Pointsman

Sometimes you feel like posting...

2006-04-23T14:14:00.000-04:00

Somedays you know you should. Like when Dorothy reminded me I had not posted since before Easter.

All I can say is it's been a busy week, with social workers, VNAs, spiritual care people, friends coming to walk Vix (hi, Lynne and Abby!).

But let's see, I had my first consult re: hyperbaric treatment this week. Took 3 hours (!) but the exchange of info was useful. Basically, they know they have something useful in hyberbaric, they just don't know ALL the uses yet. Yes, the increased bloodflow can be a good thing -- if it doesn't increase vascularization to what exists of the remaining tumor, making it grow. That would be a bad thing. But investigating this is a long process. And I think Dr. Rocket wants to be part of it, so I am going to email Joe about that. and IF we do the process...a big IF, it don't start til June, after our trip to Madison.

Before I get into that, though, I want to point out that we're going to see how the Termadore does, and make our decision based a lot on that, though I want to remind people I have had great response to all chemo in the past.

Anyway, for Madison! We're renting an accessible mini-van! So I will be comfortable, and able to swing out as necessary. This is huge! It makes me look forward to the trip. And Elaine, M's mom, is likely coming with us. Stay tuned!

Some days are better/rough/different than others...

2006-04-14T16:35:00.000-04:00

Well, some days are better than others. We got a new, light-weight chair today which has swappable arms that make work a lot easier... but the seat seems less substantial, it's lighter, making transfers skitsier... You can imagine. The other truly excellent thing about this chair is that it has raisable leg rests, which should cut down on the foot swelling. There is much to love about this chair, and maybe the PT can teach us how to work it to truly love it. I suspect she can. We had an OT here this AM, and she was really lovely and brought us wonderful things so I can pick up stuff, and move my legs and all. But her methods were not as useful as those we went through with Cathy, the PT. Every nurse and PT we have seen has endorsed the methods we're using and helped us fine-tune them. Barbara, the OT, wanted us to try new methods and maybe I'm just a scaredy cat, but the "old" methods are as fast and efficient, seems to me.

Then there is the work front. I'm considering a ms on acting and spirituality. Seems to me when an editor shows enough interest to make comments on your intro, you make at least some of the changes before sending it back? But I got 2 versions of the same file, no changes. Fine, they went off to the readers like that.

And then there is the spiritual book on writing/performing monologues that needs to be more teaching, less preaching. It's bought and scheduled, and I am hoping she is listening to what I say about changes, because it will make for a better, more concise book, without losing the valuable material.

Besides the fact that everyone from outside the office is surprised I am trying to work full time....

Vixen is doing well; she is wonderful! I have someone coming in from the office three times a week to walk her. Lynne has taken one of Mary's classes, so she is about the only person I trust to walk my little girl. That will be different when Sue and Shirley visit, as they so kindly have said they will. Of course I trust either of them with Vix -- they've both taught her!

Anyway, Easter promises to be quiet. My sisters are coming up to pot the roses I bought and bring a clematis that we requested. It should be quite nice!

We Have A Ramp!!!

2006-04-06T10:57:00.000-04:00

Not the spring time vegetable, though I imagine it’s available at the Golden Harvest or Fresh Markets.

No, the wheelchair accessible type. The temporary kind you don’t need a freaking permit for. Steve (friend from work) and Brett (husband of friend from work) installed it yesterday and as unlovely as the weather was -- it was SNOWING!! -- we went outside to test it out. It works fantastically well. Today we may even amble over to the Masonic lot, on the corner, with the dog.

I can also now make a cup of tea on my own. Unlock and lock the back door. Load the dishwasher, but not unload it... Mobility and functionality come slowly, but they are coming.

Next week I have a meeting with the hyperbaric specialist. Dr. B had never heard of hyperbaric treatment for necrosis, but he was on the phone right away with the local specialist, and their office didn’t seem too surprised as to what was bringing me in. Fingers crossed,eh?

Rookie Stripe from Hell!!!!

2006-04-03T15:57:00.000-04:00

So, I got the wheels moving, as it were, on getting my new motorized wheelchair. My friend Steve, who has done such great work here for us, is threatening to bring over a roll of yellow tape, so I will be an official dangerous rookie. I am threatening to dragoon my 2 male friends who play golf into teaching me (No. No plaid pants. One has to draw the line somewhere.). Vixen will soon be emulating all those little dogs who live at the Margeson, pulling 300 lb guys in their chairs -- or looking as though they do, for all they are Jack Russells. Looks pretty funny, but those dogs get their exercise!

The chair I have my eye on, like I have never looked at a car, is a Nutron R51XLP. I hope it comes in colors other than Junior’s, Jimmie Johnson’s, or whoever is driving the Jack Daniels car, but the JD is more in my line IF they don’t have orange (Tony Stewart) or brown (Mr. Dale Jarrett himself). Suppose I could have the body painted... :-)

And so do I. The PTs I have seen have shown me various smart, low-impact exercises to do to keep the upper body strength good, and to work on the lower body strength.

Melissa went out and rented a temporary ramp this afternoon.

Emotionally -- pretty good. Can move the left foot sometimes without hauling on it. Stood at the kitchen sink for 15 seconds today, which felt awfully good!

Vixen is getting used to things. She cannot yet jump onto the bed, because the floor of the bedroom is now wooden, and she can’t get a purchase and in fact hurt her leg the one time she tried it -- but that is how smart she is, she tried it only once. Now she sleeps next to my bed and moves when necessary.

Cute nature note: I am working in the dining room, and we have a feeder outside the windows. Well, in addition to the chickadees, sparrows, cardinals, and junco, we now, since yesterday, have a chipmunk. Oh, and a dyspeptic looking squirrel, about the first I’ve seen this year. The chipmunk shares with the birds. He also eats enough that his little cheeks puff up with food so he can’t get into the feeding slots. Way too much fun watching nature when I should be -- and AM -- working!

Ok. Where are we?

2006-03-22T18:11:00.000-05:00

More specifically, where's my foot? Is it on the ground? Is it flat, pointing the right way?

This is the most frustrating thing. A week ago I managed with a cane. I now slowly get round with a 3-sided walker. It is in its way, as our friend Stephe said, kind of like a stroke, given the relative suddenness with which it happened. It being the loss of mobility. On Monday, I agreed to get a commode and yes I can now say that without blushing. Coming downstairs Tuesday was tricky, but that was all. Going upstairs last night was hell. Coming down this morning was worse -- we shall be sleeping on the sleep sofa down here til our friends come in and move the bedroom from upstairs to downstairs... the bathroom and kitchen are on the first floor, you see. So Melissa gets to decorate our old bedroom as her office... one understands it is going to be a grotto of some sort. Strange to think it's going to be hard to see. Me, I'm in charge of the new bedroom, which I call modified club. No, not dark wood panelling, but many different horse photos, some by Barbara, some found here and there. Two ornate bookcases from an unfinished furniture store will act as headboard and night stands. Reading light will be better -- though there are no inset light fixtures there, we can add lamps as necessary.

Did you know -- you probably did -- there are special chairs for people who cycle? Play tennis? Rugby? All of the above? I've even seen paralympic curling! But this could clear up, too, one neurology report says it might well. But damn it, I might as well have fun despite it all.

I'll miss my old office upstairs. You see, we live in a Cape, and my office was a weird little space. Everything down here is so four square. But I'm here, Melissa is here, Vixen, Trouble, Tenzing, Grendel, and Floyd are here, my horse pictures are here, and my friends are here. It's just -- frustrating.

Back on the Ste-roids Again...

2006-03-18T12:36:00.000-05:00

Or, "My Appetite is Back and There's Gonna Be Trouble...."

So. Ever since I tumped over, you may recall, I've been feeling uncertain on my legs. Got worse middle of last week when my left foot went numb. Monday went to the doctor. Wednesday morning had an MRI -- only 2 days before my scheduled one.

Propriaception -- the brain doesn't know where my left foot is. Cause -- likely radiation necrosis.

Jeezums, here we go again! I now have a cane and a walker -- I may be getting a better, luxe model of walker if my insurance approves. I am probably going to temporarily move my office space in work to the first floor. The bathrooms and the kitchen are all on the first floor, damn it.

It could get worse. It could stabilize. It could, according to one study in the neurology journal, get better. According to it, onset of symptoms is severe and abrupt, and then they can go away again. May take 18 months... may not. May not get better. But the cerebellum is a balance center, not a cognitive one. Which means my ability to do the Monday and Tuesday NY Times crosswords should not be impaired.

Owning a herding dog, however.... this could be a battle of wits in any event! Luckily, Vix is listening to Melissa, whom she (Vixen) has never viewed as an alpha and who (Vix) I think needs a refresher course.

My mood is not the best, as you can imagine. But

Words, words, and #$@!^%

2006-03-14T14:55:00.000-05:00

One of my pleasures -- and it has real science content, so I won't call it a guilty pleasure -- is Mythbusters. Recently, they opted to investigate various myths connected with flatulence. This could lead to a riot of improper or only marginally proper language, but our boys, Jamie and Adam, too the high road, consistently using the word "flatus" to describe the, umm, produce of flatulence.

Somehow, my post on the great gelding (which word will probably bring nothing as the commenter probably needs to look up what it means) generated seven posts of sexual/scatalogical phrases.

Thanks to a friend, I have been made aware of these in quick order and deleted them. But for now, I am screening comments. And while I am aware such -- flatus -- is probably generated text, whoever is posting it need not sit their wracking his brain for such phrases.

For the rest of you who have been nothing but intelligent, clever, kind, supportive, I do apologize, but you shouldn't notice much difference.

Birthday wishes -- whether he wants them or not.

2006-03-09T10:08:00.000-05:00

I have seen his face, in person, exactly once. That was in November of 2004. It was late on a Sunday afternoon. The place would be closing in an hour or so. Formal programs were over for the day. We stood in the aisle, just enjoying being there. I paid my respects to the greatest of the great ones, and then just hung out by my favorite.

Then Tammy forgot the mint.

We had been at the Kentucky Horse Park that morning, before we were due at our friend Jeanne's, to visit the grand ladies of the Our Mims Retirement Haven. It was a muddy series of days, and Mr. John Henry had taken full advantage of the fact and had gotten himself good and mudded up, well up the legs. Seemed kinda pleased with himself, too. We got to see Tammy start to work on him, but then had to beetle off to keep our appointment with Jeanne.

When we returned... John Henry still had a deal of mud on him. Typical human strategy -- let the stuff dry, first. That was what Tammy had done and it enabled her to get all -- pr most -- of the remaining mud off. She went back to the tack room to return the brush. And forgot to come out with John Henry's mint.

Mr. John Henry is not shy. Wham! Wham! He would bang his left front hoof against the door of the stall. Wham! "Woman! TAMMY! Where's m'damn mint?" Wham!

The mint came quickly. But the benefit for us was that we got to see more of Mr. Henry than just his shaggy butt in the corner of his stall! And he got his mint.

Today, March 9, 2006, I would like to wish John Henry a very happy 31st birthday!

Click here to see John Henry's race record and pedigree.

So there I was...

2006-03-07T12:26:00.000-05:00

...Feeling awfully darned sorry for myself. How come? Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. ;-)

As the whole world probably knows by know, a few weeks ago I tumped over and hit my head on the corner of the dresser. The "corner" is important, it gains me extra sympathy points. That knock on the noggin (did you know that Scott Hamilton -- I don't know who that Scott Hilton guy the spell check wanted me to write about -- referred to his brain tumor as his "noggin nugget?") seems to have exacerbated something that's been coming... me being pathetically out of shape! My left leg has become numb, down to my foot. I'm currently using a cane to walk, just to keep me from tumping over again. My butt hurts (as my therapist's first client referred to it, my "butticle," which is a fabulous word!). My leg feels like it's asleep, alternately super heavy, or filled with helium. My foot, especially my left foot, feels like I'm stepping on something wicked uneven. I haven't been sleeping well. The Olympics are over. The Red Sox are playing like crap in Florida....

WAAAAHHHHH! Poor me.

Ok, a little self pity is fine, but I need to snap out of this, and events/things keep hurtling my way (stop that, I don't move quickly these days) to remind me not to be silly.

Case in point 1. Jeff's note to me, telling me that the numbness and pain in the butticle are very familiar to him from when he had his problems with the sciatic nerve. And this without my really describing to him what I'm feeling. Kind of like testing a psychic.

Point 2. Sciatic nerve -- inflamed -- is just what George the PT said we were dealing with. NOT CANCER.

Point 3. Jeff reiterates that he is very familiar with what I'm feeling/dealing with right now. Which is NOT CANCER.

Point 4. I'm sitting on the sofa this past Saturday, why I don't know since it is the least comfortable place in the house for me to sit, when we hear the mailman on the front porch and setting something inside the storm door. Melissa goes out to see what it was, and comes back, holding out to me a big envelope with the return address of Cavalia -- a show I have had a draft for a blog about for ages. We were given tickets as a birthday present from my sister, and a limo ride to Boston, from my other sister. I was frankly blown away by the show. I wrote the company. I told them that before I had seen the show I had been facing the possibility of whole brain radiation, but an MRI right after the show suggested I didn't need to do that. (Well, we all know how THAT turned out!)

In the envelope was a gorgeous Cavalia 2006 calendar, signed by Magali Delgado and Frédéric Pignon, with a letter from their home office, apologizing for the tardiness of the note and saying how touched they were -- they had shared it with the entire company and the founder. What a lovely, lovely thing! Made me alternately sniffle and smile the rest of the day.

Point 5. The regular mail the same day brought a wonderful card from my friend Patrish, who has been so concerned and caring all through this. I remember Jeff saying Patrish and Ed are the only couple he knows of, married as long as they have been who still hold hands. In the wake of my tumping over adventure, I guess Patrish mentioned this to Ed, who said, "Well, do you want to hold hands, or fall on your ass?" I have never yet met them, face to face -- when I do, it will be one of the high points of the summer.

Point 6. Melissa looked at me and said, "I'm bored. I'm going to make you another hat." It is _green_, damn it, the green of fresh and growing plants and flowers and stuff. And yesterday, while getting fish for dinner, she stopped in the yarn store (how did I see THAT coming?) and picked up 2 gorgeous skeins of yarn for yet another hat. This one will be purple. I told her I had enough blue.

Point 7. I was at one of the printers this morning; it was not doing what I needed it to do. The VP of our company, our boss here, comes up the stairs and asks me how I'm doing. I sort of shrug and mutter something, and she immediately says, "I'll come see you later," And she does, and listens to me explain about my leg and how frustrating it is. She asked good questions and was as supportive as a boss -- but more importantly, as a friend -- could be.

Point 8. I got a message from Patrish. She can't wait to meet us at Saratoga so she can give me a big Mom hug that will last me til we can meet face to face again.

Point 9. Cheers and check-ins from Rambler in Ottawa.

Point 10. Jeff reminding me not to strangle George.

So somebody please tell me what I'm complaining about? (Ok, that VW ad is pretty annoying.)

TV Commercials

2006-02-28T14:24:00.000-05:00

I like commercials -- good ones, of course, as everyone would be quick to add. What makes one good and one lame, well, that is largely subjective. But recently Volkswagen switched ad agencies, and it's showing up in the commercials. You may remember that VW ran a very quirky series of ads, largely inclusive (which is to say one of those couples was gay; we didn't see many women in them, though).

How, however, the new ad agency has decided -- or VW has decided -- to go after a different demographic. From the 2/28/06 NY Times:
VOLKSWAGEN Strange spots introduced a bizarre character named Fast, symbolizing the need for speed when behind the wheel of the new GTI sold by Volkswagen of America. The commercials were compelling but sexist; only men drove the car and all the women were portrayed as annoying whiners. Gold for getting noticed, lead for sensitivity. Agency: Crispin Porter & Bogusky, part of MDC Partners.

Being a woman I didn't find them all that fascinating. While I was tempted to buy a VW back when the gay couple took the sofa off the curb (and soon regretted it), I am not only not even remotely tempted by the new GTI, hell, I'm blogging about the ads. The ad I want to see is where a woman gets fed up with Fast and hurls him from the car while it's travelling at 90 mph, or pulls it from the front seat and stomps that sucker flat.

Physical Therapy

2006-02-24T13:11:00.000-05:00

First off -- congratulations to the US Men's Curling Team on their bronze medal. Well done, gentlemen, and hope to see you at the Worlds in April.

Also on Friday, I started up physical therapy again. I used to have chronic back pain. I went to George the miracle physical therapist (hereinafter PT) for about six weeks, and felt great. Good enough to start riding lessons. Laura, my teacher, competes in dressage, so balance and centering are key --and very good for one's back and muscles.

What is not good for one's back and muscles? Being virtually inactive for, oh, eight months. Not completely inactive. I do some chores around the house. I go to work. I walk Vixen, but where we used to walk 3 miles a day, we (I) do a half mile now. Which George actually says is a good distance for me right now, thank heavens. So I know George will be able to help. It may not always be fun...

I was right, the man is a sadist. A PT god. A dear, funny, talented sadist, but a sadist. Basically it seems that everything connected with the sciatic nerve that could be inflamed is inflamed. He asked many questions, did reflex tests, did some traction work, showed me how I could do same at home, showed me how I can lie on my side without pain... I was there about 90 minutes. Crap, I've lost a lot in the past 8 months, but it seems to me especially so in the last four weeks or so, but that's probably because of that muscle finally deciding it had had it. I mean, I can't get up from a crouch without help, or something to pull myself against. I'll be seeing him twice a week for a while. As I said, he thinks walking a half mile a day, which is what I do with Vix, is perfect for me right about now (phew!). And I have to ice my back 2-3 times a day. It's freaking freezing out! The idea of pressing a pack of ice against the small of my back is not attractive... but I am doing it. See? I am capable of following orders, even if Melissa doesn't think so.

And hey, he likes curling, too, has even been curling. Once. This guy's a gem. A sadist, but a gem.

It really does take it out of one, though. I'm glad it's the weekend. I was going to go shopping with Melissa after my appointment, but I just let her drive me home. This worried me, though, because she had to go to the fish market. Which is right next door to the yarn store. I figured I was doomed, but she turned up trumps and didn't even go to the yarn store -- which, given that she is nowhere near finished her project for the Knitting Olympics is a darned good thing! (You want all the gruesome details, check out her blog).

And of course, we got 9 inches of snow yesterday. Which makes walking more difficult, especially on brilliantly sunny days like today. Complain, complain, complain! :-)

Tumped Over

2006-02-22T12:24:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure of the spelling of the verb "to tump." I do know it is Southern, possibly peculiar to Arkansas, where my partner's parents live, or to Mississippi, which much of the rest of her family comes from.

A truck that, say, goes a little too fast on a snow covered highway and ends up on its side (in a ditch adds style points) is said to have "tumped over." A tree can tump over. In fact, almost anything, in the right conditions can tump over.

I know. I did it.

I'm going to have to try this vacation day thing again, because it sure didn't work on Monday. I got up and was getting dressed. One leg into the jeans -- hey, that was pretty good, I was on one foot for, oh, seconds at a time! Let's see what I can do with the other one....

What I could do was lose my balance, "tump over" sideways and -- major extra style points here -- hit my head, which is still bald, on the corner of my dresser. And whoever moved that dresser is going to be sorry!

Melissa bolted out of bed. "What happened??"

"I hit my head on the corner of my dresser," I wailed, thinking that was pretty damn lucid for someone who had just hit her head on the corner of her dresser. She looked at my head: no blood, no broken skin, "But you have a dent with a squidgy spot!" I crawled out from between the bed and the dresser and clambered up onto the foot of the bed -- and that's when Melissa got really worried. I guess I passed out for a minute, because next thing I knew I was laying back on the foot of the bed and Melissa was in my office on the phone. While she was talking to 911, I was pulling on my shoes and socks (I was cooking!). By the time the extremely nice firemen arrived, I was standing up in my office. "Where is she?" one of them asked. "Ummm, right here."

I answered all the questions perfectly -- even my age, damn it. My blood pressure was normal. The firemen helped me downstairs when the ambulance arrived (Melissa does not do things by half, nor do I blame her). Actually, the firemen said they might not have bothered with the ambulance were it not for my history of cancer. The EMTs were delightful. I got to ride in an ambulance, though after tumping over and substantially knocking one's noggin, riding backwards is probably not the best thing. I wasn't sick, but made sure I had a basin when I got to the ER.

No headache. No broken skin. Damn little bruising. Eye movement -- normal. No vertigo. No nausea aside from what can be attributed to motion sickness. All of which said to the doctor no need for a CT scan or MRI, especially since I had an MRI less than a month ago, and I'm having all sorts of blood work done next week, and you really, really do not want to make the phlebotomist's life harder than it is by trying to locate my veins twice in a little more than a week.

We were home by 10:00AM. If, heaven forbid, you have to go to the ER, first thing on a Monday holiday is a pretty good time. As I curled up on the sofa -- STILL no headache, but those muscles that hit the floor... and the dresser... and the weight bench... were starting to get sore... I realized (a) how stupid it had been to test my balance quite that way, in that place, then (b) it was just bad luck I had fallen in that direction, then (c) this was the kind of thing that lost Lindsay Jacobellis her gold medal, and (d) it's damn lucky I have a hard head and that I didn't kill myself! I confess, I felt rather freaked out later in the day and had this intense desire just to go to bed. The lucky thing is, I'm so sore from having fallen that lying in bed ain't comfortable!

I felt good enough to go into work the next day, but by the end of the day I was sorer than ever, and a little unsteady (to be expected, Dr. Bonnem said), so I chose to work at home today, with a stack of manuscripts by my side and right next to the massage pillow Bran and Elane (bless them, how did they KNOW?) sent us for Christmas.

Not unrelated to this -- I start physical therapy on Friday. I know it will make me feel much better. The question is, is it going to make me feel worse, first?

I am not a knitter...

2006-02-08T17:06:00.000-05:00

Nor do I play one on TV. Yet somehow or other, I have found myself deep in the company of knitters, cheering on Teams Wales (the Jamaican Bobsled Team of Knitting) in the Knitting Olympics. This past Sunday, I found myself at the new local yarnshop -- comfortably ensconced in a wing armchair usually reserved for trailing husbands -- while Melissa picked out yarn for two sweaters. To be fair, one is for me -- but I had the yarn picked out for it within 5 minutes, I kid you not. Yet we were there almost an hour.

Nor do I have any hope of seeing my new sweater -- a rust-orange gansey -- any time soon. Melissa wants to finish the crochet top for which she bought yarn on Sunday, and then there's the project for the Knitting Olympics. The Olympics projects is supposed to be completed by the end of the games, that is, in sixteen days, including the opening ceremonies. The fact that both Daytona and the Westminster Kennel Club show are on TV during that period may actually help speed things along.

Who do you pretend to be?

2006-01-27T15:18:00.000-05:00

No, sorry, that is not as risque a question as it sounds. I just finished reading Martin Dugard's book, Chasing Lance (about Lance Armstrong and his 7th Tour de France victory). It was a very enjoyable book, and if you're a fan of Armstrong's (trying not to "Lance" him here...), you'll probably like it.

Something that hit me though, and that is when Dugard parts from his colleague and companion during the Tour, Austin:

When we said good-bye in Paris we didn't know quite how to say good-bye. It's one thing to spend ten days riding in a car with a guy, talking about your wife and kids and the quality of the morning run. It's entirely different to make the decision to either shake hands or do the buddy hug. We did neither. He filed his story; I filed mine, and then we walked down the Left Bank at midnight and pretended, like all the other post-Tour tourists, that we were Hemingway.

Men, maybe. Especially American men who find themselves on the Left Bank at midnight. But that caused me to wonder -- who do women writers pretend to be, on the Left Bank or anywhere else?

One thing leads to another...

2006-01-24T17:13:00.000-05:00

The spell checker saw "Tootsie" and tried to correct me with Tosca. I'm impressed.

Current food obsessions

2006-01-24T17:07:00.000-05:00

I know, in January, you're supposed to be focused -- really focused! - on losing weight, specifically that gained over the holidays. But instead, I find myself craving certain foods. Nothing unusual about that, everyone does in the winter.

But my cravings have something like a 2 week lifespan until I get bored and want something else.

Currently: Tootsie-Rolls (Midgees, or however it's spelled), and Wise Onion & Garlic potato chips. Not together.

Previously -- Oreos. My friend Jeff was scarfing them down during the same period of time. We determined since they are, or seem to be, dark chocolate, they qualify as health food.

No clever title

2006-01-23T16:01:00.000-05:00

(I sometimes think the hardest part of blogging is coming up with a moderately intelligent title for a post... I had one when I started, then Netscape ate my post and I have completely forgotten what the title was.)

Today is January 23. 26 years ago, I ran into Melissa, whom I had met a few months before, coming o out of Science Fantasy Bookstore (now Pandemonium) in Cambridge. We spent the next several hours talking -- and we're still talking.

One year ago was the start of the Blizzard of 2005. I was also two treatments into my fractionated radio-surgery. Fractionated -- a full (or nearly) dose of radiation right to the tumor, delivered in five doses. I had had the first two on Thursday and Friday. We drove home on Friday and picked up Vixen. Then it became clearer and clearer that the bulk of the snowstorm would hit late Saturday and all day Sunday -- and my appointment for treatment was for 8:30 Monday morning. In Dartmouth.

We took the dog back out to the kennel and headed back up to Dartmouth on Saturday. We got there just as the first flakes started flying. We unpacked, then headed over to the Food Co-op to pick up food for dinner -- and, truth be told, some junk food, but luckily, Melissa had a package of sushi in the basket when we ran into Dr. Hartford so we could pretend to be eating healthily. The next day, Sunday, was the 23rd, and it snowed and snowed. Up at Dartmouth, we got only ten inches, as opposed to the two feet we got on the coast. Forget the radiation, the one thing I was not looking forward to was shoveling out when we got home. but when we did get home, Wednesday afternoon, my friend Eric -- friend and gentleman Eric --had shoveled out our back walk, enabling us to get into the house.

WHy all this backstory? Last Friday, January 20th, I went out to Wentworth-Douglass for a follow-up appointment with Dr. Singh. I was able to bring the radiologist’s report from my MRI two days earlier.

He said (a) he could tell I was doing much better than the last time he had seen me (during treatment) just by looking at me -- I looked more myself --and he also said the rate of the tumor’s shrinkage was excellent. He also said that the various problems I’ve been experiencing have been caused by (a) the swelling of healthy tissue in the brain as a direct result of the radiation, a completely normal occurrence and (b) the decadron. Yes, folks, two weeks after I was taken off it, I was still wrestling with that ol’ demon decadron. I asked Dr. Singh (almost hopefully!) whether I should go back on the decadron for a spell, or to be macho and tough it out.

He suggested I tough it out, for a few days at least. So, I’m being tough.

It was a very positive follow-up, just what I needed just, as they say, what the doctor ordered. I hope it, and the MRI, are signs that 2006 is going to be, health-wise at least, a lot less “challenging” than 2005 was.

(And it is snowing again, but nothing like last year!)

Oooops. :-)

2006-01-20T12:52:00.000-05:00

Before you ask, umm, no, we didn't make it to Saratoga last weekend. On the other hand, I didn't end up in an emergency room, either. I did end up calling my oncologist on Saturday morning (he was on duty, and it wasn't that early), as I had been feeling... unsteady... since that Wednesday or Thursday. And I didn't think I would enjoy walking around Saratoga when I was worried about my balance. (Then there was the weather, too.)

Of course at first, I thought it was worst case, tumor regrowth, etc. Then I remembered something. On the 6th, he said I could come off the decadron. So I hadn't taken it for something like five days. And since decadron is taken to reduce swelling, it was, it seemed to me, just possible that what I was experiencing was a typical effect of the radiation itself.

But it was confusing, because sometimes it felt like my knees were weak (a side effect of the decadron, though why it should be worse when I had stopped it, I do not know), or like my blind eye was somehow... blinder. So, my doctor slotted me in on Monday morning (which was really good of him, as they do a lot of treatments on Mondays), and because I wasn't able to point my finger to precisely where the problem originated -- knees, eye, or head (do not go there), he suggested I try my eye patch for a few days and see if that helped at all. Especially since I had an MRI scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

So I tried it. Did it help? I'm honestly not sure! Sometimes I think it did. Sometimes it felt like the problem was in my knees. All I know is that, with a turtleneck sweater, eye patch, and watch cap pulled down to keep my head arm, I looked like a WWII commando! Though some waggish souls suggested I get a dangly earring and a parrot. I declined, not wanting to compete with Johnny Depp.

Wednesday, January 18. First MRI since the radiation. Bloody miserable weather, too -- rain, wind (lots of it). More wind hereabouts than rain. Walked over to the library at lunch, was ahead of the rain, but the wind had me going thither and yon. So, Melissa picks me up, we drive out to the hospital. We get out of the car -- and there is the most gorgeous rainbow I have ever seen. It was a bright, complete arc, and a double rainbow to boot (though the second one was pretty faint). A bunch of people stood around outside the hospital, on the sidewalk, in the parking lot, gazing at the rainbow, silly smiles on our faces.

Still had to have the MRI done. The tech was, as usual, very nice, and more than usually efficient: "This next set will take about 2 minutes," and bam, it would start, no fiddling around. The longest single part was carefully injecting the contrast, since my veins are so awful.

Cut to the chase: I called my doctor Thursday just before noon --and he had just gone in with a patient. But he called me within a half hour or so. "Has the eyepatch worked?"

"I can't tell!" I practically wailed. "Sometimes I think it has, other times, no."

"Well, the good news is the tumor has shrunk. But there is still swelling in the brain."

"Oh. What from?" I asked, having my own notion.

"If I were to hit you on the arm, your arm would be bruised and swell up. The same thing with your brain."

"So what causes that?"

"The radiation. It causes the healthy tissue to swell."

Now, I could be wrong, but I think that is what I was suspecting earlier. And I am profoundly grateful to my doctor for confirming it, frankly (though I think I would have made a great instinctive oncologist!).

The cool/convenient thing is that I am seeing Dr. Singh (you remember Dr. Singh?) this afternoon, and the good folks at my doctor's office said they'd fax the radiologist's report over to him, so he'll have the most recent hard info in front of him, so this could be even more useful than the general follow-up it was going to be. While my doctor said he could not, with any medical reason, strong arm me either into going back on the decadron or staying off it, well, it's Dr. Singh's swelling, as it were, and he started me on the decadron, so I figure I'll go straight to the source and ask his opinion.

So, Saratoga -- and Mayakovsky, Dr. Singh's equine stand-in -- will wait. We're now looking at the first weekend in February and no, not just because that's when the harness racing track re-opens. Much. (Wish I were in Saratoga today, though, it's 50 degrees and quite lovely.)

The Eyes Have It

2006-01-10T17:26:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned earlier, we're taking a bit of a road trip this weekend. Uh-oh, I can hear readers of this blog saying. Didn't you end up in the emergency room the last two times? Well, yes, I did. Not going to happen this time, though. I have been off the high blood pressure medication that caused the hypo-tensive occurrence at Saratoga over the summer (low blood pressure -- I had lost about 30 pounds in two months, and didn't need the medication anymore) for a good length of time now, and my blood pressure remains quite good. Nor do I expect my eye to give me any problems, as I just saw Dr. Norman yesterday and he was almost as happy as a little kid with a new sled by the way my eyes looked and behaved.

What I never knew was that, before scans and MRIs become commonly available, many doctors would use pressure in the eye as an indicator of possible edema or swelling in the brain. Well, he said there's no abnormal pressure in my eye, which there had been following surgery and at my last visit. He was delighted... which made me quite happy, as you can imagine!

Anyway, the road trip. We're heading back to Saratoga, to visit our friend Jeff. It's not going to be a physically ambitious weekend -- the three of us are very much of the sit around talking school (in the summer there, it's the "sit around handicapping" school, but since Jeff is good at handicapping, and I'm as likely to say, "Oh, that's a lovely horse!" well, you can imagine....). And yes, we're probably going to visit at least one yarn store -- if anyone has been to the yarn stores in Saratoga, I'd welcome reviews!

Ms. Vixen will spend the weekend at the Bark n Run (what we call the kennel she stays, and loves). The really excellent thing about this is that the noses will no longer have it, which is to say she is getting a bath. You have to understand, she is a very clean little dog (imagine that said by Paul McCartney in A Hard Day's Night), and never smells doggy. Well, in the torrential rains we had toward the end of last year -- and right after she had a bath at the vet's, she discovered that a house near us had disgorged from its cellar, via pump, something that smelled amazingly good to a dog. She rolled in this spot three separate times -- she never rolls! So I will let Pam deal with it this weekend. I consider it a late Christmas present to myself.

Off the Decadron!

2006-01-07T09:33:00.000-05:00

I had my biweekly (I mean every two weeks, not twice a week) check-up with my medical oncologist yesterday. I had been down to 2 mg of decadron, once a day. And anyone who has been on decadron will tell you, even that is too much. He was pleased enough with what he saw and what the blood work said that he took me off it completely! I have been taking it since mid-November. And right before Thanksgiving, I went up to a high dose of 4 mg four times a day. It's a good thing I lost so much weight following surgery this summer... my face is quite puffy (of course), and I don't currently have any hair to, um, disguise it. Though I have to say, I think I look quite kick-ass bald. It really doesn't bother me, being bald, except when I'm walking the dog in the morning and the windchill is 6 degrees! Yes, I'm wearing a hat, let me tell you, it doesn't always help!

But Dr. Bonnem also said that I don't have to come back for three weeks this time -- nor do I need to have blood work done! That last is especially welcome -- I would think for the phlebotomists -- since my veins are terrible. I'm a challenge, let's say. It's a good thing I don't mind needles, nor am especially queasy about blood... oops, sorry if you are.

Cool!

2006-01-04T17:10:00.000-05:00

It's happened -- and I'm thrilled! I was mentioned on a blog I really admire -- blogdog (in case you missed the link last time!).

How can you not love a site that has such great photos of beardies? And while I don't even knit, I love yarn (I don't quilt, either, and love going to quilt shops), and love reading about people's projects. I know, it must seem weird enjoying something so very vicariously -- after all, one can certainly learn to knit, either well or not, as opposed to say, driving a stock car (Melissa is talking to the auto museum in Saratoga about showing her one of their 1930s cars up close and personal for a book she's working on.). But there is something so very peaceful about it all... well, ok, not to read Yarn Harlot.

It sounds as though Dale and Karen had an outstanding (and remarkably restrained) trip to Patternworks. Melissa is officially a very becoming shade of green with envy. Couple that with the fact that our mad friend Susie (another IBC survivor) lives in Wolfeboro, and it's sounding like a road trip from the seacoast sometime in the not too distant future.

Not right away, though, as we're visiting our dear friend Jeff up at the Spa over King Day weekend. I warned him Melissa wants to also visit two yarn shops up there, and bless him, he said he was ok with that as he spent a lot of time in yarn shops with his ex-wife (!) and his late mother. We pointed out to each other that one of the stores is almost next door to a very fine used bookstore. Something for everyone! Including, we hope, a visit with a friend who is probably one of the two foremost equine photographers, and a visit to a farm which is standing at stud (a) the most gorgeous horse we have ever seen who also (b) happens to have an incredibly sweet temperament, which is very unusual in an intact male who has been breeding for a couple of seasons.

Yarn. Horsehair. It's all fiber.

And next month is Boskone, for the science fiction fans among you. Melissa is going to go down for a day -- as soon as we know what her schedule might be, we'll post it here, on the official Pointsman website, and on her own site(s).

So I want to thank Karen for inspiring me to fulfill one of my New Year's resolutions, which was to post more frequently, and especially for the kind words on the writing.

2005 -- Year of the Blog?

2005-12-28T13:44:00.001-05:00

I know these things have been around for a while, but I was just taking a spin through my current favorites -- among them my friend Dale's, her friend Karen's... There's also the wonderfully smart and insurgent Redneck Mother. My author and friend Chris started one called My Uninformed Opinion-- he writes books on theatre for me, but he is a cogent critic of current journalism and politics.
Melissa has one with a couple of entries, and she keeps promising to do more, and has some great matters to write about. Jeff has, I think, one entry. He is a beautiful writer. In fact, his ONE entry was good enough to get him a guest appearance (paying, thank you) in The Blood-Horse magazine (for us Thoroughbred racing fans).

All of these were started either at the very end of 2004, or in 2005. I guess we all had stuff to write about. Heaven knows I did, though it all ended up being rather different from what I had planned in January... or April. But as I said in the last entry, right now things are good. I hope to be writing more about writing, gardening... you know, every day life... in 2006. Starting with a planned weekend road trip to visit Spajeff... and maybe that handsome stud Mayakovsky, out at Mill Creek Farm!

The other thing I have discovered -- blogs that cover not only dog training, but knitting (or the other way round). I don't know how to knit, alas -- never learned, but Melissa did learn, from my mom, and like both Dale and Karen, this year she made a bunch of very handsome and comfortable socks for Christmas presents. Me, I'm still waiting for my pair.

Way More Impersonal than a Holiday Newsletter!

2005-12-18T10:25:00.000-05:00

I actually enjoy several of the newsletters we get this time of year -- the ones from the Nolans are always fun. My friend Lou always writes thought-provoking ones. (Gee, thanks, Lou, after 3 weeks of daily chocolate and cookie deliveries in the office, you want me to think, too??)

This year, I didn't get Christmas cards out (you may have noticed). My handwriting is still really, really bad. And basically, I didn't get myself together, and Melissa's schedule makes it hard for her (and she's never been a card person, really).

By the way, in the country of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen (and maybe has a certain amount of wisdom), but she still stinks at putting lights on the tree and decorating in general. Thank heavens, last weekend (the 17th-ish), Melissa decorated the tree (and made the lights look better than I had). It's a great looking little tree, very symmetrical, and she does an especially good job of hanging the glass icicles. I had decided I really wanted all our ornaments that had a sun/heat theme going on, and we have quite a few. And the two new ornaments we got this year -- one a present from one of my sisters, the other a present from a colleague -- are both gold-toned.

Yesterday was the solstice. The days are already 2 seconds longer (my racing degenerate buddies tell me that translates into 10 lengths, a good distance by an reckoning). The Johnny's Seed catalogue arrived. Today the Territorial Seed catalogue arrived. (So did another medical bill, sigh.) My gardening next year is going to be different; I need to be able to get at things more easily, actually see what I'm doing/growing, so I suspect there is going to be more hardscaping, more container gardening. I am still so profoundly grateful I got the two arborvitae out and the crabapples in during an asymptomatic period.

And speaking of those crabapples, I received the best and most unexpected present the other day. Last Saturday, I was starting to feel -- good. Not normal, but headed that way. We were going to the grocery store, and I asked Melissa if we could go to Rolling Green Nursery. Yes, I bought presents for people. I also bought myself two rosemary plants (one upright, one prostrate). Well, Nancy, on the register, mentioned they hadn't seen me since the spring. So I told her what was going on, and she was tremendously sympathetic, wished me well and all.

Monday, there was an envelope from Rolling Green in the mail. The owner, Beth, said Nancy had mentioned I had had a challenging year, and they send me a gift certificate. As you can imagine, I was in tears (again -- I do that a lot these days). What generous, kind people. But real gardeners, real plant people, tend to be.

So do dog people. My friends in Piscataqua Obedience Club stay in touch.
For the first time in years, I missed the Piscataqua Obedience Club's Christmas party. I was extremely disappointed, but I was wiped out at the end of the day (huh, so much for those fatigue levels!), and I had developed either a recurrence of thrush (horses get pretty purple ointment; we humans gets diflucan!). Everyone at POC, please know I missed you!

(Oh -- it's a cold, according to the nurses at Portsmouth Regional, so you should be glad I stayed home!)

A lot about 2005 really...stank. Radiation in November wasn't fun, but I am so grateful for the positive attitude and support of Dr. Andy Singh at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital. And the radiation therapy team -- they rock.

Once again, everyone at Heinemann turned up trumps when I needed them. I am so damn fortunate to work for such a company, with such an outstanding, kind (that word again!) group of people.

Let me give you a quick rundown of the short version Barnett/Scott support team.

My sibs. This ain't easy, but they're there. They're not afraid to ask how things are, what's going on, about procedures and such.

Ike and Elaine, Melissa's folks, visited earlier this month, and that is above and beyond, because the weather was ghastly, especially for Arkansans -- it was cold and we got a foot of snow. My parents have been dead for quite a few years; it's a great comfort to have parents again in Elaine and Ike.

My friend Jeff. I could go on and on about Jeff, but I don't think he'd enjoy that. Suffice to say he is probably my best friend in the world -- and inspired both Melissa and me to say, "Ya know, if I were straight..." Thanks, Jeff, for always checking in.

Sue Walsh. President of Piscataqua Obedience Club. Always checks in, especially since I haven't been able to make it to meetings in quite a while. And informs the club as to how I'm doing.

Susie Hammond. Another IBC survivor. A woman of great panache, drive, and determination. She calls every few weeks, asks what's going on with me, urges me forward. We met two years ago when we were both going through chest radiation (in its own way, the whole brain stuff was easier... and also a lot harder!).

Rambler. From Ottawa, she sends me wonderful handmade cards of one of our favorite racehorses (the beautiful and sweet -- and silly -- Mayakovsky), as well as keeping me informed about Canadian racing. For instance, Mayakovsky's barnmate, Lycius, recently found himself the sire of a Canadian racing award winner. I think Palladio is a great name for a son of Lycius. Lycius is also the dam-sire of Travers winner, Flower Alley. And like the others, she checks in on me -- in her own special, often wacky way.

I think that's one of the points I want to make. The common point is that everyone has been keeping tabs on me -- but everyone does it in his or her own way, and each way is unique. Patrish sends me the most gorgeous cards with Pegasus (Pegasi?) on them. Josh included me in a mailing of some CDs he made over the summer of jazz pieces and standards (Josh, if I have totally misrepresented those, I apologize!) -- music that had me dancing, albeit clumsily, for the first time in easily more than 6 months.

Things are good. Last Sunday, we went shopping (no, not to a mall. To a place called Jenness Farm, where they make goats' milk soap.). I walked Vixen twice, and I made dinner that night -- first time in months. Maybe this week I have overdone a little (not much), but things are indeed improving. Not only can I tell, my doctor, Dr. Bonnem, thinks so too. Woo-hoo!

And yeah, with fourteen days this month below average temperatures, it has not been a fun time to be bald. :-) But I look good bald, and damn if the scars from the brain surgeries hardly show up. I'm really impressed. Cold, but impressed.

That's the news from here. I plan to be more consistent about updating this -- I feel more like writing again, even if my typing stinks.

Winter's here!

2005-12-09T15:21:00.000-05:00

For those not on the qui vive with things with me, I am two rounds away from completing whole brain radiation. DO NOT GOOGLE WBR it will give you nightmares, but we found some excellent sites, and Dr. Singh is very happy with the way things are going. From a massive four Decadron a day (the dose they give you on Mt. Everest, I am down to two. And as I said, my last treatment in Tuesday morning. Celebration is either going to be at Case Espresso, Sake, Pesce Blue, or Outback (we have no indie steakhouses anymore and I love prime rib). The side effects (fatigue, etc, will last for another ten days. Who knows how long the hair will take to grow back, probably around 6 months. Luckily -- DG, you would LOVE this -- there's a new yarn store just opened down in Rye, next town down, and Melissa has a great book of hat patterns. I am wearing one made of a black merino tape. It's is very neat -- and quite warm, which is the key thing!

And yes I am doing NY Times crosswords to keep ye old short term memory loss at bay, though even that seems less than feared. Good excuse to do crosswords, though.

So, there I be! Looking forward to being completely fixed in '06!

Love to you all --

--l.

The sports of the weekend

2005-11-23T11:18:00.000-05:00

Well, it was a good weekend for sports, locally speaking. While Harvard was losing the game in the third, we switched over to TVG to watch the running of the Stuyvesant, in which our friends Joe & Mary Grant had two of their boys, Dr. Rockett and the ever classy Evening Attire running. Well, with new jockey Jose Santos aboard, Attire ran his race, rating close to the leaders, and got the win.

When we switched back to the game, Harvard had tied it up! And won in Ivy League's first triple OT. A winning season, to be sure.

Then the next dday, Tony Stewart won his second NASCAR championship. I am so happy for Tony -- the move from Lake Charlotte, where all the big name drivers live, back to Columbus, IN., has made a huge impact, and he seems much happier this year.

Jack Roush is a whining baby. Kust Busch made a bad mistake, but Roush is not acting like a grown-up about it all. I am delighted his teams were defeated by Tony in his Joe Gibbs racing 2 car team.

This is how I warned my colleagues yesterday...

2005-11-22T17:21:00.000-05:00

On the day I reached the halfway point of my treament.

I am grumpy, and I am going to be bald.

So please forgive me for the next few weeks. The bald I can deal with (if I have to, to quote Red Green), but the current dose of 16 mg of Decadron a day is something else. (Melissa has already made me one stylin’ new hat, and she’s going to be awfully busy for a while. I think the most disconcerting thing was reading, “You will lose your hair. It may or may not come back.” Argh!!!)

I am undergoing whole brain radiation to get rid of a few pesky remnants. I am halfway through treatment as of today. Yes, there is champagne on the agenda. I finish up on December 2, and I hope to be tapering off the steroid this week, but Decadron does lead to mood swings, so if I utter a less than cheery good morning in the mail room, please know it has nothing to do with you – everyone here has been outstanding through a very long period of this. I was talking with Connie, my radiation tech this morning, and we were both saying how very fortunate I am to work in such an office, with such understanding, and with such supportive colleagues.

Thank you all. You’re the best Thanksgiving present a soon to be bald and already grumpy woman could have. ;-)

And that goes for the people -- most of them, anyway, who read and respond to my blog. Thanks for your support. We're out there, kickin' butt!

Let's hope for a warm winter....

2005-11-15T16:42:00.000-05:00

Sorry I've been incommunicado. I was scheduled for a follow-up MRI at Dartmouth today, but a few weeks ago, I noticed I was feeling... different. So I called and asked if they could move it up a couple of weeks, which they did.

Dr. Hartford himself wasn't sure he saw any growth on the MRI, but the radiologist did (grrrr). Oh, also, I had been throwing up every morning, and no pregnancy jokes, please. All three doctors, Hartford, Bonnem, and the wonderful Dr. Singh, agreed it's time for whole brain radiation.

Whatever you do, do NOT Google WBR. It will tell you terrible things. Scary things. Things I did not need to read, frankly. I did ultimately find a good Canadian website, but still. I can get the radiation done at the hospital in Dover -- 20 minutes away as opposed to 2 hours. Dr. Hartford suggested two treatments a day. Dr. Singh didn't think that was necessary, so I have one treatment a day, for fourteen days. Two down, twelve to go.

Of course, one of the side effects is hair loss. Melissa has already purchased a book of knitted hat patterns. Keeping her in check should be amusing!

But let me tell you about the meeting with Dr. Singh. He was very positive. It looks as though with all the radiosurgery and regularly surgery, we got the core of the tumor, but it keeps sending out these damn tendrils. Whole brain gives us he chance now to get everything, to wipe out any little cancer cells that are even thinking of showing up. I also asked him what it meant to him that the cerebral spinal fluids have been clear for quite a while now -- almost since that first chemo in July. He said it was huge, and wonderful, because it meant there was no other "burden of disease." Which made me feel good. He also said I shouldn't experience any burn such as I did with chest radiation, thank heavens.

I've now had three kinds of head/face apparatus for keeping me still during radiation, and fitting this last one was the worst, strangely. Worse than having little holes drilled in my head, even. It's a piece of plastic mesh that they soak in hot water to make it malleable. Then it is pressed over one's face, completely. I managed it -- they also did the measurements, so it took a while -- but I was very happy when they removed it.

It was a relief, therefore, yesterday, my first treatment, to discover that the hardened mask was a lot less scary.

Each treatment, by the way, consists of two 20 second blasts. That's it.

Other good news -- the tech is Connie, who was the RT when I had chest radiation done two years ago. Another confidence booster.

I finish up on December 2. Christmas will be a smaller affair this year -- we've opted not to have our usual party -- but I anticipate starting off 2006 completely clear and cancer free.

And with some stylin' new hats.

Chalkier than normal

2005-10-28T16:40:00.000-04:00

So, on a horseracing discussion board where I hang out -- ok, I'm an administrator --
there is a Breeders' Cup contest that is as simple as it comes... largely because Josh has offered to do all the math! You pick two horses you like in each race. The betting goes like this: "You will play $10 win and place on each of your selections, plus a $1 two-horse exacta box, plus a $1 pick three and pick four on all applicable races (using, of course, your two selections in each leg), plus a $2 AB/AB daily double in the third and ninth races.

That's all there is to it. And most cash on hand at the end of the day, of course, wins."

Well, once I was convinced to play -- no money is changing hands -- I made up my list. A lot of sentiment: I am not convinced that Riskaverse is going to love the going on the turf course tomorrow. I am not convinced Dr. Pleasure, at the age of 2, will overcome breaking from post position 14, but he's my beloved Beautiful Pleasure's first kid, so I have to root for him. It's also very unusual to see a John & Donna Ward trainee show up in the Juvenile, so I do wonder what they have planned for him.

But in the Sprint, I had to go with Lost in the Fog. That's partly sentiment, too. I hear how this is a more talented field than any other he has faced, and that's true. And at even money, ain't no way to make money on him. But this is a horse who hasn't done a damn thing wrong. He has won at multiple tracks, on both coasts. He's like Smarty Jones in that Smarty kept marching forward and winning, and people kept predicting he would lose his next race. Lost in the Fog isn't getting the respect his record -- 10 wins in a row, including one at Belmont -- deserves. So I've picked him in the sprint.

And in the Mile, I have to go with Leroi --Leroidesanimeaux. He's been impressive all year long, would love to see him top off the season with a win here.

Stellar Jayne, please, in the Distaff. Not just because she's a pretty gray. :-) I wouldn't be disappointed if Ashado repeated, though. She's off to the breeding shed, as are Wonder Again and Riskaverse. The BC won't be the same next year without this trio of classy dames.

In the Classic -- it was hard, I was splitting my rooting interests between Rock Hard Ten and Perfect Drift, but not that Rocky has scratched I can concentrate on Drift who certainly has an almost perfect post position. Here's hoping fourth time is the charm -- he's improved in each Classic in which he's run.

Most of all, I just want everyone to come home sound. I hope it really is a fantastic day of racing.

Vacations and emergency rooms

2005-10-21T09:18:00.000-04:00

Well, Provincetown was lovely, as always, even though the weather did not allow for sitting on the beach, reading. It didn't rain much during the day, but it was windy and just not nice weather. What was pretty cool was that a friend of a friend had a show opening at a new gallery down there on Friday night, so we went and introduced ourselves. There was another artist there who is a columnist for the local paper -- Jeanne McCartin -- who had interviewed Melissa a few years back, so they reconnected, too. It was a little colony of seacoast New Hampshire-ites there in P'town.

But Saturday afternoon, I noticed my left eye was sore, and Sunday morning, it was swollen almost shut, so we left a day early -- a day on which the sun was actually shining, waaahhh! -- and drove back to Portsmouth. I ended up at the emergency room with a pretty severe eye infection. Luckily it's in my blind eye anyway, but my eye was very swollen and the muscle that enables my eye to move side to side is involved.

I had a very good emergency room doctor, who called my opthamologist, and he prescribed steroid drops. The drops worked wonderfully well, within a few days. The muscles in the eye are still sore so I'm not driving yet. Hopefully, I will be some time next week.

But I had been so excited by the prospect of a vacation, a real one, time away from home without doctors, and where do I end up? Same thing happened in August, in Saratoga, when I had what's called a "hypotensive" event -- my blood pressure was way too low and I about passed out while we were visiting a local farm. It's making me wary of vacations!

Hunh. Getting mad seems to have helped.

2005-10-06T16:58:00.000-04:00

I had chemo last Friday, and like half the other sessions, I had to start by going to radiology and having them access the damn reservoir. In fact, three of us -- Dr. Pierce, Dr. Bonnem, and myself -- seem to have come to the same conclusion independently: the selker reservoir moves. Not a lot, it just shifts under the skin, so that the point of access is never the same. So tattooing the spot wouldn't help. I was on the verge of suggesting to Dr. Bonnem that before my next treatments, we make an appointment with radiology, so they'll at least be expecting me.

Well, Dr. Bonnem came in and said that since the cerebral spinal fluids had come back clean the past several times (I think the was my 7th or 8th treatment), since the protein and glucose were doing what they were supposed to, there were no white blood cells showing up, presumably because there's nothing there to fight, and since he had sent the last sample of CSF to the pathology lab, and they had found NO TRACE OF TUMOR CELLS, we would make this my last chemo. Instead, I'll go in every three weeks for a check-up. They can draw the CSF from the reservoir, and yes, I have an appointment first with radiology. I consider myself lucky to have the damn reservoir though, since it obviates the need for a spinal tap.

This leaves me free and clear for our annual October trip to Provincetown! I am still a little unsteady on my feet on uneven surfaces (like dirt, sand... sigh), but I am still going to the Beech Forest and hang out with those ballsy little chickadees who are a kind of role model for me, they're so tough.

Right now, as of this moment, I consider myself cancer-free. Titless and cancer-free, as Melissa and I were joking when I had my mastectomy. Much more fun even than being footloose and fancy-free!

Did I mention...

2005-09-10T15:34:00.000-04:00

I'm mad as hell about all this new shit I have to go through? I'm also mad as hell that I didn't know about this earlier. They had already done the path on the non-frozen sample (would that be the fresh sample??) by the time I left the hospital, but the resident who cleared me for discharge said it was a meningioma. I could have completed the damn radiation by now. During a time of year when being bald has fewer meteorological ramifications. I always wear a cap, or nearly, so sunburn would not have been an issue. Frostbite, however.

Ah, screw it. Yah, I'm mad as hell, mad enough to lend some serious weight to any and all treatments. "I'm gonna zap that tumor out of my brain, and send it on its way." And I am, you know. You better believe it.

And if anyone knows where I can get one of those hats James Blake wore during his interviews in the studio, let me know, ok?

Thera-putty -- it's fun!

2005-09-09T17:03:00.000-04:00

It's green and pliable. It has no discernible scent. It stretches awfully well. And it's called Thera-putty, and I love it. George, the world's best PT, gave me a small container of it today to build up strength and muscles in my left hand, which has been weakened, ostensibly by cubital tunnel, but I also fear by some of those phantom tumors created by the tumors in the CSF. And yet, my last test of the fluids was clear.

The bad thing about Thera-putty is that it reminds me of this awesome fudge Melissa bought me up at Saratoga, down to the shade of green AND the container it's kept in. A ridiculously tempting shade of green! The texture is pretty good, too.

Well, damn it all.

2005-09-09T16:45:00.000-04:00

I had a follow-up with Dr. Hartford, my radiation oncologist up at Dartmouth yesterday, and he told me that initial report of a meningioma was incorrect. What they removed was 90% scar tissue, but at the heart of it all was tumor.

Given that, and the presence of tumor cells in the cerebral spinal fluid, he's thinking we need to consider whole brain radiation. Not fun to think about. And he wants to do it ASAP. Which means before Provincetown. WBR, like any radiation, leaves one fatigued. It also leaves one (a) bald and (b) with a burn on the scalp. I have been assured, up hill and down dale, that it is nothing like the burn I got from chest radiation, and I do hope that's true. I don't mind going to P'town with no hair, it's a badge of honor, as far as I'm concerned. But I don't want to go there if I feel the way I did in May of 2004, which was really physically weak and tired. I need to talk to Melissa, and to Robert & Ken, after we talk with a wide range of doctors -- Hartford, Bonnem, Singh, anyone else who might ought to be part of the equation.

Second chemo down...

2005-08-02T12:59:00.000-04:00

I had my second chemo today, and once again, the reservoir proved almost too difficult to locate. I was afraid I'd be shuffled off to radiology again so they could find it and access it for us. But Dr. Bonnem did indeed find it, and I came through it no worse for wear. Had some nausea last week; this week I took a Zofran before the chemo, and when I came home, I took a compazine and had a cup of tea, all of which seem to have helped.

Greg said something on the way out -- to the effect that I'm already ding really well. I wonder if he had the fluid tested and maybe there were fewer tumor cells in it already? That would be very cool, indeed.

Only bummer is that my chemo next Monday is scheduled for 1:30, and I had hoped to get to Saratoga in time for lunch. Now we'll barely bake it in time for dinner. But it also looks as though Barbara's signing at The Lyrical Ballad may not take place that night, so I can catch her at the Fasig-Tipton sale the next evening. Not to mention at Joe's party.

The reservoir, for those who were wondering, really IS a reservoir. Dr. Bonnem ops it up every week, and the chemo drips down into my brain over the week. He also told me there's no need to have this removed, as I did with the port.

Oh, and he removed the sutures from my scalp, so I look marginally less goofy now! I still need to get out to EPONA, to see who looks badder -- Blessed or me. I think I have this one locked up, frankly. :-)

And of the day of the seventh....

2005-07-29T16:38:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, July 23, Lance Armstrong clinched his seventh victory in the Tour de France, and I was discharged from Dartmouth-Hitchcock for the second time in a month. On the 22nd, I had had a reservoir put in, so that I can have chemo administered directly to my spinal fluid, which had showed tumor cells in it. Lance's scar on his head is much cleaner and more elegant than mine, but what the hell.

We have tracked the monster to its lair. To its outpost. We will eradicate it. We will be victorious. I may not have Lance's drive, but I do have his determination to beat this shit out of this thing, and if I have given an eye for wisdom, so freaking be it.

I'm back

2005-07-13T09:12:00.000-04:00

Time to get back to posting. I had surgery on the 27th. Are you all sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

First, the thing we've been treating for the past year with radiosurgery seems to have been NOT a metastasis,but rather a benign meningioma. Benign being a relative term. Its presence was first diagnosed because it was up against the brain stem, causing me some double vision. But this explains why the radiosurgery didn't eradicate it. Breast cancer is very susceptible to radiation; meningiomas less so.

However, the pre-surgical MRI, done the morning of the 27th, showed a second lesion. So they added that to the day's agenda, and that little SOB did turn out to be a metastasis of the breast cancer. However, it was on the same surgical pathway as the one we were going after anyway.

The surgery ended up taking almost twice as long as expected. Melissa was, of course, there, as were her mother Elaine, and my sisters, Noralie and Dorothy.

I spent the entire first night in the recovery room; I was feeling pretty darned punky. The nurses there were outstanding, very caring, wonderfully efficient. And as it turned out, the recovery room at night was a lot quieter than my hospital room was.

Tuesday I was brought up to a room; Tuesday night at 10:00 PM, the floor nurse tells me they're now ready for my follow-up MRI. You have to admit, that's a pretty ungodly hour for an MRI. But apparently that showed that they were able to completely resect (remove) the tumor, and they got most of the meningioma. They didn't want to scrape or dig too much, since it was up against a nerve that was making me cough. And since it took, in all likelihood, 46 years for it to grow as big as it was last year, there's not a lot of concern about it growing back in a hurry.

I was discharged on the 30th, and we went back to the hotel; I collapsed into bed and luxuriated in the quiet. Hospitals are noisy places. And yes, every two hours, there was a nurse checking my vital signs. I know they have to, and I probably wasn't sleeping all that deeply anyway, but getting away from the constant noise, clatter, and chatter of the hospital was a relief. We drove home the following morning, and when we got in, I again crawled into bed and stayed there for a few days.

I had my stitches removed this week -- I may frighten only half the horses at Saratoga when we go -- and the various oh so lovely bald patches are growing in nicely. No, fortunately, it doesn't look as though I have mange. I think I look rather like Lance Armstrong, except our scars are different. Mine makes me look like something from an early Tim Burton movie, and quite the badass.

Aggressive Affirmations, margaritas and green tea

2005-06-16T13:43:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. A follow-up MRI at DHMC showed that the damn tumor has grown again, slightly. And this time, we're not treating it with radiation. This time, it IS brain surgery! No, of course I'm not thrilled by the prospect, but what I am thrilled by is the opportunity to get rid of this little SOB once and for all. We're going to evict it. It had its chance. Now, we're turfing it out.

Surgery is June 27. And that's only because Dr. Roberts is on vacation until then, otherwise, I would have clamored to have it done sooner. But, hey, a rested and relaxed neurosurgeon is a good thing. We're calling him "Papi," after David Ortiz. We figure Dr. Hartford got us extra bases with the radiosurgery, now it's up to Dr. David "Papi" Roberts to hit one over the fence! Which I feel confident he will.

Of course, the fact that the damn tumor seems to be pressing on a visual pathway, causing me to lose sight in my left eye, is disconcerting, but a couple of people have said that, once the tumor is removed and the pressure relieved, my sight should return to normal. We'll see what the opthamologist at Dartmouth says tomorrow.

I had my monthly check-up with my primary oncologist, Dr. Bonnem. He walked in with the lab reports, which I had done up at Dartmouth. I said, "Before you say anything, the night before I had those done, we went to Margarita's."

"Oh. Well, your liver counts are normal."

"In that case, we went to a Japanese restaurant and had green tea."

"Well, it shows."

He has a very quiet, very dry sense of humor that I appreciate enormously.

The aggressive affirmations? Oh, well, Z, the mental health worker out at PRH, offered me a pre-surgical tape of affirmations. She said the tape consists of a woman reading these lovely affirmations in a beautiful voice that's "almost angelic."

Ummm, can I get a tape of affirmations that get the energy up, that scream at the tumor that this time, it is HISTORY, no more Mr. Nice Guy, this time, I'm playing to win. That kind of thing. Maybe I'll make one. I can't be the only person who would find that more to her taste?

Blogger Gadfly

2005-05-26T14:42:00.000-04:00

That's me. There are two folks currently blogging who are two of my favorite folks in the world, and also two of the best writers. Unlike me, they don't post very often.

Not often enough, in fact.

Not nearly often enough.

So recently, I have found myself in the role of the gadfly. "Hey, you know, that would make a terrific blog entry." That kind of thing.

Sometimes, as with a slot machine, or the turn of a friendly card, the tactic reaps generous dividends, as today, when both Spacity and Galacticsouth were updated!

Woo-hoo!

Throwing ourselves out first floor windows

2005-05-24T18:00:00.000-04:00

That's what one of my neighbors said we'd be doing if it doesn't stop raining soon. I said, heck, I'd probably be throwing myself out of my cellar window.

It's not even a Hundred Year Storm kind of rain -- thank heavens! No, it's mean, persistent, drizzling, soaking, stubborn stuff. Sometimes it actually rains and the rest of the time the air is just wet.

The basil isn't just unhappy, it's about gone. The ferns seem happy. So does the hosta. The Solomon Seal looks ok for now, but the slugs will be showing up any minute now. The tomatoes are waterlogged. I'm waterlogged. Vixen looks up at me with misty eyes when we go out... no wait, those are my glasses that are misted over.

We're supposed to be getting a nor'easter tonight, but I think they were a little off, I think we had it last night. It was a wildly windy night. We lost power for 3-4 hours, the trash barrel decided to take a small trip, the lid got run over... right now, it's downright tranquil out there, just a heavy mist falling.

By the time we see the sun again, I should have one of those gorgeous English complexions!

Air kisses

2005-05-23T17:03:00.000-04:00

I am no horse-whisperer. I am no animal communicator. Wish to hell I were, but I'm not.

Cam is not drinking his water. He's eating his grain, but not drinking. Not eating too much grain. Ron thinks that it might be the weather (have I complained yet about the weather this month? No? Don't worry, I will.), that the cold and damp may have exacerbated his joint problems and have him feeling off.

I had a long talk with him yesterday. Cam got me through chemo, and if he needs me to cheer him along and get him to drink his water, then I will do so. He also needs someone to pick up the cost of his Adequan -- the person who had been underwriting it has died. I'm hoping I can do that for him.

I love this little Standardbred a lot. When I go to his stall, he'll stick his head out and whuffle first one side of my face, then the other. Just like Marylou Whitney, he gives air kisses!

I gave him some carrots yesterday -- they at least have some water in them! -- and he chomped them right down. But I don't know why he would go off his water... unless, like me, he's sick to death of the stuff as it keeps falling from the sky! I'll be out there later this week, to check on him. And give and get air kisses!

Mind the Gap

2005-05-16T22:37:00.000-04:00

The last time I was at The Stone Church (Music Club) in Newmarket, NH. was two years ago, right before I was scheduled to go in for a biopsy. So, a lot has happened in the interval. Sunday night, I made a triumphant return... no, wait, it was Jon Nolan making the triumphant return, I was just delighted to be there and hearing him and his band rock out.

The music was great. It rocked, it was loud -- but never so loud you couldn't hear the lyrics, and that's good, because Jon's lyrics are some of the best around -- the band was fantastic, all around (Tim McCoy looks like Liev Schreiber playing a bass player. But his bass playing is powerfully good). One glass of wine per set, thank you. Strange to be able to get the Bonny Doon Pacific Rim Riesling as opposed to the cheap jug white they used to serve. But the Bonny Doon is one of the wines now being bottled with screw-tops, as opposed to corks, so maybe that's an homage to divey-ness past.

What was _weird_ though, was the sense that the last time I was there, it was still more like the 20th century, and this was most definitely the 21st, largely because of the intrusive presence of People With Digital Cameras. You never used to see cell phones, camera phones, digital cameras, at a ZuZu gig. Sunday, there was this chick with a tiny digital thing who kept holding it above her head while she checked the view, holding it practically in the faces of the musicians. Heedless, pretty much, of anyone else around her. She was going to get her photos, and that was that. Hee-hee, aren't I cute? The determination would be one thing if she were a journalist. Or the mother of one of the band members. But she wasn't. She had her new toy, and public space became, by rights, HER space while she got her shots. There've always been photographers at the ZuZu shows, sure, and sometimes they'd get down front for their shots, but the folks with the film cameras got in, got their shots, and got out.

Ah, the hell with it. Minor annoyance, just an interesting phenomenon, the tech and cultural gap between the last Say ZuZu concert and Jon's first solo CD release. The music was great. Jon's new songs are outstanding. Here's to the start of many more nights (early nights) at the Church.

Elitist Nonsense

2005-05-12T17:38:00.000-04:00

Vixen and I are enrolled in a Rally Obedience class, which is, in a way, an exercise in futility, as she is ineligible to take part in any Rally competitions. Currently, Rally Obedience matches are under the auspices of the American Kennel Club only -- and Vixen is a mixed breed.

Any organization that says it promotes responsible dog ownership and yet doesn't permit mixed breeds to take part in performance events (that is, not breed/conformation) is, well, barking up the wrong tree.

The United Kennel Club does allow mixed breeds to compete in obedience events; alas, they're not going to be offering Rally for at least another year.

Of course, it's not the destination, it's the journey, and we're having a heck of a good time in class.

But the AKC really needs to get over itself, and reach out to the folks who adopt mixed breeds from shelters across the country and offer them a chance to show what their dogs are capable of.

Maybe they're just afraid that the mixed breeds will prove to be much better competitors.

BIG time Coulda-Woulda-Shoulda

2005-05-09T17:47:00.000-04:00

If I had realized he was the only gray in the field...

If I had known he was named for Sting's son...

If I had just looked at the PPs and seen that his dam is Set Them Free...

If I had paid attention to the fact that I was listening to Ten Summoner's Tales last week for the first time in YEARS....

I'd'a had the Derby winner.

Who needs past performances when the gods are jumping up and down and waving and going, "Helloooo? How much more do we have to give you???"

It's ok, I never bet on the Derby, anyway, but the bragging rights would have been awesome.

Well, ok, the money would have been even more awesome

To those who view the glass as half empty -- all those who are saying, "This race is a throw-out unless proven otherwise," I say the glass is half full, and the race is legitimate unless proven otherwise. A careful trainer, a talented horse, and a smart jockey can make hair stand on end in the next two races. Or not. That's why they call it horseracing.

Good luck, Giacomo.

Catching Up with a Catch-All Post

2005-05-06T07:05:00.000-04:00

No, I still don't have a clue about the Derby. Afleet Alex, Wilko, Bellamy Road, Sun King, Greater Good, and for some reason I now have this nagging feeling that Andromeda's Hero may show up. Where in heck that came from, I have no idea. However, since it's unlikely I'm going to drive through a blinding nor'easter to get to Rockingham Park to place my bets, all that's at stake are bragging rights.

The crabapple trees are now planted, thank you. Since yesterday evening was so pleasant, I took advantage of it, since, see above re: this weekend's forecast weather. If it's Saturday, it must be pouring.

It was hard work -- damn New England soil with all its rocks -- but they're in and, I hope, happy. The sparrows who hang out in the rhododendron seem quite taken with them: they were testing one of them out even before I got it planted. And since we wanted to put in something that will appeal to birds, that's a good sign.

Speaking of birds (smoooth!), I saw a pair of Northern Flickers this morning, hunting for worms across from the Middle School. They're very handsome. I had heard one a week or so ago, but had never seen one. So that was a lovely way to start the day!

The big (really big) mare, Rainbow Blue, is racing tonight at the Meadowlands. Thank heavens they have live video, because the surest bet of the weekend is that TVG won't show it because it is, after all, the day before the Kentucky Derby.

And if I'm wrong about that, I'll be happy to post and say so.

Derby week

2005-05-01T09:19:00.000-04:00

I have my own personal handicapper, from Saratoga Springs, no less, and I still haven't a clue about this year's Derby.

No one has come along and wowed me as both Monarchos (2001) and Smarty Jones (2004) did. I do better when a horse hits that one note inside me, a note felt, not heard. That's not to say I'm not impressed by certain of this year's three year olds. This is the crop that was hit by MRLS, by the way.

But no one has made "the move," as Monarchos did in his Florida Derby. And no one has -- for me -- put together a string of consummately professional races, stepping forward each time to confound the naysayers, that Smarty Jones did. I like Afleet Alex, High Fly for some reason that I cannot explain, so maybe he's the one? Nah, that didn't work with Brancusi... Wilko could be the one to break the curse of the Juvenile Eclipse Award winner. I really liked Rockport Harbor, and his connections (that's one of my favorite parts of Maine), and it would have been wonderful to see John Servis win back to back Derbies. But I admire Porter and Servis for stopping on the colt for now. Maybe with any luck, he'll pull a Tiznow in the autumn, and maybe we'll also see him race as a 4 year old, shocking as that might be.

Strangely -- and Jeff would probably say this is heretical -- I wonder if the Preakness won't shape up to be the more interesting race, with horses who either couldn't draw in to the Derby, or who felt that the distance was just a little beyond them, showing up.

Jeff also rightly pointed out that the Belmont is probably the only time these horses will race that mile and a half distance.... though I was intrigued to note the very full field for the Elkhorn at Keeneland this past week. 13 horses going a mile and a half on the turf. I wasn't too surprised to see Macaw win, though I'm not very familiar with his trainer, but the second and third place horses were trained by folks who know (a) grass and (b) distance -- Michael Matz and Jonathan Sheppard.

The question with the Derby, and then the Belmont, is not so much as "can he get the distance?" as "can he get the distance faster than anyone else?"

Last year, Smarty and Birdstone proved they could, head and shoulders above anyone else in the Belmont.

All I know is that someone there is in Saratoga Springs who does not love the idea of Bellamy Road winning!

Horticulture and Automobiles

2005-04-30T11:22:00.000-04:00

Did you know that you can fit a crabapple tree, in a 7 gallon container, standing about 6 feet tall, into a Honda Accord?

Nothing really surprises me about the capabilities of a Honda. Nor should I be surprised at anything that Beth, out at Rolling Green, is able to do.

But people watched in awe as we finessed the second crabapple (dwarf variety, Malus Sargentii Tina) into the passenger seat (tilted all the way back) of my beloved 1991 Accord. And getting it out again was a piece of cake!

So now I have two dwarf crabapple trees waiting to be planted out front, where we managed to dig out the two arborvitae. The soil out there is pretty heavy, but we have loads and loads of compost that we can dig in, which Beth says is the best thing.

In other horticultural news, I was out at Home Depot, checking out pavers and mulch, when I found the most wonderful, not to say adorable, certainly whimsical, little plant. The tag simply said Fiber Optic Grass -- yes, grass. And yes, it does look like a fuzzy little fiber optic lamp. It's actually a rush (well, yes, it's a rush to look at, too), Isolepis cernua. Hardy, alas, only in zones 8-10 (I'm ostensibly in 5, but my garden is actually 6). And thank heavens for Google, I have learned it really likes a wet environment. I'll try to treat it as a container plant, instead of as a garden annual.

This Spring...

2005-04-28T17:26:00.000-04:00

So different from last spring. Last year, I had stereotactic radiosurgery on April 14. At that point, I had been on steroids for 2 weeks. I would be on them until mid-May.

Funny, I was able to function and work fine with the tumor; it was starting on the steroids and their effects that put me on short term disability, more, I think, than anything directly associated with the radiosurgery.

I even went back to work for several days following the radiosurgery because I hadn't been informed that my disability had been okayed.

But I needed the time off. I was tired, and the damn steroids caused myopathy in my legs, making it hard, very, very tiring to walk. They also caused muscle cramps in my legs such as I had never experienced before. My leg and foot would literally lock up on me.

I spent the time curled up on the chaise in the bedroom, reading. Sounds terribly Victorian, doesn't it? Except for the Yukon Gold potato chips, a passion for which was another side effect of the steroids.

Basically, I missed spring last year. I was indoors much of the time from mid-April to mid-May. We went to Provincetown for our 25th anniversary, and there was so much I couldn't do, that we usually did. That I was able to do when I was going through chemo, damn it!

That was then, though. This is now. This is 2005.1. It's April 28, and I just got in from a good long walk with Ms. Vixen on which we both got totally soaked in a sudden, drenching downpour. It's spring, and all my seedlings are up and waiting to be transplanted. I'm seeing the trees leaf out this year, as opposed to last, when I emerged, blinking, in mid-May, and the leaves were all fully unfurled. This is Spring 2005.1, and last week, we enjoyed walking the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail, in Ripton, VT. and going to the UVM Morgan Farm. This spring, I'm mobile!

The MRI last week was very good. The tumor is less than half the size it was when we treated it, smaller even than it was in December. We have downright oodles of space between it and the brain stem now, so Dr. Hartford is conferring with a couple of his colleagues, weighing any risks of doing stereotactic radiosurgery again -- one full dose of the radiation, right on the damn tumor. The fractionated radiosurgery we did delivered a total of 20 grays in 5 treatments. Biologically, that's the equivalent of 12 grays, a very conservative dose. The idea with stereotactic, and with the room we have now (oodles, but the way, translates into millimeters), is to hit it with the full 20 grays, all at once -- which irresistibly reminds me of the Bottle Rockets song, "Radar Gun," with the line "milowatt seconds on maximum output will dusty that puppy!"

Of birds and horses

2005-04-28T06:42:00.000-04:00

Over in Saratoga Springs, my friend Jeff saw his first two Thoroughbreds crossing Union Avenue, indicating that the Oklahoma training track is open and becoming populated again. So how appropriate that this morning, while walking Vixen over by the South Mill Pond, that one of the birds I saw was a cormorant, the first I've seen this year. If you're a racing fan, you get that. I also saw my first sandpiper of the season, but which kind, I couldn't say.

I'm still not putting the shovel away. I'm looking for a span of dry, warm (not hot) days so I can put out my basil and tomato plants and repot up my cabbage seedlings.

It looks to be a horse-y weekend, coming up. There's a dressage event at Spinnaker Hill, where some of the EPONA horses are. There's a draft horse event down at the Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm, in Newbury, MA. And there's a series of open farms being held by the Standardbred Pleasure Horse Organization of Maine.

If it shapes up to be warm and dry, however, all bets are off, and you'll probably find me in the garden.

Well, we can't say he didn't warn us...

2005-04-20T07:36:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not talking about the new pope.

Have you noticed that the really popular, not to say cult-y films get their titles abbreviated by the faithful? The Lord of the Rings films become, respectively, LOTR: FOTR, LOTR:TT, and LORT: ROTK. I have already seen the new Pirates of the Caribbean referred to as POC:DMC (Dead Man's Chest).

So, look at what George Lucas has in store for us next month:

SW:ROTS

Sigh...

An Anniversary

2005-04-14T17:13:00.000-04:00

A year ago today, I had fractionated radiosurgery up at Dartmouth-Hitchcock for what I have learned NOT to call a brain tumor. As you know if you've been reading this (no, I promise, there will not be a test), what we treated was a sanctuary site metastasis of the original breast cancer -- that just happened to be in the brain. In the cerebellum. Next to the brain stem.

It was wicked cool, the whole procedure, even having the frame literally screwed onto my head. The Bob Vila School of Neurosurgery, I call it.

That night, we went out to dinner at the wonderful restaurant Grenache (no long with us, alas) with my head swathed in gauze bandages (even when they don't cut your head open, the like to make it look as though they did). The restaurant staff didn't bat an eyelash. As the best restaurant close to the hospital, I imagine they've seen all that and more.

One week from today, I head up there again, for a follow-up MRI. Certainly when I had the stereotactic radiosurgery a year ago, we did not anticipate having to do fractionated radiosurgery this past January. But we did it, and I was in a much more kick-ass frame of mind. This thing is going to be sorry it thought to mess with me.

We're going to turn the trip into a mini-vacation -- we're heading over to Vermont for a few days, staying at a Morgan Horse farm in Stockbridge! I'm hoping mud season isn't too muddy, but I have Muck boots and will bring them if I have to!

And what does THAT say about me?

2005-04-12T18:09:00.000-04:00

I was just doing an online word puzzle, and the clue was "kneecap." Oh, dear, I do wonder what it says about me that I first thought of the verb, and not the noun....

Better than last spring

2005-04-07T17:18:00.000-04:00

Now that spring weather is here -- complete with afternoon seabreezes, which means we're a good ten degrees cooler than spots inland -- it's such a pleasure to be working outside. Hell, it's a pleasure to be working outside, period. Last spring was when I was diagnosed with a sanctuary site metastastis of the original breast cancer. In the brain. Right next to the brain stem. I had nystagmus, some double vision, and minor balance issues. Really minor: I managed to get the kitchen painted before I knew what precisely was wrong. Even when I was diagnosed, the neurosurgeon I saw said the my deficits were minor. But enough to make me disinclined to drive out to EPONA and work with 1000 pound animals, or even to root around in the soil very much.

This year, I feel so much better. The fact that the last MRI showed that the little bastard is smaller than it was in December certainly helps! I'm also not on the damn steroids.

This year, I got my seeds started! The cabbages and tomatoes already need to be put into pots; the basil is coming along wonderfully.

And last weekend -- on a day that was unexpectedly dry -- I managed to cut, hack, dig, and grub out one of a pair of old arbovitae in front of our house. They were (once) globe arborvitae, but had become more like amorphous arborvitae. They were repeatedly damaged by snow and ice, causing the main trunks to split; they were sheared by the city sidewalk plows. But did they have the grace to die? No. So last weekend, I went out there with my loppers and pruning saw and got one of them back to the main trunk, and got that almost down to the ground (I left enough to act as a handle). I then went out to Home Depot and asked one of the folks there to recommend the best tool for getting the rootball out, understanding that there was no room to swing anything -- it had to be a digging tool. He recommended a terrific construction spade.

Digging out the roots became a job that required not just four hands, but at least one foot, as well, as we pulled and twisted the bulk of it up and around to lop off the remaining roots, but, by golly, shortly before 1 PM (a good thing, since the NASCAR race at Bristol was due to start at 1:30, and I would have been left to carry on by myself), we wrenched the damn thing from the ground.

What a wonderful feeling of accomplishment! I was muddy and sweaty, but it was great to get my hands into the dirt -- even if it was mud and clay. And I got a terrific and unusual recommendation for what to replace the arborvitae with. I had been thinking of holly, or something like that, but one of the women at Rolling Green Nursery suggested a super-dwarf variety of crabapple! And Melissa and I both think that's a dynamite idea. We can prune it back as hard as we need to contain it -- the space they'll be in is very limited and we don't want them encroaching on the sidewalk -- we can underplant, and there will be fruits for the birds through much of the winter.

So far, folks, 2005.1 has been awfully darned nice.

That Time of Year

2005-03-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

When you host a message board populated by the most colorful group of people this side of Damon Runyon, the national holiday becomes not the Fourth of July, or Victoria Day, or Thanksgiving, but April Fool's. That's when the pressure is on. The pressure to create stories that walk the fine line between absurdity and plausibility. And the few that tumble over into the, "Oh, come on, if you believed this one, I've got a statue you might be interested in." My unindicted co-conspirators, as I like to call them, are capable of much subtler humor than I am, so I leave the more plausible stories to them. One is a whiz with Photoshop. Another brings a wealth of experience as a lawyer, a journalist, and now a lobbyist, which is to say, he brings a rich sense of the absurd. One of my stalwarts might not be able to help out this year, buried as he is in the sands of academe. Or possibly the Racing Form, I'm not sure which.

All I know is, the heat is on tonight. (Yeah, I know, I've known April 1st has been coming for a while now, so why wait to the last minute? Ask Charlie Brown.)

The mysterious disappearing comment

2005-03-30T17:08:00.000-05:00

Hmmm. One comment on my blogging and gossip post, and guess what? It doesn't load! All I get is a blank screen. In any browser. Maybe it's written in invisible ink? Maybe I really annoyed someone and they disabled that screen. How curious!

Blogging and gossip

2005-03-28T17:32:00.000-05:00

I read an interesting article today in the NY Times about blogs and, essentially, the demise of the gossip column. And before you say "good riddance," you might want to read the article, which was largely about Liz Smith, who writes for Newsday (home of my favorite theatre critic, Linda Winer). Smith's kind of gossip doesn't involve looking for smoking guns. She is described as lacking a mean streak -- and, lacking that mean streak, would probably get nowhere if she were starting out today.

A lot of online discourse is unbelievably hostile. The blogs that are replacing the old style gossip columns make hostility and schadenfreude their stock in trade. And that's sad, damn it, sad in that it makes me sad to think of it, and sad as in pathetic. Where has this mania for tearing people down come from? Some people pretend to do it with a tear in their eye, lamenting the loss of old standards and morals (see Major League Baseball and the US Senate). Why can't we look up, instead of down? And don't try to tell me that our "role models" have disappointed us. Find a different damn role model, then.

Sure, it's the facelessness that makes these hostile, dirt-digging blogs possible; I sometimes wonder if, in those dark days before home computers and easy internet access, these would be the same people making prank phone calls? Nah. Too much direct contact.

Oh, god, I'm sounding like Pollyanna again, aren't I? I seem to waver between these two personalities, of believing in the best of all possible worlds (well, Pollyana and Pangloss start with the same letter) and then letting rip at people who don't live up to my own lofty standards. To wit: old fashioned, real-world, bricks-and-mortar cattiness isn't dead yet, either.

(Tangent: what is the difference between cattiness and bitchiness? Level of income? Discuss.)

Tonight I was at the gym (don't laugh), and a bunch of women there were going on and on about how they have NO respect for Camilla Parker-Bowles, and how COULD Charles want to marry her after having been married to Diana? They were laughing themselves silly talking about how unattractive they think Parker-Bowles is and how terrible SHE is. This wasn't precisely schadenfreude, but it was nasty and unpleasant, and I'm afraid I made a few pointed remarks that people wouldn't mind so much if C & C conducted themselves with a certain flair or pizzazz... that the problem wasn't that Charles had A mistress, but that he didn't have several. I'm sure Oscar Wilde could have said it much better.

On a related note, there were a number of links and websites cited in the article on Smith. I checked one out, as it seemed to be of the gentler variety (that is, NOT Defamer). And I found there one of the nicest tributes to Bobby Short that I've read in the past week. A very sweet reminiscence, of a man one could only look up to, for his talent, his determination, his urbanity, his style. I shall always regret never having gotten to see him perform live. Does anyone remember a line -- it might have been in the TV show Benson, where a character is neatly summed up when he says, "Come on, you can help me alphabetize my Bobby Short collection?" I'm sure it was a character played by Rene Auberjonois... Before Star Trek, of course.

2005.1

2005-03-25T07:28:00.000-05:00

Like some typically imperfect Microsoft product, 2005 arrived with its share of bugs masquerading as features. Bah! And Basta! Away with this false 2005!

March 25th being the new moon and the start of the (old) Roman new year, we have decided to release 2005.1 as of midnight. All these health problems will be things of the past. No need for hysterectomies. No more tumors in the brain (or anywhere else, thank you very much). Nothing but blue skies, as it were.

Care to join us?

Still looking

2005-03-23T17:40:00.000-05:00

"When in literate company I am
Impelled to try an epigram
I never seek to take the credit:
We all assume that Oscar said it!"

Or maybe it was Tom Paxton. A friend of mine recently started using as her sig, "Could have been the whisky, might have been the gin, could have been the three or four six packs, I don't know, but look at the mess I'm in."

And when I lie awake at night and try to think of scenes for Point of Sighs, which we would really like to be working on (though Melissa is certainly keeping busy with other writing!), I try to figure out why it's -- not there.

Short answer is that, when you have had cancer, an imagination is a very scary thing. I wonder, though, if the treatments also had anything to do with it. "Could have been the chemo, might have been the rads. Could have been the five part radiosurgery..."

But I'm more inclined to think that it's the fact of the cancer itself. And maybe some post-treatment letdown. I've read it can take over a year from when you finish treatments for things to get back to "normal." And of course, having just had the fractionated radiosurgery in January.... crumbs, I was expecting to be back to normal, let's see, November 2003 plus 18 months would make it... this coming May. The thought of having to wait another 18 months...

A friend asked me today if the drive is still there. I suppose to some extent it is, since I'm still posting here. I'm trying to figure out the why of it all, why the drive is gone, and then figure out how to get back to it.

Believe me, I am trying to pull myself up by my creative bootstraps. And it's not as though this sense of ennui has permeated other parts of my life, it hasn't. I was thrilled just a little while ago to see a pair of cardinals in my back yard! I'm eager to get my garden tidied up after the winter, and my seeds started. I like life, as the song goes. I just can't seem to put words together in a meaningful way in terms of fiction.

And it's not as though I feel as though I've outgrown the kind of writing I've always done. I don't cringe when I read the books I've co-authored. But every time I sit down to try to write something, my imagination seizes up.

I'll find a way, a route back to it, I know. I just feel like I'm in this flat landscape; it's not even a case of feeling lost in some alien setting, or not seeing the forest for the trees... There aren't any trees! It's all a blank, like a vast... white sheet of paper. Hmmmmmm.

I'll get back to you.

Odd couple

2005-03-19T18:00:00.000-05:00

The other night, I had the pleasure of experiencing the most delightful confluence of unlikely TV shows... or maybe the unlikeliest confluence of delightful TV shows.

The Maine PBS station was showing The Red Green Show, which I love. For one thing, it's gloriously dumb, in a silly sort of way. It's got this amazing repertory company of Canadian actors (leading one to suppose there are only a gross or so of actors in Canada, since they all appear in almost everything). And it has The Man's Prayer: "I'm a man... But I can change... If I have to... I guess."

So, ok, that was fun. But (after discovering that TVG was showing poker instead of horseracing, and what in hell was up with THAT?), I flipped past the Style Network, and discovered another guilty pleasure -- The Brini Maxwell Show!

If you don't know Brini... It's unfair to use the words "Martha Stewart" anywhere near Brini. Brini is all about style... from the 1960s. Her clothing, her hair, her make-up, the food, the crafts, the decor, everything is perfect.

I should also point out that Brini is a man. Well, Brini is played by a man. And so gorgeous I could hate him. But the show is a hoot, and could only be made in NYC, where big tough firefighters are not at all nonplussed at being interviewed by a man who makes a truly exquisite woman.

Red Green and Brini Maxwell. Gosh, it was wonderful!

Seasonal treats

2005-03-18T17:01:00.000-05:00

I don't buy tomatoes in winter; it's an exercise in fruitility. I focus on root vegetables and the like, appreciating the sweetness of their flavor in their season.

This time of year, I'm longing for something green that isn't broccoli. And that usually means asparagus. There's no way native asparagus will be in stores or farmstands for another, oh, 6-8 weeks, I'd say. But there is another barometer. I will not buy asparagus in the spring (ok, late winter) until the price drops to $1.99 a pound. (Or better yet, a bunch.)

As sure as the Derby prep races (and there are a lot of them this weekend, good luck, Pat Kelly and Naughty New Yorker! And Galloping Grocer. And Rockport Harbor! And... oh, never mind...), that first less expensive bunch of asparagus is a sign of warmer (if not quite yet salad) days.

Glory be, there they were, in Fresh Markets this morning, at that magical price!

It's also a good indicator of when I can start my seeds. Received wisdom says the last frost in this zone is May 31. If that were so, I'd be using greenhouses and season extenders like crazy, but we all play fast and loose with that May 31 date. My own garden is its own little microclimate. It faces due south. It's only five feet wide and lies between the stone foundation of the house and a five foot tall wooden fence. It is toasty in there. So this weekend, I'll probably be starting my basil, tomato, and cabbage seeds. And hopefully, the basil will thrive enough so that in mid to late summer, through early fall, I can make and put up enough basil to get us through next winter. There's still a small container in the freezer from last year...

The cabbage is a new experiment; Melissa read in the Johnny's Seeds catalogue about mini-cabbages. You get minis by planting them closer together than you normally would; I'm hoping to get the same effect by planting them in containers. Don't know how it will work out, but it should be fun... and take up less room than the volunteer pumpkin plant we had last year that Melissa wouldn't let me tear up.

Graceful language

2005-03-16T21:40:00.000-05:00

I'm writing an opening letter for our new theatre books catalogue. Or I'm trying to ... it has not been a pretty process.

In the course of attempting to do so, I've found myself thinking about what the pervasiveness of computers in our lives has done to language. And I'm not talking about the usual things -- the truncation of entire words down to a kind of base 2 of single consonants and vowels, or the introduction of new words and phrases to the language.

No, I'm talking about being brought up short when I start to use a phrase like, "when a playwright puts pen to paper." Now, I grant you, it's a stock phrase, a cliche, perhaps, but it has a certain grace to it, and rhythm. But, really, how many playwrights still, in fact, do put pen to paper anymore? So, what do I say? "When a playwright makes words appear on the screen?" Maybe "when a playwright's hands dance across the keyboard," but I don't know, it's not as concise, it's not as neat.

I'll let you know if I come up with anything brilliant.

I wonder if Leigh and Leslie Keno would be interested...

2005-03-11T16:22:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I did a little pre-spring (spring? what's that?) cleaning. Wedged into one end of my office (a long, narrow room) was an old computer desk. You know the kind, dark particle board grained to look like wood. Weighs a ton. This was indeed an old one -- the structure of it assumes a tractor feed printer.

It used to house my printer (not tractor feed) and my stereo. Besides that, it served to collect stuff. I won't say junk, but a hellacious amount of stuff. And I was tired of it.

So last weekend, I wedged myself into that corner of my office, managed to squirm and twist the old desk around, and with a couple of handy screwdrivers, managed to disassemble it. This thing was so old that it hadn't even required an Allen wrench.

In the process of doing so, however, I had to empty out its various shelves and in doing that, I cam across quite an assortment of old computer peripherals, many of which I could no longer identify. Which old computer did we need the switcher for, and what did it switch to and from? Oh, look, a power pack for a Macintosh Powerbook 110. Or maybe a 140. Cords, cables, disks, mysterious boxes, programs on 5 1/4 inch disks... part of me -- that would be the pack rat part of me -- wondered if they might not be of some interest at some future date. But the very elusiveness of that word "some" convinced me that the right thing to do was to chuck it all.

I just know I'll be kicking myself when Tech Antiques Road Show debuts.

"Fabulous"

2005-03-11T14:00:00.000-05:00

When a straight man uses that word, you know he really means it.

I went up to Dartmouth-Hitchcock yesterday for an MRI, follow-up to the fractionated radiosurgery I had back in January (crumbs, it still FEELS like January out there!).

Cool new thing -- instead of ear plugs, I was offered headphones and music, so I took those. The classical music they had was a nice range of Mozart. The music didn't block out the noise of the MRI at all, so it was rather like Philip Glass competing with Mozart, and more often than not, Glass won! But it was interesting, and as the MRI was completed, the music was quite wonderfully triumphal. (This is where I could use that dancing banana emoticon.)

Afterwards we beetled over to radiation oncology to meet with Dr. Hartford. He was very pleased with the results -- the tumor is smaller than it was in December, let alone January. After groping for the right word, he described the response to the treatment as "fabulous." We like fabulous. Fabulous is nice.

I go back for another MRI in mid to late April; at that time, we look at the level of response, and put our heads together as to whether to hit it once more with radiation -- just to be good and sure the little bastard doesn't come back again!

You've Got Comments!

2005-03-09T18:08:00.000-05:00

It's sad, isn't it? Being the type of person who checks her email, and when she finds she doesn't have any... checks it again, to be sure?

I do not want to become that way about comments, but holy cow, I had comments the other day! Danny, bless you for your encouragement, and Don, dude, you have always been there for me and my writing!

Don's take on blog posts (entries... things) was interesting, and similar to a debate I've sort of had with a member of Horseboard. He hates emoticons. And I think he views posting on a board very specifically as writing and within the meaning of the act, it is.

But most people, I think, view it as keyboarded conversation. And also, most people are not adept at conveying precisely their tone and meaning with pinpoint accuracy. So, if you're "saying" something that has any kind of a twist to it, emoticons are useful tools.

I view posting on a board more like conversation, and delight in really good emoticons. Some of the members of Horseboard find some terrific ones. My favorite in the arsenal of ones available for our use over there is the dancing banana. Don't ask, but it's very useful.

But I view blogging very much as writing. And that carries with it its own freight and responsibilities. Well, responsibility may not be the right word, or I shouldn't suggest that I'm not very, very careful indeed about what I post on a board. Because I view it as conversation, I make sure not to post anything I would be unwilling to say to someone's face.

So that could be why I'm slower with blog entries than I am to fire off an opinion on this year's Derby contenders...

Sure, Rub it in, Oregon!

2005-03-08T17:04:00.000-05:00

I like to listen to classical music while I work, and I listen to a webcast from KBPS in Portland, Oregon. Unlike so many classical stations that seem to play Top 40 Classical Hits, KBPS plays a terrific range of music, from early music to early 21st century. They do not play The Meditation from Thais a half dozen times a month!

Only problem is... this time of year, listening to those Portland, OR weather forecasts is really, really painful. Sean Yu and Robert McBride are talking about temps in the upper sixties. Outside my window, I am looking at a mixture of rain, sleet, and snow.

I'm a Yankee, and proud of it. I try not to complain about the weather, especially in winter. You can't cope with winter, you don't belong in New England, right? And everyone knows that March can pack a 1-2 punch. Or a 1-2-3-4...5...6 punch. You roll with it, baby.

But golly, those Portland forecasts sound nice.

Perfecting Avoidance Techniques

2005-03-05T17:12:00.000-05:00

Ok, here it is March 5, and if I have any regular readers, they're probably getting turned off by the sporadic posts. Entries. Whatever the heck these things are called.

I kind of watched myself this afternoon dancing around this. I'd open up the bookmarks, wander up and down, always avoiding the one that brings me here. NY Times? Check. Horseboard? Check. Portsmouth Public Library catalogue? Check. Equibase? Check. Damn, I'm good! Oh, wait, I haven't checked my email in, oh, twenty minutes! Check. Oh, the dog needs to be walked, doesn't she? (Regardless of whether she's actually asleep in the bedroom.)

Perhaps it's an inferiority complex. Danny is so wonderfully open. Blog-envy? Am I doing this right? Is this thing on? :-)

Thing is, I hang out with a wicked smart group of people on horseboard, so posting here feels... lonely. Over there, I know I'll hear from Buckhunter, or Josh, or Spajeff, or Rambler, and it's a dialogue. This is like being onstage, and I was never one for stand-up. And while I have a lot of respect for folks who can write one person shows, I don't think I'm one of them.

But I'm not going to give up on this blog. It's still my tool to try to find my way back to writing, to try to persuade my rather nervy imagination that it is, indeed, safe to come out now.

Which I do think it is. I have a follow-up MRI this coming week, to determine how the tumor, you know, the one left over from the breast cancer, the one that is NOT a brain tumor (see Nomenclature), has reacted to the fractionated radiosurgery. If it knows what's good for it, it's on its way out of Dodge, for good.

Racing the Truck

2005-02-27T17:09:00.000-05:00

I love good TV commercials. They're like poetry in that they have to convey so much in such a small amount of space and time.

Over the past few years, UPS has been having lots of fun running a series of ads featuring NASCAR driver Dale Jarrett -- UPS being the primary sponsor of Jarrett's #88 Ford Taurus. The premise is that UPS wants Jarrett to race the truck. Jarrett doesn't want to. For years, UPS reps, people on the street, famous musicians (my favorite was Charlie Daniels), a certain pair of Muppets, and his own father, have tried to persuade Dale to drive the truck. All to no avail.

Until this year. Dale walks into a meeting of UPS execs and said he's changed his mind, he'll race the truck.

The news sweeps across the globe, leading to general mass rejoicing. Cell phones ring, text messages proliferate, it becomes the lead story on the evening news... and then Dale sticks his head back in the conference room. "But let's not make a big thing of it, ok?" he asks. The UPS execs hastily reassure him -- as a plane flies by outside towing a banner that says, "Dale Says Yes!"

Well, you see, it takes more time to describe it than it takes to run. That's why good commercials are more like poetry and describing good commercials is... blogging. You can see it here (and a word of advice -- the UPS site seems to like Netscape better than Explorer. Yay, UPS!).

As much as I enjoy NASCAR Nextel Cup racing, I lack the genetic component, which my partner has discovered to the nth degree. To the extent that this season, we have NASCAR In Car, which is one of those packages that lets you follow the action from inside certain selected drivers' cars. Good weeks are ones when DJ is one of the selected drivers, as he was last week and is again this week. Anyway, while I'm here blogging away, Melissa is off swapping back and forth between the network coverage and her In Car coverage. And to be sure, the conversation can be fascinating, the insight it gives you into how decisions are made, on how cars handle and how an evil handling car is dealt with, is really nifty. People love the inside story. I bet Danny would rather be backstage at the Oscars than in the audience. (Really big smiley face here!) I know I'd rather be on the backstretch at a racetrack (especially Saratoga) than on the apron or in the grandstand.

And so far, no one has tried to censor the drivers' language in these "private" conversations we're allowed to listen in on. And sometimes, wow, the language. Last week Dale Jarrett had an evil handling car for part of the race, and the normally gentlemanly D.J. was heard at one point to say, "They're driving by me, they're freaking driving by me. I'm freaking wide open and they're freaking driving by me."

Understand, the word he used WAS freaking. Not the other one that isn't firetrucking. That's about as salty as DJ gets. And, as I mentioned earlier in this blog somewhere, his primary charity is the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation -- how about that, a NASCAR champion concerned with women's health issues!

But I was going to mention a mild case of NASCAR widow-hood. Usually it's not a problem, as I'll drift through the living room where Melissa is watching, or if I'm out driving, I'll listen to the race on the radio, which I prefer to watching as I'm not wild about the hosts on Fox. The problem is California. The California races start later, of course, so they end later, of course, and they tend to cut into the dinner making hour. I enjoy company when I'm making dinner, and I'm not keen on pushing it back an hour or more waiting for the race to end, so I'm left to make dinner by myself, with only the critters for company. (really REALLY big smiley face here.)

The problem tonight is, we decided on having something that she traditionally makes. Sigh. I better get some cheese and crackers (to go with this whine?) to get me through to the end of the race.

Wildly Random Musings

2005-02-24T17:35:00.000-05:00

I admire Danny's discipline... or maybe it's obsession? -- when it comes to blogging every day. Like him, I started this blog to try to prime the pump for my own "real" writing. To get those muscles back in working order. And stuff -- like life! -- keeps getting in the way!

Last weekend, Don Sakers & Thomas Atkinson came up for a couple of days following Boskone. They're two of our dearest friends; we actually "ran off" to Vermont with them three years ago to get civilly united. Then Melissa's mom came up from Arkansas to help out while Melissa continues to recuperate from her hysterectomy. It's all been very pleasant, but has, I confess, kept me away from the computer.

But here I am, without much substantive to say (hi, Jeff!). So, some things that have crossed my mind, caught my eye, amused or irked me recently.

1. If you enjoy good photography, you must check out Barbara Livingston's website. She's won two Eclipse Awards for photography, and the woman catches shots most of us wouldn't even be able to see, let alone capture on film. It doesn't matter if you're not a horse-lover. If you're in a museum, do you turn away from a Degas because it happens to have horses in it? She is to photography what Stubbs and Munnings were to painting.

2. Speaking of Danny... I feel like I'm getting my minimum daily requirement of political insight, sociological awareness, and pop culture instruction when I read his blog. And sometimes it leaves me feeling the tiniest bit inadequate!

3. Law & Order, the series, of any stripe, seems enamored of this notion that defense attorneys are evil, venal, or else incredibly naive, not to say stupid, and sometimes all of the above. It looks as though the plan for the new series is to have all of the defense attorneys be "ethically challenged." I only hope that the creators of the various series never have a legitimate need for a good defense attorney. What is so wrong with the idea of innocent until proven guilty? I suppose they never knew that John Adams defended one of the accused in the Boston Massacre. That he contended it was of more importance to the community that innocence be protected than it was that guilt should be punished. Good thing he didn't live a hundred years earlier, Cotton Mather would have gotten really medieval on him!

4. I have new insurance this year, and it is probably going to be directly responsible for a spike in my blood pressure. I am very fortunate to have insurance, and in the grand scheme of things, it's damn good insurance. But there have been many hoops to jump through, many errors to be corrected, and I'm about to throw something.

5. It was amusing to see the same story, about J. Paul Reddam purchasing Kentucky Derby hopeful Snack, in both Thoroughbred Times and on the US Trotting Association website. According to the USTA site, Mr. Reddam is a noted owner of Standardbreds, while Thoroughbred Times doesn't see any need to mention that. Know thy audience.

5a. That said, there's at least one sports writer who would point out how unlikely it is that a Triple Crown winner will ever be named Snack. Uh-huh. And Seattle Slew sounds nice, but "slew" meant "swamp."

6. It's not the cold, it's the damp. That's the winter version of "it's not the heat, it's the humidity." I just got back from walking Vixen around town, and it is raw out tonight.

7. Fans of less than stellar hockey teams have taken cold comfort in proclaiming their teams undefeated in the 2004-2005 season.

Signs of shhhhhh.....

2005-02-17T17:45:00.000-05:00

It really is ridiculous of anyone who has spent her entire life in New England to be talking about signs of spring in the middle of February. Signs of a February thaw, perhaps.

Joe is talking about his horse coming back to NY from Florida around the second week in March. Just in time for the traditional St. Patrick's Day snowstorm!

A few years ago, Melissa and I had a signing at Jumpgate on Preakness Day, so that would be the third Saurday in May -- and it snowed! No just flurries, we're talking measurable snow that made the folks at the Harley rally down the road very unhappy. That same year, we had measurable snow in mid-October, so that made for, let's see, four snow free months.

I do love New England!

And yet... yesterday, mild as it was, temperatures here in Portsmouth were cooler than in surrounding locales. Why? Because the wind here had turned around and was out of the east. Yes, that's right -- the first seabreeze of the year.

And now that my backyard has lost most of its blanket of snow, I can see many daffodil tips, grown a good inch or two. No signs of the chionodoxa yet, but they'll be along, overtake, and pass the daffs in good order. In a month, maybe less, they'll actually be in bloom while the daffodils are still growing.

Hairy Tales

2005-02-17T17:00:00.000-05:00

Blogs can become some (literally) twisted life form, curling in and around themselves, commenting on one another, one blog entry inspiring another, which sends another blogger to the keyboard...

Danny just commented on his friend Tamar's entry about hair. Danny wrote about baldness. My take on baldness is that everyone should try it. Sure, I didn't want to, but I also didn't choose to wear wigs. And I can look at the photos of me without hair, and not cringe. I have a pretty darned decent looking head! The hardest part was the lack on insulation. It was cold in the winter (and spring), and in the summer, whenever I wore a baseball cap, it was hotter than it would have been with that cushioning air-pocket of hair. And, as my friend and hairdresser Larry pointed out, raindrops can _hurt_ without that cushion!

(If I can figure out how to post photos here without having to house them on some public site, I will post one of me in my hairless mode. It's very... Midnight Oil-ish.)

The acid test is would I do it again. (Well, sure, if I had to!) Because of the cold, sunburn and raindrops keep falling on my head elements, probably not.
Aesthetically, though... If I weren't a wimp about those other factors, I just might!

One of my favorite episodes of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (I don't even want to talk about Queer Eye for the Straight Gal, or Girl, or whatever the heck it is) was the one about Richard, who, at the urging of the Fab 5, especially grooming guru Kyan, ditched his toupee and went for the bald look. My goodness, the gentleman looked fantastic! Sharp, sophisticated and so much more confident. Less is more! And a lot less is a lot more!

My concern about this blog entry is that Danny is now going to think, "Oy, I'm complaining about being bald when Lisa was bald because of chemo?" Danny, DON'T, please! Because then you'll incite my old Catholic guilt that I should have made you feel guilty so I should just shut up... Even recovering Catholics retain that facility for guilt, I'm sorry to say!

Dogs, Horses, and Automobiles

2005-02-16T17:14:00.000-05:00

The second week in February is valued for one thing above all others, and no, Danny, it is NOT Valentine's Day.

Rather, it is that doggy celebration known as the Westminster Kennel Club show.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am something of a leveler when it comes to dogs and showing. I own a mixed breed. Always have, always will. I am a member of the United Kennel Club, or UKC. The UKC permits, nay, encourages mixed breed dogs to take part in performance (obedience) competition. The AKC, which says they promote responsible dog ownership, does not allow mixed breeds in any of their performance competitions (obedience, agility... Rally O, even, probably). I have no time or patience for that kind of useless and actively harmful elitism.

But I am a total pushover for the Westminster show. Those dogs are having fun, and they show it. The best of the best are like some great radiating presence on their own stage. Even as cool a customer as last night's winner, Carlee, demanded that all eyes be on her. Oh, she was perfect! (I was rooting for the Great Pyrenees, doubtless remembering fondly evenings spent at the Sea Dog brew pub in Camden, Maine, where the mascot was a Great Pyrenees.) Her self-stack should be an instructional
video, except it might cause too many handlers to despair.

My greatest pleasure in Westminster lies in seeing all the less popular breeds strutting their stuff. I love the Komondor and the Puli. The Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever is probably my favorite of all retrievers. The Belgian trio -- Malinois, Shepherd, and Tervuren -- are some of the most handsome dogs I have seen. Always delighted to see the "little captain," the Schipperke, and the "I know what I am doing and I will do it in my own time, thank you" Shiba Inu. Because of Vixen's own probable make-up, I am enchanted by the Shelties and the Whippets.

As the hosts, David Frei and Lester Holt said, my favorite dog is the last one I've watched. Of course, the beautiful thing about owning a mixed breed is that in one dog, you can have so many, and are free to love all the pure-breeds for what they contribute in one savvy, sassy, mutt!

As for horses, about which many people I know can write far more knowledgeably than I, well, I am having a total fan moment here. Gander is coming to Rye! I can tell from the crickets chirping that not too many of you know what that means. Gander is one of the most popular racehorses of recent years, among people who know racing, especially on the NY circuit. Sure, I love Smarty Jones, but Gander is Gander. A horse who, like those dogs at Westminster, knows he's good and knows he's loved. He's won Horse of the Year titles in New York and New England. His trainers, John and Tonya Terranova, always made sure he was accessible. My friend Barbara Livingston, when conducting photograph workshops, always brought her students by their barn at Saratoga. Well, Gander is now retired, and his owners are from NH, so it turns out that Gander will be spending his retirement at Peter Fuller's farm here on the Seacoast! Maybe he can do some publicity for EPONA!

Automobiles. The middle of February also means Speed Weeks and the Daytona 500! While I hate, loathe, abominate, and despise the new points system, it's hard to be churlish (yet) when my favorite driver has locked in the pole position for this great American race. Yes, sir, Dale Jarrett has given notice that he's not to be counted out, after two less than typical years for him and the #88 UPS Ford Taurus. There are many reasons I like and admire Dale Jarrett. He's a canny, patient driver, the kind who can start at the back of the pack and end up leading and winning. He's a gentleman -- he will not wreck you. And, of all the NASCAR drivers, he is the only one whose primary charity concerns women's health -- he supports the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation . All around class act, D.J., and I hope to see him in Victory Lane on Sunday afternoon!

(Oh, you may have noticed -- how could you not! -- all the links in here, all of a sudden. I had one of those "bang the rocks together, guys" moments, downloaded the newest version of Netscape, and lo and behold, all those bells and whistles heretofore denied me are now mine to command. Be afraid. Be very afraid.)

Should I Stay or Should I Go

2005-02-15T17:31:00.000-05:00

I think I'll stay.

I had contemplated moving this blog to ... somewhere else. For a few reasons, but the key one was that people were not able to comment without signing up for a blogger account, and that just seemed rotten to me. I mean, my die-hard degenerate handicapping friends object to giving The Form any information, they sure as heck aren't going to divulge even false info just to comment on anything I might post here.

They still might not, but at least now they can do so without coming up with elaborate alternate personae and email addresses they never check (we all have one -- or two -- of those, don't we?).

A lady with attitude

2005-02-12T17:07:00.000-05:00

Taba died yesterday. She was 32 years old, and had lived at my friend Jeanne Mirabito's farm since late last fall. Taba was champion 2 year old filly in her native Argentina. She was the dam of 1986 Chamion Older Male Turkoman, and the grand-dam of 2001 Horse of the Year Point Given.

I met Taba on a gray day in late November at the Our Mims Retirement Haven, Jeanne's farm for retired broodmares. She was very much a grande dame. Imperious. Elegant. And she knew very much her own mind, and didn't mind giving you a piece of it. The most striking instance came when the name Point Given came up in conversation.

Taba's ears went back. Her head jutted forward. And if you weren't careful, she came damn closing to taking a chunk out of you for even mentioning that name in her presence.

Why? Who knows? It could be because she felt that Point Given was undeservedly more famous than she. It could be that she had not forgiven him for not winning the Kentucky Derby in 2001. Sorry, Taba, but nobody was going to beat Monarchos that day. All we know for sure is that you did not mention Point Given in her presence... or, more precisely, within striking distance. Because she would do her level best to nail you.

Taba even knew when you were _thinking_ the name Point Given.

Taba was donated to the Our Mims Retirement Haven by Olin Gentry. But she was owned by Gaines-Gentry Thoroughbreds. And Taba died on the same day as John Gaines.

Jeanne is one of those people whom it is a privilege to know. Her farm is basically a hospice for elderly broodmares. She takes them in, cares for them, loves them, knowing her heart will be broken. That is a kind of courage, of gallantry, we don't see all that often.

Taba was a fortunate lady, as are the other mares residing at Our Mims Retirement Haven. To learn more about OMRH, about Our Mims, the mare who started it all, about Jeanne Mirabito, and to learn how you can help, visit www.ourmims.org.

Winterlude

2005-02-09T08:57:00.000-05:00

What a spell of lovely weather we've been having! After an absolutely brutal January, February has been, well, a Valentine. Sure, it's only February, and there will be more snow -- and a lot of it, looks like, starting tomorrow -- but I do think that New Englanders have a capacity for living in and enjoying the moment. Mild winter days like this are such a gift! One can ditch the parka, the mittens, even the hats. Saturday afternoon I was working here at my desk when Melissa infomed me it was 54 degrees outside! That did it, I bolted away from the computer, got Vixen leashed up, and off we went. The South Mill Pond is virtually ice free, and covered with ducks (haven't seen the buffleheads in a few weeks, though). Downtown was crowded with people enjoying the mild weather. It's pretty funny to see folks who obviously don't put seasonal clothes away -- I have seen shorts, t-shirts and, more insanely, flip-flops being worn! Now, my shorts and most of my tees are put away for the warmer months. I was delighted to be wearing nothing heavier than one of the ganseys Melissa has made me. Vixen had a grand time splashing through puddles and becoming a mud-puppy.

It's restorative. It gives you a chance to catch your breath, to deal with the rest of the winter... which is a month shorter than it was, well, a month ago, right? :-)

Like a Ferrari to the grocery store

2005-02-04T20:07:00.000-05:00

At the end of December, my dear old Bondi Blue, first gen iMac gave up the ghost. I think it can be repaired, and if so, I intend to get it repaired, as we have always wanted to have a hub in the kitchen where we can keep recipes, and this would be the most practical way to do that. But when the little old iMac died, I was in a position to buy a spiffing new one. Not top of the line, but not an eMac, either. So I have one of these super-elegant "Where Did The Computer Go?" iMac G5. I absolutely love it... and I feel more than a little guilty owning it.

As I've said elsewhere in this blog, I haven't been doing a lot of writing lately. So I feel as though this lovely, powerful computer is not being put through its paces fairly. I post here. I update the pointsman.net website (no, really, I do...). I read my friend Danny Miller's blog -- he's as big a Mac fan as I am. I administer the horseboard.com discussion board for Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing. I research and order seeds and plants. I plan trips. I locate bargains (woo-hoo, those mocs from Lands' End are on serious sale right now!). I check out my friend Barbara Livingston's amazing photography (www.barbaralivingston.com/gallery).

But I do feel it's like taking a Ferrari to the grocery store. And I know whereof I speak, sort of. We have a neighbor across the street who has a Ferrari. And he does drive it to the grocery store, or just around the neighborhood. A Ferrari is not meant to go 20 mph. It's an insult to the Ferrari. So much so that when the Ferrari returns to a state of rest, it lets of an indignant fart of disdain. "Milk? You got me out to go for a half gallon of milk, and not even whole milk, but part-skim? Fah!"

So, to my iMac, I'm sorry. I promise, I'll turn you loose some day soon. And we'll see some great places together.

Nomenclature

2005-02-03T19:35:00.000-05:00

Been meaning to write on this for a week or so now.

After my last treatment up at Dartmouth-Hitchcock last week, I met with my radiation oncologist up there to go over what's next, which, basically, will be the first of many follow-up MRIs, starting in late February.

As I think I have mentioned in this blog, I feel so much more confident this time about the results than I did last time. Last time, last spring, I was plumb wore out I guess from the chemo, surgery, and chest radiation. But also -- I was thinking of things in the wrong way.

To wit: Dr. Hartford was talking about the fact that breast cancer responds very very well to radiation (i.e., radiation is extremely effective against it). Part of my mistake was referring to this pesky little hangover as a brain tumor.

No, no, no. Brain tumors do not respond as well to radiation. They are biologically, chemically, pathologically a whole nother critter. Therefore, it is absolutely key for me to refer to this little hangover as "breast cancer." A lesion in the brain, to be sure, but NOT a brain tumor.

I wish I were a knowledgeable gardening writer, I imagine fantastic insights -- or at least clever ones -- could be drawn on the topic of the nomenclature of cancer and of growing plants.

No more being careless with words. You'd think, in my professions, I would know that, wouldn't you? But it's so interesting when something like this really, truly, brings home the power, physical and real, of words.

Declaring 2005 a Non-Starter for Wagering Purposes...

2005-02-03T19:25:00.000-05:00

Well, really, can you blame us?

We have decided to start 2005 again some time around March 1, which of course, isn't all that weird, in many calendars. Let's face it, those kids born of virgins in the deep midwinter were actually more than likely birthed in the milder spring months. Makes sense, and Mom has never been anybody's fool.

I had thought about declaring it started as of February 1, but I'm still on the damn steroids, which I hate, and Melissa is just starting her recovery from her hysterectomy (more on that anon), and so, let's just get this out of the way. Come March 1, though, we expect to be partying in the streets!

The hysterectomy went well. The doctor found severe endometriosis. Melissa being the science fiction writer that she is, she asked the doctor to photograph whatever she removed, which she very kindly did. It's pretty impressive. The good thing, I guess, about the endometriosis, is that she should end up feeling even better than she was expecting to, as a result. Dumb innards.

Today was the first day this week that didn't involve being at the hospital. In fact, it was one of the few days of the past two weeks that did not involve being at A hospital, either up at Dartmouth or here in town. Wow, no wonder I feel like I'm relaxing a little bit, finally.

Now, where's that Maker's Mark...

Another Interlude

2005-01-30T07:08:00.000-05:00

43 degrees out there today, boys and girls! Sweater weather!

Tomorrow my partner goes in for her hysterectomy, so we've spent the day tidying, making sure things will be pleasant and comfortable for her when she comes home. A nesting instinct, to be sure. Last year, on New Year's Day, 2004, I had a fit of Queer Eye Meets Sensible Chic and set up a little reading nook in the bedroom using an old chaise we had. It's a very cozy corner now, and I think she'll be using that quite a bit. We had a sensible shopper moment this morning and found a handsome throw for the end of the chaise marked down from $40 to $12.00.

I'm not sure if this is especially blogworthy, but, hey, it's what's going on in my life right now. That and tapering off the damn steroids. I'm down to 4mg a day, total, 2 mg AM and 2 mg PM. I just have to remember to take the second dose way before bedtime, as I get a few hours of sleep and am then inescapably awake.

Oh, the interesting thing about the steroid I'm on? It's what they give folks on Mt. Everest who are suffering from altitude sickness -- and most of those people take a lower dose than I was taking. Small wonder it makes me cranky!

Wish us luck tomorrow.

Interlude

2005-01-29T20:17:00.000-05:00

While it got colder last night than it was predicted to -- it was -2 at 8:30 this morning! -- today, temps reached the mid-30s this afternoon. And that was just enough inspiration to order my first seeds of the year!

I missed last year's growing season with the brain lesion (which, if you will recall, was a sanctuary site metastasis of the original breast cancer, NOT a brain tumor), and I am determined not to miss this year's. I'll be ordering a couple of different kinds of basil for pesto. I'm trying a mini-cabbage at my partner's behest, which will luckily take up less room than last year's volunteeer mini-pumpkin! Hopefully the new Hidcote lavenders I planted last year are enjoying the blanket of snow and will come back better than ever. And I'm getting more flowers in -- cosmos, a new mallow, and nasturtiums.

I've no idea what the early spring garden will look like, except that there will be chionodoxa, since there always are. But I didn't get any tulips in last fall, so this year might be a good chance to start re-arranging things. You have to realize -- the whole garden is 5 feet wide and 25 feet long! A challenge, to be sure, and much smaller than the "small gardens" discussed in magazines. Hah, Roger Swain, you think THAT'S a small garden?? Come on in and help me design this one.

Part of me would like to get a designer in, I don't know whether it would be as grand as a "landscape architect" or simply a real honest to goodness gardener who knows a lot more than I do about putting plants together. It'd be fun to see what an outside eye could suggest.

Next up ...

2005-01-28T20:55:00.000-05:00

Well, we're back from Dartmouth. We drove up last Saturday to get ahead of the storm, which we did, very nicely, thank you. The snow started just as we were coming out of the Food Coop with dinner supplies (we had already been to the liquor store). So we holed up all day on Sunday with books and the Australian Open. We only got about 10 inches up there.

Monday morning, the day of my third treatment, dawned with a temperature of 21 degrees below zero. Without the windchill. We basically stayed around the Lebanon area, had lunch at the Seven Barrells Brewpub, always a pleasure.

I discovered, too, that the editorial summit I was missing was cancelled due to the blizzard.

Tuesday we headed up towards Stowe, and stopped at the Cabot Creamery Annex. Stocked up on interesting flavors of their cheeses that we haven't seen down here yet, and also picked up a large jug of a local maple ale. There seems to be a beer theme going here, doesn't there? Then we decided we really wanted lunch at Simon Pearce again, so we forewent Ben & Jerry's for the restorative sun, warmth, and beauty of the restaurant and its food. There's just something very soothing about sitting there on a quiet weekday afternoon, no one rushing you, enjoying the play of the sun on the ice below and the tumbling of the spillway.

Wednesday was the final treatment, and we headed home, in a small, niggling snowstorm. They key to successful winter driving is to take it slow and steady, which is what we did. 45-50 on the one clear lane on I-89 was more than sufficient, as was evidenced by the people who passed us... and whom we then passed after they spun out! And it took a deal of effort to drive that badly in a snow that wasn't even accumulating. It took us an hour longer to get home than usual. It took those folks a lot longer.

It's great being home. And I was blown away to get home and realize that my friend Eric had been by and had dug out our back walk! That's above and beyond, my friends.

Vixen came back from the Bark & Run rather hoarse.

So, what's next? My partner's hysterectomy this coming Monday! Do we know how to have fun, or what?

On the Fly

2005-01-22T11:35:00.000-05:00

So, ok, I went up to Dartmouth-Hitchcock for a mapping MRI last Tuesday, for the planned stereotactic radiosurgery on Thursday.

Turns out the damn tumor had grown 3 mm in 5 weeks! So, change of plan: fractionated radiosurgery, five treatments for the full dose of 20 grays.

I feel absolutely confident. The karma has been very positive. One, we caught the damn thing. Two, as it turned out, there was an open time slot in the sim lab, needed to get the measurements for the radiosurgery, right then as we were meeting with my radiation oncologist. And we were able to start the fractionated treatments on Thursday. The other thing is that if this little expletive deleted grew 3 mm in five weeks, then it's pretty fast growing, and cancer treatments preferentially attack the fastest growing cells. So, imagine if you will a spindly tomato plant, damping off.

This fucker is OUTTA HERE!!

This being January in New England, the weather always adds an interesting fillip. Besides the extreme cold, now we're looking at a major snowstorm which is supposed to drop a foot or more of snow on us tonight into tomorrow. Which means instead of going back up there tomorrow for Monday's treatment, we have to go back up today. Laundry gets done really fast, the dog goes back to the Bark & Run (we call it that because that's what she gets to do out there), and we grab some groceries, since our hotel room as a kitchen and no way are we driving out to dinner tonight!

All in all, quite an adventure.

We're calling it Vacation with Fractionated Radiosurgery. After my first treatment, we had lunch at Simon Pearce; we had a table overlooking the spillway of the dam that powers (or powered) the old mill, and it was quite spectacular, with all the ice. Then we went to the Vermont Institute of Natural Sciences to see their raptor enclosures. Absolutely magnificent! The birds in the enclosures have all been injured in some way that makes their return to the wild impossible. It was a privilege to see them up relatively close.

Over the next few days, when the snow winds down, we're hoping to get to the Shaker Museum, the Montshire Museum of Science and of course, that vital spot, Ben & Jerry's. It has been postulated that Ben & Jerry's is efficacious in treating the full range of female health issues. I have little doubt it is an effective adjuvant therapy in breast cancer treatment! :-)

The Count Fleet

2005-01-16T15:00:00.000-05:00

Last year, the Court Fleet really was the start of Smarty Jones' march to Kentucky. What did we learn from this year's renewal? Is there another Smarty lurking in there?

Probably not, but we did learn that Naughty New Yorker stepped up in class very nicely, even though he didn't pull off the win. Scrappy T, as more or less expected, went to the lead and stayed there, after putting away pacesetter Lakeville Rush. Naughty New Yorker drew the outside post, which was a tough break as the inner track hasn't been kind to wide, sweeping moves this meet and the bias has been to speed. He certainly also proved to be more versatile than Killenaule, the multiple stakes winning Fusaichi Pegasis colt, and proved himself seven lengths better than Tani Maru. Maybe Killenaule simply had an off day. But while there may not be another Smarty in here, I think I'll keep an eye on Naughty. And congrats to Pat Kelly, his trainer, who also trains the extremely popular and game Evening Attire.

Dog as Ink Blot

2005-01-16T14:53:00.000-05:00

Vixen is a kind of Rorchach test of a dog. She's a mixed breed, and people who stop and ask what kind she is almost invariably see whatever dog they own in her. Sheltie -- yes, we're pretty sure of that. We also think there is some whippet in her. Other guesses have been Border Collie, Australian Cattle Dog, Corgi (facially, she looks a lot like my friend Maura's Corgi, Maggie), Lab (!), Toller, Canaan Hound, shepherds of various kinds. She is really a kind of Ur-dog. It's clear that neither of her parents were pure breed anythings... so I have to wonder why her original owners had her dewclaws removed. I can't imagine they were going to use her as a sporting dog, and I can't think why else they would have done it. Like so much about Vixen, it's a mystery.

She really is a very doggy dog. Type-y, as they say. For a mutt.

Ice, Ice, Baby

2005-01-16T11:05:00.000-05:00

That's what it was like here this week, when snow was followed by snow, sleet, and freezing rain. Thank heavens, this year, we actually had a January thaw -- it was Friday morning -- and virtually all of the mess has melted and gone away. A win win situation, really -- we don't find ourselves facing a snow drought, but Vixen and I are also able to get out for long walks. For the record, Vixen likes powder, but hates the crusty stuff as she is just heavy enough to break through it, but light enough that it takes a second or two, and she finds that disconcerting. However, the crusty stuff is enjoyable for digging.

What I enjoy about having no snow on the ground is that it's so much easier to hear things, especially things like the hiss of oak leaves still clinging to branches. Bird calls travel more clearly over bare ground. There was a great article in the Boston Globe some years back that called December the time to hear "what the earth is saying," because we usually don't get snow, substantial snow, til January. So far this winter we've had a few decent snows, but we've also had periods in between of warmer weather that lets us start over again.

Oh, and I have spotted a pair of buffleheads on the Mill Pond, a sure sign that January is here.

Oh, bother.

2005-01-13T16:58:00.000-05:00

I got a phone call from my radiation oncologist up at Dartmouth-Hitchcock last night, saying that the scan I had done on Friday had come back "slightly positive." Which means there's reason to think there's been a little bit of tumor re-growth.

Yeesh.

The good news, and it truly is, that the tumor is "an order of magnitude smaller" than it was when we first treated it; that it has moved off the brain stem, it has shrunk so much; and because it is no longer on the brain stem, the radiosurgery this time can use the full 20 grays of radiation rather than the more conservative 16 grays it received at the center, 12 at the periphery. There is no sign of edema or vascularization. And if it is tumor re-growth, this is the time to hit it. And I absolutely agree with that.

So we're going to do another radiosurgery. Which is quite a fascinating procedure, the only thing I dislike about it is that I have to take steroids afterwords, and decadron really truly sucks. I know, I know, it's better than edema, but the side effects, for me at least, were lousy. Ah, well, I'll only be on it for a couple of weeks probably, as opposed to the month and a half I was on them last year!

But golly gee, I had hoped 2005 would be a wonderfully boring year! My friend Victoria suggested that 2005, for us, will simply begin February 1. A new leaf, a new year, no more of this shit.

I believe very strong in the powers of anger and humor. Both are enormously powerful weapons in one's arsenal. And bless his heart, Richard (he of the alternate spelling for fru-fru), made me laugh out loud this morning with the following:

Best wishes, Lisa. Somewhere in this thread there is an allusion to MacBeth waiting to come out. I'm not sure if it's

Out, out, damned spot.
Or something along the lines of

Tumorrow and tumorrow and tumorrow . . .

but it's in there somewhere. If I wasn't half asleep, I'd find it. But my alarm clock tells me that it's time to step into tights and sashay through the snow to a lifetime first: a step aerobics class. I'm not sure what evil deity possessed me long enough to think that this might be a good idea, but if there is not at least one spandex-clad cutie be-bopping her way to tighter buns alongside me, I may just turn around and go back to bed.

Tell you doctor that we are expecting a clean bill of health when he's done mucking about in there. In an earlier, more barbaric period when my mother underwent extensive brain surgery for a tumor, they just took stuff out by hand and then closed one up and took an x-ray or two. She would (PhD in hand) proudly report back afterwards, tapping her skull:

"There's nothing up there at all, and I have the pictures and a neurosurgeon's testimony to prove it."

Thanks, Richard, I needed that!

My friends on Horseboard are good at keeping me in stitches... and the nice thing about radiosurgery is that those are the only stitches I'll have!

Moody Bluegrass

2005-01-12T20:00:00.000-05:00

A number of years ago, at my surprise 40th birthday party, our dear friends in the band Say ZuZu played a kick-ass bluegrass version of "Nights in White Satin" for me, an unregenerate Moody Blues fan. Now, for all they might not really like the Moody Blues, the Say ZuZu guys were and still are damn fine musicians, and it rocked.

And darn it, they might have been onto something, for I found out today about a CD entitled Moody Bluegrass, with an amazing roster of talent: Harley Allen, Alison Brown, Sam Bush, Fred Carpenter, Lionel Cartwright, Daniel Carwile, Larry Cordle, John Cowan, Barry Crabtree, Charlie Cushman, Stuart Duncan, Andrew Hall, Aubrey Haynie, David Harvey, Emma Harvey, Jan Harvey, Alison Krauss, Keith Little, Tim May, Patty Mitchell, Bob Mummert, Tim O’Brien, John Randall, Calvin Settles, Ira Wayne Settles, Odessa Settles, Tom Shinness, Russell Smith, Jill Snider, Todd Suttle, Andy Todd.

As you might guess, it's from Rounder Records.

I bought it and downloaded it via iTunes. This is some fine work here. Amazing how well "Ride my See Saw" works! I shouldn't actually be surprised. For all the lush orchestrations, the music of the Moody Blues was always as much about lyrics, and "Ride My See Saw," written by John Lodge, could as much be about living and looking for work in West Virginia:

I've worked like a slave for years
Sweat so hard just to end my fears
Not to end my life a poor man
But by now I know I should have run

Left school with a first class pass
Started work, but as second class.
School taught one and one is two
But by now, that answer
Just ain't true.

"Your Wildest Dreams" seems to have been crying out to be a bluegrass song all along. Right now, my favorite track is "It's Up To You," which I realize always had those bendy notes that seems to lend it to bluegrass. (My friend Cliff would probably cringe at my terminology there.)

I'm loving this. I'll try to post something more coherent later. You know, musicological.

Way back when these songs were first recorded and performed, they were no doubt listened to accompanied, sometimes, at least, by substances designed to, umm, increase enlightenment? Oh, heck, even more recently than that, a summer outdoor concert we attended was perfumed by the battling aromas of Skin So Soft (for the bugs) and pot. Now there's a bit of moonshine to them...

Being Bilingual

2005-01-12T19:47:00.000-05:00

I'm more or less resigned to being a second class citizen. (We won't talk about marriage issues... yet.) By day I work on a PC. By night, I work on a Mac. And for all their protests that most of the Blogger staff use Macs, well, those protests obviously don't register with the suits. The Mac version of Blogger is very bare bones indeed. No nifty little shortcuts or tags for inserting links or emphasizing text. Nope, it's raw HTML or nuthin'. And I'm not working on some six year old Bondi Blue iMac (not for the past two weeks, at least), I'm working on a spiffy new, sleek, elegant, powerful sexy iMac G5. The latest available version of IE for Macs. All frightfully up to date, contemporarily, as Flanders and Swann would say.

I used to be quite fluent in raw HTML. But it got so easy using WYSIWYG editors and the like. Those muscles got lazy. So I'll write and publish my blog entries from my Mac, but if they need any enhancement -- links, italics, and the like -- I find a PC and go in and add those nifty tags.

I'm bilingual. I speak Windows and Mac. I even still speak un peu HTML. But Blogger, stubbornly, like the province of Quebec or English Only advocates in this country, has its one language and is sticking to it.

Maybe I should emigrate?

Don't get me wrong, I love the simplicity of Blogger. I love the elegance of the available templates. I love the fact that it's free. And in a way, I do like the fact that all the bells and whistles are unavailable to me on my spiffy new iMac, because it forces me to be less fru-fru (alternate spelling: frou-frou, according to my friend Richard) in my formatting.

Speaking of Macs, I think Steve Jobs is brilliant (I'm sure he's relieved to have my validation). There was talk that any attempt by Apple to introduce a sub $500 Mac could cannibalize their higher end machines (thank you, like the one I just bought) and would throw them into a market fray they are not best equipped to handle. But what Jobs introduced was not a cheaper Mac -- it is the Mini Mac. Jobs understands that computers are not just hardware and ones and zeroes, but are also about language. And he's played this little semantics game masterfully. A Mini Mac is just that. Not a lesser Mac, but its own entity. And since computers have been in the home for so long now, I would be willing to bet that a lot of people have extra keyboards and monitors lurking around, especially since disposing of old computers is so difficult in many areas. My partner is threatening to try to hook up the Mini Mac to the old Kaypro. But we do have a PC monitor that has been gathering dust. We have an extra keyboard. I would not hesitate to say that in the next few months, we'll be welcoming a bouncing (well, I hope not) Mini Mac to the local area network at home.

Withdrawal is Good...

2005-01-10T20:06:00.000-05:00

I spent almost all of yesterday away from the computer and though I hesitate to say anything, for fear of jinxing "it" or scaring "it" away, it seems to have done some good.

I dreamed about a couple of the characters from the Points books last night. In such a way that I had a nice little sketch of a scene to write today. I was surprised that it was the character of Caiazzo who should kick things off, but not put out. And Rathe, one of the two main characters, was also in the scene. I tell you, I woke up with a smile on my face. It's not a bad little sketch. I have no idea where it's going to lead. It involves another pointsman, a rather venal one (as, alas, so many of them tend to be), and his getting raked over the coals by both Caiazzo, on one side of the law, and Rathe, on the other. This new character is an unpleasant little tick which could, of course, work beautifully as a character and as an adversary to both Rathe, the honest pointsman, and Caiazzo, the less than honest "businessman."

Maybe there's something to this blogging stuff, eh?

Friendly Encouragement

2005-01-08T11:11:00.000-05:00

A friend recently told me he'd be eager to read my blog because I would doubtless be writing on substantive issues.

Which would be a bit of a conversation killer, did I not know that for him, substantive issues include not only matters of social justice or injustice, but also a really nice Saturday card at Gulfstream Park. On which topic anything he would care to post would be far more substantive than anything I can write.

It's also his expectation of seeing something from me that has me here at my computer this morning. My goodness, it really IS like exercising. Something that needs to be done, something that is good for one... and something that ends up, almost surprisingly, being enjoyable. That I am finding the enjoyment in again.

Still isn't fiction, though. Nico and Philip and all the others from the two Points books are still waiting, patiently or not, for that part of my imagination to be coaxed out of hiding.

Not a New Year's Resolution

2005-01-07T11:29:00.000-05:00

This wasn't something I intended to do. It was not on my short list of new year's resolutions. But somehow, a bunch of things came together, there was synchronicity in the spheres or serendipity was cultivated, and here I am.

My colleague Danny Miller said something in his blog that got me thinking. He says his blog is helping him get back to his own writing. Well, boy howdy, could I use some of that. Something has to prime the pump. It's not that I'm facing writer's block, it's just it seems as though my imagination has gone into hiding. Not that I can blame it! Two years of dealing with breast cancer and the single (thank god!) brain metastasis would seem to be ample cause for ANYTHING to go into hiding. So maybe this blog will help coax it out of hiding. Not so much blogging as therapy as blogging as exercise for muscles long unused.

Of course, as I think about it, to some extent, I am mighty grateful that my imagination ducked and covered. I certainly did not need my imagination running rampant when I was going through treatment. Inflammatory breast cancer is scary enough without a writer's imagination poking into its dark corners to see what might -- might - be lurking there.

It needs to know it's safe to come out now. I need to know it's safe for it to come out now.