This is a snapshot of me, just after I finished my chemotherapy treatments. My hair was staring to grow back in and I still wasn’t wearing a prosthetic leg very often. You can see that I’m starting to gain back some of my lost weight–I’m guessing that I’m probably up to nearly 90 lbs here.
In this pic I was panning for gold in a mountain stream with my family. It’s one of the very few pictures that I have of myself in the post-chemo era.
I’m actually not wearing these socks today because I headed over to campus early wearing my typical leather maryjanes (too narrow for fuzzy socks).
But if I was at home and sitting in my cozy chair and reading, these are what I would be wearing on this overcast and drizzly day…. :)
If you are sitting in your rocking chair, reeling just a bit because this weekend has just flown by…and yet you can’t help but smirk when you think about your interaction at the Farmer’s Market yesterday. There you saw an FFA club from your high school selling pumpkins. You told them that Bakersfield High School was your alma mater and bantered a bit, reminiscing about the campus (Once a Driller, Always a Driller). One of the ‘cooler’ young boys that was lounging in the back said, ‘I doubt it was that long ago, was it?’ Well, if this is you, you really enjoyed seeing his jaw drop when you told him that you were class of ’89. And you smiled a bit his reply:
“Wow, um, yah, that really was a long time ago….”
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (or in other words, about 18 years ago) there was a Halloween party on Oct 14th. And this cute pirate danced with a girl dressed as a reindeer. And the song was Alphaville’s “Forever Young.”
So I don’t know if John will be dressing as a pirate again this year, but he’ll always be my pirate.
I’ve been a bit depressed about living in SoCal for a few weeks, ever since we returned from Boston, really. I felt like I wanted to flee away to somewhere with four seasons, somewhere where people wear wool. All of your lovely pictures of autumn leaves made this longing even more intense. I wanted to look out my window and see red and orange and not green, green, green.
So this was on my mind as I was in my garden a few days ago. I decided to go on a hunt for color, to see just how many different shades I could capture in 15 minutes in my plot. Below are a few of the results:
PURPLE
RED
PINK
ORANGE
YELLOW
GREEN
BLUE
After I came home and sorted through my photos I felt a bit better. I made myself a big salad with garden lettuce and thinly sliced up a zucchini and drizzled it with a bit of flavored vinegar & oil and spiced with some cracked pepper (yum).
True, we have little seasonal variety here–just a range of somewhere in the 70s and 80s year-round, but the local food is good and the gardening opportunities abound. I suspect that someday we’ll be living somewhere we I get true seasons again. But for now I’ll stop complaining and just enjoy being here. :)
These lines were penned by the first Quaker Nobel Peace Prize winner, Emily Greene Balch, who won the award in 1946:
Let us be patient with one another,
And even patient with ourselves.
We have a long, long way to go.
So let us hasten along the road,
The road of human tenderness and generosity.
Groping, we may find one another’s hands in the dark
As a historical note, Quakers have been awarded the Peace Prize multiple times:
1977 Amnesty International (founded by Quakers)
1947 Friends Service Council, American Friends Service Committee (both are Quaker organizations)
Though she was raised Quaker, she later became Presbyterian:
1931 Jane Addams
There may be other Quaker Peace Prize winners that I’m not aware of….do let me know if I’ve missed any.
Oh, and how do you feel about Al Gore’s award? You can weigh in over at John’s blog.
One of my more illustrious ancestors–a former governor of New York.
I’m not seeing much of a family resemblance. Heaven knows I didn’t inherit his hair! (and what’s truly amazing about his ‘do is that was long before the days of the carefully-crafted bedhead look…makes me wonder if he didn’t have some special tin of bear grease pomade on his bathroom counter…)
On second thought, his eyebrows might look just a bit like mine when my tweezers have gone missing for a few weeks…
Ellycat has been so super snuggly lately. It’s getting just a bit chillier around here (yes, my northern friends, it was about 60 degrees this morning–brrr!) so Elly is my new best lap buddy.
She also loves it when I leave my dresser drawers ajar and will leap in and nestle in my skivvies.
PurrrPurrrr…..
A picture from my garden meditation time yesterday. My roses are still blooming (joy)! This one smelled so fruity and flowerly–I so wish you could’ve been there with me…(and I did pluck just one from the bush to add to my kitchen sink windowsill).
A quotation that I have been pondering the past few days:
“If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.”
~Gelett Burgess
I want to be open to new ideas, to continue learning, growing and changing. A life lived with fear and rigidity is not, for me, a satisfying one! I think life is too short to not be open. We should be absorbing and experiencing many new things…to tread in places where we are are unsure. To be like this rose–showing our most vulnerable inner places and sharing it with everyone, even those who may not recognize the courage that it takes to be open.
Folks:
I’m thinking I may incorporate interpretive dance into my teaching repertoire. Here’s a great ’70s-era example of protein synthesis taught by this particular technique (h/t creek running north)…
As a historian of 19th century medicine, I spend a lot of time reading grody accounts of diseases and botched surgeries. Believe it or not, I love it. Here’s a tasty little bit of history for you–an account of a c-section performed in 1857 (which was back in the day when they thought inflammation and oozing pus was a good thing in wound healing and not a sign of infection….):
“The first three days a single thickness of domestic [linen] moistened in cold water is applied to the exposed abdomen over the wound to get the refrigerating action of evaporation. As soon as suppuration is established [a discharge of pus], this dressing is replaced by a warm poultice of bread and milk, which is continued until she is well. A weak dilution of chloride of soda was several times injected through the vagina into the womb, from which it issued at the abdominal wound, and did not return by the natural passages. These cleansings diminished very much the almost gangrenous foeter of the days of suppuration. The abdominal flatus was drawn off by an esophagus tube per rectum. A silver catheter remained constantly in the urethra by which the bladder was kept nearly always empty. The bladder was incised first accidentally, then purposely, during the operation, before the womb was reached. These slight opening closed kindly, by first intention.”
Bleh. The gangrenous foeter? How’s that for a flowery way to say nasty stench?
Yah, just as you were sitting back in your office chair and yawning a bit, thinking, “Naw, there’s no way she’ll post again today” (thus breaking her previous record of three posts in one day), she goes and posts again. What is it with that pilgrimgirl?
People:
For those of you who just can’t get enough of trains (and you know who you are), don’t you dare miss today’s Daily Dose of Imagery. Sit back and just feel those rails moving beneath you as you move forward into the horizon….
And if you really want to sleep well tonite, you can add a bit of this to your mind just as you’re drifing off into a train-induced dreamworld….
