Happy Friday!

The past 7 days have been equally wonderful and exhausting and I don't think my body has ever been more ready for a Friday. So in honor of the end of the week I thought I would share the high and lows that have made the last seven days so hectic.

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Spending five days with my awesome cousins, ages 13, 10 (eleven on Monday) and 9.

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Having some quality craft time with the two girls (10 and 9). We made purses that were a big hit with their friends.

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I was unprepared for just how intense it is to be a soccer mom, Saturday alone came with 3 different sporting events, not to mention opening day festivities for softball.

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Seeing the lovely ladies of NBT kick some serious ass in their end of the year a cappella concert, and being able to introduce the boy to the reason I am usually singing along with the instruments as well as the words.

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Buying a new and very long book, which I am super excited to start reading this weekend.

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Working in both offices for a few days which makes for a very stressed out and sleepy Bridget.

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The amount of Starbucks that I could justify into my budget in honor of the craziness.

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And the biggest plus of all was that I was able to make it all work. I know it may not sound very difficult but I have a tendency to be overwhelmed by how much there is to do. Instead of taking it one day at a time, I look at the big picture of what lays ahead and I start to freak out. Usually, because of this reason, I end up skipping the fun things in order to make sure I can handle the sensible things. But thanks so some awesome people in my life (IE Mom, Cait, Jeremy, Kristen, Joe) I was able to keep myself sane and still fit in some time for awesomeness.

So in conclusion, Friday I have never been so happy to see you. And weekend, I am super excited for the mini golf, triple date, outdoors time, and relaxation that I know you have in store for me.

Have a great weekend everyone! Lovelovelove :)

Go to your happy place.

For the last 2 weeks or so I have found myself slightly overwhelmed and anxious about pretty much everything and nothing (it's kind of like the anxious anticipation of waiting for Santa only in a not so fun way). It has a tendency to come and go every so often for me and it has been going on long enough that I have just accepted it as part of my charm :) The good news about having these extra neurotic periods of time is that I have a reason to stop and force myself to escape to one of my few happy places that exist on this earth.
The qualifications for somewhere to be considered my happy place is that it needs to hold some sort of happy memory, it must have a good view (sunset or sunrise is a bonus), preferably outdoors (a cool breeze, birds, etc), and I need to be able to just breath better there. There are a few places that meet all of these qualifications and certain locations tend to jump up and down on the list but there are two that always remain at the top spots and those are my great uncle's house in wildwood crest and the other is the roof of my house. Sadly I haven't been able to escape to the beach just yet but luckily my favorite portion of the roof is located just outside one of my windows. Since I was about ten years old I have been removing that screen and shimmying my way out onto that slanted piece of heaven. I'm not sure why it's so calming... maybe its the remnants of that rebellious and dangerous feeling from when I was a kid or the fantastic breeze that always seems to blow past that part of the house. Whatever it is the second I am seated on the warm shingles (or whatever they are) I can feel myself breathing easier. Over the last two weeks I have been lucky enough to get home from work just in time to see some beautiful sunsets out there and although the colors tonight were not as vivid as they have been in the past; it still calmed me like nothing else could.

What is your happy place?

Post secret

I discovered post secret my junior year of college and it has become one of my favorite little pleasures on Sunday mornings. After I wake up and grab some coffee, I sit at my computer and through these secrets I feel connected to man kind. Some of them I can relate to and occasionally I find ones that I truly understand but would have never thought to send them in as my particular secret, however this past week all of that changed. I came across this secret, and it was exactly the secret I had been waiting all these years to send in.

No I did not send in this postcard, but I might as well have. This card represents the battle that I have been fighting off an on with both my family and myself for close to ten years now. I know that post secret is anonymous and most likely the person who sent in this secret will never read this blog, but thank you anyway whoever you are. Thank you for reminding me that I am not alone in my fight of not having cancer but living with cancer.

Poetic nerd.

A few months ago I got the writing itch and was able to crank out a few poems and things the I really enjoyed. Inspiration has been a bit slow again lately but I really did adore every second of it while it lasted. This is something I wrote during that time...

Yesterday I showed you parts of me
that most humans have never seen.
Though fear consumed me,
your bright eyes led me away from the clouds.
You have those forever kind of eyes
that could tame the wildest lion.
Such a contradiction from my ever changing view.
I wish I could reign mine in and hold back the change of the tide.

I want to discover the real truths of our pairing.
To learn the stories and feel the feelings of this bright boy
who seems to carry the whole universe in his head.
To see if I could learn all the mysteries
and somehow keep the butterflies.

We could stroll hand in hand
and take the most beautiful mental photographs the world will never see.
We could explore this vast wasteland they call life
and through each others eyes make it seem like the garden of Eden.

Snow day

So please keep in mind that I am in no way a photographer, but I have adored this snow day and wanted to capture it in some way.

This has been the control center for most of my day (excluding the awesome nap time I had with my bed earlier) and it has been quite fantastic to catch up on some much needed music downloading and hot beverages.



I always forget just how much I love the calm beauty of undisturbed snow until it snows again and I am always blown away by how happy it makes me. This snow day has given some much needed rest and relaxation after a crazy few weeks. I really hope that I can get back to real life after this a new burst of energy and excitement.

Lovelovelove!

Love is a mix tape.

One of my all time favorite things to do for my friends and family and even strangers is make mixes. Whether they be themed like the "Autumn blues" mix I make for my girlfriends every year or just a collection of my current favorites. It is a great feeling to expose others to music and art that they do not yet know about and to be able to give them something else in this world that makes them feel connected to the rest of humanity. I mean don't get me wrong sometimes a mix cd is just that but there have been times in my life when I have received or made the perfect mix to satisfy my emotional needs in that moment and to me there is nothing better.

Knowing this my wonderful college roommate Christy bought me a book for Christmas called "love is a mix tape" and it is turning out to be one of my favorite books of all time (granted I am only 44 pages in). The writer, Rob Sheffield, and his wife shared an amazing connection through music and like me over-indulged in the art of mix making. This story, at least thus far, appears to be his tribute to their brief life together and he uses the mixes made by the two of them to bring him back to that time. "Nothing connects to the moment like music"

I'm not really sure where I intended to take this post except that this book is stirring something in me. I'm not really quite sure what that is yet, but so far I am absolutely in love with it! All I know is that when I am gone I have every intention of leaving behind as many mixes as possible to tell my life story :)

"I have built my entire life around loving music, and I surround myself with it. I'm always racing to catch up on my next favorite song. But I never stop playing my mixes. Every fan makes them. The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with - nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of life."

Lovelovelove!

Makeshift Public Speaker

Last week I was given the wonderful opportunity to speak to freshman at Villanova University about what it’s like to have a chronic illness. They were learning about family history and the importance of knowing your risks and although my story doesn’t necessarily bring those points home (because nothing I have is genetic), I think I was able to help regardless. I knew going into these talks that my story was more about the luck of the draw when it comes to struggling with disease, but this motivated me to find different ways to show them why it is so important take care of their own health.

One of the big points I tried to get across was that no ones knows your body better than you do. This was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn when so many different people were telling me they had no idea what was wrong with my leg. At one point when I was almost 15 I even said to my doctor at the time “is what I have a tumor” and his response was “there is absolutely no way what you have is a tumor.” Well sure enough a few months later I was diagnosed with a desmoid tumor, but I digress. This was not meant to be about the a-hole doctor that I had at that time, but about how if there is something wrong with the way your body is working you should never let anyone make you think you are crazy. If you’re in pain or something is off, you need to peruse the issue until you find an answer that explains your problems or satisfies your soul. I tried to explain to them the idea of being your own advocate and trying to help them understand that it is okay to disagree with your doctor. I explained to them briefly about struggling with the previously mentioned awful doctor and how if you are not satisfied with whom you are seeing, then find someone else. A great support team of both loved ones and doctors is more important than anything else when facing an illness no matter how big or small. If your doctor makes you uncomfortable or doesn’t listen to you then how can they ever help you?

I really hope that I was able to communicate these messages to them and that they were able to see them through the rest of the story. They were very thankful for me coming and sharing my story with them and a few people even told me I was courageous and to be honest that blew me away. I have never seen myself as being courageous, I've always just been trying to live my life the best way that I can. One gentleman asked how I was able to get as far through college as I did with everything that had happened and I was so taken back by the question that I almost couldn't pull it together in enough time to answer. Luckily I did and told him that for me it was just the next step in my life. I told them that if I looked at cancer as being my whole life, that I would not have room for anything else fun or positive and its the normal things in life that keep me pushing trough all the other crap.

It was so refreshing to be able to be so completely honest with strangers and it was a bit therapeutic to go back and remember the roots of my illnesses. All in all I am so glad that I did it and I really hope that each one of them took something positive, no matter how small, from my story.