Friday, December 1, 2017

Friday, December 1, 2017

Tonight's picture was taken in November of 2008, about five days after Mattie's second limb salvaging surgery. Because Mattie had a 12 hour surgery, they wanted him to work his lungs to remove any possible fluid build up from lying flat and being under anesthesia. Mattie did not like the standard pulmonary breathing exercises. So instead, we had to make his exercises fun and turn it into a game. One of the ways we did this was with straws! One of Mattie's friends brought us a wild straw. It basically was like glasses made out of straws and when you sucked into the straw you could see the fluid fill up around the glasses. Mattie wanted me to try them first, before he would attempt this. Which was what this photo was illustrating.  This was not atypical for Mattie, as I was the guinea pig for most of his physical and occupational therapy exercises. I always did them first!


Quote of the day: Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you. ~ Veronica Roth,


It was another full day or running around. One of my chores today involved going to Mattie Miracle's post office. Every year before we do our mass mailing, I check in with the post office, to prepare them for our 500 envelopes. Since I know they prefer bulk mail delivered to them a certain way, I like to follow the process. With each annual fund that we do, I get a little smarter. 

This year, I bought our holiday stamps in October. Yes October! This way, I can get 500 stamps easily! In October people are not thinking about holiday cards yet, so there is no demand on stamps. I have also learned that before I put a stamp on our envelopes, I bring in a sample envelope to the post office to weigh it and confirm the amount of postage needed. Ideally I would love our envelope with our small gift taking just one stamp! Fortunately I had the where with all to take a sample with me today. 

I thought one stamp would suffice on this year's annual fund envelopes, but THANKFULLY I checked. Because we needed 21 cents more this year. I can't imagine how I would have felt mailing out 500 envelopes, to only find them all returned because of insufficient postage. Not only the labor and effort would have been lost, but we would have also been out the cost of a forever stamp. The post office was great today, as they really weighed this sample envelope multiple times in hoping that one stamp would suffice. But no luck! Any case, I view this as a crisis averted. 

In the midst of running around and doing chores with an continued migraine, I could see Christmas trees and decorations, and Christmas music was playing everywhere. In theory I like Christmas, but that is where it ends. To me the festivities of Christmas are for children, and therefore without Mattie, I am left to wonder how the holiday applies to me? In my heart it doesn't, which is why I have been closed off to Christmas for years. I am not sure why my friends thought I decorated for Christmas. But I haven't decorated our home for Christmas since 2007. This is when Christmas ended for me. I may go through the motions of the holidays, but at the end of the day, I really do not buy gifts, exchange gifts, attend holiday parties, and my list of NOT'S is much larger than my lists of SHOULD'S!