November 11, 2026

On this day in 1918 at the 11th hour, was the end of World War I, otherwise known as the Great War.  In Canada, this day is called Remembrance Day and hee in the US, it is called Veteran's Day. 

When I was young, every Sunday before Remembrance/Veteran’s Day, we would go to Windsor and Mom would March either with the Service Battalion or the Cadet Corps from the Canadian Legion to this beautiful church.  There would be a special church service and afterwards we would go to the cemetery Nextel to the church to put poppies on the veterans grave sites.  Then they would March back to the legion and we would have lunch, our parents would be in a different area and we three would have to wait and wait and wait for them to be done chatting so we could go home.  I cannot even add up all the hours we three had to wait when either both parents and then just mom would be in the officer’s mess after parades.  It was so boring. Sometimes we would have something to do, not always though.  Sometimes being an Army Brat was tough work.  Much waiting is involved.  

When I was a cadet, I would be one of the cadets marching to the church and back.  I still had to wait for what felt like absolutely forever while mom was in the officer’s mess everywhere we went.  

There is a story that has been told that happened on Christmas Eve 1914 in the height of WWI, at the front.  There was a truce for that night because it was Christmas Eve and it was suppose to last through the end of Christmas Day.  In the trenches in France The French and German Soldiers began singing Christmas Carols and coming out of there trenches to meet one another.  They exchanged what they had as gifts and for one night they weren’t enemy soldiers, they were brothers.Collin Raye has a beautiful song on his Christmas Album called, “It Could Happen Again”.  Johnny Cash did the prologue beautifully.  The song gets to me every time I hear it.

So the reason today is both Remembrance Day and Veteran’s Day is because the at 11am on November 11, 1918 the Armistice was signed.  The fighting ended.

November 7, 2026

Pinky Promises, the kind that last forever. There was such a promise made to me that was kept until 2010.  It was broken, just not by her choice.

My Mother made me that very important Pinky Promise when I was around 8/9 years old.  I was having meltdowns every time mom left the house.  She took each of us out by ourselves.  That was where the Pinky Promise was made. 

One of the videos I like was taking about pinky promises and that was what made me think of this.

Mom and I did not always get along.  When I turned 14, I don't know what happened to me.  I turned into an extremely sassy teen.  Way more sassy than I had ever been. I also spent much of that year grounded, literally.  The night before my 15th birthday, I started to count how many days I had been grounded then I had gotten to more days grounded than ungrounded so I started counting the ungrounded days.  It was about 3 weeks and they weren't in a row, as a matter of fact, I was technically still grounded on my birthday the next day except mom said if I finished my lists of jobs, she would end the grounding for that time. I managed to finish them.  I did spend my birthday ungrounded.  

Our house was so perfectly clean.  There was a reason for this.  See mom had this idea that just being grounded is not enough,no, not at all.  So here is your long list of housework to do while you are grounded, not sitting around moping. Like I said, I was really sassy because I was home so often cleaning it.  After I graduated from Wayne State University, mom said to me that her job was done, I was educated and I had my degree so she could just sit back and relax.  We actually stopped yelling at each other that.day.  I was floored.  She said that she was so nervous I would not finish my degree and that was why she was so hard on me.  She knew at times she was too hard but couldn't stop herself.  

September 6,2026

 Tomorrow is Labor Day.  This summer has had its super fast parts and it’s super slow parts.  

Last Monday, I had the Ablation Procedure on my right Kidney.  I needed to be able to play with Ginessa Lat her lesson today and the consensus was, nope can’t do that  Part of me feels much better and the other part feels doesn’t feel better at all.  My breathing is more on the other side tonight. There was so much I wanted to write, however, I am feeling quite too tired more tomorrow will have todo.

Friday, August 28, 2026

 It looks so beautiful outside.  The sun is shining and the trees rustling their leaves in the breeze.  Naturally, these trees are growing right where they should not be, however, I love the trees.  I really do.

Wednesday was an awful day for me.  Simply horrible.  For the last several weeks, I have had major problems with sleep.  I can't sleep until dawn many nights.  I do not know why.  I am not worried or anxious about the procedure as it will be very similar to the one I have already had.  I have a general idea of what to expect, of which I am very thankful for.

So, back to Wednesday morning.  I barely slept as had been my usual for a while.  C had a doctor appointment first.  That went well and without any problems.  Then came the drive to our neurologist's office.  That was when the issue began.  I was fine at first until I wasn't.  I fell asleep for about a minute and i crashed my car.  We were okay physically, me, not so much emotionally.  The owner of the truck didn't even stop at all.  I guess he didn't have much damage to his vehicle.  There isn't a whole lot damaged to mine either.  It is more of I can't believing that I fell asleep while driving!!  This is terrible!!  After a few minutes, I drove us home.  I was extremely tired.  I fell asleep in my chair then went up to my room to go to bed.

Yesterday was a bit better.  I stayed upstairs mostly.  C brought up the laundry she was working on.  I folded the laundry and put it away.  My room is looking better and better every week.

2 days until my ablation of the kidney.  I wonder how long it will take to have the extra nausea, fatigue, and pain to go away?  Soon, I hope.

August 24, 2026

C has been home for a whole week now!  I am so glad she is.  I think all of us are.  Tonight, right before B went to bed, I asked him about getting shelves instead not the long dresser we use as a side board.  He looked and asked me, what is the problem I want solved.  I said I really do not like how the center of the dining room table does not line up underneath the chandelier.  B said okay.  What if you and C switch places at the table then we can move the table to where you would like it.  We both said that will work. C has done a lot of work this week, let me tell you.  The corner of doom next to where I sat is now gone.  The stove and the sink safe wonderfully clean.  I have tried to keep up with the filling of the dishwasher and starting the dishwasher. C has made some awfully yummy and healthy meals too.

My goal between now and a, hopefully, full recovery is to teach about 4-5 lessons a week.  It will really help my brain stay much calmer and not go crazy like it can.

7 Days to Ablation!!

August 22, 2026

Today was long.  I did have one lesson, so that was good.  Sleep is so elusive for me these days.  I can't sleep.  My brain will not stop.  Much of my brain knows that after the Ablation the tumor will die and be absorbed by tissue around where it was.  The other part of my brain is so anxious and absolutely terrified about how will my body handle one mure thing to recover from.  

A couple of nights ago, I was texting with Kathy about our dream Walt Disney World Vacation.  Kathy said 3 weeks in a deluxe hotel so that we could enjoy the parks and the resort too.  I wanted 9 character Dining Meals because I love them.  I wanted to be able to celebrate my mother there on October 18th.  That was the day she passed away.  I also thought she would enjoy their Not So Scary Halloween and I really Enjoyed the Mickey and Minnie Christmas Party.. 

By morning I thought I would call and see just how much our fantasy Disney Vacation. I received the preliminary cost.

tomorrow, I plan to work on the music library.  Currently, I am working on the vocal library.  Mostly, at this time I am recreating the library more so than building a brand new one.  I also need to file all the books and sheet music with the numbers instead of the type.  It will be so nice again to know what I don't have.  I am using the same numbers that have been used before.  The orgiinal ones that my mother had assigned them.  

A New Diagnose

 About a year ago, when I had yearly scan of my kidneys, A new mass showed up.  The first CT scan results were inconclusive.  That was about October 2025. In March, I had another CT scan.  It did come back negative, except for one test.  I had a biopsy and it came back positive.  I have Renal Cell Carcinoma.  This diagnose did answer a few questions on some symptoms i have been having.  I have pain my side a lot of the time, i am so much more exhausted than I was, and the extreme nausea.  I am nauseated 24/7/365, but this is worse.  

I will have a procedure on the 31st that will freeze the mass and that will kill it. I had another choice, surgery.what comes after, I have no idea. I will find out after.

My anxiety has moments of being almost calm, well as calm as I can get.  My cousin K, is coming with me to all my appointments.  That was a huge relief.  She took notes at the appointment with the doctor who will be doing the procedure.  I am falling asleep right now.as I write this, so I am ending this and going to bed. 

Here is a fun Peony picture!!

Teaching

 From the time I was young, I knew I always wanted to be a musician. I never ever waivered on that.  I was a born musician.  I think I sang long before I spoke.  I learned how to dance and then added acting classes.  I was working on a career in Broadway.  That had been my goal since I was about 8 years old.  I had been put in theatre class beginning when I was six.  I recall my parents speaking about this as if theatre class would channel my being dramatic.  It didn't.  It made it worse.  I learned how to cry on cue.  I only got away with crying on cue to get one of my brothers in trouble once.  The second time, I got in trouble.  I did deserve the time out.  

I have no idea how many students I have taught over 38 years.  Too many to count.  I have been lucky enough to have a career that I could support myself and I was proud of my work and what I did.  My mother was so thrilled and proud that I was a teacher.  She loved assisting me at competitions and rehearsals.  She really did.  Mom was always so helpful.  Mom and I were very close.  She came to most of the music competitions, there was only one that she didn't go too and oh my!  I heard about it the entire weekend.  All of the teachers that knew my mother asked where was mom?  Why did you leave her at home?  Let me just tell you never again.  I brought mom with me after that.  Mom laughed a lot when I told her all about it.  

I love teaching.  I love sharing the thing I love most in the world with people.  I do not know how to market myself in this new world of media.  I cannot work full time.  I haven't been about to for 19 years now.  I would like several new students.  I do like teaching here.  It is enough.

Starting Small with Old Hobbies I Love

 I learned to sew when I was in 3rd grade.  I was 8 years old and home because I was very sick, so was my younger brother.  We both missed about 2-3 weeks of school, I am not sure really how much as it was so long ago.  My mom made all of my clothes for school and church up until 4th grade.  That was when I had to actually go to the store and buy my school clothes.  The meltdown is a whole other story.  Because my mother had us rest in the morning and in the afternoon, we felt pretty good after the first few days.  Naturally the medicines helped too.  It was very common to see my mother sewing during the day.  I kept asking her questions of why are you doing this and that.  What does that do?  I had shown interest in sewing before, however, not as much as then.  Mom brought up my little table and chair.  Thus began my love of sewing.  

About 6 or 7 years ago, I had finally admitted I could no longer so because my hands simply ached too much.  They also shake a lot.  I decided to give a friend my sewing stuff and whatever material I had left.  I wanted someone to enjoy my stuff.  My friend, Pattie came and got my machines and all my sewing things.  I had lunch shortly after that with her and her daughter.  Pattie had made me a quilt.  It is so beautiful.  I love it.  I was very very surprised too.  I did not expect that.  The quilt is music themed.  

By the time I was in junior high, I could sew my own clothes with very little supervision.  Mom and I still sewed together, it was our bonding thing, I just didn't always need her help.  In 8th grade, the night before Halloween or the day the school was celebrating Halloween, I decided that I was going to make my Halloween costume after all.  I had picked out the pattern and the material plus all the notions a week before.  I had planned on making the costume for Halloween at school, but that week was awful.  8th grade was one of the worst years for me when it came to me being bullied.  It was cool to be as mean as you can to me.  There was a point system for what you did to me.  It was just insane.  There was one girl in my homeroom class that was the worst.  My homeroom teacher was never in the room and when I told him about it, he did nothing.  I went to the library as many days as I could.  My homeroom teacher was actually happy when I couldn't go to the library during homeroom.  He laughed and said things like you can't go to the library today.  I had friends, none stood up for me.  One ofter joined in if she was mad at me for some ridiculous reason.  She would get mad at us for the most insane reasons like not writing her a not during whatever hour we were in.  She expected a note from all of us every single hour no matter what.  I wrote all of my notes to her at night at my house so I would have them ready for the next day.

Anyways, I digress.  I began making my costume after school. I finished the costume about 11:30 that night.  No, my mother was not that happy that I was still up when she came home from work.  She did see the finished garment.  I had made a couple of whoopsies, nothing anyone who doesn't sew would really know.  Mom said I did a good job.

Nervously I put on my costume and went to school.  I tried to brace myself for mean comments and mean things.  I was not prepared for nice comments and impressed classmates.  All of my classmates recognized who I was in my costume: Laura Ingalls.  The TV show Little House On the Prairie was a favorite among many students.  I was asked all day where did I get my costume.  I said I made it.  I was also asked, did I make the bonnet also.  Yes, I did.

I made a lot of my church clothes in high school and I also made a lot of homecoming dresses for classmates and a lot of prom dresses for classmates and the dresses I needed for singing competitions and perfromances.

Recently I bought some Christmas Ornament Kits that you sew.  I am starting with those.  We shall see how my hand do.  They don't ache as much as they used to, I am hoping that means I can do some sewing.  I do miss it a lot.  The picture is of me in 3rd grade, the year I began learning to sew.  Mom made that outfit.  I absolutely loved it!

RSD, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

 One of the hardest parts of ADHD for me is RSD.  There are so many words I have been told as far as I can remember that still go through my head a lot of the time.  Some of the worse ones still haunt me:

    You are so selfish.  How can you be so selfish? Don't be so selfish.

I can't even say who said this to me the most.  I know my mother rarely said it.  Other family members said it often. I have such a horror of being selfish that at times I made myself as small as possible.  At school, I had a reputation of being a chatterbox.  At home, I was silent, depending on who was home.  The last time the three of us spoke to our father before he basically decided we no longer existed to him, was when we each we asked if we would move with him and his wife and stepdaughter to a farm in Texas.  We all said no.  I was 10.  We hadn't heard from him in months.  I explained why. I asked if we would visit mom, I don't remember his answer, I told him I don't like to be outside, the sun and heat make me sick, Andrew is allergic to the sun, I don't like to get dirty, and I don't think I can help with taking care of animals that stay outside.  I have no idea what my brothers told him.  I was just told that I was being so selfish by not going to live with my dad.  

It took until I was in my 50s to understand why his words felt like he told me I was the worst person in the world.  I couldn't tell him the biggest reason I didn't want to move.  He didn't pinky promise he would not ever leave me.  Mom did.

I have been working on getting some hacks so that the criticisms and mean commits do not keep going on and on in my head. Who knows? Maybe someday criticism won't bother me after the situation is over and done.  I can only hope. 

New Journey of Grief

Me and Tilley a few Years ago

On Thursday, April 16, 2026, my Aunt Tilley passed away.  I have yet to be able to process this.  In some ways it feels simply impossible and others like it has been almost a year.  At the end of last May, she moved to Nova Scotia with my cousin, Zachary.  I had spoken to her about 2 times since May. I tried to call her several times, however, she rarely had her phone on, which was pretty normal for her.  

She and I had so many laughs over the years.  We also liked a lot of similar things.  One Mother's Day shortly after my mother passed away, we went and saw a live event at the movie theatre at the local mall.  We saw the Ballet of "Romeo and Juliet".  I love dance so much.  I really do miss it too.  I danced for 9 years through out the end of high school and university.  I loved Ballet and Lyrical Jazz the best.  I met one of my closest friends in Ballet, Mollie.  We stood next to each other at the bar.  Okay, I will confess, we were also the two super serious dancers who would glare at anyone talking or not paying attention.  Eventually, we did ease up on the glares.  Ballet Class was also where I met one of the teachers that had such a positive influence on me as a teacher.  Her name was Debbie. Rarely, did she yell or tell someone something mean when they made a mistake.  She didn't make a big deal about it.  Debbie just quietly corrected the student.  

I don't remember what year it was, Mom and I went to Chatham for the Highland Games. We were standing at the grandstands watching a collection of Bands that were concluding the band competition, when we heard a booming voice say, hey, that is my cousin!  Mom looked at me and said I know that voice.  We moved away and down the stands came Wilbert and Tilley. I don't know if I had met them before or not.  Thus rekindled a family friendship that lasts even now.  I was very close to Tilley, I visited her often and called her at least once a week when she lived near her.  She lied about 45 minutes away from me.  

Maia, I am unsure what year

Her youngest daughter, Maia and I were also close.  I miss her an awful lot too.  She passed away from Inflammatory Breast Cancer.  

Lia

There are good things too that have come out of the family.  Maia had four children.  Her oldest and youngest daughters have families.  It was her youngest daughter who called to let me know about the passing.  There will be a celebration of her life, however, I will not be able to go.  I do not have an updated passport and it is a very long trip, with my physical limitations, the pain levels would be super high.  Maia's next older sister has a daughter who has 2 children.  We had a really good conversation.  Even with the social media that so many of us use, spare time is hard to find, especially for parents, it doesn't matter if a mother has another job outside of the home or not, being a parent means you wear many many hats.  This is not to say that people without children are not very busy,  I am saying this is a big reason why it is difficult for our family to get together these days.

Tilley would have been 94 on September 5, 2026. I loved hearing stories of when she was young and lived in several different small towns.  She got married when she was 18 and there were 12 people in attendance at the wedding.  She would say that all the time.  She had lived in many different places, with Halifax, Nova Scotia being one of her favorite.  She always wanted to go back there.  She did.  Last May. My prissiness did irritate her a lot.  She couldn't understand why did not like to go outside. She also said to my mother once that had we been visiting more when me and my brothers were young, I would have been forced to run around outside with her kids.  I said I didn't like to run around outside.  I liked playing with my dolls and my barbies. Tilley said to me, no you would have been running around probably with Maia.  Maia looked at her mom and said no, I would have been in here playing with her dolls and barbies right with her.  Tilley was so surprised.  Maia said I liked those toys too.  She said I would have wanted to be with my cousin in here. This was just one of the more comical things that were said.  Now Maia did say to me one day when we were I think in my backyard, it is just a little dirt, Heather.  You will be just fine. 

Tilley and Maia were a good help near the end of my mother's life.  my mother passed away 15 1/2 years ago.  

Tilley & Melody

Danielle & Melody