I’m amusing myself taking pictures of the flowers in our yard. These are just using an older iphone, with no retouching except cropping them.
John did the hard work of growing them. I just wander around taking photos.
The little things
Category: Uncategorized
Darren’s Here!
Darren came to stay with us! He plans to stay until the work-from-home orders are lifted and he needs to go back home. I’m soooo happy to have him here! I was stressing his two-day drive from Boise to Albuquerque (that was part of my stress from yesterday which I didn’t mention because he hadn’t arrived yet and I guess I’m superstitious, lol.) I always worry when people are traveling.
I’m happy he made it safely! Although now we get to wait around for a couple of weeks to see if we get covid. Everything is so fraught these days! He wore a mask and was very careful and stayed at a campground instead of a hotel. He’s even wearing a mask when around us in our own house! And we’re avoiding close contact. And I’ve got the evaporative cooler blowing air constantly through the house.
I meant to convert to refrigerated air this spring, but then I was in Boston getting cancer surgery and now it’s a pandemic, so I never got my air conditioning. Turns out the evaporative cooler is very good at pushing a lot of fresh air through the house, which they say makes a big difference. But who knows, it’s so hard to know what is prudent and what is just unnecessary and not going to make any difference anyway. Traveling out here from Boise was a risk, but I’m just so glad to have him here.
Today he did a video interview with Laura about autism for her company’s diversity program. I listened in, and it was absolutely amazing. Like wow. I’m going to see if I can get the recording of the video and post it. It was so impressive.
And now he’s helping a friend of mine move. She was trying to do it all by herself and it’s just not possible to move furniture alone. So he’s got gloves and a mask and they’re doing their best to social distance. The reality is, sometimes we just need to interact a bit with each other. How is she supposed to move alone?
I wanted to help her myself, but I’m still recovering from surgery. I’m not in much pain, just twinges when I move in certain ways, but I feel like I have a long, narrow piece of cardboard inside me, horizontally across my lower abdomen. It’s stiff and pulls and just feels wrong. I guess it must be internal scar tissue. Anyway I’m not supposed to be lifting heavy objects, which presumably includes furniture.
It was very nice of Darren to spend his first day here helping out my friend, after doing a fabulous job of talking to Laura’s coworkers about autism.
What Activities Are Safe?
I don’t usually just repost articles, but this one is very good. The author, Erin Bromage, is a professor of immunology. It’s about how COVID is transmitted, to help us better understand what’s dangerous and what’s not dangerous. Thanks to John for sending it to me (and to Erin Bromage for writing it).
https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
The good days and the bad days
I’m in middle of a break week, between rounds of chemo. Unfortunately the side effects of chemo persist for quite awhile, so it’s not like I magically feel better the moment I quit taking the pills. However, I have had good days, or good parts-of-days. And I’ve had some bad days too.
The bad days include stomach issues. My stomach cycles through all the various non-fun things you don’t want your stomach to be doing. Every day is a new day, with new different kinds of stomach problems, yay! Bad days also include migraines, tooth & jaw pain, hand and foot pain, rashes, blotches, eczema and a variety of other more minor issues.
I’m also generally very tired and don’t sleep well at night. I’m having hot flashes at night, and I wonder if I’m actually going into menopause? It’s time, I’m that age. So yeah. World pandemic, cancer, migraines, menopause, let’s just get it all over with at once! On bad days I also have bad moods. Anxiety, depression, irritability. There are times when I just sit in bed, crying. On bad days I think I’m going to die (I’m not really, at least I don’t plan to anytime soon).
There are a lot of good days too. On good days, John and I walk around the neighborhood and admire the plants in everyone’s yards. On good days I sit outside in the shade and read a good book. On good days I answer emails from my friends. By the way, some of you are very good at writing those “I’m just checking in to see how you’re doing” emails. I appreciate it! It’s a gift. It’s a skill. It’s something I’m not very good at. It takes time and effort. Thank you!
On good days I spend a little time cleaning the house, and maybe cook something better than average for dinner. (Like cookies, lol!) John and I are really strictly isolating ourselves and are not bringing in groceries or take-out or delivery at this time. We are eventually going to have to get another grocery delivery. I am sick of frozen vegetables and really want a good salad. Mmmmm…butter lettuce with chilled shrimp in a lemon dill dressing. And I’d like a croissant with that, please. Other days I dream of mixed greens with all the Greek toppings you can imagine. I’m dreaming about food. I mean, literally.
It was not all that long ago that John and I happened to have an off-hand conversation about how we never dream about food. John usually dreams about being late to catch his plane and his presentation isn’t ready. I dream about falling-down houses with gaps in the walls and missing fence boards and my dogs are going to get loose. Neither of us ever used to dream about food. I am now dreaming about food.
On good days I do a little stretching to music and look forward to the day when I can work out again. On good days I amuse myself with organizing the pictures and music on my computer. I know that sounds super boring. Imagine it being similar to a playing a puzzle or playing solitaire. I’m really not up for much mentally right now. I basically can’t handle the news, or most TV shows. Anything that most people consider entertaining is going to be too much for me. But I enjoy my pictures and my music collection – of about 10,000 songs and over 40,000 pictures. It should keep me busy for awhile!
Before cancer I used to read publications like the Atlantic and the Economist. I now read short, lightweight novels set in places like southern France or remote Greek islands, with feel-good, soap-opera plots. I am just not the me I used to be. Although I did recently read a heavy and thought-provoking book about what it’s like to be nonbinary. Maybe I’ll post more about that soon, it was interesting.
John and I are planting things in the yard. We have sprouts coming up and flowers blooming.
You’re like, “Uh, dirt and weeds?” No, seriously, those are BABY FLOWERS!
I’m even coaching a little bit. I have a few good clients who know my situation and are flexible if I have to reschedule without much warning. It’s good to be able to still do something useful, even though I’m stuck at home. That’s the advantage of a part-time, home-based business!
I took a risk and booked a vacation rental with a private pool in Tucson for the end of August. Remember how much I loved the pool last year? It’s so weird to think back and realize that I had cancer then, but I didn’t know it. The house I rented this year is smaller, more affordable, and closer to the bike trails. It looks nice in the pictures in the internet ad.
Note that the only two pictures I bothered to post are of the pool, lol. But don’t worry, the pool comes with a pet-friendly house. I’m really hoping that the chemo, cancer, covid, and everything will line up right so we can go.
Rapping Fox in Sox
This is surprisingly awesome! Thanks to Laura for sending it.
Chemo Challenges
The goal was 2 weeks of chemo and one week off, before doing it all over again. Well, I made it 12 days. Which is pretty close to 14 days. But not quite. I did ok for the first 8 or 9 days and then it got really hard. Now I’m going to rest for 9 days and see about starting again.
Maybe when I start back up again I can take a slightly lower dose, or only take it for one week before a break rather than try to do two weeks straight. I’ll have to see what my doctor says. I talked with her on Wednesday when things first got bad, and we decided to wait for one more day to see if anything improved. She was supposed to call back on Thursday but never did. Meanwhile I was continuing to get worse. So when she didn’t call back on Friday either, I went ahead and decided that my last dose for this round would be my Friday night dose.
Now I’m looking forward to 9 chemo-free days 🙂
A friend on the news
A friend of mine, who also has cancer, was interviewed by the local news. If you click on it, it should load the news video (after an ad). Kathleen explains why she appreciates it when people wear masks when they’re walking outside. It’s a gesture of respect for those who are out walking who are immunocompromised.
Songs Around the World
A friend of mine sent this:
This program has a great premise. Lots of talented musicians from all over the world play the same song, and then it’s mixed together. Meanwhile, on video you can see the musicians playing in their own environment. The musician’s name and their location is subtitled. They’ve got South Africa, Japan, Spain, Hawaii, Cuba, Argentina…everywhere.
Most of the musicians are playing outside, so the footage is fascinating. You can see villagers standing around listening, dogs wandering through, children and grandmothers dancing, urban laundry hanging from brightly colored buildings. The musicians are also all dressed differently, some very casually, some in traditional robes and costumes.
The songs are all different. In the playlist I posted above, the first song is in Spanish and then most of the rest are in English; a few are in other languages. It’s all different kinds of traditional and popular music from around the world, including a lot of Western folk music. Country, blues, African, Latin, reggae, etc. A lot of the songs I recognize at least slightly.
There’s even a Jimi Hendrix song, (number 17 on the playlist above). It’s sung in Argentina, Hawaii, by the Lakota in Sioux Falls, in Chicago, Italy, Zimbabwe, New Orleans, Lebanon, Niger, Ojai (which is an expensive, retired-hippie artist’s colony in the mountains north of LA), Ghana, India, Japan, Mali…it’s by far the coolest version of “All Along the Watchtower” that I’ve ever heard.
This is the main link, were you can then choose different playlists, https://www.youtube.com/user/PlayingForChange
Thanks to my friend Rosemary for telling me about it!
The crazy things tenants do
Funny story. I think John was a little annoyed, but I’m just shaking my head.
John went over to our rental yesterday, the one that’s on the market. He wanted to fix a few little things and do some watering. He came home to tell me that there’s an outdoor faucet missing. Hu? Like, completely gone. He says there was a faucet along the side of the house and it’s completely gone. No faucet anymore. No hole in the wall. Nothing. Like it was never there. He went to use it to water some flowers that our real estate agent had put in a pot at the entryway, and the faucet didn’t exist.
I was not inclined to believe his memory. There are faucets in the front yard and in the backyard. I figured there never was a faucet along the side of the house. I was sure he was confusing it with a different house. We’ve had a lot of houses, and we’ve never actually lived in that one; easy to get confused.
I couldn’t imagine a tenant would remove a faucet, cap it off, re-stucco the wall and repaint? But John was like, I’m not going crazy, it was there. So he went back through a bunch of old marketing photos I had on my hard drive. He’s right. There used to be a faucet there.
Every year we nag all the tenants to winterize their water lines. They must have failed to do so and burst a pipe. And apparently it was cheaper to cap it and patch it all over than it was to replace the faucet.
That house had a fair amount of turnover, so we don’t even know which tenant did it. It wasn’t the most recent guy because he’s a friend of mine and he would have said something. We think it was the people before him, who were a bit of a problem in some other ways. But we will never know, because someone pulled a fast one on us!
Staying Home
John sent me this, it’s a little tongue-in-cheek video about how to increase unhappiness. It wasn’t originally written about staying home for the COVID crisis, but it turns out to be relevant.