I never signed up for this...

I'VE MOVED!!!

 

I post every day---at my new place.  Click here to get there.

Change of address

I'm moving the blog.  I'll be Master of my domain.  LOL.

This is my official change of address notice.  I was too disorganized to send notices out when we moved to a new house a few years ago.  I kept procrastinating and figured the post office would handle everything.  

If you subscribe by email, no worries---you will keep getting the blog and the Postmaster General of the internet will handle everything.

If you WANT to subscribe, click here.

To read today's post and future posts at my new address, click here.

See you over at my new place.  I only wish it was this easy to move in real life.

Not a Hallmark moment

You can buy a card for pretty much anything---any possible event or emotion.  From having a baby to having a hysterectomy, Hallmark has something to hit the spot.

Today marks a hallmark in my life so by rights it should be a Hallmark day.  But I don't think I'd find an appropriate card I could have sent to my ex-husband. 

Today was our anniversary. 

Although Hollywood has a few fractured but friendly couples, I don't think Hallmark has yet recognized the marketing appeal of this demographic.  If they wanted an expert, I could have invented a few cards for the occasion (you'll have to imagine appropriate artwork).

Outside: Happy Anniversary to us

Inside: Happy April Fools Day, too

or

Outside: And they said it wouldn't last.....

Inside:  It didn't.

You get the idea.

Like every bride on her wedding day, I truly believed I was living the ultimate Hallmark moment as I said my vows 31 years ago today. 

Actually I sobbed my vows--and never pronounced the words "I do."  H and I used to joke that maybe our wedding wasn't really legal. 

We divorced 14 years and 2 children later.  And despite that, we are very lucky compared to many couples like ourselves.  We always put the children first.  We still speak.  We're still friends.

And I would send a card today if Hallmark made one for ex-married couples.  In fact I think they should. 

And here's my take on what it could say:

Outside: Today is not our anniversary anymore, but we still have something to celebrate.

Inside: (No words--just a slot to insert a photo of our kids)

Note to Hallmark: feel free to steal this idea.  I'd still buy the card.

Cross-posted on 50-something Moms blog .

 

You had me at hello

I still say it when I answer the phone.   I've been saying "hello" way too  long to stop now.  Even though I know who's calling.  I could say anything I want.   Only I don't.  I keep saying "hello."

That's when I pick up the phone.  Which is getting more sporadic and less automatic.  This is not just the case with me.  People skip the human and listen to the message.   If E. T. phoned home,  maybe no one would answer.

As amazing as it may be, and as much as I appreciate all the features of my Blackberry (most of which I don't know how to use), I'm not so sure I want to listen to music or watch TV or read books on my phone.  I want to talk.  And I think I'm starting to miss that part.

We don't call anymore.  We text.  We email.  We chat online.  And by the way, I'm not complaining.  Even though I AM complaining.  I avoid phones like anyone else: they feel slow;  out-dated.  If I hear my own kids on the phone, I barely recognize their voices.  LOL.    

While the phone advances keep going forward, I'm thinking I might try going backwards.  To reach out and touch someone a little more often than I've been doing. 

It's hopeless for me to keep up anyway.  Because I'm hopeless.  To me, applications will always be for jobs or colleges.   And I'll always be way behind the curve (although I'm informed enough to realize I just made a pun).  I don't have an iPhone yet;  although I have to admit I'm impressed with a phone that can listen to a few bars of music and Name That Tune.  But I'm way out of my league.  While I'm still stuck on hello---the iPhone is farting.

I wonder what Alexander Graham Bell would make of that one.

.

Weathering the Weather

There's nothing like live television.  I've been there.  Maybe that's why I found this video so funny.

A great day with the gynecologist

To get what happened today, you have to get where I'm coming from.

I was 45 years old.  I had two children.  I had breast cancer.  My prognosis was terrible.  I couldn't think of anything else.   24/7 doesn't even describe it.  I was obsessed.  Possessed.  Cancer invaded my brain just like it invaded my body. 

Only worse.  At least parts of my body didn't have it.  My entire brain was affected---every cell, every thought --I had a one-track mind.

I tried eveything to escape--yoga, meditation, guided imagery, music, nature walks.  Nothing worked.  When I discovered art a year after my diagnosis, I finally found some relief.

Painting for 5 minutes without thinking about cancer was a first step.

Eating a meal without chewing on cancer was a milestone.

Seeing a movie without cancer as the sub-plot was a breakthrough.

I never thought I'd get through a whole day without thinking about it.  But as the years went by, I discovered even that was possible.  

Cut to the gynecologist today.  (I've lost so many body parts you'd think I wouldn't even have to go anymore.) 

This isn't the gynecologist who delivered my children, or saw  me through cancer.  I've been seeing this doctor for maybe 5 years.  Today I'm in the stirrups waiting for my exam while she's flipping through my chart.   And she says, "So what was the year of your diagnosis?"

I pause.  "I can't remember if it was '94 or '95," I say.

 I CAN'T REMEMBER.  I have to think before I answer for sure: "'It was '95."

The doctor is as dumbfounded as I am.  The date of diagnosis is indelibly imprinted in the brain of a cancer patient.  "How great that is," she smiles.  "To think that you could forget."

I smile, too. It's quite a moment.

I float out of the gynecologist's office, basking in my resilience, and my ability to let go of cancer.  When suddenly I have a thought.

What if this is not a milestone in my cancer journey after all?  Maybe this is a different kind of milestone:  the onset of Alzheimer's.      

Out of Africa

Just one thing about those 25 things.  If you know my  husband, or even if you don't, the first 24 things don't exactly add up to #25--going to the refugee camps in Africa.

We had seen the documentary made by Don Cheadle, called Darfur Now, about the plight of the refugees from Sudan.  A week later, we're casually talking over dinner when out of nowhere, V says he wants to go to Africa to do something to make a difference.  It wasn't idle talk; V was determined, it was almost as if he needed to go.

Still waters run deep.  His.  I was mostly worried about his safety as his trip became more real.  It's not like going on a safari--or the Amazing Race.   The US State Department warns Americans not to visit Chad, and our embassy will not take responsibility for citizens who visit the eastern portion of the country near the camps because it's highly volatile and filled with armed rebels. 

For most people, that would be a deal-breaker.  Especially when two days before his trip, this picture and an article about the hostile situation was on the front page of the New York Times.

I tried not to think about the front page--and took a page out of V's WASP handbook instead.  I stopped nagging and he went to Chad. 

Aside from missionaries or relief workers, few westerners venture to this area---it's desolate, desperate and dangerous.  While V was there, a worker for Save the Children was killed by the rebels.  V saw his body brought back to the airport to be shipped back to France.

Just getting to the camps is a challenge.  You can only get there on special UN flights run by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the group Angelina Jolie is involved with.

From what V described, the refugees are resigned to the fact that they are going to spend their entire lives in these camps.  It's not a life; it's an existence.

The temperature was 120 degrees while V was there---of course no air conditioning.  And no Starbucks on the nearest corner. 

Life is bleak and boring. The women do most of the work--like building ditches for water. 

But there is little to motivate them, other than surviving another day.  They have no way to exchange ideas or goods with the outside world. 

V's work in Chad was to arrange a project to bring crafts made by the refugees back to the US--where they are sold at home parties sponsored by a wonderful non-profit called Rising International--whose goal is to end world poverty by empowering women all over the world.  

This is their first project inside a refugee camp; possibly the first time women inside a refugee camp will receive any reward for what they can produce.  

V got rewarded beyond what he hoped to find in Africa--the chance to make a difference.

25 Things ....

If you're not on Facebook, you're home free.  And you might not even know about the latest meme asking people to list 25 things about themselves and then spread it to 25 more.  A "friendly" computer virus.

I have to confess I've been interested reading other peoples' lists.  It's all part of 21st century transparency. 

But I also have to confess I can't imagine why anyone would tag me--and why they'd want to know any more about me than they already do.

Like that old line--- enough about me.  What do you think of me?

Lately I feel if I'm not writing about myself, I'm talking about myself.  It's bad enough on the blog.  But it's even worse at home.  I feel like I'm sucking up all the air.  All the time. 

My husband is a great sport.  But I feel the need to set a limit to self-absorption--and make things less about me and more about him.  Which is why I had this idea.  V isn't on Facebook anyway.  So instead of writing 25 things about me, I wrote 25 things about V:

1. He made a bet on New Year's with a friend to see who could lose more weight in January.

2.  He lost (25 pounds) and he won

3. He can't carry a tune

4. He played football in college against O.J. Simpson

5. He was born in Omaha but his parents moved to California when he was 3 weeks old

6. He is a neat freak at heart but tolerates my clutter

7. He has made 9 holes-in-one at golf 

8. He asked to be sent to military school when he was in 8th grade and stayed until he graduated high school

9. He is addicted to crosswords and does the New York Times Sunday puzzle in ink

10.  He hates to shop

11.  His favorite movie is "Shane"

12.  He makes the coffee every morning and brings me a cup when I get up

13. He can do all kinds of math problems in his head

14.  He is not good about staying in touch with people from his past

15.  He changed my drains when I had breast cancer surgery

16.  He changed his voter registration a few years ago and became a Democrat

17. He will eat anything --and he actually likes Spam

18. He has run ultra-marathons and used to run 125 miles a week

19.  He owned his own bowling ball

20.  He loves Civil War history

21. He recently ordered a Snuggie--and he's been wearing it 

22.  He forgets where he puts his keys

23.  When he was young, he wanted to be a football coach when he grew up. 

24. He falls asleep the instant his head hits the pillow

25.  He spent several weeks in Chad at the refugee camps housing refugees from Darfur

Thanks to this list, I've just come up with 25 new ideas for blogs.  But enough about me.

Deficient in details

If you show me a page of copy, my eye is like a laser beam--that will automatically pick out any typos or mistakes.  Or when I make a mosaic, sometimes there's one little piece that doesn't look right, and I'll rip out a whole section, even though I know nobody but me would ever notice.

 My eye for details doesn't apply to most of my life.  But that has to be obvious to anyone reading this.  Because right here on this blog is a very obvious mistake.  Anyone precise and detail-oriented has already noticed what I mean.  Go ahead and look.  Up at the top of the page.  The design doesn't fit around the banner. 

It fit at the beginning.  But then I changed the page design and I couldn't figure out how to change the banner back.  It's been this way for months.  You've seen it, I've seen it, everyone has seen it.   

It's a technical thing I don't know how to do.  So I figured I would temporarily leave the broken banner alone and wait, until I was ready to change the whole design. 

This is one of the hallmarks of a procrastinator.  I wait, and then I forget about it. 

The word "wait"  is one of those four-letter words I should never say.

I don't know if this defect detracts from the experience of reading, or if it offends anyone who has obsessive compulsive disorder.  Since it's my blog and I'm an artist, even though I haven't done anything about it,  I'm sure it bothers me more than it bothers anyone else.  

I''m not sure it does bother anyone else.  If you subscribe to the blog by email, you don't even know what I'm talking about. 

In fact,for almost six months, NO ONE has ever mentioned this to me.  Which makes me kind of wonder why I'm pointing it out now.

Character test

2009 is only a month old but it's already shaping up to be a tough year.  The economy is scary enough; but it seems as if every day I hear about someone else battling cancer.  All kinds of cancer.  Like a cancer chain reaction.

Maybe I hear more stories than the average person because I'm a survivor.  And even for me, it's never easy to hear this news.  To know what to say.  To know what to do.  To know that yet another person--and the people who love them--have been thrown into what I call Cancer World.

It's not a place you want to live.  Or vist.  Or even pass through.  It takes a special kind of brave. 

Personally I'm very squeamish.  I couldn't even watch The Wrestler last night without covering my eyes through the fight scenes.  But that's not the kind of strength you really need.

I found out I was stronger and more resilient than I thought.  But the truth is, I was---and I am---far less strong than people I talk to every day. 

Cancer is capricous and cruel.  It's a constant test of character.  And a person's true character emerges in a crisis.  As ironic as it may sound,  sometimes cancer can bring out the best in people.

Right now I'm helpless, watching friends confront this character test.  They never fail to inspire me with their courage.