Category: A Bit Of Randomness

This category is full of randomness that really doesn’t fit nicely into any of the categories having to do with my road to walking.

1:36 p.m

I received some news today at 1:36 p,m, that I have been having difficulty processing! I think I am overwhelmed. Since receiving this information, I have teared up and began crying with no way of stopping it. The tears just began streaming down my cheeks! I think if I write about that, that will help with my processing.

I changed my profile picture on Facebook yesterday to this because it was Mother’s Day:

I like this picture of us because in it, my Dad is sitting in his chair at the dining room table and my Mom is standing next to him and both me and Sean are next to them. I am Mexican and I come from a family of huggers!!! I have also made Sean a hugger as well!

During this pandemic, I recall very vividly when he was called back to work and had to leave my bubble with my Mom and me. In order to keep me safe, he was moving in with my nephews as he began to work again. I remember hugging him very tightly and crying because once he left my house, I wasn’t sure when I would be able to hug him again!

We talked on the phone and FaceTimed constantly after he left. Or, as much as is acceptable for a young man to talk to his mother. It has been frequent enough to satisfy me. I remember crying when I got vaccinated because I was safe from dying and I was one step closer to hugging him again! I wasn’t sure when that day would come because this pandemic has been stretching on forever!

But today, at 1:36 p.m. I received a text. Actually, this text was sent to both my Mom and to me from Sean:

Sean received his second shot today which means in two weeks, I will be able to hug him again!!! I sent this text to him with tears screaming out of my eyes:

We will have to coordinate the day with his work schedule but as of May 24th, I will be able to hug him again! So these tears have been tears of joy and while writing this, I still am super overwhelmed and still continue to cry in anticipation of hugging him again!

Well Played OR 14.75 Years

Big Brother it’s definitely trying his hardest to trigger tears from me! It’s in my Facebook feed that these songs show up. I’ve been thinking about the latest song that showed up for a few days now. This morning, I checked my phone to see what time it was because it was still dark outside and I saw this:

Seeing my Dad eyes staring back at me was extremely startling while I was half asleep and laying in my bed in my pitch black room.

Today, I have constantly been thinking about this song and remembering sitting in a booth at a restaurant whose name I cannot remember right now but I heard this song. It was kind of soon after my Dad’s death and it always makes me think of him.

back then, this line reminded me of him most:

My Dad has only visited me in my sleep a couple of times in the past 14.75 years that he has been gone but as I hear this song and searched the lyrics for this blog post, Big Brother has succeeded in making me cry but I can ALWAYS cry when I think of my Dad, just not immediately. Well you played, Big Brother!:

Busking

I was talking to my Mom about the specific YouTube video I saw and I shared it with her. I am posting this on my blog now because my YouTube feed will be refreshed with U2 songs which I really enjoy!

Back when I shared this video with her, another video popped up that I thoroughly enjoyed and shared with her as well:

I shared this video with her because she really likes the, “Where the streets have no name“ video and that is a song she will listen to with me because she likes the video so much!

So now, I think my YouTube feed will be filled with U2 videos which I like a whole bunch! And, I need to add (which I overlook too often) but I think it is because I love Bono so much! But Adam Clayton is so cool! I remember seeing a video and they were playing their instruments and he was just nonchalantly plucking his base with a cigarette between his lips!

Happy Feet

I am not ashamed to say that a couple nights ago, my Mom and I watched Happy Feet. Happy Feet was the very
first movie I took Sean to see at a movie theater. My Mom and I took him. I texted him right after we were done watching it:

He texted me back with this:

I laughed when I read that because I clearly remember him being scared by the sea lion trying to eat Mumble. I was glad that I had the forethought to put his cup into the cupholder of my seat. He had his little kid’s tray of popcorn on his lap that went flying when he got scared by the sea lion! So many years later, we still laugh at it! Man, I love that kid!

Nice Try

Big Brother has been trying to get me by posting random songs in my Facebook feed but time has passed and I’m not falling for it. I don’t want to tease him because I know that he is powerful but there were a few songs that showed up and a long time ago, they would have broken me but I’m okay. So, Nice try? I guess getting older has its perks?

I was such a dramatic teenager!!!

Glutton for Punishment?

So, I saw my latest Facebook videos that are popping them and I felt okay with it. But last night, my eyes were hurting so I took my contacts out and while my mom was walking Leia, I am put my James Blunt playlist on shuffle. I wondered if I was a glutton for punishment:

After a while, I heard this song:

I texted that to Sean and he responded with this:

If I recall correctly, it was summertime and I listened to that song A LOT!!! At that point in my life, I was coping by eating 10 packs of Tim Bits! Sean was young and he just accompanied me to Tim Horton’s. It was not far from our apartment complex. I don’t think he knows to this day how broken I was but I like that we can laugh about it now because we made a memory!

This is the lyric that broke my heart:

Back in the day, this song tore me up but now, I just remember going to Tim Horton’s the with my little boy! Donuts are definitely my weakness!!! Sean cannot hear this song without making a joke:

#MyGirlL: From a, “Chunk” to. “Fit”

Leia had her return x-ray yesterday. This is how she looked when she got home from her appointment:

I just

Leia was worn out from the heat! She didn’t even make it to her bed! My Mom was told that her heart and lungs look great! The doctor called her, “Fit” opposed to being a, “Chunk.” I hate to put her on, “Front Street” and one, she lost 2 pounds! I told my Mom that I think she gained the weight because she was not walking as much in the winter. The doctor even said that the third treatment for heartworm may not be necessary! I am so pleased at hearing that because it is expensive so NOT having to do the third step sounds good to me!

I guess we caught it early and my Mom and I have been praying to Saint Francis for help! (We’re Catholic)

Hair

The day before yesterday, my Mom asked me if I was going to comb my hair that day and that made me laugh a whole lot! Her question made me laugh at first because she used to ask me that question when Sean was young. She asked me that same question the summer when we first moved into our first apartment.

When Sean was young, I would bathe him at night. I would comb his hair and then he would go to sleep. When he would wake up, his hair was crazy!!! I used to go to my Parent’s house on Saturday mornings for breakfast. My Dad wanted to see Sean because we were no longer living there. When we would get there, my Mom would ask me, “Did you comb this boy’s hair this morning?!

I would laugh and say, “I did not, because it looks so cute!” She would comb his hair before we ate breakfast at her house. I had Sean‘s hair cut short when he was four and began preschool.

So when she asked me this, I laughed because it has been about 16 years since she has asked me that regarding Sean but she has never asked Me that as an adult! But let me explain, back in the day, when I was still working, I would wake up at 4:30 every morning to get ready for work by getting in the shower first thing. I have not been in the habit of combing my hair before I take a shower.

But now, my hair only gets washed every other day. I am not in the habit of combing it on the off days. Today is an “Off” day as it was a couple days ago. When she asked me that on Wednesday, I combed my hair before I ate lunch. Today, I combed my hair after I washed my face.

With the stay at home orders and the pandemic, I grew my hair out and I was most uncomfortable while it grew! I would pull my hair into a knot right after getting out of bed because I couldn’t stand the hair on my neck! Now that I have cut my hair, it’s not a problem to have hair on my neck. As a result, I’m just not in the habit of coming my hair on the days that I do not wash it.

On the days I have to blow dry my hair and before I blow dry my hair, I comb it while it’s wet. So, I haven’t put much thought into combing my hair in years . But now, that it is short again it seems that I have to seriously think about that and do it!

Okay, So, Let me ‘Splain Ya!”

So, last Wednesday, I wrote a post about three random songs that showed up in my YouTube feed. They were songs that used to break my heart when I was young and dramatic! But, I didn’t cry and that made me happy that perhaps, Big Brother May have lost a step because they didn’t make me cry! Maybe I am on the road to healing! I (TOTALLY don’t see that happening anytime soon especially since I can’t control my emotions anymore!)

So, let me ‘splain ya:

So, my brother read that post and commented;

I have since decided that the 90s was the BEST musical decade! At least for me, I was young, without responsibilities, and was still able bodied! I looked at the playlists and I saw this one popped up in it:

That song is woven into The fabric of Mike youth and for so many reasons! I explained in the blog post I shared last Wednesday hell my brother, Jimmy, told me about a week before my cousins’s quince that his friend and he were going to perform a song that was sung by a female so I had to sing it. He had called me when I had just gotten home from class and I drove over to his house and we jammed. Our comments continued on that blog post:

Since this conversation had taken place, (and Luis lives in Mexico) I searched my blog to find the post where I had written about this song. I couldn’t really remember what I wrote. I searched through 35 pages on my phone in my, “Tines” tab to find it!

Re-posting and subsequently reading what I had written, I DID have a killer dress on (that I no longer can wear because having MS, weight fluctuates a lot and the dress was three sizes too big for me about seven years ago. I don’t know where it is now. Probably in my basement. It has great memories attached to it!

I wrote about holding on to the mic stand as I sang to study me. Retrospectively thinking about this, it was beginning of me completely losing control over my muscles. That kind of makes me sad but I appreciate having chronicles all of these things in my blog so I can go back and think about that specific day. I’m pretty sure I saw family members recording it so, it’s a new one has it, that would be really cool to see!

Having to tell Luis that I am, “Out” in terms of getting the band back together greatly saddens me! I knew it was that I should not have challenged Big Brother but since I did, he got me! Since re-posting this blog post, I have listened to this song multiple times and I have cried!

“HUG DAY!!!” 😍😍😍

Sean spent the first 31 days of his life in the NICU after being born 8 weeks prematurely. When discussing this fact with people, I tell them that, that “Was the longest month of my life!” And I wholeheartedly believed that! That is, until Covid hit.

First, let me explain that leaving the hospital WITHOUT your baby is extremely difficult!!! But the difficulty was lessened a little bit because we could hold Sean for 20 minutes a day. He could not afford to be out of his incubator for longer than that. The only exception was if we (Sean and I) “Kangaroo Kare[d].”

A nurse in the NICU unit explained to to me the major benefits of doing this. She told me to wear a button down shirt to come see him at the hospital. All I had to do was tell them that I wanted to “Kangaroo Kare” with my baby and they would set up the screens to allow me privacy another nurse would get Sean.

I would lay back in the recliner as she put him on my chest in nothing but a diaper. The benefits are the skin to skin contact that I had with my baby. Moments after the nurse placed him on my chest, all of the numbers on the monitor completely stabilized. She told me that it was really good for the baby and me. I could do it as long as I wanted. I can still remember the feel of his little baby hair on my jaw as I felt all of his ribs under my left hand as I would fall asleep.

It has been just over one year since of quarantine in our house. Sean went back to work, I believe it was just before Mother’s Day of last year. I didn’t get to hug him last year and I never thought I would go long periods without hugging Sean ever again in my life!

As the pandemic got worse, Sean wouldn’t even come into our house in hopes of protecting me from this terrible virus. Last summer, we could talk with him sitting on my porch:

I was unable to attend any of his abridged graduation and instead, he came by the house:

This fact was extremely difficult for me having had put him through 12 years of Catholic education. But my Mom told me that there will be many more milestones and celebrations in Sean‘s life that I will be able to be a part of.

As the pandemic continued to rage on, the vaccines came onto the scene and I thought that when it was my turn, I could hug him again. I was fully vaccinated on April 1, 2021. My Mom was fully vaccinated on April 14, 2021. I remember sitting in my house on March 18, when I received my vaccine, and crying because I didn’t need to be afraid of dying anymore.

Sean received his second dose of the vaccine on May 10. So, this morning, he open the door to our house and commented, “ look at us! All maskless and stuff!“. And then this happened:

But before we could take this picture he wouldn’t stop making a face until my mom took a picture of this silliness:

Man, I love that kid!