Saturday, August 2, 2025

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Tonight's picture was taken on August 4, 2009. This was a day I will NEVER forget. Why? Because literally minutes before I snapped this photo, I learned that Mattie's cancer metastasized throughout his body, six weeks off of chemotherapy. Mattie was going to die. Literally before I received this horrific phone call, we were hopeful that Mattie was off treatment and we were going to focus on physical rehabilitation. You can see the look of happiness in Mattie's face. How I kept it emotionally together in front of Mattie, I still have NO IDEA. Strike that... I do know how I did it! I did it because first and foremost I was Mattie's mom and as his mom, his needs and wellbeing always came first. 

Quote of the day: True love is many things and can survive the strongest and most painful of times. When love comes out the other side of a fire, it may be scarred forever, but this bruised love is somehow only greater for having survived the pain. ~ John Carter Cash

For the past two days, I have been playing around with paper templates in my family room, as I am trying to hang up two pieces of art. I described this project in yesterday's blog, but the process continues today! Thankfully I have my lifetime friend, Karen, and my dear friend, Cheryl and her husband Steve working with me remotely on this project. This morning Steve wrote me and gave me a stellar tutorial on how to hang up art using J hooks. Not only were his descriptions clear and understandable, but he provided photos! I am a visual learner, so pictures are worth 1,000 words with me. Having this support, truly helps as I want to get this project right. It has taken me TWO YEARS to get to this point, so I don't want to screw it up. 

Round ONE

So initially this was the layout I placed on the wall. I aligned the paper templates up at the top! Yes these two pieces of art are different sizes. With the landscape piece being larger. I purposefully chose different sizes because there were supposed to be four pieces of art on this wall instead of two. With four together, it would have created a wonderful square of art. 

In 2023, we commissioned a local artist to do impressionist paintings of our home. This was something we all agreed upon, and trust me prior to this there was no agreement over what went in this space. We paid for two of the pieces of art to be created, with the notion that once these pieces were done, we would pay for the next two. It took me a while to reconnect with the local artist working on this project, because when I became single, I wanted to ditch the entire project altogether. However, since two paintings were already paid for, I decided financially it made more sense to claim these pieces. Truly this has been a very emotional project for me.   

Round TWO

When Karen saw the above photo, her mathematical eye immediately said... no! The templates need to align on the bottom, not the top. So I pulled out my ladder, which is like 15 feet tall, and rearranged the templates. 

Round THREE

Karen then mentioned switching the templates around to see if the vertical template looked better on the left. At the end of the day, I think my mom, me, and Karen agree that Round TWO, with the vertical template on the right works the best. 

The family room wall is extremely tall, and what I love about having the vertical template on the right, is it immediately draws the eyes up into the room. 

This afternoon, I took my parents out to our local diner. We haven't been there for three weeks. Everyone was thrilled to see us! They all said my dad looked great, like he had never been in the hospital. Yes I would say physically he is making a come back, but cognitively each admission, provides a another massive decline. This decline is invisible to most people, but it is very real and very challenging to me. 

I went upstairs to my room today for about 15 minutes. I sat on my bed to answer emails and messages and of course if I am on my bed, my side kick is never far behind!