The last week is here, Logan is getting the last treatment and will be cured of the disease, how cool is that!? There are two operations left to go about a month from now that rids him from all that remains of the disease. There will be some new adjustments I can be sure of, but I'm not going to let it get in our way. Our journey has been very intense and I don't wish anyone to have to walk in my shoes the way things drummed up. I as fortunate to have a few family members who had my back for all it was worth. Some very dedicated relatives that I was able to rely on helped me in the little things, but to me, little was HUGE! We have had prayers vocied among several different religious denominations during their service in our behalf from those who know us and those who know of us, so grateful of that also. The social network of friends have held me up "virtually" and gave ther kind notes of love, and good energy! Love it! And if I didn't hear from you that's just fine I know we all have busy lives. The visits to Chemo have been like a full time job, in at 8am and there till 4or5pm! We are almost through it, I can't wait for this to get behind us, really! My work has been supporting me the best as they can. I have been on some variable hours and sometimes on call and working on the weekends I should be off, but I work in the people business, it's what I do! So I will update again as things start to close out. You take care of yourself too!

In the past few months I've been dealing with a whole ton of issues. Many of them quite personal. I'm seriously drained of it all! Automotive breakdowns, child meltdowns, husband's diagnosis of cancer, the list goes on! Work has assured me I won't lose my job over the medical issues of Logan. They gave me a wreching time one night I had to call out and it made me furious!! My boss pulled through for me and actually worked in my place. That had never happened before! As of late, the cancer thing is almost completely behind us and it has been a fight that has changed our lives undoubtedly. I've been depressed but coming out of it, going to the gym, making some goals to get my hunting license, reconnecting with some activities that I have not done in years, namely skiing, next winter. So I'm making some changes and sticking to it. I would love to lose the weight I've gained since having my kids and getting to a happy me! I have been overall happy but I do fall into a demeanor of loneliness and certain sadness and eventually gets everyone else around me down and that's not healthy.
Finding peace in each new moment, meditating, attempting to keep it all together, being aware of my shortcomings and seeking guidance from the Higher Being!

I've been working, what the hell else is new?? But being at work has opened some friendships for me. Normally I'm not making friends at work since I hang out with 90-yr olds, though I have been making some great friendships with them it is not the same when they aren't able to get out of the house with me and just go do whatever, though I know that they would if they were physically able, etc. But the story is becoming friends with relatives of those I care for and other people who come around, the nurses or other caregivers. Logan and I made a friend with a football parent who has been helping out with rides for the practices since my job has not allowed me the time off to go myself. All in a matter of just a month and a half I've developed some great friendships and have even done a "girls night out" something I've been wanting for and needing! I love being around people who I can relate to. One friend, I couldn't believe it, told Logan she had been mormon before, all because a joke Logan made about Mormons! So we laughed to find out that we had an old belief in common. It just made our friendship that more enjoying cause we don't like to admit we were once among the cult; however when you know someone else who has been there and left it too, it a laughing good time!
A group of gals got together for a night out, one older than I, never been married or had kids, the other has a kid and not currently married but has a boyfriend. We get along so well and we have some great connection with each other, nothing like I've ever had before! I never found adult mormon women to be any fun so making friends was unlikely. I threw that life away long ago and am coming to a new life of friends.

JUNE, JULY, AUGUST and now SEPTEMBER.... Where has the time gotten to??? I've taken no real vacations (weeklong) and I just put in for time off and my boss denied it!? Oh the nerve!! I really am burnt out, I have had enough with my crappy schedule all over the board waking up at 8am and not done until 8pm and traveling up to 5 clients a day.... I guess I signed up for this but whatever happened to a family life? Weekends? Things are getting seriously dysfunctional in my house! Not only do I work all the crazy hours but I'm found/left with a messy house. CLEANING is nobody's favorite past time, and I can't stand the mess when I get home. A home is a place to relax? HA!
The loser nephew is now gone. He became a real dissappointment for us all! He did a lot of "talking" but no action. Finally, after coaching him in to what he should do for the very last serious time, it was him who failed to see he was not ready for MANHOOD as much as he thought he was. Our purpose was to get him to stop sucking from his mom's tit and grow up and become a MAN. At 20 years old and no job, no furthering education, nothing can be accomplished on the path, as nobody has done in his life, we supported these things and pushed him toward these things. Instead he decided that fooling around with some young female was his best alternative and he left our house for good, and I'm 99% sure he stole from my daughter of a favorite electronic device that has since disappeared! HMMMMMm! He owes us any supposed rent money for all the months he spent with us since June...well, I'll never see it, and I don't plan to see him again for the dishonesty and the immaturity he displayed time and time again. When will boys stop living in their mom's basements and think video games and freeloading is the way to go? Well, after all the years I've known his mom, I thought she was a hot ticket, great parent, but as we are slowly-or quickly finding out, it was all just a fake-out with the way her boys have turned out-both of them have taken us and other family members for a sick awakening...they are not the nice boys we all thought they were!

I've been off the writing block for a while. My internet use has gone to minimal, but not so much by choice, nevermind about that. I've been working a lot less because of my client passing away. She was my workload all 40/hrs a week. Now I'm working what seems like a lot but it's not...going from house to house a few hours here and there but it's yet to do it for me. So I'm slowly working my way into the day shift and away from second shift. I may even work some overnights as I recently attended a Home Health and Hospice inservice training on what is a vigil on the night of the death of persons... Its really not an event I'd like to dwell on, but as birth and marriage and all other life happenings, this one is also a big event that, for many, don't want to be near or talk about. My mom was my very first and since then, its been many in my life at work. I've seen it all and I continue to revisit that sacred moment in people's lives where they go on their next journey. I used to be so afraid of death as a kid, even having real bad panic attacks over it, thinking about it, that makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing working along it? I've definitely come to face my fears whatever they were at age 7-? when I stopped panicking/wondering about it. I am so comfortable about it in my own mind that when it comes it will be my time, just as all other things happen. Is this creeping you out? I don't really care if it is or not, to many I say, get over it! We come into this world with nothing and we leave this world with nothing. That's the physical part of it. The emotional part is left for those who are left behind. I just lost my mom 13 or so years ago, and I'm okay with that. I get sad, but I am always remembering her for who she was, not what killed her or the crappy circumstances that made the end hard. I lost many folks who I've met and grew close to, and each one of them I remember their names and their faces and the things they taught me. Some taught me joy, even in their last months where pain was taking over them and the meds couldn't calm them, some told me "never to get old" well, I just don't know how I'd avoid that, but I'll keep trying... some taught me to be more less worried about the little things and enjoy what I can do, especially at my age, and the list goes on. I really love the lessons on life and philosophy the wise and old have.

I'm trying to get off facebook for good, just as I'm getting reacquainted with relatives, there was some wisdom pre-facebooking in "laying low", not that I haven't enjoyed the experience, but the politics behind it and the privacy acts are getting another look. Nothing can be fun anymore without BIG BROTHER looking into every detail. I'm not paranoid, just angry that freedoms aren't like they used to be. Enough said there.

The song "I Remember" by Deadmau5 is what I'm listening to, if you don't have a "playlist.com" account you should check it out! I heard this song on Comcast music channel and I was taken in by the trance-like music. HOT HOT HOT!
Sooooo I was outside waiting for Logan to get home so he could get me to get my NEW car! We found something that was affordable, good on gas and nothing needs attention. While I was waiting outside with the kids the LDS boys came around in their suits and nametags. The kids warned me in a whisper that they were coming toward us. This is not the first time the "boys" have come around since I've officially left the church. Only this time it was just myself, usually Logan has been the one out when they confront him. I stood there looking the other way wondering if someone since has put a tag on our address as they sometimes do to state something like, "don't go back or try to convert"....well, I was standing away from the house and then one pipes up, "Hi, we're servants of the Lord, Jesus" I couldn't help but interrupt to save his speech, "I know who you are b/c I was a Mormon, born, raised, etc." Well they were interested in hearing my 'story' of the why's and hows on my leaving and I refused to 'share'. For one, its something you'd have to have a lot of time to discuss, I was on my way to getting my new car and then get to work on time. Of course, they don't have a clue to any of this even when I was in my full scrubs, as if they saw right thru that. And does a Mo-boy REALLY want to hear my 'story'? NO! "If you pray with sincerity God will show you-" I retorted back responding quickly, "OH He's showed me the truth!!!" They just want to love-bomb me back with their beliefs. They kept prodding of what I found or what I lacked in knowing before.... Nope. Hey, if you REALLY WANT TO KNOW, question the hard QUESTIONS. I DID. I WANTED TO GET THE ANSWERS THAT THE LEADERS SHY FROM TIME AND TIME AGAIN! And let's just say, I was at the end of my rope with the religion standing on "faith without works is dead" like they are a business with a quota to fill and nobody gets paid, in fact you have to pay them for your work! HOw DoES THAt MAkE @ny sense?? I was at the end of doing service, service, service and it was never enough, do more more more, in the meantime, my home, my relationships elsewhere were suffering, my work, my sleep was depleting. Visiting Teaching on a many morning where I was supposed to be catching up on sleep, the guilt trips put on in meetings and more meetings. ALL FOR WHAT???? I loved God and it seemed that even the 'human' in me was saying His 'Holy' leaders were making me miserable! Was I right? Were THEY actually wrong? My body, my mind was unable to feel balanced no matter how hard I tried. I cried. I felt like my life was being attacked at all levels. I've been married to an extraordinary man who after many years on his own track with it all had been studing on his own trying to live the lie. We had some good yelling matches, again, my life was sucking! God would have me be happy and I wasn't. I finally realized I'd been duped in believing in Joe Smith and his cronies and his bad ideas that have nothing to do with the Bible (and not his reworded version to suit his needs) Joe was a bad man in all my research, he slept with and married other married men's wives---that's like Tiger Woods--but worse, Joe even married a slew of them and the facts are even in that genealogy site==30+ wives. Emma was just the first. He couldn't keep his pee pee zipped up, what a damn shame! I thought he was a fantastic guy way back when. But the truth is all over the internet and I am not some crazy, I am a deep-rooted kind of person, loves Truth of all things, and I'm not stepping off or away from what I know as of 2008 but began wondering back in 2001. Took years of my life to get it set straight-All the questions set straight in my life. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs and I finally chose to walk away from what I consider out of my code of living. And you may think of me what you think, but I didn't run away quickly, it was methodical, it was slow and in my eyes the right thing to do for me and my personal happiness. I love my life now and God is a different God to me, even Jesus is a different Jesus to me. Curios as those 'boys in suits' were, they were in the neighborhood for some time all evening, the kids said.
I also used to hate it when I was a Mormon when people on the 'outside' (that's me now--I'm one of THEM) would call Mormons members of a CULT. Well in hindsight, YES. Here's DR. ROBERT J. LIFTON'S CRITERIA FOR THOUGHT REFORM a brief summary

1. MILIEU CONTROL the most basic feature is the control of human communication within and environment if the control is extremely intense, it becomes internalized control -- an attempt to manage an individual's inner communication control over all a person sees, hears, reads, writes (information control)

2. MYSTICAL MANIPULATION (Planned spontaneity) extensive personal manipulation seeks to promote specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that it appears to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment, while it actually has been orchestrated totalist leaders claim to be agents chosen by God, history, or some supernatural force, to carry out the mystical imperative the "principles" (God-centered or otherwise) can be put forcibly and claimed exclusively, so that the cult and its beliefs become the only true path to salvation (or enlightenment)...

3. THE DEMAND FOR PURITY the world becomes sharply divided into the pure and the impure, the absolutely good (the group/ideology) and the absolutely evil (everything outside the group) one must continually change or conform to the group "norm" tendencies towards guilt and shame are used as emotional levers for the group's controlling and manipulative influences once a person has experienced the totalist polarization of good/evil (black/white thinking), he has great difficulty in regaining a more balanced inner sensitivity to the complexities of human morality the radical separation of pure/impure is both within the environment (the group) and the individual ties in with the process of confession -- one must confess when one is not conforming

4. CONFESSION cultic confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself sessions in which one confesses to one's sin are accompanied by patterns of criticism and self-criticism, generally transpiring within small groups with an active and dynamic thrust toward personal change is an act of symbolic self-surrender makes it virtually impossible to attain a reasonable balance between worth and humility...

5. SACRED SCIENCE the totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic doctrine or ideology, holding it as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence questioning or criticizing those basic assumptions is prohibited a reverence is demanded for the ideology/doctrine, the originators of the ideology/doctrine, the present bearers of the ideology/doctrine offers considerable security to young people because it greatly simplifies the world and answers a contemporary need to combine a sacred set of dogmatic principles with a claim to a science embodying the truth about human behavior and human psychology

6. LOADING THE LANGUAGE the language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliche (thought-stoppers) repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon "the language of non-thought" words are given new meanings -- the outside world does not use the words or phrases in the same way -- it becomes a "group" word or phrase

7. DOCTRINE OVER PERSON every issue in one's life can be reduced to a single set of principles that have an inner coherence to the point that one can claim the experience of truth and feel it the pattern of doctrine over person occurs when there is a conflict between what one feels oneself experiencing and what the doctrine or ideology says one should experience if one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group, one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to even question -- it is always "turned around" on them and the questioner/criticizer is questioned rather than the questions answered directly...

8. DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE since the group has an absolute or totalist vision of truth, those who are not in the group are bound up in evil, are not enlightened, are not saved, and do not have the right to exist "being verses nothingness" impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed one outside the group may always receive their right of existence by joining the group fear manipulation -- if one leaves this group, one leaves God or loses their transformation, for something bad will happen to them the group is the "elite", outsiders are "of the world", "evil", "unenlightened", etc.

Are you thinking????
Here's a video that I can relate to and another video that I couldn't agree more with