Camp in Progress

I get to spend another New Year's Eve with my most adorable and handsome husband, which is the icing and the cake. The big scoop of ice cream is being with our friends, and I'm happy happy about that. I'm happy for the folks who made it, and I miss the folks who couldn't, and I'm holding everyone in a big circle today.

Here are preliminary pictures of our craft-in-progress, which is only half completed. Ain't it something? It's created with mostly found objects -- although a few of the objects were "found" in my bedroom.







It's going to look awfully pretty all lit up with candles after the show tonight.

Eric is making breakfast now -- yummy homefries and eggs-as-you-like-them. It's a nice way to start the day that ends a year that has challenged me on every level. And next year promises to do the same.

Orientation

We had camp orientation last night for the early bird campers. It was fun. We passed out laminates which revealed this year's motto and the camper's angel card of the year. Tom received a Merit Badge for his fact checking skills. We drank champagne and went to the Paramount Theater to see The Wizard of Oz.

The Paramount is an old movie house that has a classic movie series on selected Fridays. It's a pretty place, with a full bar, a mighty wurlitzer, a news reel, and cartoon, then Dec-o-Spin -- a prize lottery based on the number printed on your ticket. So, we went to see The Wizard of Oz, but it was also the whole Paramount experience.

A pretty nice way to finish a day that started with chemotherapy.

And now to finish my coffee!

Home again.

Eric has been working feverishly since our return from Reno early this evening. It was a nice drive home -- typically lively conversation with one of the world's truly great road-trippers, L.L.

We arrived home then walked out the door five minute later, off to the hospital for a blood test. I have chemotherapy in the morning tomorrow, and house guests arriving in the late afternoon. Tonight Eric's taking down the Christmas tree, and I miss him, and miss taking down the tree with him. I'm just too tired to do it.

I liked being on the road and looking at the swirling snow drifts and icicles. I like being home, too.

Spoiled in Paradise

The Atlantis Casino and Resort, Every Player's Paradise, is treating us well -- I'm sitting here in my Atlantis robe, in my concierge room, but I haven't yet had use for the butler. If I do find that I require the services of the butler, I'm going to insist on calling him Mr. French.

Life is up & down here in more ways that one. I win a little, I lose a little.... but, also, I'm in ping pong mode between being happy to be in paradise with Eric and Lisa, and feeling sick and tired. Tuesday's post-chemo are the hardest, though, so I have some reason to believe that today will be a good day.

It's nearly 8:00 AM and I haven't gambled yet. I can't believe I'm wasting this valuable gambling time!

Christmas and Chemo

We had a nice Christmas -- good friends and food and stuff. Pretty tree. Plenty o' champagne.

Today we're heading out to Reno w/ Lisa... off to the Atlantis Casino and Resort, Every Player's Paradise. At this very moment I'd prefer to be sleeping, but I know it will be a good time.

Just FYI: I'm bald and my hair is not growing back. I will be bald until I'm lucky enough to have failed my current chemo, thus bringing me that much closer to my demise.

I don't understand why my peeps don't know that by now. So many of those around me ask me if I'm done with chemo... if my hair is growing back... etc.

I'm going to do chemo once a week (fourth week off) until I fail chemo or until I can't handle the side effects anymore. And then I'm going to do a different chemo.

People should stop asking me when chemo's over, and when my hair's gonna grow back.

Off to pack!

Almost Xmas

It's been a slow-moving Christmas eve for me. I've spent much of the day in bed -- the chemo seems to have exacted a greater toll than usual. From time to time I rouse myself and work on projects; there are place cards to make, laminates to create.

The house smells like Eric's good food. It's not been a slow-moving day for him!

I'll garner my energy this evening to attend a 10:00 PM church service. No fear... I hold my same ol' opinion of Christianity... but going to see the fabulous Mr. Tom Silva play on Christmas eve has become a favorite tradition of the season. No pressure to keep taking the gig, Tom!

Eric just walked into the room and informed me that if I liked to eat fish that we would be enjoying an Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes tonight. He's awfully cute.

That's all the news fit to type.

Wee Hours

The Hannukah dinner for 18 was fun. Eric outdid himself with brisket, latkes, kasha varnishkas (sp?) et cetera. The teachers didn't talk about work/students/math tootoo much.

The next day, Friday, I spent five plus hours in the blue recliner, watching the drip drip drip of the iv. Then my niece Luana and great nephew Dusty arrived from Las Vegas. They are delightful individuals! This is the second Christmas in a row we've been able to see them and it's such a nice present!

I'm not exactly sure what the plan for is today. Whatever it is, it needs to be low key, on accounta the decadron has me awake at 3:30 in the morning.

Eric is just a few feet from me. He's warm and Eric-ish, and it's hard not to wake him up to talk to him. It wouldn't be the first time. He's a good sport about it... about most things, really...

Off to try to sleep!

Hump Day

Eric is amazing. After work tomorrow, at 6:00 o'clock, 17+ folks (Eric's co-workers and their sig figs) are coming to our house for Hannukah.

We didn't even settle on the menu and go grocery shopping until after work today! Still, when the guests arrive tomorrow we'll be ready, largely due to Eric's efforts. I set the table tonight: one, long, table with holiday greenery, dreidels, and gelt. The briskets are cooking now.

As exhausted as I am (which is pretty darn exhausted), I'm still so happy to share this life with Eric... to be people who'll throw a dinner party for 20 on a weeknight.

Now if I can just reconcile that with my buzzing feet and aching bones.

How did it get so late?

Whew. It's been a busy few days, and it will only get busier. I've been extra-super remiss in returning phone calls, e-mails, et cetera.

It's a crazy time!

Yawn

I would say that my hands are ugly, but Eric would never stand for it. They may be calloused and peeling, but they don't hurt. That's better-than-fair to me, and I won't complain about how they look.

My eyebrows and I are parting amicably. We never had much of a relationship anyway. I plucked them just once, between the onset of puberty and the realization that I didn't give a damn. My eyelashes have abandoned me, too, even though I never tortured them with mascara.

It was s'posed to be a busy weekend, but it didn't turn out that way. There were activities planned for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, but only Friday came off as planned. I spent the rest of the weekend tired, tired, tired.

Another busy week starts tomorrow. Off to bed!

Yawn

I would say that my hands are ugly, but Eric would never stand for it. They may be calloused and peeling, but they don't hurt. That's better-than-fair to me, and I won't complain about how they look.

My eyebrows and I are parting amicably. We never had much of a relationship anyway. I plucked them just once, between the onset of puberty and the realization that I didn't give a damn. My eyelashes have abandoned me, too, even though I never tortured them with mascara.

It was s'posed to be a busy weekend, but it didn't turn out that way. There were activities planned for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, but only Friday came off as planned. I spent the rest of the weekend tired, tired, tired.

Another busy week starts tomorrow. Off to bed!

More proof that Christianity is more about idiocy than idealogy:

So... I was scanning an article about a figure skater who was shocked to learn that a choir that had been singing Christmas carols at one of her performances had been silenced by an administrator who hadn't wanted to offend the "half-Jewish" skater.

It was much ado about nothing, and really just feeds the whole, absurd, "they're taking Christmas away from us" mindset, and then I read this:

Cohen, who is half Christian and "celebrates everything" during the holidays,learned only through news reports that the choir had been cut off on her account, the 22-year-old skater's mother and manager said.

What the hell is half Christian?

I can buy Jewishness as a birthright -- mostly -- but Christianity most certainly is NOT. If someone wants to call himself a Christian, let him embrace the full ridiculousness of doctrine. No one can make someone adhere to the ugly lie of Christianity, even if someone's born into the mess... as most of my good friends can attest.

Eric, again.

I went to my husband's high school to assist with hearing screenings just a few weeks after I started working for the school district. Teachers brought their students to line up outside the mobile hearing van, and I kept track of the classes and the students.

It was an easy work day at a new job. I made conversation with the teachers, but only knew a few of them through Eric. I was chit chatting with a teacher when CN came by and told him that I was married to Eric Price.

The teacher was excited to hear this news. He said nice things about Eric, which is not a new experience for me. Then he said, "Eric loves you very much!"

I laughed, and said that I loved Eric, too!

Then the teacher told me that he'd recently been at a development meeting with Eric. Small groups had been formed and they'd gone through several "getting to know you" exercises. Each teacher was asked that old-chestnut-question: If you could have dinner with anyone who ever lived, who would it be?

Eric had told everyone that if he could have dinner with anyone who had ever lived it would be his wife. "And we could tell he meant it," was what the fella said.

This is just another Eric story. It's the sort of thing that makes some folks roll their eyes.

I don't know what marriage is like for most people, and the only marital advice I've ever had to give is "marry Eric". But I'm sure glad that I married that man... glad that I married him, moved in with him, went out with him, said hi to him the park.

School Night

I had a nice day today, despite my uncooperative fingers. Actually, my fingers look worse but feel better, which is a trade I'll take any day. I made the Ladies Who Lunch laugh... told 'em stories and had them laughing, laughing, laughing.

Here's a picture of our Christmas tree, although pictures can never do a good tree justice:



And here's a picture taken during my first Christmas with Eric. I can't believe that I thought I was old and that I longed for straight hair!



I was bright eyed and bushy tailed in that big, joyous, oh-my-god-he's-so-wonderful-and-I-love-him-and-he-loves-me kinda way. I told stories and made people laugh. But boy oh boy I had no idea what good things were in store for me. I couldn't even imagine how light life could be.

Light and love are the gifts Eric gave me, in addition to light up pink flamingos and a black leather jacket.

What a bitchin' boyfriend, huh?

Another Week!

My weekend would probably sound slow and slothful to most of my three regular readers, but for me it was jam-packed. Eric and I went Christmas tree shopping post-chemo on Friday and found a lovely tree. It was easy, which is not typical. There were years when we would drive from lot to lot and not find anything even close to what we wanted.

Eric has a Christmas Tree Stick, btw. It's the absolute maximum height allowable for our tree (approximately 8.5 feet). He brings it with us when we look for a tree tall enough and fat enough and bank-like enough.

I've been shopping and decorating and such despite my war-torn hands and general fatigue. These are the good days, and there's no point in saving anything up for better times. Not that I was ever much of a saver-upper anyway.

Janis had us over for dinner last night: a lovely roast beef w/ potatoes and carrots and onions, a salad of her home-grown lettuces, and the Cookies of Wonder and Joy. Yum!

I have what amounts to a data entry crisis at work at the moment. I really just need to hunker down and TYPE -- a pleasant enough way to spend the work day, usually -- but my fingers are not cooperating (and my mind wanders, too).

I guess I should get ready to go, though.

Morning

Getting ready for chemo at 9:00 AM this morning. It's the final chemo of my third cycle, which means that I get one week off after this.

My fingers are blistering again and it's pretty painful. It's definitely starting out worse than before, so if this is any indication of things to come, I'm not going to be happy camper.

The doctors and nurses have been no help whatsoever. I've implemented the suggestions of the Cancer Ladies, and had thought that was working, but .... well... apparently not-so-much.

Have to go!

Sleepy.

Just another workday... not terribly productive, but enjoyable. Eric made a lovely quiche for dinner, and now I'm drinking hot chocolate and playing silly computer games, and watching The Daily Show.

Not very exciting, but uneventful evenings are nice, too.

Hoots, Boot, and Markers

I had a nice day at work today. I laughed & laughed w/ NM, who is definitely a hoot. I had a good time w/ CN, as well, who is a different sort of hoot.

Eric and I sang on the way home from work... a crazy Zappa/Manilow medley, with some Neil Young thrown in to boot.

Once home I received the results of my latest blood test, which shows a significant (around 50%) drop in my tumor markers. Tumor markers for breast cancer are notoriously unreliable. They're virtually unused to monitor ned patients (folks with no evidence of disease), and for some people they don't correlate to cancer growth at all. BUT... if I'm going to have a marker drawn, I'd rather have it go down than go up.

That's all!

Chemo + Cancer = Rock + Hard Place

Three out of four Fridays is just a lot. They come around so fast, and the respite is too brief. There just aren't that many nights that I feel like drinking champagne.

How can I say that I want to continue with treatment? But how can I say that I want to stop, when stopping represents failure of one of the "nicer" therapies, and means one less option, and that I'm that much closer to running out of time, as well?

These are rhetorical questions!

I ate jambalaya tonight, and Janis' chocolate peanut butter cookies of wonder and delight (as I've dubbed them). I have reason to believe that my Christmas tree will be beautiful, and I know that I couldn't have a sweeter, better, smarter, kinder, more handsome, husband.

How many days 'til vacation?

It's funny to me that I consider the weekend to have been a success because I was able to go shopping and do laundry. In the past that might have a constituted a bad weekend, but now it means that I felt ooookay.

The best moment of the whole weekend happened last night, when (for some reason) my bad impression of Richard "I am a Windbag" Dreyfuss made Eric laugh & laugh.

I watched strange medical shows yesterday -- documentaries about a 13 year old girl with a 15 lb growth on her face, and another about Primordial Dwarfism. I paid for my voyeurism with supper creepy dreams.

Now I’m at work, and I suppose I should get to it!

I had chemo today, but it was a best case chemo scenario. It was a short... just the three pre-meds and the taxol, so I wasn't there all day.


Here's Eric as we're leaving for the appointment this AM. Isn't he adorable? And I love this view from the front of our house. The Oakland hills in the background could be any European city.


Yes: I'm officially handicapped. BUT... it kinda rocks. Did you know that if you're AlterAbled (as we say at Fair) you don't have to pay parking meters? Also, you get to cut in line at Disneyland. There's a silver lining for sure, although I don't want to belittle the cloud.


A deceptively benign marker given the screaming fear of so many of the folks who enter this doorway. When I see people in the waiting room who look first-time-scared, I try to put a little hop in my step and a smile on my face. I don't want to be part of the tyranny of cheerfulness, but on the other hand I don't want to think that every day w/ cancer is hell.


One of the premeds has been hung. Note my picture on the bag... security! They are very careful with the administration of chemo drugs. The Chemotherapy Suite even has its own pharmacist on site.

I didn't take any pictures after that on accounta the premeds put me to sleep.

It's been a quiet day post-chemo. Eric is handsome and life is good.