Month: April 2006 (Page 2 of 3)

I took some pictures of all my finished objects yesterday – I have been bad about updating on the knitting front, but I have finished two scarves & two pairs of socks, plus a third pair on the needles. (for my dad; I feel like hand-knit socks are hugs for your feet.)

I would put all the pictures in here but our internet connection at work is a PITA. And I have a hundred things to do today. So! If you care to click on my Flickr badge over there on the right, the first bunch of photos/most recent are of the Noro scarf, the Opera scarf, the beaded hand-dyed socks, the On Line bright self-patterned socks, and the blue/green socks for my dad. I’m also going to knit him a lightweight hat, like a Kufi-style hat, so if he loses his hair & wants something soft for his head, he will have it.

Oh, look, the little gerbils started running on the wheel & the internet’s going a little faster:

On Line socks

And now the gerbils are taking a smoke break. No wonder they can’t power the wheel more than five minutes at a time. Damn smokin’ gerbils.

OK, this is one motherfucking rollercoaster we’re all on. Dad’s got the front seat & all the rest of us were snatched up at gunpoint to ride this thing and we’re in various positions of clusterfuck seating. Pardon all the swearing, I’m feeling rather colorful and angry today.

I spoke with my dad twice yesterday evening, and his spirits were excellent. He actually enjoyed his first radiation treatment, because, as he put it, it felt good to know they were killing those motherfucking cells. Kill! Kill! and then we both started doing the bit from Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Massacree about how he was sayin’ keeel keel, jumpin’ up and down and we were both shoutin’ Keeel Keel and I wanna see blood and guts and veins in my teeth and my god, it was good to not be crying. (if you haven’t heard that piece, just know my father & I were not actually jumping up and down.)

We are definitely going up there next weekend (barring any nosedives on this rollercoaster); my aunt will also be there, and Brenda’s daughter will be back in school & her son will be with his dad – so we will be able to stay with him. I was prepared to stay in a motel (somewhere), so he’d also have his space, but he sounded happy & excited to have us all together. The part of me that lives in my brain, perhaps it is the old wise gnome who wakes up a little bit more each year I’m alive, knows and tells me that there are a thousand more ascents and descents on this ride we’re on. Right now I’m clinging to the seat back, grateful we are in a semi-flat part of the ride this morning, that the sun is shining and I don’t see the plunging-into-darkness terror in front of me today. It probably also helped that I had my doctor give me something to help me sleep, and for the first time last night, I didn’t have the hamster wheel creaking & spinning behind my eyes while I stared into the dark, waiting to sleep. (She gave me something that is also prescribed as an anti-depressant/anti-anxiety. Bonus!)

Today is a new day. My husband just rolled by the house on our new (used, yay eBay!) riding lawn mower & I thought the noise was coming from our neighbors. It made me laugh. The smell of fresh-cut grass is awesome. Thank you again for all your emails & comments, your sympathy & prayers. I will hopefully be able to blog about some other things soon, joyful & funny & bitchy. Today, I leave you with a picture. My knit night friend Peg just got a 7-wk old lab pup, Sam, and she brought him to knit night, where he got to meet Remy, the 4 & 1/2 month old siamese kitten. Damn funny stuff. (I used my phone camera so forgive the quality…)

The cancer has spread to my father’s brain. Radiation begins today, chemo to follow. Second opinions to follow as well. At least we have action & steps & things to do while the question of where the cancer is coming from is still to be determined. I hate hearing him cry. Perhaps that is the price we eventually pay for a society that doesn’t want a man to cry, ever, so he is always the rock, the strong man, the wise and knowing being who never wavers, and yet sometimes life throws huge curve balls that bring you to your knees.

He wants to be alone. I so desperately want to hold him, see the wrinkles around his eyes as he squints at me with his sardonic humor. He wants and needs alone, because that is how we are. We rebuild and fortify in solitude, find our center, help us get off our knees. I turned and screamed through a snotty blur at a co-worker yesterday, “I CAN’T BE AROUND ANYONE RIGHT NOW”. She was trying to offer to drive me home, bless her heart. I called later to apologize, but I needed, REQUIRED my solitude at that point. To sit and hang on the steering wheel and sob until my chest hurt, then to drive home, so slowly, bobbing my head rythmically, counting silently over and over, as I resealed and respackled the fissures and cracks in my heart so I could function another day. And I’m not the one fighting cancer.

So I will wait. And daily reseal and respackle and accept that I will not have a single day for a while, where my eye makeup stays on all day. And I feel gratitude to everyone who lets me be this way, who doesn’t judge or tell me what I should do. That is a gift, and I am blessed to have so many people who care and are praying and want to see this whole thing turn out well. I thank you from the bottom of my broken little heart.

The email signature of a sales rep, who has no idea how much the words meant to me:

When the World says Give Up

Hope Whispers, Try One More Time

I have subscribed to the Hazelden Gift of the Day email for over six years – I found it after I failed to get my mother to enter their treatment program. Funny thing was, she just didn’t think drinking an entire bottle of vodka and almost dying was really indicative of a problem. I’m always the CRAZY one! {Insert big moose-hand rapid-waving by my ears here.} Sometimes the emails don’t do much for me, sometimes I save them for their poignancy & appropriateness – and today’s couldn’t have been more spot-on. So I share it with you, as I climb back into my hamster wheel & try to wait patiently for more news. I’m thinking of embroidering “No situation is more than we can handle” into my forearm.

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
— Dorothy Bernard

No one of us is always courageous. With trepidation we embark on many journeys. Fear is dispelled each time we rely on our inner strength and trust that our lives are in good hands.

Self-talk is powerful and will prepare us to meet whatever lies ahead today. Self-talk is like prayer and quiets our fears, making it possible to give our full attention to the events transpiring. Self-talk, when positive, cultivates a healthy self-image, one that offers security, even in the face of disaster. We all carry on a dialogue with ourselves much of the time. Taking charge of the messages — making sure they enhance our personal well being — is an option always available to us.

No situation is more than we can handle. Whatever courage or strength is needed is as close as our willingness to go within, to commune with ourselves.

I must own my fears before I can let them go. Courage follows closely on their departing footsteps.

I had a good conversation with my father late today, no real news, that will be tomorrow, and even then, they still do not know where the source of the cancer is. But treatment (radiation) has been mentioned, and really, all I wanted to hear was him sounding so much better, which he did. He is out of patience for everyone rushing around as though he is about to die. He suggested perhaps the influx of visitors and well-wishers bring pointy sticks with them, so they can poke him & see that, in fact, he is still alive. Once I know what the next steps are, I will plan to visit him and, well, poke him with a stick. He invited it.

Tonight is the least obsessed I have been in five days. That’s not saying the obsession and rumination and big hamster wheelin’ ain’t happening, but it’s at least half a step down from code red. or code purple. Who knows what code level I’ve attained lately.

Here’s the funny part. Someone found my blog today, by searching for the word “dickcakes”. I thought, when in hell have I ever even USED that word? And why was I surprised to discover, that indeed, I did say it.

Scrotum Pie. There. Now another wacko can find me.

* We still don’t have a diagnosis. It’s unsettling, we were first delayed from Monday to Tuesday, then on Tuesday to Thursday. It’s a little like someone you don’t know juggling with your soul & the souls of those you love, waiting breathless and praying they don’t drop them. It’s a lot like sucking.

* I am perfecting the click of my eyes into the 1,000-yard-stare. Sometimes I look right through people.

* My most common reaction to things that would ordinarily send me screeching (and blogging) is succinctly captured in the form of two lines from an Eminem song:

Screaming “I don’t give a fuck!”
with his windows down and his system up

Because, in fact, I don’t give a fuck if the spot ran wrong or you want a schedule to start on Monday or you need a plan. My father has cancer. He told me yesterday it’s Stage IV. But that it didn’t mean anything, it only meant it’s in more than one place. Well, there’s no Stage V, no matter where you google. So. How do you know it’s Stage IV without a diagnosis of what the cancer is? Does this give you a glimpse of what the hamster wheel in my head looks like, the one I climb on and run at least every five minutes, the one I can’t shut off at night unless I take something to sleep? The one that spins the tears and the hope and the futility and the helplessness? The hamster wheel I cannot leave, until I have more information, I cannot separate it from my head or my heart, I cannot turn it off, I cannot let go because it is sometimes the only thing that keeps me going, when I want to collapse in a heap, when I want the one person who could fix everything when I was a kid to give me answers he doesn’t have.

* Do the right thing. This has been a common theme on the hamster wheel. To go home now, to wait. To respect my father’s needs & wishes, to care for my own as well. (He is already exhausted by the people & family there non-stop streaming into his home & through the phone.) None of these can truly be answered until we know what we’re dealing with. I know my presence would be a drain, it would also be a benefit. Being the only child is an enormous trump card that bears great responsibility and great wagering. The only thing I’ve done is start to knit him a pair of socks.

*Breakdowns are becoming a daily way of life. A junior AE tried to set up an interview for our department intern & called me on the phone to see if I would be available. I burst into tears. This is my new way of telling people what is going on, it seems to be working. At least it’s effectively communicating “GIRL IS CRAZY”. Which in the end, is what I want to leave people with. Ayup.

That’s all I’ve got. It’s an effective snapshot of pretty much every ten minutes in my head. If only my hamster wheel were a good fat-burning device, instead of a crazy-sobbing hope-despair track to nowhere. I’m getting there fast, that’s for sure.

Oddly enough, I believe our conversation started as we were watching the news & the coverage of the Hispanic protestors on the telly. Suddenly JWo was singing, and I did not, for the life of me, recognize the song. Here are the lyrics he was singing:

“And there’s a word in spanish I don’t understand
But I heard it in a film one time spoken by the leading man
He said it with devotion, he sounded so sincere”

Now, keep in mind, there was a lot of EMOTION in the singing. And big hand movements. So all I could really focus on was how funny it was. And because I refused to recognize this song, we had to go upstairs & get on the computers and listen to the snippet & prove that, indeed, my husband knows his Elton John backwards & forwards, and I have, at some point, heard this ballad.

JWo: “It came out in 1988. Whoa. You were on Social Security then.”

“Oh shove it. (I’m THREE years older than JWo.) I was listening to COOL music, like Scritti Politti and Flock of Seagulls. I didn’t have time for pop.”

JWo: “I’m getting into Elton John now, just to spite you.”

“I’m just saying, he’s pretty GAY.”

JWo: “He’s not gay, he’s just a snappy dresser!”

“HE MARRIED ANOTHER MAN! That makes him GAY!”

JWo: “Hey!”

“You are so gonna see this conversation blogged.”

JWo: “HEY!”

I’m a little raw right now. My father called Friday night from the hospital & told me he has cancer. He has a lesion on his spine & a spot on his sternum & they were giving him pain, so he went in. We’ll know today what we’re dealing with & what the course of action will be. It’s rather amazing, how much stuff sticks to your wound once the abrasion has been made; watching Johnny Sack dance with his daughter at her wedding on the Sopranos last night made me blink back tears – and there are a hundred other things in the past two days that have shot tears to my eyes. Like, taking a shower. Showers are good for crying, I think. Water washing the tears away, cold tile on my hot face. I just keep telling myself that we’ll be strong & optimistic & there are a hundred things in our favor – early detection, he’s a tough motherfucker, people beat cancer all the time. I started to write a blog yesterday, a recap of the conversation, but I couldn’t even let JWo read it, and I couldn’t finish it. Too many tears. Damn me for not buying waterproof mascara at Sephora!

*If I had a bitchin’ Camaro, I wouldn’t goose it and challenge a Porsche on Ward Parkway to race. I’m sensible like that.

*Insider Blasting & Ho-Ram Scoop: The girl who was hurt? Hanging on the fence leaning over the blast site. Sure, the blast screwed up? But that’s not too far from looking down the barrel of a gun to see if you can see the bullet. DARWIN called, he wants you out of the gene pool!

*More Scoop: One more week of HO-RAM. Then, corrected blasting on a same-time-every-day daily basis. The sensation of the building falling around me will still be there, so I’ll be leaving the building same-time-every-day for a while. Rational? Probably not. But I’d rather be up the hill and feel the earth shake than inside wondering if I’m going to be crushed.

*Sephora opens today. I shrieked (no joke) at my boss when he tried to set a meeting that would conflict with a long lunch hour. I have my priorites, people. Plus, I’m a little fried from burning the candle at both ends AND the HO-Ram. He’s revising the meeting time. I should probably shop for some aromatherapy?

*Sims Update: You will all be happy to know that my Sim has recovered nicely, she no longer weeps constantly (but our roommate does – GEEZ, she’s irritating.) Now I need to figure out how to unlock the gnome so all the cheat codes can be used. I’m terribly excited that there’s a gnome. And yes. I’m a cheater.

*This has probably been done, but I’m thinking of a fun Blog Day called “Flash Your Bath”. I would love to see just how jammed everyone else’s bathtub/shower area is & what-all products you have. I know I’ll need to splice two photos to get all mine in the pic. ;) Whaddya think?

HAPPY FRIDAY. May your day be free of HOs and HO-RAMS.

….makes me smile……

(Sorry. couldn’t resist the schmaltzy song!) Took these pictures over the past weekend, leaning back into the tree. This is one of the trees Polly thinks she should be able to climb in her Squirl Patrol Exercises. She’s quite persistent in the War on Squirl Terror. And, really. Couldn’t we all be a little more vigilant?)