Well, it's a damn good thing I've got four precious weeks off of any sort of treatment, because I'm so freakin' busy I think I'd just crumble up like a stale shortbread otherwise. Or crack like a cheap piece of stonewear, or shatter into a billion tiny bits like a delicate blown-glass menagerie animal-thing, or run screaming around in the streets or something equally extreme and irreperable...

First the move was on and coming hard and (way too) fast down the pike. Now maybe it'll be by the end of next week. Can I get a "AUUUUGH!"? Amen, brothers and sisters, AMEN!!!

And so, in the meanwhile, I've been trying to take care of all the tertiary medical stuff I've either had to -- or just decided -- I would put off until I was done with the icky-icky chemo... That means things like the opthomologist (for that weird pain-in-the-eye problem I had the MRI over).

What a joy that event was. Not only did I have to repeat myself to four different people about why I was there (I think they see a person walk in wearing thick-ass glasses and automatically assume they want new ones or something), but I had the extreme displeasure of having several different kinds of beams of refracted light shown into my defenselessly dialated eyes. And, of course, all for nothing. No problem the doctor could see with the right eye. So it's probably a stress reaction.

I'm full of stress reactions, really (the cancer may have been a stress reaction for all I know). Going there to find nothing wrong with me -- again(!) -- even when my eye feels like a rock in my head just iced the cake of my overwrought metaphor-mixing, self-righteous, angsty anger, stressy, hissy fit self. But I'm getting new glasses.

Apparently my prescription was a bit off, so I'm getting it replaced. And they are so very, very cool, my glasses-to-be (my myopia is so bad my lenses have to be special made and ordered and take forever to get here). They just ooze chic, hip, devil-may-care elan for four-eyed people. Yes, that's right, I will soon be the proud owner of a pair of genuine, 1950's, crystal-encrusted, cat-eye glasses. Oh the glamah -- just unbelievable, I'm telling you.

Honestly they are very cool. I was looking at what's basically a more expensive variant on what I already wear, and pointed at the 50's-looking frames nearby saying "I can't believe these are coming back" when the optometrist told me that they aren't -- those are originals she bought in bulk from some collector at an eyewear show, the name of which she dropped like I ought to know.

Now, since I work across the street from a veddy exclusive eyewear store, I was sworn to secrecy by her about where I got them. I'm not to tell a soul about my antique frames "connection". Apparently vintage cateye glasses are prized elements of some weird optometrist cartel, and have a street value far higher than the phenomenally cheap 70 bucks I'm paying for my little beauties (usual prices for ones like mine are somewhere in the 500 dollar range because they're "antiques" you see).

The woman at the opthamologist's office got them in bulk (a huge boxful apparently) for next to nothing, and so I get to be the envy of every freakishly hyper-retro hipster in the Mission (the hipster ghetto of SF -- not to disparage the Mission -- no, no -- I say that to disparage the hipsters).

Who am I to talk? Well, I did retro and wore vintage clothes back when people on the street would shout insults at you, so I think I can safely be as sanctimoniously hypocritical about this new crop of pseudo-80's, messy-haired, punk rock wannabes as I'd like. Anyway, it's what we do. We grow old enough to make fun of the next generation, much the same way as an older sibling would, and we indulge every so often.

If it keeps my spirits up, I've decided it's theraputic, so there.

I still have no internet access at home. I plan on spending some time at a cybercafe as a treat to myself tomorrow. Maybe I'll be around here then.

TTFN

Today is my last day of chemo.
But tomorrow, tomorrow is my little guy's fifth birthday!

And how do you have a birthday party for a kid that doesn't give a ca-rap about being social, so has no friends; doesn't eat anything that is "wet" or requires silverware; and is only just now able to say "I'm five years old" (we've been praticing how to say it so he can have a little greeting phrase-type thing)?

Well, you have it with mommy and daddy, for one. You bake birthday cookies, and then you go to the zoo.

And the weather should be beautiful for taking him to the zoo. It's supposed to be sunny. Little guy... I hope he finds his day is special.

So there are a lot of things going on at the Domus Antonius this month. I may not be around as much as I'd like.

Kid's birthday.

Then, I get the freaky subcutaneous valve/port taken out (I hate that thing. It totally creeps me out all the time. eew, eew, eew) sometime next week. So, minor outpatient surgery soon...

Buying and shopping for a few new pieces of furniture for the new apartment...

Spackling and painting the new apartment...

Getting the floors re-done.

Getting the new carpt laid in the bedrooms.

Moving.

The DSL will be off for about two weeks, so no AW at home for a while... :(

I'll be around AW a little when I'm at work, but not so much at home. Oh well. I can just work on graphic or similar things, I guess.

Today promises to be pleasant. I'm visiting my friend's hilarious elderly mother for a few hours after I'm done with my treatment. When my friend returns from work we'll go through her place taking pictures of furniture she wants to sell because she's moving as well. I get first pick, which is awesome. Got my eye on her Federalist bureau, mm-hmm. We just need to make that all-important barter/deal with a truck-owning lug of some variety, because my friend's in San Francisco, and I'm in sunny Oakland. We'll snag someone, I know. Whether through implimentation of the beer-and-pizza carrot or the appeal-to-your-highly-evolved-manliness "pretty, pretty princess" distress call, we will get someone.

I'm okay... disgusted by what is wrong with me, but there could be much worse things, so all is well. I'm still having eye pain, but I don't care now, knowing that it's nothing dangerous.

It's a "mucous-filled cyst" pressing on my eye and optic nerve that's been giving me trouble. Yuck. But it should resolve on its own. Whew!

The doctor said if I really wanted I could have a head and neck surgeon drain it, but I really don't want anyone poking around in me any more than I absolutely have to allow.

As I was getting ready to go home, I told the guy that replaces me what the diagnosis was and he said: "DON'T!"

He's a dramatic guy.

"My old co-worker blah-blah (can't remember her name, but he's one of those people that always has a bagillion people to refer to in conversations, and somehow expects you to know their names every time someone comes up for a second time... whatever, dude... anyway) had one of those pressing on her optic nerve in one eye and a really bad cataract in her other, so she went to a surgeon to have it drained, and they just -- nic! -- right on the nerve; so she's blind now."

So, I think I'll wait for it to resolve. Pressing my luck is not something I really want to do at this juncture.

Oh yeah, and talk about a hard luck story. I think my life is crappy. This lady had the surgery (routine, simple thing, right?) and then went blind. She went to blind school, where she learned to read braille, make her way around town with her new leader dog, take care of herself, cook, clean, all that stuff you don't think about having to do and have to do differently if you're blind. Right? Right. Okay, so she gets out of school, and her first day leaving her apartment, she slips and falls down the stairs outside her apartment building, breaks both legs and I think her wrist as well.

So the moral of the story is twofold: If you have a small problem you can live with, do, because the solution may be worse than the original problem. And -- if you think you're having a hard time in life, there's some other person (formerly part of the "ordinary, regular folks" world you like to count yourself in) doing way worse than you. Count on it.

The guy moving out has painted the apartment in the colors of the flag of Brazil. The walls are mostly green, though I guess there's one yellow room. Hmm...

Well, onto another subject. I'm about to have my dinner, which will be vegetarian chili with cheese over rice. I'm a half-hearted vegetarian, myself, but the better half is into it. He's no vegan -- he eats eggs, and every couple of weeks he has fish -- but he's very consistent, and never breaks with his routine and sneaks a hotdog or anything like that. Since he switched over I've eaten a lot less meat, and I do feel healthier.

Sometimes, though, I get cravings for red meat that are positively primal. I must have a sweetly broiled, medium-rare slab of red meat. It's almost a high to eat it. But not today. I'm content to eat beans.

This reminds me that beans were like the ramen noodles or government cheese of ancient Rome. There are lots of references to and jokes about the poor eating beans. One saying (and I only remember the translation, not the latin) was: "Hunger sweetens the beans." Nowadays we have "gourmet" beans.

There's nothing humble in humble food anymore. Beer is made to exacting standards, comes in hundreds of different varieties, and is made with gourmet ingredients. Then you have bread. Simple bread -- the heartier and more pesanty the bread, the more "special" it is -- not that it isn't good, but c'mon -- soda bread? Potato bread? Or how about bran? Mmmm. Fancy. Let me play three times the price for that.

Meanwhile, back in the Middle Ages, Wonder Bread would've been like freakin' ambrosia. Well, bleached flour anyway... Then you have using honey instead of sugar, like in your tea -- but not just any honey, you have to know what kind it is, etc. Oh and there's raw sugar, too. Meanwhile, back in the Renaissance -- sugar? What's that? Oh and there are so many other things that have been gourmeed.

The humble, basic, all-purpose tortilla now comes in regular, whole wheat, corn, blue corn... Rice can be black, pearl, brown, wild, basmati, jasmine -- anything but regular rice! No way. Soda? Yeah, that's being microbrewed now, too.

But who am I kidding? I'm a foodie. I love the idea of having four different kinds of olive oil in the pantry. I enjoy having five different kinds of tomatoes available to me at the grocery store.

Well, there.

The tenant that was living in the actual manager's unit is moving out, so we'll get to move in at the start of May. We'll be re-doing the floors, so they'll be nice, fresh hardwoods, and just generally all around we'll have more space. We will be trading lots of windows for it, but in return we get a spot at the back of the building, which will be much quieter than being right out in front by the sidewalk. I can't wait!

And our new wedding rings arrived today. Yay! My husband had problems with the old one causing him to break out (he has sensitive skin) on his ring finger, so we're trying silver this time around with a nice, traditional claddagh design. We shall see. At least, if it doesn't work out, we won't be out the cost of a pair of gold rings, and I'll have a purdy bauble.

I have to wait another day (or two) for those MRI results, but I'm doing my best not to worry. Of course, the next part of it is, if there's no discernable area of concern, then what, exactly is the problem? that will mean more rounds with more doctors. Urrghh.

Wednesday I meet with the Radio-therapy doctor for a consultation. I won't start that for a few more weeks, but it's coming...

Gee I'd like to be fabulously entertaining and shockingly hilarious, but it's just not in me right now.

No really, what a blast that was. I had an 8:00 appointment for one today, and of course, no one remembered the time change but the patients, so I had what we might call "a bit of a wait" before getting it.

After snaking around through deserted hospital corridors with the lights turned halfway off (since it's 6:45 on a Sunday to everyone it seems but me and my family), I finally found the MRI department. It was quite disconcerting, and not a little dissimilar to survival-horror video games where the intrepid heroine finds herself in some sort of situation where she's in a normal, everyday environment somehow altered and/or deserted. Made me want to runn up and down the hall, checking for "items." I could almost see the subtitles on the T.V. screen saying things like "There's nothing of use for me here." and "I'd better not touch this, I don't know what it does."

The entire building seemed to be completely empty. I could hear my husband coming into the building from three stories up after parking the car, it was that quiet.

Finally the guy shows up. He's nice, but a little freaked out that there are four people waiting by the door (the 8:30 appointment had shown up by now, too). So I go in, miffed and buzzed on my latte by now, with no idea of what I'm about to do, which as I said, was just great.

How great was it? Well, I had my head taped down, and had to stay immobile while shoved all the way down into this little tube, with earplugs in my ears, a cloth over my eyes, a big helmet-like thing over my face for the technician to use as a reference target, while truly huge, enormous magnets moved around me making '70's Moog synthesizer sounds. It was like being inside a Philip Glass recording. At first, looking at the machine before I had to get on the table, I thought how lucky I was to just be getting a head scan where I wouldn't be all the way inside the machine. Hardy-har, Serica! So good with the funny jokes.

Just try to relax for thirty minutes of that. And I'm not sure (nor is my Dr.) if the problems I've been having with my right eye are stress-related, or something more nefarious (hence the MRI). Of course this makes the eye/headache trouble start up again big-time, so now I'm shoved up in this thing, laying there, trying to be still, and can't escape the thought that there may well be no "problem" at all, which does nothing at all to help matters, infact it makes me more stressy, which makes my eye hurt all the more (after giving me a respite yesterday), which fuels ever more tension in my body.

I'm like one of those little Chihuahuas that quivvers and shakes itself into total freakish neurosis over time when it comes to stress. I always have been.

Then it's over, and the tech says "There. Next time you'll be all ready for what will happen."

I said "Well, let's hope there won't be a next time, frankly," in my best, smiley-friendly way.

He says "well, it'll be much easier for you."

That's great. So there is a problem? I know this guy's not gonna tell me, even if he's seen it all and would know in a microsecond whether or not something was wrong, he's keeping mum about it because he has to, but the paranoid in me is clinging to that last bit of conversation, thinking yup. that's it. He saw something and doesn't want to say. At least I only have a day to wait.

The thing is I do know that there's something wrong with the whole way my right eye's hooked up, because I've had problems with it in the past, like losing sight in it for a few minutes five or six times years ago without getting a migraine, and similar things here and there. No flashing or floaties, so none of the usual glaucoma stuff. I had a cat scan about ten years ago when I lost sight in it for about five minutes at a shopping mall. It's probably a detatched (detatching) retina, but the way it's been lately... well, one gets concerned about every little thing.

So anyone wants to put in a good word for me with whoever you pray to (God, Goddess, the shade of Hippocrates, Zoroaster, Vishnu... I'm not particular, it's faith that's the thing), or send a good wish my way, I'll take it with gladness and thanks.

Somebody set our recycling bins on fire at four in the morning today. It was quite the conflagration by the time it got noticed. I woke at first to a peculiar woody smell, and mentioned it to my husband, who promptly rolled over and went back to sleep. So did I, but a few minutes later I woke again to this lovely rosy-orange light streaming in through the blinds. The smell was even stronger, with a pronounced paraffin tinge to it. I was struggling to figure out what the hell was going on when there was a pounding on our door.

"Fire! There's a fire! Outside! Fire!" A woman's voice was shouting.

I bolted straight up, fumbled on my glasses, and then saw that the rosy light was moving. Not good.

Now it's precisely for moments like this that I do not wear overly sexy, slinky things to bed, nor will I ever sleep naked. My glasses are always half an arm's reach away, and slippers are right by the bed, just in case I have to make a dash. Images of people wandering around stunned in piss-poor pajamas after the Northridge earthquake have engrained this one discipline in me, and it's funny because that was four years before I moved to California. I used to get teased for it by my husband.

So I get the kid and bring him into the living room where he can continue to sleep on the couch (i.e. near the front door) while my husband calls 911. This is an interesting conversation. The fire has grown to about eight feet long and six feet high. The breeze is moving the flames and smoke away from the building, but still, it's only about four feet from our windows...

"I need a fire truck. I have a fire. How big? I don't know. Not that big. It's a fire. I need a truck. Our recycling. I don't know... medium. Yes. It's still burning."

While this is going on I'm thinking about how this is just totally bizarre. I'm not nervous, really, just kind of disgusted that this might be the final disasterous underpinning to what has been a decidedly unpleasant phase for our family. At least that's what I'm hoping, in an odd way, if the fire gets worse, which I wasn't wishing, but was prepared for. Anyone who's been in a similar situation knows you think freaky things when something like this is upon you. I was trying to decide if I should be worried or not when I stepped outside for a minute (we're near the front door, so no, my sleeping child wasn't in any sort of jeapordy). The next several minutes I spent going back and forth into and out of the building...

So my husband is outside where a bunch of tenants have congregated. Everyone's in some sort of rude approximation of their waking clothes, rumpled, slightly confused and not sure if they should be really concernened. It's a strange sight to see them out there in front of the building, at the pitch-black heart of nighttime, so well-lit. In my husband goes again, this time returning with a fire extinguisher, which he empties onto the fire.

One huge green bin has been reduced to a molten pile of stuff about a foot high, and the other has been sealed shut with heat. So much for the scavenger garbage-pickers. They always come by and get all the glass and metal out of it the day before the recycling center comes to empty it. It's like a strange April Fool joke on them. 3/4 of it is entirely normal-looking, with only the side facing away from the street being all warped and melted...

Anyway, about five minutes have gone by, total. It seems, of course, like it's been a lot longer. It's odd the way that the usual nightly dark is gradually returning to the outside as the fire dies down. Then my husband remembers the gardener's hose in front of the building, so he grabs that, turns it on, and is dousing the now tame fire as the fire truck pulls up.

God bless the Oakland Fire Department. They are amazing, brave people who fight some of the worst fires in the country. When a major forest fire breaks out, or a disaster requires highly-trained search-and-rescue, there the Oakland Fire Dept. will be, if they don't have some homegrown catastrophe to attend to. So they pull up, kind of saunter over to the still slightly-afire embers, and congratulate my husband. While I know they don't want people getting hurt by fires, etc., this situation is quite beneath them (especially at this point), and we all know it.

"Good job. It's almost out." Says one while he drags the gooey base of the former bin out into the street to finish smouldering. They report back that yes, in fact, there was a fire, and it's all over now, and drive away.

This is my husband's second fire to fight. Four years ago he helped keep another one (that time it was an entire unit of a different building) under control until the fire dept. got there and pulled the place apart putting it out.

It turned out that it had been caused by the tenant, who liked to take her morning shower by candlelight. The candle caught her little decorative hand-towel on fire and up went the ones hanging above that. By the time she'd grabbed her robe and run outside to yell for help the bathroom and kitchen were engulfed. That one made the local news. I think Mr. Antonius should be a fireman, but he shrugs it off.

Woke to a quiet domus. Like, quiet because the art deco wiring gets overloaded by the coffee maker, microwave, and refrigerator running in tandem. You wonder why it is you're sleeping so peacefully. Then you realize that it's because of the quiet.

My son kicked his shoes off at the grocery store today. We didn't see it until we were in the parking lot and had to backtrack through the store looking for them. Eventually my husband found them over by the Lotto machine...

Sounds like some sort of weird, modern-day auspice. Now there's an idea! I'll have to write some up for the lists journal.

So I feel pretty good today. I'd say excellent except for the swelling in my right ankle. I look like one half of "Pink Elephants on Parade" from the knees down. Called the Dr.'s... They said to "elevate it." Yeah, thanks.

Got all uppity and above my station and went crazy with a latte and a chocolate croissant (which isn't crescent-shaped, dammit! I really wish people would get these things straight!), as opposed to my usual break snack of doughnut (alternately known as "donut" in finer rust-belt establishments) and regular coffee.

Not to say that I have a doughnut every day! Nononono! But when I do have a break snack, that's usually what it is. They're California doughnuts, anyway -- little airy, skinny things. "An armature for sugar," as one of my co-workers from New England put it one day. Not anything like the kind you can get in Michigan or other places where they actually have winters. Those are pastries with heft. You could hurt someone with a Michigan doughnut if you threw it at them hard enough. That's not to imply I would ever do that, I'm just saying.

I'll probably add more to this entry later.

Okay here I am to add more to this. It's later, see? You just have to take my word for it.

So the kiddo... he's changing a lot. I guess you'd call it improving. I call it 'confusing mom and dad.' He's started doing all sorts of things he didn't do a few weeks ago, like point and answer questions. He can say his name now. He calls me "mom" and his dad is "daddy." It's not like a miracle overnight cure or anything, but...

Well, here's an example: He never has said anything about his age or anyone else's age. No singing "Happy Birthday" or "I'm this many." None of that. Well, just yesterday he sat on the couch and started going on about "I'm six years old." Both Dad and I told him "No you're not, you're four. You're going to be five." So he corrected himself. He slowly and carefully counted our four fingers and said:

"I'm four years old."

He looked at us; we nodded. He looked at his hand again. Again he said "I'm four years old."

A month ago there was no way this would happen. Not at all. And he answers when we call his name now, too. He doesn't like the shortened form of his name, only the full version, and he's very insistent about it, too. Until now, we had no idea because he never said his name.

I'm desperate to go out to a big party with winky lights and thumping music, but there's no way I'd be able to manage it. It's been way too long since I went out like that, and I don't really have the energy. I think I'm beginning to run out of intellectual steam in some odd sort of way. It's tiresome on the mind; not being able to have much of an actively physical life. But there's no way I'm going out dancing with an elephant ankle, so I have to bide my time. Patience. I'm tired of patience.

It's two more treatments after today. But I got some bloodwork on my antigen markers back, and I'm on the low end of the range of normal levels, so that's very, very good. Assuming my flavor of BC pumps out antigens, which it may not, which we wouldn't know since I wasn't tested for them before I had the thing removed, so only if they go up will I ever know. Basically it was really great news that doesn't mean very much. That's typical for the way things go around here. I'll take it as good news. They were lower than they were when I started treatment, so...

Good day, though. I wore a little newsboy cap without a wig -- I have enough hair for something like that now. I got asked by another patient if it was my first time there. I laughed, pulled off the cap (showing my ultra-suede), said "No. I started in November". Basically I helped him feel comfortable, since it was his first time. Another young person with cancer. There are more and more of us, I think. Scary, but what I can do to stop it I don't know. This guy didn't know he had anything wrong until it had found its way to his nerves, so I'd say I'm definitely in the category of "It Could Be Worse" -- but aren't we all in that category, really? I mean, the rock bottoms of human experience are so rock bottom, most of us will never go that far down. We might think we're there when we're handed problems, but the greater, vast majority of us are really just a stratum or two down from peachy keen.

Without my wig and with my contacts in, the women that work behind the desk at the Dr.'s didn't recognize me when I came in. I'd also had time to do my makeup today, so it was a nice thing. A guy flirted with me, too. I couldn't believe it! At the oncologists' office? Well, I guess if you meet someone there you know they'll understand what it is to have cancer. He was a little surprised when I came into the treatment room.

My husband just came over and read this and blurted out: "I got the purdiest gurl in tha On-colo-gy office!" in his best hillbilly.

Mr. "Antonius" (who does so much for me I don't even think either of us realizes just how much it is), was all sheepish about telling me he liked me better with makeup on today. I always put a little on, every day since I started to show physical side effects, but the whole shebang takes a bit of time.

The thing about the wig gig is that once you get it all put together it's kind of plastic looking... and very drag queen. It's inescapable, because you're basically painting on a whole face. Everything's too perfect. And you top it off with perfect hair. That makes you either a newscaster or a drag queen (or both). But by drag queen definitions, I am doing drag, just so everything's clear here.

I laughed at my husband's shy admittance. I laughed because of course he likes me better with makeup on. Without it I look like some kind of being from beyond like one of the Hellraiser people.

"I have no eyebrows. I have no eyelashes. That makes the circles under my eyes look even darker than normal. I can't look like 'me' unless I put those things back or cover them up somehow. It's okay, sweetie. I like me better this way, too."

And I meant it. I'd do the do every day but I'm always behind schedule in the mornings, so it's eyebrow pencil and blush put on in a big hurry in the car on the way to the train (hoping we don't hit a pothole and I have to fix something). I will not put on makeup other than lipstick on public transit. I just won't do it.

I didn't work today. My son is sick. My husband is, too, so the great irony of the day was that I was the healtiest one in the family, and nursing duties fell to me.

Little guy is a bit lethargic, and he's got a little fever, but he's pretty much okay. He's in a good mood and not crying or screeching, so on the autism scale of well-being-by-way-of-emotional-state, it's good. Big guy is sleepy and running a fever. I sure do hope I don't get this weird little bug they seem to have.

Well. There it is. My great day.

Thank you mystery nominating person. Whoever you are you're making me blush.