Peeking into the rock

Today or tomorrow, the surgeon said, we should get the pathology results from the surgery. I thought the oncologist said it would take longer than a week, but maybe she said it would take longer than a week to get started with the next phase of treatment.

Anyway. The way it goes is that there are two possibilities. Either the margins are good or they are not. If the margins are good, I don't need another surgery. If they are not, the surgeon needs to go in and take out more flesh. And beyond that there are two possibilities. Either the lymph nodes are free of cancer, or the lymph nodes have cancer in them. If the lymph nodes have cancer in them, I need chemotherapy before I have radiation. If the lymph nodes are free of cancer, there are two possibilities. Either the cancer cells from the breast have a high oncotype score, or they have a low oncotype score. If the oncotype score is high, I will have chemotherapy before I have radiation. If the lymph nodes are clear and the oncotype score is low, I will go directly to radiation and thence to taking hormone blockers for five to ten years depending on another string of possibilities.

The numbers are with me in each of these if/then situations--I mean, it's more likely than not that the margins are good, the lymph nodes are clear, the oncotype is good. If that is all the case, then I suppose I advance from "cancer patient" to "cancer survivor"--or do I do that at the end of radiation? I'm not sure. If any of those things are against me, I stay a "cancer patient" for that much longer.

I just want to open the box and see which I am, but it's not even 8:30 so I need to be patient.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law is insisting on paying to paint my house  but the problem with that is that he's insisting on doing things his way, which means insulting the professionalism of the painters and insisting on breathing over their shoulders while they work. I almost fired him and started thinking about how to get the money for it myself, but then I used my cancer situation as a lever to get him to slow down instead. I'm going to use the time gained to figure out how to get him to trust the painters to do their job. He refused to consider Zack's painter, I believe because he doesn't trust Zack, and got three folks off of Yelp: the first two are kind of bros who started painting irregularly and independently but a long time ago so they're licensed and they have crews now. The third is a woman who got where she was by working for another painter for a long time and studying for various certifications before she took over the business.  Myself, I feel I have reason to trust any of the four of them (including Zack's painter), but if I'm choosing and I can't throw the business to Zack's guy, well, I think you can guess which one I want.

I have a bad head cold for the first time in years. I forgot how stupid and sleepy a cold can make me. I'm good for a few hours in the morning, when I do a bit of housework, take the dog out, and write a little. Then I doze and struggle to do anything at all for the rest of the day.

And now I am off to pick up my Grey Bears vegies and walk the dog and visit my friend Glen, which will take up the rest of the morning. I did poke a little at one of my projects this morning, but I am soooo slow and stupid that I made little progress. I did realize how little I know about horses (hence th previous post).

No writing done yesterday: I went to the center and moved boxes and furniture and then I was in too much pain. But this morning I am better. I only wrote 1300 words, which barely puts me at 50K, but that's all right, because I figured out how to accomplish a lot of things in those words. Those new characters that interloped on Saturday are earning their keep, so that's all right. And anyway, they will keep me from having to introduce other characters lter, since they have replaced them all.

Found while trying to get some terminology straight: Lamber Simnel, who sounds rather like the outline for a boy's-love story in which the protagonist eventually finds love and peace of mind with a falconer's apprentice.

Going in early because my coworker has a sick kid.

And lastly, the Prague contingent has determined that they're going to marry at some point in the discernible future, which will apparently involve taking out a license there and eventually throwing parties wherever necessary. As Frank says: it's an excuse for a pie.

And I say: good enough. One big wedding was enough for me.

I've written about this before, but I feel that the story bears repeating. Here is a version of my letter:

The personal side of this to me is that I had a slight to moderate elevated chance of permanent damage or death each time I was pregnant, and the thought that Mississippi lawmakers are set on making it illegal for me to enhance my own chances of living to raise my own children is just terrifying. I suppose I don't expect them to value my life higher than the possibility that some dividing cells could become a life, but the lives of my children seems like an issue that ought to matter even to the most intransigent of mysogynist warriors for the faith. Not to mention that the life they say they are bent on preserving would be harmed greatly by the death of its mother, even if it escaped death or hideous injury on its own.

But abortion was legal and fairly inexpensive in my childbearing years, so I lived, and my children grew up with an intact mother. And they're doing well. Their father died too young, but they did have a full set of parents growing up.*

*This is my own, cross-cultural definition of a full set of parents: a full set of parents being a family of adults dedicated to raising the children together. This definition does not depend on gender, number, or residence. An incomplete set of parents is created by the death or absence of a person who ought, for reasons intrinsic to the family, be present.

This will show my age:
one of my favorite songs ever is Bert Jansch's "Bright New Year," which I thought of all the time with respect to my own mother. Here it is covered by a young man who gets it okay.

Bert Jansch - The Bright New Year

Hello mother dear
Hope you are well and happy today
I do love you and think of you
Each single day
I dream of seeing you happy.

In summertime I thought
I would be able to see you again
I do love you and think of you
Each single day
I dream of seeing you happy.

As the bright new year
Draws closer now
I'm on my way
To bring you my love
And wish you good cheer over there.

Actuallym, I saw my mother all the time. But there is this feeling of concern and worry and maybe even downright fear that mom's falling apart, maybe going crazy with the weight of age and separation -- I lived with it all the time after I left home. She was going crazy and she was falling apart, she was fragile and my father dumped her when she hit middle age -- I like to think it was not because she was getting older but because he couldn't deal with her fragility and because he wanted to live the life he sang about, the free-hearted anarchist, and she was anything but free-hearted.

I didn't really intend to talk about any of that, really. I just wanted to make note of how I've started the new year.

New Year's Eve the dog and I walked in the New Year Parade, with the Women in Black, relatively silently, sandwiched between the bagpipes and the gamelan. Seriously. It's Santa Cruz, that's what we do for the New Year. Then I went to Connie and Israel's house meaning to stay for an hour and come home but what I did was stay till two-ish. Also I cooked. I made cauiliflower and cheese thing, not a great example but edible, roasted roots, chocolate bean flour cake with walnuts and agave syrup instead of sugar and some of the butter replaced by peanut butter, and also sesame candy with agave syrup. I'm not sure that agave syrup is actually lower in glycemic load than other syrups, because I haven't seen a source I trust, but it's rumored to have its fructose molecules all chained up into less-available fibrous strings. I need to talk to my favorite nutritional biochemist. AlsoI swept all the floors and did dishes and laundry.

New Year's Day I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, a lot of floor cleaning and some throwing things away and wiping down surfaces and moving papers around. And then the in-laws came over and we went to Bean Hollow Beach for the traditional Minus Tide Viewing, with the dog of course, and with the intention of going to the famous Duarte's artichoke restaurant of Pescadero, but it was closed, so the inlaws took us to a Greek restaurant in town and I had Horta Vrasta, which is dandelion geens boiled and served up with lemon and feta. And also a dish of "gigantes," which are butter beans in a kind of thick mild starchy sauce, better than that sounds. Everything was pretty good except the avgolemono, which was too lemony and at the same time bland. I put my name on a list to be notified when they have music (and dancing) night again. And I promised to tell Helen, my sister-in-law, when they tell me. She's Greek and is wistful about dancing.

I forgot to put my card in at Bookshop for their New Years' Day drawing. Oh well.

Yesterday I took the dog to the field and she romped around sedately and I had successful conversations with human beings. Then I went and visited my brother which was pleasant though I think the dynamics in his family are not and I fear for their equanimity over time. I forgot to take the telescope and contact the guy in El Cerrito who wants to buy it. I think my original plan of only dealing with locals is the only way to go. I can't deal with all this far away stuff.

Today I pruned half my apple tree and sprayed it and the plum tree and the apricot tree and the pomegranate tree with dorman oil spray. I still need to do the rest of the pruning and get the prunings into the greencycle can. But this is the first time in years I have gotten the first dormant spray done before late February. I just paid attention to the weather for once and I noticed that there was going to be no rain for a few days and I went for it. I also cooked some more --m some eggs and some rice and lentils for the week -- and swept some more -- I sweep and sweep and vaccuum almost every day and I still have barely made a dent in the mountains of dust that have accumulated while I was wrapped up in a little mourning ball -- not that I've ever been a great housekeeper. Also I dyed some white underwear orange, because orange was the color of dye I had for historical reasons, and orange is not as bad as white, at least I think it's not, we'll see.

I meant to get out to Lighthouse Field with my clipboard, but when I thought it might be either the field or the pruning, I thought the pruning was more immediate.

Also, over this same period I have written 7000 words of a probably 10K word story. One of my endless "fellow with little to no self-esteem and his crush" stories, but this one features the song "Spanish Merchant's Daughter:"

Father was a Spanish Merchant and before he went to sea
made me promise to say "No Sir" to all you say to me
--No sir, No Sir, No Sir, No Sir

I know your father was against me. Should he not return from sea
And they say you have no mother, would you then say no to me?
--No sir, No Sir, No Sir, No Sir

Yes I know I have no mother, should father not return from sea
Then you see I have a brother who would take good care of me
--No sir, No Sir, No Sir, No Sir

If we were walking in the garden, plucking roses wet with dew
Would we be in any way offended if I walk and talk with you
--No sir, No Sir, No Sir, No Sir

I know the world is very cruel if you have no one to care
But I always will say no sir until from father I do hear
--No sir, No Sir, No Sir, No Sir

As we tarry in the garden and we linger side by side
would you tell me I must leave you and refuse to be my bride
No sir, no sir, no sir, no sir,
No sir, no sir, no sir, no no!



Tomorrow, back to work.

We're getting estimates on the roof and the painting. The brothers-in-law are making sure I don't space out on basic maintenance of the house as it is my ace in the hole. So John came down and held my hand while I called people.

Frank got his ballot and voted and mailed it back in in a hurry because he was worried about missing his deadline.

I've met with my favorite lawyer and started getting the house out of the joint tenancy and into a revocable living trust. After some discussion I have decided to make them both trustees even though what will happen is Emma will make decisions and Frank will agree to them and take too long in signing papers. I'm having the lawyer write in language that includes any future spouses and children, so if I lag in updating things it will still be easy to administer.

I went to a Bat Mitzvah on Saturday. The intention was then to spen the night with my old friend Lizzie but I freaked out and had to come home and hole up. This was the second time I've left town since Ted died and I was not ready to spend the night away from home.

The Bat Mitzvah will get its separate entry in a bit, because it was really interesting. But I do have to say that Bat Mitzvah, couple with the stuff I'm doing now for my kids,certainly strengthens my opinion about Proposition 8 (not that it needed strengthening). The Bat Mitzvah girl is the child of a lesbian couple, and in order to do the things I am doing now, her mothers have to go through many extra hoops. And they shouldn't have to.

Off to walk the dog.

Most of you only know that the person your condoling me about is important to me: maybe you've gotten snippets over the years of my life with him, something he said, something we did together. I think since you're all being so very kind to me unconditionally, you deserve to know something about the guy. I'm not about to sanctify him, I'm just remembering him. Honestly, he was a grump and a slob (like me), and he could be socially awkward, and he dressed like a hobo no matter what I did. My children's friends remember him as the pantsless guy -- when he didn't actually have to go somewhere, he would frequently walk around the house in just a t-shirt, bare from the hips down, just pulling the hem down over his crotch when he had to pass in someone's view.

Gunter Grass said in The Tin Drum that a story really ought to start with a person's grandparents, so I'll tell you: his grandparents were, respectively, Austro-Hungarians who arrived in San Francisco ready to to take advantage of the building boom after the 1906 Fire and Earthquake, and on the other side, North Dakota Norwegians who broke away and came to Oregon to live like real Americans. Ted wasn't the first in his family to go to college. That would be his Aunt Elsie who did so withought her father's blessing or cooperation, and in fact against his prohibition.

Ted's a Peninsula boy, raised mostly in Menlo Park when that was a pleasant comfortable working-class suburb with an almost rural feel to it: in a house his father built. His father was a union carpenter, a job foreman. His mother called herself a secretary, but her job at the Alaska branch of the Geologic Survey was more like being the chief editor for a cadre of the researchers there, without the status (but with the respect). The Trollmans were the kind of people we wrestled with during the Vietnam War. I mean, they came out of World War Two convinced that the United States had a job to do, keeping the world safe for democracy, and staunchly supported every adventure the government got us into. By the time I met them, around 1971, they had changed their minds.

Ted's mother grew tomatoes, green beans, and Meyer lemons in her backyard. She canned the green beans and tomato soup each year and made apricot-pineapple jam from a lug provided by a friend with an apple orchard in San Jose (different times). She was the sharpest, most efficient woman, kind, and stoic. His father developed a twinkle in his eyes in retirement, but I heard he could be stern -- nothing compared to his father. Ted vowed when he had children nobody would say "wait till your father comes home" as a threat, and he would not be the disciplinarian. And he wasn't.

There are all these really 50s-looking photos of Ted and his older brothers. They all did Boy Scouts right into high school, they made cars for the Pinewood Derby, they went on Jamborees. Ted breeded guppies and worked at Nippon Goldfish as a kid, and collected comics, and got good grades. He went to UCSC, fully intending to graduate cum laude in history and go to law school,work in corporate law until he had enough money to retire, adn then live a life of enjoyment with his fish and his comics and his friends. Shortly after I met him he decided to skip the law school and corporate law part. Only it ended up being orchids he raised. He did graduate cum laude, with a major in Modern Russian History and a minor in Ancient Greek History. He kept on reading history his whole life. A lot of the books he read were about wars and the technology of war -- he called them "war porn," but there was nothing pornographic about his interest. Frank inherited this keen interest in history and politics.

I met Ted my first week at UCSC. He was a junior, I was a freshman. He was doing an all-nighter even though it was only the first week because one of his teachers had assigned a forty page paper to be done by the end of the second week. I was getting up extra early to work in the UCSC Garden. As I passed his dorm windowq, I saw his candle guttering in a scary fashion, threatening to catch his curtains on fire. We had a conversation about it, and later we saw each other again, and eventually, we agreed to see each other over the summer. He had a girlfriend that school year, and I had two boyfriends -- my high school sweetie had talked me into getting another guy to frolic with so he could justify sleeping around back home. But that summer I extricated myself from the other guys and went to visit him in Pacific Grove (basically Monterey). We went to see the squid run at the COast Guard DOck, we bought a bag of cherry tomatioes and we made iced cherry tomato soup out of them, and of course we ended up in bed together. He courted me with the little toads at Lake Lagunitas by the Stanford campus, with foraging for abandoned fruit in vacant lots (yes, this town had lots of vacant lots right then), with stargazing and comic books and a magnificent voice which I will never hear again.

Practicalities: the last I heard, Ted's body had arrived at the coroner's office from the tissue donation center, but tomorrow is Friday and then there's a weekend. So the ashes won't be back until Thursday or so, which entails running up against Labor Day weekend, and I really won't do anything that weekend that entails peoplde driving into Santa Cruz. The weekend after that is the weekend before avid arrives. So I've decided we'll do the memorial on Sunday, September 14. The Henry Cowell Park Walk will be in the morning, and the Lighthouse Field event will be in the afternoon. This also gives us a couple of weeks to sort out logistics -- tablem, chairs, etc. I know my brother says he has a couple of long folding tables, and I know my friend COnnie has stacks of chairs. If you're interested, let me know and I will see that you get plenty of warning as to the time and place -- parking, carpooli, es

I'm brainstorming the soundtrack of Ted's life, and I'll get someone to make a compilation for me and we'll find someone with a portable CD player. I haven't faced up to the photos yet, but I think that will be possible tomorrow, if it's quiet around here. When we send out directions, I'll suggest some favorite potluck foods of his -- suggest, not direct: nobody has to bring anything, let alone what I tell them to.

I'm quite literally falling asleep at the keyboard, which I hope means I'll be sleeping tonuight. I have a prescription waiting for me for some kind of sleeping aid, but I won't take any unless I really need them.

I met with the crematorium people today. They'll take care of procuring death certificates and a few other little tasks. I sprung for a biodegradable box: an astonishing expense, compared to the cost of the stupid unrecyclable standard plastic box, but not much more money in absolute terms, and I figure it's worth it to get what I want, and to not have another thing to put into the land fill. The other thing I ordered over the basic package was a bead. They take a pinch of the ashes and they cook it into a dollop of beauitiful glass, and then they want you to buy a chain or a stand for it, but all I wanted was the bead, which looks like seawater viewed from a specific angle, or like certain leaves when the sun shines just so.

The undertaker, or whatever he is, is a very kind man, very clear and not pushy (though he would have liked to have sold me more if I had been in the mood). He wears a tie made of a piece of "Starry Night." -- the Van Gogh picture, of course.

It's hard to believe in for more than a moment at a time. I keep thinking "I should save some fo this strudel for Ted," or "I should get back home, Ted will be wondering where I am."

So the dear boy has a journal. Go read it: it's really good, though alarming. Culture clash! Linguistical revelations!

And I went to Lane Bryant (which is far away, and we only went because we were already over the hill*) and discovered I wear a really tiny number in Lane Bryant knit tops, though in clearance-rack crop pants I wore the size I kind of expected to wear.

And you know how the cut and fit of clothes changes over time? Right now sleeves and armholes and shoulders are being cut in a way that it sort of disastrous for me. The line of the shoulder is too narrow (though there is still too much cloth over the bust, if the thing fits at all), and the armhole is cut too high, which means 1) the shoulder seam is about halfway to my neck and stands up in an awkward little point over my shoulder and 2) if I lift my arm the shirt strains all weird between the bust and the armpit. Altogether it looks like the shirt is way way too small and way too big at the same time.

I decided that, rather than fail to get replacements for the clothing I have to get rid of (really I'm not vain but there's a limit to how clownish I want to look. And the pants I bought two weeks ago are already sliding off), I would get a couple of shirts that were okay enough looking. I also succeeded in finding 3 pairs of pants. One I think is supposed to be shorts, but they hit me a few inches below the knee and if I can find coordinating knee socks I will like them. One I think is supposed to be knee-length, but they're kind of plus-fourish, a little longer than that. And the other is all the way down to my ankle so I think they're supposed to be capris. Considering it's getting cold I think I need socks.
I also got bras that fit and have no lace to disintegrate right at the worst time, and socks, though since they are strongly patterned I'm not sure how well they go with the pants and shirts.

*we went over the hill to celebrate the birthdays of both the nice fellow's brothers and to nag the oldest to eat vegetables. And watch a video of my nephew skydiving. He's really a go-do-it young man, and pleasant. Also said nephew and his father seem to be getting radicalized, which is an odd sensation, though welcome.

Every so often I want to show off my kid. She's the middle one with the alarming hair do in the first picture.

I want to write something about solipsism and skyhook science fiction, but I've put it off too late for today.

On another front, I've been looking at old posts for various reasons, and I am the Queen of Stupid Typos. I don't spell check lj because the lj spell check is so annoying, but I guess I ought to.

So April 17 is the commemmoration of Enrico Caruso's last concert in San Francisco on the eve of the FIre and Earthquake. There's going to be a concert and singalong of Caruso numbers at the Yerba Buena Gardens at I think 5:30 pm, so if you can be in the City at that time I'll be grateful. Since I can't.

April 18th is the day that San Francisco celebrates the birth of my children and also, coincidentally, the fire and earthquake of 1906, which you'll notice is a hundred years ago this year. We're going to miss the 5:12 AM event at Lotta's Fountain, and the 7:00 AM event at the golden fire hydrant at Dolores Park, but we're going to the 10:00 Firemen's Parade. So's my sister-in-law: she's going to ride on the Oakland Fire Department parade rig with her work dog, who is a Dalmation named Molly.

Zac calls Easter Zombie Day. This year we're going to do Orthodox Easter with the sister-in-law whose family is Greek. We celebrated Easter this time at the house of Lizzie Jenkins, who is a childhood friend of mine and the daughter of my father's childhood friend. It was a really fine supper and the company was all good and best of all I got to listen to her father, whose name is Robert but my father called him Rupert P. or Rudolph because they were jazz kids and they used to do zany jazz kid stuff like having nicknames. Rudolph could be gotten to hold forth about jazz things and art things. I told him he ought to produce podcasts so I could listen to them.

Livejournal now asks you if you want to restore entries you lose because you hit some random key. This is good news.

Also I saw my brother and sister-in-law and niece and her husband and the baby Juliana who is cuter than a seven month old has a right to be, and of course, their amazingly large dogs.

And now I am off to bed: Gloria in the morning, and the next day -- earthquakes, fires, birthdays, parades, and of course, shopping.

Oh, and it rained today. Hard. But it didn't hail and there werte no new slides on 17.