About Amanda
I’m a disgruntled LIRR commuter by morning, real estate journalist by day, insomniac by night, and cancer butt-kicker for life.
Where To Find Me
It’s Not the End of the World
Published January 12, 2012 | A Writer’s Book of Days (01/12) – Write About Acceptable Losses
If anyone knows about acceptable losses, it’s cancer patients. We accept sacrifices we normally might not embrace in order to survive. We lose our hair. We lose our fertility. We lose our energy. We lose our appetite. We lose our inhibitions. We lose our fear of speaking up. We lose some dreams. We sometimes lose people in our lives frightened by our diagnosis. We trudge on.
It’s not just hearing, “You’re in remission” that makes us survivors. Sure, we beat some abnormal cells in our bodies. But we’ve survived more physically, mentally, and emotionally than you can imagine. We’re stronger people than you might think.
But more important than the losses is what we’ve gained. A new appreciation for life and your body. A new understanding of beauty. The realization that life is short and we need to get things done now. That new dreams can be made. That you’ll find people who will build you up, hold you close, and not let go.
It’s a new lease on life. Accept it, embrace it, and all good things will be yours.
The Road Less Traveled
Published January 11, 2012 | A Writer’s Book of Days (01/11) – You Are In A Motel Room
Mom, my sister Alyse, and I watched from the window as a freight train rumbled on in the distance. Ten, 25, 50, 80 cars – we lost count after 100. The motel we stayed in was in the Mohonk Valley of upstate New York. My friend Erin was having her Sweet Sixteen party at her new home in Edmeston, a town that falls in the middle of the Schenectady-Syracuse-Binghamton triangle. We decided to take a road trip up from Long Island.
It’s hard to believe that this was the same New York we live in. We saw green valleys for miles and miles from the hotel room. We’d gone horseback riding, explored Howe Caverns, ate lunch in a town with only one traffic light, tried sulfuric spring water in Saratoga, and passed many, many cows. It was a far cry from the ocean beaches, Long Island Railroad, and miles and miles of strip malls I was used to.
That road trip wasn’t as glitzy as many of the vacations my friends had taken – weeks at Martha’s Vineyard, transcontinental flights to California, resort stays in Mexico. We didn’t have that kind of money.
But I didn’t know that. Mom always made sure our trips – this was our first multiple-day jaunt since I’d gone to Disney World at five – were full of fun, unique, and memorable experiences, even if they didn’t cost a lot of money.
Even though our money situation has improved drastically since then, we still don’t go for the glitz. Vacations are spent meandering and exploring, sometimes throwing the map to the wind. Luckily, my fiance Lexcie shares the same traveling philosophy. Our house is full of treasures from those trips – rocks, seashells, little trinkets picked up at a small town gift store.
It’s finding a stone with the words “THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES” painted on while horseback riding in the Mohonk Valley. Eating stinky tofu in a little mining town in Taiwan. Finding a free pair of roller blades on the side of the road while taking a different route than originally planned. Buying the most comfortable hammocks ever from a seaside shack on Prince Edward Island. Visiting Islip, England just because it has the same name of your hometown.
You never know what you’ll find along the road less traveled.
Why Crossing the Street Frightens Me
Published January 10, 2012 | A Writer’s Book of Days (01/10) – Write About A Wound
It was a beautiful summer day, so I decided to ride my bike to the youth meeting at church instead of getting driven. Being 14, cocky, and vain, I didn’t wear a helmet. (And it was the last time I’d ride a bike without one.)
Not only was I not wearing a helmet, but blatantly disregarding the rules of the road by pedaling on the left side of the street and on the sidewalk. I pulled my bike up the intersection of Islip Avenue and Main Street, a busy intersection in my town. There was a driver ready to make a right turn on red. It looked like he was going to go, so I waved him on, even though I technically had right-of-way. He then waved me on.
We both went at the same time.
His car hit me on the left side, throwing me into oncoming traffic on Main Street. Luckily, I wasn’t hit by another car, but my bicycle was folded in half. I got up, shaken and bleeding from my left elbow. I hadn’t broken anything, but I was pretty scraped up and dirty. A woman, who had been waiting at the intersection, allowed me to call Mom from her car phone. (If that doesn’t place this in the ’90s, I don’t know what does).
The police showed up, but I refused medical treatment. I was more embarrassed than hurt by the accident at that time, particularly because I was partially to blame by not following the rules. The driver was 18 years old and had just gotten his license a few weeks earlier. He sat on the curb, shaking and chain smoking.
It took quite a while for my elbow to heal. I have slight scarring from it, but it’s not that noticeable if you didn’t know where to look. I also had a giant purple and yellow bruise from my left shin to my breastbone.
The biggest wound it left, though, was a psychological one. I’m very frightened by vehicular traffic, particularly if I’m walking or biking (and even while following the rules). It often annoys other people, because I take a much longer time to cross the street than most people. I won’t cross until I’m 100% sure a car’s not going to shoot out from somewhere and hit me, even if it’s obvious to other people. I’m getting better and more daring (at least to myself), but it’s still something that bothers me to this day.
E is for Exercise
Published January 9, 2012 | A Writer’s Book of Days (01/09) – Write About A Ceremony
I have a knack for remembering vivid details of my childhood – some from when I was as young as three.
Kindergarten – 1988, St. Mary’s School – has plenty of snippets. Like the time I burned my hand on the hot plate when my teacher, Mrs. Stephens, made tomato soup for our class. Being supremely jealous of my classmate Michelle, who had a box of 64 Crayola crayons and I only had the 24-count box. Playing “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?” on the alphabet carpet in room K-A. Having a tooth fall out during nap time, causing disruption for the entire class. Having the bus driver forget to drop me off at my stop. My classmate Brian yanking down his pants in front of me and getting in trouble. Playing with the giant parachute and fleece balls in gym.
One particular memory that stood out for me was my kindergarten graduation ceremony. My sister Alyse, brother Aaron, and I had just got over a bout of chicken pox. Alyse, who was a year younger then me, refused to go to her pre-school graduation because she still had a dot on her nose. I wasn’t as vain.
It felt so much more grownup than pre-school graduation. Instead of just wearing a cap, we had dark blue gowns, our school color. We marched down the aisle to “Pomp and Circumstance,” just like we had practiced in the days before, and took our balloon-adorned seats on the stage-slash-altar (Catholic schools multi-tasked). The biggest moment, besides receiving our diplomas, was the recitation of our alphabet poem. In groups of three, we walked up to the front of the stage. I was the letter E, and had to recite, “E is for exercise and a good one for you is touching your toes without bending your knees” (while doing the very same). I still remember that line clearly. Any time I exercise (particularly the stretching part), I silently recite it in my head.
I’m still friends with many of St. Mary’s classmates – and some as far back as pre-school. We spent many ceremonies together on that stage: yearly awards presentations, First Communion, Reconciliation, our fifth grade DARE graduation, Confirmation, and finally, our eighth grade commencement. I wonder if any of them still remember their kindergarten poems.
A Bad Dream Turned Reality
Published January 8, 2012 | A Writer’s Book of Days (01/08) – What I Do In The Middle Of The Night
The middle of the night is slightly more unusual for me than it is for most people. I get something called sleep paralysis. In a nutshell, my conscious awakes, but my body is still in a sleeping state. Many people experience it at least once in their lifetime – you feel like you’re awake, but you’re frozen and can’t breathe (even though you’re really still breathing). Sometimes it comes with hallucinations, perhaps feeling a presence in the room with you (which partly explains incubus and succubus folklore), and often times a feeling of flying or body detachment.
I first started getting sleep paralysis when I was 12. I was home sick with a fever, napping on the living room couch. Suddenly, it felt like there was a vise on my head. I couldn’t breath or move. I struggled to scream out, but nothing was coming out of my mouth. Suddenly, I awoke. Grandma and Mom were in the room with me, but not reacting to what just happened to me. They couldn’t see from the outside what I had been feeling in the inside and dismissed it as a bad dream.
It would then happen once in a while – sometimes I’d feel like someone was in the room with me, but I couldn’t scream out to anyone to come and help me. When I finally snapped out of the state, it was obvious that no one had been in my room. As my teenage years progressed, they began happening on a more usual basis – sometimes as much as every other day. It worried Mom to the point I was shuffled to a neurologist. He suggested an MRI and sleep study since he couldn’t immediately pinpoint what I was feeling.
It was 1999, and we had finally just got our first computer and a subscription to America Online. So I started to Google (which wasn’t called Googling back then) to see if this new-fangled Internet had anything to say. Continue reading