Barb is doing quite well and is home. Here is her note from today:

There's no place like home, Dorothy!!

I actually cried on the ride home. You know things could not have gone better for me during and after surgery, but I will not lie to you that the two weeks leading up to it were the worst nightmare I have ever been through. Just the not knowing and waiting have been the most horrible part of this all. Anyway, I am home right now and have just devoured a Casual Clam Greek Salad. I hope I don't live to regret that. I have had nothing but a liquid diet since the night before surgery. I just wanted a salad and no meat.

Now, all of the weird info and questions. They already took off all of my dressings. I have a caved in hole in my right chest. However, I do have cleavage. The cleavage is from the top part of my chest and the hole is from the mastectomy. I have two drainage tubes coming out, one of which they will remove already on Tuesday. This is way soon according to all of the earlier information I had. I am glued together, they don't really do stitches. I have on my new camisole, so from outward appearances, I look the same. It is comfortable to wear. I can't do any showering or water until Tuesday, so I just wear my camisole and house dresses. My pain is like someone hit me or if I worked out too hard at the gym. I am taking a Vicodin every six hours, when needed. Nothing at all compared to the broken back. I can use the computer and do anything where my arm goes no higher than a 90 degree angle, this week. Next week, I am to do exercises to raise my arm at or above my head level. After that, it is up to occupational therapy. I have home health care and occupational therapy starting tomorrow.

The hospital experience was as good as it can get while being in the hospital. My poor roommate was a young girl with a 7-year-old daughter. She was sick the whole time we were there. She had surgery the same time as I did and she is not able to go home tonight as she is running a fever. She is not doing that well. She was there with her husband and mother-in-law. She has had a rough time of it during chemo also. I can't imagine going through all of this with a young child at home too.

So, for the next few days, I am taking a rest and nursing myself into a strong and healed person. Home health care will be here. Starting Monday, John will go back to work and I have a group of nurses (girlfriends) who have offered to come and help if I need it. I am thinking I won't. It sure is nice having my peeps. I feel as if I have been on a long and tiring trip and now I just want peace and quiet and time to collect my thoughts and heal my body.

So, it will be an early good night, but I just wanted to write my letter and let you know how everything went. "Barb's Law of Inverse Proportions": The amount of worry and stress that a person puts into fear of the unknown is inversely proportional to the amount of time that should have been spent in worry and doubt. I would have been much better off spending all of that time on some other thing that could have used all of that wasted time and energy. Just repeat this to me at the next crisis I have.

Love you all and thank you for all of your answered prayers.

Love, me

And thanks to all of you guys who have added Barb to your prayers and kind thoughts. I may be an organized religion drop-out and a cranky cynic, but I will never argue about the power of prayer, positive thinking, and of course, (most of all) love.

~ell

The Lovely Barb goes in for her mastectomy today. Here is part of a note she wrote this morning:

I got up and worked around doing some last minute things. I am making sure I have the right clothes when I come home. I have received about four letters from women that just have had mastectomies and they counsel me to make sure I have large mens' button down shirts. I guess there is a lot of manipulation of the drain tubes for the first few weeks. Nothing stops, the world just goes on.

I hope that the week is going well for all of you. I am almost to half-way done. I count chemo I and mastectomy as half, then chemo II and radiation as the other half. So, we are really celebrating "over the hump" on Wednesday. Just enjoy each day, that is the key.

I took my sleeping pill last night, so slept until 5:30 this morning. I am up now just getting things ready. I have no fear in my heart, just anxiety about getting it over. I know that God is sitting here and probably impatient himself because I am so hyper. It is hard to let go sometimes. Anyway, onward and upward. Next time we talk I will tell you all of the funny hospital stories. Let's hope they don't include anything about cutting off the wrong boob. LOL Love me.

Dearest Person from Milton Keynes:

How are you?

Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

Just wondering.

~ell

damn the soccer moms in their mini-vans
damn thee, carload of brown boisterous boys
who threw fast food bags all over the road, laughing
damn you assholes on your cell phones (it's so important)
as you steer your box on wheels toward me, oblivious
get off the god damned road

it's still summer here. Hot as hell, but so pretty.

The lovely Barb is housebound until her surgery on the 27th due to her lowered resistance to germs and general ickyness that we may spread to her. Send good thoughts her way.

not family friendly, nope

except for the c-word. I only use that maybe once a year and then only under the most extreme of circumstances and I never put it in writing. But hell, shit, ass, bitch and fuck are regulars. And yes, I went to college and am aware that there are other ways by which to express myself but I guess I am a crude simpleton at heart. Must have been all those Partridge Family episodes that did something to my brain.

PS--Amber--did you notice they added CSB? They most have tapped our phones. Fuck. But in a good way, since it landed us CSB.

dropping eaves

overheard in the check-out line at Publix:

Woman on cell phone: "I was married to Jerry for 18 years and we had three kids but I cannot remember one single conversation we had..."

Joe's 9/11 memoir

If you get a chance, read Joe's first-person account of what he witnessed in NYC on 9/11. Thanks, Joe.

In memory of Cecile Caguicla, 9-11-2001

For Cecile:

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form -- no object of the world.

Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.

Ample are time and space -- ample the fields of Nature.

The body, sluggish, aged, cold -- the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

~Walt Whitman

This post is a tribute to one victim of the inexplicable horror that altered all of our lives forever five years ago today.

Cecile Caguicla, 55 years old, of Boonton, New Jersey, was an assistant vice president of finance at Marsh & McLennan, Inc. She worked on the 98th floor of the World Trade Center tower one, where she perished along with 20 of her co-workers and 2,749 other innocents on September 11th, 2001.

That morning, Cecile attended mass--as she did every day--and walked to work with a friend. She was last seen that morning by her friend, Maria, stopping to buy a blueberry muffin in front of the building on her way in to work.

Cecile came to America in 1975 from her native Philippines. She was a lover of the arts and celebrated and embraced beauty in whatever form she found.

In its series to honor each victim of 9/11, (Portaits of Grief), the New York Times profile of Ceclie described a generous woman content in her life and strong in her faith who loved and was loved in return by many.

Cecile is survived by five sisters, 18 nieces and nephews and innumerable extended family and friends. Her family's tribute to Cecile can be read here.

To read personal tributes to other 9/11 victims, visit the blogger memorial project to honor the 2,996 here.

kitty contemplates eating Jesus, or maybe it's just an affectionate moment

I stole this shot from Stuff on my Cat, one of my favorite blogs. Go check them out and please, do not leave an indignant cat-abuse comment. Please.

Enyhoo, this pic pretty much sums up where I am at the moment.

I'm genuinely sad about the death of Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin because the guy was so filled with wonder and awe and a ravenous lust for life that dammit, he deserved to live to be a very old man. The self-described "Wildlife Warrior" got royally screwed and so did his family. What a bummer.

I don't give a rat's ass about Katie Couric anchoring the national evening news because as we have already established, she is NOT a journalist and frankly, her studied "I am so serious and studious and concerned" affectation makes me want to puke. So can the endless "Katie is reading the news starting real soon!" ads please stop? Jesus.

When, oh when, please sweet baby Jesus, will the political campaign end already? I am so over the political ads on TV and the radio and the litter (campaign signs) choking all the roadways and the bullshit ads in the papers. I think something is seriously wrong with anyone who runs for public office.

New Orleans is still a bloody catastrophe. Does anyone give a shit?

My boss is a drooling cretin. How much longer can I stand to work for someone I do not respect and do not believe?

My manuscript got brutally panned by one of my professors (grad school seemed like a good idea). Said professor is a New York Times best seller's list author, so, yeah, she kinda knows what she's talking about. It sucked.

I am obviously watching too much TV.

I need a vacation.

The end.

when you get cancer and lots of people love you, you are sometimes so bombarded with all that love and concern that eventually you can't handle it. Barb has been so overwhelmed with phone calls and e-mails and notes and pop-ins and pot roasts and casseroles that she is freaking out and really sick of repeating the same story again and who can blame her? I say she needs to get better at throwing people out of her house. So she decided to start sending an e-mail update to all her "peeps" and Kipster set her up with a listserve thingy. Here's a bit of the latest:

"I go for my blood work on Friday. Maggie is my keeper for this one. We are going to mass and breakfast first, then blood work and on to school for a half day. We have a long Labor Day weekend. I am sooooooooo looking forward to it. I need to give my body a rest.

John needs a rest too. He is very tired and worn out. I hate to see him like this, but the statement "cancer strikes the whole family" is really true. He said his teeth hurt from gritting them so much. He is a quiet worrier and that is how he reacts. So, peeps, throw in a good prayer for John too while you are at it.

Love me."

My mom just got back from a trip to Ohio to attend her 50th high school reunion (the only reason, really, why one would travel to Ohio, let's be honest).

I asked her how it was and she said the biggest shock was when she arrived at the swanky hotel where the reunion was held.

She said: "You know, honestly, I got off the elevator and thought I was in the wrong place at first because----well, there were all these old people! Sometimes you forget that you're old."

That made me think of Maggie--a lovely woman I worked with years ago. When she turned 60 we took her to the Olive Garden for lunch. One of our co-workers remarked about how lovely Maggie was for 60. Maggie smiled and got a wistful look on her face and said: "I feel like I felt when I was 20, you know? Sometimes when I look in the mirror in the morning I'm so surprised."

One more thing: Mom said that a woman named Mary sought her out at the reunion and said: "You were the only friend I ever had in high school and I'll never forget you for being so kind to me. Thank you."

Mom barely remembers spending time with Mary. She does remember Mary being picked on by the other kids at school. And she said a guy at the reunion seemed to be dodging Mary and finally he sheepishly admitted to Mom that he had been a huge asshole in high school and had treated Mary like shit and how embarrassed and ashamed he felt seeing her at the reunion. Mom encouraged him to go have a chat with Mary and cop to his asshole behavior. He did. How cool is that?

I turned to Schmoopie and wagged my finger and said: "You listen up. Weigh your words and your deeds carefully. You never know what people will carry with them the rest of their lives." I really didn't need to say that because my kid is the epitome of kindness and compassion. But it was a great reinforcement opportunity too good to pass up.

"Yep," Grandma said. "Kindness costs you nothing but it can mean so much to someone. You just don't know."

I was driving the 13-year-old home from school today and she said: "You know what, Mom? The average human being sheds 40 pounds of skin in a lifetime."

I said: "Wow, I am so glad you are back in school. There is just nothing like the awe of the discoveries of middle school science." Seriously. That bit of esoteric trivia made my day. I hope you enjoyed it too.

is the cooler ready?

we are in the strike zone again and that means one thing to us salty hurricane vets: beer run.

so we did the wig shopping.

Will the old ladies at the wig shop ever recover? Not likely, no.

PS--Barb really loves her new temporary hair.

surprise! mental illness really can cost you your job

so here's my theory on the whole firing thing and the cult thing: I am 99.9% convinced that TC is probably bipolar. No, I am not a psychiatrist but I've spent enough time among the mentally ill that I usually recognize the symptoms. So TC is mood swinging, manic one minute (see: Jerry Maguire), unbelievably boring and dull the next (see: Vanilla Sky).

The good folks of science fiction cult-land tell him to skip the standard mental health treatment and meds, he can cure himself with their version of Star Trek-esgue religion. Why else would he cling to his misguided and ill-informed beliefs so vehemently and attack poor depressed Brookie like he did? Because it's all about him,(he is a GUY after all) not depressed Brook.

And now finally peeps in Hollywood are starting to look at one another and say "Dude, TC, he isn't the greatest actor of his generation, no, he's just fucking nuts!!! Plus he's short. And not very smart and uneducated. And sort of a pedophile. Ew. Cancel his contract pronto and somebody get me Ashton on the horn..."

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
~ Edgar Allen Poe

Our friend, the lovely Barbara, is doing well. The chemo and the steroids are a bitch but she is approaching every day with grace and humor and determination. She decided the other night to up and shave her head. Here's an e-mail she sent about it:


I did the deed.

Picture this, unable to touch your hair or wash it, being hot and tired. Trying to go to bed and your bed is filled with hair, it is itching your nose and in the back of your throat. So, I just went in by myself (sorry Mary) and shaved it bald as can be. I then took a full, long shower and feel like healthy Barb again. I can sleep now. It was freeing and it makes me feel so much, much, much better. When your hair is dead on your head and you can't touch it. Outta here! I look like a Sumo wrestler, but I can work on that too.

I guess what I am telling you is that there are no right answers, you just constantly have to ask yourself and whoever your support people are (Mary and I have deliberated over this for days) you have to figure out what will really make you feel better. If you can get past the looks of the deal, it is so easy. I feel 500% better than when I came in here to sleep tonight. I feel like I crossed a threshold and now I am waiting for the hair to grow back. Very positive. B

we went to the ball game today and of course, our team received a severe spanking, although, like the collaborates-with-the-enemy kind of gal I am, I wore a shirt supporting the out of town (spankers) team which was an homage to where my mom was born. Did she appreciate it? She did not wear a shirt supporting her place of birth team. She wore a where she lives now (spankees) shirt. So did my child. We are a mixed family.

I went to the ladies room by myself and as I exited a guy walking past with a big group of what looked like his family sort of leaned toward me and said in a low hissy whisper only I could hear, "Well, why don't you go back to ______ (name of the out of towner's town)?" as he passed."Oh, go fuck yourself, schmo," I thought, though I did not say it out loud. Just thinking it pleased me and so that was enough.

When it was time for the Star Spangled Banner we all shuffled to our feet.I was intrigued by the honor guard presenting the colors. They were from a local fire house and one of the firemen carried a huge, shiny silver axe at the ready. It looked just like the one my uncle received enshrined in a walnut display case when he retired as the state fire chief of a Midwestern state many years ago. (This is the association of all the chief's in one state. They too have a chief. It's a big deal to be the state chief). It is hanging in his den in a place called "The Villages" in Florida, which is kind of a surreal Stepford-ish town for old geezers. A lot of good the axe does up there on the "wall of me" collecting dust.

Anyway, I wondered why one would need such an axe to carry next to a young man brandishing the stars and stripes with much pomp and circumstance. It's not like the axe is necessary. Not like it would/could be used in the event of a fire at the ball game. Would it be used to beat the fire out of the flag were it to catch fire? These things are a mystery to me. But there is something about a guy wielding an axe that makes me all gushy inside. And the SSB, which was sung in four-part harmony by four old gals in matching red, white and blue denim outfits made me misty. This took me by surprise. I thought about how Randy would have hated what they were wearing. They sang lustily.

I was wondering if the four older singing gals were lesbians when a kid started running up the stairs next to where I was standing. He had a ball glove in his hand and was obviously on a mission to find the best possible position in the ball park from which to catch fly balls.

But not yet."Hold it!" An usher stuck his arm out and stopped the kid who would have been clothes-lined had he not stopped in his tracks.

"Turn around and put your hand over your heart. Have some respect, kid," the old guy commanded. (Our ushers are retirees. They demand R-E-S-P-E-C-T). The kid did as he was told. He stood motionless. I am a statue.

The ladies wrapped up their warbling, beaming at one another as their voices blended perfectly, smooth and fluid. I thought of my friend in Paris who is struggling to communicate with her neighbors and says she will weigh 600 pounds when she gets back here in two years because she is living on sausage and baguettes. I thought of how much she loves baseball. I missed her. I was glad I was at the game. I wished she was too.

I watched the usher watch the kid like a hawk, moving his lips to the words. I inhaled the smell of the peanuts and the beer and yes, even the disgusting nachos smelled like baseball, and then I got a lump in my throat and felt all sentimental.

When the ump yelled "Play ball!" I thought, "Shucks it's good to be alive."

happy birthday, schmoopie!

Angel girl,
Whom we adore,
In praise of you we sing.
Each day we love you
More and more,
Such happiness you bring.

(second sweetie from the right).