Mission Accomplished

Eric and I have seen very few movies in the last year, so we decided to see all of the movies nominated for an academy award for best picture. We saw six movies in 72 hours. It was fun!

So many people have asked me what I thought of the movies that I'm offering my yakyakyak here. I'm not much of a movie buff, but here goes:

Little Miss Sunshine was cute. It made me laugh. It bugged me that the only character who didn't undergo a transformation in the film was the only adult woman. They were such eccentric characters, and the adult woman was the same-old-mom we've seen again and again. She loves the kids and largely stands by her man. She's likable but not interesting. I'm just nitpicking, though. It was a good movie.

Eric really enjoyed the The Departed. It's typical Scorsese, as Doreen described in her comment below. It wasn't subtle, that's for sure. I hid my face in my hands A LOT. I can see why it would be exciting for folks who aren't bothered by the gore.

The Queen was visually appealing and sometimes amusing. I was distracted by the fact that it's entirely a work of fiction. It acts like it's non-fiction, but no one knows what the queen says to her husband in bed at night. Also, as Eric and I feel about all things related to the monarchy, who cares?

And who cares what I think of these movies? I'll hurry this up!

Babel was ambitious and parts of it worked better than others. The four intertwined story lines reminded me of last year's best picture winner, Crash, which was a much better film.

I'm glad that I watched Flags of Our Fathers before seeing Letters from Iwo Jima. The latter is the better movie for sure. Eric thinks that Iwo Jima is the best of the five nominees. I think that the five nominees are all just fine, with The Departed being the weakest.

This was a fun project and I recommend it as a weekend activity!

Just one left!

Our Oscar Madness weekend is moving right along. We've seen Little Miss Sunshine, The Departed, The Queen, Babel, and Flags of Our Fathers. We'll see Letter from Iwo Jima tomorrow, our three-day-weekend-Monday-off, and then we'll have accomplished our goal.

We saw Babel tonight at the Parkway. The Parkway is an old theater that has easy chairs and couches for seating and serves salads, pizza, and beer. It was nice to snuggle up on a couch with my adorable husband. Of course.

Yay.

Eric and I are seeing five movies this weekend. We haven't seen any of the Academy Award nominees for best picture, and so we're biting the bullet over the next few days. Tonight we watched Little Miss Sunshine at home. The next four movies will be seen in theaters.

I'm looking forward to lazy, rainy, dark-theatered, popcorn-eating, soda-sipping, Eric-handholding, movieish, weekend.

And... we have Monday off!

Over them.

"[other drivers] want to be in control in terms of safety, being able to park and maneuver in traffic, being able to get elderly people in and out," said Fred J. Schaafsma, a vehicle development engineer for General Motors. "SUV owners want to be more like ‘I'm in control of the people around me."' This is an important reason why seats are mounted higher in sport utilities than in minivans, he said.

An average SUV or a pickup is more than twice as likely as a car to kill the driver of the other vehicle in a collision.

The LAST time (which certainly wasn't the FIRST time) a big-ass SUV hit my darling little miata, the driver told me:

"I didn't even see you. Your car's too small."

Let's see.

I'm at work, kicking myself for not stopping for coffee on the way in this morning. I'll have to go back out for a cup o' joe at the first reasonable opportunity.

I fell asleep at the hospital yesterday while waiting for someone to check my sutures. I was in one of those little rooms with the paper-covered tables. The only reading material was a booklet on laparoscopic gallbladder surgery. The illustrations depicted a freakishly normal family that could have been pulled straight from a Watchtower or Awake! magazine. The next thing I knew I was having a nice little nap.

The doctor who saw me had a large diamond stud nose piercing. That was kinda cool.

What else...?

It's raining, which bodes well for the wildflowers.

I'd better get to work!

Sweet Dreams

I'm drinking hot chocolate. I wish I had time to stay up for a few hours! I guess I could, but I'd be awfully tired tomorrow. I feel good right now. I'm relaxed and happy, having spent an idle evening with Eric, surfing and watching TV and playing silly games.

I dance every day, and every day it makes Eric smile (and occasionally laugh). It can be a pretty sad li'l shuffle, depending on how my body's feeling, but I make a point of it. I dance at least a little bit every day because I CAN.

It doesn't feel schmaltzy when I do it, either, unlike how it sounds when I read about it.

Eric's making me laugh now. He's using fancy french words and it's cracking me up!

I've been reading wildflower hot sheets for the SF Bay Area. There are wildflower enthusiasts who track all of the wildflower scuttlebutt. I'm determined to see flowers this year, so I've had my finger on the pulse of wildflower culture. Word on the street (in the field?) is that unless the Bay Area receives bunches and bunches of rain in February we'll be out-of-luck when it comes to wildflower blooms.

Eric says he'd rather skip the rain and miss the flowers, but I'm hoping for blossoms galore.

Work tomorrow, and yet another appointment with the surgeon in the afternoon. It's my no-chemo week and tomorrow will be my second trip to the hospital. But whatcha gonna do?

Ouch.

I left work around 2:00 PM today... tired, tired, tired. Went to consult with the surgeon about the never-adequately-healed incision at my port site. He put in a few uber stitches and gave me more antibiotics... thinks there's a chance, anyway, that my port can be "salvaged".

The surgeon has told me more than once that he feel that 3 out of 4 Fridays spent in chemo is "too much". He seems sincerely disturbed by it. He's young, and he's a vascular surgeon. I don't think he sees many cancer patients.

I laughed today and agreed that it's a whole heap o' chemo, but said that the side effects hadn't been too bad, and that I don't have bunches of options. He told me that he was just sorry that I had to go through any of it. He's nice. I wish he didn't look like he's twelve years old.

Tonight I don't want to let Eric out of my sight. The cool thing is that for the most part I don't have to!

Sunday Night

My two brothers came to see us this weekend. It was nice to have guests... good to have something to focus on beyond this unexpected nausea. Truly, in five months of chemo I've not have a moment of this hooey, and now? Bleeeeeeeech!

We sat around, listened to music, and ate. A fine weekend!

Work tomorrow, and an appointment with the surgeon in the afternoon. I should be in bed, but I'm restless, tired, vaguely queasy..

I wish I could have a three day weekend!

Seriously, I'm going to have to Google weasels.

It's a chemo day and I also had an appt in interventional radiology and a consult with a surgeon. A long day of medical stuff, and everyone knows how happy that makes me!

But, it's over now, and there's no chemo next Friday. Please, please, please, no one congratulate me on not having chemo next Friday! That's really irksome to me. It's like having weasels gnawing on each of your toes, and then someone trying to high-five you because one of the weasels goes on vacation for a week.

What do weasels eat, anyway? I know nothing about them, and I've probably unfairly maligned them now.

The results are in from the ct scan. It showed some areas stable and some areas regressed. It was good news.

Because I don't want bad scans to have the power to make me sad, I don't let good scans make me happy. I'm glad that it was better news rather than worse news -- boy, am I -- but I look for stuff in my life to celebrate that's more constant than a could-be-worse radiology report.

I don't think I could live my life and have fun and be happy if I was up & down with scans.

That's my story on Friday night.

Catbird Seat

It used to be that I’d had cancer BUT… I’d gone through treatment, and it was entirely possible that I would be ooooookay – I could live a long life and die from something else. I wasn’t one of those poor women with metastatic disease.

Then I had metastatic disease, BUT… it was only in my bones, and it was estrogen receptor positive – hormonal treatment could keep me alive for many years, and at least I wasn’t one of those poor women with soft tissue disease.

Then the cancer spread to my lungs, BUT… there was still a possibility that the hormonal treatments could work, and at least I wasn’t one of those poor women with cancer in her liver.

I’m sure the trend is recognizable by now.

Then the hormonal treatments failed, and the cancer spread to my liver, BUT… chemotherapy could still work, and at least I wasn’t one of those poor women with cancer in her brain. Yet.

We hope that chemotherapy will send us into remission, and then we hope for partial remission, and then we think that if the chemotherapy would only keep us stable, we’d be happy… and then we think that if the cancer would just grow slowly, that’d be fine.

Other than THAT… well… it’s a fine day. I’m at work, having a sleepy but otherwise productive day. Eric is handsome and the coffee is good. I can’t complain. On the other hand, I’m running out of reasons to feel that I’m in an advantageous position! Except for Eric, of course – my constant ace-in-the-hole.