It all seems so inadequate somehow. I’ve done my surgery, I’ve done my chemo, and now I wait. I practice positive image visualization. I fast one day per week. I exorcise my demons and exercise my body. I drink decaffeinated coffee all day long. Somehow these things are supposed to help fight cancer, but they don’t, not really. Cancer – it comes. Cancer – it goes. Sometimes it stays. Nobody knows.
I read about the new, apparently massively more contagious virus mutation and I did what? Nothing. What can we do? I ordered an extra week’s worth of groceries. I felt a bit foolish doing it. Great, now I have two bottles of pear juice instead of one. An extra dozen eggs. An extra box of cereal. It felt privileged. Pointless. Paranoid.
I read about how hard the economic disruptions are for so many people. I try to spread a little bit of money around. I tip the people who bring my groceries. I give a little to local community causes. A little more to a friend in need. But to what end? Our country is crumbling and I am handing five extra bucks to my delivery driver. This solves nothing.
Suddenly there is cancer all around me. Not just in my cancer support groups, where I’d expect it. Suddenly it’s my family, my family’s friends, and my friend’s families. Where did all this cancer come from? I send hopefully-supportive emails. I cannot cure cancer.
Here we are, in our new year now. It feels a lot like our old year. Which was absolutely nothing like the entire other 50 years that lurk like a fading dream in my memory. I have been dreaming, lately, of magic beanstalks. I’m wondering if I should look up that old story and figure out what that’s about. But I do not like old stories; they are creepy and dark.
My beanstalk is bright and colorful and backlit by the sunlight. It grows strong and fast, with many vines looped together in friendship, providing easy footholds. I climb it rapidly and joyously, with boundless energy. I do not want to think about weird old stories of family tragedy and giant ogres.
I try to reach out more – cards, emails, texts, phone appointments, video appointments. I’m not very good at reaching out. But of all the inadequate things, it seems like the most useful at the moment. I reach out – for your sake, for my sake, for all of our sake. It’s not a lot, but probably what we can do right now.
Sorry I do not have any pictures for this post. I would paint my multi-colored magic beanstalk for you, but I don’t know how. I would take a screenshot of my mind.
New Mexico has their vaccination registration system up and running. The criteria appear to be a combination of age and occupation. There’s nothing about cancer or other illnesses, so I won’t be particularly high on their list. That’s ok, I don’t mind waiting. I think people whose jobs are serving the public should get it as soon as possible. I don’t mind staying away from people for another few months; it’s not a hardship for me. The only place I have to go sometimes is the cancer center.
John and I had been assuming that we’d have to travel back to New Mexico to get our vaccination, because we are New Mexico residents. But it turns out that Arizona is willing to vaccinate all their out-of-state snowbirds! Traveling back to New Mexico from out-of-state would have put us into a 14 day quarantine, so it would have been quite a nuisance.
Here’s what the azdhs.gov website FAQ’s has to say about it:
I don’t think Arizona has a registration system set up yet. Here’s what the New Mexico’s registration website looks like:
It’s at https://cvvaccine.nmhealth.org/#
It looks like first we submit a pre-registration, then when it’s our turn we get an event code, and then we can come back to this page with our code to register for the shot.
My kids drove 10 hours each way to camp in the windy, freezing Nevada desert in order to spend Thanksgiving with me. Am I bragging? Maybe. Am I appreciative? Oh, you bet. We wore our masks, and we were socially distanced, we didn’t eat together, and we were never indoors. Covid didn’t have a chance.
The adventure started with John and I picking out a probable destination, and then driving out there a day ahead to scope it out. The goal was something equal distant between all three households, and warm enough to camp. Serenity was coming from all the way up in Boise, so we basically had them drop due south. Laura and Alex headed southwest, and John and I drove northwest. We picked a spot just east of Las Vegas and just north of Lake Mead.
We sent the kids detailed google maps of our intended destination ahead of time, and hoped that the place would work. We could tell from google satellite photos that the final stretch involved driving through a sandy wash, and we didn’t know how passable that would be. We knew we might have to find an alternative location.
Another big concern was whether we would have enough cell service once we got there to be able to get cell coordinates out to the kids. Worst case scenario we’d have to find a camping place, then drive back out to civilization to catch enough cell service to be able to tell the kids where the camp was.
Here’s the sandy wash we had seen on google satellite view that were worried about.
Turns out the van was able to navigate it. Our van has large tires, even though it’s not 4 wheel drive. Also we carry traction pads and a hand cable winch in case we ever get stuck.
Success! Home for the night.
The next morning was Thanksgiving Day. John and I went on a couple of short hikes while waiting for the kids to arrive.
These were cool fuzzy plants:
We were very excited when everyone arrived safely that evening. Laura and Alex drove partway up the wash before deciding to park and walk the final quarter of a mile. Serenity parked on the main road and hiked the half-mile in; we met them at the road and helped carry everything to the campsite.
We had strong winds the first night. I felt very guilty sleeping in the van with the kids out braving the weather in tents. I could feel the wind rocking the van, yikes!
But they got up cheerfully the next morning, ready to go hiking. Laura had been up some that night with her dog, Zane, who had a learning curve around the concept of staying INSIDE his sleeping bag.
Here’s pictures from our Friday hike:
The masked desert bandits, lol
It started out cool in the morning, but got warm during the hike.
There were definitely no crowds to contend with. Every once in awhile a vehicle would go by on the main wash. We never saw any hikers in the region where we were staying. There were a few hikers at a designated trail head we encountered on Friday’s hike, but we didn’t hike the designated trail ourselves. We turned around at that point and went back the way we had come. We never saw any people or vehicles on this particular dirt road. We love the wide open spaces.
On Saturday John and Alex climbed a ridge, while Laura, Serenity and the dogs and I hiked along a wash.
Chilling at camp that evening:
This socially-distanced game is called “scooting the camp chair to catch every last ray you can”. Temperatures dropped rapidly as the sun set!
Kira wore her paws out hiking and playing ball on the gravelly sand.
A friend of mine mentioned that the Cowboy Junkies did a cover of an old gospel blues song that is relevant today. It’s done in an old style that is very similar to the original – I believe they included, in this version, a sampling of the original as performed in the late 1920’s by the singer-songwriter Blind Willie Johnson. The style and message may not appeal to modern tastes, but it was quite compelling, I thought.
It’s part of a tribute album of Blind Willie Johnson’s songs called, “God Don’t Never Change”, which was released in 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Don’t_Never_Change%3A_The_Songs_of_Blind_Willie_Johnson
It seems that Blind Willie Johnson was a very talented man who had an interesting, and difficult, life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Willie_Johnson
Here’s the lyrics to Jesus is Coming Soon:
We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon
In the year 19 and 18 God sent a mighty disease It killed many a-thousand On land and on the seas
We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon
Spread disease to everybody And the people were sick everywhere It was influenza epidemic And it floated through the air
We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon
The doctors, they got troubled And they didn’t know what to do They gathered themselves together And they called it the Spanish flu
We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon
Soldiers died in the battlefields Died in the camps, too Well, the captain said, “Lieutenants Oh, I don’t know what to do.”
We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon
Well, it’s God that’s warnin’ the nation He’s a warnin’ them in every way To turn away from the evil eye and seek the Lord and pray
We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon
Well, the news was presented to the people “You’d better close your public schools. “And to prevent the death piles buildin’ Ya better close your churches, too.”
We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon
Read the Book of Zechariah, Bible plainly say, “Thousands of people in the cities dyin’, Account of their wicked ways.”
We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon We done told ya, God’s done warn ya Jesus comin’ soon
Remember in a recent post I bragged about how well New Mexico was doing with covid? For weeks we had about 100 new cases a day. That was 100 too many, but it wasn’t an alarming amount compared to our neighboring states of Arizona and Texas, which were way out of control. But suddenly, last week, our numbers started rising. Instead of around 100 new cases each day, it was 200 and then 300 and then 400, and every day was worse and worse. Wednesday was 577 new cases and yesterday was 672! I have no idea what’s going on.
I don’t know what happened to make the cases start rising like that. It doesn’t seem like it could have been the weather. In early and mid October it was still hot in Albuquerque. (That was before the sudden rapid drop in temperature resulting in snow late in the month). Did New Mexicans get tired of wearing their masks? For months, New Mexico was probably the most masked state in the US. Even stricter than California, New Mexicans have been wearing their masks outdoors and well as indoors, including while exercising. For months. So what happened?
Along with a lot of the rest of the country, it has gotten so much worse since I wrote that post a month ago. Daily new cases rose and rose. It was 1,000, then it was 1,500…every new milestone was shocking. Yesterday new cases in New Mexico exceeded 2,000. That might not sound like much to those of you in populous states, but the entire population of New Mexico is only about 2 million people. That’s smaller than a lot of cities.
Since we’re in Arizona now, here’s the Arizona statistics – approximately 4,000 new cases yesterday, out of a population of over 7 million. So Arizona is actually doing better than New Mexico by percent of population.
I’m also having trouble believing the rate increases are due to the winter season. That’s a plausible theory in the north, but Albuquerque temperatures were in the 80’s and 90’s when rates started climbing there early last month. And it’s still hot in Tucson. It was 91 degrees today. That’s not winter weather.
There’s so much unknown. In addition to the rapidly rising numbers, it’s very concerning what we’re hearing about long term effects. People are exhausted and foggy-brained and have other vague but debilitating symptoms months later. It’s just hard not to worry.
Update: in New Mexico, over 2,000 new cases the day before yesterday, nearly 3,000 yesterday. A couple of months ago it was just 100 a day. What is going on?
Remember in a recent post I bragged about how well New Mexico was doing with covid? For weeks we had about 100 new cases a day. That was 100 too many, but it wasn’t an alarming amount compared to our neighboring states of Arizona and Texas, which were way out of control.
But suddenly, last week, our numbers started rising. Instead of around 100 new cases each day, it was 200 and then 300 and then 400, and every day was worse and worse. Wednesday was 577 new cases and yesterday was 672! I have no idea what’s going on. But I’ll tell you this – I’m not going to go anywhere!
Also in that same post I mentioned a Biden political sign with a play on words (just biden our time). I was going to put that one up in my front yard but John hates political signs. So we compromised and I put it up inside my courtyard where no one can see it. I think I lost that compromise, lol!
If anyone local wants it and is willing to come by, I’ll leave it on my porch for you, just let me know. It isn’t doing any good hidden in my courtyard!
Here is another Biden pun on our street.
We have a mixed neighborhood and there are also a few Trump signs, but I haven’t seen any puns on the pro-trump signs. They mostly just say something about making America great. Except one I saw that said something about “stop the bullshit,” which was funny, but not “haha” funny. Funny in an ironic and crazy way. Like seriously, who is the one spewing BS on twitter? Ok, deep breath, this will be over soon.
On our walk this morning I looked down and noticed this cute little rock someone painted and set out near the sidewalk. It was nearly hidden and hard to spot, so when I suddenly noticed it out of the corner of my eye, it made me smile.
Maybe John and I can compromise with a little Biden-Harris hand-painted rock subtly lurking on the ground somewhere near our mailbox 🙂
Can you imagine if Hilary had won, how many fewer covid deaths there would have been?
Along that line, Laura sent me this nice article about how well New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, is doing with controlling the spread of covid.
New Mexico is one of the few states that require masks to be worn whenever we’re outside our own homes. Masks are required regardless of whether we can socially distance, for all public spaces, indoors AND outdoors. To be ultimately clear, our regulations specifically state: even while exercising outdoors.
It’s a bit ironic, because we’re one of the most rural states in the nation. So John’s out there jogging alone in the desert at 6:30 am, with a sight distance of several miles, with no one in sight for at least a quarter of a mile, and masks are required. Meanwhile, dumb-asses are holding parties (mostly in nearby states, in our opinion).
We have handmade masks, made by friends and family (thank you). I have two that have a metal strip between the layers, which can be shaped to keep the mask from sliding down your nose.
I also have a cool patterned one.
John made his own gray ones.
He put a little slider bead on the elastic so he can adjust them. That’s what happens when you let an engineer loose with your sewing machine.
I can sew too, but when all this started immediately after my cancer surgery, I could barely sit, much less focus, so I appreciate friends and family making mine for me.
We eventually found one, very old, N95 mask. John had bought it many years ago, for a long-forgotten remodel project, probably involving lots of dust or solvents. He dug it out of some box in the garage somewhere, it somehow having managed to survive several moves halfway across the country and back.
We save it to use when risks are higher, such as the occasional times when he has to go into work. Even though we treat it carefully, the rubber elastic wore out. Here’s John replacing the elastic.
In some ways this seems like a very boring, mundane post. But just imagine this time a year ago. If you would have told me that we would be carefully changing out the elastic on a throw-away mask from the depths of some dusty box in the garage, I would have been, “huh?!?”
This blog post is going to be more on the serious side. It’s difficult to write (and may be hard to read), but I decided I really do want to write about this.
I finished my cancer treatment. Now what? During treatment, I was pretty much just focused on getting through the treatment. We had to figure out where to have the surgery, we had to get out there (Boston), we had to get into the system, get set up at Emily’s house, get records sent, get seen by doctors, get more tests, get the surgery scheduled and get it done before the hospitals were overrun by COVID patients and quit doing elective surgery (anything that is scheduled, including cancer surgery, is considered elective).
After the surgery I was basically incapable doing anything, or even thinking very hard about anything for awhile. The chemo treatments were rough. All through that struggle, I hadn’t really thought a lot about my long-term future.
I am relieved to be through the treatment stage. Now that it’s behind me, I’m starting to look forward. But I’m not fully and unconditionally celebrating. That’s because the likelihood that the cancer would come back is actually fairly high.
I haven’t mentioned the statistics before, although some of you may have googled it because I have given you specifics about my diagnosis before; Stage 3 colorectal cancer, T3N1. It appears that I’ve got about 60% chance that I’m completely cured of this cancer. And about 40% chance that it will come back within the next few years.
Average statistics are strange when applied to an individual. For me, it’s not 60/40. For me, it’s either going to come back or it isn’t. If it does come back, the average survival rate is very low. Maybe like 5%. All together, my current chances of dying within the next few years of cancer is about 35%. So dying soon is not the most likely outcome, but it’s actually reasonably likely. One in three.
Generally, I think it’s healthiest to assume the best. Most of us live most of our lives as if we will live forever. But I also think that it would be smart of me to put some thought into the question of – what if I only have one or two good years left? What if I won’t be here in 5 years? What would I do differently? Should I actually start doing those things now, while I can? Something that’s 35% likely to happen – seems like it might be wise to do a little planning for the possibility.
I don’t have a bucket list. I enjoy doing fun things in life, but I’ve never felt like I had to see Paris or the Galapagos Islands, or had to try sky diving. I also don’t have a big career goal or other life endeavor to finish. My children are grown and doing well.
I coach a few clients, and they are important to me, and I feel like what I do is meaningful. But the clients come and go. They work with me for several weeks or months or a year or two, they make progress (almost always they do make progress), and then they go on and do other things. There’s no endpoint or big project completion for me; the clients just cycle through.
I like camping and hiking, sailing and kayaking. I like meeting friends for lunch at cute little cafés. Outdoor patios have been my favorite for decades, long before COVID changed our opinion about eating indoors with strangers. I like music concerts and botanical gardens and walking on the beach. I like sitting in my own backyard with friends and family.
Prior to cancer I had planned to meet a Bay Area friend in Palm Springs and then we were going to go to the Bay Area together. I had planned to spend some time with Laura, getting rained on and looking at early spring flowers, just like we did the previous year. I had been thinking about visiting northern relatives in the summer. I also had wanted to make it out to the Pacific ocean, which is at its best in late summer. Late summer is also when Laura’s huge, old fig tree goes bonkers and I had wanted to make it out to Laura’s house to help her dry and preserve her yummy figs.
I don’t have ambitious goals. I’m not even sure how to write a bucket list. Before I die, I want to…what? Stay at a bed and breakfast in Taos? Hike in the Gila mountains? That doesn’t sound bucket-list-worthy.
I’m thinking maybe:
Make cookies more often.
Throw out that dish soap that I hate the smell of, rather than continue slowly trying to use it up.
Buy that ridiculously brightly-colored braid rug that will look good absolutely nowhere.
Order East Indian take-out more often.
What kind of bucket list is that? Maybe I should just pick something that sounds bucket-list-ish. A trip to Barcelona sounds good. Or Phuket? I don’t know. I made a joke about the Seychelles recently. Would it be worth two days of travel each way? Probably not. Plus, COVID. Can’t travel. Nobody’s even letting Americans into their country, for good reason, because we’re too dumb and stubborn to wear our masks and social distance and quit going to parties and shit. So whatever.
I sort of want a puppy. But what if I’m not going to be around for very many more years? I’d be saddling John with a dog for the next 15 or more years, and he’s going to want to retire and travel.
I’d like to spend time with my young nieces and nephews. But what if I’m not going to be around very long? Spending time with nieces and nephews is an investment in the long-term future – which I may not have. Plus, COVID. Can’t travel. Although I did promise Emily’s kids I’d be back soon. I certainly expected to be. But what if? Oh god, what a thought.
Should we go ahead and move closer to family now, even though it’s really not a good time buy a house right now? (And where is “closer to family” anyway?) The Bay Area? Should we buy the “dream house” now, at what is probably the peak of the market, and leave John in debt to a house he wouldn’t even want in a few years? In theory we could rent, but try to rent a house in the Bay Area with two dogs right now. It would take divine intervention. Plus, if I’m going to die, I want a private pool first, damn it!
One of my favorite authors is Jhumpa Lahiri. She writes mostly about what it’s like to be from India, living in the US. There’s a short story I read a long time ago, that’s come back to me recently. I don’t remember the title at the moment. But it’s about a man’s adult children struggling to accept his second wife.
When the man’s first wife died, he went to India to find another wife, and brought her back to the US. His new wife was of a lower education level and class, and his adult children treated her badly. They remembered their own mother; educated, beautiful, graceful – everything this lumpy country woman wasn’t.
The new wife missed India. Her friends back in India thought she was amazingly lucky to have married a rich man and moved to the US. But she was very lonely in her big, beautiful house in the American suburbs, which had been built for the first wife. When the first wife had been diagnosed with cancer, her husband built her the beautiful house with a pool, and she enjoyed it for a year or two before she died, swimming every day for as long as she could.
That story really stayed with me all these years, not because of the first wife’s cancer and her desire to have a beautiful house with a pool before she died, but because of the second wife’s loneliness in the wealthy US suburbs, far away from her friends and family and communal lifestyle in India.
At night, in my dreams, there’s almost always a lot of people around, friends and family gathered for some sort of vacation or event. There’s kids, and there’s dogs, and there’s chaos. There’s people needing to borrow cars to run errands, or borrow forgotten clothing items. There’s things that need fixed, like broken floorboards or fences to the keep the dogs in, and people like John trying to fix them. And neighbors stopping by with food or gifts, or maybe having found a lost dog or wandering toddler.
And almost always in my dreams, I have a baby. If I don’t have a baby myself, I’m taking care of someone else’s baby. Although most recently, it’s been my baby, not anyone else’s. The last couple of nights the little guy, a two-year-old toddler, has been a challenge. Last night he was eating carpet fuzz. And pleased with himself. Stop it! Geez. I cleaned the carpet fuzz out of his mouth but there was more, and next thing I knew, I was pulling cotton batting out of his mouth, in a long rope, as if I were pulling it out of his intestines. (Hmmm…that sounds a bit like a reference to the cancer.)
They say that dreaming about babies means there will be a new endeavor, big project, or new phase in one’s life. That sort of sounds hopeful, but no matter what happens, I’ve got a new phase in life coming. It may be a wonderful new phase, or it may be a short and very difficult new phase. All I know so far about my new phase is – he’s busy eating carpet fuzz?
We talked with both doctors, my regular doctor yesterday and a specialist from Seattle today, and they are in agreement; I’ve done enough chemo.
Their reasoning is similar. I was presumably cancer-free as soon as I had the surgery at the end of February; the chemo was just to reduce the chances of a reoccurrence. The first three months are the crucial months, it matters less after that. There’s only 1%-2% difference in long term outcome for 3 months vs 6 months treatment. I’m having a lot of problems with side effects and the risk of permanent damage from the chemo outweighs the slight increased risk of reoccurrence.
The only thing the specialist said that was different than our regular doctor, is the specialist wondered why the heck my cancer center didn’t have me test for COVID when we called to tell them I had a fever. She said, “Chemo doesn’t by itself cause a fever.” Something was causing the fever and she would have wanted to have figured out what it was. It’s true that the chemo was probably hindering my body’s attempt to deal with whatever was causing the fever – but that’s all the more reason to figure out what was causing the fever!
My cancer center did check for a urinary tract infection (which I didn’t have), and they did the standard bloodwork to checks for signs that I wasn’t handling the chemo well (for example, my white blood cell count was low but not hospitalization-level low). But other than screening for a UTI, they didn’t really look for infections and they didn’t have me test for COVID.
The other thing they didn’t do was take any precautions in case I had COVID. They routinely check everyone’s temperature on their way into the center, but since we had called and said I had a temperature, they put me on a special list to admit me with a temperature. Huh. And then they treated me the same as everyone else. Masks are required, 6-feet distancing requested but not enforced in any way, busy waiting room, etc.
I don’t have a temperature anymore so I’m not going to bother getting tested for COVID now. But in hindsight I should have done so two weeks ago. In hindsight it seems crazy not to have gotten tested. But we reported my fever immediately to my doctor and followed their instructions. I thought the chemo was causing the fever along with everything else. I’ve been quite sick and chemo has been the reason. The fever was just one of so many symptoms I’ve been dealing with since starting the chemo.
I know the rest of the world is understandably hyper-focused on COVID, but my life has been revolving around cancer. Cancer is the problem, cancer is the reason, cancer is the fight I’m fighting. For me, everything is colored not by COVID but by cancer and the effects of the chemo.
I’m just going to continue to lay low for awhile and hope to feel better soon. I already feel somewhat better. No more fever, no more headaches. I still have a messed up GI system, no appetite, no energy, tingly hands and feet. And chemo-brain.
My brain is chugging along slowly, the same as the rest of me. I feel stupid, listless, apathetic, timid, confused, anxious. I’ve lost my spark; I don’t tell funny stories anymore, I don’t crack jokes, I’m not creative or playful or proactive. I’m no longer trying to constantly improve everything around me. I just wander around trying to remember to do basic things like move the laundry from the washer to the dryer. Chemo brain is the hardest symptom of all of them for me, and I hope I improve soon.
One thing I have noticed, is that I don’t feel celebratory. Whoo-hoo, I’m cured of cancer, no more chemo! Right? Except not. I feel unsure and vaguely uneasy. I feel a little bit like I failed chemo. And I have more things yet to do – CAT scans and bloodwork every 3 months, and yearly colonoscopies.
There’s no real end point, like a graduation, or getting the job or buying the house. We’re just in the next phase – waiting. Waiting for the chemo side effects to slowly diminish, waiting to do the next set of screenings, waiting for it to not come back. I don’t feel done. I won’t really ever be done. After awhile the frequency of the screenings decrease. By roughly around 7 years from now my risk of cancer reoccurrence will be down to the same as everyone else’s risk of cancer. Is that when I celebrate?
Certainly I should be grateful, grateful that I have no known cancer at this time. But that’s been true since the last day of February and it’s been a hard several months since then.
I’m cautiously happy about the idea of things getting easier over the next few months. But I don’t know if I’ll ever be quite the same again. I’m sobered by the whole experience. I can’t say I ever really trusted the future and I certainly don’t anymore.
I should be grateful for being alive, but I don’t want to just be alive. I want to be lively. I want to be funny, flippant and clever. I want to be confident and benignly capricious. I want to be sexy and snarky. I don’t want to be the old woman peeking out her window at a big scary world. I want to be the teenager who thinks she’s going to save the world.
But first I’m going to go dump some crushed pineapple and spices into a vanilla cake mix and hope for a better outcome than the last time I tried to make cake. And maybe I’ll even eat some of it. Or not. Or maybe I’ll just continue to sit in my hammock under the pine trees and remind myself how lucky I actually am.
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