Christmas for the Brain Damaged - The Last One - (Promise)

Hello Fellow Travelers!

I thought that since 2012 is almost over and it does appear I'm going to live on I should record how I have spent the last two holiday seasons with severe impairments.  I am resolved to undergoing whatever procedure is available.  2013 will be a little different and, hopefully so will I!  I have been focused on one thing only for the last 20 months, one goal.  Over a year ago I ceased taking all medications.  Over a year ago I started working out daily.  My quality of life bites - hard!  Every day brings new challenges and new chances for me to find humor in every silly situation I find myself in.

My wonderful in-laws have included me (no doubt my spouse and son were really the invitees, I just get invited because like the mighty cockroach,  I refuse to die! That and Sean and I don't believe in divorce.) in all their holiday doins' which are pretty special.(Let's face facts:  Even mute I'm more entertaining than my spouse.  I might knock something or someone over, that's always good for a chuckle.)  Or I run into people who last saw me the 10 days or so before I had a grapefruit sized tumor removed from my brain.  It does explain a lot, however...

I have been appreciative to all the O'Reilly's for all their love and support (and food!) so I am planning a more normal winter in 2013.  I saw how much my son needs me this year.  My favorite brother-in-law said to me, "Your recovery is not a race."  He's probably right that was definitely my mind-set in the first year
 Now I feel great all the time and I see everything and everyone a little differently.  My patient spouse is running out of patience.  My son is a tween!  A gangly tween!  So I feel that time is a precious commodity and I have none.  So let's get this recovery show on the road!  Like yesterday!

I'm going to pick up my "Paycheck" at "The Adjustment Bureau" if I can recall "The Source Code" in "30 Minutes Or Less"

Hello Fellow Travelers!

Among the many situations that since 2011 demanded my attention, some can certainly be described as "entertainment" are, in fact, a lot of films I check off in my mind (or write off as the case may be) as "high stress" movies.  There are a lot of them.  In "high stress" movies the protagonist is given an impossible set of circumstances and then he/she+Possible Partner spend the 90+ remaining minutes being chased or chasing something or someone.  I've always thought of them as "chase" movies and tolerated others who find watching artificial stress entertaining.  I do not,  I never did find "Stress Movies" entertaining, and since I was spun around repeatedly by God (or someone) I not only find them simple and a waste of my strength these contemporary and extremely predictable films give me, the cancer survivor, a whole new level of discomfort and understanding.

It's not remotely entertaining.  Why would anyone choose to spend $10 bucks and, more importantly, spend 2 hours actually paying attention to completely artificial stress that some completely invented character is experiencing?  Not your mom, not your cousin, not a friend, someone completely made up.  Isn't life stressful enough?  We need to pay babysitters and buy popcorn and sit on very used seats for this?  That's two hours of your life you'll never get back either.  The commercial says, "If you're not whitening, you're yellowing", they are talking about teeth but it's just as true about entertainment.  If you are going to see a film and you not only don't learn anything, it costs you something,(time, money, thought, whatever)it's no longer entertaining.

I used to tolerate people around me watching characters in highly stressful situations and calling it entertainment.  Now if I am forced to watch a Stress Movie, I worry about how many broken bones the made-up characters inflict on each other in the imaginary story.  Since brain cancer and surgery lots of falling and breaking of bones have given me a unique perspective on the expected outcome of most films of the "high stress" genre.   Every time Matt Damon walks towards the screen with a fire or explosion at  his back (it does seem like Mr. Damon or Mr. Affleck are in a lot of these"stress fests".  And  what about that English guy or maybe he's Scottish?  James McAvoy, he runs around a lot, chases his own tail plenty!) I now worry a little that he might explode or get too close to that fire because he's walking away from them and not watching them closely, like any normal person would.  I rarely criticize anything that remotely resembles entertainment, I like drama and I live for comedy.  I just have no time or patience for lots of upheaval and pointless running around by fictional characters.

When the most ordinary chores require extraordinary effort, entertainment takes on an entirely different meaning and value.  It actually requires very little to amuse me.  A lot of made up danger expressed by actors who, in many cases are grossly overpaid is not my idea of a good time.

Neither is dragging anyone to experience the magic that is "Breaking Dawn" (1, 2 does it matter?  Aren't they all the same?)

PS - "30 Minutes Or Less" was actually pretty funny.

Round Foods = Round Me? or Why I Like Holiday Cookies

Hello Fellow Travelers!

What am I thinking?  The holidays are here in full swing!  They aren't around the corner, down the road or a ways off.  The holidays are here and I can't ignore them anymore and I don't want to ignore them.  However,  here is where my physical limitations are, well, limiting.  I want to bake but I can't.  I can't decorate but doing a pretty tree is/was kind of my thing.  I can't even criticize the way my patient spouse mis-decorates the stupid tree.  (Remember how the kids decorated the tree in "A Charlie Brown Christmas?  The kids huddled around the tree so you couldn't see it then they waved their arms around a lot for a few seconds and Viola!  Perfect Tree!)

Of the few foods that now don't completely frustrate me I have mentioned to food bringers and occasional food senders that self-contained, round foods I can manage.  Anything on a round bun, cookies, ravioli, tater tots - things that are short and stubby work too.  Green beans and French Fries (long foods) are now my sworn enemies.

I still make a pathetic attempt at cake when it crosses my path but anytime I try to introduce a knife or a fork into the "process" it usually foreshadows some fork-related disaster.  I know I've shared with you Travelers how I don't just spill, I spill/smear/drag/spill again a lot!  Here's the thing:  My spouse has lost so much weight training with me none of his clothes fit.  I'm starving myself, I work out every day and I have stayed at exactly the same weight for over a year.  What's up with that?  My body has changed completely too.  I workout really hard because I feel I have to be ready for the next disaster.  Cancer, OK,  Sandy, Not OK,  but I'll deal, but Christmas?  I can't even formulate a strategy and it's 12/14!

So we're back to the cookie.  I like the cheap vanilla ones for the same reason I like cheap white cake.  It tastes a lot like shortbread.  It's not dipped in chocolate.  Cookies are generally round even the traditional shapes I can manage because even the stalest holiday cookies have frosting that holds them together like Elmer's Glue.  Reindeer, Star, Christmas Tree, it doesn't matter as long as there is some cheap, white icing on top gluing that bad boy together like Epoxy.

If I just can get a few Holiday Cookies under my belt, I'll feel Christmas.  Or I won't.  That's the great thing about Christmas you may as well get into it because it comes whether you're ready for it or not.  Wait, isn't that brain cancer?  Nahhh, you can't "get into" cancer, you can't ignore it either.

What is the Life Expectancy of a Wheelchair? Should I Even Care?

Hello Fellow Travelers!

My stupid wheelchair is looking pretty BTS (Beat to S@#@!), well, you get the general idea.  It's vaguely unsightly now, it works just fine.  It's beyond hope visually. So my question then becomes should I bite the bullet and order a new one?  Or should I try to get along without one?  You guys know what I want to do...  OK, I agree, no new chair.  For me, getting a new chair would be like giving up and I won't do that until Needles freezes over.  That, was a no-brainer.

Moving on,  Christmas:  Ignore or Embrace?  I'm thinking this year I should try to embrace Christmas as much as I can.  We're full on in the holiday season, right?   I was thinking of returning to our chosen place of worship now anyway. Ho-ho-ho!  Oh, we've been done with Santa for a few years now.  I have barely acknowledged Christmas the last two years (thank you brain tumor!) and now I need to step it up and get my yuletide on.  Problem:  I can't make or bake anything yet.  I can however, order online.  There is a lot of Christmas out there, right?  My patient spouse already ordered Christmas baked treats for my parents from Costco.  What no one told me was that they (Costco) would deliver this stuff before the end of November.  So now I need to come up with something else "Christmassey".  I don't think that's even a word.  Maybe it should be.

My awesome in-laws always keep Christmas really well, as does my pal, Mary (still makes the best eggnog ever!  And she usually has at least two themed trees.)  We still go to Midnight Mass, and I was going to that long  before I was Catholic.  I'm not particularly reverent just a night owl and really immature. The devout don't go to M.M. they go the rest of the year.  That's why it's called going religiously.  As opposed to going once a year which is called Midnight Mass.