My life as I know it

I wish I had something witty to say here, but I think the picture speaks for itself. The only difference between me and that baby is that I put myself in this position by putting off my work and waiting until last minute to complete assigments and write papers. There everyone, I admitted it. It's my own fault. Happy now?

Okay, so here's what we're going to do. I know how some of you can't sleep at night if you don't have a new blog of mine to read at night. However, as a result of my severe procrastination tendencies I have a very large workload from now until the end of the semester. Consequently, my blog is going to really suffer. I don't want to lose my fans such as yourself, so I've come up with a way that I can briefly post a blog each day and describe my mood. It could be kind of fun (although my definition of fun is somewhat demented and different than other people's). Anyway, here's the 4-11. Each day before I go to sleep, I am going to type a few words that best describe my mood for the day or that best summarize my day into google images and see what images come up. The most popular search result image that shows up, will be the image used for that blog. As I have done these types of searchers before, I can assure you the images are quite entertaining and somew...

First and foremost, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a great day and got to eat a lot of great food. I know I did. I took it upon myself to eat enough food for every starving person on this planet (and then some). I always enjoy spending Thanksgiving with my family and this year I have so much to be thankful for. Mark got some exciting news on Wednesday. Instead of trying to explain, I'm just going to copy and paste my mom's email with the details: Mark will no longer be a participant in the clinical trial. He is ecstatic to be done with the IL2 treatments! Since the last time his cancer was stable and this time one of his lymph nodes was slightly enlarged, he is no longer eligible to continue. That is O.K. though, since they think the enlargement was due to Mark's port infection, not due to the cancer. The oncologist wants him to have new CT scans done in a month (on Dec. 23, to be exact), and then we will know if the lymph node is normal or not. If it is not, it wi...

I feel like crap. I haven't been able to breathe out of my nose for several days now. I have the numb upper lip that feels like botox gone wrong because of blowing my nose so much. My head is congested and I have almost gone through an entire box of kleenex. But hey, I have good news. I just saved 15% on my Nyquil by buying the kroger brand instead! I'm hoping to get a good night's sleep tonight thanks to drinking an entire bottle of "Nite Time" (very orignal name for the Kroger knock off of Nyquil). Don't worry, it's not the green kind that taste like a poor imitation of black licorice. It was the cherry kind. And don't worry, I didn't really drink the whole bottle, I took the recommended dose. It should be kicking in any minute now. Only then will I no longer here all the drunk boys outside of my window arguing about whose muscle's are bigger. So I don't usually do this, but because I'm sick and bored out of my mind on a Friday nigh...

Why people pick at their scabs is a phenomenon I'm trying to better understand. The purpose of a scab is to protect a wound and help it heal. Without it, the wound will continue to bleed and won't go away. We know we should just leave them alone but yet, for some reason we pick them anyway. I know we've all done it; had a scab that we knew we needed to leave alone and let heal, but for some reason there is something that makes us pick at it. We know ahead of time what's going to happen when we do. It's going to bleed, take longer to heal, and possibly even scar. Okay, before you get all grossed out, I'm speaking metaphorically here. The "scab" could be a number of different things depending on the person and the events in their life. But the scab I will be referring to in today's lesson is the scab of a past relationship. The relationship that you couldn't accept was over and struggled to let go of. When I speak of picking this "relations...

When I think of an infection, I think of something that needs a little neosporin and a band aid and then life goes on. When the doctors started talking about Mark's infection as something that is life-threatening, as you can imagine, I was shocked. He has stage IV cancer for god's sake, an infection is the least of his worries, right? Wrong. Turns out it's not uncommon for people going through this treatment to get these infections which can be fatal if it doesn't respond to antibiotics and continues to spread. So, going back to my blog about not worrying because it doesn't get you anywhere and it's a waste of time, yada yada yada - I have done very little of anything else besides worry during the past 36 hours or so. Even during the hour and a half last night watching the movie Amityville Horror I was worrying. Well, I guess I was worrying more about not peeing my pants, but you get the idea. I feel bad for the people around me when I get worried like this. I ...

There is nothing wrong with enjoying sleep. Just because taking naps is one of my favorite things to do, doesn't mean that I have a problem. Okay, okay, I admit it. I do sleep more than most people thought was humanly possible and surprisingly wake up still tired. I acknowledge the fact that my sleep pattern is all out of whack. While most people are awake I am sleeping, and while most people are sleeping, I'm wide awake. When I was a kid, I couldn't wait for the day when I didn't have to take a nap anymore. Now, I would give anything to go back to those days (except now I know the effects sucking your thumb has so maybe I could skip over the whole buck teeth and 8 years of braces thing). What brought this topic up, you might be wondering. Well, while trying to figure out my classes for next semester, I came across somewhat of a predicament for a night owl like myself: an 8:00am class on Tuesday and Thursdays that I really need to take. That would mean, at the very lat...

I know it's probably best to just let this go and not rehash the past, but there are a few things I need to say before I can move on. Originally I wanted to make this entry a heartfelt goodbye. Even though the end of our relationship has been unpleasant, to say the least, I wanted to look back on our relationship and focus on the good things. Then it hit me: there were no good times. Only what I thought were good times because I had nothing else to compare you to. You filled a void until something better came along, and I thank you for that. I guess having you was better than having nothing at all, but I knew you weren't "the one." I was always shopping - looking for something better, knowing that when I found it I would kick you to the curb faster than you can say virus. Speaking of viruses, after all of those times you came home with your different viruses, I never questioned where you had been or what you had been doing. I figured it was normal and that everyone wa...

"Rainy days and Mondays always get me down..." As my roommate Lisa pointed out, today was a rainy day and a Monday, making it a double negative. She went on and made her little saying into a riddle/song, but I will spare you the details. You're welcome. A rainy day in Bowling Green isn't just your average rainy day. You can almost always expect it to be freezing cold and very windy. My favorite part of walking to class in the rain is watching people try to keep their umbrellas from getting caught in the mighty wind and flipping inside out. I'm not being mean or getting enjoyment out of other people's misery (well, maybe a little) because it has happened to me too, on more than one occasion. I have had many umbrellas destroyed thanks to the winds of Bowling Green. But let's be honest here. There are some good things that can come from having your umbrella ruined. The large selection of umbrellas on the market today are indescribable. It's like Hallow...

"Worrying is like being in a rocking chair. It occupies your time, but doesn't get you anywhere." Yet, so many of us spend much of our lives doing it anyway. Why? We aren't all just a bunch of idiots (well, there are some exceptions...) who honestly think that if we worry about something, it won't happen. The reality is, worrying is not only a huge waste of time, but it's a waste of time that could be spent happily. We've all heard the corny saying about every minute spent frowning is 60 seconds of happiness wasted (no shit Sherlock, even I can do that math equation), but seriously... it's kind of true. In the large scheme of things, it's usually the things we least expect, the things we would never have even thought to worry about, that come out of nowhere and knock us on our ass. Let's take for example, the poor lady from the illustration who we will call Mildred. Mildred is so busy worrying about whether or not she put on deodorant, that on...

First I would like to apologize for the way our relationship came to a sudden end. It could have been a really traumatic experience for you. Maybe I dropped you and you broke into many pieces. Maybe I just sat you somewhere and you had to watch me walk away and never come back. Perhaps someone took you right out of my purse. The most disturbing part of this whole situation, is that I simply don't remember how I lost you. After all you've done for me by capturing my memories for the past 3 months, I should have at least had the decency to not involve you in my drunken affairs. And for that, I'm truly sorry. Hopefully your new owner, you know, the person who probably picked you up and took you home and now has hundreds of pictures of me and my family and friends, will treat you with more respect than I did. But let's be honest, someone who keeps a camera that they know is not theirs is obviously not the most respectful person in the world. Maybe, someday, somehow, we wil...

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." Did our parents really believe this when they taught us this riddle? Or was it just their hope that maybe if we, as naive children, believed it, we would avoid a lot of unnecessary hurt? Now that I'm no longer a naive child (I'm now a naive adult), words and their impact on my self-perception is something that I struggle with. Is it only people with self-esteem issues who are affected by what other people think of them? Or are even the most confident people hurt when someone thinks or says something bad about them? Or does it all depend on who the person saying negative things is and their relationship to you? Personally, it doesn't matter who the person is or what they have said about me, I still let it bother me. The key word here is let . It took me a long time, but I've finally realized that I do have control of the impact I let other people's words have on me. Unfortunately, reali...

Can money buy happiness? A topic that has been debated for quite some time now, is becoming more and more relevant to my everyday life. Maybe it's because I've never had as much money as I wanted, or maybe it's that I've always wanted to spend more than I've had. Regardless of how I got here, money (or in my case, lack thereof) is a dominant part of my everyday life. A recent study done by a sociologist found that financially richer people tend to be happier than those who are poorer. After so many arguments saying that money can't buy happiness, now we have studies showing that those with more money are both physically and mentally healthier (wouldn't we all be though if we could afford it?). This is very interesting to me, because I for one am someone who very much enjoys shopping, especially when I'm feeling depressed. Nothing that a cute outfit can't fix, right? I can't help but think of Fat Bastard and his predicament with eating. Do I spen...

Isn't it amazing what good therapy dogs can be? They can tell when you're upset, but yet, they never ask you why. Instead, they just comfort you, or in Jackson's case, bring you his favorite toy hoping that it will somehow bring you as much joy as it brings him. As bad as it sounds, one of the hardest parts of leaving home is leaving this dog. He has had such an impact on all of our lives. He is filled with more personality than any dog I've ever owned (which as most of you know, is quite a few)! I think what brings me the most joy, is seeing how happy Jackson makes Mark . It's funny to think about how much Mark did not want this dog. He only agreed to keep him because he saw how attached my mom and I already were to him. Little did he know, Jackson turned out to be Mark's biggest supporter during this entire battle with cancer. I've always liked the quote I used as the title of this entry. I think we could all be better people if we tried to be the peo...

Finally some good news! Today Mark had his biggest appointment yet and found out that his cancer has had a 73% reduction! His doctor thinks that maybe after 3 more treatments he could go into remission. Although I broke my streak of not crying, for the first time in a very long time they were tears of joy. Only like 15% of the people receiving this treatment have any success, so this is huge. Although Mark is dreading going back in tomorrow for another treatment, at least he is going in knowing that he's not doing this for nothing, it really is saving his life. I am so thankful for this fall break that I got to spend with him. He was back to his old self again and I really enjoyed his company. This is the Mark I want to remember, and the Mark that makes my mom so happy. Although I know it's still going to be hard leaving to go back to school tomorrow, because it always is, at least now my hope has completely been restored. The fact that Mark is still here is a miracle in itse...

I guess for my first entry instead of trying to get all philosophical and stuff, I should start off by bringing everyone up to speed on my life. I am 22 years old and in my last year at Bowling Green. Okay, I think that about sums it all up. Moving on.... just kidding. I figured now is a good excuse to fill out one those dumb surveys that we all get emailed to us by our close friends who probably all already know the answers anyway. But seriously, what better way to answer all those questions that you, who may not be my close friends, might be wondering about me? Let's get personal.... [Name] Emily Lynn Steele [Nickname] Em, Emmy, Emmy Booskie, Steele, Stelio... the list could probably go on. [The day I had my first breath] July 24, 1983 [Zodiac sign] Leo [Born in] Cincinnati, Ohio [Where I live right now] Bowling Green, Ohio (But from Shelby and Butler, Ohio) [Height] 5'3" [Righty or lefty] Righty [Eye color] Blue [Hair color] Brown (wow, it's ...