I changed the blog title from Living with, to Living After Lung Cancer. We're not living with it anymore. It's still affecting every day of our lives, though. So now we focus on moving past it. What comes next? Life comes next, whether we want it to or not, it goes on. Personally, I want it to.

 It hit me last night, laying in bed next to my sleeping six year old... I am a single mom. Holy crap. TONI is a single mom. This is not how it was supposed to be. Whose idea was it to leave me in charge by myself? They need to be fired. I go two months without remembering to pay the electricity. I leave the oven on for 24 hours. I take three hour naps. I spend as much time playing video games as the kids do. I can't be in charge by myself.

 And then the sudden panic subsided and I realized that I've basically been a single mom for the last seven months anyway. My partner has been gone for awhile, and mostly all he did was bark out meaningless things, trying to be relevant. And I feel almost mean for saying that but it's true. I would back him up when I could but more often than not he was unreasonable. He took as much supervising -- more in the end -- than the kids.

 And now, I don't have to constantly be on top of whether the man is dealing okay with the kids, whether the kids are okay with him, leaving someone with him so I can go buy food, making sure the kids, who just want to be normal kids, aren't playing too much in the house because it was a lot of stress on Karl.

 And I realized how free I suddenly am. I can buy what I want and I don't have to take anyone else's opinion into consideration. I can take the kids out wherever I want and I don't have to worry about whether another adult in the houe is up to it, is in the mood for it, will feel left out if I go without him, or can't be left at all.

 I don't have to follow anyone else's timeline. I can do this single mom thing for as long as I want. Or I can start dating tomorrow. I can get another PUPPY! Okay, no. No more dogs. But you get the idea.

 Ideally, I'd have kept Karl forever. I would have him here and healthy and raising our kids together. But since that obviously isn't an option, I'm going to take each day and live it as fully as I can, on my own time and my own terms, not anyone else's.