finally...

So happy to have this over. Tomorrow is my last chemo right in time for the holiday so I can do what I want for the fam.

Lovin' the holidays this year... I can't wait to workout on Sunday and lift some serious weights. God, do I miss it. I am addicted to that good kinda pain, and the doc today said she couldn't believe how good I looked for having gone through this. I refuse to buckle under the pressure.

Want to know a secret?

Since I've been very young I have always been very attracted and enamored by depressed, dark, bitter and angry men. I won't go into details but I have a pattern that I could (actually) write another book about. I find angry men a challenge. I think depressed men are ones I can fix and make happy - such a delightful undertaking... the more bitter and mean, the better. I imagine I could play crack psychologist to figure out why this is true, but there is no explanation. I'm friendly enough. I don't have a fatherly complex (I don't think) and yet I always find a way to have men in my life who are bossy, and tirelessly willing to make me feel as though there is something really wrong with me - you know, like shit. It doesn't matter whether I've worked with them, they are extended family members, or if they are friends of family members or friends of friends - if they are mean and nasty, I like 'em. No. I just don't like 'em...

I love 'em.

I met Bruce when I was eighteen. He is never angry or bitter. He doesn't criticize or berate. He doesn't confront. Not only that, he never has a problem with me and honors me as if I am a perfect specimen of a woman ---which is a big joke. I have issues on my issues and am an extremely complicated human. He puts up with all kinds of ridiculous illustrations of neediness that would make most men cringe. He doesn't care. I have no idea why I was lucky enough to cross paths with some "boy" from McKeesport, Pa when I was so young whose family is nothing like my own. My grandfather was the President of a college and his grandfather quit school to work in a mill in the sixth grade. He is Jewish - well not really, but he was raised that way and has some Lox/Smoked Fish connections still. Through the years, I haven't a notion as to why we are married considering the obvious polar distance of our needs and background. We are intellectual opposites and have different politics and social mores.

However, I am now in awe of my luck of the draw as a little girl. In the long scheme of things the most important thing two people have in common is family. Amidst the myriad of differences (which has never made any sense to me) there is the one thing we share: a deep abiding family value.

So for as much as I should have probably married a dark, angry, nasty man whom I would have divorced twenty years back, I was one lucky lady. Sometimes what you are drawn to isn't so good for you.

I'm not so sure I believe in fate. I certainly don't believe in marriages made in heaven - that's for sure. But this relationship of ours was a freaking miracle of nature, which has lasted for over forty-two years.

Maybe because we share so little is why we share so much.

Sailing... my way

I'm turning into my mother. There is an old fashioned civility that is missing today, and I can't quite get over it. This isn't just about thank you notes or standing when someone comes into a room. This is something more subtle, and as much as I am not espousing to say that I am mother-of-the-year, I think I may be close.

I told my children that when they would leave my house that they would be gentlemen and a lady. I did my work. I reminded, cajoled, taught, tutored, reprimanded, and pleaded. I spent hours insisting on things that they find inane still, and even today I will remind my thirty-four-year-old son to take his hat off --->at Burger King. I have serious standards, which most people outside of this house are unaware, but I do. Even close friends of mine think I am a little ridiculous, and my paper-plate-at-holiday in-laws can't relate, even remotely. I've spent years making them feel uncomfortable too, because I do not care what anyone thinks. I am the maker of civil humans, and it is a very serious job that I take (um) seriously.

Mother would turn over in her grave now - I think it would by doing the Paso Doble or an Olympic-worthy Triple Walley pole vault of some sort.

My grandchildren will get the benefit of my being raised like Princess Grace. This sort of thing is driven by some bizarre osmosis that has the subtlety of a charm school bulldozer. I am not impressed by children who do not respect their elders, or their teachers. I am not inspired by babies who are precocious and sarcastic. It isn't cute. I've always told my children that although it seems silly, people later in life will like them better, and they will be more successful in their jobs and in social situations if they learn to be civil and well-mannered.

Today's parents are missing the boat, and I think they need to take a little ride on my sailing ship.

Do my kids think I am a massive pain in the ass still? Yes. Am I proud of that?

Damn straight.

Acapella and Marvin? Are you kidding me?

Nothing but voices for bass. No instruments at all. This is talent.

Let Mia transport us to Italia

Rapsodia

I would like
to free you tomorrow
and would like
to see you fly
over the snow-fields, like before.

You, so far away.
even though by now
so near.
And the soul departs
To eternity.
Rhapsody.
I would like
to free your heart
and would like
to stay behind
and pretend to fall.

Because like this you are closer
and can light
my life.
And the soul departs
to eternity.
The soul departs

Because like this you are closer
and can light
my life.
And the soul departs
to eternity.

Gnocchi and Valpolicella anyone?

Ingredients

• 
  
• 
  
• 3 pounds russet potatoes
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 egg, extra large
• 1 pinch salt
• 1/2 cup canola oil

Directions

Boil the whole potatoes until they are soft (about 45 minutes). While still warm, peel and pass through vegetable mill onto clean pasta board.

Set 6 quarts of water to boil in a large spaghetti pot. Set up ice bath with 6 cups ice and 6 cups water near boiling water.

Make well in center of potatoes and sprinkle all over with flour, using all the flour. Place egg and salt in center of well and using a fork, stir into flour and potatoes, just like making normal pasta. Once egg is mixed in, bring dough together, kneading gently until a ball is formed. Knead gently another 4 minutes until ball is dry to touch.

Roll baseball-sized ball of dough into 3/4-inch diameter dowels and cut dowels into 1-inch long pieces. Flick pieces off of fork or concave side of cheese grater until dowel is finished. Drop these pieces into boiling water and cook until they float (about 1 minute). Meanwhile, continue with remaining dough, forming dowels, cutting into 1-inch pieces and flicking off of fork. As gnocchi float to top of boiling water, remove them to ice bath. Continue until all have been cooled off. Let sit several minutes in bath and drain from ice and water. Toss with 1/2 cup canola oil and

store covered in refrigerator up to 48 hours until ready to serve.

Ciao!

today...

The chemo has built up in my system and I feel weak and breathless tonight. It makes me begin to dwell on what these chemicals are really doing to the healthy cells in my body. It is clear that I am not the firecracker I used to be. I'm not sure if this is chemo or what sixty just feels like. Getting old is a bit unnerving. I guess it could be worse.

Siddhartha and Glinda

I've met so many nice people through this experience. Cancer is a club I never wanted to join, but it is shocking that you can't bring up the word to anyone without a story - their story. Many times it ends sadly with the death of their sister, friend or granny, but there is always a story.

The latest one was as I was embarking on #3 of chemo 2. As I sat in the waiting room a scrawny woman with very long hair sat beside me. I asked her if she had an appointment and she said - "oh yes." And I said... well look at you, as I jutted my chin towards her long hair. She said, "oh my - it has been 20 years since my melanoma and I have had lots of years to grow it back." I asked her if she was scared for her appointment. It was none of my business but when you are in the cancer club, you are allowed to talk about personal things to others in the club. She said "she was terrified." After being in remission for 20 years, she had to get her petscan every year, and every year is terrified for its return. The fear is a part of every day existence. I understood.

I'm reading a book that is the overview of Buddhist thought called Siddhartha. It is about young man who leaves his father's home to find his bliss - he is unhappy and is very sure that it is out there to be found. So, he goes on a journey - one of deprivation, and then one of money and privledge. But he comes to the conclusion that it is within him that he can find the true bliss of things so simple that they cannot be explained. He suddenly walks around seeing every nuance of beauty and describes everything in grand, glorious detail.

"All of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been with it. Now he was with it, he was part of it. Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart."

This is what the cancer club gives you. I walk around with the bliss that was always there. Kind of like the Wizard of Oz and Glinda. She says, "Home is a place we all must find, child. It's not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we're always home, anywhere."

I adore this new fear, which has opened my eyes to the beauty within myself.

Joe Pa et al...

This is such a good lesson on doing the right thing even when you aren't sure of the backlash. Coming forward may upset your family, make you lose your job, reevaluate your standing, your money, your degree or your friends but it isn't worth barfing all over your integrity. Honesty is part of a truthful life. If you don't know how to be honest, you lose what matters. If you aren't part of the solution you are equally part of the problem.

Honesty doesn't always come in a cute little wrapped package with a bow. Sometimes it is dirty and difficult. At times it may even be scary and out-of-the-box. The one who gets me is McQueary who could have saved that child on the spot. What a bunch of pathetic losers...

Be careful what you ignore.

sexy mama 11.11.11

hahahahah. How hot are the PCDs? Who the hell am I? Granny who?

(who put the Al-Qaeda bridge in here? Huh? Was it you Snoop Dog??)

whaaaaaa

Rant:

I am so damn tired of people and their depression. Tonight I'm thinking about those people who are so self-involved that they have nothing better to do but think too much, worry too much, and dwell on all things about... you got it:

themselves.

I do have some specific people in mind but won't bother to mention names. I can look back on my life and realize that I, too, had spent a good deal of time doing the same thing - wondering why my mother never called, or why this person said this or that person said that. Whyyyyyyy blah blah blah. I find it quite comical now, but that is only after evolving into this other person who (of course) has cancer... the larger-than-life, horrifying Big C death threat. I can say now that I don't know where I begin and where the cancer ends. Oh yes, it all sounds so cliche, but nevertheless one does change with this sort of horror.

I would rather live three and a half more years, be cremated, hang out on a mantle in a cloissonne urn with this perspective than living another thirty years as the self-absorbed downer that I used to be. People tell me, oh Sal, you have such a great attitude. What the heck do I have to be sad about? I'm not hungry, homeless, abused, or neglected. Am I living the middle-class dream? You betcha.

What does that mean, really? Unlike rich people or wannbe rich people, I am truly satisfied with what I have.

Give me a blue sky, a nice cup-a-joe and no bullshit and I'm in hog heaven.

That's a gift.