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A quick little post

… before my dog absconds with the package of cream cheese I left out on the counter.

I don’t have anything to say on this Christmas Eve that’s insightful or inspirational, except eat whatever you want (as long as it doesn’t kill you) and Be Here Now.

I love reading your blogs, especially getting email notifications of new posts. I’ve fallen behind on reading this month what with grandkids out of school for the holidays, Christmas and medical appointments   but I look forward to catching up soon.

I’m so fortunate to be here this Christmas. And so grateful that I have the opportunity to thank all of you whose blogs I follow for sharing your lives with me through your beautiful writing, your wisdom, your courage and your humor.  I feel like I’ve made so many new friends.

Peace and light and joy today, tomorrow and all of your days for you and those you love.

I’m holding all of you in my heart — especially my LC blogger community.

Now, go eat stuff you don’t need and blog the recipes.

Happy Festivus!

** You thought I was going to show you pictures of my scans, didn’t you?  Silly.  No, they are Christmas wreaths that line the skyway from the main building at MD Anderson to the Mays building.  It’s a pretty fair walk if you don’t take the shuttle, so the wreaths make the walk worth it.

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Words and pictures

My blogging buddy and friend over at BrainPickles ended a recent email to me with this favorite:

‘When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,’ said Piglet at last,  ‘what’s the first thing you say to yourself?’

‘What’s for breakfast?’ said Pooh. ‘What do you say, Piglet?’

‘I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?’ said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s the same thing,’ he said.’

*****

I know I’ve been out of touch lately, but what happened to the verb “lend”?  Did we lose it?  Or ban it?  Or lend it to someone and they never returned it?  Best I can guess is it’s been replaced with “loan,” which I thought all these years was a noun. You don’t use nouns as verbs, do you?

And “snuck”?  When did that replace “sneaked”?

******

Recently the 7-year old grandson and I were in the final moves of a savage game of Go Fish.

I asked for all his Whales.

He pulled 3 Whales out of his hand and slapped them down in front of me.

“Dammit!” he said and laughed nervously.

Seven years old.  Dammit (the children’s spelling). The mom reflex kicked in.  But, as I started to open my mouth to chide him for his language I thought, so what? Dammit is a perfectly fine, cathartic word I consider appropriate if you have to hand over 3 Whales when you’re this close to skunking yer old Didi at cards.

Whose sensibilities would I tell him we shouldn’t offend? The Bible thumpers who think cussing is a sin?  Please.  They’ve offended me  enough already.

Go for it kid.  Dammit.

******

Anita at SciFiKnitter shared the best response I’ve heard for the stupid question that perpetuates the stigma of lung cancer, “Did you smoke?”

Does it matter?

She attributes the response to Deanna Hendrickson, of LCMSChat.
Thanks, Deanna.

******

I’m thrilled for Jimmy Carter and his great test results, but words matter.

******

Seems Jimmy Carter and I both got good news last week. I had my first PET/CT scans after completing treatment. The original tumor, which was quite large, is gone and there is No Evidence of Disease (NED).

I want to be clearer than Carter’s people were.  No tumor does not mean cure and that there are no cancer cells in my body.  They could just be small and hiding, ready to grow again.

What these pictures mean is I’m in “remission,” according to my oncologist, so today and every day it stays that way is mighty fine with me. Dammit.

******

My daughter is really, really good at voices — imitating and making up her own. I’ve always wanted her commit this from Auntie Mame to memory so she could entertain her old mother (which I’m sure some of you are thinking about now, doesn’t take much.)

“Bunny Bixler and I were in the semi-finals—the very semi-finals, mind you—of the ping-pong tournament at the club and this ghastly thing happened. We were both playing way over our heads and the score was 29-28. And we had this really terrific volley and I stepped back to get this really terrific shot. And I stepped on the ping-pong ball! I just squashed it to bits. And then Bunny and I ran to the closet of the game room to get another ping-pong ball and the closet was locked! Imagine? We had to call the whole thing off. Well, it was ghastly. Well, it was just ghastly.”

Two Things

  • Auntie Mame
  • Board games

See all Two Things

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Agita

Maybe I’m a little on edge because later this week I’ll have my first scans since completing treatment at MD Anderson.  This nervousness is called “scanxiety,” I understand.  Ha, ha.  Cancer is hilarious.

Or maybe I’m a little agitated because I’m going through withdrawal from the prednisone I was taking for radiation pneumonitis.

Or maybe I’ve just had a gutful of hilarity from national butt boil (if butt boils were funny) Donald Trump.  (Please. Go away now.)

Whatever is making me anxious has picked a scab — one I became aware of only after I became a member of the cancer community.  It’s the stigma surrounding lung cancer and smoking.

I was working on a post and about ready to go with it when I saw this short-and-sweet over at Gray Connections. She says what I wanted to say better than I could.   Thanks, Janet.

Anyone can get lung cancer.  Even non-smokers, so please be kind to each other.