What is a high school reunion?

It's a reminder I could have lived without!

It appears I have been out of high school for 30 years. I would have blissfully been totally unaware of this fact except some do-gooder tracked me down and emailed me an invitation to the bloody thing. Which in itself is a bit disturbing.

I can't remember anyone from high school. I'm not sure what you even do at these things. I'm guessing get wasted and tell a bunch of lies about how fabulous your life has been.

Oh I'm sure there are people who attend their high school reunions and have a great time. Reminiscing and re-connected and come away with some nice memories of how great it was to see so and so again after all this time and to know they are doing so well. Yeah. Wasted and telling a bunch of lies.

Call my cynical but, I just can't see this event being much beyond that.

And I'm sure there are people who have kept in contact with friends from high school. Well, you are in contact with these people you don't need a reunion.

I just don't get it.

So some woman is organizing the thing. Can't remember her. And I went to the link to RSVP just to see what it was all about. About 500 people have been tracked down. And out of those 2 have said they are attending. The woman organizing it and one other person.

I'll be curious to see how many people decide to drag themselves to this gig. If it just turns out to be the organizer and one other person, they could just go to dinner.

I See You

I see you

See me
Not with your eyes

See me
Not with perceptions

See me
Not with societies standards

See me
Not with rulers

See me
With your heart

And you will know me
And I will see you

Hello Miss Clairol, I've Missed You.

Cover your eyes, I'm letting lose. God damned son of a bitch cocking sucking mother fucker dickwad. I was geriatric profiled. AGAIN.

At the Bowers Museum. It got me the senior membership. I'm not shitting you. And here is the ego stomping into the ground and pulverized to dust part. To get the senior membership you have to be over 62.

I'm 48.

Kick me while I'm down? Sure. It's says on the membership enrollment form, senior membership for those over 62 with ID. The (cover you eyes) God damned son of a bitch cocking sucking mother fucker dickwad didn't ask me for ID. Just offered me the senior membership. I can do the senior membership for you. Oh thank you sign me up, you (cover your eyes) God damned son of a bitch cocking sucking mother fucker dickwad.

It's the gray hair. So I'm going to visit my friend. Miss Clairol and try to regain my age.

But, now a terrifying thought has occurred. What if I color my hair and still get offered senior discounts?

Right now I have an excuse. But, if I'm offered senior discounts after I color my hair I will implode.

Fucking gray means old society can bite my ass.

Makes me so pissed beyond reason because my other choice is to cry about it.

Connected

Dark skies
Bright stars
Ever changing moon
Moon cycles
We cannot comprehend
The vastness of the sky
Distance of the stars
Yet we know
We know
We are connected

What the.....?

There is nothing wrong with this dog. It would be the owner. Yes. You are looking at a doggie high chair.

You can buy one at Petco if you are so inclined. But, I wouldn't be telling people about it. Or having anyone over for dinner anytime soon.

Look again at the picture. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the dog is even perturbed over this. Help me, my owners are insane people! Someone tell them I'm a dog!

Fearing Iodine?

Well, I've got my CAT scan scheduled for the 8th of March. Same day as my herceptin and the CAT will be done at my oncologist. Nice thing is that they will set up my IV and run the herceptin and then leave the IV in so it can be used to inject the contrasting dye when I have my CAT.

Daisy who set up the appointment asked me if I was allergic to iodine. So I'm assuming that's the contrast they are going to use. Well, I'm not allergic as far as I know. But, darn it I'm not sure if they have used iodine on me yet or not.

I have had a ton of scans done but I'm not sure if any of them used iodine. I have either had iodine used or not. I guess I'm going to find out if I'm allergic to iodine. But, it is a rather scary way to find out. Can they test you for this ahead of time?

Now I'm off to do research.

Crap something else to worry about.

Poking day

Well, we accomplished the herceptin today with one poke. Wrist area to boot. It went very smoothly. And I was sitting back and checking email on my iphone and not paying attention when Chris yells mom mom hey that is going way too fast. And I look and yep that was dripping too fast for my taste. They can run herceptin in 45 minutes. But, they start you off at 1 1/2 hours and well since I didn't have any trouble at that speed I haven't allowed them to speed it up. The savings in time just wasn't worth any trouble it might bring me. And for those wondering what trouble that could be, I'm talking about an allergic reaction. I don't know if slower is less likely to cause one but I do know if an allergic reaction happens at a slower rate they can stop it fast. Anyway, I am from the school of thought that if it's not broken don't fix it. But, here we were running away at a fast speed here. So I wave down one of the nurses and she slowed it down a bit for me. The nurse that set me up is usually there only one day a week. I think we have only danced once before and I think that was for one of my chemos so she didn't know.

Well all was fine and we were out of there a lot quicker with it being speedy, it took an hour. Since nothing happened I think I will go ahead and let them run it at an hour.

One of the nurses came by and asked if my vein had co-operated today. Yes it had and then I told her that the only thing different that I had been doing was lifting some hand weights. I told her I have a squeezing exercise thing but that I had read that hand weights can help so I was doing that too. AND she says oh yeah no wonder it went better today.

WHAT? Why didn't you tell me that could help.

Well, she says that's a pretty pro active thing to do.

Yeah? and the point would be?

Well, we don't push these things.

Sheesh a suggestion would be helpful though

Well, most people just wouldn't bother anyway.

Oh well, the truth finally comes out. They just get tired of giving helpful suggestions and then have people ignore them. Also there is the factor that they could give these helpful hints and it still could go poorly. If enough scar tissue builds up in the vein no amount of weight lifting is going to do any good. The weight lifting helps the vein pop and can make cannulating easier. But it is not guarantee.

Then we headed off to Fashious Island for lunch and to kill time before I had to go to the day hospital for my Lupron shot. Now I told the nurse not to put a band aide on after the shot because at the Hoag Day hospital they use band aides with crazy glue on them. I'm telling you it hurts like Hell pulling those off. So she said okay. And we are yaking as I'm pulling my pants up and I'm just not paying that much attention. It strange how after a while you are just kind of on automatic pilot with all these procedures. It wasn't until I got home and was changing out of my pants to put on some PJs that I realized that no she didn't put a band aide on me but she had taped a cotton ball to my ass. Sexy. Like a stoned playboy bunny with her tail way off centered.

And we went home. Aw sweet home and we are hunkering down now to wait for the rain that is suppose to come our way.

I'm over the flu and feeling well again. So tomorrow I'm going to attempt to get back to my daily walking. If it is raining it will be taking place at the mall.

Time to get back into the swing of things.

Happy Valentines.....

Personalize a digital greeting

Happy Valentine's Day.

Prove to me you love me.

Open you damned wallet. Wide.

Basically that is what this holiday that has been commercialized by the Hallmarks of the world have turned it into.

Hey now I'm all for celebrating love. And all the forms of love not just the romantic ones. I'm all for the reminders of holidays. The reminders of hey people appreciate one another.

But alas all things come at a price. And sometimes these holidays can cause other emotions in people. Oh like inadequacies. And that makes me cranky. Oh Hell, who am I kidding. It makes my down right outraged.

And where is that line exactly? That line from celebrating to belittling? I don't know.

So here's two middle fingers up to our sappy society's version of what Valentine's Day should be and here is to celebrating our love for each other.

I heart all of you.


(Just a little disclaimer here. I'm not referring to myself. I can drive myself to Sees.)

Can you trust......?

I was geriatric profiled recently at Disneyland. Excuse me that would be California Adventure to be precise although I think it is completely pathetic that Disney even considers California Adventure to be a separate theme park. And that they have the audacity to charge a separate admission price. They are doing a lot of work over there to expand it. Hopefully it will be an improvement.

I was outraged by the profiling. And I have blamed the profiling on my gray hair. Which I'm pretty confidant was the cause of my profile. But, today. Today, I am having to face the fact that the profiling I received was justified. Yes I do have the flu but, it's not the stomach flu. I am feeling better. I'm starting to turn the corner. But, due to an accident I had today, I have discovered for the first time in my life that I can no longer trust...
my farts.

And that pretty much makes it official that I'm old one.

Is there a purpose to illness?

Day three I believe of this flu and I'm now wondering is there a purpose to illness?

Now the Bible thumping severe right wing fundamentalist would tell you it is because we are sinners. SINNERS think shouting with Bible raised high in the air here. And this thinking Christian who has a real relationship with God says bullshit and think raised two middle fingers high in the air here. Which now brings to mind an encounter I had with a young girl recently. She was four or five years old maybe? She came up to me and held up her index finger and said "this is good for you" then she held up her middle finger and said "this is bad for you" then she went on to show me her shoes and tell me how pretty they were. Hysterical.

We are fragile, us humans. We don't like to think about it. We are in severe denial over it. But, we are fragile and we get sick. And it sucks. But what purpose does it serve? Is illness really to make sure we don't stay on this planet forever? Because I'm thinking that if there were no illnesses of any kind we would be fine. There wouldn't be an overabundance of us because we are stupid. Yes we are and we find ways of doing ourselves in without the help of illness.

Well that was my assumption. After a bit of surfing the internet I have come to a couple of interesting conclusions. One is we are all going to die. We know we are going to die and the perverse bastards that we are apparently we like to keep track of just how we accomplish this. There are tons of sources on this data for how we end it all for everyone all over the world. Here's one source if you care to gander. It's interesting actually. Alarming in someways and comforting in others. We aren't whipping out those firearms as much as the news would have us believe. But, damned those seniors over 85? higher than what I expected. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate This is a bit outdated for my taste at 2002.

My second conclusion is that well, illness does do us in far more than stupidity. Not sure if I'm comforted or alarmed by this realization. Means less control over our demise but, it also means we are not that stupid.

So I guess illness does have a purpose. Although it seems to be a pretty shitty one, our destiny is not to stay on this planet forever.

There was a marathon on yesterday. 12 hours of America's Top Model. Tyra Banks show. I had it on for the whole 12 hours while I slept off and on through out the day. It was nice quiet background noise while I slept and when I did wake up, I didn't miss anything and wasn't lost. Some girls were missing and I knew they were sent home. Losers. In the end Nicole won. And at the end is where I found out this was an old season. 2005.

Seemed harmless at the time, but I think it has caused me brain damage.

Epic Fail!

I failed on not getting sick. Epic Fail! Woke up Monday morning feeling like I'd been hit by a mac truck. Holy cow my whole body hurt and had a raging head ache and no wonder I was running a fever of 102. Did the switching of Advil with Tylenol every two hours which kept it hovering around 100. I'm congested with a runny nose but, that is it. No sore throat. No ear pain. Just runny nose, fever and body aches.

Today the fever has been hovering around 99 and I still taking pain reliever. Advil. I love Advil. Stuff works good for me.

Chris is still coughing but claims to be feeling better. But, he is not feeling that much better because he is not eating.

This is nasty stuff.

And this is about all my eyes can stand of looking at this screen.

Peace out for now.

Test

I'll be having lots of test come March. I'm trying not to think about it. But, I find that is a lot like meditation where you are suppose to empty your mind. The best I can do is get to a point where I'm thinking that I'm not suppose to be thinking of anything.

I'm waiting for Daisy at Dr. Barth's to call me with the schedule. I go for my Herceptin on the 15th and I think I'll just pop in and see her if I haven't heard from her.

Then I'll see Dr. Barth for the results. Test result day will be the 30th I think. Look to the right I have it on the schedule. AND that is what I'm not looking forward to. The scans are a pain. Something will have to be injected into me. Something unnatural and most likely radioactive. But, it is receiving the results that suck. The anxiety will be high. Just like school. Only if I ever take another test during this life that is academic I'll laugh my head off on test result day. Big deal. These results are critical. And I'm just not going to go into what they will mean if they don't come back clean because that is a scary place to go to. And I'm trying not to borrow trouble. My tumor markers are good. That's a blood test. And I feel good. So there isn't anything at the moment to indicate that the scans won't come back clean. So there I am.

Chris is sick as a dog and I'm trying not to get it. I'm walking Monday thru Friday about 3.25 miles each day and I plan on doing it tomorrow unless the boy has shared whatever it is he got. Popping supplements like crazy to try and not catch it.

Will see if I succeed.

And that is about all that is running around in my head right now. Need to peel more wallpaper as that project is not done. Yard is looking good and some of the fruit trees are just beginning to bloom.

Overall February looks to be a quiet month. Well, now I most likely just went and blew that all to hell.

Geriatric Profiling

I was profiled today. Yes I was. At Disneyland. Well, it was California Adventure to be precise.

The profiling took place on the Toy Story ride. For those unfamiliar with this ride there are stairs you have to climb and descend upon exiting the ride. I hopped on the ride with my dad without incident or any problems. Then a ride attendant looks at me and says "Do you have any problems with stairs?" "EXCUSE ME!" I say rather annoyed. Should have been a huge hint at the kid. But, no. "Do you have any problems with stairs?" The kid was probably thinking I was hard of hearing too. "NO!" and off the ride goes. I look over at my dad. "Do I look that decrepit!" My dad says "no I do, and I'm sure he was talking to me." Well, sorry dad but, the kid was LOOKING and TALKING to ME.

I'm sure it was the gray hair. My dad is bald and was wearing a hat. Me. Gray hair right out there.

I was profiled as a geriatric, unable to climb stairs, hard of hearing, crotchied old woman by a chubby ride attendant kid at California adventure because of my hair color and outrage.

Damn but, I am not ready to be looked at as old. Certainly I don't think I look like someone who can't climb a damned set of fucking stairs!

I took being bald and wearing hats as to not scare the children. I took having uber short hair. I took having gray hair. But, I just can't take being someone who looks like they can't climb stairs!

I think I might be visiting my very good friend Miss Clairol. Blondest blond #12G.

Bite me.