In Which I Say Goodbye...

My most absolute favorite pic of Deb and her daughter.

Deb. Debutaunt. Queen of the Universe. Inspiring woman. Champion of kicking cancer's ass. She's gone.

If you've been about the blogging world for awhile, you've probably ran across a site called Debutaunt, a witty and well written blog by a woman in Texas. She was awesome. In 2005, she was diagnosed with ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia), something she battled the shit out of. In 2006, a timely stem cell transplant from her brother brought that shit down. In November of 2008, the cancer reared it's ugly head again. On Monday, she died.

I make no pretense that I was her intimate friend. I was just another person who read her blog, laughed at her posts, exchanged an odd email with her here and there, and prayed like hell when she relapsed. I cried my eyes out on Monday. I cried for her family, her young daughter, and the fact that she was struck down at such a young age. She was truly a lovely woman, and I am just furious, sad, and totally devastated that she passed away.

Whether walking in a Relay For Life or convincing people to join the marrow donor registry, she was always trying to raise awareness. I do know her one pet peeve was breast cancer awareness, because it overshadowed every other cancer out there and was just so damned commercialized (yes, you can commercialize cancer). So she made it her ultimate mission to say, "HEY! There are other cancers out there! Let's give them some attention, too!"

I have decided, because of her, to join the marrow registry as soon as I can shed some weight. We had talked about this before (read: bitching about our weight problems in an email or two), but now I have a goal, a purpose. I am going to lose weight for Deb and all that she stood for. I feel guilty now because I could have lost the weight before and joined the program while she was alive, which would have been a victory for her to know that another person joined. I didn't, however. I was lazy. I also thought (and this is what is eating me up) she would always be around to be proud of the people who gave marrow because of her story and her fight.

Goodnight, Deb. I will miss you and never forget you.

You're in the arms of the angel,
May you find some comfort here...

Yay For Drunk Posts!

Yeah, I'm fucking three sheets to the wind right now. What better time to post about our trip?

Anywho, so we left on the 17th of April for Denver. We got there in the midst of a nasty storm, but survived. The day after we arrived, we had to take our son to the hospital because he sounded like he had some crazy variation of swine flu. Turns out he just had a cold, that he passed on to me. We spent Saturday and Sunday in the hotel room, trying to get him to feel better. Come Monday morning, I was down for the count, but made a valiant effort by taking my son to the Children's Museum in Denver. It felt like Hell, but he had fun, so whatever. Only drawback was having to call a cab to come fetch us because I could NOT make it back up the hill to the hotel.

Tuesday morning dawned and I still felt like someone crapped on my head. The son was fine, however. So I (wo)manned up and took us to downtown Denver. We spent most of the day riding the free shuttle bus at the 16th St. Pedestrian Mall. The boy had fun, so all was not lost. After my husband finished with his stuff at the Convention Center, I dragged him out to the 'burbs to find a Borders so I could buy the new Depeche Mode album. On the way, we ran across the infamous
Casa Bonita restaurant (if you've seen the South Park episode, you know what I'm talking about), so we just HAD to stop there and eat dinner. I swear to Hell, that place was like a crack pipe dream of a Mexican restaurant. I would have been cool with it if I hadn't run across fucking CHEEZ WHIZ on my enchiladas. The cliff diver was cool, though. Anyway....

Wednesday we decided to go to Colorado Springs for a number of reasons. One was that my ex lived there. I didn't want to see him, but I wanted to leave some flowers on his stepson's grave, whom I had heard quite a bit about. So I did, then we hit up some local national parks. It was fun, and I was feeling less dead at the time, so BONUS!

Thursday we left to drive home. I can't help but say that it SUCKED. I was tired, some dickass in a semi ran me off the road, and the weather when we hit Illinois was less than stellar. We made it home, however, and here I am typing up a short summary of it all.

So yeah, I'm okay, my fam is okay, and I'm too drunk to finish this. Whee!