This could apply to many things right now but I am glad to report that climatologists in Georgia have declared the drought over for now. This is great news for residents here as we have watched the primary source of Atlanta’s drinking water dwindle for the last several years.

As we start planting our vegetable garden next weekend, we will continue to garden as though the drought persists to do our share conserving water. Any great water conservation tips out there? Anyone? Bueller?

every time I called from Dallas, CancerMan was taking a nap and the kids were eating candy.

I was traveling for work over the weekend and CancerMan was Mr. Mom with a raging upper respiratory infection brewing. I give him credit–he out did himself trying to watch the kids and managing to have more snot in his head than anyone thought humanly possible.

The constant swilling of cough syrup seems to be making a bit of a difference. Here’s hoping he recovers in time for me to leave town again next Thursday for Phoenix.

When I started this blog, I was not gainfully employed. For reasons that are not important (to this post), I took some time off and decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. This summer, I was offered the chance to return to my previous employer with a package that I could not refuse. Fast forward to last week when I receive a work email with the subject line “Do you know these blogs?”

Being a good employee, I read my email compulsively promptly and my curiosity was piqued. The first blog was a new one to me but the second one was strangely familiar…www.livinginthetension.com. I shook my head as I picked up my phone to call my co-worker to say I was indeed familiar with the second blog on the list.

When she answered the phone, I asked if she scrolled down on the blog to see any of the photos. She laughed and said no but Google alerts had delivered the blog to her mailbox because of some of the keywords from the most recent post. I told her had she taken 8 more seconds, she would have recognized the smiling faces of my children and would have known the identity of the blogger.

After we laughed heartily, I did tell her that now I had to go back and delete at least one post since I did not think the entire staff of our organization needed to know everything I had ever posted about. So, the moral of the story is that Google alerts does work and don’t blog about anything you don’t want your entire company to know.

Like millions of other American families, we are paying close attention to our grocery budget. I have always been a frugal shopper but with this year’s price increases, I am trying to be extra careful at the grocery store. Imagine my surprise when my beloved Publix store brand pasta was the same price as fancier name brand pasta. I knew this could not be right, so upon investigation I realized that the box of name brand pasta contained 25% less pasta than the store brand. Coincidentally, I read an article in Time Magazine about this very trend the next day. The gist of the article is that companies are hesitant to raise prices again right now, so instead package size is being reduced.

Do food makers think we are idiots? I am insulted that someone has decided I will pay the same price for less food and not notice. Ice cream cartons have been shrinking for years. (If you don’t believe me, go to the freezer right now and see if your ice cream contains an actual half gallon.) The moral of the story is read the label to see if you are buying the same amount of food as you did last year.

“For Memorial Day, I want a blog and a lawyer.” - Youngest Princess

Colorectal cancer awareness month has drawn to a close and I hope you learned a bit more about the disease from this blog. Today, I want to list a few practical suggestions when deciding how to support a family living with cancer. I am not going to include every possible way to help as that would take hours and I doubt I am that interesting. But many people tried to help us when we were in the midst of the fight and some of them were at a loss as to what we needed and wanted.

For families with children, offer to spoil the kids. By that I mean taking the kids to the movies or out for ice cream or some other frivolous activity. While money can be an issue for families living with cancer, time is the greater challenge in some cases. We crammed as much fun into the weeks my husband was on a chemo break as possible but you cannot tell a six year old who wants a Dairy Queen dipped cone to wait for another 3.5 weeks. Offer to drive the children to athletic practice. Most parents are going to try to attend games whenever possible but the practice schedule can be grueling if you are juggling treatment schedules, meal preparation and other normal household responsibilities.

Before fixing a meal for a family, ask if there are special dietary requirements. Patients recovering from surgery have specific dietary restrictions in many cases. Chemotherapy can also wreak havoc with dietary patterns. We were given a lovely casserole that contained things that my husband could not eat and the children were not thrilled about, so I had the privilege of eating it for days on end. I love to cook, so I said that instead of meals, I preferred a grocery gift card so that I could choose the best meals for everyone.

If you subscribe to a magazine, offer back issues to the family. Doctor’s offices are notorious for having a limited selection of current magazines. My husband read a Sports Illustrated that was 3 years old at one chemo session just to see if their football predictions were accurate. He enjoyed himself but a new issue of the magazine would have been much appreciated. Plus, I would offer whatever I had to the other caregivers stuck in the waiting room for hours on end and small gestures such as a recent issue of People would always bring a smile.

The last one for today will seem obvious but much needed. Do not tell anyone (especially the children) in the family about how many people you know or know of that died from the disease. Everyone knows a cancer story that ended in death and we all know what could happen. Those thoughts do not help when you are in the middle of the journey. Regardless of how it might appear from the outside, very few patients are in denial about what could happen to them. I am not going to address the mind-body-spirit connection today but families living with cancer do not need to be reminded that all that they are going through might not change the outcome.

Our youngest princess came home from school today replete with news of the day’s bountiful activities and tedium. Today was a special day, club day, where each student participates in three clubs of their choosing. (It might have been your sixth choice, but they try to put you in something you choose.) Today was a bit different because they also had two assemblies. One was a Saint Patrick’s assembly even though today is Good Friday and the other assembly which lasted twice as long, according to her, was only for the fourth grade and much less fun.

The fourth grade assembly was about academic integrity as well as kindness. Apparently, cheating and theft are rife in this particular group of fourth grades. I was shocked at this as we discussed it over dinner. Our daughter said that the teachers must have used the word disappointed 57 times during the meeting. The teachers were careful to point out what constituted cheating just in case the students were engaging in behavior unaware that is was wrong. This piqued my curiosity further. So I asked for a specific example of this. When checking homework in class, if students left answers blank, instead of counting the blanks as wrong answers, they were writing the correct answers in the spots and moving on. Again, I expressed shock over this. Maybe I was just too scared of getting in trouble (and still am, for that matter) but this never would have occurred to me in grade school. The theft issue, also alarming, was proven when one of the teachers reported that over 40 books have been taken from her classroom and not returned. She has a very nice collection of books that students are allowed to use but the intention is not to take the books outside the classroom. At this point, I am speechless. But I notice that CancerMan is nonplussed about the whole affair.

I ask him if he is shocked by all of this. He admits that the theft component is surprising but says the cheating does not surprise him one bit. Because the school is a magnet school for gifted and high achieving students, there are certain academic standards that must be maintained to continue enrollment. He says that in a competitive environment, the cheating makes perfect sense. Kids are concerned about keeping up and they do whatever they can to do so. Please understand that he was not condoning the behavior in the least, simply helping his poor dense wife understand it all.

Here is my burning question about the whole sordid affair…did they speak with individual students who they have identified as being part of the problem? If I am ten years old and am sitting in the lunchroom being lectured to about this, I would assume they do not know I had anything to do with it and continue on my merry way. I hope the children have been chastised and even better, I hope those parents have been hauled in to be told the cold, hard truth that Johnny might be pulling all A’s because he is cheating.

I will address the kindness later once I wrap my mind around that as the lack of integrity is taking up all of my available brain cells. I have to say I find the whole situation distasteful and disappointing. I have to wonder if these children have been taught anything about integrity and honesty. I used to sort of snort at character education in schools since we do integrate that into our lives but clearly, this reminds me that not everyone understands the bedrock values that I feel are vitally important.

I heard a great line on a television show Sunday night. A character was asked why he had not told his family about his cancer diagnosis yet and he replied “that is a conversation that I am not remotely prepared to have”. CancerMan and I had that conversation with our daughters in May 2004. Our girls were age 8 and 6 when we had to tell them their dad was sick. CancerMan and I had known the cancer diagnosis was likely a few days earlier when a tumor was discovered during a colonoscopy. We decided to delay the conversation with the girls until we were sure and we had some idea of the treatment plan.

After dinner as we all sat around the table, we told the girls we had news for them. CancerMan said he had cancer and it was serious but we were getting a great team of doctors together. We promised the girls that we would be honest with them and keep them informed about everything that was going to happen. Our eight year old cried as she is the more emotional one and she knew the word cancer was serious. Our six year old was quiet as is her way. She did not have any questions yet but you could tell she was processing the information and would be paying close attention to us to make sure we were being honest.

Telling the girls was hard but since we had always said a family is like a team and we all had different roles to play, the girls just needed to know what the team would be like now with cancer as part of our lives. A family (or community, if you will) is diagnosed with cancer—not an individual. Sure, only one person endures the chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, physical side effects, etc. but the entire family is diagnosed as cancer permeates all aspects of the family life. If you were faced with similar news, are you prepared to have this conversation?

While the photo looks a bit sketchy, this is actually homemade paper for Valentine’s. My inner Martha Stewart cannot be completely silenced but I need high success projects after years of MS-induced failures. We sharpened crayons with a pencil sharpener (the sharpener might not recover, so use a cheap one for this), put the shavings between sheets of waxed paper, covered the wax paper with brown paper (in our case, recycled Trader Joe’s shopping bags) and iron with a medium hot iron. The wax melts and you get interesting paper.

Then the paper can be cut into various shapes and made into Valentine’s cards or decorations. I think this paper would look cool cut into hearts and hung in a sunny window. We did cool and warm colors (see warm colors at my flickr site). The youngest princess then cut the paper into squares and wrote “Don’t be such a square. Happy Valentine’s Day” for each of her classmates. Not Martha Stewart-approved verbiage, I am sure, but very appropriate. What are your kids doing for Valentine’s Day crafts?