Tips for Dating My Husband

Hey, Britney—

Since you’re only 29, I don’t know how much experience you have dating men over 50. I’m sure you’re a lovely girl, so I just want to steer you in the right direction. Maybe you and my husband are a match made in May-December heaven. If so, this advice can only help that match burn brighter!

1.      Don’t get cancer! That one should be pretty easy for you, at least for several more years. He will have an affair while you are going through chemo. He will physically recoil when you touch him the night before your mastectomy, when you are trying to feel normal one last time.  He also won’t be able to get it up. (See below.) Just when you are feeling at your most vulnerable (and bald!), he will confess that he has met his soul mate (something he had previously told you he didn’t believe existed) and that he is in love with her in a way he never was with you. But even if that happens, don’t worry! She will move away when her husband is transferred. And you kind of benefited from her existence—she was his first taste (that I know of, anyway) of age-inappropriate women he met at work—same place he met you!—so he already knew how to seduce a much younger co-worker.  Did I mention she was your age?  Bonus tip—don’t get any older!

2.      Don’t gain weight! Even if it’s as a result of bearing his child, then getting your ovaries out so you don’t get ovarian cancer on top of breast cancer, then being depressed because he was sleeping with some chick at work (see above). Gaining weight means “you’re a fat, lazy fuck” who should not be blaming him for his extra-marital activity! I was thinner than you when I was your age (and bustier!), so don’t take this one for granted.

3.      Don’t be concerned that he’s drinking too much! Alcoholism, functional or otherwise, is a longstanding tradition is his family. And while he can be super romantic and affectionate when he’s drinking, he can also turn into the meanest drunk you ever saw in the blink of any eye. I didn’t experience that until after I married him, but it was quite the revelation!. The other fun thing he does when he’s drunk is berate you and make you feel like a worthless pile of crap. Then when you push back, he storms out of the house leaving you alone with a crying and terrified child.  No problem—he’ll usually come back in a day or two!  And you know he’s not with his girlfriend, because she has a husband at home—well, unless he’s at sea. Anyway, since he doesn’t really have any friends, you can assume he’s in a hotel.  You can verify that by looking at your credit card account on line. Oh, he MAY come home at 5 AM with a big gash on his forehead from falling in the parking lot of the Dirty D, and losing his glasses to boot, but you know, boys will be boys! If you want to be the cool girlfriend, just roll your eyes and get him a bit of the hair of the dog.

4.      Don’t worry that he’s still hung up on his first wife! She’s crazy, and she’s 1200 miles away; she can’t hurt you. Ha, ha, yes she can! The good news is, it’s easy to tell when he’s obsessing over her—he can’t get it up (see above) and he will shut you out entirely while he plunges into a deep, multi-day funk. She’s a bitch, to be honest, but she has her claws in him and together they LOVE drama. She’ll become like your very own ex-wife. Maybe she’ll even stalk you for a bit—she did me! She cheated on him, and he begged and begged her to come back. It hurt him so much that he promised that the one think I would never have to worry about was him cheating on me. In retrospect, so cute to think that was true!  Don’t worry, I’m sure he will be completely faithful to you. I’m sorry, I have to stop typing now, I am laughing so hard.

5.      Don’t fuck with J or C. That is all.

So, Britney, I really hope these tips help you understand my husband.  He has mentioned the part where he’s still married, right? If not, I’m sure that’s just an oversight! One can get so confused about that sort of thing, especially as one ages. I’m sure he’ll keep taking you away for romantic weekends and spending money on you—while he has it.  Remember, I can and do check those credit card receipts! Just because he never did those things for me—for fear of upsetting his actual ex-wife, well, that doesn’t  mean you don’t deserve them. He does burn through his money, though. I’m sure your love is deep and true enough to withstand whatever happens when he runs out of cash, and you realize he’s over 50, has two kids, two (sort of) ex-wives, a crap job, an older car and doesn’t own his own home. I’m cheering for you crazy kids. Now get out of here and go love my man!

Love,

Secunda

Sleeping Through History (A Rant)

#Neverforget.  I must have seen that 500 times today (or, I guess, yesterday now).  I understand the sentiment.  But really, did anyone think I was thiiisss close to forgetting?  Seriously?

Everyone has their story of where they were on September 11, 2001.  People remember it vividly, just like women can recount their childbirths with startling accuracy.  

So where was I?  Ummmm, I was....asleep.

It was 5:46 AM in Oregon when the first plane hit the first tower.  I kept hitting my snooze alarm button, catching snippets of NPR reports about two planes hitting a building.  I remember thinking it must have been an air show, and I pictured two old biplanes crashing into the same barn.

Not quite.

By the time Saville called and commanded me to get up and turn on the television, all four planes had gone down.  Everyone knew that, but that was about all that anyone knew.  It was such a perfect Portland fall day, sunny, warm and blue-skied.  On TV, New York, DC and Pennsylvania looked beautiful as well, through the smoke and tears.  I watched the video feed over and over again, always surprised that the towers kept collapsing.  Like maybe there could be a new ending to the story, if I just watched it often enough.

There wasn't, of course.  Again today, the footage rolled, and the towers fell down.  The names were read and tears, including mine, were shed.

But after 13 years of war, abrogations of civil liberties and mindless posturing, we're not any safer.  The world is not any saner.  If anything, technology has made our insecurity more obvious, closer to home.  ISIS, ISIL, whatever they'll call themselves next week--they're not just on a TV across the room or in a corner of a bar.  They're on our phones, in our pockets and purses, and hey, now even on our wrists.

There's no more distance.  We can't pretend it doesn't matter because they're just brown people living "over there."  A life is a life, whether it's ours or theirs. And more importantly, we can't pretend that we don't have some responsibility for solving this problem.  And possibly for creating it, or at least for watering the seeds sown by others from which their hatred sprouted.

So, #Neverforget?  That's the one thing we don't have to worry about. 9/11 is seared into our national soul, as it should be.  

But you know what will be forgotten, or at least faded, within a couple years?  #Ferguson.  #Hobbylobby. #CitizensUnited.  And that's a problem.  Each of those represents an assault on the most basic founding principles of our nation: Equal rights.  Separation of church and state.  Government of the people, by the people and for the people.

What is America without these ideals?  Our country is so much more than yellow ribbons and flags fluttering in gentle breezes.  Our country is--or can be--a beacon of freedom and liberty.  Yet we are just sitting by and watching everything we stand for be dismantled--not from outside threats but from within--our courts, our legislators, our police.  Ourselves.

Oh, and Antonin Scalia.  Can't forget him.

#Neverforget.  And never forget what we're defending.

It's time to wake up.  

Bat Shit Crazy

Highest on the list of things I never knew:

If you have a bat in your house, and it's there for more than a day or so, including while you and your child are sleeping, you need to get a full series of rabies shots.

I kind of gave away the surprise there, but again...who knew? Seriously, who the hell knew?

Our saga starts on Valentine's Day.  My first night alone in the house.  It's dark. Half the furniture is gone.  I'm physically and emotionally drained. I walk into the kitchen and snap on the overhead light.

Off to the left, I sense, rather than see, a flutter.  Moth, I think, and grab a soda.  Whatever. I leave the room.  A couple hours later, same thing.  Only this time, it has to be a bird.  It's too big to be a moth.  But it's way too quiet to be a bird.  Again, I shrug.  Bats aren't even on my radar.

My friend calls to see how my Love Day is going.  I tell her there's a creature in my kitchen  A long-time Astorian, she immediately knows it's a bat.  Over my protests, she sends her husband down the hill to help.  He arrives armed with a badminton racquet.  Because of course.

We do a room-to-room sweep with no success.  I open all the windows (brrr), turn on all the inside lights and turn off all the outdoor lights.  I assume it's flown out a window, and I go to sleep.

The next night, J is home with me.  It's hard to remember a Saturday night when she and I didn't watch our "Frozen" DVD, but we couldn't have, since it wasn't released until March.  Oh, wait, I remember!  We sold Girl Scout cookies for four hours in Cannon Beach amid a miserable storm.  The things I make my daughter do for my troop!  Anyway, I see the bat, again in the kitchen.  I sequester J in my room, which now has only a mattress and a nightstand so I know there's no bat in there.

And now it's in the upstairs hallway, and I finally discover the sole benefit of living in a 111-year-old Victorian crack house:  Doors.  Lots and lots of doors. I am able to seal the bat within the staircase and the foyer.  I do the lights again, then open the front door and hide behind it.  Just as I am about to go to give up and hope for the best, the bat flies out the door and I slam it hard.  J and I go to sleep.

That's where the story should have ended.  Instead, a couple of days later I recount the tale to my sister.  Who knows someone who happens to be a doctor who knows someone who had a bat and a sleeping child in their house at the same time and (suspenseful music here) they had to get rabies shots. The danger is that bats are sometimes rabid, and you may not be aware that they have bitten you.  Seriously--who knew?

I make a doctor's appointment for J and myself the next day.  Our regular doctor is not in the clinic, so we get a substitute.  I am convinced she will mark me down as having Munchhausen Syndrome, both by proxy and straight up.  But she takes our situation very seriously.  She appears more worried about me than about J, who, it seems, did not spend the night in the bat house.  She leaves us in the examination room and goes to consult the County Health Department.

J takes this opportunity to correct the history I have given the doctor.  She tells me that she saw the bat in the TV room, "the night we got the 'My Little Pony' book at Costco.  That was three or four nights before Valentine's Day.  "Why didn't you tell me then that you saw a bat?"  J shrugs.  "I don't know," she replies.  "I thought it was either a crow or your black underwear flying across the room."

For the record:

1.  Underwear does not routinely fly across rooms in our house.
2.  I breastfed that child.  For more than the recommended year.  Partly to          make her smarter.

The doctor returns, and I update her on our history.  She reports that the risk that we have rabies is low, but that rabies is always fatal, so it's a big risk to take.  She sends us home, promising that she will call us when she gets more information.

I get two calls from a nurse at the health department in Portland.  She says she has spoken to the State Vet and he thinks we're okay.  I am so tickled at the idea that Oregon has a state vet that I don't listen fully.  I wonder if it's real job or a sinecure like poet laureate.  Actually, I have no idea what a poet laureate does.  But that was an example my fifth-grade teacher gave when we had "sinecure" as a vocabulary word. Eventually, I tune back in to the nurse.  She is just saying that she will speak with the State Vet (!) again and get back to us.

She doesn't, but at her request our County Health Director does.  He tells me a long story about being in the Peace Corps, and one of his fellow volunteers died after being bitten by a rabid dog.  The upshot of his story is that the Peace Corps nurse made everyone get prophylactic rabies vaccines.  He says he couldn't make a recommendation as to what we do, but that he would get the shots if he were in our shoes.

Then he tells me that the only place in the state to get the shots is in Portland.  I'm still not sure if that's true, but it is definitely the closest place.  He has called OHSU and they have recommended that we come in the next day. 

So we do.  At OHSU, the only place they administer shots is in the ER.  Fortunately, they let both J and me go to Doernbecher, the pediatric OR, where the wait time is measured in minutes, not hours.  The ER doctor did not give us a choice:  If there is a bat in your living quarters and you were not awake for the entire time of its visit, you get the rabies shots.  Period.

On the upside, things are much improved in the rabies vaccine field.  No more giant needles in your stomach!

Depending on your weight, you start out with three (J) or more (me) shots.  J had hers in her thighs and arm, but I get some in my ass, to her endless amusement.  One is the vaccine and the others are the immunoglobulin. (Maybe?)  Then you get to drive to Portland three more times in the next two weeks to get one shot each time.  And no, they will not ship them to your city for convenient inoculation.  And yes, you do get to make an ER co-pay for each of your four visits.  Fortunately, Blue Cross paid.  And they paid A LOT.

Side note:  The pharmacy sends up the vaccine, and the nurse mixes it and injects it into your arm (or other places, the first day).  The solution is bright magenta.  One of the nurses asked if I were anti-vaccine.  I said no, but she said the way this stuff looked could turn anyone away from the science.

J was not happy.  But she was amazing.  Brave little bug, and I was so, so proud of her.  

The whole thing still seems strange to me.  I will always wonder if I did the right thing.  We were probably overtreated.  One doctor we saw at OHSU agreed that it was defensive medicine, but that (as noted) since rabies is inevitably fatal, you just can't take the chance.  What really bothers me, though, is what do other people do?  My employer provides amazing health insurance.  The whole thing cost me eight ER co-pays and two co-pays from our primary-care clinic.  Total:  $270 out of pocket, but of course covered by my flexible spending account.  So really maybe 2/3 of that. I recently was working with someone whose ER co-pay is $500.   That would have been $4,000 PLUS his insurance would have paid only a portion of the rest.  And let's not even think about people with no insurance.  I am so very grateful, and so very sad, all at the same time.

In fact, none of this really makes sense.  We live in a rural county.  Bats are ubiquitous.  Surely they must enter people's homes all the time.  But I have never heard of anyone (in real life; I'm not counting the internet) who has gone through this.  Are they just not asking their doctors?  Are they receiving different advice?  Is there really no risk?  Or do they have to balance the cost and the risk and ultimately decide they just can't afford the care?

So, people of Clatsop County, if you have a bat in your house, call J and me! We are now immune--at most we would need a booster if we got bitten. We like to do that Girl Scout good turn daily.

And, oh how I wish i had thought of this:

PSA time:  Turns out, you are NOT supposed to shoo the bat out of your house.  You are supposed to trap it so its brain can be tested for rabies.  If it's negative, you won't need to get shots.  I am sorry, but if any of these doctors or public-health professionals thought I was going to trap the bat, well, they're just bat shit crazy.

Holidaze

A short, illustrated list of things I learned this Christmas season.

1.  If you're looking for a gift for your Playmobil family, J says that "Baby              Jesus is always appropriate."

2.  Santa is scary.  

3.   But less so with a good friend.

4.   You should take time to smell the roses lick the snow.

5.   Zoo Lights is even more awesome when you're rocking the leopard print.

6.     Unicorns, tigers and ponies look amazing on my bedroom floor.  And my           playing with her makes J over-the-moon happy. Doing it more often is             my New Year's resolution.

Here's to a great 2014!

Monster Hive

I actually wrote but didn't post this about three months ago, if the dates aren't making sense.

J started kindergarten last month.  I'm pretty sure you read about it in the Times?  From day one, she LOVED it.  Mrs. S is her hero/goddess/best teacher ever. In a fit of pique, J told me that she loved Mrs. S more than she loved me. I didn't believe her, so it didn't upset me, but I don't remember     worshiping my teachers the way J worships Mrs. S.  Mrs. S is pretty terrific but still...wow.

I walk her to school in the morning since we live too close for the bus.  It's been good for both of us.  She gets fresh air and my undivided attention.  I get the sweaty walk uphill toward home after I drop her off.  Every day we notice things that we've driven past a million times and never paid attention to.  Like...one of our neighbors has a pink hose!  Another has a "fossil" of a leaf printed on a stepping stone.  And one has eight cats, with their own dollhouse on the porch.  These are big deals when you're five five and a half.

At the end of her second week of kindergarten, J announced that she could read the word "the."  After G and I made appropriately impressed comments, she said, "Not bad for only eight days of school, huh?"  She's since added "my," "and," "was," "can" and a few more I'm forgetting.  She also has to write her name with a capital J and the rest of the letters lowercase.  This, she tells me, is "kindergarten style," and she does it very reluctantly.  It's not easy, she wants us to know, but she's also never bored at school.  So there's that.

We've also begun soccer and ballet, with much less enthusiastic results.  J just won't really participate.  She's playing soccer because G really believes in team sports.  I do, too, though perhaps not quite as vigorously, or at such a young age.  She likes practice, but not the games.  While the other kids are earnestly kicking the ball into the wrong goal, she kind of floats along at her own pace.  This drives G bonkers and embarrasses him.  I am frustrated, not by her lackadaisical-ness but by her refusal to even allow herself to have fun. The other parents murmur their sympathy, but I can feel their relief that their kid isn't like that.  

J's learning ballet because she saw the local production of "The Velveteen Rabbit" last year and really wanted to be in this year's ballet.  Every year the teacher choreographs her own ballet and each student has a part.  They perform at a real theater, and all the kids at all the schools attend. So I signed her up.  The teacher is very disciplined, and J is...whatever the opposite of disciplined is. She says she loves it, but it's hard to tell from the effort she puts in.  We're trying, and it's getting better, but...

How much to push? She's only five.  And the soccer was our choice, not hers. I don't want to force her to do things she doesn't like, but I hate to let her quit. Soccer's almost over, but there's still next fall to consider. G is going to make her play something.  There doesn't seem to be a Hang Upside Down from the Jungle Gym League, or a My Little Ponies Take a Bath Team, or anything else she actually enjoys playing.  And the odds of her being very good at any sport are genetically limited.  She does have a new game she plays at recess called "Monster Hive."  She's unshakably sure that she doesn't mean "Monster High."   The object of the game is "to turn the monsters into bees and then you are afraid of them because there are bees but there is no such thing as monsters."

Well, duh,

Jesus in the Morning

We are not, as I've noted before, a religious family.  Yes, I went to Catholic school, and I believed it all for a long time.  I've even received four of the seven sacraments!  But education, particularly history and science, along with war, poverty, hunger and all the crap done in the name of (G)od(s) has put me off the whole business.

As a natural consequence, J is being raised without religion.  She hasn't been to church or Sunday School, and we don't even have a bible in our house. It amazes me, then, how often religion (and on the Oregon Coast that means Christianity) pops up in her little world.  And watching her little brain try to make sense of it all is absolutely fascinating. 

"God" is such an easy answer to pretty much all her questions.  "Why is the sky blue?"  "Why can't you touch a rainbow?"  "How did I get inside your tummy?"  But that's a cop out, so we spend a lot of time looking things up in the dictionary or on Google.  And after you do that a few times, it becomes harder and harder not to answer, "That's just how God made it."

Because, for example:

J: Why does it rain all the time?

Me: The plants need water to grow and also?  We live in Oregon.

J:  How do plants drink water? They don't have mouths.

Me: They absorb it through their roots.

J: Like a straw?

Me:  Yeah, kind of. But they need soil and sunlight, too.

J: Why?  

Me: Well, there are nutrients--vitamins--in the soil, and the plant turns the sun's light energy into food.

J: Like the sun is the stove?

Me: Sort of. You could say that, I guess.

J: And the plant doesn't talk because it doesn't have a mouth?

Me: Yes.  And it does't have a brain.

J: Why doesn't it have a brain?

Me: Only animals have brains.

J: Mammals are animals.  I am an animal AND a mammal.

Me: Right.  So you have a brain.

J: Why do I have a brain?

Etc., etc., etc.

How much easier would it have been to say the rain is God peeing?  At any point along that path I could have said God and ended it. But then she'd end up...stupid.

My niece has declared herself, at 13, an atheist.  That's fine, but her lack of any religious training worries my sister.  Not on grounds of salvation, but because she feels that religion gives kids something safe to rebel against.  And because the bible is an important cultural reference that her daughters don't know anything about.  A friend of mine recently watched "The Bible" on the History Channel.  She had also never been exposed to the bible.  "It was really cool," she said of the miniseries.  "They were great stories.  It was like science fiction!"

Indeed.

I'm ambivalent about J's cultural ignorance of Christianity.  Right now she still believes in fairy tales, so I'm not in a hurry to tell her more stories that she'll eventually realize were made up, however culturally significant they may be.  After her no-cavities dentist visit last week, J got to pick a prize from the treasure box.  She selected a pack of biblical "Go Fish" cards

I'm going to put aside the question of why our dentist had this, alongside friendship bracelets, plastic dinosaurs and mini slinkies.  It's just not answerable.  J was enthralled at having her own deck of cards.  Playing them, however, was difficult.  Since she can't read, she has to rely on the pictures.  But she didn't know what they were.  You really can't say, "Do you have a 'Jonah'?" or "Do you have a 'David'?" when she doesn't connect the names to the pictures, and she doesn't even know who these men are. (And they are all men, except for one card that has Adam and Eve).  

In fact, looking at the "Noah" card, which shows a smiling old man with an ark full of happy animals, she asked if the grandpa were taking the animals to the circus.   I told her that each card depicted a character from the bible.  J then asked what the bible was, and I explained that it was a book of stories about God. "Like my purple book of fairy tales?"  Yes, JUST like that.

By the way, J says that you can tell the cards are for "Go Fish" because each one has a fish on the back.  A fish that looks like this:

Christmas and Easter are also fraught with traps for the unwary irreligious. When J was three, she told me that Christmas was the birthday of the baby who had to sleep in the hay because his mother wouldn't let him sleep in her bed.  And the baby's name was Gee Whiz. And sometimes he lives in the cross. And possibly his father is Santa.  Makes sense, in her world anyway:

Easter's a super fun holiday because, really, it's all about death.  J knows, at least superficially, that everything dies.  We've also been working on the fact that people do not come back after they die.  (Same with fish.)  So I thought her question about whether God also died was a good one.  No, I said, he doesn't die.  What about Jesus?  Well, yes and no, he died but he came back to life.  What about Jesus' mom?  Yeah, she died.  In fact, she stayed dead AND there's no candy involved.  To which sweet J replied that it wasn't fair that only the woman had to die.  She unwittingly hit on one of my problems with religion.

But are we doing the right thing by keeping J away from religion entirely?  G's parents are full-on anti-evolution, self-righteous bible thumpers.  I wouldn't wish that on anyone.  I've thought about Unitarianism, but that does still require some underlying belief in something.  And I just hate church. 

So what to do?  "Some people believe..." is really kind of condescending. Knowing she can take a bible as literature class in 15 years doesn't help the here and now. Some of her friends are already telling her about Jesus, and asking why she doesn't go to church.  I'm waiting for some little punk to tell her she's going to hell if she doesn't accept Jesus as her savior.  

Ain't no hell hot enough for that shit. 

Best Little Whorehouse in Oregon

I made the mistake, back in the 90s, of telling my BFF Saville that someday--some crazy, reckless day, I wanted to have seven daughters.  No sons, just daughters.  I shared with her the names that I had chosen with such care.  She replied, "It sounds like you want to birth your own brothel."  In her honor, my seven names:

1.     Lila
2.     India
3.     Sophie
4.     Trixie
5.     Katrina
6.     Ruby

and...wait for it...

7.     J.

That's A Negative, Ghostrider

Remember when he used to be hot, not crazy?

Despite not being (for me) overly worried about the bone scan, I did have some anxious moments over the past few days.  Mentally penning letters for J to open on each of her birthdays I wouldn't see.  Imagining who would/wouldn't come to my memorial service/street dance.  Wondering whether I would linger bravely or succumb quickly. You know...just being myself.

Anticlimactic, to be sure, as the results were (heavenly/delightfully/amazingly/ joyously) negative.  Oh, yeah, sure there's that degeneration in both knees and in my back.  Nothing I didn't know--oh, wait, yes--some more in my shoulders that  I haven't ever felt--just something to look forward to!   And, yes, I  do love me some objective findings.  A high price for validation...sure.  But while I may be falling apart, it's not because of cancer so who the fuck cares?

I'm not sure if that's the right attitude, but pain, however chronic, however miserable, is fine.  I can raise J with a limp.  I can go to her graduation on crutches.  I can chair dance at her wedding.  I. Do. Not.  Care.  I am FINE!!!

Oh, except for the above-mentioned, and the osteopenia. Which, as it turns out, I had last year but my now-retired oncologist didn't mention that to me.  Letrozole is a rough drug; surgical menopause is not for the faint of heart.  Pass the skim milk and the kale salad--as soon as I'm done with my weight-bearing exercise.  Tomorrow, obviously.

Because--did you hear me?--IT'S NOT CANCER!!!

Bone Appetit!

I had a bone scan today--well, I guess yesterday, since it's 1203 AM now. Though my doctor thinks my recent hip pain is either arthritis or AI-related, she wants to be cautious.  (We seem to have a tacit agreement not to say the M word.) And since I'm always up for a quick shot of radioactive isotopes, I readily agreed.

For an old IV pro like me, the test was no big deal.  You get the tracer; you get a pedicure and have lunch work on your laptop for three hours; you drink a boatload of water; and then you lie still for the camera.  Easy enough.

The bed moves.  I know this now.

And then you wait.  For results that may not be conclusive.  I am having another glass of wine embracing the uncertainty.  

And Monday?  I get a bone-density scan.  So we can all know just how much I am falling apart.  Or to see if the Boniva is working.  One or the other.

Meanwhile, tomorrow I host Bunco. Yes, I said that. And more shamefully yet, there's a theme...Hawaiian Luau.  Which means I am up late making pineapple-upside-down cupcakes and char siu.  But this party did give me the opportunity to make yet another amazing scientific discovery.  I learned that drumettes are not the curiously small legs of misshapen chickens. As it turns out, they're part of the wing.  I know this because I am also making teriyaki drumettes.  When I asked the butcher if Safeway sold them, he said the bags of wings were 50/50 wings and drumettes.  Because, as I said, apparently a drumette is the first (or second?) part of the wing. I admit that is some smart marketing, but the upshot is that I probably will never eat another one.  Well, after tomorrow.

And finally, in other bone and chicken related news, KFC is now serving boneless chicken.  The Millennial Generation apparently prefers nugget-type food items.  I never eat there, so this is not a big issue for me.  But I really do prefer--and yes, it's irrational--when my meat doesn't look like the animal it once was.  Not my daughter, however.  When her 29-cent goldfish died, she looked at me and asked, "So do we eat it now?"

Mmmmm!

Five!

Zero

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Counting to Two

An obvious result for my Google image search for "breast cancer survivor."
Not your ordinary pink ribbon.
Amazing algorithm!

How do you count to two?

One of the strange things about cancer is the absence of an agreed-upon definition of survivorship.  Well, obviously it means you're still alive.  I mean that there is no consensus on the date that your survivorship begins.  In my case, each of these is a viable start date:

• September 13, 2010--the day I found a lump
• October 27, 2010--the day my cancer was diagnosed
• February 18, 2011--the day of my mastectomy when the last trace of DCIS was removed from my right breast
• Some random date four to eight years before my diagnosis, since most breast cancers grow for four to eight years (big spread, right?) before they are detected

Depending on where you count from, I am either a two-year survivor or a two-and-one-half-year survivor (or, hell, a ten-and-one-half-year survivor!).  Naturally I prefer the longer period--as my oncologist said with respect to recurrence, "Time is your friend."  So the more time, the better.  

But when I really think about it, I have to go with the February date, because I could officially say that I was cancer-free on that date.  (Again, even "officially" is a relative term here because one never knows...)  So that's the date I celebrate.  Two years. (And one month.)

But celebrate may be the wrong word.  I just flicked back through my Google calendar to find my surgery date.  I can't believe I had to look it up--that's a good sign, though!  Seeing the appointment on my calendar was fine.  It's not like I ever pretend it never happened.  Even when I'm drunk.  Especially not when I'm drunk.

What made me cry was an entry on the day before--February 17, 2011--"Mommy-J Day."  That's what J calls a day we spend together with no one else around.  And I specifically remember planning this day because I knew I wouldn't be able to pick her up for several weeks, and I knew that I would be away from her for several days.  And I didn't really know what the doctors would find.  If they found any more invasive cancer, I would have had to have more chemo.  The hope was that they wouldn't find anything, but as mentioned, there was a bit of non-invasive cancer (with therapeutic changes--apparently good news).  And so I wondered if it might be the last day we would spend together where I would be really and truly present.

Spoiler alert--it wasn't.  I am so very grateful for every day of the last two years.  I'm still crazy of course, but much more at peace.  Apparently that's all it took.  Well, that and some Ativan.

L'chaim!

Come In, Houston...

The Lede (Now unburied!)

So, uh, yeah, that seven months of radio silence?

Two reasons.

First and foremost--it's hard to follow a eulogy post with the mundane details of my life.

Second, well, you know. Work. Christmas.  Halloween.  Yeah, that's it.

So anyway.  In summary:

Vomiting

J had her MRI in September, and it was normal.  She hasn't thrown up since.  Whatever.  

School

J started pre-kindergarten with her usual delusional aplomb.  "This is a class for four-year-olds, Mama.  No babies."  At her parent-teacher conference (no, seriously--they have these in pre-school!), we learned that she is brilliant, delightful, non pareil...except for that part about how we're working on not talking to our peers when the teacher is talking.  I tried to explain the genetics of that--how it wasn't J's fault.  No dice.

Holidays

Halloween. J dressed up as a rainbow butterfly fairy princess.  Pretty much all her favorite things rolled into one, though we wondered why she left unicorns out.  Because did you know, "In the old days, people didn't have cars.  If they wanted to go somewhere, they had to ride a horse or a unicorn.  Not like in the new days.  Now we have cars and spaceships."

So there's that.

J and Jack.  I made him myself.

Thanksgiving.  Oy, are we lazy.  We went to Portland and watched the Macy's parade in the pouring rain.  Good times.  The night before we (gasp!) ate dinner in a restaurant.  It was awesome!  i am not a fan of turkey or pumpkin pie; usually I cook something else or suffer through it at someone else's house.  This just is not a holiday I enjoy. Not sure I would do this again, but it was interesting.  

Oh!  Way to bury my lede!  POTBELLY IS NOW IN PORTLAND!!!  I grew up about a block from the original location, and I really miss it.  I remember several years ago returning to Chicago and seeing that they were all over the place.  Then I noticed they were all over DC.  And now there are two in Portland.   They were still working the kinks out when we visited the downtown location on Black Friday, but....YUM!

Christmas.  Always my favorite holiday.  Always.  And even more so now with J in her magic years.  The unwavering, unquestioning belief in Santa fills me with awe.  Not sure if you know this, but Christmas is "the Jesus' birthday.  Also Pink Baby's."  Pink Baby, of course, is the baby doll she received for Christmas when she was one.  I don't remember it happening this way, but J is adamant that Pink Baby grew in Santa's tummy.  Anything's possible around here.  

And so Jesus and Pink Baby are birthday-sharers.  J wanted me to bake an angel food cake that said "Happy Birthday to Jesus and Pink Baby."  I did make the cake, but as you can see, pre-packaged cookie frosting is not suitable for writing on boiled icing:

Why does no one ever Pinterest me?

We spent three days in Manzanita, starting on Christmas Eve. We rented a house right on the beach.  

Although it was, of course, cold and wet, it was heavenly.  Friends drove down and joined us for Christmas dinner. I want to do this every year.  It was such a happy little idyll.  C was here, and J was over the moon.  The sad thing:  This is probably the last time that we'll all be together like that.

J and I flew to St. Louis on New Year's Eve.  My "sleeping on the redeye plan" backfired because of Direct TV.  J was pretty keyed up, so I thought maybe a little Nick, Jr. would send her off to la-la land.  Riiiiggghhht.  I slid my Visa in the slot, and she stayed awake for the entire flight.  We don't get this channel on our cable plan, and she's only seen "Dora" sporadically (and one episode at a sitting) on Amazon Prime.  Who knew what wonders awaited her on a 737?  After "Dora" was over, another show came on!  She was in awe, since this only happens at our house when she's sick or I'm hungover.  We were introduced to the wonder that is the "Wonder Pets."  Seriously, WTF is that show?  

But I digress.

St. Louis was wonderful. It was so good to see my sister and my nieces.  We took J to the Magic House and, for her first time ever, ice skating.  She loved it.  I used to be good a pretty good skater--we skated on the Lincoln Park lagoon all the time when we were kids--but I suck at it now.

I went with my sister and older niece to their mother-daughter book group, where we discussed "Code Name Verity."  I was only able to read about a third of it before the meeting, but I finished it later--great book.  These mothers and daughters have been meeting as a group for six or seven years, .  The girls are now freshmen in high school!  I was taken aback by their level of discourse and their ease with discussing the material.  Looking at those girls really makes me NOT worry about the future.  I can only hope J ends up like that.

Other

I took J to see a few plays, "Peter Pan" and "Pinkalicious."  I though PP was very, very odd, but she loved it, once she understood that the pirates weren't real.  "Pinkalicious" was pretty delightful (and starred the same little girl who played "Annie" a couple of years ago).  However, it's a short book, and while they embellished it for the stage, there's just not enough material there to make a play.  But it was sweet, and all the little girls wore pink and were buzzing with excitement.  They had pink cupcakes for sale in the lobby.  They were lovely, but they were yuppy gourmet with lemon curd and whipped cream frosting.  J didn't like it, and neither did most of the other little girls who had them.  I think that demographic much prefers a solid vanilla cupcake with PINK buttercream frosting.  You know, like from Safeway or Fred Meyer.  But what do I know?

Next Up

A return to Disney World, and J turns five.  Posted sometime in the next eight months.

Tribute

Elizabeth Burton Redding, one of my best friends in college, died on Sunday night, from metastatic breast cancer.  I was out of town and off the grid, so I only learned of this tonight.  My family is sound asleep; I am sitting here on the couch, alone, overcome by grief and regret.

Elizabeth and I had lost touch over the years, but recently had reconnected via that much-maligned medium, Facebook.  As soon as she found me, she called and we talked for hours.  It was as if no time had passed at all.  We were shocked to learn that we had both just finished treatment for breast cancer.  The difference was that hers had, as she put it, "partied right on through to my lungs."  In my ignorance (and I really should have known better), I didn't understand, immediately, that that meant Elizabeth was Stage IV.  It just wasn't possible.

But it was.  

I saw her, for the first time in a decade, in Chicago in March.  We drank too much wine at dinner and talked non-stop about our families, our jobs and, of course, that big elephant in the room, our breast cancer.  By that point she also had bone mets and had begun weekly chemo in a clinical trial, which seemed to be working.  She told me that her doctors had given her a range of five to seven years to live.  We talked about what that felt like, especially with her youngest son still measuring his years in the single digits, her only daughter still very much needing a mother and her older boys just beginning adulthood.  I cried, but she did not.  She just knew she'd be the one to defy the odds.  But she also knew that she might not, and she was heartbroken at the thought of leaving her children.  I have awoken in a panic many a night to face those same fears--I don't fear dying; I fear leaving my snowflake.  But I have never had to face those fears as acutely as Betsy did.

To my mind, that Betsy should die so young, and in so much pain, can only be the work of a callous god.  But here's the thing--Elizabeth would disagree with that completely.  Through her battle, she held on to her family and her faith. If anything, it brought her closer to them.  No one could possibly die feeling more loved than Elizabeth did.  If there's any silver lining here at all, it's knowing how much, and by how many, she was loved.

I will forever regret that, relying on the false sense of security of those promised "five-to-seven-years," I did not rush to Chicago in her last days.  I knew things were bad, but it really never occurred to me that there wasn't--and now will never be--more time.  I hope Elizabeth will forgive me. Actually, I don't hope that, because I know she already has.  I just hope her family will forgive me, too.

So that's what happened at the end.  But it doesn't come close to explaining who Elizabeth was, what made her laugh, what flavor of ice cream she liked best, or what sort of weather made her happy.  It doesn't reveal the sharp glimmer of intelligence and the deep kindness in her eyes.  It doesn't tell you that she was an almost therapist-like listener, ready to advise but never to lecture.  It doesn't communicate how she made you want to be a better person.

I've known her as a history nerd, a frazzled working mother, and, in her latest incarnation, some sort of high-tech something or other that I really didn't understand.  I've known her to do some things she wasn't proud of, as we all do.  But unlike most of us, she acknowledged them, apologized and knew that tomorrow would be a better and sunnier day.

It doesn't seem right that I could be at the butterfly house, at the zoo, or on the Great Wheel of Seattle these past few days without knowing that Betsy was gone.  I thought about her a lot this week, actually.  But I have done so ever since her family started an update page on Facebook, so I can't claim any sort of ESP.  Should I have felt something--some frisson of insight--on Sunday night when she breathed her last?  

No.

Because you know what?

Betsy lives.

Réquiem ætérnam dona ei. Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat ei. Requiéscat in pace. Amen.