I love my job- usually

Work was awful tonight. I wanted to kill about six people. But you know what? I am delighted to have something in my life suck that doesn't have to do with cancer. I think things will start to head in that direction now. Cancer has been around so long that it can't be the primary source of my dissatisfaction. So even though I am going to burn in hell according to my patient, I am optimistic. It is helpful that I don't believe in hell.

So now I have two days off that I am going to fill with stuff that has nothing to do with cancer. Working on the paperwork to get my house sold, actually getting someone to mow my lawn and maybe finally going to the beach with Laura, after buying the right kind of bathing suits to accomodate the fake boob. Which I have not lost in a really long time.

And my hair is starting to grow back in. Well, "peach fuzz" was the term I heard, but i would say it is now between 1/32 and 1/16 of an inch long now, and it seems to be growing in blonde. But I think when it gets a little longer, i will dye it red. And I think an eyelash grew back today. Chemo.......that was so last month.

Memorial day

I don't remember if we just remember veterans or all people whohave died today. I thought veterans had their own holiday,but I guess it would be rude to exclude them from today. I need to know because i am working and my work is on the campus of a VA hospital (hence my fight with the VA police a while back) so I need to know if I should be nicer than usual to them. Actually, I don't since they are not dead. And i am pretty much always nice to people at work, saving my bitchiness for those closer to me and of course my blog.

I am not a big go-er to the cemetary on Memorial day or any other day for that matter although I do not mind the plant people having their big sales of cemetary pots. How often do they get a chance for that? I don't think that once people are dead they stay where they are buried. Even though my mother's grave is very close to Doyle's Bar in Jamaica Plain and I think she would like that.

When I think of dead people, as opposed to when I think of people I wish were dead and there are a lot more of them, anyway the dead people I think of are my mother and Emily, my niece who really did fight cancer, really was courageous and wonderful and beautiful and did not get a wimpy-ass cancer like mine, and ultimately did not survive. She died from leukemia at age 19 4 years ago on tax day, April 15th. So April 15th is usually my memorial day. Anyway i am sure that Emily is the motivation behind my making fun of my own cancer because she went through so much more and was really much nicer and more gracious about it than i am. She never demanded a better parking space or a free meal because she had cancer. I did that for her. I also taught all the kids in the resource room at Children's hospital when their parents or other adults set a limit on them, or said they couldn't have that particular toy or whatever, to just look at them and say, "How can you say that to a kid with cancer?" So maybe this is payback.

So I do not need cemetaries because: 1. Emily is cremated and I have some of her ashes in a sephora bag on my bookshelf. The rest are scattered (By me, Meghan, Laura and Cindy- other friends have scattered her elsewhere) on the Spanish and French Riviera, the Seine River under the Eiffel Tower, somewhere in Monaco, Hanalei bay in Kaui, Hawaii, waikiki beach and my soon to be former swimming pool. and 2. People I love stay with me. Well mainly, my mother is mostly with Meghan because she didn't like me very much but made up for it by really really loving Meghan. And Emily I don't doubt is always around, playing little tricks, usually involving prescription drugs (long story.)

So my main thing about memorial day is that it is the day after which one can wear white shoes. Uniforms and sneakers don't count. But remember one of my favorite movies ever, Serial Mom? I think the crime was wearing white shoes after labor day, but it is the same concept. We are now safe to wear white dress shoes until Labor day without getting hacked up by kathleen Turner. Just get it from netflix, you will know what i am talking about.

scarey

ok, after i wrote about the kind of ads I was getting on my blog, i then noticed that there were ads about alcohol detox places and i thought, shit I need to focus more on cancer. But then without my doing anything, i have other ads on today that are not about detoxing.

It is memorial day weekend and it is beautiful. I had about 7 things planned but ended up sleeping through most of them. I haven't figured out the rest when you have cancer thing. I will go to take a little nap and then wake up the next day. And i suppose that it is better to sleep more than less. But it seems like now i have enough energy to go to work, or do one thing every day if I don't work, but then I have to take a long nap. This would be good if there were some job out there where one gets paid for sleeping. Then i could fit a few more activities into my schedule.

what happens when you have children

Laura was hesitant to introduce me to her newest boyfriend when we were in New York.

Me: "Are you embarassed because I have cancer?"

Laura: " No, of course not. I am embarassed about entirely different things."

My commercials

When I clicked on the thing that put ads on my blog, they said they would match up the ads with the blog content. So at first all the ads were for cancer places and treatments, etc. I just noticed now ads from lawyers who defend: 1. Drunk Driving and 2. Texting while driving, or is that driving while texting. What is next? Get your recreational drugs on line from Mexico?

loneliness

Well yes I have to admit that sometimes I feel a little lonely. Like I would like to meet new friends. Who can clean my house and mow my lawn. Also I would like to have a friend who is a mani/pedicurist. And someone whose job it is to give peopleluxury cars to try out. And maybe someone who can write prescriptions withoutn asking a whole bunch of silly questions.

I erased my post

And now it will not be that funny. I am mad at the VA cops. Not all cops, because someday I may need them to investigate something for me.... I certainly shouldn't live my whole life without needing cops to investigate stuff. And this is me, before I become crazy.

So I was supposed to get a VA ID at work. They said come in the morning, we did, they said oh we meant the afternoon, we came and yet there were no cops to do our IDs. Less than one minute after leaving the police dept, i was driving to my building only to be stopped by A VA COP! I assumed they were there to apologize but apparently not, they mentioned something about exceeding the speed limit and going the wrong way down a one way street. (A LIE.) I explained that I was late for my class because I had to wait so long for a cop to do my ID which he did not do. (They did not care.) Then the one way street? I had no defense there. Despite all my decisions to stop playing the cancer card, really, I had to do it. I said, "Well, you are going to give me a break because I have cancer, right?" Did not even have to show him the boob. Of course, what else could hem say? However, I still do not have my VA ID and had to make the night nurse come downstairs when I left my cell phone at work tonight.

But the good news is that I was bald at all times and I am going to the beach tomorrow.

ps

people can comment on my blogs. Now that it is read in 63 countries and a few spare planets (I may exaggerate slightly) I certainly am amenable to suggestions from my millions of followers. By millions, I mean a much smaller number, probably under 10.That is how we aspiring writers and reality tv show stars get better by listening to the little people and no, Will, I am not talking about you. I mean I would listen to you just that i do not consider you a little person.

bald head in the summer

You get mosquito bites on it. And a sunburn unless you cover it with sun block. That is not something you get used to doing. But I will master the effect of warm weather on my chemo body this week, as the weather is going to be beautiful, and I have invitations to go boating and to the cape. May even open the pool depending on what the realtor says. Memorial day weekend. The beginning of summer. Yes, it is about fucking time.

doing normal things

Dinner was good. Bev drove so i got to sample martinis and drink wine. Note to self: do not write on blog after consuming alcohol. Almost wrote a thing about having sex with one boob. People with one boob having sex. The other way it sounded like boob sex or something. Sorry kids. And this is just when I am writing about what i didn't write. Or did write but erased.

I guess i go to the same restaurant a lot because all the waitresses had to come over and look at my bald head, mentioning which wigs and scarves were their favorite, but giving the thumbs up on the bad-ass bald chick look. It was hot out. I noticed that to go with my baldness, I wore excessive amounts of make-up and jewelry, and a very feminime dress. Although I think i looked lovely, the pictures i forced people to take of me do not bear this out. You will note that there are no bald pictures of me on this blog at least until I learn how to airbrush them. Any photographers out there?

psycho killer, quest-ce-c'est?

ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. Run run run run run runaway? Just trying to be bi-lingual.

ps

I wrote the last post after having 3 glasses of wine. i deleted it when the wine started to wear off. Many people will thank me.

Getting laid

YAH! NOT HAPPENING.

Scarey things

Remember the old days when car accidents were mainly the result of old people who couldn't drive and allegedly drunk drivers? So now there are a rash of accidents lately- I think this is real, not from Lifetime TV reruns, because it's too recent to be in a rerun- ANYWAY, accidents caused by texting while driving. If you drive into Rhode Island- i don't know why you would want to, except that it and Connecticut seem to be put between Boston and New York so that people that drive form one city to the other can be tortured just a little more, oh AND if you haven't driven through Connecticut lately, I should warn you. It grew. It takes much longer to get through it, kind of like Texas. And they trick you about the rest areas. You have to drive about 300 miles into Connecticut before you get a rest area, and they only have McDonalds, a gas station and a good bathroom. But after the first rest area, they are then planted about two miles apart for about a hundred miles and then the last thousand miles of Connecticut have no rest areas so you have to get off the road and discover that Hey, Connecticut is not like the Gilmore Girls. There are slums and shady places there. But i digress.

I think the point is that in Rhode island there are signs that say don't text and drive. Really? Like maybe there should be signs that say, don't drive with your feet, or don't let your pet drive, or don't play the guitar while you were driving. You know, things anyone might normally do while driving were there not a sign forbidding them to do so. Yeah, right. I can barely text and walk at the same time. So while it has come out that texting causes accidents, I am waiting to hear about the worst piece of technology ever which undoubtably causes accidents and much, much worse. I am talking about the GPS.

I do not nor will I ever own one. But have used friends' ones for trips. First of all, If I wanted someone in a hloier-than-thou voice telling me to take the next left (which is wrong by the way) I would have stayed married. The GPS on the way to New York was not only annoying, it was wrong and it ended up having a nervouse breakdown. In the city, it said things like,"Go 500 feet and take your next left" then immediately, "Recalculating. go nine miles and take your next right. Recalculating. Take a right now (this would have been into the Hudson River.) Recalculating. Go 3/10 of a mile and bear left. Recalculating. make your first legal U turn and then take a left. Recalculating.. Oh, I don't know where the fuck you are, you're on your own." I swear to god. At least if it is a real person who is stupid giving you directions, at least you can make them useful by live parking somewhere and sending them in to get you ice cream. Can't do that with a GPS. And at least with Beverly's you can give it an English accent, but this one only had one way of talking. And it was all wrong.

So I am not getting a GPS. Anyway every time I buy some new fangled device the next day a betterone comes out. I am going to wait for a car that you just get in, lean back and nap after you tell it where to go and it brings you there. That should be out soon. And I recommend that the first people to get them should be cancer patients. Oh and their high school friends.

Cancer snob

I am wearing my contact lenses which means I should have reading glasses on but am too vain for that so if a few wrong letter get typed, that is why. Chemo eye, i think it is called.
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So I did not join a breast cancer support group for a few reasons. One I am too lazy. The other is more complicated. Over the past years a few misguided friends of mine joined AA. Some just pretended to be alcoholoics to meet guys, but the ones who took it seriously ended up only wanting to hang around with other people from AA. They became alcohol snobs. So I was afraid that if I wentto a support group I owould become a cancer snob. Although I see some benefits to the support group- trading meds is always good. Those watnings that they should only be used for the person prescribed them are just suggestions, and certainly don't apply to people with cancer. Also, I am going to need people to pass my wigs on to after i get hair. Well maybe not the pink one. And there is that haloween store I coud open.

But already I am in trouble for cancer snobbery without even being in a group. Now my 2 best friendsfrom High school, with whom i am going drinking, shopping and on a boat Saturday- three of my favorite things- OK, they follow my blog. I mentioned one of them a few times, because she had breast cancer when it was not politically correct, and i didn't mention the secomd one for a while because she did not have it. I don't want to sound as though I am against people without breast cancer. Who else is going to clean my house and grocery shop for me when the cancer does not allow this? And who is going to mow my lawn? Apparently no one, but that is another story.

Ok, Terri from Girls Latin was my other best friend. Terri Terri Terri. See I mentioned you a bunch of times. Other non-cancerous friends I like- Cindy, Beverly (she had cancer a long time ago but not in the breast.) Peter, Tina, Theresa aka Snow White, Janna who should be a super model, Stacey the most underacknowledged and hardest working person at my work, Beth, Brooke, Patti who is overdue for a visit, Colleen Ryan, ditto and everyone else I forget because of my chemo-ADD-brain.


I need to go now and track down two non cancerous friends for dinner. Will write more about technology later.

ps. Terri, Terri, Terri, Terri. Click on the ads.

My other best friend from High School

has signed up as a follower on my blog. I love this having followers. This high school friend never had breast cancer but she is ok anyway. In fact it is probably better that more people without cancer read this blog as I think it could be offensive to people with cancer. Not everybody thinks its funny. I don't always think it's funny either, but during those times i don't write on the blog. Of course really I think laughing at cancer kind of puts it in its place.

I can't believe I am up this late. Went out for dessert and drinks with the girls from work. Lightweights, if i do say so myself but that worked out because they are digging up the streets and i had to take a short cut which I would have fucked up sober, so it was good I only had one mike's hard lemonade. And a huge plate of apple crisp.

I accidentally put on a Michael Douglas movie. I think if I had to choose between watching Michael Douglas movies all day long or having cancer, i would choose cancer. I hate that men who are 100 years old have roles where they are married to 20-30 somethings. Could you imagine some old lady being married to some cute young movie star? Betty White and Leonardo Di Caprio?

I have to go to sleep now because it has become painfully clear to me that people are going to come and visit me at my house at some point, and I must do something to lose the "condemned shithole" design. I would feel bad about having such a boring life, and then writing a blog about it, but then i watched "Keeping up with the Kardashians," which makes me think, why stop at a blog? I am recycling my reality show plan. And this time, I will add a 20 year old husband. Maybe 30, I forgot the rule is that I can't have sex with anyone younger than my oldest kid. Well, if I am in a different country that rule doesn't hold but I expect most of my reality show will be filmed in the United States.

Legal issues

As a lawyer, (OK, as a lawyer who works full time as a psych nurse and gets nauseous at the thought of actually going to court....it's PTSD) anyway i sometimes think there should be someone to sue for getting breast cancer. I have not heard a james sokolov commercial on that matter, though. I guess i would have to figure out how i got it first. Several possibilities. My best friend from High School got breast cancer a long time ago, so maybe it is Girls' latin's fault. I seem to remember something about schools having limited liability, or was that churches? God knows i never spent enough time in a church to get cancer from that. Then, at least two other people I worked with at Childrens hospital had breast cancer, one of whom was a man, who complained about it for years, the big baby. So maybe it was their fault. Also, a bunch of nurses at bridgewater state hospital got breast cancer, so maybe it is their fault as well. By the way, no one died. And i remember most of the nurses from bridgewater that got cancer were people I did not like. So I didn't feel that bad when I heard. I said most of them, not all of them. I loved Jeannie G. So maybe my bad karma caused it.

Actually, there is one thing I am sure of and that is that bad karma does not cause breast cancer. If it did, all the Republicans would have it. All those bankers who embezzled people's pensions would have it. The kardashians would have it and all those mean movie stars that I hear about on E which i watch to try to wean off of Lifetime.

Well, i guess until Jim Sokolov tells me otherwise, there is probably no one i can sue for having breast cancer, because there is no real proof around as to what causes it. Fortunately it does not run in my family, not that I would sue them anyway but if i tried there would be nothing there. To be honest, i am pretty sure I know how i got breast cancer and I think future medical discoveries will prove me right. About a month before I got diagnosed, I decided to try to get healthy- eating healthy, cutting down on alcohol, and I started exercising. A month later, cancer! Just like now chocolate and wine are good for you, I am sure the next thing will be that sugar cures most diseases and maybe even recreational drugs are good for you. Clearly, exercise is bad and i have always maintained this. But when they prove that exercise causes cancer, who do I sue? Like, who invented exercise? Or I should say, what very rich person with deep pockets can i claim invented exercise?

Maybe I can sue those fancy womens magazines with skinny models who cause girls to get eating disorders and less obsessed women to try to do a few exercises to look good in their stupid size zero clothes that don't look good on any normal person? Well, except that I only read those to make fun of people. Maybe I can sue Richard Simmons. He is so annoying that even if i didn't have a case, they might award me something. I would like to sue Tyra banks. She talks about bodies and is also annoying, although I would have to lie if i were to say she were a big influence on me. i would definitely make it on the E news. Although, shit, no lawyer would represent me and i would have to do it myself and fear of court is a side effect of chemotherapy, even though Judge Kopelman retired and he is the only one i would feel wierd appearing before while bald. Guess i could wear one of the 6 wigs i purchased for the few months I will be bald and then hardly ever wore because they were too hot. Next haloween, everybody call me up for costumes!

too funny

i installed this thing that counts the number of people that look at my blob. Or blog, as we computer savvy people say. i did not install a sophistocated one- this just counts the people and says what state or country they are from. This was because i only thought 3 people read it. HAH! More than that read it although i cannot stalk them and find out who they are. I don't want to. It might make me inhibited. BUT, unless the counting thing is lying to boost my self-esteem. which i do not think inanimate objects can do, this blog has been read in 4 countries- yes laura, because Canada does count as another country. then also australia and Tel Aviv, israel. The Israel thing is probably one of Laura's NYU friends. But I like to see that i have a wide-cross-cultural appeal. OK, Australia and Israel only read it once. I think I am limited by only speaking English, but of course my one serious attempt to communicate in French left me banned from all Hertz rental cars, ever, but i do not believe I am banned from the country of France itself. And I remember when I first started this blog i accidentally hit some button, which i will never find again, that translated the titles of my blog into Hindu. But i do not know how people go about finding blogs to read unless someone says here is a funny blog, read it....... and if i spoke one language and found a blog with titles in that language but all the other stuff in another language, i would not read it, unless i was multi-lingual, which I fully plan to be in my next life but forget it for this one or else those hertz people would have understood that because of an emergency involving vomit, i had to leave the car at the train station in Paris instead of the boat place and they would not have accused me of somehow taking the car back to the Unites states with me on the plane. This was several years ago and since i am not in an international prison somewhere, I guess they figured it out. But now i just can't use priceline.com to rent a car because they don't tell you which company it is until it is too late and once it was hertz and Beverly had to end up renting the car because I am banned from hertz. So that is why i support those french and spanish immersion classes they have for kids now. let our kids learn from our mistakes.

hair and margaritas

I think my hair grew a little bit last night. And I had a dream I had a full set of eyelashes. Clearly this means the chemo is leaving my body and I can move on to the next pain in the ass cancer treatment that will be better because I will have hair. Even if I have to end up getting a bikini wax, i am good with this. Now i have a month to chill and then a "minor" surgery on the lymph nodes which I already planned with my boss to do without really taking any sick time off. Then they will leave me alone for at least another month before radiation starts, so although I will not have my real boob til the fall, it sounds like the whole summer is going to be a lot easier in terms of treatment than the winter was. And you can buy bathing suits with fake boobs on them. Well, I can. You probably don't need to.

I think all the numbness and pain was supposed to be temporary so I am giving them one more week to go away before i do something about it. Like complain. It would be better if the numbness was some place where it would be an advantage, like a place i wanted to get a tattoo or body piercing. What, I am too old for that? Don't think so. Cancer trumps old age. Oh, I mean to say, middle age since having survived cancer, i will probably now live to over 100. Don't worry, kids. As long as you start reproducing soon (this is to meghan, not laura. Laura you need to finish college and hopefully get a job first.) your children will end up being the ones putting me in a home and telling me it is a cruise ship. As long as it has a bar. all this abstinence from alcohol during chemo will probably make me a bigger drinker in my old age. What abstinence, you say? Meghan can swear to this. Every time they came in during chemo, asking me if I wanted something to drink, i always either said water, diet coke, or juice. And please keep in mind that chemo was always on Margarita Thursdays!

into the depths of my insanity

Or not. i think that someone said this, or i read it or possibly hallucinated it but it makes sense. When the chemo is over, some people get really tired. i just noticed since coming back fromNew York, if i was not working, I was sleeping. And let me just say it is a good thing I work on a psych unit because maybe some rubbed off on me and made me less crazy than i could have been.

Working and sleeping, sleeping for the last day anyway, sort of made me focus on myself, my body, the changes to it since the chemo, how it sort of sucks, etc. Kind of the opposite of how i started out with cancer, in total denial. i have to say I prefer denial. I know there is probably some middle ground I will eventually reach. Because the recent realizations, that cancer really sucks, that I hate being bald and having one good boob and that these transient episodes of pain and numbness are not fun, are really annoying. I find myself totally self-involved, not returning phone calls and yes back to the toxic habit of watching Lifetime TV.

You know it is bad if you think of something and have to think if it happened in real life or on a rerun of Greys Anatomy. That is another thing, Everything on TV is about cancer, and all the commercials are about on line dating services. And they make me depressed because how could I go on an on line dating service with cancer? One- boobed bald chick seeks brilliant rich good looking perfect person? Not that on line dating did much for me pre-cancer. I admit, i was convinced a few times by more successful friends to try some out but i always tanked before actually meeting any of the would-be serial killers. But now since cancer would effect my actually going on one of these sites, I am mad about it.

So maybe now to get out of my self-induced craziness, I will start an on line dating service for people with cancer. needless to say, they will need to pay up front. i could coordinate the different illnesses, life expectancies, etc. There will probably be cancer groupies who will try to get on just to date people with cancer. I suppose that should be an option. In fact, perhaps i will specialize in rich cancer groupies. OK, good idea. Or maybe i will just call my cancer shrink and get on better meds.

ps

New york was fun. Chelsea lately was a very funny show. A little wierd sitting with your daughter listening to a comedy show talking about blow jobs. Fortunately we both were drinking vodka. She is almost old enough to do that legally. Does that make me a bad mother? Come on, I have cancer. i could die at any time. (Well, I could get run over by a bus or something, otherwise I appear to be healthier with cancer than I was before.....but those busses, you gotta be careful.) Actually i only bought her one drink and it was more symbolic than anything else. Yeah, ok, It was symbolic of me being a bad mother. I mean, the chemo made me forget how old she was. And she had a fake ID anyway. And we took a cab home. By home I mean our thousand dollar hotel room.

After stopping at a Russian restaurant. You know you are not going to get a good glass of wine if: 1. You are at a Russian restaurant, 2. they list the wines as "red" and "white." and 3. They serve it in a water glass. And their cheese cake was also not that good. You would think more restaurants would be open all night in New York. Actually, I suppose they are. For some reason, I suck at finding places to eat in new York City. It is not one of my skills. On the other hand, i have avoided spending 1300 bucks on sushi.

Back to that. The spending money in New York thing, and the fact that they seem to let me. Like I expect someone to run my credit card and then come out and say, "What the fuck are you doing? You cannot afford this!" No one ever does. What? I should regulate myself? I can't. I have cancer. I could die at any time. Oh wait a minute, I already used that.

What is funny is that I did have a credit card company that sort of did that. It was from bank of america, which I hate anyway, but this was kind of funny. They clearly had me on a list of people who should only spend money on things that people who live in trailer parks should buy. Like, if i left the country without telling them, they would shut off the card. Actually, it was a debit card now that I think of it so it was just my own money. Shut off at Sephora's in Paris. They wouldn't even let me leave the state. In Colorado, the fraud department called me to make sure i was really making purchases in Colorado. First of all, bank of America, THERE ARE A LOT OF TRAILER PARKS IN COLORADO. To just assume i was living beyond my means and skiing at some fancy place that i couldn't afford was very judgemental. I wasn't) Then in their biggest display of judgemental-ness, when i went shopping on Newbury street (where rich people in Boston shop) they allowed me one purchase and yes then just assumed someone had stolen my identity because how could i buy 2 things on Newbury street? They never shut me off at Wal mart, which may be part of a more sinister plot that I don't even want to think about.

It is funny that despite my trailer park credit rating with Bank of America, they are always very willing to let me refinance my mortgage because I have cancer. Like in December, I'd refinance it because i have cancer. Then in january, I'd refinance it because I still have cancer. Then in February, i have cancer again..... I don't evewn think they needed proof so I could just be lying. Of course come to think of it, they probably remember me from that debit card and assume this huge mortgage is on a trailer somewhere and they better refinance it because otherwise they are not going to make any money on it ever because trailer park homes only go down in value. Sort of like my non-trailer park home, now that I think of it.

New York

New york is a good place to go if you need to remind yourself that you are not rich. And if you are a poor person who likes to spend a lot of money you don't really have, it is ideal. The last few times I handed my credit card to someone on this trip, i held my breath that they did not come back to tell me it was declined and did I want to max out a second one, (no) What is up with that anyway? Why is there no one to curtail my excessive spending when I am this close to debter's prison as it is. I know they don't have debtor's prison (do they? I should know as I am sort of a lawyer.) but anyway even if they did i could probably use the cancer card to get out.

I often get mad that i am not rich. i would be very good at it. i would love to take my daughter's friends out to dinner and spend half a month's mortgage payment on sushi. True story. 1300 bucks on sushi. Not me, someone else's mother. All of Laura's friends are super-rich. Somehow she keeps up. Living beyond our means, a trait she gets from me. And New York, just the place for it. You look at so many hotel rooms on line for $1200.00 a night and you think 500 is a bargain. It is not. You see $900.00 pairs of shoes and think that 200 is a bargain. They are not, especially if they hurt your chemo-feet.

For some reason, whenenver i check into a hotel in new york, I feel like I have escaped from the trailer park. Actually I think I have lived in a trailer park in another life as I am fascinated with them and have actually picked one out for my old age as long as they stop cutting people's heads off in Mexico. Another story for another time. But something about new York. I have a graduate degree, I wear designer shoes, yet I do not think I quite fit in. Could be the Betsy johnson luggage with the broken zipper. Well, i do not like luggage that looks like everyone else's on the bag claim which no one ever uses anymore because now they charge you to check your luggage which is unfair. I bet i could use the cancer card to avoid that. (I have a suitcase full of medicine and shoes, necessary for my recovery.)

Well now I have to go to work so that t he huge check that i write for the credi card bill will only bounce once, not twice or if I m really lucky, my overdraft protection- that also has not learned that letting me spend money is not a good idea- will kick in and only charge me 50.00 to pay a thousand dollar check when there is only six bucks in the account. Really, it is not my fault. I have chemo brain and the banking companies of today are taking advantage. Well good excuse for the last year of my life anyway. Now what about the first 50 years? More on new york and Chelsea lately later. Lately. Later. I think i am going to start smoking weed.

Post chemo thought.

Now when my hair grows back, I am really going to appreciate it. All those years I had hair and never did fun things with it. I think I will do a different color every week and go to fancy hair salons on Newbury street with all the money I make in my new carreer, robbing banks. I am going to an inservice on it next week. Not really but in this economy, that might not be a bad thing to start up.

Short post

Or i will be late for work. Or have to skip Dunkin Donuts. Chemo is done. Just learned that i could have been sleeping through it the whole time. They gave me benadryl so I would not have an allergic reaction and I was out like a light leaving Meghan with her People Magaizines and no witty chat with me. Think she liked it.

Now will be time to figure out what "chemo side effects" were real and which were imaginary. I fear I have been using the chemo brain excuse to cover for my own inherent spaciness. And the being tired thing to cover up my laziness. Clearly, chemo causes you not to be able to clean your house, and I think that can become permanent. I also fear that I may now become a big drunk. Because I had to (sometimes) limit alcohol consumption, I thought about it more and when I could drink, tended to have that extra glass of wine. Even when I am out with Cindy, who teaches drunk driving classes (not how to do it, which would be more helpful....) and loves to share her horror stories. Well, who knows, maybe I will just become normal. Somehow, though I think I would need more than a cut off boob and four months of poison shot into my system for that to happen.

Now must find SUV to rent as laura has conceded that perhaps she has more stuff to cart home from college than will fit into my toyota corolla with a broken trunk and three people in it, having just hit Canal Street. Or whatever the new canal street is.

I forgot

oh yeah, ps, when I was talking about friends, i forgot to mention Matt H. I like that he does not treat me any different since I have cancer. He does have a few faults, but he is a very real, un-phony person. And he is kind of cute for an old guy.;

I have the best friends

Well, i would like to think it is because I am one of those people who are nice to my friends, so they react the same way. That might be true to an extent, but mainly I thin it is because of where i work, and where I have worked, that i have actually run into the coolest people ever. My friends from mclean are absolutely the best new friends i could ever have. I love almost all of them. And then people like beverly and Peter who I met at Children's are wonderful friends, not all all judgemental, and I love them to death. And then my old time friends, Patti, Cindy, and a bunch of people I don't remember so appreciate their friendship. Cindy would probably commit a crime (totally against her personal behavior) to help me out. But she won't have to. Cindy would let me stay at her house forever if I needed to. She totally needs good Karma. She has spent the last ten years of her life saving lives of people with substance abuse problems. If Karma really works, she will win the lottery soon, and she and I can move to the French Rivieraa.

And I have good family members, as well. My sisters are cool, and on mother's day, i heard from them, my kids and one of my baby daddy. Like that term, baby daddy. Needless to say the ex-husband was too busy with mothers he is married to as opposed to me. But deep down he knows that best kids he has are mine. meghan and Laura are absolutely the best kids ever.

Oh I am rambling. Might have been the wine at the bar after work, served by my step-mother, Jackie. More on that later. She is not really my step mother. One of those women younger than me that my father hit on. But you know what, she also turned out to be a very cool person. And since my dad is approaching 200 years 0old, I suspect they did not consumate their relationship.

OK, time for bed. I am very proud of myself that I am trying to have a life. Saturday, I am going to New York, picking up Laura's stuff but while we are there we are going to see Chelsea Lately in concert at Radio City Music Hall. Google her if you don't know her, she is incredibly funny and irreverent. kind of like how I would be if I were younger, prettier, and had better writers.

OK good night. See you later.

by the way

Argeninian wine gives you diarrhea. Or maybe it was the boston creme pie. Couldn't possibly be the chemo.

Ok Last chemo is tomorrow. I will take it one day at a time, since the alternative to having a very long cure for cancer is even less fun. So now I am trying to figure out how to make money while out on sick leave. I am going out to Borders to pick up a copy of "Bank Robbery for Dummies." Already thinking like a criminal, i will pay in cash so they cannot track down my credit card.

Surgeons and waiters

I am so tired I will probably fall asleep during this. It is unusual that I would stay out until after eleven on a school night.

I had to meet the cancer surgoen today. Having been a psych nurse for so long, i forgot how entitled surgeons are. Well, male ones, anyway. Barbie, my plastic surgeon was right on time for our appointment and told me everything I needed to know, including that those "lifestyle lifts" they advertise on TV at 3 am are really a scam. So then on to the cancer surgeon. Surgeons need you to think that they are busy saving lives at all times so that they can not possibly be on time. We waited in the waiting room for 45 minutes. My friend Cindy was with me. We got bored. First we stocked up on medical supplies we needed- bandaids and bacitracin mainly its not like they leave anything good out. By the time Dr. Surgeon arrived, I was on the floor, trying to fix the computer so I could check my email but the mouse was broken. Apparently he was used to patients getting bored waiting for him as he thought it was perfectly normal to walk in and find me there.

usually my doctors love me but i don't think he did. I basically wanted him to put me at the front of the list for surgery because you know what, I am done with having cancer. At first it was sort of ok, a different way of looking at things and yes an excuse for people to be nicer to me than they might be otherwise. Done. Over. Now it is just fucking boring. I don't need another month to recuperate from one treatment so that I can get another treatment, and then recover for another few months from that treatment to then get something else. Just put me in the hospital, operate the shit out of me, radiate the shit out of me and then stick on my new boob and I'm done. Cancer in the fast lane. That's what I want. But, no........ They have to take their sweet time. And they also seem to think that people have no trouble "being out of work for 3-4 weeks," after just getting back to work after being out of work 3-4 weeks, after just getting back to work after..... ad nauseum. It is an unfortunate thing but it seems as though most people can't continuously take months off from work and keep getting paid. If anyone had listened to me when I demanded my own reality show, I would not be in this predicament. However, apparently wife-swapping midget drug addicts from the Jersey Shore are more interesting than me. Plus for several weeks, I have instructed my friends to find me an extremely wealthy husband but for some reason rich guys are not falling all over each other to marry very lovely bald middle-aged women with one boob, even if the baldness and booblessness are temporary. How superficial.

So anyway I was so stressed out after the surgeons that it was necessary to go out and spend as much money as possible on a nice dinner with wine from Argentina. Why argentina? No fucking idea. That is what you get when you are candid with the waiter and admit you can't tell the difference between one Chardonnay and another. So there we are at dinner and I read that if you ordered the special desert, Boston Creme Pie, the profits were to be donated to Breast Cancer Research. I swear to god, its true. Call legal Seafood in Copley Square if you don't believe me. So obviously that begs the question, do people with breast cancer get the desert for free? Seems fair to me. Apparently no one had ever asked our waiter this question before. Oh, I know I was going to stop making people be nice to me because I had cancer, but come on, the Argentinian wine sucked and it cost about 12 bucks a glass not that I had too many. And if people are going to have these vague statements about breast cancer on their menu, they better come up with a policy. Like I am sure that every time someone ordered the boston creme pie which wasn't even that good, the staff put 8.99 in a separate area to be donated to breast cancer research the next day. You know they don't. They want you to think they do nice things for breast cancer people but you can't really hold them to it. Unless you ask for the free desert. That they had to run by the manager. Who thought I was at worst, crazy, and at best drunk. But you know, i did it for the cause. So bottom line, i guilted them out of the desert but tipped enough to cover it. I had to do it for the cause. For all those other cancer patients too shy, too polite or too sober to ask for a free desert. You can thank me later.

Click here for an easy and free way to help fund mammograms for those in need at The Breast Cancer Site!

One last random thought

It was in the 80's and 90's for a few weeks- ok, maybe it was above 70 for 2 days. So I assumed it was summer, shut off the heat, opened the windows and started wearing summer clothes. Suddenly today it is about 40 degrees and then I remembered tha sometimes it snows in Boston in May. Good thing I didn't open the pool. But now I seem to have done something to my heat so it thinks it has to keep the house at a comfortable 32 degrees. As long as the hot flashes continue, it's ok. But now my cheapness is kicking in. People want to buy my house. I am having all these home inspections and frankly, I will probably accept whatever they offer because I have a get out of jail free card if they offer less than what I owe on the mortgage. (Good time to have cancer when the economy is a mess.) So do i fix the heat, or maybe just go on a vacation somewhere warm? I have also refused to fix the dryer and have taken to throwing out dirty clothes unless I really like them and just buying new ones. For the clothes i don't throw out, I am waiting for the laundry fairy.

This is really what i want to do. Take every single thing out of my house, have a yard sale, at which I will suck and charge 25 cents for everything, give the rest away to the Salvation Army and then with my handful of possessions , move into a tiny cave where i shun all material possessions except shoes and don't have to worry about fixing things. Well except its not really a cave but my friend's apartment with a walk in closet for me and a gym in the basement. But I still plan to shun some material possessions (my new monk-like better person, having learned from cancer.) I am totally shunning my kitchen table and its mis-matched chairs and I am also shunning the tv in the living room that has recently started to make a funny noise. And that green table that I bought at IKEA that was supposed to be a desk in the office but only works if you are a midget. And I will shun that painted wood furniture unless Laura wants it as a reminder of how we should never become interior decorators. And all my kitchen appliances, except my kitchen aid mixer, consider yourselves shunned as well. I am down-sizing and simplifying. Maybe having done all this I can save up enough money to buy a Cadilac Escalade. Only kidding.

mothers day ps

So after brunch with the kids, where i figured out exactly how many mimosa's- I mean MOMmosas- I could consume before work. (It was two, not four, nice try you know who...) I worked the evening shift. After three o'clock, I did not eat a single thing that did not contain chocolate. That is why I am so healthy.

In between eating chocolate and watching the Red Sox kick the Yankees's asses finally, I had a great insight while briefly performing my job. I was taking care of a 22 year old girl with post partum depression. It occurred to me that I am better off having cancer than she is with her illness. Nobody is telling me to just snap out of it, or making me feel guilty or like it is my fault that I am sick-well, if i hadn't just cured myself with the chocolate. People feel sorry for and are nice to people with cancer. People make people with mental illnesses feel like they are assholes. I am thinking somebody should start campaigning to make post-partum depression the new breast cancer. I could see walks, and fund raisers. And we could skip the Kentucky Fried Chicken endorsement. I am sure there are many more people with psychiatric illnesses- serious ones, not funny ones like ADD, and I could wrap myself around helping them and taking the stigma away from mental illness. And i am going to started very soon, just as soon as I no longer need to use the cancer card for people to be nice to me.

Mothers day

Well, my first thought on mother's day is usually about how many presents my kids will give me. Since my mother is dead, I do not have to buy her anything. But this year, probably because i am so much more philosophical and basically better because i have cancer, i have been thinking about my mother. We never really got along and she died young, when I was going through one of those self-absorbed "my parents fucked up my life" stage. That is too bad, because I have come to understand and appreciate her more now since she has died.

Granted, part of it is that she is not hanging around yelling at me, but it's more than that. I have been through a lot of the things she went through- getting sick at a relatively young age, although she was much sicker than me, getting older, etc. I guess having cancer and being sick at about the same age she did lends some understanding, but to tell the truth, I think that having had my father live with me for at at least a decade since my mom dies really helps me understand why she was sometimes so miserable.

My father has generally been a pretty fun guy, but if you look up sociopath in the DSM-4, you will see his picture. He was always a pretty charming guy but with the morals of- what? an alley cat? I don't think I would be doing the alley cat justice. Just let me point out first that right now, my father is a cool guy. He has gotten older, and has forgotten about the scheming, wheeling and dealing part of his mind and is just a really nice old guy. It helps that he lives 3000 miles away.

My father had many interesting jobs in the past, and i believe some of them were legal. He did have the distinction of being the first one in the family to have a federal probation officerfor "money laundering" , which really made for an interesting Christmas newsletter that year. I think he saved that for after my mother passed away, but I am sure he was leading up to it in her final days. Now, I don't claim to know a lot about money laundering, since it includes two things that I am very bad with- money and laundry. But I would have thought if you were involved in it enough to get a probation officer, perhaps you might have made some sort of illegal profit from it? Doesn't appear so. Well, I don't mean to say that I would be less appalled if my father was a successful criminal. Well, I probably would. I guess it would depend on exactly how much money it was.

So anyway once my mom died and my dad got rid of the house, he spent a lot of time living with me in some of my post-divorce houses. He had a number of "deals" going on at all times and frequently used me as his attorney without actually mentioning it to me. He was always close to making a million dollars, but not quite close enough. And he always hit on my friends- the ones who were younger than me. SO I'm thinking he didn't suddenly become a totally different person at 60. I just didn't pay attention to him until he was under my nose. He had to have driven my mother fucking crazy!!!! I always felt bad that they didn't have prozac in my mother's time- I thought it could have helped. But the more time I spent around my adult dad, I became more and more surprised that she lived with him for so long and didn't kill him.

Now I love my father- and my mother- because when you think about it, we are all products of our own fucked-up upbringing. I am just sorry it took me so long to realize how much my mother had to put up with. No wonder she was such a bitch. Now when my sister comes from California and it is close to mother's day, she wants to go to the cemetary where she is buried. Not me. First of all, I am not sure where people go when they die, but i do not think it is forest hills cemetary. Secondly, cemetaries are things that people invent to drive people crazy. You can never find the grave you are looking for. I don't think GPS works there, either. Actually, the only reason I have ever visited that cemetary since we buried my mother 20-plus years ago was because it is in Jamaica Plain,near that bar Doyles, which holds good memories for me. (i had one of my law school classes there every week.) (No wonder I loved law school.)

When I moved back to Boston after having Meghan out of wedlock in Hawaii, my mother the devout rascist Catholic who made up a whole married life for me to explain my young bi-racial baby, helped babysit Meghan. Despite everything, she saw through her own prejudices and realized what an amazing kid my baby was. Meghan's relationship with my mom was as unlike mine as it could possibly be. She was wonderful and Meghan has always loved her Nana. Which is why when Flower suggests going to the grave I say no. If I want to remember my mom,all I haveto do is look at Meghan.

Happy Mothers Day

followers

I now have three followers. Well, one of them is me, i just clicked randomly on some button but the other two are real people, one of whom is even less technologically smart than me, so i can only guess that her kids hooked her up. Soon I will have to learn to twitter, or at least upgrade to one of those phones made in this millenium. But i fear that. If i get a good cell phone, well first i will have to learn how to do all that fancy shit, but that is what i have kids for, but i will of course immediately lose it. There are a number of things i only buy the very cheap of, because if i spend money on things I lose them. All of my jewelry comes from either target or the street vendors in new York. Ditto sun glasses. Fake boob was free. Chemo makes things exponentially easier to lose. It almost made me forget the word exponentially, but i probably used it wrong. Shoes are about the only thing i can spend money on and not yet lose. Probably because they are usually wedged very tightly on to my feet.

I should probably go now, as I seem to recall that some more home inspection people are coming today (NO ANIMALS WERE FOUND IN MY ATTIC ON THE FIRSST INSPECTION!) (Oh that probably just proves I have started to have auditory hallucinations, because I was sure something was up there...) oh anyway and here I am sitting naked in my room with one boob typing random and pretty stupid stuff on to my blog. And i have to tell you a bald naked woman with one boob is pretty scarey, and i would like to sell this house sometime this year. Then i could afford a fancy cell phone so i can twitter. I really want to follow Chelsea Lately's dog on Twitter.

addiction

You know how alcoholics go to different liquor stores so that people won't know how much they drink? This i don't happen to know from personal experience as my abuse of alcohol has usually limited itself to restaurants and bars, as making drinks at home is too similar to cooking, which is something i suck at. Like that pool party when i didn't realize that the pina colada mix that I was adding to the rum already had rum in it. Anyway, chemo is sreiously interfering with my ability to drink to excess, so that is not what this is about.

This is about the fact that i just went to TWO SEPARATE Dunkin Donuts for coffee rolls. I do not want the strangers at the Rte 18 Dunkin Donuts to know about the extent of my coffee roll abuse. This is very sad. There are no 12 step programs for it, and once again, i blame it on cancer. When I was home, recuperating from surgery or whatever i was doing- mainly watching wife-swap- I decided i could not become one of those people who never left the house, so i had to go out every day, even if it was just to Dunkin Donuts. This was safe. They have a drive-through, so appropriate clothes and make-up were not required. Easy enough to do. So I needed a reason to go to Dunkin Donuts and the coffee might actually keep me more awake than i needed to be while recuperating from cancer, hence coffee rolls.

They are not even that good, unless you get them first thing in the morning, which is not a time of day i acknowledge unless I have to go to work, and i don't get coffee rolls on the way to work because they are too messy- you walk into work covered in those little sugary things that fall off the rolls it is difficult to deny your addiction. So the coffee rolls are just a day-off thing for me now, but clearly my addiction is growing as I feel the need to vary the Dunkin Donuts I attend. it is a good thing they are on every corner.

Note to self: get it in writing from Barbie the plastic surgeon that they will take the coffee roll fat from my stomach to construct my new boob. Otherwise, i am screwed. I may have to look into exercise, although that is a last resort, as I am not entirely sure that that is not what caused my cancer in the first place. I vaguely remember starting an exercise regime last fall (regime- running for two days in a row. By running, I mean walking unless a car drove by, then pretending to run.) Anyway, i am pretty sure it was right after i started running that I got diagnosed with cancer.

I just found out my best friend from high School reads my blog. I am definitely New Yorks Time Best seller List material now. Luckily, i do not need to impress her. She is impressive enough, having gotten through breast cancer before it was popular and had its own Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket. A lot of people did. In the scheme of things, i am very lucky to have this now when my main worries are about eye lashes and wigs and how long to wait after chemo until I can have a really big party and consume a lot of alcohol.

I have started reading stuff about cancer from other people who are less superficial than me. Apparently, cancer is suppose to be making me into a better person, seeing what is really important and what is not. I should be turning into one of those people who exude peace and calm, like those people in, I believe it is Tibet. On top of mountains. Well, I am good at knowing family and friends are important and living for the moment is good because you never know what is going to happen. (Life is too short so love the one you've got cuz you might get run over or you might get shot.) But I knew that from before I had cancer.

But since having cancer, aside from knowing relationships are more important than material things (well, if I had any...) I am kind of becoming obsessed with make-up, false eyelashes, hairstyles and plastic surgery! Cancer is actually making me more vain and shallow. WTF! I will probably be the first and only person in the history of cancer to survive it and become a WORSE PERSON!!! Already, i am starting to think that people are too nice to people with cancer (based on my own reaction and tendency to take advantage of such people, many of whom actually now believe my cancer responds to chocolate and shoes.) If you are too nice to people with cancer, they will start getting cancer all the time just for the attention. Well, maybe not. When I survive this whole thing, i will probably start up some organization being mean to people with cancer. Hell, why limit it to cancer, i will probably start being mean to all sick people and dogs. Well, never dogs. People get much more upset about being mean to dogs rather than people. How can i stop myself from this descent into incredible meanness?????

I don't think my psychiatric oncologist is going to be much help, although she is quite good at figuring out exactly how much prozac is necessary to combat chemo-brain. I think I am going to have to go sit on some mountains in Tibet. I hope you can get a helicopter ride up there rather than have to climb. This is not a particularly good idea right now, having just gone back to work and starting to make a normal salary again, working on selling my house and getting out from under a mortgage that cost more than living in a fancy hotel, and pretty much getting past the long drawn out parts of cancer treatment, except for getting my new boob which will be the highlight of my summer. Oh that is so superficial. The highlight of my summer should be helping victims of flood, or homeless children or something, not getting a new boob! Well lets be realistic. My doctors are so paranoid about me traveling while having chemo or radiation or whatever the fuck is next that they are not going to let me go sit on any mountains in Tibet until this is all over anyway. Saved by the cancer bell. Well, when i am all done with this, i will go sit on a mountain in Tibet and become a better person. This will give me more time to save up so that I can book better hotels with good room service and, oh yeah, to find out where the fuck Tibet actually is. I hope they have beaches.

random

If you meet a person and immediately start to try to figure out how much prozac you need to take on a daily basis to stand him, it is probably not going to work out. Well at least it's prozac, not heroin. More later. Off to work.

Multitasking

Ok, so I am back at work full time. It is good. I took a longer time off this time just to be sure the chemo didn't effect me and cause any infections like the last time. Plus the paperwork to get sick leave took so long I felt obligated to stay out as long as possibletoavoid the paperwork I had to fill out to go back. Of course, when I started to get paychecks in the negative, it occurredto me to do something. Now as a lazy person, staying home, earing bon-bons and watching repeats of law and order was not initially a problem for me. I was getting inactivity down to an art. Well, especially when I had to take drugs, anyway. With less need for drugs, I started to notice that i had seen every fucking law and order episode ever, and they were all the same, and I also noticed that my financial situation had depleted to the point where my bon bons were from Walmart. But the real sign that it is time to go back to work is when you start watching Lifetime TV. When your kids already think you are crazy, it does not help when you start calling them telling them about this great show you discovered, Wife-swap, and how they should start watching it. It was only a matter of timme before they would haveme committed, so I decided if i was goingto be on apsych unit anyway, I should get paid for it.

I love being back at work. If Iworked anywhere else,it would be a good opportunity to use the cancer card for a whole new set of people to be nice to me. Frankly my family and friends that hung out with me when I was at home were sort of done with the cancer thing and decided that they should be getting special stuff for having to hang around with me and my cancer. And I must admit, they had a point. Now the thing about the people at my work is they are all so nice anyway, it is hard to tell if they are being extra nice to me because of the the cancer. Well I did convince one of the doctors it was necessary for him to go to the bakery and buy chocolate which I needed for my treatment and of course i couldn't go to the bakery myself because of the kind of cancer I have that forbids me from going to bakeries. But he would have done it anyway, I think.

There was an adjustment to returning to work after a month with chemo brain. I didn't get lost driving there or anything,and surprisingly I remembered most of the stuff my job entailed and only had to leave myself 20 post-it notes every shift. OK, I screwed up a phone call and almost got a doctor fired but that was resolved and I blamed someone else. So now I work.

Course, I can't do anything else. Forget about watching wife swap, I can't even do laundry or buy a loaf of bread. I had toasted hamburger rolls (probably in the freezer since last summer) for breakfast yesterday. Also, I am going to start wearing evening gowns to work next week, thats all that's clean. All I can do is read numerous trash novels which I "borrow" from the "library" at the cancer doctor place. "Feel free to borrow books and donate used ones," it says. I have 300 books stolen from there, and of course every time I go, I mean to bring in a bunch but I don't. They are piled in my house, next to the clothes i bagged up but never brought to goodwill. Which was probably good, because I can raid them after my evening gowns that I wear to work get dirty.

south park

I watched an episode of South Park the other night where all the men in town went out and gave themselves testicular cancer so that they could get medical marijuana. I love that show, but i hope they did not get the idea from my blog. Plus I do not really think you can get cancer by exposing your privates to a microwave. Although I do believe that cooking of any kind is unsafe.