Totally Worth It

For Christmas dinner this year, we decided to make a prime rib roast.  It was a significant investment - not just in the cost ($10.98 a pound, 9 pounds), but in braving Gartner's Meat Market to pick it up.  Gartner's is kind of a Portland tradition - best meat market in town, but around significant holidays, they have to hire parking guides, rope off areas, etc...  When we got there, the "take a number" sign was at 26, and they were just then working on number 93. It was organized chaos though - we spent maybe 30 minutes there and got out with our skins, our sanity, and some of our wallet.

It was worth it though - the roast was delicious, we had leftovers for a couple of days, we made the best beef noodle soup I've had in a long time with the bones, and now Moose, Daisy and Dancer are trading off bones and having a marvelous time.  Just for the fun that Dancer is having rolling around on top of "her" bone, it was totally worth it. 

Is It Cancer Or Just The Flu? Call in the Moose.

I've been under the weather for the past few days - running a fever, chills, general achy blah... One of the uncomfortable drawbacks to Hank's occupation of my uterus is that I can't tell if it's just a side effect, or if I've got the flu.  Either way, there's not a lot I can do other than just ride it out and indulge myself in puppy therapy. 

Fortunately, Moose is the best.  I can lay down under my fluffy purple blanket and he's right there, curling up on the lower end of my spine, just like a little hot water bottle.  After 10 years together, he knows just where to settle for maximum comfort.  Of course, he also knows just how to get my goat, and he tends to move around a lot, but still...  he's the best anyway. Daisy and Dancer occasionally try to sleep with me as well, but frankly, we need a bigger bed if it's going to be a three dog night. 

Ear Trauma

I went and got my ears repierced today - I had them done back in the 70s, but my holes grew over, so... I'd talked it over the night before with Mom, remembering the bad old days, when they would hold a cork on the back of your ear, heat up a needle by running it through a candle flame and shove it through. I was feeling very grateful for modern conveniences, having scouted the internet and found a piercing artist who was a certified professional yada yada...

So, showed up, and it's a head shop.  Half piercing studio, half vape shop, run by a woman who I'm pretty sure followed the Dead for a while.  Purple dyed hair, she makes Victorian lampshades, she gave me organic instructions on how to care for the ears, the whole shebang.  I was doing ok until she had me sat down in the hand chair (see above), prepped up and pulled out... yep.  You guessed it.  Cork.  But on the other hand, she gave me a stuffed monkey to hold onto while she pierced me, so we survived.

(Must Be 18 To Read This Post)

It's been an interesting evening here at the house.  Daniel is going off to his "Boys in the Woods" pot luck tomorrow, and he's making dessert - froot loop rice krispie treats in a lovely rainbow theme with tiny candy penises on top.  He's making an effort to be inclusive - he's got 36 white chocolate (with pink tips, of course) and 12 chocolate ones.  Contrary to urban legends, they're both exactly the same size, although Daniel does claim that the chocolate ones taste better.  I'm staying out of this one...

Memory Well

Mom brought me a gift from Grandma - she was going through her papers and found a caricature of me, circa the early '80s, sitting on a horse with a cowboy hat, claiming that there was a $1,000 reward for my arrest for horse stealin', cattle rustlin' and cowboy carousin'.  I'll see if I can manage to get it scanned in somehow, but the odd thing is that I can't remember it, at all.  No clue when it was done, don't remember ever seeing it before, it's just a complete blank.  Odd...

Really Belated Self-Realization

Tonight was the last night of my mandatory "weight management" class (don't get me started on the hoops I'm jumping through), but I suddenly realized why I'm having such a hard time with dieting.  Everyone else had goals like "look good for my reunion" or "be able to play with my children" or "go for a walk with my wife".  My goal was the same goal I've been wrestling with for the past year and a half - get this damned cancer out of me.  It's a good negative goal, but I need to think about a positive goal.  Anger is one hell of a motivator, but it's hard to keep up for long distances.

Hank Sucks.

I've been doing ok lately, whistling past the graveyard and pretending everything is smooth.  But every once in a while (like today) I get reminded that I've got cancer.  Ok, not that I've got cancer.  That I've got what is currently incurable cancer.  With a really lousy survival rate. I'm really, really good at denial - World Champ, as a matter of fact.  But this tumor that I call Hank is going to kill me. 

But that doesn't mean that I have to let him win.  I am not just this collection of skin and bones - in fact, that's not the most important part of me.  I can still create something that will last for others, and I can still polish the most important parts of me - the ones that I believe live on beyond this world.  My relationships with my family and friends, my intellect, my compassion, my dreams...  Hank can't take those if I don't allow him to.

He's been winning the war so far by limiting my movements outside the home, by tiring me out, by screwing with my emotions.  But I'm going to start fighting back again.