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My friend Rosie had a masectomy a few days ago. It’s over now, she survived, she’s laying in bed, at home, adding more things onto her list of things she can do, and/or feels obligated to do, each day. The thought of it makes me want to fold her up in my arms and just make it be okay, make it be something that never happened. It doesn’t work that way though.

My friend Sam has written a beautiful entry where she mentions dancing with me, and with Paul. It makes me grateful for things that are so direct and true.

Natto

So Eric and I went to check out the Asian grocery the other day. That’s a great thing about having guests, you finally do the things you have intended to do, but just haven’t gotten to yet. It was cool because after his three years in Japan, he’s pretty good at reading the packaging. On his recommendation we bought some natto, a kind of fermented soy bean dish many Japanese eat for breakfast. He says everyone there swears to its health benefits, that you go to the doctor with the flu, he'll say, “Go home and eat natto.”

It’s not nasty tasting, but its distinctive smell, and the way the there are strings of goo between the beans take some getting used to. I ate half the contents of my little polystyrene container, and he said that was pretty good for a first-timer, as it has been known to make people gag. However, if I keep practicing and get hard core, I can start to add chives, a raw egg, and soy sauce. Something to aspire to in the future.

She Likes Me Back!

A while back I mentioned my blog-crush, Scarlet Panda? Well she apparently noticed me stalking her blog on her site-meter, and found my blog! She commented on my post and referred me back! It’s so sweet! As a result, over the past few days, I have had more than usual visitors, largely due to the link from her blog.

I was explaining this to our houseguest-Eric, who is a writer as well as an actor, and he asked me, "Doesn't it make you nervous, when you sit down to write, to have an audience?"

And I said “Pshaw. Of course not! That’s why a blog is good for you, it’s like doing improv, or open mics if you’re an actor. You practice just putting something out there on a regular basis, regardless of who’s out there, and it makes you better.”

He said, “Gee, that’s brave. How many people read your blog each day?”

“Um. Four….and, well, actually one of those is me.”

Yesterday my average readership was up to five. And today, sitting down to write I’ve found out he’s right. I do have a bit of stage fright.

Which has made me consider audience, and the whole blog habit I’ve developed, and why. I started this blog as a way to communicate with friends and family, as an alternate to with periodic newsletters, as was my habit when we lived overseas. I liked the idea of them a “virtual space” where they could visit at their leisure. I have found however, that even those people who responded positively to receiving emails, did not make the switch to blog-space.

So what is it I’m writing now, and why? Am I giving updates of my everyday life in terms that would appeal to my parents, aunts, uncles etc? No. That would hardly make sense. Am I, as I reflexively answered Eric, writing for “practice?” That rings false. I don’t think I ever thought that before I said it. Am I writing for myself? Certainly I feel compelled to come to the page and write, but if it’s just for myself, why do I visit my blog instead of my journal?

Most of my regular readers are friends I had before, but not ones with whom I had a steady individual correspondence. They are people who already had an online social network. It’s part of their paradigm. Since I’ve started “hanging around” blog type people, have I started to adjust my posts, to expound upon random thoughts in a way that could be read by the general public, or general public of blog-surfers?

I think it’s possible. It’s probable. Certainly I am puzzling out my own thoughts, I am writing for people who know me, but I am also “performing” for an audience.

I would give my opinion on this, but I don’t know what it is yet.

Or maybe get more sleep?

The other night at Wal-mart, a woman asked me if I was Paul's mother. This makes me wonder if it's time to invest in a more expensive face cream.

Productive

Last night at 12:30, Paul started to take one of his “power naps” on the couch, making me promise to wake him up at 1AM to start working on his Coca Cola project that is due on Monday. I said, "Why don’t we both just go to sleep and make a pact to get up at seven instead of staying up most of the night?" He was reluctant, but eventually succumbed, although we changed our target time to eight. I, of course, stayed up for another hour and then rebelliously slept past the alarm…it is Saturday after all!

But now, this is it. Really. I’m going to blow through this chapter of Old English, and then we’re going to clean the house, and I’m going to go buy toilet paper and food and throw away trash in one of the cars, all of this because A) We’ve let things disintegrate for a while and now they're scary and B) because Paul’s friend Eric is coming to stay with us for a month and help with production for Paul’s last student film. This film is very important to him, because he feels it will be a large factor in determining whether he is awarded a thesis project as a director.

In other news, I have decided to become an average student. That is, I have realized that last year, I concentrated on my academic subjects more than my writing workshops. This is easy to do, because academics tend to have tangible increments, and progressive deadlines, whereas with writing…well you never know what’s going to come out, whether it will take three drafts to shape it, or twenty! And even with experience to the contrary, you can always hope that you’ll sit down the night before and just happen to be brilliant. It doesn’t happen. So this year, I’ve decided, if I’m here to write, I’m going to write, and if I have to limit something, it should be the dead language, that interesting as it is, I will never REALLY need in life again. There’s no country in the world where the plane lands and when you get off all the announcements from the loudspeakers are in Old English, and everyone is sitting in the waiting areas reading Beowulf.

Red Bear

I think I have a new blog crush. When you log in at Blogspot, in addition to the tools for creating or editing your posts, etc, there is a little sidebar of links called "Blogs of Note," that changes every week. It's kind of an impulse aisle where you can click on random blogs with interesting names--or, if your are procrastinatinge because you have sixteen hours worth of Old English Translations to plow through, you might just click on them all. If there's one that's pretty interesting, you might click on that person's links, and this is how I found Scarlet Panda. The things she (I've decided she's female) posts to be funny, I think are funny. The things she notices about the world, I find interesting. And that one particular post about baggage claim? I swear said almost the exact same thing, out loud, last time I was at the Indianapolis Airport. Because her profile states she's in the midwest. I like to think she was at that airport and overheard, but that's unlikely.

I was interested in this article about Chemo-brain that appeared in USA Today on Thursday. A recent study of breast-cancer survivors suggests that that chemotherapy changes the brain's frontal cortex functions, and that memory loss associated with chemo lasts much longer than originally thought—a decade or longer.

No one seems worried that any patients will come back saying that this was an undisclosed side effect of treatment. My guess is that if you do chemotherapy you sign some piece of paper acknowledging that pretty much anything can happen.

While chemotherapy used to be prescribed mainly in situations where cancer had already spread to other parts of the body, it is now standard for patients who have had surgery, even if there is no evidence of other cancer, in order to lower the risk of recurrence.

Earlier this year, this study came out, indicating that walking one to three hours a week after a breast cancer diagnosis can improve survival rates by 20-50%. After the study was published, a friend with breast cancer joked, “Let’s see, six months of chemo therapy only raises my chances by 7%, maybe I should just walk instead.”

The question that went through my mind when she said this was, “Why is that a joke?”

I’ll leave you with this little upbeat sidebar to the USA Today article. I’ve copied and pasted below. Now is it just me, or are these steps to “Improve Concentration" actually just steps to “Compensate for the fact that you have shitty concentration”?

IMPROVE CONCENTRATION
Cancer survivors and others with mild memory problems can take steps to improve their concentration:

* Make lists of medication schedules and things to buy. Jot down where you parked your car.
* Leave messages on your answering machine to remind yourself of something crucial.
* Use a personal organizer to keep track of day-to-day tasks.
(Source: Ellen Coleman, associate executive director of New York-based CancerCare)

this is me trying to add a picture

Ode to Childhood Knife

I think of myself as a person who owns a grapefruit knife.

I recently bought a bag of grapefruit on sale at the grocery. At home, I cut one open, and reached into our “everything but the silverware drawer” to rummage for the grapefruit knife. I know what it looks like; it has thin metal blade that is bent and serrated, and an unfinished wood handle.

At an age when I have now lived outside of my parents’ house for longer than I lived in it, I still think of myself as possessing this grapefruit knife, when, in fact I have never had a grapefruit knife—my parents have this grapefruit knife.

I have a pumpkin carving knife. It is short and serrated, but the blade is thicker and not bent, and it has a purple molded plastic handle with jack o’ lanterns in the design. For the last several years, when I’ve reached into whatever drawer (in whatever house or apartment we are living in) to look for the grapefruit knife, I have ended up using this knife, but for some reason it hasn’t made an impression on me. It makes me a little sad for the knife actually. It's like the girlfriend who can never compete with memories of the ex. Henceforth, I will try to remember to think of this knife first. To say to myself, “I’m going to prepare this grapefruit, I’ll just get that cute little purple handled knife to do the job!”

But truthfully, I’m going to try to remember to look for a grapefruit knife next time I’m out. They really do work well, don’t they?