I thought I was out of revelations regarding my birth. It turns out my mother’s mother was very good friends with my dad’s first wife. My grandma was more of a parent to me than my father by a million, and made me feel better about myself than my mom ever did.

I guess my grandmother had nothing else but us kids, after my mom devastated my grandmother’s peer group, by breaking up a marriage of a man 15 years older than herself.

I miss my grandma. Her old friend, my half-sibs’ mom, has been really nice to me lately on Facebook. Maybe someday we’ll talk about my grandma…

Mom always told me those people in my dad’s family didn’t like us, but she never revealed the extent to which she devastated all their lives.

Apparently I’m allergic to Aloe Vera straight from the plant. I had used it, but not lately. Wednesday night, I covered my face in it and coconut oil (which I have used lately.) I woke up looking like a cabbage patch doll.

I iced my eyes open, drove to “fake chemo” (herceptin), got lots of sympathy, and a prescription for steroids from the on-call oncologist. He practically rolled his eyes at me, and told me not to put ANYTHING ELSE on my skin….

My face got all crusty and I’ve spent three days with a wet washcloth on my face. It’s sort of fascinating to watch the skin heal.

MY FACE HURTS.

This is your cue to say “yeah? well it’s killin’ me…”

I know I need to post, I want to post, but I keep getting confused about what I want to post about.

There’s this rash. What happened was, I got over my radiation burn, I got the flu. I got over the flu, I did some yard work, and then I got this rash. Around the same time, I read something that happened to someone else, and spent some time rubbing on my scar tissue and thinking “Oh I hope that doesn’t happen to me.” So maybe I got something on my hands in the yard and then rubbed it obsessively into my skin.

Also in the weeks preceding I had been getting really paranoid at work. I was convinced people were checking up on me, and I was expressing it on facebook and was rude to some people who deserved it. Now I think I really was picking up on something, since the department got merged and my bosses got changed without me knowing about it ahead of time. And maybe I gave myself hives. I had hives one other time, when I had accepted a new job, but had not given notice or told the people I was friends with at the old job. When I gave notice the hives went away.

And I just seem to have old lady, dry, sensitive skin, now. The upshot is I’ve spent the last 9 weeks rubbing various things into my skin. The rash will seem to die back and then will reappear in the areas right next to where it was. I hope it will only “go around” one time.

So there’s the rash, and then there’s work. I sort of feel like doing a timeline of this job, trying to get it all into one blog with the bare details. It’s pretty boring  but maybe it would make the stupid hives go away. Except, I’m nervous someone from there will find this blog… so I don’t want to do anything rash.

Dear Real Boss,

Why didn’t I do much work today? Because I feel like crap. Why did I come to work today?

1) I have no sick time left because I’m not allowed to make up my doctor’s appointments outside of the 8-4:30 timeframe. Unlike every single other employee in this department. How was your unscheduled telecommute day on Friday, by the way? I see you sent about 5 emails.

2) My Foster Boss told me that you said you have to be here, if I’m not here, and I wouldn’t want you to miss your unscheduled, not on the calendar vacation day just because I’ve had an almost intolerable rash for two weeks and didn’t get any sleep last night. Not that you or he knows that, or anything else about my life.

That is all,

Amanda

I don’t like to talk on the phone very much. Or maybe I’m out of practice.

What I really don’t like is to be put on the phone with people I don’t know and have nothing to say to, just to “say hi”. It’s awkward and boring. However, over the last few years, I’ve given up on not being bored, and have tried to relax when people blather at me in person, instead of plotting my escape (to the bathroom if necessary.) I’ve also made an effort to talk to some of my husband’s friends and family on the phone, because it seemed to be something he wanted.

After my surgery, we were expecting a couple of house guests. One of them, N, had been due immediately after surgery, supposedly to help out my husband, but canceled. Luckily, it turned out my husband didn’t need to do that much extra for me, since he already cooks and shops, and we don’t bother much with cleaning.

N has a tendency to be days late, for visits, and hours late, to meet at a restaurant, so I was not surprised. She shows up for the second half of the second set, for concerts. She would also visit someone in another city, and would be driving a rental, so it was somewhat flexible.

So she was going to come sometime in the next few weeks, and another friend was due during the same time period. So in spite of post-surgical pain, I tidied up the guest room, which meant scooping laundry and papers into piles and boxes, where I would have to start all over at sorting them out, later. (This is the only space in a three bedroom house that is really mine. The rest of the house is full of things you never heard of, that any of half a dozen people might want to buy, if they knew we had them. Apparently quite valuable and impossible to throw away.)

I dusted. I don’t think I vacuumed.

My husband was due to go out of town for a few days, during my first week back at work. I had a thought one day, and said “I sure hope no one comes to stay while you are out of town.” He said “what if it is N?” I said “well… if that is the *only* time she could come, then I *guess* it’s okay. But I’d rather no one come then.”

A few days later I was asleep on the couch, and N called. My husband went into the kitchen to talk to her and I slept on.

When we discussed the conversation, which may have been that night or the next day, he said she was coming the same day as he left town, after he left, during the middle of my work day. I said “oh so that was the only time she could come?” and he said…      ….    “I don’t know.”

I was very irritated. I reminded him of our earlier conversation. I wanted him to find out if she could come a different time. He refused to present it like that. He told me he was going to tell her not to come those days because I “need my alone time”. I reiterated that it was okay for her to come if she could not come another time, and he refused to tell her that.

He called her, he told her not to come then because I need my alone time. She said that’s okay, she could come on Saturday. On Saturday, she called and said “I can’t come because of the amount of time on the rental car.” (How did she figure that out on Saturday and not earlier?)

So I figure she thinks I’m an evil bitch, now. I had a fight with the husband over this. During the fight, he said “you told me to never under any circumstances put you on the phone with anyone.” I asked him how long it had been since that had really been true. I admitted I had said it NINE YEARS previous. I told him if that’s all the effect all my trying had on his opinion of me, I may as well stop bothering. (So my new policy is, in fact, do not put me on the phone with anyone.)

Meanwhile, hubby’s other friend B, was on business in a nearby town, and due to drive down for the weekend. It turns out there was a medical emergency of some sort with a relative, who has since passed away.

(It seemed to me that it was actually the late stages of an ongoing situation, and when she arrived on the scene, she decided to poke her nose in and try to bully some insurance people around after it was way, way, too late. But whatever. In some sort of weird denial, she tried to talk me out of parts of my cancer treatment. “Oh you don’t need surgery then.” She later emailed “I hear you are having surgery after all.” No, that was always the plan. Talking to B on the phone was an exercise in me comforting her, about me having cancer. It drained me and I did learn to avoid it.)

So B was due for the weekend after the husband returned from being out of town. She called either on Sunday night or Monday night, I forget, to say she didn’t come.

I remember the night I was supposed to meet B for the first time. She was in town on business. Hubby told me we were to have dinner and she would phone. At 10 pm we had cereal and went to bed. She later said she had thought it was a “maybe thing.”

I remember when we were 1.5 hours late to her house when she was not *at* her house, because our plane was late (that’s available on line, right?) and she got mad because we didn’t phone her. I tried to get hubby to phone her. He refused. So it’s not all her, but it’s still irritating to me.

Lately, B has been leaving messages on our answering machine. The husband has not been returning her calls. She emailed *me* and asked if anything was wrong. I told him, he said he’d call. That was about a week ago. He didn’t call. He said he’d email. He didn’t email.

She phoned yesterday during the day. She asked him why he had not returned her calls, and he told her (and repeated it to me) that he won’t talk on the phone when I’m in the house anymore because I quiz him on every aspect of the call and get angry if he gets anything wrong.

Never mind that he works (not much though) at home, I leave the house for 9 hours every day, and she has one of them new fangled cell phones.

I only got angry at him one time in recent history. It had nothing to do with B, it had nothing to do with never wanting to talk on the phone.

I emailed her condolences about her relative. She replied, mentioning that “we” stopped returning her calls, and asking me if I still wanted to be her friend.  She said “I know we had some friction last year, but honestly feel that these things are minor and should not prevent us from having fun in the future.”

On the trip she refers to, on several occasions, she insisted she knew what I was telling her, and refused to listen when I told her she wasn’t getting what I was saying, until the 4th time around. She almost cost herself a day’s extra car rental, and generally bossed me around til I was sick of her. It wasn’t minor to me, it makes me cringe at the idea of our next trip to a concert. Which she mentioned, and said “but I wonder if you really want me to come.” Is this a trick question??

I explained to her a little bit about arguing with the husband and misunderstandings. It’s not about her, so I bet she won’t understand.

I got drained again today. There was less fluid than Monday, so hopefully this will end soon. I’m still ouchy and it is making me VERY CRANKY.

She told me to quit panicking, and get more sunshine. She gave me a big hug and said it would be okay.

My copy of the insurance approval showed up Saturday, in a letter dated 12/9. So today my husband called the surgeon’s office for me, and found out that they are now full up for Friday 12/19, and I’ll probably have my surgery on 12/30, unless they have a cancellation.

I called the surgeon’s secretary on Friday 12/12 and she “checked” for approval while I was on hold. What did she check, her snail mail in box?
I called her the Friday before as well and she told me she checks twice a day.

So they couldn’t save me a freaking space on the day we’ve been talking about since before Thanksgiving, that would let me use my four holidays and three forced vacation days for recovery? NO?

Oh and they might call me at the last minute with a cancellation. Nice.

ARRGH.

I’ve been on the internet since 1983 when I got my first email account at the university. I used it to keep in touch with friends from another university that I dropped out of. For years I have only communicated with people who have email. I stopped using the phone much.

I read internet newsgroups back when I could read all the news in my groups, and wait for more to come in. One piece of advertising could start a flame war. I bought a newsgroup themed tshirt from the same person as my husband. We didn’t meet for another 15 years after that. We both still have that shirt.

I met my husband at a shop and we exchanged email addresses. I was living in Utah but visiting here. For the next year we got to know each other by email. I got to know 3 previous boyfriends by email even though two of them lived in town. (The other one was “Stinky”.)

I got to know my ex husband by… snail mail letters. Several of them a week, pages long. We lived a couple of hours apart. I didn’t have enough to do at my job then, either. I even had a melodramatic fight with a coworker via letters (a flame war!). I kept xeroxes of the letters I wrote to both of them.

The friends I have in town now, I mostly communicate with on a chat program at work. The people I communicate with the most are those I’ve never met in person, who live all around the world, but who I talk to on the IRC almost every day. We all know what each other had for dinner and whose kids have chickenpox. My husband and I chat with these people together, changing the “nick” and trading the keyboard back and forth. We don’t have TV, so this is most of what we do in the evenings.

These people are real. We talk about them. We discuss what they should do with their lives. We try to boss them around but they never listen. They are real. We have met some of them over the years. We went on a music cruise with one of them and shared a cabin with him.

My blog friends are real (the current melodrama aside for the moment.) I think about you, I talk to my husband about you. It pains me sometimes that I can’t discuss your issues with my “real life” friends, because I don’t want them to know about this blog. Sometimes I fib about where I know you from so I can mention something.

Since I got cancer I have read more blogs of people with cancer. This is making certain concepts more real. I have not had much contact with illness and death. I am learning about how people react to these. Some people react with surprising grace and I hope to do half as well when my time comes.

I miss Mark.

I know I told my mother we were going to Vegas to get married, because the first thing she said was “that’s where your father and I got married, and look how well *that* turned out.”
She just phoned for the first time since then, and didn’t mention the wedding at all. Out of passive-aggressive curiosity, I didn’t mention it either.
We talked for about 10 minutes and it never came up.

On Monday, my boyfriend fiance sent me an email about a concert in Vegas on Friday. We don’t do Vegas, so I was immediately suspicious, and I was correct.

We had planned to go downtown in our home town, sometime soon in the break between chemo and surgery, and just have a civil service, with a “real wedding” and/or a party or two, later. This was way more fun.

My boyfriend fiance has been seeing this band for 18 years, and emailing the lead guitar player for most of those years.

The next thing I knew, he’d arranged for a preacher to meet us at the concert. Just before midnight, the band took a break, then played one song to trick everyone into coming back in. The lead guitar player said “some old friends emailed us and asked if they could get married at our show” and then, we did.

There was at least one drum roll in our wedding.

We got married in front of two old friends, who met us in Vegas, and a hundred new ones. I had met this band before, at a camping show, but I think we all know each other a lot better now.

We came off the stage and everyone wanted to hug us! It was fantastic. It could not have been better. This is the wedding I always dreamed of and it just came together. Actually my boyfriend husband worked quite hard to pull it together!

There was a moment of panic when we realized that we were supposed to have brought the license. Luckily, as the preacher’s wife said, Nevada is in this to make money, and that office is open on Saturday. We were married after midnight as planned, got the license the next day, and met the preacher and his wife again for final signings. We met at the Belagio, with a good view of the fountain that plays in time with Sinatra or Elton John. We also cruised by the Chihuilys and the botanical display in the lobby.

Then we had great sushi with one of our two crazy friends. (We dropped the other at the airport in between the license office, and the Belagio.) We managed to piss off the waiter by not falling for any of his “upsells” but we had a good time. The boys eat 1.5 times as much sushi as I do, so I went outside to the casino and lost two dollars in nickels without a single win. That was the extent of gambling among all of us.

Well, aside from getting married!
But seriously, I have never been so sure and happy about anything in my life.