Some thinkin' to do.

Another one of the cancer ladies died this afternoon. Her husband sent out an email that Barbara was gone. He wrote that she had gone to a better place -- a place without cancer, or chemo, or surgery. They attended their youngest daughter's wedding on Saturday and Barbara had enjoyed herself. She had been exhausted since Saturday, and today the cancer "won".

I'm tired and draggy and sometimes I just don't feel good, but still I'm mostly happy. I'm not sure that's something that's communicated in these little windows... that I'm slow, but that I laugh a lot... that Eric is still delightful to me... that most days I have fun.

There's not much that weighs on my mind, and I don't worry about the future.

I think, though, that it's time for me to think about what I need to do to wrap things up in this world. If there are affairs that need to be ordered, I should order 'em, I suppose.

Eric and I have had many, many, years to perfect -- say -- our Christmas dinners. But I'll only die once. Presumably.

The Usual

It's Tuesday after Friday aredia, taxol, avastin -- that can only mean fever and nosebleeds, and that's what I have.

Still, hot chocolate is good. Eric is handsome. Another work day tomorrow.

About Christmas

My father addressed this letter to Santa in 1968. Mark asked for a bubble pipe and a Green Ghost.

I remember stringing popcorn for the tree with Paul and Mark -- a bowl of plain popcorn for stringing and a bowl of buttered popcorn for eating.

I do have happy memories of Christmas at home with my family. I liked the holidays that brought our family together. It was fun to see John and Doni and the girls... Jane and Mary and Chuck and Scotty. There were better years and happy occasions.

I wasn't created from whole cloth in the moment that I met Eric even though sometimes it feels that way to me. I brought something with me, and Eric wouldn't have stayed at the end of that fateful summer had I been completely wretched. Thank God I wasn't completely wretched!

Just wanted to set the record straight.

Work tomorrow, and despite an entire week off I feel like I'm going back tooooo sooooon.

I don't stress about presents, either.

I'm doing pretty well today, all things considered. I've been thinking about Christmas and New Year's... wanting to plan for and enjoy them. It feels so hard, though, to make plans.

I'm not namby pamby regarding my enjoyment of Christmas. I love the shininess of the decorations and I love the music. I love having Christmas dinner for our friends, setting the table, eating Eric's feast. I love going to see Tom play his harp on Christmas eve. I love decorating the tree.

I really do love Christmas. My mother used to say that she loved Christmas, but if she did it was at best bittersweet. She tired. There would be a flurry of Christmas plans at the beginning of December, but by the time the 25th rolled around she was depressed and/or angry. Perhaps it was having children that ruined it for her. Who knows? I'm sorry that she couldn't enjoy it.

As for me, when I limped away from Long Beach (where the natives have a 100 different words for the color of asphalt) I decided to create my own traditions. How fortuitous it was that I met Eric and found the very best co-creator in the world. My first just-my-own Christmas was Eric's first-ever Christmas.

Eric carried the enormous tree (which he had driven me 'round & 'round to find) upstairs to my attic apartment. He didn't want to help me decorate because he'd never decorated a tree before and he didn't want to mess it up. But we decorated it together, and this year will be the nineteenth tree we've made beautiful together.

Escrow closed on our house just a few days before Christmas. We pulled up the carpeting and painted the downstairs lickety split, and moved over just what we needed to make Christmas dinner for 20 friends. Our house was inaugurated with a long table and friends at Christmas.

Christmas blends into New Year's, which has always been fun for us, and for 5 out of the last 6 years that's meant Camp Martha. This time of year has been about sparkles and dancing, friends & silliness, and fun.

I guess I just want the fun to continue. This year, and the year after, and the year after that. More sparkles and dancing, silliness and friends. That doesn't seem to be the way my hand's playing out. It doesn't seem that way. I just don't know.

I'm a sucker for wishing on stars. I've wished on every first-star-of the-night I can ever remember seeing, and since I first fell in love with Eric -- have I ever not loved Eric? -- I've made the same wish, every time. I really have. I've had the same wish for first stars and wishbones and any other wishing occasions that have arisen.

My wishes have come true. As always, I just wish for more of the same.

Sigh.

All good things must come to an end, including extended stays at the Atlantis Casino and Resort.

We came home on Wednesday. Today I had chemo -- nearly six hours in the blue plastic chair. For the most part I slept.

Now I'm tired.

That's my story!

Clams on the half shell and roller skates

These are the good times, although they aren't as good as they used to be. We are still at the Atlantis Casino and Resort, every player's paradise. We're enjoying ourselves, but it's not huge big fun. It's more... nice. It's relaxing. We laughed this morning that we largely judge our vacations by the quality of our sleep these days.

There's really no reason for us ever to leave. Our room is free for the duration, and we have access to a hospitality suite with a bar, yummy snacks and hor doervres, and comfy leather chairs.

We're just crusing along -- it's time out of time.

I only won fifty follars in the slot tournament, BUT... I won a hundred dollars in a random drawing during the tournament. That was fun.

Friday and that pleases me.

Blogger has made some changes recently. Things may look a little different around here but it's still the same old yak yak yak.

They've enabled a new future which allows blog entries to be tagged thematically. For instance, each of my blog entries about cats (zero so far, but you never know) can be tagged as feline entries, and then all entries regarding felines could be grouped for quick cat reading.

This makes me laugh.

My tags would read like this: Eric Eric Eric Love Love Eric Eric Love Eric Eric Eric Cancer Eric Cancer Eric Eric Love Love Eric.

I'm at work now, but before I know it I'll be on my way to Reno and at the start of a full week off from work. Yay!

Just a Thursday

We went out for a nice dinner last night for Eric's birthday with Janis, Tom, and Corinne. It was fun -- lots o' laughing, as one would imagine.

I tell myself every day that Eric's going to be okay. I have to believe it. I have to have faith in Eric... that he'll persevere and some day prosper... that he'll take care of himself, that the world will take care of him, that time will make it better.

Leaving Eric is the part that makes me feel ragged and awful.

I mean but seriously

Just look at him. If Eric's not 300% more handsome than the next most handsome man, I'll eat my hat.



Eric's a Birthday Boy today, and it's my great pleasure to celebrate with him for the ninteenth time. He was 29 when I met him -- tanned, handsome, happy... maybe the first truly happy person I'd ever known. Eric was the tonic for what ailed me... joyful, steady, playful, grounded, and always, always, loving.

Eric Price is my favorite person in the universe, and I'm luckyluckylucky to be with him on his birthday and any other other day. This is not new news, but it's old news that is still absolutely true.

Twosday

This morning my right forefinger has eight blisters. It's not horrible. It's not the worst thing I've ever experienced. I am, however, experiencing some trepidation about the future. I'm considering methods of putting on socks without the use of forefingers or thumbs. Challenging! My pinkies may go on strike.

Monday! Ugh!

I had chemo on Friday -- it was uneventful, 'cept that none of the nurses seemed to have any idea what's going on with my hands (which are blistered and painful). One of them suggested that it was probably the chemotheraphy. Great moments in diagnostics!

This weekend Eric's mother was here. She's the easiest houseguest in the world, and we share great big bundles of love for her son, but I'm totally exhausted. Post-chemo-weekends are not meant for such things. Now I'm facing Monday morning with less oomph than usual, and it's making me an uphappy blogger this morning.

Eric is still dreamy.

That's my story!

Chemo tomorrow. But tonight...

Is there psychological significance to the fact that I drew my mother without a nose (which she had) but with a beauty mark (which she did not have)?

I've been going through my stuff for a while now... paring it down, throwing it away. I've had different methods. For a while I was throwing out three items a day, whether it was an old envelope of photos, a favorite t-shirt from a previous decade, or a crumpled receipt from the corner of a drawer.

I don't think anyone wants to be burdened with my ephemera. Eric will want some of it, I'm sure... but no one needs my report cards from junior high or a 1972 birthday card from my grandparents.

Report cards, birthday cards, notebooks... old junk jewelery and beads and seashells and candles and poetry and sand dollars and on and on.

After finishing my initial cancer treatment in 2002, I went through all of my old journals and diaries. I read them a bit, but then I threw them into a roaring fireplace. It was wonderful. The next day I pulled the spiral wires out of the ashes, and I was so glad to be done with all of the bullshit.

I was all growed up. I'd been a happy person with a happy life, married to the great love of my life, for a long, long time. Those notebooks had been full of angst and heartache and old, old, shit.

The sort of housecleaning I'm doing now is different.

Here are the earrings I wore when I got married, and there's the Wooly Willy keychain from my Christmas stocking, circa 1991.

I wasn't aware I was such a collector until I really started looking. It's time to divest, and as unceremoniously as possible.

This is an interesting place to be.

TV kinda sucks.

Well... it's nice that the Democrats won a race or two, and Rumsfield certainly needed to go. I'm happy about those things.

Somehow I wound up watching a "news" show tonight... dateline or something similar... and it was just awful. Fascinating and awful. In a nutshell: A troubled man stalked and then murdered a pretty and popular southern belle.

It was really something.

Amidst all of the craziness of this man's life, it was his cross-dressing and desire to become a woman that received the most attention in the report.

Ain't that America.

Then, at the end of the report, it was noted that DA could have sought the death penalty after the murderer's confession, but the family objected. I thought that was a positive turn in the storyline, but then they cut to victim's sister, who stated that they'd decided to not pursue the death penalty because the victim had been a private person who wouldn't have wanted pictures of the crime scene on display during trial. Otherwise... ?

I'm not picking on the family. They've suffered a terrible loss, of course.

The level of public discourse is so LOW.

Cross dressers are dangerous and murderers should be murdered (unless the victim is a private person).

I'm going to watch election coverage now. Maybe it'll cheer me up!

My husband...

... has made me hot chocolate the last few evenings. It's been wonderful. I don't know why it's been so good, but it really has been delightful.

Eric is delightful.

Just a Tuesday.

I'm feeling a bit bored and boring, but without the oomph to stir things up. It's a combo of chemo-drain and perspective. Every morning is a bit like Christmas morning now, but then I unwrap the day, and it's mostly not that hot (the wonderfulness of Eric aside).

Eric is also tired and working, feeling the strain from that ridiculous no-child-left-untested legislation.

The ladies at work have packed away their Halloween vests and sweaters. There will be a smattering of Thanksgiving ensembles soon, but then the high season of holiday fashion will begin.

The Week

Eric made Thanksgiving dinner last night: turkey, stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes. It was delicious and made the house smell like a holiday.

I made an applesauce cake and without being too precious (I don't like those food-porn essays that use globs of sensuous language to describe making pies) I want to say that it was fun. I liked creaming the butter and sugar, and adding the eggs one at a time, and sifting the dry ingredients.

I'm trying to get through this morning while managing a growing number of side effects from chemotherapy.

I'll be going to the hospital twice this week on Thursday and Friday. Friday is a day off from work -- Veteran's Day -- but it doesn't matter to me as I 'm going in for chemotherapy anyway. I suppose it's one less sick day I have to use. Party!

Eric's mother is coming this weekend. She's traveling from Florida for the weekend (arriving Friday evening and leaving Sunday evening).

Sunday

Eric and I have had a stressful weekend so far, although we're hoping for a better day today. We're going grocery shopping later -- the first time I'll have left the house since Friday afternoon when I came home and crashed from the Benadryl. That night, however, the Decadron won, and I was up until 6:30 in the morning.

Saturday was tired and teary. Today will be an improvement, I'm sure.

Friday = Chemo

This is where I'll be tomorrow:



Isn't it a lovely blue plastic recliner?

Eric and I have had a nice evening. We've been talking, remembering, and planning. I am delighted to spend time with Eric, as always.

Duh.

I've been finding these short little hairs on my cheek or at the corner of my mouth, and wondering "where did that come from"?

This morning the light bulb above my head finally went on. They're eyelashes.

I can't believe I have to do chemo again the day after tomorrow. Last night was another evening of blech and fever. I didn't even carve a jack-o-lantern... the first time I've not done so since I started at age... what.... four?