Miles to Go

Not miles, maybe, but I still have to get my lunch and breakfast ready for tomorrow morning. I just got back from physical therapy and really, I am too old for this shit. I just feel a bit worn out, but it's not bad, really. Some of the exercises were very hard, but I was surprised at some of the ones I could do.

The Hubs did indeed order new glasses last night, and said he was surprised at how narrow the glasses are now, as in, so little actual glass in front of his eyes. Well, yeah, dear, no one else but you is still wearing aviators, and those suckers have lots of glass in them. He ordered progressives so he won't have to take off his glasses to read, so we'll see if he's willing to take the few days to get used to them or if he hurls them across the room after the first hour.

I woke up very, very tired, and have remained so all day, and hungry. How nice that tomorrow is the end of the work week here. On Friday, I have another day of people doing things to me (as I did on Monday), starting with the podiatrist, and then getting an eyebrow wax, and then -- I hope -- finally getting that other tattoo. This appointment is a little earlier -- 2.30 -- so with any luck, the artist won't be up to his elbows in someone else's huge work at that time.

Did I mention that I'm very happy with my new haircut? Perhaps I'll produce a photo, if I can. Most amazing of all is that I appear to be able to reproduce the style that I walked out of the salon with. Yes, I got the "product" he used -- but he used two, and refused to let me buy the more expensive one, said the other one would do me fine, and it has -- and a bigger hairbrush. I also replaced my blow dryer, which was on its last legs anyway. I guess this would look like short hair to most people, but since I've had very short hair before, it doesn't look that way to me. It looks like my last haircut, but without the bulk, and so far, without the frizz. I could not believe that it never puffed up at all yesterday, even though it rained all day. And when I put on a baseball cap to go out in the rain after school, I didn't get hat-head. Clearly, a magic haircut.

After lunch, two kids just came in to use the computers with a pass from ... K. This tickles the kids here no end, when they bring me a pass signed by "your daughter [giggle]" Or they love to tell me all day that they were just in a class and the substitute was "your daughter [giggle]." Sometimes they are fond of telling one or the other of us that she looks just like me, to which we always respond that they should see her sister, who is the one I have traditionally been told looks just like me. I don't believe either one of them does, but so it goes.

On a more serious note, a word about Senator Kennedy and his condition. In November, 1991, when my brain tumor was diagnosed, they said they couldn't tell exactly what kind of tumor it was until they saw it. (This was not strictly true, I later found out, but I digress.) I was told, though, that it was one of three kinds of possible tumors: 1. an acoustic neuroma, which is never malignant, but the removal of which would leave me deaf in one ear; they told me this was "unlikely" because of the size and location of the tumor; 2. a meningioma, which is sometimes malignant but very difficult to remove, because this is a cancer of the membrane that covers and wraps around the brain, and the tumor itself can grown into the brain; or, 3. a glioma, which would always be malignant and always be difficult to remove. I was totally rooting for the acoustic neuroma, which is what I turned out to have. (Years later, I read the pre-surgery report which stated firmly that it was an acoustic neuroma, but they wouldn't tell me that ahead of time just in case it turned out to be one of the others, although they knew for sure it wasn't.) Anyway, as soon as I saw the word glioma in a news report, I knew this was not a good thing.

I remember, of course, the death of President Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy, but I also remember hearing the news reports of Ted Kennedy's plane crash and the Chappaquiddick incident. The plane crash happened in 1964; I remember hearing about it on the news while we were in the car driving up to visit family in Massachusetts. The Chappaquiddick incident happened in July 1969, the day before the moon landing, so I would have been home. I remember that week as very, very hot, and my father finally conceded to using the air conditioner that had come with the house but that we had never used before; we all spent that week bundled up in sweaters in front of the TV to get any news of what was going on in space. So we heard about that tragedy, too.

I am so sad for him and his family. But I don't know if this qualifies as the same kind of tragedy that has befallen this family so many times before. Many of those were odd, unexpected, unpredictable, unavoidable (except the scandals.) But illness, unless it's something incredibly rare, just happens, happens at random. Each one of us has to succumb to something at some point, and there are few illnesses of this magnitude that are in our power to prevent.

So that's tonight's serious. I need some couch time before I tackle the kitchen stuff.


WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1759