The Giants - PacBell Park Also A Good Place to be "In The Event Of..."

Hello Fellow Travelers!

I went to a Giants' game this week and they easily won so that was great.  Great seats (Thanks, D.), great snacks and on the way to the parking garage I checked out the newly gentrified China Basin that many of the young hipsters walked to after the game.  There were easily a half dozen microbreweries within walking distance of the ballpark.  The entire area was new with walkways and new real estate where it used to be sketchy. 

Last week I posted a little blurb about the last season of Top Chef in New Orleans and why I hoped we could watch it together.  Not all my programming ideas have ended so well.  "Doomsday Castle" was disappointing but I was really alarmed at the hijinx on a program called,"Naked & Afraid".  That's the show on The Learning Channel (of all places) that doesn't promise the winner anything.  When one naked (and really stupid) man gives himself parasites and has to be carried out of the jungle on a stretcher to the hospital!  To the surprise of absolutely no one!  The fearless female goes it alone and then she left too!  So it's finally just the camera running alone!  In the Seychelles!  Hilarious! 

I included a picture of Yoda this week (Another reason "Revenge of the Sith" is my favorite Star Wars movie is we see a much younger Yoda - this Yoda kicks ass and doesn't take names!) partly because he's a classic but mostly because his vague, Confucian-speak (Is he waxing poetic?  Or  just  talking sideways?  Who cares?) carries a really positive message.  Yoda is also good friends with the Wookies!  And who doesn't love Wookies?  Yoda or the idea of Yoda is pretty inspirational, and, as I've said before I'll take inspiration wherever I can get it.

Again, I have to think everything happens for a reason.  I never cared for driving and now I can't.  I used to work in Food & Beverage, and now I can't consume either!  My ability to communicate has been diminished to my right hand, so I got a new laptop and started writing.  I feel great all the time and have no earthly reason for feeling so good.  Usually I would say, "It's not cancer so who cares?"  Which is pretty much my baseline for measuring anything these days but it's important for me to know if brain surgery is the source of my incredible lightness of being.  Because if my false-yet-oddly-familiar sense of well-being came from having a large tumor removed from my brain, I would like to know about it.

If there is a harder way to do something I will invariably find it, and cancer recovery is no exception,  I figure I've been locked inside my head for over two and a half years.  Armed, bank robbers, rapists, serve less time than that.  I checked. I'm bored, really.  My uncanny vast scope of knowledge of pop culture (and history - not only can I tell you Mr. Eastwood's marital status, I also know his body of work, in chronological order. Why I know this, and more importantly, why I can't forget it, I have no clue.) Maybe I am supposed to rant all this seemingly disconnected trivia together.  I have to increase my Bataan Death Marches (don't ask) and lengthen my balancing sessions (really don't ask) at each end of the day.

A couple of days ago I checked in with my oncologist - he's another one that makes me laugh - from his perspective the cancer was obliterated so from his end it's gone brilliantly!  My life sucks but there's no cancer so who cares?  Seriously, that's the threshold for success!  It's as low as it sounds!  Just try not to die!  Past that, no one can say for sure.  Well, I can still make fun of everyday events and still have plenty of food and beverage and goofy trends to offer derogatory commentary about.  So there's that.

I guess since there is no place for someone like me I'll have to create my own space and a niche for myself.  I'm too young to be old and too old to be young.  So maybe I'll set a new trend - my own.  I am still pretty smart.  I'll keep working physically and keep rehabbing until I regain something resembling a life. Not seeing any real necessity for food and having a really high threshold of pain leaves me uniquely qualified to repel any mutant cells.  I was born to do this.  Nothing has happened yet with the neuroplasticity that I can see, but I'm ready for everything else that's coming!

 

10:00 Wednesday Nights? Meet All Of Us In New Orleans!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

The other day I saw one of my favorite movies - "Mame" with Rosalind Russell.  I had to watch for a few minutes it's that good, Complete costume and scenery changes and arguably the gayest person ever committed to film!  Did I mention it was freakin' great?  I should have because it is!  There is no singing or dancing or killing.  By that description alone I should hate it but it's amazing!  If you see it advertised as coming up on TCM or Netflix or wherever, check it out.


Beginning October 2, and many subsequent Wednesdays at 10 PM on Bravo, the last season (for me anyway) of the last serious competition program for foodies (Top Chef) in one of the last bastions of exciting food - New Orleans will be on for a date night or at least appointment television(Patient Spouse and I, that is) we can agree on.  Other programs have come and gone, and I don't think I'll ever work with food again.  Being hungry 24/7 and not being able (or advised) to handle utensils I still like to live vicariously through others making fabulous food.  They have the down and dirty Quickfire Challenge at the beginning of the show and finish with a very satisfactory elimination at the end.  Regular judges from TC will be there and I'll be there too (in spirit) so if you like great food competition shows this one is as good as they get.  And it's on in the middle of the week, late.  So there's that.

People who celebrate their food don't ever constrain or concern themselves with calorie counts or nutritional stats.  San Francisco is known for food, so is New Orleans.  I, for one, can't wait  to see what they come up with!  When it comes to food they don't mess around in the Big Easy!  They eat what tastes good followed by some really off the chart dessert!  Then they drink and dance all night!  And that's just a Wednesday!

I received a golden 8" Steiff Teddy from my mom and he came to me sporting a gold medal (2000) so I named him "Cancer Bear"  He's made with mohair, he fights injustice everywhere... well you get the idea.  Along the lines of "Superman".  Only it's a little happy bear, with a gold medal and a cape flying behind him.  Apart from the Steiff I keep with a snap of a baby Jan with that bear,  CB, as I think of him, is highly inspirational.  And believe me, I'll take inspiration wherever I can find it.

For instance, you may have noticed I replaced my usual photo with a picture of the perfect tea roses that one bro-in-law brought me in a lovely nouveau vase another bro-in-law gave me.  I have stared  at this plant for hours.  And Patient Spouse knows how visually driven I am and cuts a tea rose to put in the blue/purple vase every week.   I have identified my amazing physical response to brain cancer as being cockroach-like, hard-to-kill.  Now I associate it with the wildly prolific tea rose.  Also hard to kill, better smelling than the roach.

Every day I wake up and ask myself what I can do to make my spouse and son's life better?  I didn't used to.  I am happy every minute to be alive!  I tease my mother not because she sent me cat fur (although for me that was something special) but because she equipped me with the twisted sense of humor and strength to thrive in this situation.  Although I'm not there yet, I'm getting close.  Who needs food?  Those clowns on Top Chef are going to make something yummy at 10:00 on Wednesdays - I'll just watch that.

PS - More tangible evidence of fashion trends I am neither partaking in or missing out on:  Knee length python boots with peep toe cutouts.  Yes, ladies, you most certainly did read that right.  I'll pause for a moment so you can read it again.  You go to all the fake trouble of wearing a "boot" and you need a pedicure?  Seriously?  Is this a "stripper thing"?  Because I've missed those before.  So somebody give me a head's up if these boots are only useful on the stripper pole, thanks.

More Crap My Mother Has Sent Me - Pt. Trois - Homeland Edition

Hello Fellow Travelers!

I took German so all my French is Pepe lePew (much like my hair, but that's another story) what I'm alluding to with my little Homeland reference is the CIAesque way in which UPS delivered a box to me with nothing in it but a laptop.  OOOOOHHH!! VERY MYSTERIOUS!!  Don't get me wrong.  I am thrilled to have a device primarily my own to call dibs on with some reasonable expectation of it's availability and status.  Learning (or being forced to learn but who cares?) to use our other devices for a few days was good cross training for me.  Painstakingly writing words like painstakingly on the I-Pad took soooo long but now I know to do it and use the texting .  Remember people I have lost almost all appendage use in fine motor skills except for the use of my right hand, and I'm a South Paw.  Where my daily comment about hunger /sleep/pain, (I am OK with all three thank you very much) usually prompts my folks to send out some Werther's (Hard Candies), maybe some Pepperidge Farms Shortbread Something Or Others.  And my mom was sending me real Steiff Teddy Bears.

So today I get a shoebox with crackers and an article about real bears, so I guess I see where I rate in the big schematic of my mom and dad's universe'.  If I'm not churning out that daily love fest  I get a shoebox with Ritz Crackers.  I hate Ritz Crackers.  Nothing is ever better when it sits on a Ritz.  Was it Coco Chanel or my mom who said "You can never be too rich or too thin."  and "Heart Healthy" Ritz Crackers suck!  Hard! So, if it means I'm spoiled I don't care.  I don't like those crackers now I didn't like them when I was little.  If they are "Heart Healthy" that just means they'll taste worse than the regular pieces of dough some machine spews out by the bazillion for the masses. 

Last month, I received teddy bears, caramels and cookies in Priority Shipping, now I'm gettin' a  shoebox with crackers.  Do you see a pattern emerging?  I do!  Better keep those grades up Trojan Man, you never know when you'll be demoted by Mom(Just kidding, Trojan Mom)  Or maybe you know exactly when, either way a shoebox full of crackers and bear media  is not good! 

Whoa!  I'm not sure, but I think I've been downgraded?  Mom, Ritz?  Really?  Why not Underwood "devilled" ham(whatever that is) or the cheese that gets sprayed out of a can?  My mom knows how I picky I can be about food - she's twice as picky as I ever was!  What I learned about food from my mother was that it was a necessary evil.  My mother instilled in me from an early age that the world was full of delicious food and I couldn't eat all of it.  It's always given me power over anything as silly as hunger just knowing that every day you were going to have to locate more food, make it edible, eat it, pay for it, and this process will be required several times daily, forever!  Ha!  Doesn't sound so great anymore does it?  All that endless consuming!  Yuk!  My mother taught me the value of enjoyment - I only eat things I really like.  I like Gummi Bears, German Haribo bears.

Mary and Mike's Wild Tea Rose from Our Garden

Do you know why they invented Teddy Bears?  Besides Teddy Roosevelt?  They came up with the idea, in part, because real bears are fairly unpleasant!  They are really strong. really hungry, not too smart and very smelly.  Real bears loiter around trashcans and campsites and often have to be relocated.  Not Teddy Bears!  I adore Teddy bears!  I collected Steiff Bears for years and will pass them along to that person who "gets them".  My maternal grandmother gave me my first Teddy Bear, a mohair Steiff, and he's had "a little work done" and he doesn't growl anymore but neither do I, and I still have him!

I had my share of Barbie Dolls but no baby dolls only bears, teddy bears are really cute.  Case in point:  "Ted" is a movie about what would happen if your brother/son/husband/boyfriend grew up with his favorite plush teddy bear,  And Seth McFarlane gets away with murder because the bear is so darned cute.  Weird Sex?  Strippers?  Afternoon Bong Hits?  Flash Gordon?  It's all adorable coming from a Teddy Bear!  R-rated, but adorable!  I mean, come on, that teddy bear hoisting himself up into a chair on Johnny Carson, was too cute, and can we talk about Mila Kunis?   She always cracks me up/breaks my heart.  But the core of the story, the suspension of disbelief, is the relationship between the dude (Mark Wahlberg) and his bear (Ted!)

Fair warning:  If you don't find teddys the least bit compelling, this movie is not for you.  Having my best teddy bear come to life and always be with me?  I would love that.  A pot-smoking, hooker-addicted Southie?  Not so much.  But it's a Teddy Bear!  AWWW! OK, he's still adorable and the kids still can't watch his fuzzy butt!  Now that we have that settled...

A couple of weeks ago my cat parked herself on my old computer and pried off a letter somehow.  We have several devices and I was perfectly happy to wait until we got a new computer but I wasn't able to send off my daily missives to my mom for a few days.

A solitary box arrived without a packing slip or return address.  Inside was a laptop preloaded with a bunch of apps and nothing else!  Lucky for me Patient Spouse knew how to fire that up with no attachments required.  I know my mom & dad are responsible for making sure that I have my  own device to compose from.  And so far I'm ranting up a storm!   I'm not exactly sure who is responsible for the covert manner in which it was shipped, it could be completely unintentional, maybe it just seemed covert.  That's my dad's style, he just shows up no  fanfare no heads up.  My mother tends to include some note of explanation or bear or story about bears.  So though this might be the handiwork of some three letter American acronym, I'm pretty sure my parents are behind the laptop mystery.  I have this weird idea that I have something to "say" using this format.  I don't know exactly what or for how long but lately when I ask questions of this nature they go unanswered.  But you guys know me:  as long as I can I'll keep asking... 

 

Am I the Only Person Who Sees A Problem Here?

Hello Fellow Travelers!

In order to shine a light onto whom are the unsung heroes of the medical profession - nurses - Johnson & Johnson made and (I imagine)paid for a vignette of a dedicated Hospice Nurse and her elderly hospice patient, Bertha.  At the end of the "tribute" you see this touching tableau has been brought to you by your friends at Johnson & Johnson.

Bertha is apparently from Denmark because she relates this story to her caregiver about someone in Denmark opening a window so the soul of the dead person can get out.  Maybe it's the dramatic acting or the knowledge that hospice = death, but every time I see that poignant message of dedication it seems to me that old lady is ready to go but she's thwarted at every turn by her caring nurse.  By the time the nurse tells the Danish Death Story poor Bertha looks more than ready to go to her great reward.  Let that poor woman die already!  Pretty obvious she's ready to go!  Let her go already.


"Not tonight, Bertha." she reassures us as she closes the window, "Not tonight!"  Oh come on, this Danish lady is readier than Hamlet to meet her maker but for being unable to communicate with her caregiver.  Seen through my cracked prism, Bertha's quaint, Danish custom takes on a whole new meaning.  I can be a little fuzzy too.  So if it is obvious to me that she's ready to take  a dirt nap,  she's probably shouting it out to lots of people.  If she was a real person which she is not.

However, instead of quietly appreciating our nation's nurses I am freaking out over this senior citizen who conveys such pathos.  Unable to speak, like me, I just want to open that window and get this show on the road. She can thank me later!

PS-I received a message not too long ago from someone who likes my rants.  I was reminded that this person thought the chorus to "Jack & Diane" was "Oh yeah! Life goes on, Long after 5th Period and Living in the john!"

What's hilarious about that is that it makes perfect sense because it's rock and roll and it makes no sense.  It's not supposed to.  "I am the eggman, I am the walrus! Kookookachoo!" It was true then and it's true now.  Who the hell knows what it means?  Who cares?  It's rock!  It's supposed to scare parents and embolden  the young.  From the little I've heard, it's still doing it's job.