jennethink

CONFESSION TIME

I have a confession to make.  Here goes.

I don’t really read all that many blogs.

I feel guilty about it.  I really do.  There is this impression out there that if you HAVE a blog then you READ blogs.  Which is really dumb.  Just because I HAVE a car doesn’t mean I can rebuild a tranny.  Those trannys are not as easy as they might look – let me tell you.   I talked to one in a nightclub one time and she was not nearly as approachable as she seemed.

I’m not sure what all this means.  I’m a blogger by way of having a blog.  But I don’t really like blogs.  I like people – Wendy, Steakbellie, Ann – so I sometimes stop by to read what they have to say.  I read Dooce regularly because she makes me laugh.  I jump over to read what pissed off housewife has to say once a week or so.  I found her though a crooked lymphoma society path when she was in the heart-wrenching process of saying goodbye to a friend with AIDS and Hodgkin’s.  Her words were thrillingly raw and real and so I stop by every now and again to see what she says and hope that one day when I’m on my deathbed, someone will react with that same amount of passion and practical love.  I catch up with Sam and Dan and Andy when I see they’ve posted something new – or 10 or 12 something news but that’s about it.  What’s worse?  I don’t comment.  Hardly at all.  Occasionally if something really REALLY touches me, I’ll toss out a comment.  This is how I met Broccoli.  And I’m certainly glad I did.  Broccoli is walking in the concrete shoes of ABVD right now.  It’s a hell of a walk and he’s doing it with honor.  Go Broccoli.

There are others, I guess.  Others I check in with but I’m not a regular anywhere.  Every now and again I’ll find someone new and, like with any new relationship, I’ll obsess for a few days – the same way when I find a new song I like and I play it over and over and over and over again.  And then one more time.  I’ll read a new-found blog obsessively for a few days – but then I’ll lose interest.  I’ll stop by a couple more times and then pretty soon …

I’m onto the next one.  What can I say?  Don’t hate the player, hate the game.  I have no idea what that means.

Why the bouncing around?  Why can’t I commit?  Dunno.  Maybe it’s my short attention span.  Maybe I’m just a tough audience.  Maybe I’m not really interested in all that much or maybe it’s that there really isn’t that much good writing out there.   I recently started visiting Dan Goleman’s blog.  He’s the author of a book I reference a lot when I teach groups about Emotional Intelligence. I really love EI – love the concept, love the application, love the neuroscience behind it – so I figured I’d really love his blog.   Boy did get that one wrong.   One time my dog swallowed a mushy piece of cantaloupe thinking it was a doggie treat.  She quickly pa-tooeyed it out onto the floor and looked at me like I was crazy.  I know how she felt.  I had that same look on my face the first time I read one of Dan’s posts.  Disappointed.  A bit confused.  I’m sure some people like it.  It’s just not what I was expecting.  That’s all I’m saying.

I guess that’s the beauty of the blog world.  There is any style, any topic, just about any anything out there being blogged about.  Don’t like my style of writing?  Think I’m too personal? Check out Jeff or Mike.  Don’t like Jeff or Mike?  Too businessy? Check out Steakbellie.  Don’t like Steakbellie?  Really??? EVERYBODY likes Steakbellie!

Last week a journalism student at Ohio University – Go Bobcats! – interviewed me for an article she’s writing about cancer patients who blog.  She asked a lot of great questions.  She asked me when I started my blog, if I felt like my blog had changed, if I blogged differently during my cancer, if I felt my blog helped me, if it’s helped any other cancer patients and many more questions.  They were good questions, well thought out.  Most of them I was able to answer right away.  A few I waited a good 2 or 3 ums prior to answering – one, however, caused me great pause. 

Is there anything, she asked, that you wouldn’t blog about?

Is there anything I wouldn’t blog about.

Hmm.

I’m not sure how I answered.  I think I said no.  I think I said, No, in fact there probably isn’t much I haven’t blogged about already.  I’ve posted about my business, my family, my husband, my ovulation, my chemo-induced menopause, my miscarriages, my hair loss – with pictures, my fears, my surgeries, my step-daughter, my step-daughter’s mom and step-dad, and how I feel about every one of the previous listed items.  I’ve posted when I’m happy, sad, weary, confused, irritated, delighted, grateful, hurt, frustrated, thrilled, speechless and more.  I’ve posted from my home, my office, my car, a chemo room, a hospital room, and at least 11 states of the union.  I’ve never posted from Canada, however, and never intend to.  But I really can’t think of a topic I haven’t or wouldn’t post about.

I guess, for me, it all goes back to openness and vulnerability – both of which I value highly.  I post about anything because just about anything can be going on inside me at any given moment.  I’m pretty open with all of that.  Pretty right out there with it.  Because it feels right to me.  Maybe I post about every topic under the sun because I have an unhealthy need to be known.  Maybe I just want to expose myself.  Maybe I’m one trench coat away from an arrest.  A posting pervert – a bloghibitionist.  Or maybe it’s because that’s the kind of writing I really like – the raw kind, the real kind.  I’d like to say I write whatever I feel whenever I feel it because long ago I learned not to care what anyone else thought about me but that’s not really true.  I do care.  If I didn’t, I wouldn’t open the comments, now would I?

FOR A WOMAN WHO CLAIMS TO LIVE IN THE MOMENT I SURE DID MISS ONE

Kansas City weather is funny business.  Never funnier than right at the beginning of spring.  It's a great time - when you can open your kitchen window and still get ice cold water from your tap.  It's the time of year when you can find people wearing everything from fleece to flip-flops.  You can wake up to frost and drive to lunch with your car windows down.  You can go to work in a sweater and jacket and be so improperly dressed in an afternoon meeting that you're bathing in your own sweat. 

A few weeks ago we went through one of these spurts of weather.  And then suddenly, one day, it was just plain gorgeous.  It came out of nowhere. All the weather stations warned us it wouldn't last.  When I got up that morning, The Hub said, Make sure you enjoy the day today!  Because it's going back to cold tomorrow!  I intend to! I told him.  And I did!  Turns out I was in my office most of the day. But even inside I was benefiting from the day.  Sun poured into my light blue office.  I worked at breakneck speed so I could get out there and enjoy it.  I didn't want to abandon my work.  But as I was working I could hear a little niggling in the back of my head.  Like a tennis shoe drying in a far off dryer - clonk, clonk, clonk … noticeable but not annoying.  A quiet chant.  Porch.  Porch.  Porch.  It whispered in my head.  The whisper got louder and louder and so right.  The niggling voice was right.  Porch.  It was a perfect day for the porch.   

Porch sitting is an art, as far as I'm concerned.  There are three classes of porch sitters - upper, middle and lower.  The more experienced, more refined, like Mrs. Murphy across the street, are clearly in the upper class of porch sitters.  Mrs. Murphy can sit for hours on her porch.  Her only tool is the worn rocker she sits in.  Joined.  The two of them.  Rocker and Mrs.  They sway together - long forgotten who is pushing who.  Up back.  Up back.  I've seen Mrs. Murphy hold her grandbabies in her arms while they slept on that porch.  I've left in the middle of the morning and waved. I've come back in the early evening to find her still there - and waved. She always waves back.  But not a wild wave.  Not a "come over and talk to me" wave.  It is just a wave.  A perfect porch sitting wave.  Hand raises up.  chin bobs down.  A small smile.  And that's all.  Mrs. Murphy totally rocks at porch sitting.

I've known the lower class of porch sitters too.  Those people who have no idea what porch sitting is about.  They are hard to distinguish at first but once you identify them, they stick out like popped nails on the floorboards. They really aren't porch sitters at all.  They're porch posers.  They are just pretending to be porch sitters. Porch Posers are the worst sort.  Porch Posers never intended to porch sit.  But somehow they see you on your porch and then decide to go sit on their porch.  But they lack the knowledge, the passion and the understanding and therefore grow tired of just sitting on their porch so they do the unthinkable - they break the invisible porch barrier between your porch and their porch and they ask you something.  I can't stand Porch Posers. 

I belong to the middle class of porch sitters - not nearly refined enough to sit with nothing but my own rocking but not so low class as to actually talk to my neighbors.  I'm comfortable with my porch sitting status although one day hope to join the ranks of Mrs. Murphy.  As if I could.  For now, I have to have tools when I porch sit.   I can't porch sit alone.  Computer.  Book. Pencil.  Sketch pad. Glass of Wine.  These are all items that accompany me to the porch.  That fine day a month ago, I gathered all my tools together to do some right fine porch sitting.   

It was the first Porch Sit of the season and as such, I noticed some things. A lot of some things actually.  Just little things but things nonetheless. Things like . the porch needed sweeping.  And, the pots of twigs needed to be cleaned and moved.  And there were other things.  Just little things but you know, they needed done so I did them.  I thought, I'll be so motivated! I'll do all these things and when I'm done, I'll sit and drink my wine and dream of being Mrs. Murphy.  So I did them.  I did them all.  I cleaned.  I swept. I moved.  And when I was done I re-gathered my porch sitting tools and finally - FINALLY sat down in the white Adirondack chair.  I slid to the back and sighed. I took a deep breath and before I exhaled . BEFORE I WAS EVEN ABLE TO EXHALE . a cloud moved across the sun and a cool wind blew.  I'm not exaggerating the least little bit.  It was the instant I sat.  The sun disappeared.  The temp dropped.  Just like that.  And I said out loud,

I missed it.

The next day the temp was in the thirties.  It stayed cold for weeks.  Every day I'd leave the house in my jacket and scarf and I'd walk across my swept porch and past my properly potted pots and then I'd glance at my chair.   

It was so not worth it.

I CAN'T MOVE

One time many years ago my father shared a semi-private hospital room with an older man who had to be tied down. He had to be tied down because he kept pulling out tubes that were going into his body.  He did it over and over again.  It didn’t matter how much the nurses tried to convince him to leave the tubes alone, the instant they were out of the room he’d remove any line going into his body.  As a last resort, the nurses tied his hands down.  Undaunted, he’d work and work to get free. Every now and again, he’d tear loose and out would come an IV line or a drainage tube.  My dad would call the nurses, they’d come in and tie him down again.  And the cycle would start over.  This went on and on.  One day the elderly man got loose and before my dad could hit the nurses button he’d ripped out his IV line and before the nurses could get there … HE PULLED OUT HIS CATHETER.  Just riiiiip … yanked it out.  Do you know how a catheter works?  Man.  That old man was one tough son of a bitch.

Up until today I’d always thought THAT RIGHT THERE was the worst pain a person would knowingly and willing put their body thorough.  Up until today.   Today when I tried to get out of bed and couldn’t.  Today when I tried to stand up from the toilet and had to use the sink for help.  Today when I thought of how stupid it is to have to bend over TWICE while dressing – once for underpants and ANOTHER TIME for pants.  Today when I cursed the stupid idea I’d had to start working with a personal trainer whose sole mission in life it seems is to make me wish I was Italian and that I had a cousin who could track that trainer down and teach him a lesson or two.  With a tire iron.

Let’s just say this – I’m sure he’s very good this trainer of mine.  I’m sure he’s very, very good and I’m sure if I was in phenomenal shape going into this he could still give me, or anyone, a kick-ass workout.  However, truthfully, giving me a hard workout would not be difficult.  For anyone.  My eight year old could give me a hard work out by asking me to make her a grilled cheese. Grilled.  With cheese on it.  I’m just saying I’m a little out of shape.

I guess cancer will do that to you.

Being as out of shape as I am is unacceptable to me.  So I’m back at it.  Back in the gym, back working my muscles and tossing weight around.  And today my body is all like WTF?!  And doing everything in its limited power to convince me that this working out thing is a bad idea.  A very very bad idea.

At the end of my workout yesterday, my trainer told me he wanted me to spend today doing “active recovery”.  Which basically means some sort of light activity.  Not too much as my muscles are apparently repairing themselves.  Which I find hard to believe. I can’t believe my muscles are stupid enough to actually fix themselves just so I can break them down again.  But I’m – for once – doing everything I’m told.  So I decided to go for a walk.  I had to go to the post office anyway and why not just hoof it up there?  So I did.  It was nice, my walk, and would have been even nicer if I wasn’t crying for most of it.  I have to be honest and say if you’d passed me (and it wouldn’t have been difficult, snails passed me) you wouldn’t think I was actively recovering from anything – except maybe having a hot poker rammed up my ass.  At one point the sky clouded up and I prayed for rain.  Rain please rain! I silently begged between grunts and moans because if it rained I’d take a cab back home.  Or the bus.  Or hop on the back of one of those snails.  But it didn’t rain.  And I had to walk all the way back home. 

I keep telling myself it will be worth it.  But let’s be honest, from the girl who once thought gauchos were a good idea, I don’t always know what I’m talking about. 

I’d always wondered what made that man rip out his own catheter all those years ago.  It just didn't make sense. Especially because it undoubtedly prolonged his hospital stay.  But now, all these years later it is quite clear to me that obviously that old man had a personal training session scheduled the next day.   

HOW FREQUENT IS FREQUENT?

Recently I noticed how annoying it is to stumble across a blog and not know for sure who's writing it or what it is about.  When this happens, I feel like I spend a lot of time and energy trying to catch up. Sort of like coming into the second half of a movie and not knowing the name of any of the characters or if the monkey with a Mohawk is significant to the plot line or just a cute extra. 

I have to figure some people come here and have the same feeling.  Some of these people are patient enough to sort through many blog posts and try to figure what they want to know.  Most, I assume, aren't.  Some of the most persistent send me email and ask me questions.  Instead of individually answering those emails, I've decided to just pull them together here in one post that I'll try to somehow figure out how to keep somewhere so others can access it. 

So here goes, the FAQ of Jenne's blog

Yeah, Hi, I read your blog and I'm sort of wondering, who are you?  (Other wording of this question has included:  Are you somebody? and Who do you think you are? and Should I know you? And if so, Please tell me why because I don't think you are anybody important but if you are, I want to know.)

Who am I.  It's a good question.  I have a little paragraph here somewhere that says,

I'm a wife, a friend, a daughter. I'm a step-mother, a speaker, a pretty good sister. I'm a part-time philosopher because the full time gig didn't pay enough. I'm a trainer, a problem-solver and consultant and if you ask around I think you'll find out I'm a pretty good dancer. 

Cute. But I don't really know what that all means.  I'm just me.  I'm strong-willed and sometimes compassionate.  I'm often too bawdy for my own good.  I do my best to be open and honest and I'm almost always overly loud when I get tickled.  I have this blog because I think I have some things to say.  I enjoy saying them.  I will never claim to enjoy writing them or being a writer because I'm undisciplined and writing takes discipline.  But, as my friend Ann's brother says, I do enjoy having written.

Um, I don't really get your blog.  Which really isn't a question but I'll translate for you:  What's this blog all about?

Heck if I know.  I try to make it more significant than a list of what I had for lunch and less cumbersome than IRS.gov.  I cover just about any topic that hits me.  If I were describing my blog to other people I would simply say it is me in writing.  Sort of like what you'd get if we went to lunch every day.  Except here I'm buying.

Why do you talk about your dad so much?

Clearly you know nothing about therapy.  The short version is my dad was my hero.  My dad was funny and loving and smart and sometimes not so smart but always growing and learning and saying little things that ended up having life-long impact.  Also, my dad died.  I was just a kid and in an instant I went from 15 going on 16 to 15 going on empty.  Although he'd been in and out of hospitals my whole life battling Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system, I was completely shocked when he died.  Because I was 15. And 15 year old girls need their dads.  If I were to draw a timeline of my life, it simply couldn't be continuous and be accurate.  I would have to stop and start it a few times.  My first ending was the day a doctor said the words, He's gone, we did all we could, I'm sorry.

Is this your job, for real?

No.  Not for real.  Not even for pretend.  My pretend job is a turtle wrangler.  My real job is a consultant.  I help leaders of small and large businesses solve small and large performance management problems.  Most of my work centers around how to make sure businesses are getting the best out of their people.  I also do strategic planning, in-house training and motivational speaking.  If you're interested, you can jump to my website. It'll give you the scoop.

So is this a business blog or a personal blog or what?

This is my blog. I believe it is impossible to separate your work from your life.  Sometimes I talk about business lessons, sometimes personal.  It doesn't matter, it all plays.   I believe in congruency - who I am here is who I am.  If you're my friend, this is what you get.  If you hire me to help you figure out what's wrong in your company, this is what you get.  If you stop by here once and never come back, you can know that you got the real me - the whole she-bang, no holds barred.  I believe the more consistent we are, the less we have to worry about.  That's why you'll find every topic on here from my adventures cooking an artichoke to my bout with cancer.   

You have cancer?

Yep.  Or I did anyway. 

Can you tell me more about that?

I can.  I can give you the quick version here and then you can find out the rest by sorting through posts labeled "Cancer Girl".  In June 2006 I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system, which, although a similar cancer to my father's is ironically just a giant coincidence.  After diagnosis, I began what ended up being about 7 months of chemotherapy given every other week.  In December 2006 I was hospitalized for bleomycin toxicity which is a fancy way of saying my lungs went on strike and for a while there we thought I was going to have a permanent stop on my timeline.  I finished my chemo in January 2007 and ended up with my first clean report in March.

Does your mom ever mind it that you are so mean to her in your blog?

No.  Because once when I was in high school she gave me a JC Penney's credit card to buy a pair of gauchos and then went traipsing off into the mall to pick up a soft pretzel or something and I when I tried to use the card it got denied and I had to go up to the office on the 3rd floor and vouch for my mother, apologize and promise to pay the late bill.  Mortified doesn't BEGIN to describe it.  And I think we all know that payback is hell.

And I guess that's about it.  The somewhat FAQs of my blog.  Hopefully it helps. 

Oh, one more thing. I try to answer the emails you send me.  I don't always do a good job of it.  But don't give up on me.  Sometimes an unanswered email will sit in my inbox for a couple of months and then blammo! I'll send a reply.  It isn't the timeliest way to deal with email but I like to think of it as throwing a surprise party several months after your birthday. Really, totally unexpected and just the tiniest bit charming . or is that annoying?  I'm always confusing the two.

There.  I feel better.

14 DAYS BETWEEN (First Line)

Contrary to the gentle sound of his name, it seemed Olin’s sole purpose in life was to prove to her that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.

ON BEING GOOGLED

I don’t watch my stats.  Every so often I look to see how many new visitors come by here in a day or how many comments per post I have on average.  Other than that, I don’t really pay attention. 

I suspect from watching my stats I could do a better job of marketing my words.  Maybe I should.  But I don’t.  Add this to the long, long list of maybe I shoulds but I don’ts.  Like flossing. And not scheduling my evenings around re-runs of Flavor of Love.

Today, however, I checked my stats.  I actually looked at a report showing where my visitors came from, where they went when they left here, how long they stayed.  I looked at all different aspects of my visitors including totally useful information – like screen resolution. Because THAT matters.  I also was able to see the posts they read – the posts that got the most attention and the posts that don’t get any attention.  Of course, I began to feel badly for the second group of posts.   I can’t help but feel like a mother whose one child is favored over her other children.  It’s an odd feeling.  I felt defensive. Nearly offended.  I began mentally listing all the good things about the ignored posts.  Like: Look, I know my little Janie isn’t a basketball star like her sister but YOU SHOULD SEE HER MAKE A SANDWICH.

Most of my visitors come here because they’ve bookmarked it.  They don’t come from somewhere else – they just come right here.  I like that.  I like that they, at some point in their day, decide to open up their browser and type in www.jenneink.blogs.com. They are specifically motivated.  They want to know what I have to say.  How cool is that?

Other people come because they’ve found me through some sort of link placed somewhere else.  Steakbellie’s readers jump over here.  So do findingblanche’s.  Other’s too. I’m surprised to find links from some sites I never knew about. Places I didn’t know I was listed.  It’s a funny feeling to see your name where you never expected it to be.  I once saw “Jenne eats A LOT” scrawled on the bathroom wall at the local D.Q.  It’s that feeling all over again.  I feel proud, honored, and a little like developing an eating disorder.   

The most interesting visitors are the ones who come from various search engines.  They’ve typed in a certain combination of words and somehow – sometimes quite inexplicably – end up here on my blog. Sometimes these searches are about cancer or chemotherapy.  That's nice.  I like the thought that someone needing information or a feeling of not being alone stumbles to the computer and searches for anything that will help.  I like that they land on my page.  I like that they sort by category and read through nearly every Cancer Girl post.  That makes me feel like in some small way, it was worth it.

Cancer searches make sense.  Searches for stepmom or chapstick make sense.  But some searches don’t make any sense at all – and not just because I don’t know how they ended up on my site but “finger emotional rational smile trust” seems like a terribly odd combination of search terms as does “oboe half bright.”  But then again, what do I know?  There could be hundreds of people just screaming out there, desperate to find anything about oboe half bright. 

I’m assuming finger emotional rational smile trust and oboe half bright didn’t find what they were looking for when they landed on my blog.  I’m assuming – I don’t know for sure.

I wouldn’t normally use these stats in any way at all.  Not to market differently or to write differently or anything.  However, I do want to mention one particular visitor just in case you are still out there. To the person who googled “bald big boobies woman” – I’d like to say, Hi. And my, I can only imagine how disappointed you were. 

IT'S OFFICIAL

I’ve been de-ported.

It feels somewhat surreal.  But very exciting.  I so wanted to keep the little bastard.  And I did everything I could to talk the surgeon into letting me take that port home.  Didn’t seem like an unrealistic expectation.  I’ve been taking it home with me for 9 months after all.  No go.  Turns out they won’t let anything out of the hospital THAT HAS TISSUE ON IT and that don’t mean Kleenex, my friend (all together now .. EWWWWW.)  But even with my meat on it, I needed to have it.  I’ve heard about soldiers bringing home “trophies” from war.  Maybe this was the same thing.  It was evidence of my own personal victory.  My Japanese samurai. My scalp from a white man.  My stage-tossed Tom Jones panties. I don’t know but I wanted it.  Unfortunately, thanks to HIPPA, OSHA and about 9 laws, the surgeon just couldn’t let it happen but she tried desperately to get me a spare one to take home.  She even looked in her office to see if she had one laying around.  I’ve got a lot of things, she said. You know surgical type things just laying around in my office.   And I silently vowed to never, ever meet her at her place for lunch.

But alas, I left without it.  I did, however leave with a brochure usually given when the port is placed and it did not disappoint. 

This diagram shows you what the port looks like

The surgeon showed me mine after she removed it. And it's true.  It looks almost exactly like that.  Except with tissue attached.

And this picture shows you were the port was inserted (I, of course, already had this information which is a good thing because if I was relying on this brochure I'd swear my port was being placed somewhere in St. Louis)

And this one … this one showing how the port will be accessed during treatment is clearly a still shot from Pulp Fiction.

Really?  Do they really think this drawing is going to make someone feel good about having one of these put in?  Just hold still there, little lady, this won’t hurt a bit. BLAMMO! I can remember all during treatment describing the nurses accessing my port as "being stabbed in the chest."  NOW do you believe me??

The best part?  The very very best part?  We went to Chick-fil-a immediately after!  Mmm mmmm … nothing says recovery like a Chicken biscuit with egg.

And now I sit here.  Portless.  I keep touching my chest where my port used to be. It is still tender from the surgery but I don’t care.  I keep touching it.  I’m in awe.  I’m like one of those people on extreme makeovers looking at themselves for the first time.  Is that me??? My chest feels so wonderfully flat.  And who EVER thought I’d be happy about that?  I just can’t get over it.  My port is gone.  My cancer is gone.  My oncologist said in two more months all the rest of the lingering side effects should be gone. 

Gone gone gone.

Remember that story I told about dropping my weights while snuba diving?  That port couldn’t have weighed more than 2 or 3 ounces … but those were the heaviest freaking 2 or 3 ounces ever.  I will never forget that feeling of that port being pulled from my chest. It was like a ripcord.  And even though my head knows that port was nowhere near my lungs, I finally feel like I can exhale.  I can really and truly breathe.

I can finally breathe.

A REALLY GOOD REASON TO LOVE APRIL 18

I don't hate much.  I really don't.  Sometimes I think this is pretty dang awesome.  Sometime it is hard.  The truth is, people want you to occasionally hate.  They want you to feel as passionately repulsive about something as they do. They want you to ball up, clench and spew ugly.  I guess I get this.  I guess.  But because I can often see both sides of a story, I just rarely hate.  I don't hate people.  I don't hate foods.  I don't hate speeches or movies or books.  I do hate crocodiles but you knew that.  Even though I feel strongly about things, I still don't hate.  Years and years ago my grandmother was staying with us.  My sister did something vile to me - like taking the bigger potato chip - and I lost it.  I freakin' lost it.  Standing in the family room with my fists in rocks at my side and my face all shades of crimson I screamed, I hate her!  And I meant it.  Oh, how I meant it. 

It was the only time I ever saw my grandmother look at me that way.

That's a horrible word, she said, A horrible, horrible word.  And that fixed me good.  I still can see that look.  She's right.  Hate is such a horrible word.  A horrible, strong word.  Such a very, very strong word, and maybe that's why I just can't see using it very often. 

That said, I hate my port.  I hate it.  Even though I know it has saved my veins, even though I've read story after story about people who don't have a port and the awful stuff they have to go though without it, even though I originally thought it was the coolest thing ever, I hate this mother frickin' doorbell in my chest.  I think you know why.  Only cancer patients have ports.  And as of March 28, 2007 I am not a cancer patient.

You ready for the good news?  As of today, possibly as soon as 11:30 this morning, I won't have a port.

Can you hear that?  That's the sound of a giant book closing on this chapter in my life, y'all.  And

I
Love
That

.

VIRGINIA TECH

I’m glued to the television set. When I’m not looking directly at the screen at images of unspeakable heartbreak, I’m staring at my computer screen refreshing it ever 3 seconds, every 2 seconds to see what new information is available.  New news, new pictures, new video.  Anything.

I was talking with a friend yesterday afternoon.  She was in her car and I was here at my house.  I was filling her in on details.  Details none of us want to know.

I know why I get obsessed like this.  I know why I will keep reading, keep watching, keep trying to find information. I know exactly what I’m looking for. 

Why?

There is evil in this world.  That much is sure. 

I had lunch with a good friend yesterday.  Neither of us had yet heard of the Virginia Tech tragedy.  Our conversation, however, was eerily appropriate.  We talked about evil and pain.  We discussed why hard things happen.  We wondered what’s the purpose of suffering in this world. 

I was so confident in my answers.  I communicated my beliefs well, I think.  My friend and I weren’t far off from each other in what we believe and we enjoyed that rare camaraderie of two friends, respecting each other, disagreeing slightly but listening, hearing, and agreeing on the big stuff.  And the big stuff made a lot of sense, sitting there on a brick patio in the bright warm sun eating Indian food.

This morning I see parents and others are already calling for the firing of the university president and others.  I hear how furious some students and others are – pointing fingers, criticizing police and investigators. I, of course, can understand this reaction.  I get it.  There is so much pain, so much anger, and as humans, we so badly want to find an outlet for it.  We want someone to pay.  Perhaps later we will find out that there was negligence.  Maybe.  Right now, however, I do think it is pre-mature.   Understandable.  But premature.

I can’t help but immediately begin to think about what can be learned,
But it’s too early for lessons.
Too early for anything but grief, comfort and prayers.

All those affected have all of that from me.

UNEXPLAINABLE, UNIMAGINABLE

There is nothing to say.

I cannot imagine what families are going through at this moment waiting to hear, to know.  I cannot imagine hanging in the moment, heart racing with each phone call, hoping beyond hope, desperate for your mind to land on some reason, any reason, any other reason why you haven’t heard from your little boy, your little girl.  Watching that clock, dreading each passing second, knowing its movement brings the worst news of your life closer.

The worst news of your life.

This hurts my heart.