Anyone who’s followed my blog for anything decent amount of time knows that I lost my grandmother last year to breast cancer. Not only did I lose my grandmother, but so did my sister and my cousins. My mother and her brothers and sister lost their mother, and my Aunt Betty and Uncle Bobby lost their sister. And as dumb as it might sound, right now there’s a cat upstairs who is still curious as to why she can’t come downstairs and snuggle with Nanny on the couch. As anyone who has dealt with it either personally or as a supporter, cancer doesn’t just affect the person with the disease, it affects everyone in the family as well.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Normally I couldn’t give two shits about what sort of awareness month it is, but obviously this one actually strikes near and dear to my heart. Which is why this morning I submitted a topless photo to the annual Boobiethon. It’s up in their galleries as of tonight, and you can go and check me out in all my topless, yet tastefully artsy glory. If you’ve got some spare change, make a donation via the Boobiethon site, or do it directly to Susan G Koman for the Cure.

And no, I won’t tell you which one is me.

For as long as I can remember until she died, my grandmother used this mug for her coffee, and pretty much anyone in the family would recognize it as hers. I use it for whatever drink needs to be kept hot, and even though it was among the things in the cabinets - stacks and stacks of dishes and an entire shelf full of coffee mugs - that Eddie and I inherited with the apartment, it will ALWAYS be Nanny’s mug.

Since everyone is most likely tired of my whining about my grandmother’s ever spreading cancer (<sarcasm>woohoo! We found out yesterday it’s reached the brain too! I think it’s hit every major organ in her body!</sarcasm>), I present to you the 10,000 kinds of awesome that is this Youtube video.

And now, I’m going to get dressed, nuke some leftover pizza for lunch, and pack up some of the bedroom before I leave for work.

It’s chaotic for us right now. Sunday night my grandmother fell in her kitchen and wasn’t able to get up, nor was she able to get our attention very quickly since we had the surround sound on and were watching a movie upstairs in Mom’s house. She managed to grab one of the cat’s food bowls and bang it long enough for Mom to go down there and help her out. Then yesterday she ended up being hospitalized because she’s been having shortness of breath and is in a lot of pain. Things were looking bad enough where Eddie and I left work early the whole family ended up crowded into one of the little rooms in the ER unit. She was admitted around suppertime and is still there until they figure out exactly what the problems are. Any and all good vibes sent her way would be appreciated.

This morning we had an appointment to go check out an apartment down in Warwick, in a complex that I lived in for about 7 years. It’s a 1-bedroom place, but it’s nice, quiet, close to Eddie’s work (he could ride in with Mom every day). Pets are ok to have, which makes me squee with delight as well. We filled out the application and put down a deposit, and with any luck we’ll get a phone call telling us we’re all set. At that point we’d be moving in next week sometime, and taping the keys to this place on the door with a note that says we’re gone. Eddie already has already planned out the living room floorplan, since we’ve long since agreed that he can decorate the living room and I’m free to bedeck the bathroom in Hello Kitty things.

We’ve had a very hot week in RI. Today it’s only about 75F, but it’s been in the 90’s for the past few days. The skies boiled over with a thunderstorm that rebooted my computer at some point last night. I learned that nothing is quite as embarassing as being stuck in 96F heat on the highway and being caught singing Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name with all the truck’s windows down, unless it’s being caught by an SUV filled with black guys who are applauding your performance.

I called my mother last night to find out how my grandmother made out with her second dose of chemo yesterday. They’re expecting her hair to thin, so my mother bought her a couple of do-rags. She’s been told that she needs to walk at least 10 minutes a day - not 10 minutes at once, but total, since she’s too weak to do much more than walk up the stairs to get dinner. She almost fell in the shower this week, and needed my cousin to help her put her bra on when she got dressed the other day. And have I mentioned they’ve discovered she’s got bone cancer as well? Is there anything else that can go wrong with my grandmother, or can we be cut some slack now?

I love Fridays. I especially love Fridays at the end of the month, when the pharmacy is empty of everyone but the most freaky of the local freaks. We get to sleep late tomorrow morning, and I hopefully won’t wake myself up shouting “I’m gonna call the cops!” like I did this morning while having a nightmare. We’re not sure exactly what we’re going to do all day, but there’s a couple of good movies playing at the drive-in (Ocean’s 13 and Live Free of Die Hard double feature) and we’ve been debating going to BotCon downtown. I still can’t believe that they’ve changed Bumblebee in the Transformers movie. There’s going to be a whole generation of kids who have no idea that Bumblebee was a VW Bug.