NED; and THIS is how she does it

But first, the good news!

Scott had another scan in early January, and it’s once again clear! Yes, NED again. No Evidence of Disease. The recurrence from March is no longer visible on the scans. This is very good, and probably miraculous news – very few Stage IV colon cancer patients get to NED once. To get to NED twice is, well, pretty gosh darn special.

This means several great things for Scott. He can scale back from the “heavy” chemo (the oxaliplatin-driven “husband has the flu” sort of chemo) to a “maintenance” chemo. The maintenance chemo has turned out to be Xeloda (at first 2 out of every 3 weeks, but now due to hand/foot side effects, down to one week on, one week off) and Avastin. That’s it! No oxaliplatin. No barfies. No crushing fatigue. Just the run of the mill sort of fatigue, with mouth sores, cracking hands and feet, sensitivity to spices, and a little dollop of chemo brain. All in all, it’s the best shape we’ve been in since the diagnosis 3.5 years ago.

And the next scan isn’t till May! So we have about four months of relatively light chemo and hopefully good health until we get any news. Scott’s thrilled. And we are sure you are too!

****************************************************

THIS is how she does it

So, in the past few weeks, I have had not one, not two, but THREE people independently tell me that I look good. Actively good. On days when I had a kid with the stomach flu. On days when I was confused at work. On days when we were totally out of milk. And on days when they weren’t feeling guilty or overly kind, or simply trying to fill in an uncomfortable silence.

This is unprecedented. Being the caregiver for a cancer patient is not unlike being the mother of an infant. At the mall, you see these darling newborn girls, all in their perfect pink frilly dresses with the matching bow on the sides, clean little fingernails and perfectly clean noses, sleeping peacefully as they line up for their one-month pictures. And then behind each infant, the mother, with spit-up on her sweatpants, dark circles under her eyes, milk leaking through her shirt, mismatched socks, house slippers, and thirty pounds of extra baby fat doing the muffin-top over even the greyest of sweatpants. The infant looks good. The mama? As Nirvana says, Nevermind.

I have found being the wife of a cancer patient and mama to bigger children is a bit like that. So much energy goes into taking care of somebody else that precious little is left over for me, and it’s sort of not important anyways, well, largely because I don’t have cancer. The cancer patient feels tired? Perhaps he should rest. The cancer patient looks a bit thin? Perhaps he should eat. The cancer patient looks a bit fat? Perhaps it’s fluid retention – should we call the doctor? The caregiver feels – cut that thought off right here; let’s get back to the mouth sores of the cancer patient. Is he able to eat with those sores going on?

But we have turned a corner, yet again, and in a positive way. We are navigating the polygon of cancer and this particular corner has me getting regular sleep and exercise, managing to eat my veggies despite the fact nobody else around here likes them, and avoiding the great black demerits on the report card of amateur housewifery: being out of food, being out of clean clothing, and forgetting to send in the permission slip for the second grade field trip.

It turns out I do count, after all. It’s just that I have had to make me count, and that has required standing up to the collective wisdom and righteousness of the world, plus of course giving significant pushback to two elementary school age children who anchor their own universes in a developmentally appropriate but still gravitationally significant way.

How, some of you are asking, do you do it? It’s taken 3.5 years to ease my way into this new sort of madness, and today, lucky readers, you are about to get a tour of certain areas of my life.

Warning: get permission from your psychiatrist before attempting to implement any of these techniques at home, especially if you iron your own sheets, don’t regularly sleep in your exercise clothes, eat a hot dinner in a timely fashion more often than not, or consider rush hour traffic a significant problem in your life.



FOOD. When we first got the diagnosis, I was doing my grocery shopping every weekend, generally about 8 in the morning, with a mental list and a two-year-old and a four-year-old in the cart. We’d eat breakfast, go potty, stock up the diaper bag, and then rush out to get a week’s worth of groceries, in hopes of being home in time to put them away, eat lunch, and get people down for a nap. This ended up being massively impractical once we were dealing with a cancer diagnosis. In addition to the weirdness associated with chemotherapy eating patterns (and the associated grocery store roulette), it was difficult to get out of the house. The kids were freaked out and wanted to sit in a lap that was all Mommy’s, all the time. Car seats and grocery carts didn’t cut it. My Saturdays were often spent doing something bizarre, such as waiting on hold with {the oncology hotline, our accountant’s office, the veterinarian’s office, the airlines, AT&T} to discuss crises such as {a weird fever Scott was running, the proper tax treatment of disability insurance, the salivary inflammation of the dog’s dew claws, the refund of the plane tickets we didn’t use but paid for, the lack of Internet connectivity for the third straight day}.

When I did make it grocery shopping, my brain was full of {why is this happening to us / however will we get Elli to sleep tonight / was the oncology appointment at 4 pm on the 2nd or 2 pm on the 4th / will our friend be able to find daycare to pick the kids up given the construction in the parking lot / was technical issue #495823 at work caused by some spacing-out on my part and if so, is it possible to fix it now or am I too spacey to close that ticket}. I would do things like walk right past the milk and cheese (both staples in our household) and stare blankly at the frozen taquitos (remembering that nobody here would eat them, but at a loss to find something more appropriate to bring home).

And to top matters off, wouldn’t you know but the kids, as they got bigger, ate more and more, so the random collection of grocery items I did manage to bring home lasted for shorter and shorter periods of time. About this time we also began our space-case practice of getting so distracted that we would leave perishable items out on the counter overnight (anything sufficiently delicate will work – spinach, beef, milk, tuna, but really, this effect is most spectacular when you do it with something like ice cream that also has the potential for the ever-famous “slow-motion waterfall effect” plus, if you time the seasons just right, will attract ants as well. Even the most dedicated ant-eating dog can only clean this up as far as her tongue will reach, which in our case, left a nice little slick all over the counter.)

That was then. This is now. Now, THIS is now I do it.

Now, I generally do not go to grocery stores, and certainly do not go with kids, in a hurry, with an empty fridge, or with the intent to bring food home. Instead, I order food to be brought to me. I order $700 worth of groceries once a month from Safeway.com, to be delivered on a Saturday afternoon.

The Safeway truck driver knows me by name, and the bags cover our kitchen counters, table, and half the kitchen floor. (I try to remember to put the dog out so she doesn’t find the beef before I do.) It takes about an hour to put it all away, and then I’m done for another month. For additional freshness and wholesome locally grown organic goodness, we have a Farm Fresh to You box full of produce that comes every other week, also to the house. If I’m especially on fire in the scheduling department, I will schedule the Safeway truck for some week when the Farm Fresh To You guy doesn’t come. Periodically, responsible grownups around here make a small run to get milk and bread and Scotch when we are out of those items. This entire setup gives us fresh produce three weeks out of four, and the fourth week we just eat jellybeans, potato chips, frozen spinach, and canned pineapple.

I have not yet been able to properly coordinate grocery delivery with the chemo schedule, but that may come with experience and time. The problem has been that up until recently, chemo has been every 3 weeks, and Safeway is every 4 weeks (every 5 weeks if I’m really busy). I’m also unsure if it’s optimal to have groceries come when Scott’s on or off of chemo. This means even if I could decide where in the chemo cycle grocery delivery should fall, because 3 and 4 are coprime, my good buddies in the Number Theory Department tell me that to coordinate groceries and chemo would involve either 1) doing groceries every 3 weeks (waaaay too much work for me) 2) doing chemo every 4 weeks (waaaay above my pay grade to make that decision call) or 3) doing groceries every 12 weeks (because 3 x 4 = 12), which would need so much inventory storage space that it would displace some very important man-toys from the garage and would probably end up with something really weird managing to go bad on me. So for now, the grocery truck and the chemotherapy schedule are sort of like birthday parties and rain: sometimes they coincide, sometimes they don’t, and this occurs seemingly at random.

If you’re going to order $700 worth of food, you need to be prepared. Now, we store food in industrial fashion. I have cleared out about one-third of the garage and installed industrial-strength InterMetro shelves from the Container Store there. Room-temperature food goes into these large airtight containers. These same containers are the ones that real housewives use to store their beading projects, cake-decorating supplies, or Christmas decorations. Over some protest, I have also commandeered Scott’s old full-sized garage beer fridge and turned it into the Southern Inventory Surplus Storage Facility. I keep a grocery list in our kitchen with a pen nearby, and write down items as we run out.

I can hear the next question: how, exactly, do you know how much of what to order? Dear friends, I’m an engineer, and I use a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is a printout of our fifty most common items (soy milk, coffee, noodles, cheese, Doritos, toilet paper, paper towels – statisticians will recognize the Pareto Principle at work, which says that 80% of our food bulk comes from 20% of the items). I tracked data for how many of each item we used each month for about six months (but I do want to go down on record as saying I realize I need 25 months of data to get a statistically significant data set, which means I just bumped up the safety stock way high to counterbalance this lack of precision. In my life, when ya gotta estimate the standard deviation of anything, guess high, baby, guess high.)

I keep a 50% safety stock of these items on hand. For example, if we usually consume 10 containers of soy milk each month, I ensure when the next Safeway truck leaves, we’ll have 10 + 50% safety stock = 15 containers in the garage. If we currently have 3 containers, I’ll order 12, because 3 + 12 = 15. If we currently have 10 containers, I’ll order 5, because (you guessed it), 10 + 5 = 15. (For those of you who are Industrial Engineering geeks like myself, you will recognize the “order-up-to” policy in effect here. You may ding me a bit for not better determining the safety stock levels, or computing a percentage in-stock rate, or for factoring in the randomness of the lead time (that Safeway van isn’t always available to come on short notice). But troops, I’ve done my homework here, and the net-net is we are not running out of food on anything like a regular basis.)

Moving to this sort of food ordering policy is actually easier if you were never much of a cook to begin with. We eat very basic meals, and the room-temperature beans out of a can are still very much a hit with the girls.

There are several best things about this new setup. We always have something to eat. The kids know when we’re out of something in the inside fridge, they do not pass go and do not collect $200; instead, they go directly to the garage and check there. If they can’t find what they want, they often find something else. If they can’t, that’s just too flipping bad. There is no pressure on me to make anything particularly yummy, because it was ordered weeks ago and because chemo messes up people’s taste buds anyways. And I have my Saturdays free to do other things, like go to the office and work, or go to the gym, or take the kids to a park.



LAUNDRY. I don’t do it. This is an every-kid-for-themselves sort of thing, with all the accompanying wrinkling, re-wearing of chocolate-stained clothing, throwing-out-of-poopy-underpants, mismatching of socks, stashing-of-clean-laundry-under-the-bunk-bed-for-use-next-summer, and sisterly interchangeability of size 5 and size 7 clothing.

The one exception to this is when there’s a food product stashed with the otherwise clean clothing under the bed and the dog will NOT rest until she’s gotten it. In those cases, I have been known to pull the clothing out, let Lucky get her small piece of old cheese or bit of Dorito, and then shove the otherwise clean clothing back under the bed. Otherwise, what with the dog whining about it, I’d never get any sleep.





DISHES. I don’t do them, either. This is Scott’s kingdom when he feels up to it. When he doesn’t, we’re a paper plate sort of operation around here.





COOKING. This I do, but never under time pressure, which means never just before we eat. On the weekends I will make a large pot of rice and/or noodles, and cut up fruits and veggies, and occasionally locate or cook some meat (preferentially hot dogs or salmon, but very occasionally something like a pound of ground beef.) I store all this in Pyrex glass containers in the fridge. At dinnertime during the week, I am home at 4:45 pm and dinner is being eaten at 5 pm. As the designated kid is setting the table, I simply set out the cold Pyrex serving dishes, and add ketchup and Parmesan cheese. Where possible, I will warm up a little something -noodles with parmesan cheese; rice with melted cheese. Last week, dinners included the following:

Dinner #1: Carton of yogurt. Pyrex of cooked carrots and onions. Microwaved bowl of veggie soup. Microwaved cheesy rice and beans. Sliced sourdough bread. Butter. Sugar. Cinnamon. Earl Grey tea for Scott for the early evening caffeine hit. More Sugar. And Sugar. And one scoop of brown sugar for your spoon if you eat your carrots.

Dinner #2: Carton of applesauce. Pyrex of sliced cooked steak from Scott’s weekend BBQ exploit. Cold noodles and Parmesan cheese. Sliced sourdough bread. Butter. Sugar. Cinnamon. Cold Pyrex of pinto beans. Earl Grey tea. Brown sugar for pinto beans.

Dinner #3: Block of Swiss cheese and the way cool cheese slicer. Pyrex of cooked carrots and onions. Plastic thing of prewashed organic baby spinach. Ranch dressing. Pyrex of homemade salad dressing for mama (olive oil, mustard, garlic, balsamic vinegar, and other things too gross for the rest of the diners.) Microwaved cheesy noodles. Sliced apples and oranges. Much protest because Mama forgot to put the sugar for the spinach on the table and is forbidding anybody to get up to get it. Earl Grey tea for Scott. Much rejoicing because Daddy is exempt from the forbidding-anybody-to-get-up-to-get-the-sugar edict, and so he did get up to get sugar for his tea, and brought it back to the table for general purpose application to the spinach.

Dinner #4: Chinese takeout, because Scott decided he couldn’t face the cheesy noodles one more night in a row. So we have Chinese noodles instead, and Maggie puts Parmesan cheese on them.

Dinner #5: Cheesy rice and beans. Microwaved broccoli. Cold Pyrex of remaining pinto beans. Raw broccoli. Ranch dressing. Mama’s homemade (and to general palates disgusting) salad dressing. Carton of yogurt. Sliced sourdough bread. Pyrex of tuna, container of mayonnaise for Scott to make a tuna sandwich on the sliced sourdough bread. Room temperature butter to put on the microwaved broccoli. Room temperature butter which is actually used as a glue on raw broccoli so the sugar will stick to it better. Chinese leftovers.

This actually represents the best practices we have accumulated over the years of our clever little living situation. I do realize we are not likely to make it onto Martha Stewart’s cover anytime in the near future. We eat too much sugar, and Scott still thinks sugar on broccoli is disgusting. If we make it back to Michigan next summer to see my mom, there will probably be meat on the table three nights running. But we are sitting down and eating dinner as a family, without any stress on the “cook,” and the dishwashing is minimal. I am able to sit down for dinner and remain seated for the entire fifteen minutes. Putting the leftovers away is a snap, because we simply put the Pyrex lids back on the containers and stick them back in the fridge. I spend almost no time having to think about food or menus or dinner, because they are now pretty much prefab and pretty much all the same. And the kids eat it, because it’s what they’re used to, and all kids eat what they’re used to.

The nighttime snack (a mere 90 minutes in the future) is also generally easy, because it involves some recapitulation of the dinnertime menu.

I am ordering groceries once a month. I am willing to spend up to two hours cooking on any weekend, plus 15 minutes a night during the week. We’ve got a variety of palates (Scott’s chemo taste buds change fairly regularly, plus the kids go through their usual phases, and I’m still liking my spicy vegetarian food, especially if you define “spicy” as anything that tastes vaguely of mustard, pepper, cumin, or Tabasco.) We’re meeting a variety of goals. For the girls: to put weight on and develop a taste for vegetables and fruits and whole grains (even if it currently involves a plentitude of sugar). For Scott, to keep the weight on any way he can. For me, to maintain current girth.

And for Lucky our dog, to never let a meatball actually hit the ground.

She may be the most successful of us all.

Belated posting from November - Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello all!


Happy post-Thanksgiving and wishing you all many happy turkey leftover dinners. We are finally "right-sizing" our holidays around here. It's a complex multi-step process. First, we had to get an accurate picture of our collective energy budget. Then, we had to not spending all our remaining energy being super upset that the current energy budget is smaller than it used to be and smaller than we would want. And finally, we had to learn to spend what we had wisely instead of blowing it all in the first hour of the holiday.

I suppose this behavior is typical of all sorts of people who are coming "down" in the world from some prior status. People who used to have money and now don't? Sometimes it takes a year or two before they realize they're not going to be flying to Colorado to go skiing over Christmas. People who used to have yuppie-style lives and now have an infant and a toddler? Sometimes it takes a season to realize that when you're having trouble getting out of the house even to go to the grocery store, squeezing in a four-day-weekend getaway to Cabo San Lucas by cruise ship is over the energy budget. People who used to be in shape to play an impromptu game of tackle football and now aren't? The emergency room is full of them after lovely spring weekends, nursing sprained ankles, pulled backs, and a variety of other casualties of the misestimation of the aging process. (For those of you who are simply too refined, too well-educated, or too classy to ski Colorado, harbor an infant/toddler duo, or attempt an impromptu game of tackle anything, to get the "coming down" picture, simply think of Blanche duBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire.")

Well, my friends, this used to be us. Our collective energy budget as a family is smaller than it used to be, and we used to chronically mis-estimate it. And we paid - meltdowns at the grocery store (who knew once a week was far too often for me to try to grocery shop?). Bizarre events in the kitchen (who knew that once a day was far too often for me to try to cook dinner?) Scary near-misses on the freeway when we were trying to drive too far in one day (who knew "too far" would be a measly 30 minutes? But at the end of a long day, even that can be too long.) Scarier visits from the Brown Bomber when we tried to go too long between breaks to go potty (again - who knew two hours between potty stops was too long? One child is built like a camel with a firm "off" spigot on all egresses. But the other isn't. And for the record, neither is the mama. Which is why I got a dog and not a camel for my pet.)

But we are smarter now, and we realize that a simple fall at the playground can turn into an emergency room visit; a simple cold can run into pneumonia; and a simple failure to consult the calendar and the Daily Plan on the whiteboard in our kitchen can result in somebody showing up at the gym with a kiddie leotard while the kiddie is running around the school play dress rehearsal in sweatpants, wondering where the h**k her white snowflake leotard is and how it was possible everybody else's mommy not only got the memo but brought cookies as well.

So, for Thanksgiving, we took the right-sized way out. School was out the three days prior to Thanksgiving, and as a family we simply don't have the surplus to keep these kids well-exercised in a way that would let me still go to work (get that - work doesn't close simply because school's closed!) So we sent the kids with one of our wonderful nanny/babysitters - three full days, out of the house. And we had Barbara (my wonderful Virtual Assistant) order a Thanksgiving dinner from the grocery store for us. A little while later I had a moment of little faith and emailed her back - could she please phone them and ensure it was a thawed (non-frozen) turkey? She emailed me the confirmation and several days ahead of time, our Thanksgiving dinner was solved and I didn't have to go grocery shopping in the usual meaning of the word. Scott got to rest, and think about how to prepare the turkey.

And I got to go to work. There is some very interesting stuff going on at work these days, and while I won't bore you with the nerdy details, suffice it to say the jury is in, and I am a far more competent engineer than I am a housewife. (I did reach Housewife Level III before sort of plateauing out of that game, at least for the time being, however, and I'm sort of proud of that.) But back to my life as an engineer. At the office I have some new software to play with. I have some new machines on which I can push buttons and watch blinking lights. There is new voice software, with programmable macros. Usually these macros are used so you can say something like, "Print that document" and it will execute a series of commands: open the document, sent it to the printer, and return you to your regularly scheduled spreadsheet. I am itching to program the voice software with a macro so that when I say "Worship me," it will say back in a velvety subservient voice, "Yes Mistress! Your wish is my command." And then perhaps show me a picture of some cappuccino. Who could *not* love going to work when you have toys like that there?

So, this is what a right-sized holiday looked like for us:

Tuesday night: I come home from work at 5 pm. Elli sets the table while Maggie stays Out Of The Way. Part of the New Smackdown Rules are that everybody helps; other parts of it include the much-reviled Distraction Clause. Evidently there are few pleasures in life greater than to watch your sister set the table while you don't have to. Say, for example, you knew you were "off duty" during the table-setting portion of the evening, and you knew you would come "on duty" during the table-clearing portion of the evening (some scant 20 minutes in the future). Wouldn't you maximize your "'off duty" time? Perhaps sit down and read a magazine? Wash your hands? Surf the web? Or even go in and try to raid your sister's secret candy stash while she couldn't come defend it? Well, this discounts that force which is stronger than gravitation and twice as pervasive: sibling rivalry. There is something much more fun than *not* having to set the table while your sister has to set it. It is to watch her set the table, while making distracting noises from the kitchen doorway. And not just any distracting noises - the inflammatory type of distracting noises, such as, "I think the dog is getting ready to chew on your Barbie" and "Bet you can't catch me!" and "I'm going to put my juicy booty on your pillow so it will smell like Parmesan cheese!" In the Good Old Days, before the Distraction Clause, we would get a plate and two spoons onto the table, and then it would fully degenerate into a round-the-house circular high-speed chase, involving (at a minimum) one Barbie, one dog, one pillow, and (in times of extreme glory) one Parmesan cheese shaker.

Hence, the Distraction Clause. If you so distract your sister such that she can't set the table, the new person who sets the table is You. (Scott would like me to tell you all that his track record for compliance with the Distraction Clause is approaching 100% - not once has he given up his Web surfing for the ecstasy of waving a Barbie doll about the kitchen, followed by the agony of setting the table himself.)

And the Anti-Distraction Clause. The burden of proof is on the initial table-setter, and Mom is not only the cook but also the judge and jury. If your sister is waaaay back in her room and making absolutely no noise, you can't claim that she so distracted you that you couldn't set the table. You can't credibly claim, for instance, that you are so distracted that you can't set the table due to your thoughts of what your sister might be wanting to do to your Barbie with her Parmesan cheese shaker. That sort of emotional distress does not qualify. She is also allowed to sneeze (Respiratory Exemption) and use the restroom (Elimination Exemption). But the minute she shows her face in the kitchen before it's dinnertime, it's a bona fide Distraction Disqualification.

(Some of you may be wondering, my goodness, aren't I worried about all the Parmesan cheese that seems to be flying around this house? Very little of it appears to be landing on, say, orthodox platforms such as spaghetti. And that would be true. But in reality, our dog Lucky loves Parmesan cheese, and will simply follow any trails of it around, patiently licking it up. In the summertime, it occasionally does bring ants, but she will eat ants too, especially if covered in Parmesan cheese. So while our floors aren't quite as clean as those of people with no kids or dogs, our floors are actually substantially cleaner than you would expect, all things considered.)

But I digress. It's now 5:01 pm and Elli has set the table for dinner. Maggie has remained in her room, stifling all sneezes but running back and forth to the bathroom seven times (with seven loud closings of the bathroom door and seven other loud closings of the door to her room) in an attempt to stay within the sanctioned Elimination Exemption yet still Distract The Sister. I set out dinner - refrigerated hippie vegetarian beans (can opened yesterday). Refrigerated organic whole-wheat macaroni noodles tossed with extra virgin olive oil (noodles cooked two days ago). Chopped carrots (freshly chopped tonight). Ranch dressing (procured sometime in the past month.) Cut-up Fuyu persimmons and a ruby-red pomegranite. Butter. Yogurt. And bread - delicious, dense whole grain, locally baked, organic wheat bread. Oops - no bread. We just had two loaves of it, purchased three days ago, and it is all gone. OK, so no bread. (Remember I told you once a day was far too often for me to cook dinner? This is what an energy-budget family meal at our house looks like. I simply cannot get home from work, supervise the Table Setting Chore (while enforcing the Anti-Distraction Clause), and heat a flipping meal up. It turns out it was much easier to train them all to eat it cold out of a can/fridge. Next year I may invoke the microwave, but for now, even that is too much. My first order of business is to find out who or what is eating an average of a loaf of bread a day around here. I suspect it's Elli.)

Twenty minutes later (5:21 pm), dinner was long over. Scott settled down to watch a movie with the kids while I set out on surface streets only (no freeways - 'twas rush hour!) to Whole Foods in Walnut Creek to pick up the turkey and the sides from the outside way station - the butcher and the deli people bring it outside for easier pickup! This is in full compliance with our New Energy Budget, which you may recall does not permit daily cooking of a dinner, certain drives on the freeway, or any trips to the grocery store. I was originally going to complete the entire transaction without actually setting foot inside the store, hence technically avoiding a "grocery shopping trip." I ended up weakening slightly on that account because I remembered we were totally out of bread and the kids wouldn't consider the side order of stuffing to be "bread." (Besides, whatever is eating a loaf of bread a day will switch to something else if we don't have any bread, and the two most likely candidates are brown sugar and Cheetos. So we need bread.)

I put my turkey and prefab meal in a grocery cart (oh, the heresy!), took a deep breath, and stepped inside the grocery store. I picked up 2 more loaves of bread....and, in honor of Christmas, 1 pint of eggnog...and, in honor of Maggie, one gallon of milk. At that point I had to retreat to the outdoor cashier lest I be in real danger of having made a "grocery trip" too close to Thanksgiving. I stashed it all in the minivan, drove back home on those same surface streets, watched the freeway come to a completely standstill even though it was now 7 pm, and unloaded our Thanksgiving booty into the garage fridge.

Wednesday: Scott picked up some coffee for the mornings, some brandy for the eggnog, and some wine for Thanksgiving. (Scott is allowed to go grocery shopping and he makes most of our little runs. The person who is not allowed to go, especially with kids in tow, especially after work, especially when there's an entire week's worth of food to procure, especially when there's a list and a budget - that person is me.) Scott laid out the thermometer, the brush, and two pounds of butter for the basting. I decided that while eggnog was usually a Christmas treat, since I had already broken a rule by setting foot inside of a grocery store to obtain it (albeit without kids), it wouldn't hurt to break another rule by having the eggnog (with brandy, whipped cream, and nutmeg) before Thanksgiving. It was fantastic.

Thursday: Scott broke out the November 2009 issue of Martha Stewart's "Living" Magazine. (I subscribe for the pictures, not for the articles. It should be obvious that since I delegate table-setting to the elementary-school crowd, decorate this house with brown patterned floors to better accommodate a mud-loving dog, and will not go grocery shopping on foot, there's really precious little I could do even if I did read the articles therein.) But Her Marthaness is in full glory for Thanksgiving. This issue shows how to "spatchcock" a turkey, which is fully in line with our New Rules. Scott basically takes his poultry shears, removes the backbone of the turkey, splays it flat on a baking sheet, and bakes it in an hour instead of four. Quick, easy, and fantastic.

Some dear old friends came over with their two kids, and we reheated the Whole Foods stuffing and gravy. We set out the Whole Foods cranberry sauce and the Whole Foods dinner rolls. We drank wine, ate turkey and our guests' ham, oinked it up on Whole Foods pumpkin pie covered with whipped cream (straight from the aerosol container).

(Later on I found out the dinner rolls weren't actually fully cooked; I was supposed to heat them for 7-9 minutes at 375 degrees. I did think they tasted a little funny, but it was the only portion of the entire dinner Maggie would eat. Note to self: next time I order a holiday dinner from the grocery store, read the directions instead of just blithely deciding what to reheat and what to serve cold.)

Friday: We have all the glorious leftovers with none of the work! This morning, I tackled the kids and we did our schoolwork as soon as I finished my coffee. (Another new nonnegotiable - if you're my kid, and you want to get along with me, you do your spelling or reading first thing in the morning during holidays. If you behave well, it will take ten minutes and our whole day can be full of fun, playdates, sand, dirt, whipped cream, and Parmesan cheese Barbies. If you behave poorly, it can take all morning, and then your morning will be full of spelling and your sister's morning will be full of fun, playdates, sand, dirt, whipped cream, and Parmesan cheese Barbies. Elli and Maggie were fast learners - twenty minutes (10 minutes per kid) and we were en route to ChildWatch at the YMCA, where they played Polly Pocket and I got to work out.) And now I'm writing this from the waiting room at the other gym, the kiddie gym, where they are playing on the trampoline and the balance beams, and I'm getting ready to go home and eat some more.

Grandma's Smackdown

Hello dear readers!

Well, the time has changed. It's dark late in the mornings, dark early in the evenings, and dark many days about noon as well. There was also evidently some sort of large baseball game involving San Francisco and while I'm hazy on the details, I did appreciate the orange and black confetti everywhere.

Many of you want to know how we are doing, and the answer is pretty well - we are puddling along over here. (And, if it's not obvious, we're not really sports fans.)

Scott is doing generally well, and amazingly well all things considered.

He's still on the Big Chemo, which still gives us a tripartite organization to our lives. Week 1 is still "Husband has the flu," in which he doesn't get out of bed much, is extremely sensitive to cold, and has many and varied other discomforts in sundry body parts, ranging from mouth sores to bruises and scabs on the feet. Unlovely. Week 2 is still a transition week, in which he's up and about more, and Week 3 is almost a normal week for somebody on serious chemo.

This means during Week 3 he's able to stay up and watch an hour or so of TV with me after the kids are in bed. He's napping less frequently, and he's able to do wonderfully normal things like getting milk at the grocery store (because the cold sensitivity has faded a bit), going to lunch with friends (because his appetite has returned), and playing war games online (because he's not wretchedly napping the fatigue away). His Week 3 is not what many of you would think of as a "normal" week, in that his activities don't generally include eating spicy food (McDonald's chicken sandwiches are now counted as spicy and our beloved Indian food is officially out of consideration), doing anything that could invite a bruise (because the blood thinners give him bruises amazingly out of proportion to the offense), or doing anything that involves a lot of planning (the chemo brain still makes all the dates, times, appointment places, and appointment faces look the same.)

The savvy readers will notice that there are contradictions riffled through this. He gets his blood drawn frequently by the vampires down at Kaiser's lab - they like to ensure his platelets are plentiful, his blood isn't too thin or too thick, and a few other things - and they leave a large bruise every time they stick him with a needle. Anybody with this sort of medical condition has various appointments with various health professionals - in addition to the oncologist, it becomes important for cancer patients to keep up to date with the rest of the health care team, a thousand and one other people they don't really want to see.

Are you thinking it's beyond unfair yet? Already immunocompromised and bleed too easily? Gotta stay in tip-top shape so you can qualify for your next round of chemo? Don't really want that extra unit of blood, that infusion of iron, or to be "benched" for the chemo cycle? Well, for all you do, just for you - now you're even more prone to infection (cancer is not a "get out of jail free" card for the auxiliary ailments - cancer patients can and do get root canals, the flu, pneumonia, and they even get into car accidents just like the boring old rest of us.) And each serious health issue will probably delay your next chemo treatment, because the chemo is hard enough on a poor body all by its ugly chemo-smelling self.

So along with the monthly appointments to see the oncologist and the every-three-week appointments to get chemo and the weekly appointments to placate the vampires at the blood lab, there's the dentist, the optometrist, the general practitioner, the acupuncturist, and, on an especially good week, something like the flu clinic (where you have to remember to get the shot (dead virus), not the mist (live virus), because live virus + immunocompromised self = bad idea.)

And to top it all off, the chemo brain is in full force. Was that an appointment with Dr. Wang at 10 am on Monday the 9th? Or an appointment with Dr. Teng at 9 am on Wednesday the 10th? Was this the week we were supposed to take the kids to get flu shots in Martinez on Monday at 3 pm on the third floor? Or was it that the kids were getting flu shots in Walnut Creek on Tuesday on the fourth floor and the live flu mist for grownups is near the optometrist on the ground level in Martinez on Thursdays and Fridays? And when is the next appointment with the oncologist - this Monday or next?

(As it turns out, very little of the above turned out to be accurate. Flu shots for kids = Tuesday, and while Friday was indeed Bike to School day and we intentionally "forgot" that one, as a bonus forgetting, we also simply forgot Friday was also Share Day in kindergarten and so poor Maggie went without a share toy for the umpteenth straight week...I will have to ask her teacher if I can bring our dog Lucky in to the class as a Hail Mary sort of make-it-up-to-the-kid thing. A real live dog who loves kindergarteners, will shake and sit on command, and can balance a cookie on her nose before tossing it in the air to catch it has got to be worth at least a few Frisbees, stuffed animals, and Transformer toys. Besides, periodically she will stop to snuffle about and lick her behind, and the kids universally and enthusiastically love that.)

***********************************

And now I am going to take you away from thoughts of behind-licking dogs and back to Michigan for the summer. If you are just joining us, you will remember we spent the summer with my mom in rural Michigan, where the culture is slightly different from our overeducated, hyperliberal, supercaffeinated Bay Area ambience. Scott came for a week, and then he had to fly back and get more chemo. I brought my laptop and telecommuted, and stayed for the month. We hired a local student, Ms. Erika, to be our full-time nanny while I was working, and between Erika and my mom, I learned a thing or three.

I'm not sure if this is a full-fledged character weakness on my part, or a side effect of the cancer. But the girls we delivered to Michigan were, to put it mildly, not behaving according to local standards.

When there's serious illness in a family, it's all too easy to want to focus on any good moments, to want squeeze all the fun and wonderfulness out of a good day, to bank it as a glowing memory to keep us warm through the chill of the next round of chemo. When Daddy's feeling good, we want to go to Disney on Ice! We want to go for ice cream and to the park! We don't want to do homework or fold laundry.

When there's serious illness, everything gets squeezed, and I wanted these girls to know they were loved, to know we cared for them more than anything, even if they spent a lot of time in daycare or with sitters, even if sometimes their parents are really tired and super cranky. And I think there's a (selfish) part of both Scott and me that wants our time with the kids to be full of love and fun, not full of time-outs and showdowns. Who wants to stay home on a glorious Saturday until the kids have cleaned their rooms, when it's so much easier to give them ice cream, put them in front of the TV, let Mommy clean it all and fold the laundry in about 10 minutes, and then we can all go to the park?

In a nutshell, disciplining kids is hard, gritty, exhausting work, and we weren't doing it as much as we should have been. When Scott was feeling good, we didn't want to do it. And when he was feeling bad, all our energy for hard, gritty, exhausting activity went by default first to the hard, gritty, exhausting work of fighting the cancer. We didn't have the steam left over to fight the Battle of Who Cleans Barbie Up From the Living Room Floor, not after a day of fighting the illness.

It happened in every area of life, but I'll give you perhaps the best example: food.

When Scott was feeling nauseated, I knew the importance of keeping his weight up, and wanted to prepare anything at all he could eat - ramen noodles? Toast and butter? Chicken? The very creamiest of pot pies, with heavy whipping cream in the filling? Applesauce at room temperature so it wouldn't hurt his cold-sensitive mouth? You name it, I wanted to make it. And when he couldn't eat Item 1, I wanted to have Item 2 and Item 3 as a backup. I don't think there's a problem per se with trying to spoil a cancer patient with food items (it's technically impossible - when they don't want to eat, they don't want to eat, and you may as well just go paint your toenails because that will be as effective as cooking yet another tempting dish and heck, the acetone may actually smell better to the cancer patient than cream gravy does. You may as well try to influence the orbit of the space station with a chicken pot pie or a pedicure - excellent activities both, but neither with any real control over the desired object). So you can't spoil a cancer patient with food.

But it's definitely possible to spoil an observant 4-year-old and an observant 6-year-old with the whole idea that Mommy is a short-order cook and waitress. They had become absolute professionals with the concept that all they had to do was shout "yuck!" at something and I would make something else. And the greatest thing about it was, I'd really hop to it quickly, because I knew they'd cry and yell if they didn't get it quickly, and I also knew Scott was feeling rotten. His last nerve was rubbed off about four hours ago, and most people feeling like cr*p warmed over have zero tolerance for gratuitous yet shrill yelling and screaming, at that at the end of the day.

I didn't want my precious babies feeling so insecure, so unattended-to, that they were compelled to yell to make their needs heard. I wanted my kids feeling warm, feeling loved, feeling that somebody cared enough about them to remember somebody liked Swiss cheese in squares and somebody else liked Cheddar cheese in triangles. I wasn't writing notes in hand-packed lunches, nor was I volunteering in the classroom or baking birthday cakes, and I was generally too tired to feel guilty, but I could at least cut cheese in a custom fashion as poor compensation for everything else their young lives were lacking because of this awful disease that has roosted in our family.

And so it came to pass that we four all tacitly agreed: a good amount of fussing (and the periodic shriek) allowed the girls to eat dinner in front of the TV, where no grownups policed their (atrocious) table manners. I would serve Scott's food in the kitchen. I would serve the kid dinners (one for each, slightly different, with the precise spoon color and proper accoutrements for each individual girl). I would lower the volume on the TV so it wouldn't be too irritating. I would set out my own hippie vegetarian dinner (different from each of the 3 dinners I'd prepared above.) And then I would sit down and try to make a little dinner conversation with a man who looked like he wanted to be in bed, asleep, or at the very least lying down and watching a movie about WWII. As soon as I picked up my fork, it would start.

(As you read this, keep in mind this is at the end of a usual weekday for me, which means, among other things, that I've generally been up since 5:30 am, dropped kid(s) off at school, and walked the dog...)

"I need some parmesan cheese!"

(Earlier today I went to work, paid the dentist's bill, and arranged for the house gutters to be cleaned...)

"I don't want this cup!"

(Earlier today I signed the field trip permission slip, noted that somebody needs new shoes, made a note to buy a birthday present for somebody's party, decided I don't even have time to tell the PTA "no" to anything so I threw their d**n flyer out but made a mental note to smile beatifically if asked about it on the playground...)

"I don't want juice - I want milk!"

(Earlier today I did a few clever and hopefully paycheckworthy things whilst at work, and then I picked kid(s) up at school, and came home...)

"I want ranch dressing!"

"I don't want ranch dressing - I like hummus with my carrots!"

"My carrots aren't cut right! I want cheese in triangles like sissy has!"

(Later today there will be dishes to do, laundry to fold, school lunches to pack...)

"Why does she have two ice cubes and I only have one?"

(Later today there will be long curly tangled hair to comb (nontrivial), a phone call from a student to return, and bedtime to do...)

"Mommy! This is ALL WRONG! You gave me the PURPLE SPOON and the PINK PLATE but you know I like everything all purple and she gets all pink. I NEED ANOTHER PLATE NOW!!!!"

(Later today, once the kids are in bed, I will likely watch some TV with Scott if he's up for it, and whether or not we get to watch TV, at some point I will fire up the laptop to clean up the clever work items I didn't fully shine earlier today...)

"Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY!!!!!"

(Later today, by 9:30 at the latest, it's time to get the mail, let the dog out, lock up the house, make sure all the windows are closed and the faucets turned off and the headlights on vehicles off, and go to bed...to start again in 8 hours...)

"MOMMY!!!!!!!!!! I SAID THIS IS THE WRONG COLOR SPOON!"

********************************************************************

These are the kids I took to rural Michigan. Rural Michigan is where farm kids do outdoor chores before they go to school in the morning, even in the snowy dead of winter. It's where families eat together after saying a blessing and being genuinely grateful for their food. It's where kids never were the center of anybody's universe. And it's a place where you certainly can clench a cigarette in your teeth while you spank your child at a public playground. Not only will nobody stop you, but many onlookers will nod approvingly if they think your kid was being a brat.

And my mother loves nearly every blessed thing about her little zip code.

Consider the California dinner scene I just described to you, and you can probably see where this is going.

The Titanic hit the iceberg with less of a thud.

My mom started off just like that iceberg - gleaming, shiny, and oh so stealthy. She fooled us all, hook, line, and sinker. Perhaps it was the curly white hair. The Grandma glasses. The nice wool pants, or the Garrison Keillor on the radio. The complete willingness to admire artwork after artwork, no matter how abstract. Or her ability to listen attentively to Elli read the very same crazy-making Dr. Seuss book six times over, while displaying a beatific smile regarding Sam-I-Am's green eggs and ham (perhaps she perfected that beatific smile whilst dodging the PTA of 30 years ago so she could bag the auction committee and instead sneak out to lift weights, run laps, put her baby in a playpen near the net and play tennis? I have my suspicions...)

Ms. Erika, our sitter, started off like that as well. She'd babysat for us several previous summers, with generally delightful results. She could do Braids with a capital B. She drove a convertible car and could give rides with the wind whistling through kids' hair. She knew everybody in town and could take children to see a real live farm animal without having to first look it up in an online directory or make an appointment. She brought new and exciting dolls and toys from her house. She had a frog pond in her backyard and blueberries on the twig for the picking.

The first week, all was sweetness and light. The kids were up and down from the dinner table like yo-yos. Nobody used any silverware. Elli was beyond bothering to say "no" to a grownup; she simply would disregard instructions she didn't like (and these included doozies such as, "that's too deep in the lake, you need to come closer to shore" or "that's poison ivy, don't touch it.") Maggie managed to bite Elli on the naked rear end hard enough to draw blood. There was screeching in Grandma's car and whining over every imaginable offense. They each showed their behinds in full anatomic detail to anybody (un)fortunate enough to be in the vicinity. They were perpetually wild on sugar, and would eat it straight from the sugar bowl. It was a disaster. It was such a disaster, and it had been my life for so long, that I didn't even see it as such - it was normal to me.

The first week of vacation was over, and I drove Scott back to the airport to fly back home.

Elli: "Mommy, how long do we get to stay at Grandma's?"

Me: "We'll be here for another month. 4 weeks."

Elli: "YIPPEE!"

The Titanic was under full power, straight ahead.

********************************************************************

The Intervention came in the form of a large red piece of cardboard. Erika sat me down and said we needed house rules. It takes guts for a summer sitter to say this to the employer! But she was right, she was right, she was right. She conferred with Grandma and they concurred. They were beyond right. (In retrospect, I think she may have been at her wits' end, and thinking she stood a good chance of finishing the summer out with us only if she got better behavior from Thing 1 and Thing 2.)

We wrote the rules out. We walked the kids through them. We walked everybody through the penalties (Time out. Loss of privilege.) It took about 30 seconds for the captain of the Titanic to honk the horn and gun her engines. Elli stood up and shouted, "I hate these rules! I'm not listening to them!" I scooped her up and put her in time out. "Elli, our house rules are that you listen to grownups. You're not listening. Time out."

She kicked. She yelled. She screamed. But the times, they were a-changin'. There was nobody sick in the house trying to sleep. Nobody whose last nerve was gone hours ago, just trying to make it through the evening. It was 10 am, so we had hours of good energy ahead of us. Grandma, Erika, and Mommy were all united in this. In Elli's rage, she even tried to bang her head on the floor. Grandma had installed a lovely hard slate tile floor in the kitchen, and while perhaps Grandma didn't exactly anticipate this sort of challenge to her new floor, the greenish-gray Michigan slate was quite up to it. Elli gave up the head-banging after the first attempt.

Maggie watched the whole scene with the widest dark blue eyes I have ever seen on that child.

Crunch. Titanic 0, Iceberg 1.

********************************************************************

The next four days were interesting. I'll give you just the barest of highlights.

At dinner one night:

Grandma: "Girls, when you're done eating, get up from the table and clear your plate."

Six seconds later, Maggie sees a dog outside and gets up from her chair to run to the window.

Grandma: "Maggie, are you done eating? You're up from the table."

Maggie: "No, I'm just running to see the doggie."

Grandma: "Our house rules are that we stay seated while eating. If you're up, you're done. Come back and sit down."

Maggie (no answer to Grandma, looking out the window): "Look Elli! It's a brown and white doggie!"

Grandma (gets up and dramatically throws Maggie's dinner away. Pours out her drink and clears her silverware): "Maggie, you're excused."

Maggie (crying): "But I'm NOT DONE! I'm STILL HUNGRY!"

Grandma: "Bedtime snack will be served in 2 hours."

Maggie (really crying now): "I NEED MY DINNER!"

Grandma: "Nonsense. You're a big girl, almost five years old and 40 pounds. You can skip a meal now and then. And stop that crying. We don't want to hear it. It's not pleasant for us. If you're going to cry, go into your room and cry. But no crying in my kitchen."

Maggie (stunned into silence): "What?"

Grandma: "You heard me. Go play, or go cry in your room. But you are done with dinner, and you can't cry in my kitchen."

Maggie (walking pitifully out of the kitchen): "But I said I'm still hungry!"

(She did stop crying, though, and was glued to her seat during pre-bed snack.)

Elli watched the whole scene with the widest light blue eyes I have ever seen on that child.

Titanic 0, Iceberg 2.

************************************************************

During playtime one day:

Erika: "Girls, you're done with the dolls. Let's put them away before we go outside."

Elli: "I don't want to clean them up. You do it!"

Maggie: "Yeah, Erika, you do it!"

Erika (not about to do anything): "If you don't clean them up, you can't play with them tomorrow."

The girls ran off, and Erika followed them. (She had decided to stop taking them swimming for now, because they weren't minding her enough to keep them safe. The unbehavers got converted into landlubbers, a Loss of Privilege.)

Like a mako shark on the scent of a good chum slick, Grandma came out of the kitchen (where she had been listening to Garrison Keillor on the radio, wearing her nice navy blue wool pants, and probably viewing the wildlife or thinking about volunteer work). She took off her glasses and prodded the dolls with her foot.

Grandma (loudly): "Oh! Oh! What is this? A doll?"

Elli and Maggie, in the other room (laughing with each other): "Hee hee! Shhh...let Grandma clean it up!"

Grandma (loudly): "Oh, oh! Well, I guess nobody wants this doll anymore. Or that one. I'll just tidy it up."

Elli and Maggie, in the other room (thumbs up): "Weeeeeee!!!!"

Grandma (loudly), and an accompanying "clunk" sound: "There. That's better. Nice clean living room floor."

And then Grandma went back to her Garrison Keillor. Elli and Maggie and Erika went out, and I remained in the basement, industriously typing away on my laptop, with my faithful dog at my feet.

Later that day, the girls noticed the trash can on the stairs. The lid was off, and inside were the dolls!

Elli (very loudly): "Oh no! Maggie! Look! Your doll is in the garbage!"

Maggie (very loudly, bursting into tears): "Oh no! Get it, sissy, get it! Quick!"

Grandma (very matter of fact, holding garbage can up high): "What's this? Why do you two care about my garbage? I was just going to throw that out."

Elli (yelling): "But Grandma! THAT'S OUR DOLL AND YOU DON'T GET TO THROW IT OUT!"

Grandma (matter of fact): "First of all, we don't yell in this house. And second of all, somebody left it out without cleaning it up. When you leave things out, I assume they're garbage and I throw them out."

Erika (approving): "Oh yes, I thought it was garbage too."

The two little pairs of very wide blue eyes, one dark blue, one light blue, engaged in vigorous negotiations with the pair of wise old blue eyes behind Grandma's glasses. The meeting of the minds sprang the dolls free from the garbage, but also gave two little girls an incentive to pick up after themselves.

By this time, the score was something like Titanic 0, Iceberg 28.

************************************************************

And so we kept it up.

I got the wailies - "Why don't you love me anymore, Mommy? You used to be a nice mommy and do nice things for me but now you're mean and I hate you!"

I got the missies - "Daddy! Daaaaaaadddy! I miss my Daaaaaaaaadddddddddyyyyy! I MISS HIM!!!!!!"

I got the why-ies - "Why? Why do I have to {do X}?"

I got the unfair-ies - "It's sooooo not fair! Why does she get to {do X} and I only get to {do Y, do not X}?"

I got the don't-like-ies - "I don't *like* {food X}. I want {food Y} instead."

But I was a camel come in from three years in the high desert - I had gotten a whiff of water and wasn't going to let a little fussing get in the way of comparative freedom.

And by the time we went back to California, the clouds had parted. By the time I had donated EIGHT LARGE GARBAGE BAGS of their toys and clothing to Goodwill (one per week for 2 months), they began to pick up the surviving items pretty regularly. And to date, the girls are into the following few ideas:

1. Mommy is the boss.

2. Life is unfair.

3. When a grownup tells you to do something, you do it. If you must ask why, do it first and then ask why.

4. Be helpful. We all pull our share around here and this means we all do chores.

5. Be pleasant.

6. Nobody wants to hear you whine, so you will be doing that by yourself and in your room.

7. We are over the "make hay while the sun shines" concept with regards to cancer and child rearing. It was fine as an emergency measure, but three years into this, the junk-food brand of parenting had become a way of life, and it wasn't good for the kids. Whether Daddy's feeling good or bad, you do your homework and you fold your laundry, and then we'll consider going to the park. If it takes you four hours to get 10 minutes of homework and 10 minutes of laundry done, you may have burned through the park time. Daddy may or may not eat his dinner, but your choices are binary (with one of them being "take it" and the other the obvious counterpart of "leave it.") You eat with your parents at the kitchen table and you use silverware. We aren't simply cramming as much fun as possible into our days, squeezing every silvery drop of rainbows and magic out of childhood, so we can forget we also are a cancer family. We're doing what we need to do, to raise well-mannered kids who are going to contribute to society, whether or not we are a cancer family.

Don't like it? Go whine in your room, and don't let the floor put too big a bruise on your temple.

It's probably not necessary to let you know this, but the Titanic of bratly behavior has officially sunk. (At least until our next medical crisis!)

Michigan flashback: free range, local, and fresh, but not organic

Scott's doing just great - we have no Scott news since our last updates, which is extremely good news.

I do not currently have sweet Michigan cherry wine on hand.  However, I am not without vice. 

Last night was the night my dear friend Robin came over, and we ate a box of truffles and some Brie and Blue cheese (on high fiber crackers).  We drank cheap red California wine.

And today, Saturday, I did not get up early, go to the 8:45 am Weight Watchers meeting at the Y, and then do a full Sweat-Inducing Workout At The Gym With Post-Workout Stretching while the children went first to ChildWatch and then to their 10 am Swim Classes. 

Instead, last night I set out Pop Tarts and Sun Chips and the TV remote, and told the girls they could eat as much of that as they wanted and watch whatever they wanted, so long as they let Mommy sleep in the morning.  The minute Mama got up, the TV and the Pop Tarts were going away.

It worked. 

I got to sleep until 9, bagged Weight Watchers, dragged the troops into swim classes at 9:58 am, and slurped down my lukewarm coffee on the pool deck while watching the virtuous exit the Weight Watchers meeting and drift towards the treadmills.

This puts me perfectly in the mood to write.  I shall tell you a tale of lands long ago and far away.

*****************************************************************************

We went to rural Michigan for the summer.


It really was quite the trip - me and my overliberal hippie California household going to see Grandma in her small rural town. It was what they call a high-impact visit, and while her town is probably much the same now that those wacky Left Coast tourists have all left, we surely aren't.

All five of us (Scott, me, Elli, Maggie, and Lucky the dog) flew out to see my mom for the 4th of July weekend. Lady Luck smiled on us; the 4th of July was Week 3 of Chemo, so Scott was feeling pretty gosh darn good. At the end of the week, Scott flew back to California early on a Friday morning, to arrive at SFO mid-day, so he could get to Kaiser to get his blood drawn before close of business, so his labs could be "run" in time for him - if the bloodwork turned out okay - to get another infusion of chemo on Monday.

I stayed in Michigan with the girls and the dog for another month. It was a real vacation for me - a vacation from cancer, from the responsibilities of running a household, from having to drive anybody to gymnastics or to an oncology appointment. To stay that length of time, I did bring my laptop computer and continued to telecommute while I was there, so I was officially "working." But the sort of paid work I do on the computer doesn't exhaust me the way the cancer (or housewifery) does, and so just being in a different zip code, in a different mindset, was such a vacation.

***

I could give you a day-by-day description of the vacation - we had steak for dinner this night; we watched the most amazing sunset over Lake Huron on that night; we got supersized ice cream cones and they dribbled everywhere nearly every night. But those sorts of descriptions of somebody else's vacation are Boring. You don't want to hear about the lamb dinner we ate one night. You may not even know it yet, but instead, you want to hear about the saga of Blinky the Lamb. He's had quite the run on this planet. All in good time, my friends, all in good time.

We'll start at the beginning. My mom moved up to this little town on Lake Huron a few years ago, after my father passed away. She lives in a lovely house right on the shores of Lake Huron, off of a dirt road. There are about twenty other little (and big!) houses on her dirt road, and if you follow the dirt road out to the main paved road, you run smack into the cemetery. (The cemetery folks have been awesome neighbors mostly because they'll take any level of noise and don't really ever make much.)

Take a left and go a few miles, and you get to Grindstone City, where they used to make large circular grindstones, used to grind the grain of the Great Plains into flour and cereal; bring your Master Card and you can buy a two-story stone building built in the 1800's sitting a few fields away - the outhouse is included at no extra charge. Today's Grindstone City is a bit lighter on the grain but heavier on the sugar: now they sell massive quantities of Midwestern ice cream atop wobbly little cones, and Danny Zeb's Party Store down the street sells the distilled sort of sugar geared to the grownup palate.

Back to my mom's house. Take the dirt road out to the cemetery and take a right, and in about ten minutes you'll come to the traffic light in town. In the summer it displays all three colors: green, yellow, and red. In the fall and spring it sort of blinks weakly. And, I am given to understand, in the brutal winters, in the teeth of blizzards blowing heavily in from the Great Lakes, that little traffic light shuts off its blinking and just holds onto the wires overhead for dear life. It's just as well; even if it were to be typing out Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in Morse Code, people wouldn't pay much attention to it. There's not much need for traffic control here in December. There are only about 600 people in town full-time, many of them either too old or too young to realize they're not, say, in Los Angeles or New York City or Bangkok.

The town appears geared to leisure (in particular, the summer sort of leisure.) Relative to the San Francisco Bay Area where we live, the population is somewhat skewed to either end of the age spectrum. The very young appear fairly content.

The teenagers can't wait to get out of there and even in the days of the Iraq wars the military looked pretty gosh darn good to many of them, boys and girls alike.

The young families are all looking for that needle in the haystack: in the middle of farm country, in the middle of an economically depressed region, they are looking for that elusive well-paying secure job which will let them raise a family.

The retirees fall into two categories. The first category are those who grew up here, raised a family here (as a farm wife? as a teacher? as a beauty salon owner?), and now find themselves being old here. The second category of retirees have been to Los Angeles, New York City, and occasionally Bangkok, and have decided those places are too gosh darn {expensive/loud/fast/liberal/crowded/full of bulls**t} for their tastes, and so they have retired to this, their own little piece of paradise. These retirees are my mom's crowd. In the summers they read poetry by the shores of the Great Lake as the sun sets at 9:30 pm. In the winters they get properly snowed in and listen to their Elvis Presley CDs. In the spring they have the leisure to watch the snow melt (in a region which measures snowfall in feet, this is actually a nontrivial activity.) In the fall they sit in their living rooms and vote Republican.

*****

This whole business of voting Republican brings me to the next subject of the Rural Michigan Experience. There is Acceptable and Not Acceptable Behavior. It differs somewhat based upon zip code, and (while not going anywhere near politics) here I will give you a brief outline of Ways We Know We're Not in Kansas Anymore.

In urban California, it is Acceptable to eat with an eye to the global pesticide load, to calculate the total (weighted average) distance your dinner has travelled to your table (in kilometers so you can appear more European), and to Do Your Part in Keeping Organic Farmers in Business. (This has a whole host of possible extensions, including going vegan, joining those Zero Population Growth people, and Freecycling early and often.)

In the rural Midwest, it is Acceptable to get the very best yield for your farming investment that you can, and while you're at it, everybody earns their keep - even the children and the dog.

Do you see the orthogonality building?

Just before we left, Scott and I got on (yet another) health kick. What if this cancer was caused by, say high-fructose corn syrup? What if these massive quantities of this sweetener are actually feeding the cancer? We try to remain semi-un-hysterical, but when there's something like metastatic cancer, it's hard not to channel those folks in the 1950's who were wondering, what if this lung cancer really is caused by cigarettes?

Well, if the cancer liked high-fructose corn syrup, we were going to starve it out. The "HF" was banned from our house, from our children, from our cars, and (mostly) from our grocery order.

Like self-respecting Bay Area yuppies with an added burst of mortal fear thrown into the equation, we skimmed Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma." We watched Morgan Spurlock get Super Sized. We shuddered our way through Fast Food Nation. And I am too afraid to watch the one where the cow has a UPC code on it (is it Food Inc?) We already have organic vegetables delivered to the house as part of a CSA, and have kids who eat whole-wheat pasta with No Genetically Modified Ingredients, Ever! Even our dog eats green beans (and adding to this shameful behavior, she also doesn't really "earn" her keep. At least not in the Midwestern farm dog sense of earning one's keep by hunting, herding, or guarding.)

And so, after a red-eye from SFO to Chicago, a few hours running around O'Hare, a stop at McDonald's for breakfast (and a fervent hope that all the organic steel-cut oatmeal I'd eaten in the previous six days would somehow absorb or subvert the McFood we were eating at the airport), we caught the puddle-jumper to rural Michigan. Within ten minutes of landing, we had all our luggage (including the dog), and were standing in the morning sunlight, blinking stupidly, in the middle of what was essentially a giant cornfield.

There were rows and rows of corn. Each row had a little sign at the end of it.

Scott pointed the signs out to me. "Look at that! What do you make of that?"

I knew exactly what "that" was. "Darling, it's a sign telling you what brand of corn seed they planted there."

He was fascinated. "I guess not everybody eats organic corn seed raised by local farmers."

The entire two hour ride back, we passed row after row of corn. Big ones, small ones, droopy ones, floppy ones. Ones for people to eat. Ones for dairy cows to eat. Ones to feed to beef cattle that we then feed to people. I'm sure an amazing number of them were slated for High Fructose Corn Syrup glory.

The Midwestern love affair with genetically modified corn continued in the newspapers. In addition to advertisements for trailers, livestock, babysitters, and farm equipment, you can buy genetically modified seeds. On page 3, there's the ad for AVA Soft White Winter Wheat, which is moderately resistant to Fusarium (scab). It has Excellent Yield Potential, Good Test Weight, and it was developed by Hyland seeds, from Ontario, Canada.

The ads for corn, wheat, and other seeds in the paper looked just like the technology, clothing, and recreation ads we see out here. Fry's Electronics advertises network cable; Macy's advertises its fall collection, and Hawaii advertises its airfares to the Bay Area crowd, just like the good folks at Hyland seeds, in Ontario, Canada, were advertising their products, complete with full technical specifications and locations where they could be purchased, to their target market audience.

With newspaper ads like that, it was time to realize that were essentially in Rome. So for the time we were there, we ate non-organic meat-heavy saturated-fat-laden delicious (and locally grown) produce and meat and dairy.

(One of the reasons you see me going to Weight Watchers these days is that I put on 8 lbs in 5 weeks.  I didn't think such a thing was possible outside of pregnancy, but evidently with enough ice cream, anything is possible.)  

***********************************************************************

At least my mom said the eggs were bona fide local, fresh, and free range. I asked her how she knew that.

"Well," she said. "I know they're local because I pick them up off the highway on my way back from Bad Axe. There's a farm, and they have a little brown fridge out near the road. You stick your money in the little box, and you take your eggs out of the fridge."

(Isn't it just delicious that the closest "town" is called Bad Axe, Michigan?)
"But," I pressed. "That's local. How do you know they're fresh?" I was used to egg cartons from the manufacturer, with stamped expiration dates, and a little "USDA Organic" certification plus some other verbiage saying something about the chickens getting to run around. These eggs came in cartons from all sorts of manufacturers, with a little note inside saying the eggs were not from the name stamped on the carton. (I guess the farmer sourced gently used empty egg cartons from Somewhere Else?) There was no expiration date applicable to the actual eggs in the carton.

She said, "You know how you have a hard time peeling the hard boiled eggs?" That was true. Every blasted time I hard boiled up a dozen of these, getting the peel off of it required a chisel. It turns out that's because the eggs were *too fresh* - a new concept to me - and that if the eggs are really that perfectly fresh, the wise housewife knows to let them sit a few days before trying to hard boil them. The wise housewife serves fried eggs the first three days, watching as the large lovely orangish-sunny yolks occupy up a huge portion of the whites. The wise housewife watches the thick egg yolk drip slowly down the side of the fork, onto the white buttered toast, and keeps her hard boiling activities down to a low simmer for a few days. I may be a wise housewife someday, but for now I'm still squarely in the "forced to use a chisel because she's in a hurry" camp, in all too many areas of my life.

"All right, all right," I conceded. "That's fresh. How do you know they're free range?"

I came with her the next time she bought eggs. Sure enough, we pulled into the dirt and gravel driveway. We got a carton of eggs from the rainbow of carton sizes and shapes in the little brown dorm fridge. (Is there a Society of Little Brown Dorm Fridges? Do they Facebook together? Is this fridge surprised she's packing eggs when all her other sister fridges are probably full of beer? Or, more likely, did she do a noble stint in the dorms at Michigan State, and then at Delta College, and then again at Wayne State, and after a serious Tour of Duty, is she relieved to be back in the peaceful country, servicing sober Christians who want good eggs during reasonable daylight hours? But I digress.)

We put the money into the box. I don't remember exactly, but it was probably about $2 - far less than the $6/dozen it costs to get anything comparable in the Bay Area.

My mom pointed to the back yard. Sure enough, behind the farmhouse were all the usual accoutrements: a horse, a barn, a field (full of genetically modified corn), and The Free Range. The Free Range was, of course, chock full of chickens. They were a rangin' and a rollin' and a peckin' and a scratchin'. Every so often the Working Dog would run by and they would shift to tremendous a-cluckin'.

So, dear readers, here's how you know you're getting eggs which are local, fresh, free-range, and non-organic.

They're local because you don't go very far to get them.

They're fresh if they don't hard boil well but make lovely hollandaise sauce.

They're free-range if you can see the chickens running around.

And they're not organic if you're in a part of the country where under "organic," the local dictionary lists: "paying excessive money for corn which is moldy, produce which is worm-eaten, and cows that don't produce very much milk. See also: d**n fool."

Back in the trenches - it's working!

Hello all. It's been a while - some of you left us queasily quaffing sand-laced champagne as we lurched back through the Santa Cruz mountains in a limo as we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. Others of you were with me through the Great Preschool Caper of 2010, in which I was desperately searching for that hen's tooth: a preschool, with high technology on the premises, which could do something fast.

Things have calmed down a tiny bit - we have our two kids back in school. We have Scott still on chemo. And at work (at least for the time being) I'm preschool-ful and don't need immediate assistance in the high-tech fast-moving anklebiter category.

So now, it's time for an update on Scott. You may remember he had a recurrence of his cancer in three separate places, discovered in March on a scan. It was quite the surprise, because he felt well and had no pain. But on his oral maintenance chemo (which was Xeloda pills only), he had disease progression, so she trotted out the bigger guns.

The oncologist put him back on "Big Chemo," which is a combination of three drugs: 1) Genentech's wonder drug Avastin, 2) oxaliplatin, and 3) 5-FU (fluorouracil, known colloquially in the cancer community by a different set of works that go intuitively with the letters "F" and "U.")

If you're not interested in any details, skip a few paragraphs.

If you'd like the "sound bite" version of the drugs, this trifecta is known as XELOX. Go ahead, I dare you to Google it.

And for those of you desperate for the details of this but not headed to medical school in the near future, the Avastin and oxaliplatin are in liquid form and need to go straight into the body in an IV infusion in the hospital, which takes a few hours any given Monday. The 5-FU comes in either liquid form or pill form. If you take it in liquid form, you get an infusion over 48 hours, which means you go to the hospital, get hooked up, take a little bottle of hoochy-hoochy home in your pocket, keep it away from the kids, try to dress in a way that you can carry this bottle and the IV tubing and the needle into your chemotherapy port around with you everywhere you go, refrain from showering for 2 days, and go back to the hospital to get disconnected. If you take it in pill form, the pill is called Xeloda and you just take it twice a day for some period of time - in Scott's case, two weeks - and then don't take it for some other period of time - in Scott's case, the third week. In the beginning, three years ago, Scott had the 5-FU in liquid infusion form. Now, he's taking it in pill form. You can probably see why.)

He's on a once-every-three weeks schedule of the XELOX regimen now.

Week 1 is the week he gets infused intravenously at the hospital with the Avastin and oxaliplatin, and the fatigue, nausea, and other side effects make that week most akin to a week known in healthy families as "husband has the flu."

Week 2 is the week he begins to feel a little better, and would probably be more akin to "husband has jet lag and lingering GI symptoms from a weeklong business trip to India."

Week 3 is the week known around here as "husband grills bits of cow" and "family goes to Waterworld."

And then Week 4 - you'd think with this continuous linear improvement, that Week 4 would be "husband does flips on trapeze" and "husband beats Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods in the same week." But Week 4 doesn't actually exist around here - a three-week chemo cycle means that as soon as he's feeling fairly decent, he goes back to Week 1, which puts him (instead of on the golf course or the Tour de France), back into the "flu" category.

But it's working! We went to see his oncologist last week, and the results of his latest scan are in. The cancer has receded again. All three of the previous hot spots are NOT VISIBLE. Not visible, as in they are NOT THERE (or at a minimum, too small to see). The tumors are once again responding to this behind-kicking chemotherapy, and the oncologist smiled and used the word "excellent."

I didn't know oncologists actually had the word "excellent" in their vocabulary. In medical school, they teach you new words for things: "hiney" becomes "gluteus maximus." "Head up the a**" becomes "exhibits depressive symptoms." "Stark, raving mad" becomes "discomfort related to childbirth." And I had been convinced that before they'll let you out of oncology school, they delete words like "excellent" from your vocabulary, replacing them with phrases like "cautious optimism" and "responsive to treatment" and "interval improvement in {insert Latin word for "hiney" here}."

But our oncologist broke all the rules. She smiled. She said "excellent." Before she could break into a Highland fling or launch into an aria, Scott asked, "so does this mean I can get off the heavy chemo?"

She smiled. "Not yet."

He said, "What do you mean, not yet?"

She said, "When you had the recurrence in March, I recommended a six-month treatment with XELOX. We are at the four-month mark now, and this is an excellent response. To keep the cancer at bay, I recommend you finish out at least two more months on the XELOX, and then we'll re-evaluate. I might even like to recommend two additional months of the heavy chemo on top of that, before you go back on maintenance chemotherapy."

So for that Friday, at the end of a Week 3, we left the oncologist's office. Scott was on Cloud 9 - the treatment was working again! All the fatigue, all the nausea, all the feeling like a twice-wrung-out-sock in a hurricane - it was all worth it. He was focusing on the treatment's success. He was focusing on the two more grueling treatments of this Big Chemo before he could re-evaluate.

I was still in a haze of disbelief. One of the hardest parts of this for me has been the element of Surprise. Not a lower case "surprise," as in "surprise birthday party" or "surprise bill from the IRS." I don't even think it's comparable to "surprise - you're having twins!" This is the Capital Surprise, as in March's "he looks really healthy and we think he's still in remission, but Surprise! the cancer's back!" Or as in this week's "he looks really sick and chemo doesn't usually work super well a second time around but Surprise! it's working!"

From what I have seen, usually, in these parts of the cancer world, you don't get second and third chances like this. Chemo usually works for some period of time, and then the disease progresses. I have known so many people who have had a recurrence of metastatic disease as the beginning of the end, and I was trying hard not to think of what could be. In my cancer caregiver support group, over the past 3 years, I would estimate that conservatively I have watched twenty caregivers go through the death of their loved ones from cancer. It's a rate of about one every two months or so. It's a lovely group and a great bunch of people, but we are pulled together once a week in a gruesome waiting game - for whom will the bell toll next?

But at least this time, the bell is not tolling for our household.

I couldn't believe it.

The same first line of chemo which beat it back the first time was working again.

We left the oncologist's office on a Friday. Scott went home. I went back to work. An hour later, I was on the phone having a mundane business conference call with people whose world is full of lower-case surprises - "surprise! this part of that project is late." "surprise! that shipment got lost." "surprise! we messed up the time zones for the conference call."

At the house, we had a lovely weekend, grilling pieces of cow and eating fresh corn.

Two days later, on Monday morning, I was up as usual about 5:30 am. It was Maggie's first day of kindergarten. At 7:30 am, I left the house to take Maggie to her first day of school. I totally forgot to take a picture, and felt all sorts of Mommy Guilt when I saw the other mommies taking pictures of their little dears on the front steps. Scott stayed home with Elli until about 10 am, when she went with her sitter for the day (second grade didn't start for her till Wednesday.) At work, I remembered we hadn't taken Elli school shopping, so I swallowed some more Mommy Guilt and texted our wonderful sitter and asked her if she would take Elli school shopping while I was at work.

And that afternoon, Scott went back to the hospital for another infusion, another entry into the Week 1 of Big Chemo.

He was able to drive himself home from chemo, but was firmly in bed when I got home about 4 pm with Maggie, all flush with excitement at her first day of kindergarten. Elli was all excited about the purple school folder and the new markers our sitter had gotten for her, and was looking forward to the start of second grade in less than 48 hours.

And thus we launched into another Week 1 of Big Chemo, also known as "husband has the flu."

Our dog Lucky vastly prefers Week 3, when the big event is "husband grills pieces of cow."

Preschool GOTTEN! THANK YOU ALL!!!

Hi everybody!

This is just a brief post to say thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

We've got the preschool downloads we needed; boss is on an airplane on his vacation, and I am once again pulled out of the fire of crisis. Thank you all - you saved me in a moment of great need.

Give those sticky darling preschoolers a big hug for me. And yourself too!

Got Preschool? URGENT HELP NEEDED!

Hello lovelies(and handsomes) - it's been a long time since I've given you an update, and this may be the only post here which is not (much) about Scott or cancer. Scott's still on chemo, still doing well, and scheduled for a scan later this month, so we're in hurry up and wait mode.

This post is all about me. I need some urgent help from the wonderfuls among you.

You may remember I have work that I go to? The place my paycheck comes from? They've been wonderful to me there - they've coped with me coming in late and leaving early with no complaints for THREE YEARS. They've let me telecommute. They've let me switch jobs to accommodate the wackiness in my life. They've given me time off with no hassle for trips to rural Michigan or the ICU.

It's the most wonderful job, the most wonderful client, and I'm in a bit of a quandary. They're making a line of educational tools to help teachers assess the natural number sense of pre-school children.

And, well, I was supposed to get them some pre-schools to download (and run) their initial product offerings by, like, well, actually by yesterday. And where was I yesterday? I can't exactly remember, but I can say mentally I was somewhere between attending a Weight Watchers meeting and getting buzzed on Michigan sweet cherry wine. (Both are fairly preschool-unfriendly activities, and they sort of give me that equal-but-opposite tension in my life.)

And Maggie, bless her chubby little cheeks, JUST TURNED FIVE AND IS NO LONGER IN PRESCHOOL.

If you could help me get some preschools, I would be forever grateful. Here's exactly what I need:

1. Locate a bona fide preschool, which has children between the ages of 2-4 enrolled. If you have a child in this age group, please take this to his/her teacher. Feel free to direct all your friends here - the more the merrier. I so need the help.

2. Ask them to go to www.mathemazing.com

3. Click on the "Educational Content" link. This is totally free and if they don't have a userid, they get to create one for themselves. No cost, no junk email, no nothing but sweetness and light coming from this site.

4. Click on "Register" to register themselves as a new user. Fill out their information and click "Register."

5. Login with their brand spanking new userid and password.

6. DOWNLOAD ALL THREE OF THE TOOLS ON THE SITE. It don't mean a thing if we don't get these downloads.

* Preschool Number Sense Tool #1 - left click on this and play that game at least once!

* Download Audio Walkthrough - right click on this to download the podcast. (Left clicking on this will get you some exciting stuff which is probably illegal in most of Michigan but done in the Upper Peninsula anyways, so do the right thing here and right click that baby.)

* Download Our White Paper - right click on this to download the paper.

7. Let me know that you have just pulled my a** out of the fire! You can reach me at carrie_beam [at] yahoo.com and/or just leave a comment on Facebook (or heck, even here on the blog). Call me on my cellphone at (925) 285 - 1977 if you have any difficulties with any of this, any time of the day or night.

So, you're feeling a bit strange about this? I can't promise you that you're in a preschool sort of mood.

What I can promise is that there are no bugs or viruses here, and if we can get a preschool to register and download ALL THREE PRODUCTS by yesterday (or heck, by today if that's all we can do), it will help me BEYOND immensely.

Did I mention we just got back from a monthlong vacation in rural Michigan (and do I have tractor racing and bullfrog hunting stories to tell)?

And did I mention my boss is going on vacation in TWO DAYS?

And that I need to have a preschool download these BEFORE HE GOES???

And that I was evidently the preschool lady and I'm just needing a little help from my friends?

Thank you - I LOVE YOU ALL FOREVER!!!!!