My daughter’s high school is selling yearbooks for $70!!!! The results of my non-scientific Facebook poll suggests that this is going rate for U.S. high school year books. There are a lot of kids from low income families at my daughter’s school. It just doesn’t seem right. Can’t they do something less fancy so that more students can have one? Do the cheerleaders, athletes, and prom court campaign for expensive books so that they can view their popularity in full color with an indestructible binding?
Archives for category: Feelings
After yesterday, John was needing a laugh. So I showed him this hilarious youtube video, Sad Cat Diary. He loved it and it was another way to celebrate the life of our cat because there are so many truths about their unique behavior described in the video. The video was all over Facebook so you may have already viewed it. If you haven’t, check it out. It’s well worth viewing.
Protected: Breaking Orbit
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When faced with cancer or any other serious illness, it is only natural to think about the uncertainty of our futures. Lately, I find myself thinking about this more frequently. A year after diagnosis, I find myself finding more and more room for non-cancer related life, “the new normal” as it is often called.
I find myself thinking that I have no way of knowing whether I have cancer in my body or not. Frankly, this is the truth for everyone with “no evidence of disease.” I don’t know if it will come back. I also know that just like everyone else, I may have a different serious disease or injury in my future. And my family and friends will face illnesses and other hardships. We often think about disease and death as the enemy, but they are part of the natural world, and we will all face them.
By nature, I crave certainty and dislike ambiguity. In my job, I help kids and families reduce the chaos in their lives. I am the family administrator at home. I may have even been described as a “control freak”, maybe just maybe, once or twice in my life.
The last two years have been the most challenging in my life. I been been mired situations that I’d hoped I’d never have to face, full of ambiguities and dire possibilities.
What I have been noticing the most in the last month or so is the fact that I am not freaking out. Even in the scariest, grayest parts of these years, I’ve found a constant. There has always been love. Love from family, love from friends, love from healthcare providers committed to help. And the love I have for others is stronger than ever.
Life can be murky, ambiguous, and downright scary. But love is clear and love is always beautiful.
XOXOXO
Love-in-a-mist is a lovely but tough flower. If you plant it in your garden, you will have it forever.
Protected: Afternoon with Don Draper
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Protected: Memorial Day Weekend
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One of the dear people in my life has Parkinson’s disease. She is an amazing woman. I met her as an undergraduate psychology major at the University of Washington. She was a grad student looking for research assistants. Her research sounded fascinating and I ended up working in her lab for 2-3 years. She was a wonderful mentor and took a faculty position in the Midwest upon graduation. I haven’t seen her in person since then but we stay in touch through Facebook and email. (She is legally deaf so the phone is not a good option.)
Her disease had an early onset. She noticed tremor in her hands while she was in the hospital just after delivering her daughter, who is now 12 years old. She was doing really well for the first few years. She went skydiving and traveled with her family. Eventually, though, she had to retire early from the faculty job she loved. She still drives and is ambulatory but I suspect this is true on an intermittent rather than daily basis. She has undergone two heart surgeries. She “flat lined” after the most recent one while in the hospital and it took the medical team some time to revive her. She remembers this time keenly and her unwavering focus on staying alive for her children. Her physicians have suggested brain surgery. She has not warmed to that option. She takes medications that cause all kinds of side effects. She knows that her health will continue to deteriorate as will her ability to take care of herself and stay connected with others. In other words, Parkinson’s is not a light-weight disease. It is chronic, it is progressive, and it ends lives.
Yesterday, I was following one of her Facebook discussions. (She is the most active Facebooker I know in terms of getting conversations and debates going.) At one point she was discussing Parkinson’s with a friend who also has it. They were talking about the hardships and then she ended one of her comments with, “At least it’s not cancer.” Although it surprised me a bit, I was not hurt in the least that she wrote this. But it is a great example of a sentiment I still hear a great deal from people, which is that cancer is the worst disease ever. It’s not a coincidence that a Pulitzer Prize winning history of cancer is cancer is called, The Emperor of all Maladies.
So the good news is that not everyone has been “pink washed” into thinking that there are kinds of cancer that are “the good cancer” or that cancer is cute or easy. The bad news is that the fear that people have of our “Emperor of all Maladies” will keep many of us, especially those with metastatic breast cancer, that much more isolated. Scorchy Barrington wrote about this isolation beautifully earlier in the week. Another blog buddy, Diane of Dglassme, wrote a beautiful comment on Scorchy’s post. I would copy it here but she might want to write a post about it in her own blog because it is that good.
Protected: Best of Blog: Super Week with Super Friends
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Yesterday, on my way to the car after work, I saw a woman in the parking lot. She was perhaps in her late 50’s or early 60’s and was significantly over weight. She was facing away from me, bending over to get a bag out of her car. Since she was wearing quite a flimsy pair of stretchy white pants, I was easily able to ascertain that she was wearing thong style underwear!
Although I had to salute her for the zingy way she was living her life, I must admit that my first thought was, “Eww, is she wearing a thong?” I was also not impressed with the pants or the cellulite that could be seen through them.
Then I felt guilty. I thought, “Look, she’s parked right next to the yoga studio. She’s probably going to a class there. She’s taking good care of herself. You are so very shallow.”
Then I started thinking, “But that is really gross.”
Then I started feeling guilty again.
Then I started to feel guilty because I didn’t feel guilty enough.
Then I started thinking about aesthetics. Why are things, living and non-living, beautiful? One could argue that overweight people are not considered beautiful because being overweight is not healthy. But being overweight is considered attractive in many cultures and in the past was associated with being wealthy, not having to do manual labor, and having ample food to eat.
Now this woman was also older and youthfulness is part of our cultural ideal. Now if I imagine a younger woman, of the same size, in the same outfit, I can’t say I would have been positively impressed.
So instead of offering this woman some of my famous granny panties, or riding on this sling shot of guilt I’ve created for myself, I have one thing to say to this woman.
“Namaste.”
All people are worthy of my respect and this is not contingent on something as trivial as underwear choice.
My Eyes Are Up Here 