My doctor did not hide his tray of tools fast enough after the procedure. It looked like a vampire's charcuterie platter.
"Whoa, gruesome."
"It's not as bad as it looks!"
I think, if you explained the whole procedure to a doctor of the future, they would agree that it was exactly as bad as it looked.
Results in about a week.
I have commandeered a power washer and I'm getting ready to prep the house for painting. Ivory and charcoal, probably.
Or, before anyone can stop me:
My brain decided, logically, that the best thing to do would be to paint the entire house. “For baby Jesus,” I said. In Newfoundland, people paint their houses before Christmas, just in case the Christ Child shows up for a dram of whiskey. I’m a non-believer, but it’s always good to be prepared for unexpected hospitality at this time of year. Even if you are someone with a doormat that says “GO AWAY”.
But I did not get to paint the house. This weekend we had to trim the lychee tree and fire up the wood chipper, instead. For baby Jesus. And also for our elderly neighbors, who asked if we could please trim the damn thing because it was out of control and taking over their carport. The painting will wait another week.
In the middle of this, I had a dream about an old friend. In the dream he was the same as he had been in high school, and I hugged against his shoulder, relaxed completely for the first time in a very long time, and started crying in relief. He’s the guy you want to talk to when you’re worried about cancer, because he had it as a kid and can crack a joke about it.
The next day, the boy texted me. He’s not a soft-shouldered teenager anymore, he’s a ropy beef-stick man, but he feels the same anyway.
Ho’omaluhia has to be the most beautiful setting for a gallery there is, even if you trip over dress-tossing influencers and their camera-snapping boyfriends every few feet. After the reception, we walked down to the lake, and Leif fell in love with every duck in the park. I told Mike to grab an armful of ducks and make them run across the park benches for me so I could hear their little feet go flap flap flap flap, but evidently that is where his devotion to my mental well-being ends.
After we were all muddy up to the knees and nearly lost my mother to a fairy ring of mushrooms, we packed the family off to Kin Wah, and Zenny discovered that she really loves tiny cups of loose leaf tea and giant lazy Susans covered with shrimp and noodles.
It was a perfect day. Really needed that.
Okay, so here is what happened: on a scale from normal to cancer, my tests came back somewhere on the bad end of the range, but they won’t know exactly what is happening until they nip a few chunks out of me in 2 weeks. The good news is that if it is cancer, they can just take my parts out; I’m not having any more kids anyway. The bad news is if it’s not cancer, all they can do is carve the bad stuff out of me like a jack-o-lantern every few months until it becomes cancer, because that is how health insurance works. My doctor is going to snoop around for another excuse to remove the parts and just get it over with, since they've been giving me general woe anyway.
Kept everything together on Halloween until the kids were asleep in bed, and then Mike put his hand on my shoulder and I suddenly started crying. The deep, full-body kind of crying, not the dignified film-heroine kind.
The next morning, I was supposed to be dropping off artwork for a gallery show, but I had forgotten the required labels at work and there was no time to get them. I was ready to give up on the whole thing, but Mike said no, went to the drug store to print new labels, and then took off of work to drive me across the island. At the gallery, the women in charge of the show frowned at the saw-tooth hangers on the back of my frames and said no, they needed to be wired, as stated in the prospectus. I felt hot-faced embarrassment, because I had read the prospectus, but thought it just meant the art needed to be ready to hang on a nail, not that they needed literal wire. I quickly packed the paintings up and said we could go home, but Mike said no again, drove us to the hardware store, and wired my paintings in the parking lot. I started crying again (the dignified kind this time). When I got my shit together, we went back into the gallery with the properly labeled and wired paintings, and the ladies cheered when they saw us coming. They were glad we hadn't given up and gone home, and by then I was, too. The Association of Hawaii Artists show will be up at the Ho'omaluhia gallery until December. Opening reception and awards ceremony this Saturday. Fingers crossed for my three little paintings.
On the way home, Mike pulled into Best Buy and took me to the camera department. We played with all the floor model cameras until the store employees had worked up a sweat, jogging back and forth to deactivate the anti-theft alarms we kept setting off.
The man went full Dad Mode on me, and I appreciate it.
So that's what's going on. It's going to be fine. Just not how I wanted to be spending pie season.
Had roast beef and did shitty karate up and down the neighborhood with the kids. Couldn’t find any old Coors bottles to fit my Cobra Kai costume, so I drank Guinness out of a kombucha bottle.
So creppy
Whoa scary
Something went wrong in my latest round of screenings, and my doctor wants to sit down with me on Monday to go over it. While booking the appointment, I was too busy analyzing the receptionist's voice for clues to realize that Monday was Halloween. If I get bad news an hour before handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, it's going to be a rough night. Luckily, I'm dressing as Johnny Lawrence, so if I start throwing candy bars at kids, it'll be in character.
I didn't like Cobra Kai when it first came out, but workplace peer pressure got to me, and it does have its moments
This time, if I get bad news, I am not going to do something stupid like a book a trip I shouldn't take and delete 10 years of journals. A plan will be in place.
The plan so far:
Step 1. Leave the doctor's office, get in my car, drive to the beach, wade into the water, and give that shark another chance to finish me off.
Step 2. Buy the Nikon D850 I've been wanting.
It isn't a good plan, but I have all weekend to think about it.
Just chop the organs out already, Doc. I don't need them anymore, and I'm not interested in having interventions every 5 years until they finally decide to kill me. I have arch enemies to outlive.
The first kid to walk up took a pumpkin, scratched in a pair of eyes, a big smiling mouth, and a dick and balls for a nose. "Look!" he showed his friend, "He's a Chad!"
I took the child's phone and shot-put it into the ocean.
Depraved youths in line for free açaà bowls
Next time I’m skipping the craft and just giving them stickers.
On Sunday, we were up at the stables for another horseback riding lesson. One of the students was a toddler in diapers and a spiked helmet, being led around by a nervous-looking instructor who was trying to coax him into patting the horse with the brush without getting stomped into the mud or kicked in the head. Seems like a lot of money to pay to endanger your baby when we have a beach full of sharks right there, for free, but okay. While Zenny trotted in circles with her teacher (and a horse), I wandered around and took unflattering pictures of all the farm animals.
Someone dropped a goat pellet, RUN
Did not get snot on me this time, I have natural aptitude for farming.
The Royal Scottish Country Dance Society got together for a party to kick off the season of dance classes. These used to be fun, back when members hosted the parties in their own homes and everyone got loaded on fried noodles and booze, but these days the event is hosted in a meeting room and everyone sits stiffly on plastic chairs and sips cheap wine.
whoa there, reign it in, folks
I brought a Costco custard pie, the only dessert I know for sure a group of elderly people with finicky diets will polish off in one sitting, and my mother plonked down an entire bottle of good scotch. I don't get along with scotch, but I do enjoy bolting half-shots of my mother's drinks when she walks off and forgets about them. "My scotch keeps leaking out of this hole in the top of the glass," she said, getting another refill. It was a good night to play this game, because after I swiped my third half-a-glass, my aunt announced that my 15 year-old cousin had joined an Air Force program and is going to be allowed to fly actual airplanes.
Well, why not?
How complicated can planes be, anyway?
The rest of the week has been the wrong kind of adventure; doctor's offices, auto shop waiting rooms, long phone calls with the insurance company about out-of-state ER invoices, surprise orthodontics bills, trying to help a Ukrainian immigrant with housing paperwork through a heavy language barrier and sprinkles of anti-vaccination propaganda she heard on Russian TV.
Punching my way through the evening workouts, feeling very ready for a weekend of pumpkin patch hay rides and Sunday dinner dessert.
Painted some strawberry guavas and started a new 6 week workout program.
I didn’t make a ton of progress in the last 6 weeks (I got a bit derailed by exploding organs), but I definitely gained strength in my arms, and my knees hurt less with more muscle to hold them onto my legs.
This next 6 week program has more boxing and MMA training, so I can get my Eagle Fang on and hone my storytime crowd management skills.
Painting has been slow, workouts have been tough. Not feeling completely myself yet.
But I'm getting on with things.
I've got a couple of gallery shows coming up in the next few months. Better get my shit together and finish some paintings.
Contemplation counts as part of the process.
"And anyway," I said, "I don’t think the guy we trespassed is actually smart enough to get his hands on a real gun. There would be bullet holes in everything, including himself. My running theory right now is 'kids shooting at chickens with pellet guns'."
"Well," he said, "That guy did just get picked up for busting out the windows of the property next door, and there was a witness, so we got him on that, at least."
"Did he shoot the windows out, or throw a rock?"
"I can't speak to that. But yeah, a rock."
"So can we assume, if there's another incident, that it's not him, because he's in custody - or has he already been released?"
"I can't really say. But yeah, he's out."
Look at me, expert interrogator.
The detective hung around chatting, either because he was enjoying the air conditioning or because he was hoping I'd offer him some weed, until my boss finally shooed him out so we could close for lunch.
And that is how we became not at all closer to solving the mystery.
In other news, I’ve been back on the workout program and doing ok. My doctor gave me pills that should “correct” my middle-aged metabolism and allow me to lose weight again, but so far all that’s happened is my bosoms have gotten bigger. I’ll take that as progress anyway. One more week of the intermediate program, then I’ll take progress pictures again.
