Saturday, November 9, 2013

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Tonight's picture was taken on November 8th of 2008. Mattie was invited to his art teacher's studio to paint a special creation. Mattie met Miss Pollack at his elementary school, and they took an immediate liking to each other while Mattie was in kindergarten. Debbie understood Mattie and she read him as a mature and wise soul. Which was indeed correct! She also saw the budding artist within Mattie. Though in this photo Mattie had his first limb salvaging surgery, he was able to use his hand to paint. Debbie gave Mattie this wonderful floral smock to wear and with her guidance, Mattie created "Mr. Sun" that day. Mr. Sun is a huge painting and hangs in our dining room today. It was actually a beautiful gift Mattie and Debbie left us with! Mr. Sun inspired the creation of the Foundation's logo, and in essence the Foundation doesn't only possess Mattie's name but it showcases his favorite colors and his own artistic creativity. I recall the day Mr. Sun was painted quite vividly since we all spent the entire day together and Debbie worked very hard to make it special and memorable for us. Pay particular attention to how Mattie signed his painting..... big, bold, and in blue. A color that would stand out on the canvas.   

Quote of the day: The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired. One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley


For some reason, I am simply exhausted tonight. When I woke up this morning, I received an email from my lifetime friend, Karen. She wanted to know if I was planning on building a pyramid today! She was joking with me, but there was some truth to her jest. Because she knows my weekends are even busier with tasks and chores than my weekdays. To some extent this frenetic pace we keep on the weekends maybe planned or needed! Needed because it is a great distraction from what life truly is, which is hard and different without Mattie in it. We spent a good portion of the day in Mattie's room reassembling and rearranging furniture. The painting we did last weekend looks wonderful and slowly the room is taking on a life of its own. We also hung several of Mattie's canvases on the wall today and I am beginning to showcase some of Mattie's meaningful things, which is lovely to see.

But the day did not end with Mattie's room. It continued with a clean out of our bedroom, which is next on my list to address. It too needs to be painted, but that may not happen for a few weeks! It just depends on our energy level. Of course no day would be complete without candy processing and sorting. Honestly there is CANDY EVERYWHERE!!! The smell is overwhelming and at times sickening. Peter has really helped me make significant sorting headway today. But the sorting continues.

There is candy on our table and candy lining the perimeter of our dining room! Someone asked me today about the sorting process. She thought that people gave me sealed bags of candy, like sealed bags filled with Hershey bars for example. But then after reading my blog she deduced that this is not what I am receiving. I receive left over Halloween candy people have and this candy is usually out of its larger packaging and dispersed with other candies. So literally when I open bags people give me I find wrapped chocolate bars mixed with lollipops, hard candies, fruit chews, gum, etc. This is what makes sorting challenging because you literally have to go piece by piece and put each in a Ziploc bag with its like buddies (snickers with snickers, lollipops with lollipops, etc).

We have a whole system and the staging and sorting area is on our dining room table. Certainly it would be a lot easier to just grab all the candies and throw them in Ziploc bags, and fill the bags that way. But the problem with this is if you mix candies for a period of time and store them indefinitely this way, they start to lose their flavor, or worse they absorb the flavors of the other candies around them. So sorting is KEY to preserving the candies!

In addition to this, it is vital to go through each of the candy for the following reasons. We sort out all unwrapped candies, half eaten candies, and candies with inappropriate messages on them such as RIP and the grim reaper (YES I found several of these this year). I am sure these are cute messages to some extent for a healthy child who maybe getting into the Halloween spirit, but these messages are too real for children with cancer and their families.