Something Evil This Way Comes

It’s been a typically long while since I last posted. Someone left me a little nudge in my comments section and the light went on. The magic one that appears above my head in my more animated moments.

See, it’s a weird thing with we cancer bloggers that if you don’t post for some chunk of time, people begin to worry. It’s a strange kinship. But it’s also a very good thing. It’s an experience unlike any other that I have had. I have become part of a secret club that nobody would ever wish to join, but now that we are here so we do our best to help each other and keep an eye on each other and share information about treatment and surviving in general. And in many cases we could pass on the street and not know each other. But, I am deeply affected by the good things and the bad things that happen in the lives of these folks and I suspect others have the same experience.
It’s strange, but a very good sort of strange and I am awfully glad that folks are out there, doing those things.
I’m also glad for my local face to face comrades. We all share something and, not to be all Sesame Street about it, but the sharing is good.

So, how’ve I been?
You know, I really couldn’t say. Which isn’t a very helpful response because you’d think me, of all people, ought to be able to at least fudge an answer.
But I think my mom’s death sort of hip checked me into some new and different frame of mind. It’s difficult to describe and mostly I am still trying to figure it out.
Some wee snippets of it are things like…. at Christmas this year, I had this small but constant sadness that I would never get a Christmas present from my mom ever again. Now, the reality is, my mom hasn’t been able to participate in Christmas for about 5 years. And I was not someone who believed she would ever have a miracle recovery from Alzheimers and we would all slide back to happier times. But it was the absolute finality of it that kept nipping at me.
And it wasn’t about needing or wanting some more stuff. It was a sense of missing how my mom used to put a lot of care and attention into the presents, and the wrapping itself was a work of art.

When my dad had to step up and take over that detail there was a marked change in the whole deal.
My dad, who has non Alzheimer’s related memory problems in that he just plain spaces things out, would send us each a smoke detector, some wrenches and a few screwdrivers all with their Canadian Tire price tag still on it. Often there would also be a one pound can of beer. Like I said, memory problems.
And I don’t mean to take away from the things my dad did. Because they are sweet in the way he tried so hard to do this thing, a thing he had never done before and here he was, an all grown up man, having to learn how to do the Christmas shopping for his grown kids. And are there any people more difficult to shop for than your adult relatives?
But I digress.

I tried pretty hard to do the ‘it’s just another day’ version of Christmas this year. But on the inside, it was a pretty introspective time. Which is okay. There are far worse ways of spending Christmas than being introspective, and I am guessing at least a few people reading this had them. It’s a tough time for lots of people. This year was tough, but not as tough as I had expected.

Okay, so Christmas is over.

It seems the current plan in family-land is to sell my parents’ home, though I guess I should say ‘my dad’s home’, but right now, I don’t feel like it.
And that creates another strange set of emotions. My dad is now enjoying all the mod-cons of a care facility and no longer needs a house. It all makes sense. So the siblings, and myself if I can squeeze in the time between work and school, will go to that wretched town and empty out my parents’ home and then it will be sold.
Now bearing in mind that this house is not one I have ever lived in myself. And that I hate hate hate the town my dad lives in. I still have this eerie feeling that there will no longer be that home base, that spot you can always sneak back to if the spit hits the spam in your life. The old safety net.
Given that I have never really used it as a safety net, it’s not so much of a loss in real terms. It was some strange under-utilized form of stability so, I suppose I should go create its replacement, though I don’t have a clue what that will mean or what it will look like.

That’s about it for now. Things are different. Still strange, still difficult more often that I would wish for (but who can’t say that?) but in a calm sort of way.

And to leave this on a trashy pop culture up-beat note, I am currently smitten, in a movie-star smitten sort of way, with Helena Bonham Carter. I watched the 5th Harry Potter movie one day last week and saw Sweeney Todd the next. Helena Bonham Carter does evil so good.

Last Saturday night, I had intended to be hanging out at an apres Hallowe’en “Day of the Dead” party but about the time the doors were opening for that event, my mom took one final lung full of breath and then cashed in her chips.
I’ve spent the last week in a town that I hate, burying a woman that I love and hanging on to a very delicate thread that ties me to sanity and the big picture. Okay, it slipped away more than once.

I expect I will feel a lot of things about my mom’s death over the next little while. There hasn’t been much time to just sit and let the reality wash over me. I’m sure that will come, and at all the least convenient times.

Here’s the thing.
I am a mix of good things and bad things. Somedays I am hard pressed to know what the good things might be, especially lately.
Whatever good there is in me got planted there by my mom.
When I was a kid, my mom wouldn’t let me watch Hogan’s Heroes. She said Nazi concentration camps/POW camps weren’t funny.
When I came home at age five and said someone had ‘jew’ed’ me out of something, she sat me on a stool and told me why I shouldn’t talk use expressions that justified treating other people atrociously.
When I came home at age six and said someone ‘gyp’ed’ me out of something, I got the same conversation, this time about the persecution of the gypsies rather than the Jews.
When I have acted like a dope, my mom could tell me to grow up and get over it and…. I would. More often than not.
I have always held my mom, and her opinion of me, in very high regard.

My mom died of Alzheimers, but more to the point, she died from isolation. When she was in her fifties, she and my dad moved to a town where she had to start all over again. And that was just too hard. It was too hard for her to find a job at that age and her social circle was vaporized, so that her only friends were the wives of my dad’s friends. And that didn’t actually click.
I feel bad about the loneliness my mother lived with for the last chunk of her life and I find myself wondering if there was anything I could have done better to support her.

My mom was smart and funny and ethical. She tried very hard to be fair, and I try to do the same.

It’s been a long time since my mom and I could have a conversation. She stopped knowing who her kids were about 3 years ago. And yet, she knew we were all there sitting with her right before she died. Something was different, her eyelids would flutter when one of us would talk. I dunno, but I know she knew we were there and I know that it mattered for her. And then she died.
If you knew how completely unlikely it is for me and my siblings to all be in the same room at the same time, you, like me, might think that she had actually died of shock.

So… my mom is dead.
Because it’s been so long since she participated in her life, I convinced myself it was just sort of a technicality. But I sat in the car and wept when we drove to the hospital to tell my dad that the woman he married 57 years ago had died.

The funny, not ha-ha funny but kick you in the ass funny, part is that everyone in my family has been having kittens about my dad and his crap-tastic health and his not-long-for-this-astral-plane future, and then my mom goes and sucker punches all of us and I think, “Good for you, mom. Good for finally getting some tiny shred of the attention you deserved.”

If there is one decent thing about my mom and Alzheimers, it’s that she was completely unaware of my whole cancer process, chemo and all its vile side effects. I am glad she never had to watch me go through that.

So, R.I.P. Mom.
Thanks for doing all you could to make me a decent person and the world a decent place.

I just spent 4 glorious days in this groovy cabin. I actually spent 2 months in this very cabin last winter. Back then, it didn’t look quite as splendid. That was because there was snow all over the ground as well as fallen trees and crap. Much chain saw action was necessary back then.This weekend was completely glorious. I drove off the ferry and I felt my shoulders start to drop.

The cabin is kind of bare bones. And there is a different cabin that I sleep in when I am there.
But here is the pretty cool part of the story.

I ordered my copy of the last Harry Potter book from that evil bookslinger that sells things basically at cost. Being a cheap bastard, I opted for the free shipping feature.
Now, I work 12 hour shifts and, from what the folks at Amazon were telling me, the book was due to arrive on one of my work days. So I arranged with my landlordy that she would take delivery for me and I would give her a container of yummy corn chowder. She did her part by being home and available. But the Mensa dudes at Canada Post apparently couldn’t read the sign I left on the door of the building, saying to buzz the landlordy. So, in spite of the sign, they buzzed my place, I wasn’t home, and they sent my book to a local post office, where it is still waiting to be picked up.

That was a speed bump interfering with my plan for a perfect weekend, but that was okay because I had a big armful of books with me for my little vacation.

So, I was on Galiano, having an amazing dinner of halibut grilled on the barbeque and we started chatting pop culture. I mentioned being vexed by Amazon. My friends mentioned that they had a copy and, since they had already read it, it was available for reading.
Well, really, it was all I could do to stay and finish dinner.

And that’s how I spent my time away. Laying in a chair, in the sun, on the deck of a wonderful cabin, reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Gallows. It was marvelous.

The other wonderful thing about being at the cabin is… there are bees. Lots and lots of bees. They swarm around the fuscia plants at the cabin. You can stand right in the middle of them, and they just keep buzzing around, doing their bee thing, completely uninterested in hurting you, and rubbing their little bee feet together and making with the honey.
I liked that a whole lot.
And the eagles.
And the dragonflies.
And some brilliant yellow little birds that maybe were some sort of finch, I dunno. I just really liked them.
And the strange thing that kept making splashing sounds in the pond, but I never did figure out what it was.

And then one morning, I woke up and saw that a rat had chewed through the screen on my cabin window and had helped himself to a goodly chunk of my peach.
Well, what the hell.
I thought it was funny.
The owner of the property felt considerably less jolly about the whole affair. What with the rat-liness of the whole thing. Me, I thought it was an ambitious mouse but the owner of the property says rat, rat, rat.

And now I am back in the city. Did my week’s worth of work and now I am on holidays till August 13th.
It’s Gay Pride in my town, so that will take a big chunk of the first half of that time.
And then, after that, I may just toss some food in my cooler and head off camping by myself.

And then… if everything works out, which really remains to be seen, a week long kayaking trip later in the month.
Come September I know I will have to buckle down with work and school and having no life and so I plan on running a bit wild this summer and leaving the cats in foster care a bit too often.
I’m sure they’ll deal.

Happy Pride, folks.

Last week, while screwing around on my PC, I suffered an all too familiar screen freeze. I quickly wrapped my hand around the CPU to flip the ‘any key’ and that was all fine. It was just that the re-flipping produced absolutely no results. Just a big black screen on my monitor staring back at me uselessly. I was at first optimistic that there may be a miraculous and spontaneous re-birth, but no.

It’s times like this when it sucks to work 12 hour shifts because I had to wait till Thursday to even get a chance to take my computer in to the shop. And I must say, it was freaky to spend some time sans computer and realize my huge reliance on the beastly machine.
For example, I had a request to make some soup for a friend who is sick, and I originally thought, “sure, there is that yummy black bean soup I have been living off lately”. But then I realized that the recipe was online (at epicurious.com, in case you are looking for a great website for recipes) so instead I had to guttle around in the freezer and find a couple of tupperware containers of Sportswoman soup, which is a recipe known only to me, and while I am sure it did the trick for my friend, it was amazing to keep slamming into my assumption that anything that needed to be done could be done online.

I don’t know about you, but I am fairly internet dependent and I would say that I get an urge to do something, whether that is write an e-mail or look something up, at least twenty times a day.
In a big picture sort of way, I am glad that I went without, if only to demonstrate where I am at with all that.
And I am also happy because I spent way more time just laying on my couch reading books, rather than reading, well, who knows what sort of mindless shite on the computer.

Summer is making itself known here in my city, if only in a tentative way, and I have started exploring some vacation options for myself. Stay tuned on that score.
A vacation seems sorely needed.
Work has been especially gruelling lately, dealing with a lot of death in the work community. And it was made even more freaky when one of my co-workers was assaulted by one of the folks we work with. The colleague received 30 stitches to his face, many of which were around and inside his eye.
It’s crap like that that makes a person jump back a bit and say, “whoa… that could have been me. and why am I doing this, exactly?”
Of course, we do it for more complicated reasons than I can explain right here, but still, I think everyone I work with was horrified that someone who is known to us could do such an awful thing to a co-worker, and a totally nice man.

So, that’s me, in a nutshell. As always, it’s a mix of good and sort of complicated.

Okay, amigos. It’s a work night and there are dishes to do and counters to wipe before I lay my scruffy head down for the night.

Later…

I have been so out of it for the last while that, with some degree of surprise, I realize that spring has pretty much uncoiled and sprung and is patiently waiting for the tap on the shoulder from summer, at which point spring will wander elsewhere until we need it again next year. I’m not sure where it goes. Maybe it slides into a big Rubbermaid container and gets pushed under the bed. Who knows?

I moved into my place on March 1st and while I knew I had a stunning view, it’s these days when the sun shines for a long time that really drives that point home. My view is excellent during the day and also at night, when I can see the lights on the bridge off in the distance and the ships in the harbour down below me. I have had days when I drag my sorry ass home from work, just run down and exhausted, and walked in the door and had the view both overwhelm and cheer me.

The cats have a tiny balcony and they lay out there and come in all warm and half-baked from the sunshine.
They lay around in the enormous pools of sunlight that come in. It just delights me every time I see them stretched out in the sun. They seem content here, and I am happy about that.

I have been hitting the gym a lot lately, finally getting back in that groove which I fell out of when I moved. Getting the routine established has been harder this time than other returns, but I think I have it down now. I have also been riding my mountain bike a lot lately. I realized about a month ago that it takes me exactly the same amount of time to drive my truck to work, park and then walk the 4 blocks to my work site as it does to get on my bike and blow all those pedestrians off the sidewalk… and when the cost of gas went up to $1.20 a litre, well, the stupidity of driving my truck was just too clear, even to me.

And I have been re-reading the Harry Potter books, in anticipation of the final book’s release in a few weeks. It amazes me how she created a series where some small detail in the second book will come back into focus in the 6th book. It also amazes me how many of the details I have forgotten over the last couple of years but I blame the chemo for that. I really, really like the HP series and think J,K.Rowling has done an amazing thing for literacy. And I will be both happy and sad when the final book is released, because I will have it, but then it will be over. But I think old JK probably deserves some quiet time with her family and loved ones. It may be a long time till she can have that, but wrapping up the HP series will probably provide some light at the end of the tunnel.

That’s it from me. I am feeling pretty optimistic about the summer and ways that I can spend a whole lot of time away from here and relaxing elsewhere. Money is always a consideration, but I have a few things in mind and I am hoping that I spend the summer making special guest appearances at work rather than being a regularly scheduled guest.

And on a somewhat sad note, I got an e-mail from the folks at Pandora.com saying that they were suspending service to clients who were not in the USA. For those who don’t know, Pandora was a music genome project and it was a brilliant way to turn yourself on to new music. As a user, you would create your own ’stations’ based on an artist or album that you liked and Pandora would search its files and play music that other users had rated as being similar. So, I had created an “Etta James” station and got turned on to other women blues singers. Same for creating a “Leo Kottke” station, or even… a “Metallica” station. I don’t really understand why users have to be in the USA, but apparently it had something to do with copyright issues. But if you are south of the 49th, you should really make the most of this. And me, I am just hoping the resolve whatever deets need to be resolved because it was such a great thing. Just pick an artist that your are in the mood for, plunk the name in, and wander around your place listening to great music.
They have to bring it back!
Fingers crossed.

Rodger Dodger
over and out.

For the unfortunate group of folks who show up as my friends on LJ, I am truly sorry for the fact that my recent attempt at a website tweak, which would allow cross-posting from my site to my LJ page, well, rumour has it that things went haywire and people got buried in 5 screens worth of old news about me and my life.
I do apologize for that.

And to set the record straight, I did get hit by a bus, but that was 2 years ago and everything is fine in that regard now.
And nope, Elaine and I did not get back together. Those things we wrote about going through cancer stuff together are now historical documents.

It was sort of bizarre, in a gruelling sort of way, for me to read all that stuff again. To think back to the beginning of the process and how freaky that was and how I had no clue what to expect or if I would even be alive today, and just try to muster the courage to put one foot in front of the other and do it.
At the time, people told me I was brave, and I remember thinking, “What other choice do I have?”
It’s weird to look back at it all.
Thinking about all the people who helped us along the way.
Thinking about all the tests and the terror and the uncertainty.
Thinking about the side effects; the memory loss and the neuropathy.
The whole event made my head tingle in some ways I hadn’t been ready for.
And that’s sort of interesting, since it’s my life I was talking about.

Anyway, for the folks who I inundated, I do apologize.

On other fronts, I saw both my gyno oncologist and my folks at the High Risk clinic (who follow me and my BRCA mutation and where that has mutated to at any given moment) and both camps are happy with my blood work and my mammograms and all that happy crap.
So, that’s good news.

And it’s spring, and I like spring. All that new life and all those fresh starts, it’s almost inspiring.

Oh, and I had a birthday in there, too. Which is another reason I like spring.

That’s it, that’s all.

Yikes, I have been remiss with my little website.

But let me take a stab at correcting that.

Today, I am sad to announce that my beloved stove top espresso maker is Officially Pronounced Dead.

It’s bean a long, glorious, delicious and invigorating relationship. And I have been in denial for a while. I saw that the metal was starting to strain and crack in the basket, but ignored it. I noticed the flavour was starting to be less than it had been in the past, but just put an extra effort into cleaning it. But today, at approximately 3:45 pm, the coffee maker officially spit its last blast of steam thru a blend of beans and made it quite clear that there would be no second cup.

I’m sitting here with only a couple of sips left, trying to think of what bill I should dodge for a month so I can scrape up the money to get the next machine.

Maybe that’s not very sentimental, but I take my joe pretty seriously and this is a bad time of the week to be left with no joe.

Maybe I should set up a paypal account like other folks have….