am lucky to have you as my friend. Thank you Thank you Thank you.

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