Dinner is Served!

Whatta ya do when it's taco night but there is no ground round to be found? You have cheese, you have lettuce, you even have tortillas...but no meat. No meat and NO desire whatsoever to get back into your car one more stinkin' time and drive to the store. (I have chauffering issues...can you tell?) Well, if you're lucky, and somewhat brave, you can pull the last turkey burger out of the freezer, along with the two well-meaning but not so well-desired veggie burgers and throw them all in a skillet with a can of chili con carne. Simmer and stir.


In the meantime, you better start thinking up ways to spin this to the kids...cause it ain't pretty.




Plan A: Label it gourmet and insinuate it's a Guy Fieri creation. Who could pass up Guy Fieri fare? He's fat AND cool, way more so than the Kool-Aid man. They're not even in the same league...real and pretend status aside.


Plan B: Start doing that funny bit by comedien Don Friesen about the poor kids in China. Sharpen up your Chinese accent so that they laugh so hard they cry. The tears will naturally blur their vision just long enough to get the cheese and lettuce to cover the....um...filling.

Plan C: You do pray at dinnertime right?

Much to my surprise, with no tricks employed whatsoever, everyone just sat down and ate it with no questions asked. UNHEARD of in my family. No whining at all? Is this what they've wanted all along??? Really??? Baffled...yes. Monumentally baffled. But in the end, just counting my blessings. One more family dinner down...17,000 more to go.

Et tu, Rubus?

When one eats berries in a bowl, regardless of the genus of berries being devoured, one is best served when the last berry consumed is of the sweetest nature. Bitter berries are only tolerable when there is at least one more berry of significant sweetness left to cleanse the palate, thus leaving the partaker of berries quite delighted and satisfied.

Hence the majesty and genius of pie...where all fruit is made equal, resting on the dulcitude of fellow berries. All being exalted together by sugar and crust, crust and sugar. Amen and forever.

Nothing Comes from Nothing

You might think the phrase "nothing comes from nothing" is attributed to Rogers and Hammerstein and "The Sound of Music". I know I thought that, but interestingly enough...it is actually comes from Parmenides, an ancient Greek philosopher. When he said it it sounded more like this: ex nihilo nihil fit. That must have been profound, centuries ago, but really all it means is...I am bored! Which leads me to ask....is it possible to create a blog out of boredom? Can I turn 45 minutes of down time at work into an essay of any worth? Probably not, but I'm gonna try! Yesterday I was sick. Well, I've been sick for about a week now, but yesterday I got sick of being sick. Sleep deprivation caught up with me and viola! At 11 am yesterday I begged off work and went home to be alone with my Nyquil. Can I just say, I LOVE Nyquil. It's the only good thing about being sick.

Eternal Calculus

This post is going to be quite different than my last several posts. My last few posts all started and ended with a blank text box. There was so much to write, but no way to write it. Fortunately, a picture is worth a thousand words and some old albums have come to the rescue. But before I get to my slideshow, perhaps an explanation is in order.

Two days ago marked a year since my last chemo treatment. Hence, I have been growing my hair back now, for 367 days. That is, theoretically I have been growing my hair back for 367 days. T h e o r e t i c a l l y. Realistically...it hasn't been going so well.

It's been months now since I've started to worry. My chemo buddies all have short, but rather full heads of hair already. I have short, rather thin and transparent hair on my head. I have long since done the dreaded google search that went something like "hair always grow back after chemo" to find out that about 2% of women will not get their hair back. I'm holding on to the hope that since it took me a while as a baby to grow hair, that it will just take me a while as an adult to do the same. See:





this is how much hair I had when I was born












this is how much gas I had when I was born (isn't mom pretty?)














this is me 5 months later (isn't grandma pretty?)















this is me a year after I was born bald








I stuff this down every morning and quickly groom so as to move my mind on to something else as swiftly as possible. Layers and layers of this angst had built up enough that I knew it was getting pretty close to the surface and that eventually I would snap, slump into a corner of my bedroom in a pile of tears, and refuse to come out ever again.

I was partially right. One day I did snap. But I was in the shower, and I had just reached up to wash my hair when the thought of "what's it matter" and the thought of getting out of the shower to see me in the mirror again both collided. Let's just say...it's not the first time I've sobbed in the shower.

So there you have it. This is not a pity party for me. This blog has never been about that. This is for all the times I've dropped in on someone else's cancer blog and felt not so alone when I was done there. Maybe there's someone else out there that's 40 and looks like 80 and now we're soul sisters.

The Lord is reportedly counting the hairs on our heads. I am counting the days since chemo. I've never really liked math.. but this has got to be the worst story problem ever.