I am exhausted today. I am a bit surprised about how tired I am and it kind of hit me this afternoon at half time of the World Cup. We attended the celebration of life and I ended up standing for 2 hours as all of the tables were full and I did not know anyone sitting at any of the tables of the 250 people that attended. Mel said that she was tired at the end as well. We were there from 1 to 3pm and then when I got home I watched a bit of the World Cup and then I was so exhausted that I told Mel that i was going to take a nap. I ended up sleeping for almost 2 hours I think, but even after I woke up my whole body feels so tired. I think that this is accumulation from the last two days where I probably ended up pusing myself a lot. We did not go to bed until after midnight I think and this morning I slept in until 8:17 which is not really normal for me. I will need to go to bed early tonight to compensate for it. This week we will be going to the hockey tournament and we will see how that turns out.
The kids hooked up the PS5 to the TV upstairs so that they could play it. With the coffee bar area and the TV all of us have ended up socializing more compared to downstairs. I think that we will end up getting a TV upstairs, Mel likes the idea of getting the Samsung Frame as we know quite a few people who have purchased it and they are happy with it. There are a couple of locations that we can put the TV, and I think that we can get it and be happy with it. Logically the best location for viewing would be between our two windows we have in the area, but the most space would be on the large wall behind where we have the dining room table. The issue is that we do not really have any chairs or anything that face it directly. The area where we tend to sit is by the coffee station. I think that we can fit a 65″ TV in that space, but it will reach the edge of each of the windows and we will need to make sure that it is perfectly centered. Some days Mel and myself are tired and do not feel like cooking and we tell the kids to fend or themselves. They can both cook their own meals and make up creations that they wanted. Xavier ended up making mac and cheese with smoked brisket. He knows how to make it from scratch but he cheated and used KD, dressed it up a bit and then used the smoked brisket. Olivier saw the bright orange in a container and decided that he wanted to make KD with fried kielbasa. He excited told me that he flipped the kielbasa in the pan by flipping it because he did not want to turn them individually. I am in the bedroom and he shouted that he did what I did. When my mother sees me cooking and flipping things with ease, she says that she was never good at that. My father can do it, but my mother does not have the confidence to do it, if you do not do it correctly you can end up with quite a mess. There are times where I am too lazy to go get a spatula or something to flip and just flip things in the pan. My higher end pans are designed to do it well, but currently most of our non-stick pans do not really have the proper lip on the pans to do it easily, so I am impressed that he did it with one of those pans. Olivier tends to stick to use only the non-stick pans, while Xavier will use the stainless steal pans. No one uses the cast iron or my carbon steel pans. Yesterday my mother washed one of the cast iron lids and left it to air dry. It is remarkable how fast rust can appear. By the end of the night there was rust all over the pan and Mel’s mother and aunt both remarked that they did not wash that and they do not want to wash any of my cast iron things. They normally leave it for me, which I do not mind. I said it is not a big deal as they are both easy to fix. This one it is not very deep with rust as it is quite superficial, so I scrubbed it a bit and applied oil and it is as good as new.
I am not sure how the cancer affects me, or the difference between what the cancer does to my body and what the chemo treatment does. It is hard to say whether the fatigue is due to cancer, chemo, or just the regular fatigue that would come from pushing me too hard. During the speeches that we had heard today at the celebration of life, the one that stood out was from his god daughter who spoke of gratitude letters for people. I think that it stood out because of what I do with one of the social workers where I am writing my legacy document with her. I try and write some things of gratitude and I think that it is important that you share it will people. She had said that she writes about people that have had an impact on her life. I think that this is something that I may do, it is going to take me a while as there are so many people that have had a positive impact on my life. I am going to start from my childhood and then work my way out timeline wise. Hopefully I will get through everyone, I am not sure how long it will take because there are a lot of things that i would like to write and say. When Mel and I got married, we each wrote thank you letters to everyone. We would be sitting there hand writing out letters and Mel would finish 4 or 5 before I was done one. She asked what I was writing so furiously and I told her I had a lot to say to the people involved. In Mel’s letters there would be words thanking them for their gifts, while I would be writing what they meant to me and then thanking them. My cards were filled with writing while hers were shorter. A song popped up when I was listening to the album that I listed above. This song is not from that band but from a different band and it is something that made me think of the gratitude. the song starts off with a voicemail from the father that he had left for his son and in it he says that he loves him and is looking forward to hearing from him. There are quite a few instances I have heard about from people leaving voicemails that people save for years. I always loved that concept but I also never leave voicemails and do not really understand when people leave them for me as I can see that they have called. But the romantic side of me loves this concept of capturing these moments on a voicemail. A message that was common throughout the celebration of life was to always tell people that you love them, and that is what my friend always did. He shared his love with everyone, all of the time. I would like to write a page or so for all of the people that I know and I am not sure if it is something that I would give to them now or later. What I plan to do however is write them all and I will leave them in a folder and I will make sure that Mel knows about this folder. I will probably revisit the content when I think of things to write for each person. If my condition deteriorates then I would want Mel to give those to each person, or I can create a killswitch on my accounts where if I do not log onto them for a month they are all released. That is an ideal time, as in most situations I log in and check things at least once a week, but with a month it would be very weird for me to not log into my accounts. I know that in theory the intent is to give it to people right away, but I want to finish writing to everyone first. It will take me time to think and to capture everything. Right now I am working on writing something for Mel in my legacy document and it is hard to capture everything in words for what she means to me. I can write things, but I do not feel it captures what I want to tell, so that one will take me some time. Today Olivier has told me probably a thousand times that he loves me. I am not sure what brought that on. Mel will overhear and ask what he is saying and he tells her that he was telling me that he loves me. I am not sure if he has told Mel that as frequently today as he has to me or not. I will have to ask her later.
Olivier was relaying a story about me to Mel about things that I did not do. It was rather amusing as I did not correct him and Mel told him that it was not me. She is right, but I let him tell the story. Growing up I had a great childhood. There were a lot of kids in the area that I was friends with and we hung out and did things all of the time together. It is do different from these days where we need to schedule time for kids to hang out together. There are so many things that we did that kids these days do not do. We use to build treehouses in the forested areas where we were. I am not sure how we managed to find wood, nails and a hammer. The structures were most likely quite sketchy but we did it. We also spent days digging a hole in sand to build a cabin in there. As we were young we never really thought of creating support structures and one day the whole structure collapsed because we probably expanded it too much. We would spend hours building jumps and then see how high or far we could jump on our bikes. As kids we could be mischevious as well, as most yards did not have fences we would roam through the neighbourhood and help ourselves to the gardens of others for some treats. Yesterday with all of the kids here, they spent a lot of time raiding all of our fruit, we have currents, wild strawberries and raspberries scattered through the garden, our front and back yards. The kids ate mostly the ripe fruit, but if it was even slightly coloured they would eat that as well. My friend made a comment how we would pull up carrots from people’s yards. We were mischevious, but generally we were not destructive. I do not remember ever getting caught. There was one time that I was caught taking a shortcut through someone’s yard and the dad caught me and lectured me on why I was cutting through their yard. It was not even that big of a shortcut, and I am not sure why I did it. As this entry is getting quite long I will end it on this.
I am trying to remember things that I have not thought about for decades, while also trying to prepare messages for a future that I cannot predict. I do not know what will happen with the cancer, how long I have, or whether these letters will be needed any time soon. I will keep writing down the stories as they come back to me and telling people what they mean to me, even if I decide not to give them the letters right away. Maybe one day someone will find the folder and think that I somehow knew exactly what was going to happen. I do not, but if anyone would like to tell me, bring on the psychics.
Q