Anniversary

I met Eric eighteen years ago today.

He was tan & bright eyed & joyful. I wanted to swallow his confidence like a pill, and wanted some small amount of his shinyness to rub off on me. I had never known anyone like him. His brand of self-possession and comfort-in-his-own-skin was so foreign to me that I didn't have words to describe it. I just knew that he was special, and that I wanted to know him for a long, long, time.

Eric was the first good choice I'd made as an adult, and is still the best.

We were sitting on a bench in Yosemite this weekend, and there was an old couple sitting across from us. Looking at them I was filled with such longing to have what they have -- what they've presumably HAD -- a long life with each other and the chance to be old together.

This is the same old song I always sing. It's Martha's Lament. I can't help it. It's eighteen years later, and it still feels like Eric hung the moon.

Yosemite was swell.

It feels like a long time since I blogged! Yosemite was beautiful, as expected. It was very sunny, breezy, and good.

Eric and I went on a two hour hike, past Mirror Lake, which was taxing (uphill) for me but worthwhile. There were other folks there but we were able to get away from the largest of the valley floor crowds. Here's where we were:



Now it's Monday, and I'm discombobulated. I need to go into work, but I don't want to -- being displaced from my office is increasingly stressful. It's not enormous in the grand-scheme-of-things, but I don't always live in the grand-scheme-of-things.

I guess I should figure out what I'm doing.

Right Now

I've felt good for the last three weeks.  I've been almost entirely without pain, and I've even had more energy that usual (my new usual, not my old usual). 

 

I've really been appreciating it.  Sometimes I stop and think about how nice it is to be able to cross my legs without "helping" my leg up & over.  I've been going on pretty weekend walks with Eric and not limping the next day.

 

It's wonderful!  It absolutely won't last, but how sad would it be to only acknowledge when things get bad, or worse? 

 

I think everyone who's lucky enough to not be in pain right now should take a moment to enjoy the easy, painless, movement of their muscles and the smooth function of their joints. I hope there are lots & lots of you out there.

Mold

If I didn't have bigger fish to fry stress-wise, I'd find this mold situation pretty awful.

My job is an old school job. This isn't a 21st Century gig. I can't just plug a laptap into a workstation and get to work.

My job involves paper. Paper lists with items checked off.... stacks and stacks of alphabetized forms... information in triplicate -- white, yellow, pink.

I use index cards. The department uses equipment. There are floor to ceiling cabinets: scoliometers, audiometers, expensive little books for testing color vision. There are syringes and alcohol wipes. There's a refrigerator containing medications.

There are logs with signatures in blue ink.

So, yes, while having word processing and spreadsheet programs is good, and access to the district database is required, what I really need is to be at my desk, surrounded by stacks and stacks of contaminated, spore-y papers.

NM is as even-keeled as I am, and she finds this stressful. CN fled the building shortly after the Mold Meeting, very nearly holding a napkin over her mouth and nose.

I have to say that while this isn't the end of the world, it's pretty much pushing the envelope of inconvenience.

Not to mention having breathed in that moldy green black nastiness for a year and a half.

Phooey.

Well, shoot.

The SLZ Unified School District office has been poorly maintained. This is partially due to the neglect of the maintenance staff -- they are often criticized, and some of the criticism is valid. However, in a school district that's perpetually short on funds, dollars are prioritized to school sites (as they should be).

Unfortunately, the building has a bit of a mold problem. Actually, it seems to be a BIG mold problem. Also: two offices were found to have a particularly nasty green-black mold in the air, Stachybotrys chartarum, that is a toxigenic mold. My office is one of them.

I'm not allowed back into my workspace. There's some question as to whether I'll even be able to remove papers from my office. I'll be displaced for the rest of the school year and probably into the fall. I can't even imagine how I can do my job without my files and equipment.

Oh, well.

Quickly

Just a quick update as we're close to running out the door.

It's been a fine weekend. Eric had his book club Friday night, and I went out with Tom and Janis. We went to Acote, and just in case you're reading, Ms. Lyons, we had pomme frites and croque monseur, grilled skirt steak, mussels, lovely cow and goat's milk cheeses with almonds and walnuts and figs, delicious cocktails and warm cashew tarts with banana ice cream.

Yum!

I spent most of the day Saturday in The Zone (that's computer-game-land, and I do get totally sucked in). Eric went with Tom to buy a brand spankin' new HarpMobile, and it's BEAUTIFUL.

Today we're going to eat a quick breakfast, then head to Henry Coe State Park for a guided wildflower walk and li'l picnic lunch. I'll try out my new camera on those wildflowers, and enjoy an abundance of Eric time.

That's my story!

Friday

On this day, the 30th-from-the-last work day of the school year, I'll work until 3:30 or so, and then I'll hasten to the oncology department of Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, where I'll be ushered into the chemotherapy suite for two injections: the usual abdominal injection of Goserelin, and a slow-hip-injection of Faslodex. 

 

Faslodex is a new drug for me, on which I hang almost no hope.  It's really just something to do while I don't do chemotherapy.  If it works it will be a (really, truly) lovely surprise.

 

 

 

 

In the Light of Day

In my memory I had written a long, maudlin, blog entry last night. I came to look at it this morning -- not to change it, because I'm determined to not re-write these things, but to read it & wince -- and I find that it's not so bad. I think it just sounds like I love Eric. Nothing new there.

I'm off to work. I'm a little late, but this the first time I've gone to work post-infusion. With so few days left in the school year, and so much to do, I figure that if I CAN go to work I SHOULD go to work.

One more Wednesday Night

It was fine today once I was set up with the IV. Usually I read during the 2 hour infusion, and Eric often grades papers, but today we just talked and laughed.

Eric told me a nice story about a rainy night he spent in a campground with friends. It was raining too hard for them to set up tents, and so they stayed up all night in the van, taking turns reading out loud from a paperback copy of Huckleberry Finn.

That's a nice memory, and Eric has a bunch o' them. It was a new story to me, which was a nice surprise. I know his stories so well, and I know Eric so well, that sometimes his memories feel like they're my memories. Having someone hold your life so closely is such an amazing thing. I worry that Eric will be lonely without me. I know he'll be lonely without me -- and it makes me absolutely crazy to not be able to do anything about it.

If there's ever a Camp Martha without me -- an unlikely occurrence, but if -- I would like all of the campers to remind Eric how wonderful he is, and how much I loved (more than anything, more than I ever could have anticipated and imagined) my life with him.

This weekend we're going to SF-MOMA for the Calder exhibit (which we didn't get to last weekend) on Saturday, and on Sunday we're going on a guided wildflower walk in Coe State Park.

Next weekend we're going to Yosemite.

And the weekend after that we're going to a play on Saturday, and to a fundraiser at the Bay Meadows Horse Races on Sunday.

It's good to have fun stuff planned.

Sleepy me.

I worked all day, and then went to my mosaics class. Before class I went to the lab and had blood drawn -- it took three tries and two technicians to draw one little vial blood. My veins are, as they say, shot. My veins are on strike.

Tomorrow is infusion day. It almost sounds like holiday.

I'm just hanging out, waiting see what happens next.