oddities and other offerings on a tuesday morning . . .

Most mornings, I wake up, grab my laptop, check my email, and read my stash of what I have classified as "odd blogs'.  They are not really odd, they are just a few bloggers I have tripped over in my surfing that have struck my fancy and whom I now read on a consistent basis: the Nienie Dialogues being one.  This morning, Stephanie, a burn survivor, was chatting about her kankles if she stands to long.  Kankles, if you are not familiar with them, are calves that become feet without taking an ankle break.

She gets them from poor circulation, having been burned over 83% of her body.  I, on the other hand, having never been in a horrific plane crash, get mine genetically.  Although I look exactly like my father, I was blessed . . . ??? . . .  with my mother's kankles.  Gee, thanks, mom.  I never really thought that much about them until, when in my freshman year of college, some smart football jock called me "kankles" for the first time . . . .  ouch!!!  And, no, they aren't very pretty and I can't wear ankle bracelets because I would have to buy them in the necklace department.  But, the darn things hold me up and I can walk, run, dance and trip over them, with the best of you, so in the long run, I don't mind them.   Katie, did not inherit them.  She, instead, is double jointed all over.  A parlor trick she loves to show off . . .

Anyway, that was odd thought number uno.  Odd thought number two came while I was bathing . . .  something I am never allowed to do alone.  Bear comes in first, stands over the side of the tub, stirs the water with his huge webbed foot and proceeds to drink from the puddle he has captured in his paw.  As soon as he is done, Ninj comes along and daintily dangles her front paws and nose into the water and laps her intake with her little pink tongue.  Poor tiny Pippin is last and not anywhere big enough to reach over the edge to drink and still have her back paws on the floor.  Instead, she hops up on her food container, wanders to the corner of the tub with there is more room, leans over and literally licks the water droplets off my eyebrows.  It is all rather disconcerting and . . . well . . . odd.

And since things come in three's, when I finally looked in the mirror this morning, to brush my teeth, I saw my reflection and did a double take.  My hair was recolored yesterday and this morning, Sharon Osbourne, stared back at me.  My hair, until it has been washed some 48 hours later,  has not had a chance to mellow back to its normal natural redness minus the gray and is currently an odd shade of maroon . . . while my scalp is tinted decidedly orange.  Altogether not a good look . . .

Oh, and I might just as well add a fourth that has been bothering me for a bit.  The other night, the 9TS showed me something he discovered about his left foot since the surgery.  Without the tendons of the middle toe, the next toe in has lost its stability and become a little loose in the base meaning it can just about do a complete 360 spin.  And apparently, so can the toe of the other side of the gap.

So next time you come to visit, we will have an old timey family side show and treat you to a exhibition of lapping cats, double jointedness, whirling toes and genetic kankles.  Fun huh? 

But the question begs to be asked.  Does anyone else ever have odd thoughts on Tuesday mornings???  Do tell!  please.

and other things . . .

so of course I took my camera to Tampa.  I can't help myself.  I took shots of the equipment in the rooms while we were waiting on doctors, shots of their lobby Starbucks, of pressure bandages, ID wrist bands, bruises . . .  the 9TS's of course, not complete strangers . . . the valet key case . . .

Credits:  a special thanks to Katie Pertiet and Anna Aspnes over at Designer Digitals.

the hotel where we spent the night, the clerical help, parking garage . . .   But my favorites are the two of us standing outside, after digesting the good news and trying not to be happy, happy, happy until we get home because lets face it, most of the guests at Moffitt are not doing a jig in the parking lot!

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Friday afternoon found us back in a waiting room  . . .  in a cancer center.  But this time it a pre-screening for genetic testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 for me.  Breast and ovarian cancer run heavily in my family.  I have two first degree relatives who had one, or the other, or both.  Since the test is so expensive, our insurance company, like many, will not cover it unless the patient meets certain perimeters . . . hence the pre-screening.  After a two hour chat with the woman in charge, I now know more than I wanted to about the nasty little mutant gene we are hunting down.  And yes, I qualify and they will draw the blood sample next week. 

I have been aware of the availability of the testing for a long time but it has only been since 2008 that the GINA law was passed that prohibits places of employment from discriminating against those carrying the mutant genes.  Few woman wanted to take the chance of not getting hired or losing current medical insurance, me included, if the tests proved positive.  But now we are free to get the test results with minimum ramification.  If it turns out that I do have the little rascals, my long term medical care plan will change with more frequent doctor assisted breast exams, quarterly mammograms with MRI's and possible preventive drug intervention.  For those of you wondering why I haven't mentioned my ovaries, it's because they were surgically swept under the carpet back in 1996.  

One of the neatest things to come from the results of the testing is that if I do not have the mutant genes, then Katie automatically does not have them.  She cannot inherit something I do not have.  And since she has no first degree relatives that had either cancer, her life time chances are that of the general population.  Did I mention only 4% of all women carry the mutation?  Cool, huh!

OK, enough of the medical stuff.  End of topic.  Today is Saturday and we are celebrating tonight with filet mignon, sauteed mushrooms, grilled asparagus and a couple of plump taters . . . our red meat quota for the month.  Slurp!

Tri(al), tri(al) again . . .

I am so excited and pooped all at the same time, I am just going to flat out cheat and post a copy of the email I sent to Lynda, a friend who always seems to be able to buoy us up even through her own trials.

"Good NEWS!!!   We just got back from Tampa and are so excited I think we shall both implode.   He is still cancer free which means he qualifies for the study and as soon as he signed the paper work, they called our insurance company, got clearance and started some of the preliminary tests!!!!! 

We should have trial dates by the end of next week and there are NO placebo's on this particular trial so he will be . . .  guaranteed . . . getting the good stuff . . . so to speak.  Hooray!!!!!

Thank the Lord! and all of our friends."

Of course he did mumble something about needing a blood transfusion after they lifted about 12 vials of blood from him this morning . . . nothing we couldn't replenish by a trip to Panera's for lunch and a good heavy meal for tonight's dinner.

Life is once again as good as it gets.  Thank you all, from the bottom of my black pitted little heart.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

prayers please . . .

Dear Readers,

We head back over to Moffitt Cancer Center tomorrow.  They will do a CT of the 9TS's abdomen, thorax, neck and pelvis, followed by an MRI of his brain.  The next day they will do blood work and we meet with his Medical Oncologist.   If there is no sign of cancer, we will be accepted into their Melanoma Vaccine Trial for the next 12 months.  While there are no guarantees, he might be one of the lucky ones for whom the vaccine works.  But, if they find cancer cells, he is washed out of the program.  The study is strictly for stage iv metastatic melanoma patients currently free of disease.  I know it sounds odd that he falls into both of those categories at that same time but that is the nature of the disease.

We could use all of the prayers, good thoughts and sanity we can muster, that he is cancer free tomorrow and qualifies for the trial.  If not, well, sigh, more surgery, more treatments.  It is what it is.

Thanks so much,

Jeanne and the 9TS

1958 . . . 2010 . . .

I think I told you somewhere along the line, that my parents went for a walk one day when I was in 4th grade and came home announcing they had bought a house and we were moving.  I was not enthralled.  I loved this little house:

It was built in 1942, a wedding present from my grandfather to my parents.  It was small and cozy and just perfect!!!  Both my sister and my rooms were on the second floor tucked under the eaves.  Remember the ever popular rose trellis patterned wall paper.  Yep, we had it.  Each room had a door to the attic and if we wrangled and wiggled all the storage stuff around, we could squeeze through from one room to the other.  Not something I think our parents had in mind when they sent us to our respective rooms.

But I digress.  Lets go forward to 1958 and that walk of doom and the house on the lake.  No more slow walks down down Cedar Road to The South Beach each summer morning.  No more hot footing it back over the baking pavement late in the afternoons.  I was devastated.

Now, let's fast forward to August 2010 with me cruising the web.  The house on the lake is once more for sale.  I found some shots.  Sorry they are blurry but I stole them from here.

Pretty sweet, huh?  Well, before you get all excited, this is NOT the house I grew up in from 4th grade through college.  This is what happens when you live in the land of McMansions.  Yes, they kept the footing of our house but everything else is totally different.  When my dad finally sold the house in 1990, they added a third floor, punched out huge windows and moved all the walls.  I barely recognized anything from the original structure.  Now, the yearly taxes are almost double what my parents paid for it originally.  EEK!!!

So what did it look like when we lived there.  Take a gander:

A little different don't you think?  I do miss all of those dogwoods.   And just for the heck of it, this is me in 1958:

and yes, I finally adapted to life on the lake.  We sailed, canoed, fished, skated and hot footed it down to The West Beach all summer long.  But the truth is, I still love the little house on Cedar Road and if any one came along and gave me a do-over, I wouldn't take it.  Life was just too good in the 50's.

1953 . . .

The year before I was to start elementary school, they finally began building a new facility, so unlike my sister, I would never have to be bussed some ten plus miles away to the Preakness School.  The best thing about this new school was its location . . .  a hundred yards, through the woods, behind our across-the-street neighbors house.  For four years, we crossed our dead end street, cut through the Burwell's side yard, up the now much trodden path and there we were.  Its playground became our playground with towering . . . now prohibited slides, huge swing sets, basketball hoops, sand boxes, hop scotch and four square areas.  A dream come true.

But what I really remember was playing there while it was under construction.  Our end of Cedar Road at that time, had all of nine or ten homes and twenty-four kids.  As soon as the workers left, we swarmed in, running down the halls, checking each room for the slugs punched out of the electrical boxes that we were sure would fit in the those old bottle holding Coke machines . .  . but of course never did.   We skittered, bent over, through the housings that would eventually hold the heating and electrical wiring, like moles in a newly laid lawn.  We giggled at the rows of toilets with yet to be built partitions, and danced through the would be cafeteria/auditorium.  A regular phantasmagorical kid heaven.

And as I was sitting here, reminiscing over the fun we had that spring and summer so long ago, I realized that while I would indeed be a member of the first kindergarten class at Pines Lake Elementary school, I was, until that September, all of four years old.  No one minded that I was away from home for hours or that we played in a construction site.  And, this was not neglect.  This is what it was like in 1953.  Hooray for growing up in the 50's!

yoga and La's . . .

Tuesday is THE day.  Yoga with the Yaya's.  I love yoga.  I might even say, I love the Yaya's because, you know what?  I do.  We get there early and catch up on the nonsense of our lives.  We check in with Lee, because she always has the best nonsense, and Lorraine because she is Lee's conscience and keeps her out of trouble.  Peggy always giggles and shakes her head at us.  She keeps us grounded.

But last week, Lee broke all records with the story of her toe nail.  She had damaged it so badly it came off.  She, feeling like it was ugly, applied a flesh colored bandaid and then proceeded to draw a toe nail on the bandaid, which matched her other nine nails.  I hadn't even noticed until she told the story at which point, all Yaya eyes zeroed in on said nail.   I had to have a picture.  This week I took my trusty camera.

See, you can hardly tell.  Oh, and here is the rest of Lee:

and the rest of the Yaya's . . . minus a few:

and one of the Yaya's with our fearless leader Barbara.

and after a wonderful morning of stretching, breathing and snoozing, Joanie and I left for our weekly lunch with Nancy at La's Bistro!

La's is another habit of ours.  We are so bad, they keep our favorite table reserved for us, 

our water and tea are waiting for us and none of us bothers with menus.  We always seem to order our individual favorites and Gron starts cooking as soon as she see us.  Gron, in case I forgot to mention, is one of two reasons we adore La's.  She is the chief cook and bottle washer and makes THE best yummy sandwiches.

but she is not alone.  Her faithful sidekick, Michelle, is the other reason we darken their doorway every Tuesday morning.  She is our grape supervisor.  One must finish all of the grapes on her plate or deal with Michelle.

I was so hungry this morning, deliriously drooling for my usual turkey, mozzarella, tomato, and basil mayo sandwich on ciabatta that when it came, it was inhaled long before I remembered my camera.

But, so you get the idea, I found this little bit of heaven ready to leave the kitchen:

yum.  Grilled chicken, artichoke, red peppers, black olives, grilled onion with special sauce.

There is no doubt that Tuesday is my favorite day.  Good friends, good food, good health!

read to the end :o) . . .

I know you've read about this one before but I decided it needed its own layout.  ta da!!!  Special thanks to Linda Roos, Anna Aspnes, Creashens and two of Mr. & Mrs. Font's children; Ali and Georgia.  You are Loved!

I also, after stepping on the scale at the doctor's office, decided it was time to do something about the extra ten pounds I have been carrying around.  My clothes are too tight, I am grumpy, it ain't healthy.  So yesterday, I watched what I ate and did an hour and a half of exercise in the pool, after which, I took a nap.  The 9TS woke me up at 7:30, four + hours later because he was getting a tad hungry.  A FOUR + HOUR NAP?!?!?!?  Who'd a thunk it.

And so it will go until the pounds disappear and life is thinner again.

And now, if you have read through all my whining and made it this far, I saved the VERY best news for last.  We head back to Moffitt on the 25th for a battery of tests that will continue on the 26th.  The 9TS will be poked, prodded, bled, MRIed and CATed, all in preparation for entrance into one of their trial programs . . . a vaccine against melanoma.  As a stage IV metastatic melanoma patient, this is a blessing.  Even should the vaccine not work for him, it will provide valuable information that will one day lead to a cure for this insidious beast.  We want to be part of this!

And on that note, I bid adieu and head for the pool.

some things never change . . .

Katie is home again for the last of the yearly doctors appointments before school starts . . .  she types through the haze of widely dilated eyes.  This morning it was the ophthalmologist - two for one package - mom and daughter.  Once back home it was time for the 9TS to go spelunking into Katie's foot for a tiny sliver of glass that did a one and a half gainer with a double twist into her heel back at her apartment.

After a first rather cursory look he decided it necessitated the big guns . . . "I'll need alcohol, a needle, my magnifying glasses, cotton balls, a back hoe and a jack hammer . . . "    A few tentative probes later, accompanied by a couple of 'aha's' and 'oho's' and some mumblings about reaching China, the first skirmish ended with nada . . . zilch.  Not to be deterred, he dove, nay, dived back in with both hands flying.  Finally with much grunting and great satisfaction, he retreated with said sliver perched on the end of his thumb.  Success! 

And as he repaved the now somewhat larger hole in her foot, we reminisced about other battle scars and daddy doctoring:

Like the time she managed to get her foot caught in the toe grip of her bicycle while the pedal repeatedly and viciously took chunks out of the back of her ankle and into her tendon . . .

The Christmas we picked out a tree and she started to yelp.  It didn't take us long to realize she was standing on a fire ant hill and the nasty little beasties were rapidly covering and biting her lower extremities . . .

Or the time she flew off her swing at the top of its arc and fell to earth breaking her radius.  It was her dad she was thankful for, not the orthopedist. 

Or when she left the top of her toe on the pavement and happily hobbled to school with a daddy fashioned sock covering. 

There are too many to remember but the point is, that even at age 22, there is no one better than her dad to patch her up, stand her back on her feet, give her a big hug and make things all better. 

What's not to love about that?

signs you need to clean . . .

there is a dust bunny hiding behind the hall table the size of Pippin.

the living room rug is hanging out to dry on the stair balustrade.  Since it is sisal, I can hose down any cat yaks.  Gah!

I can pounce onto the living room sofa in a cloud of dust and a mighty hi ho silver.

my bedroom has piles of clean laundry waiting to be ironed.

I will not mention the bathrooms.

And no, I am not proud of the condition of my home.  It just gets away from me.  It isn't high on my priorities.  In general, it doesn't bother me living this way . . .  until someone drops in unexpectedly, and then, yes, I am embarrassed.  Mortified in fact.  And then I clean.  After the fact.  In shame. 

Today I will make an effort and when I am done. It will sparkle just a bit under its layers of dust.  And I will be happy.  Just not happy enough to keep it up on a daily/weekly basis, lets get that perfectly clear.

And so it will continue.  But, a couple of days ago, a small older compact woman arrived on my doorstep offering her cleaning services and so we chatted.  I need to check out her references . . . a few of our neighbors.  And maybe that will be the answer . . .  but only if I am not too embarrassed to have her look at the house and then find her racing for the door, screaming and running zig-zags in terror down the cul-de-sac  . . .

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The downstairs is now clean and as I dusted and choked, and vacuumed and wheezed and wiped and sneezed, I realized how many goodies in my house have meaning for me:

Our hall table has an old wash pitcher my college friend's mother gave me when I admired a set she had.  She apologizing that she did not have the matching bowl . . . I, ecstatic to have just the ewer.

The sea oats I illegally seized my first year down here and carefully shellacked to preserve.  Not withstanding the fact that the three of us could have been thrown, slightly inebriated into the pokey for a little midnight poaching.

The two black elephants  I can remember as far back as my memory goes.  They used to sit on my sister's trinket shelve but I think they were much older.

The old manual typewriter really belongs to Katie.  She found it in an old 'antique' store and since it never made it back to her apartment, I appropriated it . . . for the time being.

The hurricane lamp my mother bought in Williamsburg, Virginia, on one of our last vacations and it sat for years on a table in our family living room, next to the family bible. 

The mirror behind the table was a goodie I found in college in an abandoned house up in the hills.  Long ago looted and trashed, the mirror had originally been attached to a bureau, the type that tips slightly forward and back.  It too was trashed but with a little tender loving care and refurbishment, its been with me ever since.

In the dining room, the furniture belonged to my parents.  When I reupholstered the chair seats, I found layer and layer of fabric whose memory I had long past lost.  Each layer was a gem unto itself bringing back those stale remembrances like little time capsules.

My mother-in-law tatted the doily underneath the floral arrangement for me.  It was white but I tea dyed it.  I love it.  In the background you can see a hooked rug my maternal grandmother made and if you look carefully, down in the corner, you can see she added her initials and the year.  I wouldn't trade it for anything.

See why I don't clean!  I get caught up in memories and nothing gets done.  I end up on the sofa, eyes closed going back in time and greeting those wonderful people in my life whose memories I keep in my heart and in my home albeit covered under a layer of dust.

even more pippin . . .

pippin, the major mouser

pippin and the 9TS's slipper

pippin meets bear

the end.

the good, the bad and the ugly . . .

When I was on the phone with the gentleman from Social Security the other day, he was running down his list of bureaucratic questions.  He asked, among other things, if I had been married before, to which I replied yes.  Did it last more than ten years, no.  Did it end in death or divorce?  Without blinking an eye, I told him I wanted to kill him but logic prevailed and I divorced him instead.

But later, I started to think.  What is it about the mention of my first husband that still incites such anger in me all these years later? 

Is it the fact that he couldn't keep a job, or that he cheated, or that he was an alcoholic, verbally abusive?  Pick one.  Any one. They all qualify.

The truth is, after all these years I am still angry and hurt that he chose a bottle over us.  That alcohol was more important than his wife and daughter.  I understand that it is a disease that ravages the soul. I get it that he was a self medicating depressant.   I get that, I really do . . . but the pain it caused is irreparable.  So through the clouds of disappointment, I filed for divorce.  I had failed at being able to keep a marriage intact.  Failed . . . 

Three years later, the gang I worked with invited me to their usual Friday night celebration at another one of our hotels.  I headed over to say hi to my boss and he introduced me to  . . .   the 9TS.   Didn't see that one coming, did you?

Three years after that, we were married  . . . on the beach.  The 9TS doesn't drink but occasionally, he doesn't cheat, he's a retired top cop and has never said a nasty word to me.  And that is where the comparisons stop . . .  because truly, there really aren't any.  He is the love of my life.

So while there has been ugly in my life that left scars, it also left me with one wonderful kidlet.  While there has been bad, it has left me stronger and where there has been good, it has only gotten better.   

Here's to you my beloved 9TS and to all the rest of the days of our lives!

and so it goes . . .

Pippin prefers Bear's food.  Not an auspicious beginning to a new friendship.

Richard quit Carrabba's.  The world has tilted.

Annie is a perfect cat name.  Congratulations Joanie!

Katie left wearing makeup to celebrate with Ryan.   Happy 21st Garrett!

The 9TS is finally back to the gym.  I've missed the funny 'man' stories.

I found a tiny tooth.  Is there a tiny tooth faerie?

Headed to Goodwill.  Katie cleaned her closet.

The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.