The new year, 2024–we’re way into it. It’s been too late for a while to say happy new year to someone. You no longer accidentally write “2023.” We’ve plunged in, and that dive for many includes r-r-r-resolutions. Dry January. I’m gonna start hitting the gym. Book clubs.

Let’s do something maybe a little easier. How about this year commit to making a friend younger or older than you?

This Charley Locke article in Vox “You should have more friends of all ages” suggested just that, saying, “Making friends with those outside of your age range — people 10 or 20 years older or younger than you — can be challenging. But those relationships can widen your world, providing perspective and community beyond your current experiences.”

(As a pleasant surprise, I had bookmarked this article when I decided to write about this topic, and when I opened it discovered a former Drexel student I know well was featured! Go Devin!)

A person I much admired, my former neighbor (sigh) Bob Heck, was to me a model of this. He had friends of all ages, and it seemed to make him a considerably more well-rounded person. As he aged, of course, those intergenerational friendships tended to be with younger people, those he mentored but also simply seemed to enjoy sharing his numerous hobbies and pastimes with.

People can of course diversify friendships and relationships in many ways, but leaping age barriers can provide a unique lens for taking in life, for all the expected reasons: Our younger friendships can help us look at things in new, fresh ways, and with an older friend we could share their vantage of experience.

This doesn’t mean older people have to walk around with a bunch of 20-year-olds saying “fire” and “cap,” or if you’re in the “fire” and “cap” crowd to go see 80-year-olds perform in classic rock bands, but making friends outside of your age bracket can help our perspectives be more flexible and nimbler.

I often think life does tend to push us toward rigidity of belief, starting even when we’re young, and making achronological friends seems a way to slow this. A great divide in human experience seems to be viewing others without valuing the viewpoint their age brings, and we don’t do enough to experience the first-hand experiences of those outside our age range.

As my daughter is finishing up grad school and preparing for a major geographic move, she started babysitting, and she is having the incredible opportunity to be around a baby, whose developmental milestones amaze her. While of course you don’t have a friendship with a baby, her marveling at these daily developmental milestones made me think about how we don’t maintain that sense of wonder. We instead see chronological others through lenses like “Those kids today!” or “Old people are so lame”?

Okay, baby milestones are easy–and fun!–to see, but there are such markers we could find in all of our relationships. As Locke wrote in the Vox article, “Different life stages offer and require different abilities: In your 20s, you may be looking for career advice and are able to help parents connect with a distant teenager; a new parent may be looking for a support system that can become part of their extended family; a recent retiree may have plenty of time but seek more day-to-day connection.”

Developing a friendship with someone much older or younger provides you with opportunities, and I think as does any relationship built around appreciation of others, these opportunities in the end enable us to slow down.

No matter our age, we could all use more of that.

Tags: ends & odd, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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This year’s holiday quest
Ranked neither naughtier nor nicer—
I simply wished to buy my wife
A humble bagel slicer.

“What could be easier,” thought I,
With a confident Christmas laugh,
“Than to find that mundane item
That cuts your bread in half?”

In the spirit of the season,
Out I ventured to the stores.
The holidays don’t grate on me–
I like strolling the mall’s floors.

But something unmagical occurred
As I went from shop to shop.
No bagel slicer could I find,
Despite my many stops.

Oh, I found tools for grating, chopping,
Liquidating, dicing, icing.
But nowhere could I seem to find
A device for bagel slicing.

Sure, I could zest some lemons,
Squeeze juice from silly limes–
Mist oil? Check. Cut grapes? Indeed.
But no bagel slicer could I find!?

Decapitate some broccoli!
Carefully measure out some tea.
Cleave tomatoes, mash potatoes—
What was happening to me!

I began to think I was the butt
Of some cruel anti-Santa joke:
Victim of the bagel slicer buy-out
By a Grinchy miser of a bloke.

I went to five stores, ten, then fifteen,
Enlisted shoppers much more able,
But I began to concede my wife
Would must hand slice her Christmas bagels.

Then rambling through South Jersey I saw—
A restaurant supply store!
“You don’t need to be a member!”
Cried the cheery fellow at the door.

I asked the manager in small voice,
“A bagel slicer—please, good sir?”
With a merry laugh he pointed,
And my goodness, there they were!

Bagel slicers stacked up all neatly
Both in metal and in plastic.
The amused cashier had never seen
A patron who found them so fantastic!

I’ve relayed my tale to many folks—
They sputter, “Yo dummy: Amazon!”
But they don’t seem to understand
That would have ruined all the fun.

Because on Christmas morning,
Hearing my wife’s bagel-slicing Splat!
I bragged to all those near me,
“Oh, the work I did for her to find that!”

Tags: ends & odd, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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It was exactly like they said it would be. We had three kids and it was this runaway train for years and then all of a sudden on September 9th youngest kid moves out and you look around and the house is empty. Just like that.

In a cosmic joke, I vowed when I was young to never have kids, but I’ve loved being a dad. Make no mistake, though, I lived through those 20+ years. Some of it was grinding–let no one tell you differently: Eight years of sleepless nights changes a person (and that person’s hair color). But when I look back, I mainly remember the good things. That’s a little ego integrity life reward: You hold on to the good things.

Now I’m 54 and everyone has moved on.

I was dragging the trash can out on Sunday night, a task that was the responsibility of others although I sometimes got stuck doing it. When I did, though, I could accompany my labor with a nasty text about why dad was doing someone else’s job: Hell to pay!

As I rattled the big green can through the dark that night, though, I realized I can’t “subcontract” this chore out now. And a thought hit me as I performed this most quotidian of jobs:

That’s the end of that.

For years, I’ve been arranging activities, clipping articles, logging movies and books geared around this home full of little people who grew big fast. Almost all parents start with a baby in a crib and a list of What are we gonna do next?

You’ll probably never get to it all. The homemade doll house. The tree fort. Getting that pool installed (which we may still do to spite them or lure them back home–you choose).

I don’t want this to seem all melancholy or sulky. My youngest was on three vacations without us this summer and all of them have been busy for years, so our house, once a perpetual hub of activity, gradually grew accustomed to quiet.

But the thought hits me everywhere.

We went over to watch some Palmyra high school soccer, and for the first time since 2013, there was no Warnock out there.

That’s the end of that.

I was on the phone wandering the house, and I went into Zachary’s room. He had cleared out most of his stuff, and I was jolted by the echo; it was as if I was in a room in a new house. I hustled out as if I were in danger of being bespelled.

[Screeching tires indicating an abrupt halt]

Then, while writing this as a way of doing a little empty nest processing, I got (finally, after 2.5 years) COVID. I was flattened for a week. Forget the nest, my brain felt empty; I was as sick as I’ve been in 20 years.

I’m slowly getting back my energy, and I’m among the living. People have asked me what it’s like “to be an empty nester,” and I say that the COVID thing broke my stride of experiencing what it was really like.

But I do look at the agenda of what’s before us.

I get up on weekends, and the house is calm. I want to ask whoever is home what their previous evening was like, but there’s no one to ask.

That’s the end of that.

I had vowed not to be the father of Harry Chapin or Everclear ballads, and I feel a sense of triumph that I overcame and wasn’t that. We didn’t build the tree house, my kids and me, but we did plenty. I was there the whole time. No regrets.

But daily, as Zachary thrives during his first year at school, something happens that reminds me:

That is the end of that.

Tags: ends & odd, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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A few years ago, because she wanted me to cut something down and my gas chainsaw was decrepit, my wife bought me a battery-powered DeWalt chainsaw. For my limited purposes, its battery oomph works great.

Last year, I added a battery-powered DeWalt lawn mower. Suddenly, including the hand-me-down battery-powered weed whacker I got a few years ago, I’m close to green landscaping!

A general side effect of battery and electric power is you get metrics, even simple ones like the three little green power indicators on the lawnmower. There’s no doubt this information has made me a better fellow traveler on our planet.

Now, as I mow my grass (and I’m even working to rid myself of this grass and go for natural landscaping to be even more eco friendly), I’m determined to get it all done–front, sides, and back–before the batteries drain. Where I would once make these neat, (spouse-pleasing) angular rows, I now hustle. I make wide, curvy turns instead of hairpins. My mowing is eddy shaped.

I mow faster. I’m more in tune with the world.

(In moments of mid landscaping despair, I reflect on the gas I wasted during past gas-powered lawn cuttings.)

But all good things have a revenge effect, and now I have a new kind of strife–family strife. More than ever, I’m on my son to “cut that there grass right!”

This draconian lawn-cutting oversight I engage in is a perfect breeding ground for passive-aggressive male child behavior. He pushes the button and pulls the lever. From there, he lollygags. He saunters. He strolls.

I watch him pausing in a state of dreamy oblivion and making these sharp, time-consuming, double-back turns. I grow exasperated. I know what those little green lights are doing.

I bully. I fulminate. I yell.

I eventually use my latest go-to line of disdain, going for the jugular on my soon-to-be Drexel University student. I let him have it: “And you’re going to be a civil engineer?!” I sneer the last two words, knowing full well he can hear me because of the purr-like quiet of the battery mower.

To his credit, he is unfazed. He feels not flogged nor stunned by my verbal fusillade but in fact stumbles through it as he continues his wasteful landscaping.

And he gets his vengeance… the battery lights dim from 3, to 2, to 1.

He’s not even finished the backyard, and the mower is out of juice. Kaput. I howl in anger.

For Father’s Day, my wife got more batteries. (Surprise!)

So now when the batteries die, he calmly goes in, has a lemonade, and gets the replacement packs. He’s in the house for hours, maybe weeks.

While I seethe.

It is not lost on me that now even my rage is battery powered.

Tags: ends & odd, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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It wasn’t complicated. He had fallen at dialysis a few weeks ago, an event that occurred only a week after his surprisingly speedy recovery from having a pacemaker implanted.

He fell at dialysis at least in part because he refused assistance when he needed, mid treatment, to use the rest room. He went in, and then down he went.

Following that fall, tired of dialysis, of the, to him, shackling dependency that accompanied it, he said, while in a hospital bed at Cooper, “No more.” Maybe there were other factors. COPD. The elusive pains of aging. The ever-shrinking world that accompanies getting old, especially in our culture.

It was his decision and that was it. I only made one pitch for future possibility, describing a few things I thought he might consider living for, but he had done the mental calculus about those things and was moving forward. When I brought up my kids, his grandchildren, he said, “That’s your thing. Let’s talk about my thing.”

My brother and I respected the decision.

Years ago, I read an article in The Atlantic about the burgeoning issue of elder care in our culture. The article described it as a largely hidden problem—until we talked about it, maybe even with some stranger on a train, and then we realize how many of us share these challenges.

Decisions. Once you say no more, there still needs to be a place. You don’t just welcome death and lie in the grass and he comes to get you.

There is a lot of waiting. Where would it take place?

He posed the option of going to his house—to what?: To being bed-ridden and alone?

We mulled it over and then decided he would experience hospice at our home.

My wife was a damn hero about it all. She created a bright, sunny care space in our front room. She hung a painting of the first night game at old Ebbet’s Field and a display of his Marine service medals, featuring two Purple Hearts from Korea. Family photos everywhere. A room that colorfully said “home.” He could be hard-hearted, but he said he marveled at the love around him. He said it in a way that affirmed for me how little of that he had had in his life.

She took the job seriously, compassionately. I would find her, day after day, sitting in the front room with him, working on a puzzle.

The kids were great. They handled this process as best they could.

Samaritan Hospice—what would these people be doing if they hadn’t found the call for this kind of work? Their efforts were extraordinary.

He went through an initial period of calm, but then he became frustrated and angry. “It’s all shit!” “Nothing’s worth a shit!” Again, you can’t just lie down and will death. The body is tough, even when denied food and even finally drink.

Other moments. Two nights in, we found him on the floor without a stitch on. There was equipment around the railed hospital bed. There was no way we could figure he could have made it to the floor without falling, but there was no thump. Slid down, amongst the equipment? There he was, while the three of us tried to shake out the cobwebs and figure out what to do. You don’t call 9-1-1 in a hospice scenario. Finally, we had this exchange:

Me: How did you get up?

Him: Up?!

Me: Yeah, we found you lying here on the floor.

Him: Well that’s not really up, is it?

He and my wife got to, uh, know each other. Without dialysis, the body becomes intolerably itchy, and she regularly saw to that. One day, he said, “Scratch my heinie. About this time we’re pretty good acquaintances.”

At one point, my wife and brother thought it was surely over. I arrived home from work, and they rushed me into the house for the final good-bye. I sat for a minute, but then, unconvinced, I walked away to get a sandwich. He was lying there, unresponsive, and then popped up and looked at them brightly: “Hi guys!”

Anything complex grammatically and semantically became difficult then impossible. His vocabulary funneled down to simple commands: “Up!” “Juice!” “Drink!” and of course “Death!” This life-long accountant, trying to explain, in head-gripping frustration, about how he wants to count the “home runs” in the “fiscal quarter.”

Discussing the dying process is always a curious thing, especially in our still virtual era. It’s weird. You’re going through this at home, downstairs, and then you go upstairs and log in to a virtual meeting. It seems especially inappropriate to drop it on people in a Zoom meeting or on email.

There are renewed connections, though. I talked to an aunt and cousins in California I haven’t spoken to in decades.

But my dad was a hermit. Misanthrope. We didn’t have a ceremony, because he was outside the warm sphere of humanity, seemingly by choice. I had to laugh when I came across this a few weeks afterward:

“I got nothin’ against mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.” pic.twitter.com/cThtEx7emk

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) March 18, 2022

My work handled it all great, humanely. So did my wife’s. So did my brother’s. As people around us found out, they did what they could, and it was always enough: A little food. Some conversation. Contact.

My brother found podcasts of old games, including the greatest NFL game ever played, the Colts-Giants 1958 NFL Championship that my Dad not only attended but still has the ticket stub. My wife created a play list. I couldn’t help but pause when I heard Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” as he was fading, fading…

Then the rattles. No real pain, but total disconnect.

That last night, two-and-a-half weeks after he arrived, I cautioned my son when he was out later than our bedtime not to go in and check on Grandpop, as I didn’t want him to make the unfortunate discovery. My son came home at 12:30 and did peek in: Life was soldiering on.

I got up 6 a.m. the following morning and he was gone.

Tags: ends & odd, health & medical, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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I have again wrenched myself into the 21st century. Last year I did it through TikTok. This year, Venmo.

This Venmo thing took a big leap of technofaith, since I had only recently started depositing checks electronically. I was driving to the bank with paper checks in my leather wallet–I know, I know: it was, as the kids say, ridiculous. It was time to get modern.

I signed up for Venmo. Not long after, someone wanted to give me money. I told them my Venmo userid. And they did! Look at me, exchanging money online–whee!

Now if you are a late teen or 20-something, the rest of this will no doubt strike you in a “Wow that dude’s old” kind of way. You’ve been warned. But that’s where the story is.

So one day I open my Venmo (is “open my” the proper phrasing?) and look around, and I notice that I can see that Jimmy gave Jenny “$20 for drinkies.” Jeffy paid Jilly and there’s a French fries emoji. Somebody paid somebody for “Sticky Buns.” Serena paid Virgil accompanied by a GIF of a fingernail getting painted.

On and on. I was stupefied: What was I seeing? I’ll tell you, uh, whipper-snappers what I thought I was seeing: The intimate financial transactions of people, many of them strangers.

My befuddlement led me to what I thought was a good question: Why would people want other people to know how they spend their money?

I posed this very question to many of these people and others like them. The general response I believe can be summarized succinctly: “Who cares?” Not only did they not care, but few could even understand why it mattered.

If I thought this was weird, people said (sometimes stifling a yawn), I could simply make my own transactions private (ah–I had already done that!). But what was the difference?

This behavior was outside my sphere of understanding. In my world paradigm, financial transactions are private. They shouldn’t be social. They shouldn’t be media. Especially when it is easy for them not to be.

However, as I scrolled through the endless transaction list of pizzas and drinks and articles of clothing and drinks and tickets and drinks, money eagerly exchanging hands, I wondered if my perception was what needed changing.

Doubt crept in. Why should these things be private? In real life (IRL), wouldn’t I have seen these people in public with their drinkies and pizzas and other stuff, handing money to another person?

What’s the difference if I’m seeing it all secret-like on my phone? Who does care, and, in our digital world, what does it ultimately matter?

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You’ve heard this everywhere, but I’ll still do my little part here: Get out and vote. I believe if enough people do, we’ll move on from this embarrassing chapter in U.S. history, and we’ll reduce the chance of hemming and hawing and resisting and bs’ing.

Get out there and vote so the swell of numbers means we don’t have to listen to lies about fraud or tampering. Make all of that not matter by virtue of decisiveness.

Tampering? I admit I’ve been mystified since 2016, when everyone was crying foul because Russian bots were running amok on social media and ruining our democracy.

I kept thinking, wait, not Russian tanks or paper-shredder-wielding soldiers or poison-toting spies. Bots. Carrying little pieces of stupid information. My frustration would well up that these bots were an excuse, that our elections’ integrity were being questioned because people weren’t smart enough to do some research on a stupid little fake news story they read on Facebook.

We’ve got to do better. We cannot allow phony ads to influence our vote for the President of the United States.

We’re not living in mud huts cowering and shivering every time it thunders. Shame on us for this nonsense even being a factor in our election. I know digital deceptions–deep fakes, etc.–are getting more complex, but everything can be double-, triple-checked.

It only takes rudimentary critical thinking skills to see through slick editing to a lack of substance, especially when you factor in motive: If a message you receive is being propagated to better someone’s chances at election, at any cost… c’mon, connect the dots!

If you see, for instance, a photo of a bunch of bikers with a caption saying they are praying for the president’s recovery outside Walter Reed hospital, you just need to look around a little to see this isn’t true.

Facebook and its kin, for all the money they make, should police content better, but if your decisions are being primarily governed by material that you’re reading on social media…

… well, here we are.

Smarten up, and get out and vote. Inform yourself, even a little, and then vote. Think of it, as Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum wrote in “Citizens Guide to Defending the Election,” as something proactive you must do: “To put it differently: Instead of treating democracy like tap water, Americans must start fetching it from the well, carrying it home, and boiling it before drinking.”

I’m no prognosticator, and perhaps I’m naive, but if the vast numbers of people who think what’s happening now is a disgrace show up and vote, there’ll be no conversation come early November about the transfer of power. It’ll be too overwhelming to be a conversation.

Who knows, maybe the incumbent will even surprise us with a show of decency in conceding in the face of massive polling numbers.

If that image cheers you, however unbelievable it seems, then get out and vote.

Tags: ends & odd, politics & government, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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It’s been more than forty years since I made my last, final and permanent move out into the civilian world … leaving behind the life of a military brat, which had been mine since the day I was born … and making a new life ‘out there’ …

Life is different off-base … and, so are the people … not better, not worse … just different …
[Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd by Jeff McDonald
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10. Every St. Patrick’s Day, when they dye the Chicago River green, it just looks like pond scum

9. People always making fun of the size of his shillelagh

8. On his day, number of people fraudulently claiming Irishness just to get a kiss

7. Compared to Saint Nicholas’s helpful elves, St. Patrick’s leprechauns are nothing but a bunch of drunken troublemakers

6. After you’ve heard “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya” a few million times, you’d kill for a simple “Hello”

5. Only saint whose name is associated with massive hangovers

4. When St. Patrick’s Day revelers get sick on green beer, they look like Linda Blair

3. The way Trump can’t open his mouth without a big lie falling out

2. Hasn’t had his Blarney Stone kissed in years

1. Snake bites
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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10. What did the clock do after it ate?
It went back four seconds.

9. How do you make an octopus laugh?
Ten tickles.

8. How many great men were born in New York City?
None, just little babies.

7. How do you make a rock float?
Put it in a glass with some ice cream and root beer.

6. What’s the worst thing your wife can say during sex?
“Honey, I’m home!”

5. What’s the difference between roast beef and pea soup? Anybody can roast beef.

4. How do you find a blind man in a nudist colony?
It’s not hard.

3. What do the Starship Enterprise and toilet paper have in common?
They both circle Uranus looking for Klingons.

2. Did you hear about the guy with the invisible penis?
He came out of nowhere.

1. Why does Donald Trump sleep with a tub of hummus?
Because there’s nothing he LOVES MORE than having a chickpea in his bed.
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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10. Wow, you dress like the Grim Reaper one time and they never let you back into the nursing home!

9. My uncle was so stubborn, when he died he left a won’t.

8. I’ll tell you what makes my blood boil: crematoriums.

7. I used to hate it when my old aunts came up to me after weddings and said, “You’re next,” so I started saying it to them after funerals.

6. On my tombstone I want it to say, “Failed to forward chain letter to five friends.”

5. When a mime passes away, do his fellow mimes observe a moment of talking?

4. When I die, I’d like the word “humble” to be written on my statue.

3. My friend Dave drowned, and for the funeral we got him a wreath shaped like a life preserver, because it’s what he would have wanted.

2. For three days after death, hair and toenails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off.

1. The easiest job in the world has to be coroner—surgery on dead people—because, even if everything went totally wrong, the worst that could happen is you’d get a pulse!
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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I think people are afraid to ask me about the cancer these days. That’s kind of funny when you think about how forward and open I have been with all of this. To be fair, though, I suppose it’s possible that they are waiting for a blog explanation? Looking for me to fill in the blanks? I may need to fill them in for myself, as well.

I think that there is usually some kind of grand announcement. Patients get a PET scan or MRI and then a doctor pronounces them NED– no evidence of disease. That hasn’t happened for me. It’s been a little more foggy, so I’m clearing it up for myself. It’s probably time I dragged you into the clearing.

After my surgery in April I was told that my surgeon got clear margins, meaning that as far as anyone can tell she cut out all of the cancer. We (James and I, upon meeting the oncologist and resident) were told that we were “talking about being cured” and that I was “basically cancer free.” Now, the surgeon had already recommended radiation therapy, but that is usually done later (or in place of chemo, like with a lumpectomy). I knew I didn’t want radiation. If my surgeon hadn’t taken so many lymph nodes– like, all of them– then I might have been more interested. However, the lymphedema risks with radiation, along with the cardiac risks associated with radiation, outweighed the added benefit for me. But, back to the wishy washy oncologists who never used the term NED. They strongly recommended chemo to lower the risk of recurrence. Statistically speaking, it does this for many people. I had a previous oncologist do a test on my first biopsy tissue called a Mammaprint. It showed me at a higher risk for recurrence and recommended chemo. Have I mentioned all of this before? Anyway, I never wanted chemo but obviously I did the chemo. Still no one handed me a NED card.

Now, I’ve been working with an integrative oncologist in Az, right? He has done some blood tests. We did cancer antigen tests before surgery (elevated), after surgery (normal), and last week (normal). We also did something called a Biocept test. That test came back at 0. Goose egg. No circulating tumor cells. Still no NED card or announcement.

Here’s the problem: that pesky little thyroid nodule. Technically, it’s cancer. But, it isn’t doing anything. It’s just sitting there. As a matter of fact, it shrank a smidge, even though chemo has no effect on papillary thyroid cancers. I’m basically working at willing it to vanish. The surgeon who wants to take it out is checking on it every four months. Meanwhile, after I went vegetarian all of my thyroid numbers normalized. On paper, my thyroid is healthy. Just don’t look at the ultrasound. lol

So, I’m like 99% NED.

I’ll have another thyroid ultrasound in March. I had a clear mammogram on the remaining breast in December. I’ll have an MRI in April.

They took out my port, which was HELL. I continue my quest to educate the medical community regarding the fact that natural redheads need more local anesthetic. They continue to torture me, only coming round to my side of things (and reading the fucking studies) AFTER they have tortured me. The port removal left a sizable scar. I wish that I had thought to ask them to make me a lightening bolt shaped scar, because sometimes it aches, and I’d like to tell my children that it hurts because Voldemort is nearby. Also, he knows you didn’t do your homework. He’s not happy.

I have not had any reconstruction. I would very much like some of that. However, we got some new insurance this year. Turns out it’s awful and none of our doctors (not a single doctor at Moffitt) are in network. So, I’m plastic surgeon shopping again. I want something called a DIEP, because I don’t want implants and I just want to do this once. Not everyone does it. It’s a difficult surgery, you want someone who does it on the regular. It’s a six week recovery time kind of thing. Maybe later in the year.

My OBGYN wants to perform an oophorectomy— I like saying that word out loud– and I just might let him. It lowers my risk of recurrence about the same amount as taking Tamoxifen, which I am not taking because of side effects and also because I have a genetic mutation that raises my risk of blood clots. I have an appointment to discuss this with him further in June. In March I have an appointment with a Naturopath OBGYN to discuss with her first. I generally find that the naturopath md’s are more honest with me about risks and side effects.

My eyebrows are back. One of them is predominantly grey. My eyelashes are nearly back. Not quite as long as usual yet. My hair looks like I cut it this way on purpose, sort of. It came back very grey and very curly, so, ugh to that. I have colored it and am having a hard time getting to a shade like my natural color. So, no, chemo won’t give you bright red hair. Don’t try it. On a happy note, my pubes came back their regular lovely shade of strawberry blonde. Maybe you were curious, but afraid to ask. Now you know.

I mostly feel ok. I get tired easily. Some days I just don’t have any energy. Some days I can really get a lot done. I take a lot of breaks. I take a ton of supplements, still. They help. I know this because I’m out of two of them and waiting for them to arrive. I’m told that it could take me a year to feel like my old self. My good days are pretty freaking good, though, and my bad days will never be as bad as last year’s bad days.

I think that should take care of most people’s questions. I feel cancer-free. Sorry if I posted links that I’ve posted before. It’s just easier than going into long explanations. I mean, you’d rather read about my pubes, right?

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10. When I popped into the bar and tried to open a ‘Transvestite Account,’ the first thing they did was ask me to provide proof of a dress.

9. The people who talked about me behind my back discussed me.

8. My electrician friend accidentally blew the power to the ice-cube factory next door, and now the company’s gone into liquidation.

7. When vandals destroyed all the road signs in our town, they really pulled out all the stops!

6. I think the highlight of my life must’ve been reaching the summit on Mount Everest, because it’s all been downhill from there.

5. I entered a swimming contest and won the 100-meter butterfly – but what the hell am I supposed to do with an insect that big?!

4. My hamster died from lack of exercise, so I don’t think he had the wheel to live.

3. Ahhhh, return flights, they really take me back.

2. Kleptomaniacs always take things literally.

1. I miss my umbilical cord, because I grew attached to it.
 

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10. When I asked the stewardess, “Can you telephone from this plane?” she answered, “Sure, this plane is gigantic and has wings!”

9. A customer was rude to me at the McDonald’s where I work, and I got back at him by not putting any Coke in his drink – so just ice was served!

8. After the psychic midget escaped from jail, the headline read “Small Medium At Large”

7. I was taught how to get on an airplane at boarding school.

6. Pilots look up to astronauts as farther figures.

5. I bought a replica fisherman’s knife, made to scale.

4. Ever since I started using volumizer on my hair, the voices in my head have been a lot louder.

3. Yesterday we wanted to eat Italian, but this enormous woman was standing in the restaurant doorway and we couldn’t get pasta.

2. When the clock factory burned down, there was a lot of second-hand smoke.

1. Terrorists have been hiding bombs in cans of alphabet soup and, if one goes off, it could spell disaster.
 

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10. I resolve to lose just enough weight so my gut doesn’t jiggle when I brush my teeth

9. I resolve to stop drinking, the moment I pass out or all the booze is gone

8. I resolve to finally find Waldo

7. I resolve to keep my ambitions within reach

6. I resolve to solve world hunger

5. I resolve to email back that Nigerian prince who keeps trying to contact me

4. I resolve to buy a t-shirt that says “LIFE” on it, then stand on a street corner and hand out lemons to passersby

3. I resolve to drive by my gym at least three times a week

2. I resolve to keep all my resolutions to myself this year

1. I resolve to limit my number of resolutions to nine
 

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10. Black & Decker Silly Driller

9. Gasp! – The Saran Wrap Game

8. Hello Kitty Tiki Torches

7. Fontanelle Lawn Darts

6. Hospital Waste Grab Bag

5. The Alt-Right Indoctrination Kit

4. Fisher-Price Choking Hazard

3. Jihad! – The Self-Detonation Game

2. Easy Bake Microwave

1. Baby’s First Nail Gun
 

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10. Regular naps prevent aging, especially if you take them while driving.

9. My car’s such a piece of crap that its resale value goes up or down, depending on how much gas is in it.

8. I consider the word ‘Dodge’ on the front of my truck to be fair warning to jaywalkers.

7. Have you ever noticed anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anybody driving faster than you is a maniac.

6. I just got into a car accident while reading a sign telling me to keep my eyes on the road.

5. My new house has a circular driveway, and I can’t get out.

4. Apparently, everyone in my town thinks the saying is, “Don’t think and drive.”

3. Honking endlessly isn’t going to make me drive any faster – stupid geese!

2. I just bought a crappy secondhand car and the only gear that works is ‘Reverse’ – but I’m happy, as long as it gets me from B to A.

1. If you try braking, it will give your driving a bit more 00mph!
 

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The last several weeks have been all about the anticipation of an end. An end to the chemo. An end to what we think of as the miserable part of the treatment of this disease. I mean, the whole thing is pretty miserable, but this part is literally poison. This part has been so hard on my kids. They feel it every day. They have begun to understand this pattern in our lives, the way the week begins with a pretty good Monday, then the infusion hits on Tuesday. Wednesday I have steroid energy (but also steroid crankiness) and then the rest of the week is a slow, agonizing climb back up to an almost normal mom on Monday again. My six year old daughter is terrible at knowing what day of the week it is and what day we have plans on, but she knows when it’s Tuesday and what that means in our house these last months. So, this countdown to next week’s final chemo treatment has been on the forefront of our minds. It comes up a lot. A lot a lot.

I’ve been seriously looking forward to the end of chemo. I’ve been beyond looking forward to building my poor body back up. Man, am I jiggly and soft. I try to go for walks when I can now, but it’s so damn difficult and exhausting. If I walk too long I blow my energy for the rest of the day. It’s like I have this finite amount every day and when it’s gone it is just gone. I wish I had a battery indicator light so I could know when I’m pushing it and could know to stop. That would be super helpful. I’ve been thinking about the joy of getting to Tuesday, November the 28th and not going to chemo. Tuesday mornings I feel decent, and I’m downright excited to have a Tuesday that doesn’t get ruined half way through with poison. I think I’ll go to the beach that day and fill myself with salt air instead.

I’m looking forward to having the energy to walk every day and work my way back up to doing yoga. I’m looking forward to going back to physical therapy for this damn arm that got ruined by the surgery. I’m looking forward to having the energy to do all the chopping and cooking that goes into a healthy plant based diet. I’m looking forward to not having to tell my kids that I can’t do whatever or I’m too tired for this or that. I’m just looking forward.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about the last few weeks. It felt like when you’re a kid growing up poor in the 70’s and it’s three weeks until Christmas, and you know your mom has been scrimping together money all year to make it beautiful and you know you’re going to get what you want from Santa, because even though you often don’t have enough food in the fridge you always know you can count on Christmas. Like that.

Then a few days ago I had a long phone consult with my naturopathic oncologist. He’s putting together two protocols for me. Well, actually, he already did, I just haven’t read them yet. One is for helping me clean up my body post chemo. One is for going forward in life and remaining cancer free in the future. (according to some charts I have about a 30% chance of recurrence, according to others as high as 50%). When I hung up from that call I wept. To be honest, I just barely kept it together through the call at all.

Because part of this is over, though there are still more surgeries to come, and part of it will never really end. I’ve had to make changes (that really, I should have made anyway, that make sense for all humans in this world) and I can’t go back to living the way I did before. I want to get back to normal. My family wants to get back to normal. Then there is this realization that there has to be a whole new normal. I can’t live my life in fear, but neither can I live my life in denial. That’s a hard reality to face when you’ve invested some serious time and thought in the idea that this is all about to be over.

Next week is my last taxol infusion. They have a big bell that you ring when you are done. There’s no school next week, so the whole family will be with me. My kids are pretty excited to ring that damn bell. Hopefully they don’t break it. That would be just like us, to over do it and crack the thing. Hopefully it feels like this is over for them, that the new normal just bleeds into their old normal and things get easier for them, lighter. This week has been all kinds of heavy, and maybe next week it doesn’t magically all go away, but at least I could (as my son would say) level up.

Thank you, cancer, I get it now. You can go away for good.

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I’ve been walking, lately. And I’ve been walking a lot more, getting out past my usual routes of recliner-to-frig, and car-to-office. And the funny thing is, I’m LIKING it.
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Tags: ends & odd by Jeff McDonald
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10. “I couldn’t afford a Fitbit and thought this would be the next best thing.”

9. “I’m a big fan of ‘pumping’ iron.”

8. “I thought it would be a good way to meet one of those hunky firefighters.”

7. “I made a miscalculation; the 6-pound dumbbell has a bigger hole.”

6. “It’s the male equivalent of Kegels.”

5. “It takes a dumbbell to fuck a dumbbell.”

4. “I’m very nearsighted, and I honestly thought it was a cat.”

3. “I misheard something about the gym being overcrowded, and then something about cramming in a member.”

2. “I was practicing my short-range ring toss.”

1. “Well it had a hole in it, didn’t it?!”
 

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