eh? Wot's wot!

"And I know 7 months is a long time...but I think that you will find, Lumplings are basically the same..."

-Song from Yom Yom Lumpling, with apologies to Depeche Mode

We have a new herd appearing on etsy:

Amy Rue's Lumpling Land

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=295

I put some up tonight and more will pop up tomorrow (July 2nd)

Very sorry about the length of time that it has taken me to get this herd up for adoption. It's been a helluva a year!

I'm almost terrified of what this second six months will bring with 2009.

Wait, there isn't any "almost" about.

I might need diapers if I think about it too much.

If you follow my husband's blog/story then you know what I'm talkin' about.

If not...well, it's a sordid story of hospitals, brain lesions, cancer, not cancer, bleeding, more blood, children seeing blood, children thinking daddy was gonna die, mama thinking the same, and oh yay, the doctors also thought that...nice to be on the same page and all...ugh... shuffling sick husband on planes, husband doesn't know how old he is, how long have we been married? How did we get here? How old are the children? At least he always knew we had kids, small blessings, fitting for whole brain radiation, dear god the side effects, scans, more scans, living in the hospital again, again, brain biopsy, pain and more pain for him, no I can't effing eat or sleep, how could I? but then a light! A beam of hope in the form of infection (yes), strep?? In the brain??

Did you get all that? Yeah, me either. But it sure has taken up our year.

There has been good though... Hans' book came out and everyone loves it. We are all quite chuffed and proud of him. He is making a nice recovery, still in pain, but better all the time.

We are enjoying our summer with the kids and finding our rhythm in life again.

hold your breath & let go....

Over the highway and through the woods we went to Grandma Grace's.

The one time of the year that I see my paternal side of the family.  We've all flocked to Grandma's every year for that one special day of Grandma's cooking.  

Grandma doesn't cook anymore.  She looks confused and Aunt B told me that she had tumors near her brain.  

But I made her famous orange cranberry cake and  even though it wasn't as good as Grandma's I was proud to see everyone attack it.

And my kids got to play on the rope swing.  I spent hours and hours of my childhood whirling on the rope swing outside of Grandma's.

See those blue stairs with the big E behind Finn?  Crumpled now, but still strong when I was a child, we would climb to the top and jump on the swing.  A cousin or uncle would grab the hanging rope and pull me high enough to kick branches.... sending spanish moss and acorns into the air.

The kids were so excited and once I was assured that the alligators had vacated Grandma's pond they jumped into the water fully clothed.

Their incredibly smart mama packed clean clothing for just this reason.

I never missed an opportunity to get in that pond, smooshing georgia red clay between my toes and catching minnows with my hands.

Grandma used to beg me not to leave...holding onto our arms and making fake crying noises to make us laugh.  But this time she accepted our hugs and didn't really seem to have the strength or clarity to protest.

It was a strange way to leave.

But oh how lucky are my kids that they know their Great Grandmother?

Lumpling Love & Junkie Mumpin!

A great big ole thank you to everyone for coming to check out the newest herd of Lumplings today!

We'll get those birth certificates printed up this weekend and get all the Lumps on the road to their shiny new homes! My preschooler was hanging out with me during the adoption, reading her books and singing

"Five little Junkies Mumping on the bed..."

And I'm typing like a crazy person, but came to a screeching halt when I heard her song. Took me a minute to figure out what she was really trying to sing!

Dang, what do they teach in preschool these days?

Junkies mumping on the bed indeed.

Lucky Junkies!

Amy Had a little Lamb....

Amy had a little Lamb, it's fleece was white as snow...

& then that sweet little lamb found out that Amy Rue

turned an absolutely obscene age (eh, we can still say "early thirties" for the next ten years or so) today and that poor little lamb had to go...

Check out my hysterical gift from Hans. I was still rubbing the dreams from my eyes this morning when he gave me the Dead Sheep Head here, and I laughed and laughed!

The lamb is from Cherrybox Studios, where they have all sorts of other wonderful critters like Unicorns and Pink Pony heads on display. Absolutely brilliant job!

Another wonderful sheep painting came in the mail later in the day from our friend Don Bertram in Houston. I'll have to take pictures of it tomorrow!

Feeling oh so lucky and loved today,

and I have new laugh lines to prove it.

pussy cat wussy cat...

Mama! There are kittens underneath the Woodbridge!

Yeah? That's nice, sweetie.

One followed us here...can we keep her?

Uh, nope. Unless you learn to scoop cat poo.

She's so cute and black, Mama!

A black kitten? Uh oh.

Oh Dear.

Are we suckers?

Please meet little Miss Dibley, the newest member of our family, and our third black cat.

Dibley has a small white patch on her neck, like a Vicar. So we immediately named her after the Vicar of Dibley show that I love so much.

Our oldest cat, Tiggy, doesn't give a rat's ass about the new kitten, but Neko is out of her mind. Neko has been walking around pissed off at the world and growling at all of us.

Dibley is super sweet and just thrilled at having a bowl full of food in front of her. Tomorrow she goes for her first Vet visit and Ella is already worried about that thermometer going up the kitten's hoohaw.

Even though this has interrupted some Lumpling sewing time I still expect to launch a herd in about two weeks!

There are still three of Dibley's siblings living underneath the restaurant if anyone is local and looking for a new fur baby!

time to breathe

We've just returned from MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, riding on a cloud because my husband, Hans, had clean scans.

Cancer FREE!

For several weeks now I've been going through the motions of life, but not really feeling it. Fear shuts me down.

And I was completely terrified that the cancer was back, taking hold somewhere in his body. The almost 2 years of remission seemed too good to be true last week. I've read too many stories of people not making it this far with the same cancer.

But enough of that!

Layers of dust are being lifted from my mind. I'm so freaking happy.

The world feels a bit brighter today.

And now I'm taking my coffee here and I'm going to do some actual sewing.

There are Lumplings waiting to be born!

Happy happy little fuzzy Lumplings...just like me.

swim time

I'm sure you can tell which child is mine in this picture.

Yep, the one that isn't paying any attention to the swim instructors, but instead seems to be saying "wooooo! Where the party at, people?! I got my bikini on and I'm ready to live dangerous!"

And my other child seems to be saying.... um, well, I actually have no idea what that face means. But he was happier than he looks, I swear!

Okie, here my daughter looks sweet and innocent again. I tried to find a picture of my son not looking crazy and that didn't happen; he looks like a cartoon character in every single picture.

Today wrapped up the week of swim lessons for the kids and we are pleased to be done! I'm still terrified that my kids will flip out at the pool. The first year that Finn went he was what we call a "runner & a screamer". The swim instructor had to chase him down and plop him back in the pool.

But here's the rub of the week: Ella lost an earring! Gone! Poof! I tried to put another one in her ear, but it had already closed up even though it could have only been a few hours without the earring.

So tomorrow we make the trip back to the mall to get her ear repierced. And she knows what to expect this time which makes this trip more intimidating.

So I fully expect to be wobbly in the head tomorrow.

Yep, wobbly.

Like we need another hole in our heads

Oh me, oh my, my little Miss has some new holes in her head.

I knew we were in trouble last week when some of the neighborhood girls showed off their sparkly new earrings to Ella. So it was off to the mall for us!

Ella asked me if it hurt to get your ears pierced and I told her that it didn't because I swear it never bothered me! But you see that face up there in the picture? That was the look she gave me right after saying, "but, but Mama, that did hurt!"

Whoops.

I had to beg and plead with my Mother to get my ears pierced when I was eight. Practically had to sacrifice small animals to get her to agree. I remember sitting on the counter at Treasury Drugs in Marietta scared out of my wits and wondering just why I begged for this. But I don't remember crap after that, except for a few years of glorious huge plastic earrings in the 80's.

And in my teens I stuck safety pins through my left ear about 5 more times. Never really bothered with my right ear, it was spared the torture. I also stuck a sharp safety pin in my nose, but that one took forever to get through...not painful, just tedious. But the safety pins never hurt my ears either, I didn't even bother with the ice to numb things. I did heat up the pins and dip them in alcohol first!

So responsible. pfft.

My very first job was at the mall piercing ears. I find it hard to believe now that someone looked at me and agreed that I would be trustworthy enough to put holes in people. For real, I wouldn't even trust me to do it now.

So I felt a little emotional taking my own daughter back to the mall where I pierced ears as a teenager. The mall where I met her Daddy. The mall where I spent hours with my best friend before her death, and when I dream of her, I still dream of her walking beside me, fishnets tattered, through that same mall.

Once the girls did the whole "one two three!!" thing and the earrings where in, I let out a huge sigh and then sucked my breath back in when I saw Ella's little lip tremble. She didn't cry, and neither did I after a few tense moments.

Finn looked on and rolled his eyes.

I was so nervous after everything that somehow I agreed to purchase 8 dollar Hello Kitty Lip glosses.

But now Ella is very proud of her sparkles, and feels all grown up. I always promised myself that I would take my daughter to get her ears pierced as soon as she asked, and I fulfilled that personal promise.

But now, what will I do when she gets a bit older and wants me to drop her off at the mall?

Maybe I'll show her how to put the right amount of tatters in her fishnets, and how to lace her boots the correct way.

I hope so. I hope that I will continue to fulfill my dreams of being the right sort of mom for my children.

While the sewing machine is away....

....the Lumplings don't play!

I broke my beautiful new sewing machine.

Something about screwing up the timing. So she is off at the repair place to get her inside bits tickled.

The lady at the sewing machine store was so sympathetic, she didn't even accuse me of machine abuse once! She even petted the sewing machine and told me how sorry she was that it wasn't working.

This lady obviously understands the bond between a girl and her machine.

I do have some Lumplings done, just not too many of them have baby Lumps. I will still launch a new herd for adoption sometime in the next couple of weeks.

One more day of school left!

Today was award day at Finn's school. He came home with awards in Computer, Language Arts, & Music.

We are awfully proud of him!

Happy Mama Day!

Hans & Finn surprised me with breakfast in bed.

Complete with fresh roses and mint from our garden.

I've never been so coddled!

Finn made this tile for me at school. The green lady is me...maybe with a perm? Check out my giant flowers!

Ella went into panic mode this morning when she saw Finn hand me a gift and wrapped up a shiny marble in Hello Kitty paper for me. She also drew this picture of wild sheep and their kitty. Um, I think the kitty is the one about to fly into the sun.

small pleasures mine

Tallulah Bankhead: "Why, it's as easy as ducking for apples."

Dorothy Parker: "Hah, change one letter in that sentence and you've got the story of my life."

Our new little fat belly tea pot has a brilliant strainer hiding in the spout, keeping the pesky leaves out of the cups.

Hans and I have been so thrilled with watching the tea leaves dance about that our eyeballs are floating from drinking so many cups.

Now I need a good source for loose leaf tea that we can afford given our million cups a day habit!

More small pleasures this week include sending off all of the Lumplings, making a new flower bed and moving my heucheras to a more friendly spot in the garden, walking the Renn Fest, Rocky Road ice cream, installing a new ceiling fan (can never have enough in Georgia!), leaving the windows open to enjoy the breeze and planting my rear end on the sofa sewing more Lumplings while watching _How Clean is Your House?_ on bbc america.

All in all, a near perfect week for me!

Do you remember the first time you realized that you lift another human?

The knowledge has gone to Finn's head and Ella is never safe these days! I'm waiting for day that she turns around and picks him up too.

Did you think that I had forgotten about you?

I'm surprised I remember my own name!

Since my last post I went on holiday to Germany with my husband, his parents and my two munchkins. We met up with all of Hans' Uncles, Aunts, Cousins and more Cousins, and basically took over a hotel in Celle for a couple of days.

I fell in love with Hameln, Germany, where the Pied Piper fairy tale is based. All of the cobblestone streets, crooked old buildings and lace fluttering from windows spoke to my desperate for history soul.

It's hard to find charm like that here in America. I go to Savannah whenever possible to feel something close.

We got home just in time to hunt for Easter eggs and get our baskets in place for the bunny to come calling.

And that Bunny had a frozen cotton tail! Winter returned to North Georgia, turning all of our beautiful blooms to mush. Hans and I garden somewhat obsessively, but luckily we hadn't planted anything new yet!

And now....I'm catching my breath. Giving my home some cleaning love and attention, and just enjoying being here.

I'm looking at next Tuesday, April 17th being the adoption day for Lumplings.

The website is finally back up and seems to be working (fingers crossed!), so I can finally give these guys new homes!

I will post the official day and time tomorrow, as well as email the information to the mailing list.

And now we are...

And now we are.... seven, four and ready for spring!

I brought in forsythia branches a couple of weeks ago so that they could force bloom inside.

Here, in North Georgia, the forsythia is the first to shout "Spring!", and she isn't shy about it.

This is a picture of my smallest branches, poking out of an old silver mint julep cup, tarnished just the way I like all of my silver. It's much easier to say that you enjoy the tarnished look to avoid having to polish the silver every month.

The forsythia blooms have helped fuel our spring fever. Hans and I are already making our plans for the garden this year. I love this time when we dream up our next projects and almost itch with excitement to get back to our gardens.

And here we have the seven & four part of my life!

Ella's party was very exciting on Sunday. We had about 14 kids and their parents here to celebrate. Ella donned her party dress and showed true southern roots when she refused to wear shoes as well....just like her mama! We love to admire and buy shoes, just not really wear them so much!

There is a matching dress for her favorite baby doll, Coco. Coco also refused foot wear.

In a couple of weeks our crazy family will be heading to Germany. Finn & Ella will get to meet all of their Uncles and cousins, and we will somewhat follow the Grimm Brother's fairytale way as we visit some of the smaller towns.

Hans and I haven't been to Germany since 1995, when he asked me to marry him in Berlin.

He thought this through and waited until we were in a country where I couldn't speak the language so that I couldn't run very far!

Smart boy.

This trip will obviously be very different! We haven't taken a plane ride this long with the children before and I really hope we all handle it well!

I hope to have a Lumpling herd come up for adoption before we leave. Be sure to keep an eye on your email for the next amyrue.com announcement!

Celebrate!

If you read my husband, Hans' blog, then you already know that his PET/CT scans came out clean....NO CANCER! We don't have those biopsy results back yet, but the doctor said that he didn't see any cancer down there.

How fabulous is that?

We were both nervous, but putting on brave attitudes for each other. His surgeon, Dr. Hofstetter, was the first to tell us that the scans looked good and he just breezed by with that information. I had to interrupt him (goes against my southern girl training in manners!), and ask him to repeat it.

We were on a total high as we went to the airport to begin our journey home, but due to the storms across the SouthEast ended up waiting for 7 hours for the plane to take us home!

But that was ok... no cancer!

Now, this little girl here is too little to know just how important this past week was to her life.

All she knows is that this week she turns FOUR!

My baby, my little possum girl is going to be 4!

We are going to have a great big party with a Winnie The Pooh cake and balloons.

Ella is talking about her party non stop, I have no idea what she will talk about after this!

Ella at a party last weekend giving the blowy thing a go. What are those things called? I've always called it the blowy thing, I'm sure that's pretty wrong.

For the rest of this week I'll be cleaning the house and getting everything organized for the big day. Hell, we'll call this Spring Cleaning! Two birds with one stone type of thing.

solace in pillows, & comfort in my clutter

New Lumpling pillows are in the works! I hope to finish them in the next couple of days.

Not very sure when they'll go in the store because Hans and I travel to Texas for his cancer checkup early next week.

I usually get a bit paralyzed before Hans has a checkup, and it keeps me from sewing and other hobbies. But I'm really trying to overcome that this time by forcing myself to keep working.

This will be his year and a half tests. For the first year he went every three months, and at a year he "graduated" to tests every six months. So this is the longest that he has gone without a CT, PET scan, or biopsies since being diagnosed in July 2005.

Now me? I'd be content with scanning him every damn week.

It's like we have been holding our breath for the past 18 months. Gastro-esophageal cancer has the highest chance of recurring in the first two years. Five years, of course, still being the "cure" goal, but these first two years are the scariest.

We are so close! It's so hard not to live in cowering fear every day, but we have to live our lives as normal as possible for our children and our sanity.

A really nice lady emailed me a few days ago after stumbling across the Amy Rue site and our story. Ten years ago her young husband, and father of their two young kids had Cancer. Here is an excerpt from her email:

~~It is a roller coaster, but almost 10 years later, I see that somehow we survived the ride. Our daughters are teenagers now. My husband and I stay active in their lives and our life is "normal". Those early days now seem very far away. A couple of the important things I learned are, keep your life as normal as possible, for yourselves and your kids. And remember to take one day at a time. Don't worry about tomorrow. Trust me it will take care of itself.~~

I love when people reach out like this. When they take the time to offer solace to a stranger.

I try to do the same for people now, and I hope that in ten years Hans and I will be a bit of strength for others in this fight.

Here's my wall of clutter and comfort above my desk. When I'm feeling stumped or blue, I can look up and see the small things that mean something to me: Pictures that Finn, Ella, and Hans have drawn, my marriage receipt ($26.00!!), family photos, old postcards, a card that Richard Kirk painted for my birthday, buttons, metal bits, and more!

I should also mention that I'm sick sick sick right now, and dosed up on cold medicine which makes me a bit introspective.

Crass goofiness should return by tomorrow!

I'm late I'm late!

Our local magazine featured a photo that I took of my daughter, Ella, for the Valentine cover.

Ella was pretty thrilled because she's still been a bit sore that Hans had Finn on his cooking show, and not her. But now they both have a tiny bit of local fame.

I've been remiss in posting on the blog since the last Lumpling adoption. After I had all of the Lumps packed up and sent off, I attacked the study/studio where Hans and I work.

It might not be spring yet, but I feel it coming and I had to get all of this organized.

Hans even helped me put up new shelves in my fabric closet, and now I'm just incredibly happy with it.

I've also created havoc on the rest of my house...ripped up carpet from the stairs and started painting them white. Made new curtains. Took apart the dining room table because it doesn't work and I'm annoyed with it. Hopefully, I'll be able to afford a new dining room table one day, but right now the room has no table, much to the confusion of our guests.

It's hard to explain that if something annoys me that bad it just has to go. I have to keep the table because it does mean something to me. My Granny used this table in her photography studio in Montgomery Alabama, then it was my Mom's dining room table while I was growing up.

When my stepfather died, I was five, and I crawled up on the table and carved his name into the top. I didn't want any of us to forget him.

But now the table is not a comfortable fit for us as a family. Maybe one day I'll open that shop that we dream about and I can use it in there.

A Decade Today

For Ten years I've worn the same ring on my finger. It's gathered some scratches, and gets dusty from time to time, but it's a good ring...a solid ring.

A ring that said "I do" on the Square in Marietta, Georgia, shook off the dirt after that first garden was planted, had hundreds of paint colors cover it from time to time, sparkled when my children were born, and comforted me when the word "cancer" was dropped into our laps.

Newly engaged in Germany

This little ring is ready for more. More scratches, more dirt and more love.

Because Ten years of marriage isn't enough...not nearly enough.

It's a damn good start!

I'm greedy and I'm proud of who we are, and what we dream together.

P.S. - Hans gave me this aquamarine ring for our 10th anniversary. I hope that in ten years this ring will also have a happy story to tell.

7 x the baby boy love

My little boy is 7...SEVEN years old.

Geez louise...Did I blink or something?

We took Finn to his favorite Japanese restaurant where he had the choo choo train onions and his favorite sushi. The Chef discovered that Finn would try any sort of fish and kept stealing sashimi off of Opa's (Hans' Dad) plate to give to Finn.

The whole staff came out to sing to Finn and gave him a pineapple boat, complete with a candle.

Finn squirmed during the singing, but was thrilled with all of the special treatment.

We've been non stop celebrating his birthday since Saturday when we took all of the kids to the movies. The movie party was great and all of the kids had a wonderful time. On Sunday, we took Finn & Ella to the Build a Bear place at the mall where Ella got a Hello Kitty and Finn came home with a fuzzy frog. Monday was the Japanese dinner and today, Finn brought cupcakes for his entire class at school!

See, here is where I blinked... I'm pretty sure that I took this picture of cute little drooling baby boy just the other day.

But no, here is the picture I took the other day...complete with cupcake crumbs.

At this time, seven years ago today, the doctors were just deciding that I should have a c-section. They had been trying to induce labor for three days and my body wouldn't budge. I was at the point where my blood pressure was too high and it was dangerous for both me and Finn.

I'll never forget the nurse getting me ready for the epidural. She told me to sit on the edge of the bed and touch my toes.

Do what?!?

Touch my toes?!?

Are you freaking kidding me, lady? I haven't seen my toes in months! I don't even know if they are still there!!

That nurse ran away.

Everything went so quickly from there, and I was in an operating room with chatty doctors and Hans by my side. The Doctors stopped chatting suddenly and everyone was super quiet. We were told that Finn was breach, or head up, and the cord was wrapped around his neck.

If I would have gone into labor, Finn would have most likely been strangled by the cord.

There are so many times in our lives where we are just on the edge of something huge and awful happening to us. Sometimes we fall in and it is Cancer, but sometimes we turn away suddenly and are holding a beautiful pink baby.

So here's to all the times that we either turn away suddenly, or crawl out of that huge and awful hole by our teeth.

Because, Hell, Hans and I have done both now.

And here's to everyday being as special as a baby boy's birthday!

The Lumplings and the Shoe Lover

Lots of little Lumplings coming into being! I'll be working on them tonight, as I fear what tomorrow will bring me. Somehow, Hans and I agreed to take Finn, Ella and TEN other little kids to the movie theatre for Finn's birthday.

Wait. Pause here. My little boy will turn seven next week.

Holy Crap.

Ok...back to our crazy outing. I think Hans must have agreed to this; I don't think that I'm quite that insane. Maybe? Ok, maybe I am, but I obviously need to be medicated.

Finn is really happy about going and I'm sure I'll have a good time once we get popcorn and drinks for everyone and get them all seated and quiet. Did I say Quiet? Pfft.

Luckily, all of his friends are really good and sweet kids. No popcorn throwing hellions in the bunch.

Except for me, of course.

A quilted pillow that will soon go up on amyrue.com. Just a few bits left to finish.

The cotton has a beautiful feel to it and the quilting only enhanced that. So we are left with a soft, but sturdy, pillow.

mmmm....mustard....mmmhmmm.

New shoes make me pretty happy. Mustard colored shoes make me even happier.

So tomorrow, I'll wear my lovely new yellow shoes and herd small children in public.

Yeah, I feel the envy.

Pfft.

But it is really great, in a strange sort of way, that Hans and I are able to do what we do after this past year and a half.