Thursday, March 31, 2011

Time for a vacation

A woman who works down the hall from me got run over in the street today by a car. Right in front of the entrance doors.
I thought, "I'm glad she wasn't killed," and "Mmmm, need to rethink my constant jaywalking."
Then I was mildly envious of her for getting out of work today.
I said the first two things out loud but I kept the last bit to myself.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Chemo hair? Radiation hair? Colitis malnutrition hair?

So, about a year and some months ago, I had a CT, then another, then another, and most of my hair fell out in the next six weeks. It had two more spells during colitis flares where it would start  raining down again. I'd have hair on my clothes, in the food, covering the sink, all over the floor, and big old wads in my butt crack that I never figured out how they got there. Seriously, how does a pile of hair the size of a toy mouse get past an untucked shirt and down your pants?   Twice a day?
I lost almost all my eyelashes, about half my brows, and a sizeable but unmeasurable portion of my nose hair. I can't really describe the process when your nose hair decides to let go and blow out of your nose. It doesn't look like eyelashes on your face, either. And the carpet still matched the drapes but boy did it get threadbare.
 I started with a shitload of dark mouse brown, slightly gray, very bone-straight fine hair. By the time a year had gone by, I was down to less than half the ponytail I'd had in width, it was very flat and straight indeed, and my hairline had reshaped while receding. There were a few weak looking grays coming back but not much else. I didn't need a haircut for months last winter, it actually stopped growing for a while, and my hair usually grows nearly eight inches a year; "My hair is eating my face" is how I describe my need for a bimonthly haircut as a rule. I only got it cut once last year in eight months, and only then because it was so raggedly and broken.
In September, I got hold of some meds which started holding the colitis back somewhat. About a month later, my head began to itch like crazy. When I got some privacy to scratch it, my scalp felt decidedly prickly. I started seeing this kind of crew-cut growing in around my remaining hair. So, now about four or five months later, I have two distinct heads of hair. If it's dry or static-y at all, I have a whole new set of hair about three inches long, most of it stripes of gray, a lot of it wavy, that sticks off my head like a momfro. Or the strangest mullet ever.  There are curly elflocks growing in front of my ears. Curls, on me, the flat and lifeless hair queen of the world. Frizz, even.  Bizarre doesn't begin to cover it. It's pretty cool to have hair texture, though. I've always heard that your hair grows back different after chemo; I wasn't on chemo that I knew of but I did get convinced that the first CT was an overdose. So, maybe radiation hair.
My abundant chin hair, which had stopped growing altogether last winter for six weeks and then was a little feeble and hesitant, is no longer pussyfooting around. I'm back to the daily hunt and pluck of three of the little bastards at the least. Good thing about that is most of them turned white as well, so they aren't as aggravating as when they were all black. It's weird what cheers me up sometimes.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Poltergeist

Two nights ago, I came home at ten, lugging groceries. As I staggered into the kitchen, the oddest noise got my attention, and I couldn't find it at first. Then I realized, the old fridge magnet that is a minature slot machine was making a tinny, creepy, running-down battery noise. Its bandit arm was pulled forward just a little, and it was sort of whining.
I touched the handle, and it clicked off. Then I went cold all over; that crappy thing doesn't have a decent magnet on the back, and falls off when tapped. So the cats couldn't have set it off. One of them was in the house, and not acting weird, so I looked around, and the back door was unlocked. I have gotten in the habit, since the dog died, of closing it by the deadbolt and locking it in one motion. The cat started acting strange, sniffing under all the furniture. Yikes yikes yikes.
I got the creeps, bad, and called my fella and whimpered, and he came over and shone his flashlight all around, including the attic, and flushed out no evildoers. I still had trouble going to sleep.
Last night I got home and there was a light on I didn't remember turning on that morning. Sure enough, I got too creepy to go in and had to go back and get him, and his flashlight, again.
This morning I was all, "I am TURNING THESE TWO LIGHTS ON AND REMEMBERING IT" out loud like a crazy lady.
Fella surmised one of them would burn out before I got home and he'd get summoned again. Ha, third time was the charm. No cats inside but nothing that creeped me out, either.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Adding to my legend

Looking like me, and walking like me, makes me automatically eccentric in a town dominated by small-nosed petite makeup obsessed women. I have lived on the same dead-end street for decades and my neighbors are either friends or frightened of me.
Two weeks ago I planted some new lovely flowers in my front flowerbed. I ripped up handfuls of wild onion at the time, and dug out every plant of it I could find. This week I was dismayed to see they had all come back and more. The internet was not much help; I've tried every remedy and product for them listed except: steam.
I have a steamer, kind of a big 'un.
I got my chair, my ice water, my phone playing Avalon channel on Pandora, and my extension cord. I fired up that steamer and steamed those weeds flat. They turned bright green and fell down, smelling like dinner with that special wild onion funk.
The postman and the neighbors all had to stop to see why I was vacuuming the flowerbed. The explanation did nothing but add to my legend on the block. If I'd done it in my bathrobe it would have been a little more fun but it's too warm today for that.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

How to Slow Down Time

As you get older, time seems to speed up. Days and weeks seem shorter and shorter. Then, poof, there goes another month, another year. I have discovered how to stop this process cold in its tracks.
Give up eating starch.
No, seriously. I was gaining weight in a scientifically unlikely amount and writing down every bite I ate; the calorie count could not even begin to account for the four pounds a week the scale kept inexorably showing.
Then I decided: okay, if your guts think you are still starving, make them work to get the calories out of the food. So: eggs, fish, meat, veg, fruit. No sugar, wheat, potatoes, corn, or rice.
Holy shit.
A day lasts forever on this regimen. There is nothing to look forward to, and eating is not fun. The last week at work doing this was about a month long, and that's with going home one afternoon with a stomach bug.
I lost about four and a half pounds in ten days, also highly unlikely, and am not the least pleased. For this amount of suffering I should have acquired Adriana Lima's body.