By 9:30 last night I’d worked myself up into a good old-fashioned pity party. Oh yes. With the appropriate music, my handy dandy bowl of chocolate and a chip on my shoulder the size of an Easter Island Head….that spoke to me….and said “EAT MORE CHOCOLATE”.

Which I did.

As the most irrelevant of events, yesterday morning I got the “you do what?” from a new mom I met at my kids’ school. I GET it that most of the world may not understand the blogging thing…they don’t see the need for it…it’s a monumental waste of time and if you were a real writer you’d have something I can pick up at my local Wal-greens best seller rack.

Mom – So, do you work?

Me – Well, sort of, I write. I have a blog….”

Mom – Blog? You mean one of those website thingys?

Yeah, on that whole INTERNET thingy…you know, the one Al Gore invented?

Me – Yes.

Mom – What a neat hobby. Must be so nice to have the extra time to do that.

Me – I make the time, it’s important to me, I write about my family and my daughter’s cancer—

Mom – WOW, that must be depressing. Who reads it?

And that’s it, folks.

I have a depressing, useless hobby on my internet website thingy.

They just don’t make Hallmark cards for that kind of love.

After that rousing game of “Use Anissa’s Sense of Purpose as a Verbal Pinata”, I had to take Peyton to her clinic appointment. If you read the post previous to this one, you can see how I felt about that.

It sucked. Up one side and down the other. It both sucked and blew at the same time. It was one long never-ending stream of suckage.

It involved:

1. Peyton not being able to eat anything from 7:30-4:40
2. Peyton’s port not cooperating, making special meds necessary, driving our time over the school pickup and having to call in reinforcements to go get them from school
3. The spinal tap from hell that involved screaming, tears, mistakes, insufficient amounts of pain medication and a child in unnecessary excruciating pain.

I took the kids to dinner because I knew I’d be throwing rolls of Ritz crackers and fruit snacks at them if we went home to eat. This, in turn, made it impossible for me to get Rachael and Nathaniel to chess class in time.

They were disappointed, but so sweet about accepting the weary look on my face as reason enough. I felt another blow to my heart.

By the time I got everyone to bed and I sat down with my bowl of chocolates, I was ready to just call it a day…a sucky day that makes me wish life came with a do-over button.

I didn’t answer my phone. I didn’t answer emails. I didn’t answer chat messages.

But what I did do was open my Google reader, and start reading. Maybe someone had a worse day than me out there in the world of blogging, and by Joe, I needed to find them and realize my sucktoberfest wasn’t the worst.

It wasn’t.

It’s not often I read about other cancer children on sites that don’t originate from a cancer parent. Last night there were 2. One shared about the loss of a friend’s child to cancer. The other was from a mother who lost two twin sons before birth and how she was sharing her grief with a mother who lost a daughter to cancer.

I felt the big hand of God come down and just slap the snot right out of me.

Anissa, you hearing this? You? You don’t get to complain! You don’t get to sit down and have a pity-me moment because you had a bad day. Yeah, Peyton’s day was rough. There will be more of them coming. You get to be thankful that your child is still breathing, is still in remission and you’d BETTER be thankful that she has treatment options because too many kids don’t.

I was humbled beyond belief.

Yeah, I get that. My day was awful. I hope not to have another like it for a very long time. Do I think for one moment that my day compares to every day in the life of a parent who walks in their house and hears an emptiness where a child once ran? Who walks by that bedroom door and wishes with all their heart for a voice to call out and ask for one more story, one more drink, one more kiss goodnight? No. And I know that.

I got to wake up this morning and start a new day with all of my kids. Yesterday is a memory. A bad one, but it’s in the past and I can sit and brood about it, or I can grab the joy that today offers and make a better memory to replace that one.