Cold as Ice

Inspirational song: I Want Candy (Bow Wow Wow)

Trick-or-treating is still a thing, right? My doorbell didn't ring a single time tonight. Not once. I peeked out the window a half dozen times, and the only person I saw walking was accompanying a dog who had his own flashlight (hanging from his collar). I set out some of our uncarved pumpkins on the front steps, found the Halloween-themed candle holders and put them on the porch, and I turned on the porch light and the lamp in the living room. I thought I made the sign. I even painted a green pumpkin with ridges to look like a spider, and the Mr put out the one he carved for the game Wednesday night. No trick-or-treaters. No pedestrians at all, after the dog-walker. What the hell am I going to do with two Costco-sized bags of chocolate bars, half of which have cookies or wafers in them?

It was still completely frigid out there from this week's big weather event. If no kids were out in costume, hunting for candy tonight, I really can't blame them. I really didn't want to have to open the door for anyone, and face a cold blast of air each time. This morning was still in the deep freeze. Our pond wasn't frozen solid, but I wouldn't have wanted to be a fish living in it. The sun was out long enough to melt the roads and sidewalks, but the driveways were still dodgy.

My daughter didn't feel like answering the door any more than I did. She just set a big bowl on her porch and put it on the honor system. That did not work. She alerted me to a picture she took, after what she said sounded like a herd of teenagers came by, grabbed the entire bowl, and took off with the lot, bowl and all. There were a few hard candies littered on her porch afterward, and not much else. I'm not sure which would be worse. At least she didn't have a lot leftover.

The bright side to having no one ring my doorbell tonight meant that there is peace all across the land. Alfred isn't hiding under the bed downstairs, and Athena helped me watch Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (with her back to the TV and her eyes closed). I don't think Jackie left the rocking chair in the front room all night. No fear for black cats here. They're living like little gods, as is proper.

Committed Role Playing

Inspirational song: I Eat Cannibals (Toto Coelo)

“I don’t feel like I’m welcome in this group,” he said in his character’s voice. Where can we go with this? It’s a large D&D party, double the average number of player characters, of people who are old enough and experienced enough to stretch the bounds of the type of roles we created for ourselves. His character is a halfling, sort of like a hobbit from the books and movies, and his personality has been hard for the rest of us to crack. When we were on a ship together, he stood apart from us most of the time. My uptight, rule-obsessed Amazon spent most of the ship time split between doing her job guarding a local functionary and mentoring her nieces. The guy who is playing a humanoid frog monk hid from the seawater and the sun. The guy who is playing an injured bird man was sociable, but classic human interaction was a bit alien to him, so we had to approach our assumptions from other angles. The rest of the party is all over the place too, with two dramatically different elves (one the polar opposite of me when it comes to the rule of law and social norms), a guy who is the fantasy world equivalent of Indiana Jones, and an eight year old boy who appears to be able to shape shift into a cat....or maybe it’s the other way around.

While we were sailing, we heard all kinds of crazy rumors about things like raiders on the sea, traders of gems, and cannibals. The halfling only heard about the cannibals, three or four times over. It utterly terrified him. So now here we are, stranded on a beach after a hurricane, half our shipmates missing (like my nieces) or found dead. The terrain is bone dry if we leave the waterline. No trees, no softness, no shade. A rocky coast with one man-made structure, inhabited by a strange little man who scavenges what washes up from the sea. And with one off-hand comment, the halfling is convinced this guy is the cannibal, and moreover, he’s going to kill and eat us.

We’re in a tough place, shipwrecked and lost. We are missing most of our supplies, most of our clothes, and most of our weapons. We would have all died when the eye of the hurricane kept moving over the top of us, and the storm returned. Without his stone shelter, there would have been nothing left of us. So when we were burying bodies of the ship’s crew members who didn’t survive, it didn’t help our situation any to have the weird little man shrug and say, “meat is meat, boy.” I don’t want to have to chase the halfling a mile down the beach again, next time he gets scared of a man who has thus far been nothing but gentle and generous. So how do I hide from him that while I was helping bury our dead, our host took a little detour to make jerky out of a sailor’s quadriceps? I’m not sure how I feel about it myself.

Blanket of White

Inspirational song: Happy (Pharrell Williams)

I can go to bed happy tonight, having gotten exactly what I'd hoped for: a big, honking winter storm, even though it's still just October. It's all I wanted. There's going to be record-setting cold for the next day and a half, which means this awesome snow will stick around a little while. I love it so much. I'm not really sure how much we got on my own personal Park, but I know it was deep enough to keep me from marching through the yard to get across to the neighbor's when I needed to borrow a piece of hardware from him. I went all the way to the sidewalk, which we so rarely do, because the snow was more than ankle deep, even taking into account my boots with a chunky heel.

The neighbor took today as a snow day, as did Mr S-P. Well, the Mr was told to stay home, after his community college shuttered their doors an hour before his class was supposed to start this afternoon. The roads are a little nuts, it is true. I was too excited to stay home myself. I had to see whether Rotary was still going on. It was thinly attended, comparatively speaking, but there was still more than half of the club joining me for lunch. I regretted not getting my snow tires swapped in, but taking it slow meant that it was more just fun skidding, not the scary kind of skidding, when it happened.

I've seen the flashing lights of the snow plow go up and down my street twice now. The snow hasn't stopped yet, and there should be enough overnight to measure, but just barely. Not sure yet whether the college will be closed again. It didn't come up in the scroll on local news. The K-12 is only on a two-hour delay here. The thing that really matters, though, is whether the roads will be clear enough that the two members of my game crew who don't live in city limits will be able to get here. Priorities, you know.

Games People Play

Inspirational song: Angry Eyes (The Eagles)

After spending all morning Saturday planting trees, once the five of us got back to town, we each went our own ways and took naps. We aren't even all that old, but the labor got to all of us, even the 30-somethings. Our friends from out of town came back over that night, and we cleared the D&D debris off of the game table, and tried out a couple new games we acquired this year. As the first of two storms blew in, we thought it would be a great idea to sample "The Donner Party." The point of the game is to figure out which one of the players is the cannibal, by first figuring out whether there's enough food to feed the snow-bound pioneers, and then bluffing the rest of the people to vote out who dies that round, in an effort to get rid of the cannibal. Hard to explain briefly, but it was fun to play. Would be better in larger groups than smaller.

The other game we tried was a card version of Oregon Trail. That one was deceptively hard, much as the original old-school video game was. First, you have to lay down cards to travel a distance of three feet, but for every five cards you lay down, you stack them and keep going. Calamities happen each round, like broken wagon wheels, running low on food, etc. And as in the original game, you can die without warning of dysentery or snakebite. That happened a lot to us. I'll be interested to play both of these again, with as many players as we can fit around the table (knowing our table is gigantic).

On the drive home Saturday, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open. I was the driver, so this actually mattered. The sun was brutal that day, and I felt like I was staring straight into it. I assumed it was just fatigue. Yesterday we watched the evening game next door, in front of a modestly smoky fire. I didn't think about that much after leaving there. But this morning, I noticed my eyes were deeply red, and sticky. They've been like this all day. I'm left wondering, was it something I did? Or did those things bother me because my eyes were already irritated? I read something about how cancer treatments affect your eyes, with most of the triggers the article listed applied directly to my situation so far. Although, of all the problems I could have--dry eyes, clogged tear ducts, glaucoma, or cataracts--there is one effect some people experience that I find fascinating. There are some treatments that can change your eye color, actually draining the pigmentation out and changing brown eyes to blue. Mine have always been a light brown, pretending to be olive drab in certain light. I feel like I don't have a lot of pigmentation I could spare. Maybe I'll re-read that article to verify I avoid whatever treatment it was that could lead to that change. And a conversation with my doc about protection of my eyes is in my near future.

Goldfish and Clowns

Inspirational song: Gonna Get You Anyway (Pete Townshend)

The forecast has already pulled back on how much snow we should get and how soon we should see it. This happens a lot here. Regardless, it's still super cold out there, so certain winter maintenance had to happen right away. We are new to this whole fish pond concept, so we let ours go as late as possible while we made our cold weather plans. Yesterday I bought a big plastic storage tub, with the intention of making that the winter home of nine fat goldfish. Actually going through with the capture and release process was a whole other story, though. We weren't sure how to accomplish it yesterday, so when we came home from the volunteer project, we were more interested in naps than chasing fish around murky water with a net.

Naturally the cold weather blew in overnight, and we went from being comfortable outside in long-sleeved t-shirts to needing to bundle up a little more. We still had to stick our hands in frigid water, but thankfully there was a large quantity of much warmer water available for later in the day. I'm going to throw down my criticism early: the Mr should NOT have scooped out rocks and sand from the bottom of the pond first. It made catching anxious fish much more difficult. We had to yank back a lot of the creepy Jenny they were hiding in to locate them, and we chased them round and round with the net. Eventually we found all nine, but it took more than an hour, and the two of us had to tag team on fish hunting. I regret not taking at least one picture of a fish caught in the net, but I felt so bad for them every time they came out of the water, looking startled and unhappy, that I immediately dunked them into the water in the tub.

The Mr planned ahead and put the temporary fish tub in the wheelbarrow, so that once it was populated, we could move it into the garage without killing ourselves. Good idea. One hundred points to House Smith. Just lifting my side of the half-full tub from the wheelbarrow to the little table we had in the garage to keep it off the floor was challenging for me. The larger pond pump stayed in its setup outside, but we had some older, smaller pumps that ought to hold us for the winter. We had some leftover screen that we will use to guarantee no mammal paws go fishing while they are in the garage unsupervised. Elsa and Murray sleep out there on their regular beds (if you didn't already know, it's insulated and heated), and Harvey has an annoying habit of zipping out between Mr S-P's feet when he goes out to put the dogs to bed. He's stayed out there several nights in the last month. He seems quite upset when breakfast time rolls around and he is still there.

I have to hope that over the course of the winter, the garage is cool enough to keep the goldfish comfortable, while staying warm enough that the old dogs are cozy in their beds. I imagine the fish can handle it a little warmer, so the dogs win that battle, paws down.

For the Good

Inspirational song: The Trees (Rush)

Volunteer project number thirty is in the books. It was the biggest one our brokerage has attempted thus far and it was a resounding success. We had roughly fifty people show up to Colorado Youth Outdoors to plant about a hundred trees, and we accomplished our goals. 

Colorado Youth Outdoors is a non-profit on an expansive (and beautiful) acreage south and east of Fort Collins. They teach kids how to excel at outdoor sports like fishing and archery, as well as survival and good stewardship of our wild lands. We were invited to plant spruce, juniper, and wild plum trees on a section of the property down by their BB gun range. The junipers were tiny, less than a foot tall, and the plums were spindly and knee-high. The spruces were massive, as tall as an adult, and they required a tractor and several humans to plant.

At first I was assigned non-physical tasks, like getting folks checked in, getting liability forms signed, and handing out t-shirts and hats. Once we had everyone but the three or four no-shows checked in, I put my belongings in my car, and walked down to the work site to take photos. I couldn’t watch everybody, kids included, laboring with shovels and rakes without joining in. I slyly grabbed a shovel and crept behind a group working to cover the big spruces up to the top of their burlap-wrapped root balls. I sort of helped plant about six of those (as best I could), as the tractor went down the row setting them in place. Then they dug up a mound of dirt that we used to fill a bucket brigade to bury them better, and we did the same with mulch on top. I couldn’t carry buckets, but I could fill them for about an hour, until my back muscles called knock it off.

I returned to the main building to help set up lunch, provided by our frequent corporate partner Odell brewing. We (the four friends I roped into helping) visited with other volunteers through lunch, and they were just setting up the BB gun range when we all decided we were old and tired, and we headed back home.

I’m not sure how many volunteer projects I’ve participated in now. More than five, probably not yet ten. I like it more each time, and I liked it enough to start with that this was the deciding factor when I chose to work for Headwaters. It can be exhausting, but I have yet to think it wasn’t worthwhile. It’s always worth the effort.

Wild Friday Night

Inspirational song: I Don't Want to Know (Fleetwood Mac)

By the time we got home, it was already fourth quarter. CU is playing another Friday night game. I wasn't facing the television in the restaurant, but I had been able to watch the updated scores on Twitter and still participate in dinner conversation. Our companions were a person we've known for decades, who is comfortable enough around us not to mind that I peeked at the score several times, and her beau who we had just met, but who fit in like we'd known him for ages. We lingered at the table, talking long after the check was signed and plates were cleared. Luckily our favorite restaurant is rarely packed to a mad crush, so we were able to stay without the wait staff shooing us out with a broom. (It doesn't seem to signal that the place is not destined to last long. It's been open for years and has the support of its sister restaurants and brewery parent. Plus the food is fantastic.) We have a little extra time to visit with our friends before they head back home. They are coming with us to the volunteer project tomorrow.

But now we are home, and I don't know how the game ended, or even whether it's over yet. I put Twitter away, crawled into bed with my crochet and my cat, and started the recording from the first quarter. Buffs were holding their own when I last looked. The QB had been hurt (late hit slammed his head on the ground), so even though my team had been doing well, literally anything could have happened at the end. This is my wild Friday night. In jammies early, watching recorded football with a cranky fuzz-pants sitting on the edge of my blanket-in-progress. If I'm feeling really frisky, I might stay awake all the way through my recording, rather than falling asleep early so I'm fresh and perky to volunteer tomorrow.

Flash in the Pan

Inspirational song: Nothing Knocks Me Over (Chumbawumba)

I blinked and missed it, in a quite literal sense. When I went to sleep last night, it was solidly snowing. I peeked out a couple of times and smiled with glee over how steadily it came down. I woke in the six o'clock hour with the urgent need to get up for just a minute, and in the dim light I could see that the grass and cars were blanketed with white, but the roads were mostly clear. I was still pretty sleepy, and thought I'd just close my eyes for an hour before getting active for the day. I didn't open them again until almost nine-fifteen. Oops. I looked outside, and the snow had already gotten that clumpy look, where it looked like it had come down in small snowballs, and left more mud than snow cover.

It's okay, I'm sure. It will be nice the next two days, which is good for my plans. I'm supposed to be taking a group of folks to the south end of Fort Collins to plant a whole bunch of trees for a non-profit program that gets Colorado kids outside and participating in sports and activities. This is one of the biggest volunteer projects my brokerage has undertaken, and it's a milestone. I think it's the 30th project, but don't quote me on that. It will be a gorgeous day, for people who like warm sunshine. Me, I probably won't do much of the digging and lifting of trees, but our volunteer coordinator has given me tasks that will work with my abilities and allow me to duck under shade often. Among those will be taking pictures of the participants, so expect a photo essay Saturday night.

The weather will turn cold again Saturday night, quite suddenly. By Tuesday night, we should have a thick coat of snow again. I wish I knew how to interpret the forecasts, though. I overthink everything, so when I see a nighttime prediction of an inch of snow, the next day a call for one to three inches, and then that next night one to three inches, do I add all of that together? So a minimum of three and a maximum of seven? Or do you assume that "one to three" written twice in a single day means the whole day combined? Overthinking makes my head hurt. I have buried my shame over not knowing this answer for years.

Midnight Special

Inspirational song: Yes, I'm Ready (Barbara Mason)

I went searching for the lyrics to the song I had stuck in my head, which I do almost every single night, to be sure that I have the title and artist listed correctly, and less often to make sure the song says what I actually want it to. (Sometimes that matters to me, sometimes not so much.) I found myself helplessly wandering on tangents, watching YouTube videos of Peaches and Herb singing Reunited on the Midnight Special. It's bedtime, when I always write these little essays, and I'm in a dark room in bed. It took nothing to trigger a really strong flashback to middle school, staying up late on weekends, watching the Midnight Special on the tiny little TV my dad gave me for Christmas when I was a kid. The TV was a smooth, "modern" design (to the late 70s and early 80s), in a creamy white molded plastic, and the screen on it couldn't have been much bigger than the screen on the iPad I was using to look up song lyrics and videos. Those late, late nights, watching that tiny TV set on the dresser at the foot of my bed were not the origin of my obsession with music, but they fed into it at a very influential time in my development. I can't imagine where I would have been had I not thrived on a steady diet of musical performance on the Midnight Special and Saturday Night Live, and when it came along, the original MTV, from back in my teenage years when that actually stood for "music television."

When I went searching for a song, I thought I was going to focus on writing about the little storm pushing through right now, and the bigger one promised for late in the weekend. ("Promise" is a strong term this far out, but I'm sticking with it for now.) I had almost forgotten the weather was to take a turn, when I went outside right around noon. I'd been cleaning house for hours, and every bit of me hurt. I went out the soak the aches loose, and as soon as I sat in the hot tub, I looked north, over T's side of the fence, and saw dark skies looming. It was still a little sunny when I sat down, but within twenty minutes, I had to keep checking my phone to remind myself it wasn't evening, it was lunchtime. The sky was dark, the shadows were coming sideways (from the south, but it still played tricks on my mind), and winds kicked up and blew leaves into the water around me over and over. Just telling Murray to go in out of the rain doesn't work, so he got sprinkled on a little when the front arrived, but he does not seem to care, ever. By late night, once the Wednesday game crew left, and we were running the dogs out for a last chance to pee and taking trash to the cans in the alley, the rain had turned to light snow. It's supposed to be a fast-moving storm, without much accumulation this far north (much heaver snow down by Castle Rock and Colorado Springs), so there isn't much reason to get excited yet. Sunday and Monday could feed my childish enthusiasm for deep snow a bit better. My inner child has been crying out in anguish for a "snowpocalypse" for years. These two rounds of frozen precipitation won't be it, but they make me ready all over again for a literal deep freeze.

It's a quarter to midnight as I'm concluding writing. There are three cats pushing me to the far edge and corner of the bed, as usual. I failed to verify my sheets got dry while I was madly panic-cleaning the house for the Wednesday game night, so after everyone left, I had to carry a wadded-up, still-damp ball of sheets to the bedroom. We've been just on top of the fitted sheet for an hour, waiting for it to air dry, before making the bed the rest of the way. Time to toss the cats aside and put everything together properly. If I'm lucky, I can get it done and be sound asleep by midnight. I am not holding my breath, though.

'Tis the Season

Inspirational song: Ah Leah (Donnie Iris)

The seasons have changed. The season of sitting, looking outside at the hot sun, regretting not doing more to work on the garden has ended, and the season of staring at a tablet screen, regretting not starting making any presents yet has begun. I've just picked up crochet again, as of last week, to wrap my head around being creative. I found this brightly colored yarn last year, when I was buying up every color and texture of yarn while it was still cold in and outside. I imagined that I'd be doing a lot of crafting projects while I was going through treatment and recovering this year. I knew it would be super boring, staying home and doing nothing. I just didn't know I wouldn't feel like focusing on anything at all during that time. So two gigantic tubs of yarn (and an entire room full of other crafting supplies) have languished for months (years on the other stuff), waiting for me to rediscover my inspiration. I wanted to make something with the rainbow yarn for my younger daughter, I just didn't know what. I've started a blanket for her, hoping that I can make it all the way through a project now. There are still two or three similar things waiting to be finished from last spring.

I'm spending more time on Pinterest again, trying to find inspirations for gifts that don't look like macaroni and glitter crafts. I'm always surprised how many of those I still find. It's like watching a train wreck when they have auto-play videos of them in progress. I also watch helplessly most of the other videos on that site, especially the embroidery ones. I don't know why they capture my attention like they do. They are almost entirely hand-stitching alterations on clothing with thin yarn or six-ply embroidery floss. They're basic moves, but done in a hypnotizing motion on a looped video. I can't turn away.

If I'm going to make homemade gifts for Christmas this year, not only do I need to start now, I need to commit to using the materials I already own. I have so many paints, canvases, beads, yarns, trims, tools, and fabrics. I must not--MUST NOT--buy new materials. Just one trip to Michael's for a crochet pattern would turn into a cart full of duplicates of half the things in that room down the hall. There needs to be a bargain I can make with myself--no trips to the store until I've made (x) number of items or used (XX) amount of stuff. The values of x and XX need to be large.

My Fault

Inspirational song: Baby, Come Back (Player)

Please forgive me. It entirely possible that I had deep thoughts today, that would have translated into an interesting essay for tonight. Boy, if I had cogent plans for a topic early in the day, by evening I had nothing. My eyes are puffy and stinging, and my knees are swollen and sore. I walked myself silly at Costco, and came home craving an onion curry dish for dinner. I brought all of this on myself. The fatigue too. I'm a mess.

I did test out my new phone camera, both with fall shots at home and note-taking pics at the store. I haven't done a whole lot that's too artistic, but that will come with time. The aspect ratios on the things I've taken so far are a little weird, and I noticed yesterday that the selfies were mirror image. I'll have to adjust the defaults.

If I promise to get a good night's sleep tonight, so I can say something profound tomorrow, will you give me another chance? Please? Because this is all I have for now. I can't believe I kept my eyes open this long.

Legacy Dinner

Inspirational song: I’m Gonna Love You Through It (Martina McBride)

I was given a gift tonight. To be accurate, I was given several, some more tangible than others. They were all valuable to me.

About two months ago, when I was first trying to go back to Rotary after finishing chemo, one of my friends there came up and asked me if I would be her guest to a dinner honoring breast cancer warriors. She didn’t tell me much about it at the time, but I agreed, because knowing her, this was going to be a good event. She has never steered me wrong. She gave me the paper ticket a few weeks ago, and I put it in a safe place in my purse, without reading the name of the organization sponsoring it. Two weeks ago, when we had our Rotary Day Out to non-profit organizations, I chose the group that was basically a cadaver lab (and it was the right choice for that day). I could have gone to Roberta’s Legacy, a non-profit for breast cancer patients and survivors, but I decided the other was where I wanted to be at that moment.

Last week at my appointment, I said something to my oncologist about going to the dinner this weekend, and she said, “The Roberta’s Legacy one? I’ll be there too.” It wasn’t until that moment I put the name together with the event. I should have paid closer attention. Now that I have all the pieces assembled, the picture that comes through is a positive one. Roberta was a local woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer first in 2010, thought she beat it, and then it came back in 2015. I believe they said she died in 2016. Her family remembers her as a consummate giver, caring about other people to the very end of her life, even making blankets to give to newly diagnosed cancer warriors in the weeks right before her death. They tried to honor her memory by making a donation to the Rocky Mountain Cancer Center, but they were unable to accept the funds as delivered (I don’t know that part of the story), and the money ended up with a single mom in Denver who was going through treatment. She had lost her job when she wasn’t able to be there consistently, her insurance was gone, and her husband/boyfriend (don’t know which) left her. She said the money donated in Roberta’s memory made it possible for her to buy groceries for the first time in too long.

Understanding what their gift meant, the family set about creating a charity to help local women and men struggling with the financial burdens of breast cancer, and in this calendar year alone, they have reached 44 families. They help with medical bills, costs of living, cleaning services, repair services, and integrative health (like lymphatic drainage massage). Tonight’s dinner was part fundraiser and partly a chance to bring the recipients of this charity’s assistance out for a break from the hard work of fighting cancer. It was out at the Shupe Homestead, the beautiful event center in a rural part of Boulder county where we had a Rotary party last summer. The gathering room was decorated beautifully, the caterers were outstanding, and one of the sponsors was a local coffee producer who created a special roast as a party favor. The coffee company will be selling this blend from now on, with proceeds going to Roberta’s Legacy.

I sat at the table purchased by my friend, who sits on the board of this charity. She had brought in her friends and family to fill it. I felt so welcomed by them. I was nervous going in because I was attending solo, but they treated me like I was one of them. Another one of her friend-guests, who sat to my left, was also a breast cancer survivor, twice over, and I had a lovely time talking to her. In fact, I never lacked for conversation. Strangers and people I recognized alike talked to me. I’m often awkward and shy in settings like this, but not so tonight. It felt like family dinner. My oncologist was at the next table, and I recognized her PA, and a couple other people I’ve encountered through this journey. There were a few Rotarians I knew also.

I feel like it is possible so many people felt comfortable approaching me because tonight, for the first time, I went in intentionally bare-headed. My hair is starting to grow in, but it is still thin and short enough to mark me as a recent chemo patient anywhere in the world. I did what I swore weeks ago I wanted to do, and I made myself as girly as possible. I spent more than half an hour on my makeup, including shading in my eyebrows a little darker than normal and eschewing the fake eyelashes I bought for this event in favor of mascara on what few natural ones I have left. I wore more jewelry than I’d been sporting since the day before the surgery back in April. And I wore a soft sweater dress with a bright pink scarf. I sent pictures to my daughter to approve the outfit, and she caught that I had tied the scarf like a breast cancer awareness ribbon. Even I didn’t realize I had done it.

I expected this fundraiser to have an auction. I could have sworn I read that on their website or on the ticket or something. My tablemate thought the same thing. There wasn’t one, but they did have a couple dozen extra bags of the coffee to sell and donate the proceeds, and an artist had created a pendant series in a few different designs. Some looked like the creation goddess fetish like I used to hang from my car mirror years ago, and some looked like a tree goddess fetish. They were ceramic, some glazed, some not. Some had two breasts, some had none, some had the left or right one missing. If this incredible dinner and chance to learn about Roberta’s Legacy wasn’t enough of a gift, my friend who brought me also insisted she buy me one of the pendants, with little charms to hang from it. The artist didn’t have tools with her to attach the charms, so she will get that to me at a later date. I failed to get a picture. What I can show in photos is the flower centerpiece that all of us breast cancer warriors got to take home. What a lovely memento. What lovely gifts. I am overwhelmed.

7415

Inspirational song: Photograph (Ringo Starr)

I finally solved my problem. I had it up to here (gesture) with the phone that wouldn't work, and I went to get a new one this evening. Until my car battery is either replaced or certified to be functioning, I didn't want to drive my own car, so I bummed a ride to the AT&T store with my foster daughter. She was the right person to drag with me. She knows more about phones than my other family members, and had informed opinions and solid advice. I had many questions about what would work for my needs, and she pointed me in the right direction. I think together we made the right choice.

I ended up with a Galaxy Note. I've gotten to the point where I always have to whip off my glasses to read device screens, even though I have progressive lenses, so I wanted a big honking screen on my new phone to make it easier to see. Goal achieved. I still haven't figured out half the stuff it does yet, but I'll get there. I also took advantage of my foster daughter's Amazon prime, and I have a cover, trio of charging cables, and wipe-on screen protector on the way here.

We set up the old and new phones to transfer over wi-fi at home, because the guy at the store predicted it would take at least an hour. He was off by a lot. It took three hours to get over halfway through, and then it picked up and did the rest in another hour and a half. I thought to blame the old phone for running slow, as it was doing for weeks. Then at about the three and a half hour mark, I checked the progress, and it said it was through about 5000 or so of 7415 photographs in the transfer. Oh. That would do it. Since it finished, I have done very little of the actual set up, like choosing a ring tone and logging into my older email account, but I've spent hours deleting pictures. I haven't made it through a thousand of them yet, I'm sure. This is going to take forever. It's possible that I take too many pictures. More than possible. I should go back and see what I've skipped lately and use those before I make new ones.

I See Yer Problem

Inspirational song: Never Been to Spain (Hoyt Axton)

It's time for a Friday potpourri post. Theming is a little beyond me with what I have to offer.

This week I wrote about food, as I so often do, and said something about failing to teach my daughter how to make gravy. A friend from my hometown and my mom commented on that one, and they had a back-and-forth about some dish called "eggs a la goldenrod." I had never heard of it, and they seemed to roll their eyes (in written form) over memories of their mothers making it. So I googled it, and found that it was basically creamed hard boiled eggs on toast. That didn't sound so horrible, and seeing as how it was morning and I was so hungry that my stomach hurt, I decided to give it a whirl. I boiled two eggs, made a white sauce with chickpea flour, and heated up a gluten free everything bagel in the oven. The "goldenrod" part comes from chopping the egg whites into the white sauce, but crumbling the yolks over the top of the dish. Not so hard. And it wasn't nearly as awful as I expected it to be from their agonized nostalgia. It wasn't all that different than biscuits and gravy, when it comes down to it, and it wasn't necessarily unhealthy. I might actually do this again, sometime when I am in possession of gluten free sandwich bread. Heck, one of these days, I might actually own a toaster again.

When I was supposed to pick my daughter up to go grocery shopping on Wednesday, my car wouldn't start. I tried to get the hood open, but try as I might, I couldn't find the secondary release handle on the front of the engine compartment. (I don't attempt to access it very often, so I didn't realize what I was looking for was a yellow swing-out piece of plastic, instead of a push-up metal piece like older cars I had long ago.) When the Mr came home and I told him about it, he said that he went out and it started up three times in a row, with no issues. Of course. I never went anywhere by car yesterday, so I didn't follow up on it. We were heading out to go to a matinee movie and dinner this afternoon, and finally he was able to re-create my problem. The engine barely clicked when the button was pushed. So he looked under the hood. Sure enough, the battery terminal was thickly coated with light blue corrosion. He poured a little vinegar on it, jumped it with his car, and off we went. It started up just fine in between the movie theater and dinner, and we sort of forgot about it. Until we tried to leave after dinner, and once again, nothing but clicks from the car. Oops. We called around, and our foster daughter was literally a block away from us, so she came over and we used her car for the jump. So I guess tomorrow is going to be time for a bit of car maintenance.

As for the movie, I must admit to being pleasantly surprised. I really expected a sequel to disappoint me. It did not. Judging from the giggles from the audience around me, they also were pleased with the film. We went to see Zombieland 2. While rehashing jokes from the first movie usually feels forced and desperate, this time a level of self-awareness made references to the original sort of cute. I won't lie, it is every bit a zombie-killing movie, with all the gore of the genre. In this sort of setting, I don't mind that. And without giving anything away, I will say: Stay to the end. Don't leave as soon as the credits start to roll.

And lastly, I made my first attempt to sleep under a weighted blanket this week. I couldn't find an adult one at Wal-Mart, so I bought a kid one that was way too light for the purpose, but possibly too heavy for my finicky spine. I only had it on the bed a few nights, but it was there long enough for me to notice the cats acting differently. I studied them, and their heightened alertness, and came to the conclusion that the tiny glass beads inside the blanket slid in the little pockets like sand in an hourglass, and hissed ever so softly. Cats just didn't trust it. So I was surprised to find Harvey calmly sleeping on top of it once it was folded and put on my cedar chest. I was so tempted to reach over and make noise with it, just to see whether he would jump. I didn't. But I thought it.

I Made It

Inspirational song: Brother 52 (Fish)

It might have been the two cups of coffee with ridiculous amounts of the leftover whipped cream, and a leftover piece of cake for what counted as dessert after breakfast. It might be me getting used to the tamoxifen. It might have been the strong afternoon sunlight triggering a little bit of a migraine now that I'm months out of date for the Botox to prevent it. Or it could have been that dinner was only a couple Tylenol, a handful of unsalted mixed nuts, and a glass of wine while watching the Chiefs-Broncos game. I ended up coming home early from the game (from next door), because my head was spinning and my stomach was threatening to do flips. I'm hoping to get to sleep much earlier tonight, if not to make this go away, to make me have to experience it less.

It wasn't a big, exciting birthday for me today, but it was a lovely, mellow, zero-stress day. I was in my jammies until noon, a swimsuit for a half an hour in the hot tub, in a robe for hours this afternoon while I picked back up some crocheting, and then once I did shower and dress, I put on pajama pants to wear next door because no one judges me about it. Who could ask for more?

Tomorrow we'll go out to dinner, and maybe a movie (the Mr wants to see the Zombieland sequel, and I certainly won't refuse that). But for tonight, just being quiet and glad that after the year I had, I actually made it to this birthday is good enough for me.

Hands Off

Inspirational song: Chicken Fried (Zac Brown Band)

I'm a slow learner. Last year, when my birthday fell on a D&D night, I decided that I'd make one of my favorite meals to share with the group. I made jaegerschnitzel, standing over a hot stove, frying cornmeal-breaded pork cutlets that I had spent all my energy pounding flat that afternoon. I was exhausted by the time I sat down to eat, and my knees and back hurt for the rest of the night. I made my own cake too, although I'm pretty sure I didn't write on it or put candles on it.

Here we are a year later. D&D fell on the night before my birthday, and when my kids asked what I wanted to do, I said that I didn't want to make my own dinner again. I didn't want to plan it and I distinctly did not want to cook. I tried so hard to stick with it. But a week ago, I told my daughter, hey, how about chicken fried steak? That's one of my absolute favorites, because I am a born and bred Okie. We learned years ago that using chickpea flour does a far better job than wheat ever did for me, so it was a perfect gluten free conversion, plus the Beyond meat vegetarian option was a stellar substitution as well. I gave her the rest of my menu suggestions (mashed potatoes, green beans, and Pamela's brand chocolate cake). I kind of wanted the kids to be able to show up with the stuff, to cook, and hand me a plate. But then the kids had too much going on, working too many hours, and trying to do art commissions on the side. So I did the shopping with my daughter this afternoon (although I at least made her drive, since my car decided it wouldn't start). She bought some of the stuff, and I bought the rest. She was still a little wiped out from everything she has going on, so I got the cake baking. I was able to walk away at the time to make the actual meal, so it was kind of awesome not to have to stand over the fryer, or to deal with the potatoes. I did have to make the gravy, as I failed as a mother to pass that knowledge on to my daughter (apparently). I got the first serving, carried all my stuff down to the basement, and once seated, I stayed put.

After everyone had filled themselves with heavy fried foods and gravy, and played an hour or so of D&D, my daughter and my neighbor went upstairs to prepare the cake. I have never been a fan of frosting, so I selected whipped cream as a topping. They whipped the entire quart bottle of cream, almost double what they needed for a cake. I guess tomorrow will be sweet cream in our coffee, which is not a bad thing. T found a bottle of candy star sprinkles, and put them on the cake. When they came back, my daughter asked whether I needed candles. I was happy to assure her I did not.

So I guess I'm halfway to learning my lesson. I am either a hopeless control freak (a possibility) or I've just trained the friends too well to expect me to provide Wednesday dinner. I am not displeased by how this turned out. Food was delicious, friends are dear, and game night was a whole lot of fun. Let's do this again next year. But maybe with frozen pizzas.

Dibs

Inspirational song: Athena (The Who)

I think it almost every single night: I’m just going to write that I have nothing, post, and then I’m going to go to bed. And every single night, once I start typing, words come out. I don’t know where they come from, and I don’t know when they will dry up. I imagine someday they will.

I’m struggling with Facebook again. I post the link there for every post I create. But I’m in the process of pulling back from social media again. I wonder whether there is a more automatic way of linking to where people can find the blog if they want it, without me having to log in to Facebook every day. The only options I can think of to circumvent one platform involve increased activity on other platforms, and that just sounds worse.

I got to the end of my day, thought about all I had done, and decided I wanted to keep most of it for myself for now. I thought about whether I had anecdotes from my past, or greater life lessons, and I came up empty. I knew I hadn’t taken photos yet, and I looked to my right, and there was a face looking accusingly at me. I am not allowed to have a glass of water in this house, without a little black face having first dibs. Athena was sitting next to my water glass from earlier, mad at me that I had consumed enough that it was too far down in the glass for her to reach. I know the rules, and I failed to follow them. There will probably be consequences. In that moment, I knew that I had a promise to myself to maintain. I snapped a picture (carefully, slowly, with my barely functioning phone) and set about finding my nightly quota of words.

Trepidation

Inspirational song: Free Fallin' (Tom Petty)

I unloaded on the doctor today. It boiled down to "everything hurts and I hate it." She listened patiently, took me seriously, and gave me reassurance. The point of my visit today was to decide which long-term oral medication I'll be on to prevent the cancer from ever coming back. I had gone for a bone scan, for a baseline of my bone density in case I ended up taking one of the aromitase inhibitors. They can cause osteoporosis all by themselves, so it would be something to test for often. However, this class of medications can also cause muscle and joint pain. In fact, they're practically guaranteed to. After spending several minutes of me complaining about how bad my fibromyalgia flare has been over the last week, she said that aromitase inhibitors are no fun for people with fibro. She compared this to a race, saying it would be like holding me back at the starting line to take them. She said that there is "good old tamoxifen" in this situation. It's an old drug (and cheap!), which can have a few side effects of its own, like hot flashes and hair thinning. But joint pain isn't an automatic with it, so it's what we will try first. All the same, it's sitting in the pharmacy bag in my purse right now. I haven't worked up the nerve to take my first dose. I have a friend who has taken both kinds of drugs. She did poorly on each, and she tells me often how little she likes them. I'm a little scared of it.

When I was first being screened today, having to ascribe a number to my pain levels, the nurse who did my intake asked me whether I'd ever tried a weighted blanket. I've thought of it often, but the price held me back. She said I could probably get a great deal on Amazon, but after hovering my finger over the "buy now" button, I backed off. I didn't want to pay for shipping, and I was leery of getting something I hadn't touched first. I knew I could pay a similar amount at someplace like Kohl's, but my daughter suggested I try Wal-Mart first. I looked all over the bedding section, and just as I was about to give up, I found the children's version. I bought a small, cotton-candy pink one, weighing in at just six pounds. It was enough to test the proof of concept. I've been under it for hours now. It doesn't breathe well. Even without the tamoxifen, I'm having hot flashes under this (and then freezing when I stick my feet out). If it doesn't inflame my notoriously sensitive lower back, then I might consider going over to Kohl's and getting the adult version that weighs 20 pounds, and is more like what I'm supposed to use, according to all advice.

The world smells like leaves all of a sudden. When I walked out of the house to go pick up meds and find the blanket, the smell hit me in the face. It was fantastic. It's a shame that the bitter cold from last week killed most of the leaves, rather than letting them turn beautiful colors down here. There are still a few, but a lot of the trees on my block look pitiful. At least I get the weather and the smells that go with this. I'll have a little hot spiced cider and squash soup, and my fall experience will be complete.

Cabinetry

Inspirational song: Bitchin’ In the Kitchen (Shock Treatment)

Some days you just have to rely on other people’s accomplishments. I didn’t have enough of my own to speak of. Right after morning coffee (the first cup), the boys set about taking another stab at installing cabinets next door. I’m not sure that either of them had done this on this scale before, but as a couple of amateurs, they did alright. It took all day, until well past dark, but they got all the uppers hung, and three fifths of the lowers attached. The sink cabinet and the trash pull-out are just set in place for now, so that T can walk through his living room again without swearing. This renovation has been very stressful for him, as it is for most people. I doubt anyone actually likes living in a construction zone, having to eat only microwave meals or takeout, and having to do dishes in the utility sink in the garage. He’s been so on edge, I was leery of interjecting when he initially set the trash cabinet directly next to the sink, intending to put the dishwasher on the far left of that row. I gently suggested that it would be better to have the dishwasher closer to the sink, so that pre-rinsed and dripping dishes didn’t travel so far to be loaded into the machine. He had already blown off my initial hint about the water access line needing to be fed through the back of the trash cabinet in the original setup. Once I recruited Mr S-P and T’s girlfriend to my position, they lobbied him to agree as well.

Now that we can see it taking shape, it’s fun to picture how it will end up. He will get the countertops measured this week, and his dad will help him make a special table to go under the window. He is waiting to select paint colors until the countertop is installed, and I’m not sure he has chosen the floor tile yet. I have yet to be any real help, because my health has taken so long to build back up. I’d like to believe that by the time he is painting and putting down the tile, I can be of more use.