Reporting from the front lines

We've been here for six and a half hours and my mom is only just getting the chemo drugs now. The morning was spent doing blood work and getting IV fluid. Several times today I have said, "Last chance to run..." But as I type, I'm watching the liquid drop by drop as it collects at the bottom of a small plastic tube and into the line leading to her vein. No going back now. Moments after the oncology nurse connected the new drug my mom and I said a prayer to God asking that she be made healthy again through this medicine and that she not suffer too much with the side effects. Then we laughed, asking God to also keep a steady supply of Ativan coming. We later learned that while we were having this moment my dad, who left the hospital on an errand, had stopped by the local church to light a candle. (A great act of faith for a Jewish man.)

My mom is sleeping now. She's been in and out all day due to the Ativan which is given to cancer patients for anxiety and nausea (and given to Lola Mellowsky for social gatherings). She's been in a good mood all day having gotten through a fearful day yesterday. This morning she said, "I'm feeling brave today, Laura. God always does that for me."

I told her to give herself some credit, too.

Usually God makes it into my everyday conversation about as often as NASCAR but lately She's a star player. You take Her for granted 'til you need Her, I guess...sort of like a mom.

Gigi the Red

The chemo cooler is packed:

fresh salad with a couple types of greens, baby spinach, peppers, cucumbers, carrots and avocado for topping.
oranges
apples
blackberries
strawberries
kiwis
red and green grapes
carrots and hummus
cottage cheese
yogurt (I actually found grass-fed)
and about seven different types of organic nut-jammed bars (I would like a night of dancing at a nut-jammed bar.)

They said that tomorrow would be a longer day than usual because my mom will have to get IV fluids for an hour before even starting the new treatment.

We're all feeling a bit anxious---especially my mom, of course---but we were able to enjoy the night despite our dread. Tonight after dinner I was able to (with their knowledge) record my parents talking about the first day they met over 40 years ago at the hospital in New York City where my dad was doing his residency and my mom was in nursing school. They both remembered the dress with the blue flowers on it that my mom was wearing that day.

We also had a brief discussion about funerals which, despite the morbidity, was pretty hysterical. We've decided we're going to give my mom a viking funeral (20 years from now, of course) and send her off on the river at the foot of my parents' yard on a kayak before we shoot our flaming arrows. I also told them that if they had to pull a Thelma and Louise at any point along the way, I would totally understand. Wasn't joking about that part, actually.

The conversations are certainly interesting these days. That's why I bought the tape recorder; I don't want to miss anything.

Heading to bed now as the 8am call time will come sooner than I know. Life changes again tomorrow. Going to war, my mom called it.

A braver lady, I've never known.

I know I suck but here’s where I’ve been…

Last week I went with my mom to the hospital to have a CAT Scan done of her chest and abdomen. The idea was to check in to see how the cancer responded to the first two rounds of chemo. If the tumors in my mom’s lung and adrenal gland shrank considerably then there was a possibility that surgery could be moved up. Otherwise, her oncologist, Dr. Miller, would need to adjust the chemo cocktail appropriately.

The latter part of this check-in has been on the table from the start---the possibility that the drugs would not work and would have to be changed---but I don’t think any of us wanted to hear that part so we were all taken aback when the Cat Scan showed very little change in the size of the tumors. (I guess when chemo is working, it really works.) Dr. Miller, a woman whom we all like more than I think any of us expected to and trust to the extent that one can trust the person who is issuing the poison orders, said that though the tumors have gotten slightly smaller, it was “not a home run.”

So the plan is changing, starting with the chemo cocktail. This Thursday she will undergo her first round of treatment with a stronger (read: harsher, more toxic, more terrible) med. The fatigue and nausea that she endured with the first med will now be upped to heavy nausea, probable vomiting and definite hair loss. This new drug is so toxic, in fact, that they will have to pump her with fluid and keep a close watch on her kidneys. At this point I think she is planning to spend the night after treatment at home but the option of an overnight at the hospital is there so that she can be monitored closely. With my dad being a doctor (and my playing one on this blog), we’re hoping we’ll be able to help her through it in the comfort of her own home.

After two rounds of this chemo my mom will have another CAT Scan and Dr. Miller will assess things again to see if surgery is still an option or if she will try radiation instead. According to Dr. Miller, the precision of radiation has come so far that it’s akin to surgery and a chemo/radiation combination seems to be the future of lung cancer treatment. During the appointment she at first said that surgery was probably off the table but circled around and eventually said that it may still be an option. In truth, I’m just sort of confused now. I can take worry, I can take fear, but confused is something I do not endure well and my frustration showed itself as tears.

Reviewing the few notes I managed to take during this last appointment I saw that I quoted Dr. Miller as saying this: “You’re not gonna die.”

Glad I caught that at least.

She said we’re learning more about this cancer. She said it’s not a failure that the first plan didn’t work out as we hoped it would, it’s just time to change courses. “You’re not going anywhere,” she told my mom. If she thought otherwise then she would be sending my mom to hospice and not for chemo.

These are promising words. I have to believe there was no smoke blowing. Still, all this news was overwhelming. Over the past six weeks my mom had voiced her fantasy, her deepest hope, that they would go to look for the tumors and that they would be gone. I loved that she was thinking this way. I was thinking that way, too. Maybe if I cook her enough broccoli the cancer will disappear, I thought. All we need to do is stay positive. Pray. Visualize her healthiness. Believe.

My dad worried that such thinking would result in great disappointment. It’s completely understandable that he would be protective of my mom in this way but I don’t think that if she had guarded herself with cynicism (or realism for that matter) it would have been any less difficult to receive such news. The hope kept her buoyant. I love that she is brave enough to feel hope.

But it indeed was a great disappointment and this past week was the hardest week yet. Many tears marked the arrival of this new level of intensity. And, of course, we are all dreading this next phase of harsher chemo. However, the tumor in my mom’s lung is blocking the bronchus such that her lung is not getting adequate oxygen so there is no choice but to shrink it. On she goes, my mom.

So that’s what has been happening.

Anais Nin said, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” Lately, I feel like I’ve had three tastings. The one I’m living, the one I’m trying to get down for myself---the notes jotted down hurriedly when I first wake up at my parents’ house and lift the shade with hopes of seeing the sun just starting its red roar across the sky---and then the version I’m writing here. A cleaned up version, held tighter, no emotion seeping out. The presented version. Facts. Lungs pained as I hold my breath to type.

It’s exhausting. It’s hard enough to feel it once. It’s hard enough to get it all down once. It’s inefficient. I’m missing things. The only way I can figure to do this---if I still want to do this which I think I do---is to just do it. No more editing. Show up. Spew.

The main thing I’ve been avoiding is the subject of fear. I did not want to admit its prevalence. I still struggle with a flawed logic that if I allow fear in, my hope is somehow compromised. I understand that I can feel both things at once but to write it out loud is different. I would tattoo a brave front on my face if I could. Also, there was this: I didn’t want my mom to know I was scared.

After this week though, the word is out. She knows I’m scared. I know she’s scared. We both know my dad’s scared. (I don’t totally know what my siblings are feeling but I’m sure there’s fear there, too.)

And also we’re all hopeful.

It’s this trying to protect each other thing: Don’t be sad, don’t be scared, don’t worry, I’ll take it for you. I’ll hold mine so you’re not reminded of yours. If you see only my hope, you’ll believe harder in your own. That’s where I was coming from when it came to my mom. But I think over the last week we’ve come to admit that we’re all just gaping wounds of fear and love and it’s better to feel it together than to be afraid and alone. This doesn’t mean that going forward there won’t be the stuff of “being strong” for one another---I’ll hold back as many tears as I can rather than have my mom see me cry if I can help it---but we’ll know to be honest when we need to be.

Same goes for this blog. I’m sure I won’t totally shelf my game face but I can’t just speak of forcing vegetables and unceasing hope anymore. There is more to all of this and rather than running away and hiding all week, I’ll try harder to go there if it feels possible. (Otherwise, I’ll write a note saying that I’m running away and hiding.) When I started to write about this---when I start to write about anything---in addition to my inclination “to taste life twice,” I always hope for relatability and connection. But how can I expect someone to relate---to have someone see their own fear reflected back---if I’m not being honest about my own? I’ve been reading all sorts of blogs lately from people documenting their experiences with cancer and they have been tremendously helpful to me. People not numbers. People not science.

But therein lies some of the problem: It is not my cancer. Sometimes it feels like mine. (I bet my dad would say the same.) Sometimes I just so wish it could be mine. And though my mom has given me permission to write through this it still sometimes feels like an invasion of privacy. It feels like an invasion of privacy to even talk about it. There is an odd tendency towards secrecy that I feel surrounding all of this despite knowing as I do that this is a time, perhaps more than any other, to reach for friends and family. (Not my strong suit, I suppose.) And I also know that to deny what is going on right now would be to do myself, my mom, my family a disservice. This is real. To not accept it as such would be to miss the real stuff of life.

So, I’m going to try to paint a more accurate picture. Fear and hope, sadness and laughter. I just ask that you all still focus on the hope and add yours to the pile.

I have a new toy!

I plan on posting something later today explaining why I've been an absentee blogger (I never meant to hurt you, kid) but I was too excited about this to wait! Even though my birthday is not 'til the 30th (only three shopping days left, people) Dan decided to surprise me this morning with my gift since I'm heading to RI tomorrow and may not see him on Friday. He put the computer on my desk and left the envelope---beautiful letter enclosed---taped to my office door so that I saw it as soon as I woke up. (Wasn't gonna share but I'll throw you a bone 'cuz I'm feeling all schmaltzy: You are a writer, my love, and this is me saying I believe in you.) (Yes, I got verklempt.) (Yes, I thanked him.)

I don't know how to use it yet but I'm pretty sure this is the machine on which I will write whatever it is that makes me my millions. (Macs come with a gigabyte of creative genius already built-in.)

I had been thinking about converting to Mac all month (my Dell is going to have to be put down soon) but we both decided I should wait until it made more sense financially (and until black smoke started coming out of the Dell). Apparently, all the advertisements for PC deals he has been e-mailing these past few weeks were all part of his scheme to throw me off the scent.

Well played, sir.

Seriously though, how great is that man?

P.S. I won't let you down, bud.

(Oh, get a room!)

A coffee whatema?

Back on the wagon in a big way, people. This, after falling off in an even bigger way. The junk food bender of last Thursday went right through the weekend and involved massive quantities of Chinese takeout and a pint of Ben and Jerry's. (Go out now and buy Stephen Colbert's AmeriCone Dream. You can thank me later.) Rock bottom ended up being lunch on Saturday at one of those steakhouse chain restaurants. (I really can't remember the name but you know the type; peanut shells on the ground, massive cuts of raw beef in the window, obese children everywhere.) Upon sitting, the meal started with fresh out-of-the-oven buns which were not so much buns as they were fluffy squares of white bread cakes; picture the Pillsbury Dough Boy with no arms or legs. These were topped with warm melted butter and then served with cinnamon butter in case you wanted a little butter with your butter...which I did. A couple of those in addition to some fried jalapeno poppers, a cup of chili and a strawberry margarita that was so big it required a two-hand hold and my body just hurt.

The drive home consisted of me clutching my belly (I wouldn't unzip my pants because I want to remember the pain next time I think that I can handle just one cupcake) and saying to Dan, "You have to make me stop. Seriously. It has to end now."

And it did (after we finished off the Chinese food that night). I've been clean for two days now. Where's my sobriety coin?

I'm actually considering doing some sort of cleanse as a result of all this and as a healthy spring kickoff. (Yup, going the route of the self-righteous newly reformed addict.) I meant to do it the start of the year but the timing seems more appropriate now. Fruits and veggies are fresh and local, it's nice enough out to not feel defeated by muck and mud everywhere and I'm no longer wishing to be be swaddled in a spaghetti blanket at 4pm every day. It's time.

I'm not sure which cleanse I'll follow yet but I'm seeing some alfalfa sprout smoothies in my future.

Also, I think I'll try a coffee enema.

It's a real thing.

I wasn't actually considering it until I ran the idea by Dan after we watched a documentary which discussed these enemas as part of some alternative cancer treatment (no, I'm not making my mom do it) and, to my utter shock, he didn't seem completely opposed. That said, I'm not sure he heard me correctly.

We've been looking for a new hobby...If nothing else, I'm sure it would build intimacy. Though we'd probably need a little something to ease us into it.

Perhaps a strawberry margarita or seven.

Taken orally, of course.

Don't tell my mom

This stash of treats was hidden high above our kitchen cabinets where I can neither see nor reach.

I would bet giant bags of money that I am going to get my period in less than 48 hours.

Exhibit A: I've cried approximately 74 times in the last three hours.

Exhibit B: Three of the four snacks featured above are no longer with us.

Only the Milk Duds survived. The Hostess Cupcakes, Reese's Peanut Butter Egg and even the chocolate bunny (which served as transportation for great gobs of jarred peanut butter) never had a chance.

In times of stress, or when the hormones they are a changin', my manic inhalation of sweets is like a how-to bulimia video minus the vomiting. Once I get that first taste of sugar on my tongue, I can't be stopped. I keep going until my stash is gone and then I start freebasing the cocoa. (We actually call it a "Stage Five Peanut Butter and Fluff" because usually the only sweets in our house are the aforementioned ingredients which only interest me in my absolute weakest moments...have I told you this before? Anyway, it's the equivalent of an alcoholic downing the Scope.) Dan shakes his head on these days. For him, it's like watching his rehabilitated alcoholic friend go on a bender. He knows that rock bottom is on its way. He knows that I'll have to start my twelve steps all over again. ("Molly, I'm sorry I stole all your Halloween candy and also that I made you stand guard while I searched your friend's backpack for Fruit Roll-Ups.) He knows that the self-loathing that follows such binges can be completely debilitating.

It's really the undoing of all my positive reforms. One day I'm touting the benefits of whey protein and the next I'm eating the cupcake crumbs that have fallen into my cleavage. Not pretty.

I guarantee that there is some sort of psychological component to this in that I'm binging on all the foods I've specifically forbidden my mom to eat. I know it wouldn't serve her health to eat them---and her health is of the utmost importance right now---but I can poison myself with hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup?

At this very moment my fridge is stocked with a big salad, freshly cut red peppers and hummus, homemade yogurt, strawberries, blueberries...and what did I just make myself?

You know it. Stage Five!

It ends here. I'm going for a walk. I'm rocking some stylin' windpant right now and I'm leaving the bar!

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and one of those maternity belly bands that pregnant women wear so they don't have to button their pants.

I'm totally craving a Fruit Roll-Up right now.

Independence Day.

April 13, 2000. (I still have that plastic filing cabinet.)

Ten years ago yesterday, at just shy of 19, I left the town in which I grew up to move north to New Hampshire. Thus, last night was the 10-year anniversary of the first overnight in my own apartment. I didn’t move to a dorm room or a college campus and I didn’t go with a friend or to a friend. I left town at 18 for multiple reasons that I will sum up here as: I wanted to go. New Hampshire, where I knew nobody and nobody knew me, is simply where I went.

When I woke the morning after the move (10 years ago today) I remember trying to keep my eyes closed as I lay in my bed, thinking that if I didn’t open them then the choice I had made to leave and the deep loneliness I felt upon waking, wouldn’t be real. But open them I did and, indeed, that strange and disorienting feeling of waking in an unfamiliar room thrust me into my new reality. I then took the five steps into the kitchen of the small studio apartment I was renting (my first apartment, of course) and sat at the counter forcing myself to eat a Lender’s onion bagel---I could only get half down---and reading from a compilation of essays by humor columnist Dave Barry with the hope that a laugh could rescue me from the pit of solid dread which had settled in my stomach a couple of weeks before the move and stayed there ever since. Also, I had promised myself I would read every morning and write every day. (There were so many things I would do in this new life, I thought.)

My mom bought the bagels for me the night before. Cream cheese, too. Some canned soup, juice, jelly, a jar of peanut butter. On moving day my mom and dad drove much of my stuff up in their van and the rest was in my little gray Hyundai which I drove up with a sister’s boyfriend who had become a good friend over the years and offered to help. After unpacking my stuff, he and my dad went on a drive for most of the day while my mom stayed with me in the apartment Lysol-ing and scrubbing everything down. (Only later, when I was moving out of that particular apartment mere weeks later, did she tell me she had seen mouse droppings under the sink.) She helped me to set up my bureaus and bed, put some new dishes she had bought for me in the cabinets and, since I didn’t yet have curtains, she hung a sheet over my kitchen window so that I couldn’t be looked in on. As the hours passed while we set up and her departure from the apartment and trip back to RI neared, my dread built. I wanted her not to leave. I wanted so desperately for her to just stay there with me overnight. I might have even said this. Or I might not have. We went out for dinner and before they all headed home my mom had my dad stop at a convenient store where she grabbed up the bagels and other groceries as her last act of mothering before leaving her youngest daughter all alone in a new apartment, in a new town, in a new state. When I told my mom that yesterday was the anniversary of this day through a cell phone text, she wrote back: “Don’t remind me. That was so hard. I was so worried about you.”

I cried when they left. The last few weeks before departure were marked with many spontaneous eruptions of tears. I wished that I could stop this crying but without warning the fear rose up and out (making me and whomever I was speaking with very uncomfortable). I wanted to go just as much as I didn’t or else I wouldn’t have stayed. At 18, and the simplicity of this for me was a blessing (as simplicity often eludes me now), fear was just fear. It’s a concept I am only just getting back to now. I didn’t disguise it with obligation to whatever scenario I was too frightened to change as I sometimes do now. Fear was just fear. I don’t think I ever actually spoke the words “I’m afraid” (and perhaps I’ve just found a perk of 28 in that I can speak them now) but I recognized that I was terrified to make this move and that I was going to do it anyway.

Yesterday, 10 years later, I wrestled with this same decision: to stay or go. My mom was of course weakened by the second round of chemo (though, thankfully, she reports feeling much stronger today) and I was torn about leaving and returning to NH. I thought that maybe I should stay the full week down there---this is chemotherapy we’re talking about and it hasn’t even been a week since the treatment---but I also knew I had writing projects that I needed to get to and responsibilities in my life here to keep up with. It was time to go, I finally decided (with help from my mom who told me the same).

As I drove over the bridge and away from Rhode Island I thought about making that same drive all those years ago. Driving over that river in either direction is always rich with emotion. I thought about how two of my life’s biggest challenges are bookending this decade. I thought about how much had changed in regard to what I was now driving to...driving home to. A different town, a different life. A family in Dan. I thought about what had changed in Rhode Island. Nieces and nephews, in-laws, cancer. I wondered what would be different 10 years from now...

I thought about what I knew at 18 and what I know at 28. I wondered what I would understand better at 38.

On some matters, I think 18-year-old Lola will always be the clearest of thinkers:

April 14, 2000

“Still having a hard time thinking long-term on this but thinking more about not turning back.”

I wrote that sentence 10 year ago today. It seems like a contradictory statement (and in the journal I follow it with “Does that make sense?”) but I understand what I meant: I don’t know exactly how I will go on, but I know I will.

Was I writing a journal entry today, I might write these very same words. In that way, nothing much has changed in these past 10 years. I still don’t know what lay ahead, but off I go.

Blood cells roasting on an open fire

My mom (and pretty much everyone else in my family) has taken to calling me the "food police." Apparently, when this sheriff comes to town the laws of an anti-cancer diet are more strictly enforced. (My dad's a good deputy and as such takes most of the bullets, but I lay down the law.) It's not always used as a term of endearment but this certainly doesn't mean I'm deserting my post. We can't have anarchy.

So, last night, as I packed up the Chemo Cooler for today's festivities (chemo: round two) I stuck to my guns. Along with today's poison entree, my mom will be enjoying a fine feast of fresh fruit salad, baby carrots and red pepper hummus, spinach and mushroom frittata (compliments of sister Chirly), yogurt, apples, oranges, walnuts and possibly a salad if I am able to throw it together before the 9am appointment. The key is to have enough options to distract my mom from the tray of muffins and bagels that will be the featured fare in Chemo land. (I will dedicate another entry to how incredibly wrong it is that these are the foods supplied by the hospital---the exact foods that feed cancer---and how I'm almost fired up about it enough to start a movement.) Today's session should be shorter than the last one so I doubt she'll make it much past the fruit salad.

While the last treatment caused my mom great fatigue and nausea and a general feeling of crumminess for three weeks, she avoided throwing up and sustained her appetite. (Though her wounds are slower to heal as a result of the low white blood cell count.) I'm hoping that it will be as mild this time around though we're wondering if the cumulative effect of two chemo sessions will be more challenging. The initial chemo game plan was that after two rounds she would have another CAT Scan to see if the tumors were shrinking and if they weren't then the chemo cocktail would be adjusted. If they are shrinking then the surgery consultation may be moved up. The idea was to have only three to four rounds of chemo but I'm sure the oncologist will tell us today if this is still the plan.

Things change and move pretty quickly around here. I got to RI around 3pm yesterday and after dinner with the 'rents (just the three of us which felt very much like 10th grade) my mom and I went for a walk in the neighborhood and then met my dad at the bottom of the yard where he had started a fire in a pit he built overlooking the river. It was chilly at dusk and the river waves lapped on the shore as I sat on a wooden bench warming my hands over the fire while the three of us talked. It was one of those moments when you are both completely present and also somehow outside yourself acknowledging that this is something to be treasured. My mom went in after a bit and my dad and I sat out 'til it was dark and the logs were nearly burnt through.

Sitting by the fire on Chemo Eve...someone oughta write a carol.

A modern day love letter

From: Dan
To: Lola

Subject: Want to have Date Night?

Next Thursday night, the 15th. What do you say?

Click this link: Romantic Spot



From: Lola
To: Dan

Sunject: Re: Want to have Date Night?

I say yes. And I'll wear a skirt.

A hole different type of writing

Dan, please find this place and bring me there on a vacation.

So today I was perusing jobs on a few of those freelance writing gig websites (you know, rather than engaging in actual writing) when I saw a listing for an alternative health magazine seeking writers who have "positive experience and knowledge of the colon..."

While my first thought was, "I've had plenty of positive experiences with my colon," I soon realized they meant writing experience (though I'm sure this potential employer wouldn't frown on my enthusiasm).

The ad then went on to say:

Wanting articles to touch on colon health and/or the following: (And, yes, I did have to reread that to be sure that the job did not require writers to touch a colon.)

1. Mechanics of the colon
2. Vitamin absorption of the colon
3. Oral approach to cleansing the colon
4. Colonic approach to cleansing the colon
5. The relationship between the liver and the colon
6. The relationship between other organs and the colon
7. Articles covering chronic diseases and the colon
8. Diverticulitis, Chrohn's Disease, Colitis and other colon diseases
9. Emotional aspects of the colon
10. The colon and spirituality
11. Enzymes and the colon
12. Other Colon Health related articles

First question, an oral approach to cleansing the colon?

And two, an oral approach?

If you are dedicated, reliable and enthusiastic this is an opportunity for you.

Told you they'd appreciate my enthusiasm.

The fact is, I am perfect for this gig as I have both a knowledge of and an interest in the colon. (And you can file that under sentences I never thought I'd write.) Both my mother's parents as well as a maternal aunt have all had colon cancer. (Also, my paternal grandfather had lung cancer as does my mom of course, so my DNA is a bit of a cesspool.) With such a genetic predisposition I felt the need to school myself on the matter, particularly in regard to colon cancer (as I just know this is the one that's coming for me as payback for the cheese and Pop-Tart diet of my early twenties). Plus, I am eager to learn more and the job requires that I interview doctors and other health practitioners for the work. Given my natural curiosity for the relationship between nutrition and physical and mental health, this could be a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the stuff I'm already pursuing recreationally. (I'm particularly curious about the "the colon and spirituality." As it is, I'd say it's with something like religious fervor that I preach on the divinity of flax seeds.)

While I didn't realize it until right this moment, I have something like a passion for colon health. Perhaps this is because I believe the affliction of colon unhealth is much more prevalent than it is spoken about and for whatever reason I feel like I'm duty-bound (oh, god, no pun intended) in this life to talk about things that other people don't necessarily want to. For better or for worse---and it generally leans towards worse---I feel like my honor is tied to uncomfortable honesty. (Really, Lola, you're bringing honor into a conversation about colons? What's next, you gonna start ranting about how the feminist movement will not prevail until women are able to go in public places? The fucked up thing is that I could totally make that argument and think I may have come up with my article pitch.)

The bottom line is that this job fits me like a (rubber) glove but I am hesitant to throw my hat in the ring. Maybe I'm trigger shy, maybe it's plain old fear or maybe it's just timing. All I know is that this last sentence could pertain to this writing job or the list of reasons I've given for avoiding going to the bathroom and I don't think that's a coincidence.

Easter blows

On Friday night Dan and I went out for Latin fare at a restaurant in Portsmouth and had drinks afterward at a wine bar overlooking the harbor. A few cocktails in me by the time we got home, it was inevitable that at the night's end we were going to get down and dirty...blowing Easter eggs. Having seen the idea in the Food Network Magazine, Dan (nicknamed "Danny Crocker" by brother-in-law Pete) decided he wanted to hollow out the eggs and stick little scrolled clue notes inside them from the Easter Bunny which would lead Molly to her basket when she woke up Sunday morning at my parents' house where we all spent the day. On Thursday night Dan dyed 'em and on Friday we blew 'em. Using a small screwdriver he tapped small holes into each end of the raw eggs and then we put our mouths on one hole and blew the innards out the other. (He tried using a can of duster but the pressure broke the eggs open.) At first the egg whites just slowly dribbled out but a large puff eventually shot the thick yellow yolk through the tiny hole and into the sink. (To which Dan replied, "Now tickle it and cuddle." I know, how could we destroy the solemnity of the Easter egg tradition? I'm pretty sure blowing your first egg is a sacrament though.)

The egg hunt Easter morning was a huge success and then some. For better or for worse (depending on whether you're his niece or his wife), Dan's head works like that of a seven-year-old so he is the master of all things Easter Bunny and has been performing E.B. duties since his niece and nephew, now 12 and 14, were of believing age. Bec told us that leading up to Easter Mol had been telling anyone who would listen about the riddle that the Easter Bunny (Dan) left for her last year so Dan wanted to up his game this time around. The result was the best Easter morning egg hunt I've ever witnessed. It had Molly retrieving the fragile eggs, cracking them in a tub gleefully, unrolling the tiny pieces of paper, reading the clues aloud and then running off to find the next egg. One egg was taped to the bottom of the kitchen table, another was inside the pocket of her jean jacket, two eggs even had her running outside and the excitement escalated to such a point that an actual squeal of delight rang through the house when she finally found her basket---heaven in purple cellophane, this basket Bec made up---in the bathtub.

The kids aren't the only ones to benefit from Danny Wonka's skills. Years ago (and there is video footage of this somewhere that I MUST find), Cherie, Katie and I practically wrestled each other down as we dove for hidden plastic eggs while participating in one of Dan's hunts. (A clue which read, "Look to Mao for what you seek" had Katie climbing---and breaking---a book shelf to retrieve an egg hidden behind a Mao Tse-tung biography.) And this past Saturday before we headed down to RI, Dan set up an egg hunt in our apartment which had me running from room to room and eventually led to a hidden stash of all my favorite treats: Milk Duds, Cadbury Mini Eggs, Hostess Cupcakes, Haribo Gummy Bears, packs of gum, etc. (All but the gummy bears have since been hidden again for the health of the nation.) Dan's been making me Easter Baskets and egg hunts for years. Though the last thing I need two months before summer is a cache of sugar and chocolate (which is at this very moment emitting low-frequency cocoa vibrations from wherever it is hidden insde my home), this is a step up from past basket fillers which have included, I kid you not, Preparation-H wipes and a book titled "Lose Your Belly!"

Romantic, I know.

Easter is not the biggest whoop of a holiday to me (I, in fact, was initially opposed to the plan of gathering at my parents' home because of the risk to my mom's immune system) but this year's was actually pretty low-key and thus pretty wonderful. I relaxed on a hammock in the sun down by the river, I watched my three-year-old nephew hook a basket half his size over his arm and run along a green lawn in search of eggs, I went for a walk with my sister, brother-in-law and nieces Sammy and Molly, and I sat for an hour in an Adirondack chair chatting with 15-year-old Sammy about life and remembered how smart 15 can be. (Even though we quite enjoy our teenaged nieces and nephew, Dan and I have now graduated to the I-hate-teenagers-at-the-movies phase of life so it was good to be reminded how insightful a person can be at 15.) In the end (provided that my mom doesn't get sick as a result of all the company), I'm glad I was voted down on the Easter front and we did gather. My mom was the one who pushed for it despite my worries. "I have to live," she said.

Chemo this Friday. Keep thinking that way, ma.

My neighbors are weird.

I'm out on my stoop. It's a sad little stoop, all concrete and brick. Still, it faces south and there's a spot for my coffee so it's a stoop I've learned to love. I can hear the chirping of the birds, the flapping of the little round wings of the ladybugs and the charming gurgle and sputter of the sump pumps. While there was no boat evacuation this time around, our road was again marked with a high water sign and our yard was again a pond. One of our fellow apartment building dwellers saved us from total devastation. Dan calls the guy Nature Boy not only because he looks just like the Bugs Bunny character but also because one day when a deer ended up on our front lawn after being hit by a car, Dan and I watched from our bedroom window as Nature Boy dragged the carcass to the side of the house, used a rope to string it from a tree, and proceeded to skin and, well, bone the thing. Right. Outside. Our window. It was an entire day's work and Dan I took turns peeking through our shades to see what stage of the dissection he was heading into. It felt like we were doctors looking in on a surgery. "Now you'll see Dr. Nature Boy make a lateral incision directly above the cute little white spots." It was all very bizarre and funny---"Yeah, the guy is still out there lynching and mauling the deer"---until we remembered that we share a home with this guy and, wow, is he good with that knife. (I'll save for another entry the story of how I once watched our slightly, well, touched, upstairs neighbor packing rifles into the trunk of his car. I've since told Dan and Matt---and now I'm telling you in case they don't take me seriously---that if I go missing, the questioning should start with him. And put my prom picture in the newspaper.)

So, Nature Boy (whom I met during the evacuation and who seemed nice enough despite the fact that roadkill is his sport) saved the day on Wednesday night when our driveway was almost completely under water. I watched through the window as he stood in water up to his knees clearing and bagging the sticks and sediment that had been blocking the nearby sewer and saved us all.

I'm realizing that it sounds like I spend an awful lot of time peering out my windows at my neighbors. Here's the thing---our apartment is on the first floor at the front of the building (come get me blog-following rapists!), so just opening our blinds means being a snoop. While I didn’t love this at first, it has certainly enhanced my detective skills. I not only figured out that the neighbor with whom we share an entrance (a girl whom I really like and wanted to be friends with so I made the first move and gave her a bottle of wine for Christmas but I apparently couldn’t buy her love and it seems as though we'll never be more than chatty breezeway friends) had a new boyfriend, but that he was a co-worker and that it was under wraps at the office. (Wonder why she didn’t want to be my friend...)

As you know, I sit by the window to write every morning. Well, one day I noticed a foreign BMW in the parking lot at the crack of dawn and minutes later heard our neighbor see some guy out and tell him that she'd see him at work. (Shared breezeway, remember?) So I figured if they work together but weren’t driving in together, it was the stuff of undercovah office lovahs. (Let us not forget that Dan not only worked in the main office but was also helping out with some management shifts at the restaurant I worked at during the summer we got together. I know a thing or two about separate cars.) My theory was confirmed during Evacuation Monday as she and I chatted (but did not exchange phone numbers): Dentist and hygienist are, indeed, drilling. (I had thought about telling her about my blog so she could see some of the flood pictures, but now I really can’t. Did I just throw out a potential long-term friendship for a short-term joke gain? Have I forgotten that we're not really friends? You’ll note that I have neglected to say her name which is perhaps indicative of the hope I have that we will someday become friends. Maybe when that happens one day and I forget that I wrote about this and tell her all about the blog, she'll think I'm talking about the other dental hygienist with whom I share a breezeway.)

The evacuation really was a bonding experience though. We were on the ship together, we disembarked and trudged toward safety together and at the fire department we sat and talked together while waiting for our rides. (I was waiting for a rental car, she was waiting for a friend to get her…another friend who was not me…the dentist? This is all sounding very Single White Female, isn’t it? Well, get ready to go a little further on this crazy train.) When it came time to say good bye to each other ---and you have to remember, we didn't know when we were going to be able to go home again after being evacuated by boat---the atmosphere was somewhat heightened. While I didn't say, "Be well and God speed, new friend. May your head stay above the torrents and may we meet again in dryer days," there was a moment of hand holding. Okay, hear me out. She reached for my hand. (Oh my, do I sound crazy.) But she did. She reached for my hand with a warm and affectionate and utterly cool, "Take care, girl." (She says girl a lot…you know, in that way that friends do. I'm only now realizing that she probably doesn't know my name. I didn't know hers either until a note she left on the door for the UPS man said it...not helping myself here, am I?)

Anyway, again, she reached for my hand. I participated, equally engaged in the good bye handhold as she, but with perhaps a tad more enthusiasm due to my innate spazziness. This is where the story turns ugly. Her ride was waiting. She had to go. She was backing away towards the door mid-handhold and somehow (I don’t know how!) the handhold became me standing there clutching her pinky finger like a five-year old not wanting his mom to leave him with the babysitter, as she tried to escape. For a few interminable seconds, I held onto my neighbor’s dainty pinky as though I was engaging her in an unreciprocated game of pull-my-finger. I eventually let go---the Chinese finger trap released---but it left me flushed and uncomfortable in the wake of her Speedy Gonzales-like exit. I stood there in embarrassment, knowing that my overeager handholding and near finger dislocation had just cost me a new friendship. Telling Dan about it moments later, he could only shake his head and laugh at me. (He thought I had come on too strong with the wine in the first place. I thought that this was relatively reserved considering that I had wanted to leave a copy of Eat, Pray, Love on her doorstep after one of our first hallway chats revealed a recent breakup…I won’t tell you where I hid his body.)

Oh my god, I’m the crazy neighbor! I’m the craziest of the crazy neighbors! I’m the woman who sits at the window watching everyone.

“I hear she nearly took off that sweet girl’s limb during the evacuation,” they’ll whisper to each other at the mailbox.

No, couldn’t be. I’m not the crazy neighbor. I’m definitely overreacting. There’s no way they think I’m the crazy neighbor. She couldn’t possibly know that I’m the one who outed her and Dr. Beemer at the office. (He was never good enough for her.)

P.S. I just sent this to Dan to, again, get the “Is this just funny to me?” check. He not only approved, but wrote this in response:

"By the way, for the record, she was picked up at the fire station by a woman."

My very own Jeff Gillooly.