I forgot! On Easter (well, the day before Easter) my family celebrated and my mom made this funky cake:

It's a lemon cake with really sugary white icing and shredded coconut. Then, she dyed some coconut green, so it looked like grass, and it's supposed to be a basket with like "eggs" (jelly beans) in it... It was kinda weird, but I thought the idea was funny. I didn't eat it 'cuz of the coconut, of course. Here she is at the table with her cake and her easter flower arrangement from our garden...

INCOMPLETE List of People in My Life & Life Lessons I've Learned From Them:

No full names for privacy and/or security reasons.

Kim – Smile, even though you’re aching. (If we smile, once in a while, we'll get back on track...)

Emily – Laugh at yourself when you fall.

Traci – Make your own judgments about people; do not base them off what others say.

Teresa – Work hard, but not too hard; Family is more important. (Stop and smell the roses)

Brian – Never say “I love you” unless you really mean it.

Mrs. Utsey – You can make anything happen.

Mr. Tyler – It’s important to take adventures. (Expect nothing... And expect everything)

Ginny - Attitude is everything.

Meagan - You can go to the edge and look into the abyss, but then you have to be able to walk away from the plunge.

Fr. Malo - Ask yourself, Do they make you a better person?

NOTE: If you are not on this very short list, this of course does not mean you are not meaningful to me or that you haven't taught me a valuable lesson; I probably just haven't realized it yet, hence the list is incomplete.

I don't understand where my mom gets all her energy. And this is not necessarily a compliment. It's healthy to have an abundant amount of energy, but my mom never stops. When she does actually stop moving, she falls asleep within 10 minutes. She's on the go, all the time. She's on the go from about 5am to 10pm everyday. She hardly even stops to eat. Most of the time, she just scarfs it down, while getting ready for her next move. Is this the definition of workaholic, or just crazy? We have this tradition that we stop, hold hands and take a breath before dinner (no praying or anything just one deep breath), because it is good for you to relax for a second right before you eat, I don't really know. Anyway, sometimes she talks straight through it and I have to remind her to breathe, then she breathes really fast and continues her sentence. When I was little, my famous phrase for her was "Stop and smell the roses." She moves so fast that she never even notices any flowers, much less smells them! I, of course am the exact opposite. I believe in taking a huge whiff and savoring the sweet scent. My mom says I do this not because I enjoy it, but because I know that one day the roses will inevitably be taken away. I don't know about this, but I do know that on my deathbed, I will be remembering their sweetness, not saying "What roses?" My grandparents are in town. My mom thinks they are bored to tears, so she sets them to work weeding and other manual labors. My grandpa ends up knocking himself out completing these chores. I think my mom should realize that relaxation does not equal boredom. I myself am always put to work on my vacations to run various errands that she can't seem to get done. Her problem is that she takes on the work of about 3 people, but in the end, she cannot do it all herself, so she must delegate it out and fill her days always trying to catch up. But, maybe she just likes to feel needed.

Post-Edit: This is neither the definition of workaholic nor just crazy. My sister has recently been informed of Hypomania, which sounds exactly like my mother, and is related to mental illnesses that run on that side of my family.

My mom has a quick analogy for how my sister and I are so different from one another:

Ginny would go into a candy store, but walk out with nothing because she couldn’t decide.

Kate would go into the candy store and say simply, “I’ll take one of everything."

Maybe you have to understand my sister and me more in order to get this, but it's very true. My mom also has a much longer analogy for her and her 3 sisters of what would happen on a Snow Day. I don't remember it, but she may repeat it in the next week orso, so maybe I can catch it.