plan B

OK, I have decided to stop feeling sorry for myself. Besides if I drink all the time, I will start to look old. SO i am developing a Plan. If anyone who reads this has been through this or knows someone who has, feel free to give me advice. I will meet with my oncologists as soon as possible and find out my options. Then I will talk to a couple of other oncologists and see what they say. Then I will choose whatever conventional medical treatment I think is best. I will also start with the unconventional stuff, too. Reiki, guided imagery, etc. Not without teliing my doctors, as I was warned by an oncology nurse who went drinking in the north end with me.

Then, i am going to have as much fun as I can, just in case. Already several friends have agreed to go sky diving. I am seriously thinking of trading in my car for a sports car. I will find my passport and travel as much as i can. And i am going to get laid more. All these guys who say a missing boob wouldn't bother them, well I just may take them up on it. There's other stuff, too; I am going to have to make a list. Going to the beach every day is good. I have a ton of really good people in my life and I am going to start spending more fun time with them. This does not mean that I think I am going to die from this. It's very unlikely that I will. But it was enough of a scare that I realized that what is important is to be happy with people you love. Not telling them that in a year or two, we'll do this but just doing it now.

And anyway, I am too strong to let some stupid cancer that managed to hide from the nastiest chemotherapy in the world get to me. I am pretty good at surviving bad stuff. I will kick this cancer's ass. And then I will take a nap.

cancer sucks

Ifyou think that you read a long rambling incoherent post here, you were imagining it. Good advice- do not write on a blog after drinking wine. And for that matter, don't drink wine to deal with bad news. (I will try whiskey next time.) Because really the next day you still have to deal with shit, and you are a little hungover. My excuse was that when i called for the results of my lymph node biopsy,which everyone knew would be negative, I learned that in fact it was NOT FUCKING NEGATIVE. All that chemo and still they found cancer in six of my lymph nodes. The good news is that those particular lymph nodes are sitting in a lab at Mass General, not in me. But still.... Now I have some thinking to do. The first two things I did: 1. Get drunk, and 2. Texted a friend to go sky diving. If my life is going to be interupted all the time by stupid cancer stuff at least I am going to have fun and do all the things I have wanted to do for a while and never gotten around to. I am still sure that I will die of old age, not cancer, but this whole thing seems to be taking a lot longer than it was supposed to, so I am going to stop putting things off until I am done with cancer and just live in the moment. Or hopefully a later moment when I am not so hungover. Caroline, you are a sweetheart. Thank you so much for commenting on my drunken post just as if it were normal.

follow me

OK, I need one for follower so it will be an even ten. Also I need one more facebook friend so it will be an even 150. Prizes will be given.

world cup soccer

OK, the San Francisco Giants beat the red sox. An anomaly. Won't happen again. Come on, our pitcher tonight is 65 years old. He did a pretty good job, considering. Pretty good baseball, though.

Went back to work today. I only used two sick days for recovering from surgery. I think it was a good decision. I go nuts sitting around with nothing to do, even though I enjoy being lazy most of the time, it gets old after a while. I am a better nurse than patient. I love being able to walk around without any medical devices attached to me (you don't want to know.) I am even looking forward to going to the gym. I am going to try my best to become one of those people who can't go a day without working out. I think if i focus on getting most of my body into really good shape, I won't focus so much on the few body parts I am not too enamored of at the present time. And my hair is starting to grow in real hair, not peach fuzz. It is not close to gray- in fact it appears rather dark. I may be a brunette in my next reincarnation.

And it's summer, and it's beautiful here. Might try to hit some beaches on days off, or at least go to friends pools. This will be me next month- tanned, in shape and a brunette. I am done with letting cancer make me feel unattractive. Of course I have always had that inner beauty- hey I got an award at work for that, kind of. But as they say, outer beauty is better.

Why am i up at 230 AM? Well I worked till 11, then watched my red sox let the giants win because they felt sorry for them having to live in a city where the sun does not shine and everything costs too much.

Somehow I think if I post that I am going to go to the gym, I will be more likely to do so. Of course, what I have done is tell a bunch of people ( on 4 separate continents,) that i am going to go. None of you will see me. I could just lie.

Now i am tired, and this is a really boring post. Sorry. Well, it was my first day back at work. I used all my energy up there. What the fuck do you expect. Oh and in case you didn't notice, this has nothing to do with world cup soccer after all. I realized that not only do I know nothing about soccer, I haven't even heard of half the countries that are playing.

Understanding our dreams

OK, i am writing this immediately upon awakening so that I will remember everything about my dream, which I realized is recurrent since I had cancer. You know how they say that dreams are an accurate reflection of our thoughts and feelings even if our actions are not? Who is they, you ask? It's me- I have an undergraduate degree in psychology, goddammit. I know what I am talking about. I have read everything from Carl Jung to Understanding Dreams for Dummies. So here's the recurring dream: I am putting on eye make-up and I cannot find any eye liner- there is just lip liner everywhere, which I never use. What a nightmare!!!

SO I am relieved to know that while on the surface I am a superficial vain person more concerned with the effect breast cancer has had on the way that I look than on the seriousness of the disease and the cure, deep down inside I am a superficial vain person more concerned...............

ps

you are just going to have to take my word on the toenail thing, my camera ran out of batteries. Also another Very Good thing I just noticed; as I become hairier, eyelashes grow in. They are very blonde and short right now but i am going to try mascara tomorrow.

Good medical news

had my post-op visit with the doctor today. It is one of those good news-bad news things. Good news, I have a medical opinion from my doctor that my hair is coming inblonde, not gray. What a huge relief. The bad news was unfortunately not from my doctors, but much more important, from my manicurist. Chemotherapy wreaks havoc with your toe nails. She did not say wreaks havoc, as English is not her first language and in fact I am on a quest to find out what Vietnamese dialect she speaks so that I can learn it and tell for sure if they are in fact, talking about me when they look at my feet and talk to each other. That is not racist. i am just saying that my manicurist speaks vietnamese about me. I think. Luckily for me, chemo has not ruined my toenails to the point where they can not be disguided very nicely with a good pedicure, and now Meghan and I sport "nail art," painted flowers on our big toes. Oh by the way I am not talking anything gross here, like fungus or anything. Well, i am going to change the subject here because anything i can think of to say about my toenails not being as gross as you think is just going to make people think they are grosser than they are. They are not. i am going to try to post a picture of them if I remember how to.

back to whining

Having cancer is very worrisome. Sure, the health concerns, and the time away from work and less income, and the lack of appropriate pain medications are something of a concern. But now I REALLY have something to worry about. My hair is starting to grow in. Mainly on my head but I just noticed some on my legs, too. I don't mind the hair on the legs. Now the hair on my head is about 1/8 of an inch long and a little fuzzy. It hasn't grown to the point to where you can tell what color it is. That is the problem. It looks kind of a dull shade of blond, which is what I would have expected. That is probably the color it would be without hair coloring, or "natural highlights" as I like to call it, as I enjoy lying. But here is the source of my worry. Right now, you can't tell what color it is going to come in, and one of the possibilities would be um, gray. Not that i think it would eventually come in gray because I don't really have the DNA for gray. And of course I have tools to make my hair whatever color i want. Having been without hair, I appreciate it more. Sort of like my left boob. I am not sure how soon one can dye ones hair after it comes back after chemo. Looks like if I did that now, it would just color my head. When totally bald, I did not mind going around au naturel because bald didn't look bad. But something that could be gray is not something I want to advertise. OK, this is where the five wigs and 500 scarves will come into play. I am surprised that no one has invented some kind of dye for new chemo hair. Clearly there are not enough people aware of the real things people with cancer worry about.

random thought

I do not understand why I am not more famous than I am.

Cindy's apartment

Now I have figured out why no one dies of breast cancer. because the treatment takes so long that people just die of old age first. So this is probably a good thing. i cannot complain about having cancer, or recovering from it right now. I have watched every tv show there is since being home from work and have now resorted to reading. If I were at my house, i would be reading trash mystery novels, if at bev's house, trash romance novels. But I am at Cindy's, so I am reading trash autobiographies of people who have turned horrible lives around against all odds. Just finished a book by someone named Cupcake Brown who had a horrible abusive early life with drugs, gangs, violence, etc. and then climbed out of it to become (and what could be better than this) a lawyer. So now I think about how terrible her life was and whining about cancer does not seem fair, since I certainly had it easier than her, of course we both ended up being lawyers anyway. Of course theses episodes of empathy for others rather than sympathy for myself generally last 24 hours or less, so I will be whining about cancer again very soon.

post-surgery

I couldn't write for a while because of lymph node surgery. I was thinking lymph node-boob, but this was more lymph node-arm. Might be time for that nursing school refresher course. Of course I am such a pro at all this now, I was in and out in a matter of hours, not days as I thought and yes i was just a little disappointed that i did not get to stay in the hospital lying down, medicating myself and being waited on hand and foot. Which never happens anyway. Apparently my recovery time was amazing, as were all of my vital signs, labs, etc. I have really become much healthier since getting cancer. Maybe they were wrong and it is all a mistake. if so, At this point, I am not pointing it out until I get my new c-cup. Of course i noticed one bad thing about being so healthy and having cancer. They apparently don't think I need big pain meds. DARVOCET? Really? Although it is fine while I am just sitting around with no bigger effort to make than changing the channell on the remote- I cannot find Lifetime on Cindy's tv, so I have switched to the e network. Wait a minute, maybe its E I can't find so have switched to the lifetime movie network- 24/7 movies about battered women who kill their husbands. Apparently this is what women want to see on TV. So anyway I am going to have to trade these darvocet in for hard core narcotics before returning to work.

You know, in the old days, because i am right handed, and all my stuff is on the left, surgery wouldn't have been that big a deal. But now, who writes? All communication is either on computer or texting, so it doesn't really matter anymore if you are right or left handed. Maybe eventually we will evolutionize to the point where nobody has a right or left handed-ness. (Maybe I mis-spoke about the darvocet, I apparently just made up two words, three if you count mis-spoke.) So my mind is sort of trash right now. The closest thing to reading a good book that I have done was financed laura's tatoo of some line from a Nabokov novel. Gone are the days of tatoos being something you get while drunk of a heart with MOM written inside it on your biceps. Well they are probably not really gone. i will probably do something similar when I am completely done with cancer, or pretend-cancer, whichever one it turns out that I have. But tattoos are more intellectual these days. I blame Angelina Jolie. I actually blame her for a lot of stuff, although if it ever becomes cool to adopt old people (you know like if you adopt so many kids that you need extra grandparents to go around,) I would like her and brad to adopt me. I would keep my other kids as well, but maybe they could give me a spending allowance.

pink facebooks

Lately I have been seeing people on facebook joining the group- let's make facebook pink to raise breast cancer awareness. I probably joined it myself, because I join everything but if I could unjoin it I would, because it is stupid.

Making a facebook page pink would just make people think their computer was broken, or that they were hungover. And do we realy need to raise awareness of Breast Cancer????? Everyone is aware of it. Turn on the tv, they are advertising all these walks and runs for breast cancer. There is even a horseback riding one. Every company has some product that supports breast cancer- even Mike's Hard Lemonade, which proves my point that it is good to drink alcohol when you have breast cancer. Those pink ribbons are everywhere! Breast Cancer is the new Paris Hilton. Breast cancer is so politically correct that men are getting it now, and they are much bigger babies about it.

So we are aware of it, so what. I am fully aware of the New York Yankees and I am not going to do a fucking good thing for them. We need to go beyond awareness. Research is great. I think they are moving ahead and close to a cure so giving money to research is one good thing to do. But what about those people with breast cancer who haven't been cured yet? Perhaps they need a nice sports car to get to their treatments? Maybe they need rich husbands so they don't have to worry about their old age? maybe they need a nice trip to the French Riviera to recover from their radiation treatments- along with high powered sunblock, of course. I think instead of raising awareness about breast cancer, which has already been done by those other altruistic advocates like myself, we should also start being aware of the material needs of people with breast cancer. They need more expensive shoes, obviously as research has shown that that does help cure cancer. Too busy for shoe shopping? Just throw large wads of cash at your favorite breast cancer patient. or gold and diamonds. Time to be creative here. It is sort of a shame that all that money raised by those races and kentucky fried chicken all goes to boring stuff like research. Do not get me wrong, I still think some of it should go to research, but here is a good idea for a facebook group: Lets give everyone with breast cancer a pair of manolo blahnik shoes and a ferrari. That's a group i could get behind.

eyebrows

it is harder to brush in eyelashes than it looks. Or else my daughter has a very sick sense of humor.

ps

I wanted to clarify that my comment about only having 6 months to deal with cancer means I expect to be over cancer by then, and this is supported by all sorts of medical stuff. I did not mean I am going to die in six months. I write this because my friend, Hannah, posted my blog and said it was funny but sometimes makes you cry. This is not supposed to make people cry. Unless they are crying because it is so funny. Or maybe crying because they have a friend who writes a stupid blog, aha, i think not because now it is not only read in Singapore but also in Germany. So I guess those people know how to speak English.

cars

I totally wrote this before but it disappeared. Now I am afraid it will not be as funny because I am tired and feel a little less funny than I did. I almost bought a new car the other day. Here is some free advice: Don't go to a car dealers after you had wine with lunch. Now, guess why I ended up not buying one:

a. I realized I am in a terrible financial situation
b. I already have a perfectly good car that is paid for and runs great.
c. I could not decide between a sports car and an SUV.

Yes, the answer was "c." It gave me another reason why I should marry. One of us could have an SUV and one culd have a sports car, then I would get them both after he accidentally dies of old age or an excess of potassium chloride. Note to self- probably won't be able to marry anyone who reads my blog.

I think one of my underlying reasons for wanting a new car is that if i ever become homeless and have to live in my car, it would be a nice one. Although the likelihood of becoming homeless is small. I figure I really only have about 6 months when everything is going to suck with cancer, i will have to work less, make less money, etc. Then i will be ok. And it would be hard, although not impossible, to piss off every friend I have that has offered a place to stay temporarily during this time. And even if i exhausted my friends, there are my sisters, who are legally bound to take me in. And I could drive to their houses in my new sports car, or SUV. Maybe I could try my, "I could die at any time" line and they will lease me a ferarri, thinking they will get it back in a few weeks. I think I would have to look sicker, though.

Sephora

Went to Sephora with Bev. She had never been there before!!!!! Anyway, they fixed my eyebrows and now i have kit for eyebrows that Laura my makeup expert will help me apply. Then went to dinner with Tina an old friend from children's and she says, oh I have a present for you. Then she looks at me. Turns out that she had bought some fancy mascara and it was buy one get one free and she thought, oh good, Barbara likes nice makeup, i will give it to her. Only to show up and see me with one, maybe two eyelashes. I am keeping it because, obvioulsy, my hair is growing in but not down there. i will be using mascara any day now. So I thought the gift of mascara was like some O.Henry short story but no one knew what I was talking about. However, I was right.

reality show.

I have mentioned a few times, I beieve, that I am against all reality shows unless they were smart enough to create one about me. So how surprised was I to hear that they are doing one in Boston Hospitals!!!!!!! I mention it to my boss and she said, Oh yeah, they asked us about it a while ago and we decided we didn't want to be a part of it. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH SOME PEOPLE??????? What could be more fun than all the stupid things you do as you go about your daily job being broadcast all over the world? (They must edit out the really bad mistakes.) And you'd get paid, or at least that is my expectation for when I get my reality show. Although there seems to be dating and sex involved and maybe it's best that my work hold off a bit so that we can hire some nice looking male professionals.

Cancer: A total pain in the ass

I am sick of having hardly any hair. I am sick of freaking out my manicurist and pedicurist with my chemo nails. I am sick of other things that I forget because I have chemo brain which is not helped by chemo brain meds. I am sick of being tired except when I am too widw awake.

However, perhaps the alternative is being dead, and I would not like that at all. First of all, I don't have enough life insurance. Then I am missing out on being a grandparent, although I am totally too young for that, but i am really looking forward to teaching meghan and chris's yet-to-be conceived children to call me barbara, not grandma, and also how to swear. And I am totally looking forward to laura becoming a famous poet/author, who will of course dedicate all her books to me. Of I pay her. Oh, and I am looking forward to getting a new "c" boob, becoming a cougar, and moving somewhere warm, where I will go to school for my MSN and NP degree, so that I can write prescriptions. Also, I look forward to signing up for those disaster relief nursing places, like Haiti, where my fake daughter went, or wherever the next disaster is.

So I will do the stupid Mass General conserative treatment. I am sorry that my surgeon has no sense of humor. He is a fucking surgeon. My ex-husband almost became one, but chose psychiatry instead. He is not on my blog. He has no fucking sense of humor. That is why they say opposites attract.......for about a year and then there is a huge awful divorce. True for me.

So, I think that I will become a better person when this is all over. it is not all over yet, so I have not yet become a beter person. I hate people who are assholes and don't have cancer. I hate (some, not all, Bev, tell Paul) republicans. I think mean people should have cancer, and i don't think i was a mean person before I got cancer. I was not. Now I am a little mean. But mainly most people like me despite what you-know who says.

So let us all look forward to the early fall, when I will have 2 good C cups, and be a really good person. Peace Corps, traveling disaster nurse, whatever. Then maybe a cruise ship nurse. Then sainthood. The first athiest saint. With big boobs. And possibly grandchildren. if they are good enough for my sainthoodness.

hair update

My hair is now 1/16 of an inch long (approximation) (ok, I made it up.) And I have 2, possibly three eyelashes. Nothing yet on those other parts i would have to shave or wax off anyway. Starting to wear wigs again to get used to having hair on head. Kind of a pain in the ass. PS Someone from Singapore read this blog. Maybe they can tell me exactly where Tibet is.

sleep, perchance to dream...not.

Ok, so now I sleep all the time. Or i would if I didn't have to work, or have friends who come over and drag me out of bed at eleven AM. I should list sleep as my occupation and nursing as my hobby the next time I have to list such things. SO they have a fatigue clinic and they give you ritalin, which I had previously forced my oncology shrink to give me for add-chemo brain. Wakes you up and helps you be less ADD. Well,it worked halfway. I still sleep, but I really concentrated on my dreams. And if they are a window into your subconcious, I am really fucked.

I always have this recurring dream that somehow I forgot to graduate from college, and have to go back but of course: I forget what all my classes are, I can't find the buildings because all the colleges i attend in my sleep are like on estattes with castles on them and such. Last night i accidentally wandered into a drama class where everyone in the class was going to be in a play. There were like a thousand people in the class, and everyone got a part except me. Come on, villager in the background with no speaking parts? Not even that? Of course always in this dream, I hadn't registered and/or paid for my classes on time, which really did paralell my actual college-nursing school-law school career. But I usually fixed it before actually being thrown out of class or not being allowed in the class play. Whch never existed, thank god.

But I never have that naked dream anymore. i think probably because of all this cancer stuff, my naked body has been seen, poked and prodded by the best of the Boston medical community. Whereas, before the cancer it had just been poked and prodded by random people who were not generally the best of any community. So if there is one thing cancer has done for me, it has been that it has taken away the naked dreams. Apparently now, not being allowed to be in the school play is more humiliating than being naked. I don't really see an upside to this, however. In fact, it probably means when i am really old and my brain goes, i had better have the grandchildren (which don't exist yet, apparently my fault, another story) start looking for a nursing home on a nudist resort. hey, not a bad idea for all you investors out there. Quite often, I have had to work hard to keep an elderly and sometimes less than elderly psych patient clothed. Eliminate one of the problems right there by opening geri-psych nudist units. It is only at times like these, when I have my brilliant ideas, that I wish Donald Trump read my blog. I am pretty sure he doesn't anyway, although he clearly should. I would watch his show if he read my blog. Well, I would watch it if i were awake, which I doubt that i would be at least after the first 10 minutes....

little-known medical fact

Beer cures neuropathy. Or maybe it just washed out all the leftover chemo in me. And, light beer just has fewer calories, not less alcohol. Clearly with all this wisdom, Harvard Medical School should award me an honorary degree. And a few prescription pads.

THE House

Maybe all that power-napping has caught up with me because I couldn't sleep more than 3-4 hours last night. Oh, could have been the Large Iced Coffee I forced a colleague to get for me at about eight o'clock last night. At least I never got into those energy drinks. Well shit, of course i never would, it would interfere with my napping and now that I think of it I am kind of pissed about the ice coffee.

But that is neither here nor there. I was lying in bed- awake for once- thinking about how it will not be long before I am rid of this house. It is funny (not ha-ha funny but odd or i guess ironic) how many of my recent patients have been undergoing a lot of different stressors causing them to need to check in briefly, and a good percentage of them have as a major stressor the fact that they are afraid of or are actually dealing with having their house foreclosed on.

I am actually one step ahead of the foreclosure people, but only because they are so busy foreclosing on my patients and making them crazy. I am selling my house as a "short sale" which means people can offer less than I owe the bank, and if the bank goes along with it (and i am told they seem to do this most of the time) I don't have to make up for the difference. Now where was this whole concept when I was on the buying end of a house? Oh, you are asking $500,000.00? I'll offer 279,000. Honestly that sort of thing is possible as long as the market stays bad. So I advise any of you thinking about buying a house to go out immediately and make an extremely low offer on a house that is being offered as a short sale. Of course when i heard about this it crossed my mind to have a friend or relative to offer an incredibly low figure and we would all make out, but probably someone would have found out and it probably would not have been entirely ethical, although it is a know fact that people with cancer don't need to be as ethical as those without because we have to put up with so much else. That is true, not just a raving of mine, I read it in a Real Cancer Book.

Obviously, I just lied through my teeth, which is also encouraged for people with cancer so that people won't start to think that we are just these sweet, strong people suffering bravely through our trials that life has given us. Actually, some people with cancer can be real assholes. I know I can.

So the house. I finally finished the paperwork with The Realtor. I do not think he is on this blog, at least I hope not but I will be a little kind. The Realtor drives me crazy. It is not him, it is me. I would not be as avoidant of a hot young stud realtor in a nice car with a personality, but my poor old guy has none of the above. Actually, I have gone so far as to not answer the doorbell when he has come by. This makes no sense when he is hee to help me unload this house, but really, I have stopped worrying about whether or nor what i do makes sense. Sometimes it does, more often it does not, but I have all these chemicals running through my body making me tired, or wired, or hot or cold, sometimes both simultaneously, my hands are numb and yes simetimes I am driven to the brink of insanity- and then right back to normal and then i go to work and pretend to be the one who is not crazy when I talk to my patients. I have to say, i can put up a pretty good front. Probably because all my venting and complaining is done to a few select friends and family and now this bloggerino.

Oh, yeah, the house, tha was what I was talking about. I am not the least bit sad that I won't make money on it. I made a bunch of money on the house I sold before I bought this one, and only put some of it into the house. The rest I spent on the best summer (so far) of my life- renting a cottage for 3 months and taking Laura, Cindy and Emily on a two week road trip in Europe. Probably the only vacation I did not come home from totally broke- and probably the last one, too. Being irresponsible with the money really worked out. I was sort of the mind set of living in the moment as who knows what's going to happen in the future. And didn't two of us end up getting cancer, Emily's much worse than mine, but i will always remember celebrating her 16th birthday in Paris with mimosas and chocolate croissants.

And i am not sentimental about this house. This is not where I raised my kids. In fact, i don't even like this town. Most of my neighbors are mean. I like a few things about the house or I wouldn't have lived here seven years. I like the kitchen. it looks pretty although I never use it and I really like the pool. However, I realized that about 75% of my friends have pools and they are all excited to be entertaining me this summer. And if they're not, they will pretend they are because they can't be mean to me because I havefucking cancer!

Plus this house has not been a house where good things happened. I movved here when meghan was already out of the house in college. First my brother's kids lived with me. The youngest was a pretty good kid, at least had some personality and helped me keep my hand in criminal law. The other one, forget it. I had to do an intervention and throw him out on the street- but I think he still won, it was a while ago. Once laura went to college and I decided to rent out rooms to poor souls who needed a break- well can I pick them or can I pick them? Actually one kid was nice, paid her rent and committed no felonies;of course she left after a month or so. Everyone else thought that I was just kidding about charging them rent and decided instead to occasionally give me $20.00. Those were the good tenants. I actually had three holes punched in my walls (one on each floor) by three separate disastrous roommates. I would have done better just hanging around outside a jail and when guys got out, offered them a room. I do have to say that our friends, who were related to the last batch of felons, did fix everything, so that is not part of why my house is going to a short sale. Mainly, I think it's the economy. Oh and maybe the fact that I remortgaged it a couple of times for important things like more trips to Europe and shoes.

But I will be glad to get out of this house. Good things did not happen here. My father fell and hit his head and had a stroke here. We lived here when Emily got diagnosed with leukemia. My neighbors-well, I think they hated me anyway for no reason, but then when my dog escaped and allegedly bit some psycho's adult daughter- I maintain, I saw no teeth marks, I think he just scratched her- they went crazy complaining about the dog. Now I notice that now that I am dog-free, they all have very loud dogs who I am sure bite people all the time. People in this town are mean. And loud- not that I ever noticed until my condition required frequent naps. Plus i got cancer living here and the basement flooded the last time it rained torrentially. More bad karma- two of the people I had hired to do some pretty good work on the house are now in jail. Not because i didn't pay them enough and they had to resort to crime. One is innocent and the other, well is probably not. Which is a shame, because he was supposed to finish the upstairs bathroom, which is a big reason for the short sale.

This will be a good house for a nice family who knows how to fix bathrooms. That is who I think is buying it. This is no longer a good house for me. I basically live alone, although Laura is here part time during summer break- but i do not need 4 bedrooms and a den? family room? sunroom? attic with I am sure sqirrells and maybe bigger animals? No way. i am moving into my friend Cindy's apartment for as long as she can stand me (I have 2 back ups if I drive her crazy but i hope I won't.) It is a big place, high ceilings and all that, and i will live in one bedroom with a walk-in closet. And i will have someone to talk to. And I can afford it. And she has one of those big flat screen TV's which is really funny because she is the least technological person I know. And the apartment complex has a gym, so i can go out and buy a few outfits to wear down there while I look around and don't exercise. And Cindy is fairly neat so i plan to get rid of 80% of my possessions and clothes but not shoes before I move in. Downsizing. I am becoming a minimalist. Unless that means something other than what i think it means. Yeah, bald, giving away my possessions, probably start meditating soon. I know it is not a mountain top in Tibet, but I think it is on the third floor. I am practically the dali lama. Yeah, I knew how to spell it before chemo.

HAH!

Remembered the code which I have again forgotten but was able to see that in fact one person in the United Kingdom read my blog. Or I guess someone could fake it. BUT Who would? Hope they were not insulted by the Monty Python reference. I would not be. I think they are very funny. Remember No one expects the Spanish Inquisition?

I have given up trying to make my bloggings (Certainly a new word I made up.) sound better so I get less offensive commercials. First, i clicked on the commercial thing because it said if people click on things, I make money and I imagined myself making 6 figures from my creative writing, and to this end, I click on every ad, no matter how stupid and have instructed my friends to do so. So far I have made $4.00 and change which they have not sent me. Apparently blogging will not support me in my old age. Plus now I must say I am getting stupid ads that even I would not click on, despite the fact that it earns me, I believe, approximately two cents. And then of course, i feel like I have compromised my art by commercializing it. HAH!!!! It is very sad if this is my art. And at this point, I would commercialize pretty much anything and i believe i have mentioned before that I am a little sad that I missed out on the prostitute thing. Maybe i could become one in rest homes- after my boob gets replaced, of course.

Maybe now I will get ads for escort services on my blog. Some people would click on them. Probably more than would click on the mormon geneology link. Also there are still bereavement web sites. Well, I certainly hope that they consider the vast diversity of my blog which is read not only in great Britain, but also Tennessee and Honolulu. Mormons? Not that I have anything aginst them and i approve of having several spouses at once. (I say that like I have even had a date in the past six months....) But where do they get Mormon from my blog? Clearly the people that work for the ad company smoke too much weed. So it is good that they have so many links to drug abuse rehab places.

Of course, none of them are in England..........

More things about forgetting and being tired.

I forgot the password to the thing that counts how many people view the blog and what countries they are in. Probably ok, because Australia only read it once. Guess i am not funny enough for that country. I am surprised that no one in England read it. I think that they would like it. Of course, i think all British people are like Monty Python. I think most people have still heard of Monty Python. They are not that old, nor am I.

I am trying to get this blog more about cancer so that I will stop getting ads about drug and alcohol rehab places and grief couselors. That is probably because of my new line, I have cancer and could die at any moment. Well it is true, although the cancer part is sort of irrelevant but I could walk out of my house and get hit on the head by a falling tree. Speaking of that, procrastination and cancer-induced laziness has proven to be an effective strategy is at least one part of my life. My yard was starting to look like a graveyard or worse, well I think even grave yards mow their lawns (people mow graveyards, whatever, you know what I mean.) and the cut down trees and brush from months ago were still sitting out there waiting for my ADD friend with a truck to take them to the dump. To be honest, the dump in this town is very confusing. it is only open like one hour on three days a week and I have shown up at least twice with truckfuls of would-be dumpage, only to find it closed for some stupid reason like the guy that works there had to go to the dentist. Ah, dentists, do not let me get started on that. Anyway, I just ignored the front yard. I think my regular yard guy started to blow me off because he reads this blog and thinks that I could die at any moment. So back to ignoring my yard. Eventually, a strange man and I do mean strange, rang the doorbell which I actually answered as I was not running around naked as I usually am, and offered to haul the stuff off to the dump and mow my lawn for a very reasonable price. So that just proves that if you ignore something long enough it fixes itself. I have no doubt that another stranger will ring my bell and offer to clean my house and do the laundry (because no, I did not fix the dryer and I am embarassed about my traiiler park clothes line so I just drop off the necessities to be laundered for me so there are a few pieces of not so necessary dirty laundry out and about in my house. Also, walking around naked is helpful in reducing laundry as well. But I feel bad for the lawn guy because he just has an old fashioned mower and it takes forever to mow the lawn unlike the guy who dumped me whohad this really cool thing that even i would use if I had one, although I would never have one, where you just stand on this thing and it cuts the grass and puts it somewhere. I think it runs on magic.

So now that there are secondary gains to my laziness, when will it end? Sometimes i think it is OK, that if I am tired, I should rest, I had a lot of chemo and sort of blasted through all of that and maybe my doctors are right that you have to wait a while after chemo before things are back to normal (Back to normal for them means it is then OK for them to cut me open- in only a very small area this time and then let me wait til I am back to normal so they can radiate me. I see a lot of cancer-induced laziness in my future.) Then sometimes I think that I would use any excuse to lie on the couch and watch old movies or law and order reruns, napping frequently and that cancer is quite a good excuse. Even my kids go along with that. However, i have noticed that I have missed a few parties lately and this is not like my old self. Perhaps I will have to cut down on working in order to party more. By partying, of course, I mean ice cream and cake, lest the people who determine what ads go on my blog start getting out the substance abuse counseling ones.

posthumous degrees

Well lately I have been reading a lot about people getting graduate degrees awarded to them after they died. Well,maybe once I read one article and it might have been in People Magazine in a doctor's office. Anyway, WHY? The main point of getting a graduate degree is to brag about it. "Hey, loser, I have a PhD from Harvard.....oh wait a minute, I am dead, never mind." So, in the afterlife, you say you have a doctorate degree, and they are not going to be able to tell that you didn't get it while you were alive? Maybe there are different cliques in heaven, or hell, or whatever there is out there and they wear T shirts to differentiate each other, "I got my college degree when I was still alive, not like these other losers."

This made me think of a good idea. " Dear Harvard Medical School, I am aware of your practice of randomly awarding degrees to dead people. i have cancer and could die at any minute. It would be more helpful to me if you awarded my my posthumous degree while i am still alive. A medical degree would be very useful to me right now as there are a number of prescriptions I need to write out for myself and my close friends and i really don't want to bother my real doctors, who recieved thier degrees while alive. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation."

Just to be on the safe side, i am going to start requesting post-humous MBA's because I may have to start my own company on the off chance that existing ones don't hire people with posthumous degrees that they earned while actually alive.