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Monday, December 28, 2009
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tillyjane, a/k/a my mom, spent three weeks at the beginning of this past autumn traveling around the West, much of at the Grand Canyon doing trail maintenance and habitat restoration as a volunteer. When she returned to Portland, she began writing up her days as a sort of irregular journal. The emails were so delightful that with her permission, I'm going to post them here as guest blogs — meditations on people, travel, nature and the American West.
This is her fifth installment, from an email dated September 24th, shortly after her return.
( Where Have All the Flowers Gone? )
tillyjane's previous installment, I'd Like to Get to Know You", is here: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
Don't forget the latest caption contest voting poll — I'll be closing this out today or tomorrow, and declaring a winner, so if you haven't voted yet, go check 'em out.
Atheism, cancer and me — Relinking a Christmas Eve post of mine in case you took the weekend off for holidays. Comment thread is still active, and has a lot of really good discussions, though it is quite long at this point.
My cancer and digestive health TMI post spawned an interesting comment thread on LJ — Which was then echoed, in various ways, by calendula_witch here (hysterectomy), fjm here (celiac), joycemocha here (menopause) and accioayla here (joint disorders). And possibly more I don't know about. Fascinating stuff in some of those comment threads, too, as we all talk about things people Don't Talk About.
Failblog with the "four Fs" — "Fighting, fleeing, feeding and mating." Ahem.
A Microbial Encyclopedia — Scientists have mapped the genomes of 56 species of microbes. I love the comments about the density of species. Interesting stuff.
Anniversary of a cosmic blast — Somehow I missed the original event. This piece from Bad Astronomy is fascinating, violence on a literally astronomical scale.
For Airline Passengers, Pat-Downs, Searches and Restroom Monitors — Pilots on Sunday declared an emergency after a second man, also a Nigerian, spent an unusually long time in an airplane restroom. Oh, joy. Speaking as someone who often spends an unusually long time in restrooms, this will make flying even more of a treat. Maybe there's an upside to me being grounded for the next seven months.
?otD: Avatar or Dances With Smurfs?
12/28/2009 Body movement: n/a (60 minute urban walk forthcoming) Hours slept: 6.25 This morning's weigh-in: 225.0 Currently reading: Living With Ghosts by Kari Sperring
2:09AM
I love this song.
It incorporates some of the best quotes from Sagan, including: "We on earth marvel, and rightfully so, at the daily return of our single sun. But from a planet orbitting a star in a distant globular cluster, a still more glorious dawn awaits. Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise - a morning filled with 400 billion suns; the rising of the Milky Way."
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Shortpacked!@TNI: Year in review.
Shortpacked!: Mail Bag Week!
 Hey, look! My Uncle Jon is holding my awesome new T-Rex Squishable. Maggie got it for me for Christmas because she knows this is the closest I'll ever get to being able to wrap my arms around Ryan North every night. Not that he wouldn't let me, it's just the distance, you see.
I should let it hang out with the house's growing collection of webcomics non-book merchandise, like my Monica statue, my Diablo action figure, and my Joyce plush and Maggie's Jinxlet plush. T-Rex will stomp them all. Gently.
As today's strip infers, I've been taking questions from my fellow Twitterers and answering them in comic strip form. It's something I haven't done before, but I'm enjoying it thoroughly, as I get to address some small things that may otherwise not appear in the comic. I still have some strips for the latter half of the week to do, so it's not too late to submit questions.
It's a good format for this week, what with the low panel count and the no coloring, since I'm helping my pal Graham move out of his apartment to his new one, right up until the New Year. It's funny, because as he noted to me today, at this stage in his moving process, I'm basically the only other person around who can actually help him. Who else is going to be able to know what boxes to put which Transformers, so as to keep them ordered by toyline? No one but me, that's who!
Because I'm a dork.
I work pretty damned hard at being strong and smart about all this cancer stuff, but sometimes the horror of it all overtakes me again, flashing by like an S-class Mercedes on the autobahn.
Then all I've got left in my hand is tears.
Oh, well. At least I was in the shower. And it proves I still have a heart.
I've been talking a lot lately about sex and cancer, about the overwhelming aspects of chemo, the impact of cancer on my circle of intimates, friends and family. But it has had other, less obviously dramatic impacts on my life, some of which are still very strong.
One of the most basic changes is not particularly TMI, which is that my sleep metabolism shifted substantially after the colonic resectioning of May, 2008. When I emerged from the immediate post-operative recovery period (during which one sleeps twelve or fourteen hours a day, or more), I found myself sleeping six hours per night instead of my classic seven and half or eight. This was a welcome surprise, and I immediately leveraged it to expand and firm up my exercise regimen.
So one of the frustrations of this round of surgery has been the intense oversleeping during recovery. I'm down now to six or seven hours per night, which tells me I'm at the tail end of the substantial recovery. Which is to say, I still have healing wounds, internal pain, range of motion issues, etc., but I'm a lot more myself. One of my chemo fears is that the sleep will spiral back up. Fatigue and lassitude are classic, and basic, side effects of chemotherapy.
Because I use those waking hours. That's how I sustain a Day Jobbe, parenting, a writing career, a love life, a social life, and still get laundry done. I'm not superhuman, I'm just awake and energetic more than most people. The eighteen hours a day I've been used to was a gift of the first Excellent Cancer Adventure. This round of New Adventures in Cancer threatens to take it away. Not pleased, me. Not pleased.
( Under cut for digestive health TMI. )
3:23AM
The Ustream Q&A is done for this week - thanks to everyone who showed up!
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Apparently two of my 2008 novellas, "America, Such as She Is" (from Alembical), and "In the Forests of the Night" (from METAtropolis) are currently Nebula eligible, due to a fillip in the rule changeover. If you're a SFWA member and would like to see either of them, please let me know.
We made it out of Oklahoma City on thursday morning with the storm chasing us the whole way. We didn't make it clear of the weather until reaching Fort Smith and by then we realized our visit to Arkansas might last longer than we expected.
A storm-of-the-century later, we're spending an extra day here at Megan's family's house. They've been extremely hospitable during the whole incident, but I worry about driving on the curves and hills around here when we head back tomorrow. Looks like there's only a three-hour window in which we can enter the city while the weather is above freezing.
And on top of that, I hear the snowplows are only hitting heavy routes so neighborhoods are still impassable. So we could make the five-hour trip back home only to be stuck a few blocks from our house. :P
I know a lot of you are still stuck in OKC, so I'm just hoping everyone's safe and warm. We'll be joining you soon for next week's snow!
Friday, December 25, 2009
Joyce and Walky!: Romance.
For Christmas we had this delicious penisloaf. It was the tastiest part of a cow, garnished with awesome.
I put so much of this beef in my mouth.
Had a successful Christmas today. the_child did pretty good with her haul, including the crowning glory, a Canon multifunction printer/copier/scanner for her to use in her art projects. Dinner at my parents', where the haul was considerably reinforced. My piece de resistance was the restored 1907 Remington Model 10 typewriter given me by Mother of the Child, though numerous other thoughtful gifts were given and received all around.
At 0:dark:stupid tomorrow, the_child and I head for the airport, and off to San Francisco. We'll be connecting with calendula_witch mid-to-late morning. That's my last out of town trip pre-chemo, so I'm looking forward to both the time away and to the memories, if that makes sense.
I'm back on the 3rd. shelly_rae is back on the 5th. calendula_witch is back on the 7th. We hit zero hour on the 8th, where the rabbithole gapes open and swallows me whole.
Hope everyone has enjoyed a lovely, wonderful holiday season of their preference with persons of loving goodwill. Be well, one and all.
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