A Quiet House. Also, Fuck Cancer.
Since yesterday evening, I’ve been the sole occupant of my house. The beasts went away for the weekend and I have been sleeping, crocheting, and watching the entire first season of The Newsroom1. Tomorrow morning, when for the second day in a row I may wake up after 7AM, my parents and my brother will be participating in the annual fundraiser they help organize for pancreatic-cancer research. I’ll be very grateful for my quiet, therapeutic weekend, but I’ll miss them terribly. Did I tell you last winter that my dad had cancer? It’s possible I didn’t. I’ve...
Read MoreContest & Fundraiser! Donate & you could win yarn or fibre!
As you well know because I won’t shut up about it this summer, pancreatic cancer runs in my family on my dad’s side. Because of this, my father has both participated as a subject in research into familial pancreatic cancer, and for the last several years has received regular screenings of his pancreas. There’s no simple early-detection test for the disease, which is why its dreadful five-year survival rate is only 5%. Every September, my parents help put on a fundraiser for the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, which helps to fund explorations into...
Read MoreDispatches and Catch-Ups
For someone who has an extraordinarily low tolerance for structure, I’m really missing my normal routine. It may not actually be the routine I’m missing, but the space? I miss my home. My jogs in the woods. Greg and Cleo. The quiet time I need to keep busy and sane. I haven’t had much time to myself in more than two weeks and I’m starting to go a little Dr Jekyl on my usual, though admittedly quirky, Mr Hyde. On top of that, though I’ve kept the Twitter at my side, I’m feeling out of touch with all of you. So help me keep my sanity, hey? Drop me a note in...
Read MoreStar Trek Made Me Cry (AKA I’m Asking You for Money Again)
As you may know from my vague and sporadic tweets and all my allusions to stress, last week was a tough one. See, the day before we left town for Greg’s grandfather’s funeral, we got a call from my parents after one of my dad’s routine pancreas screenings. He gets those about four times a year. The short story is this: About 10% of pancreatic cancer cases are hereditary, and my family’s one of those affected. My father’s mother, brother and sister all died before the age of 70. After my uncle Bruce died several years ago, we discovered the Lustgarten Foundation...
Read MoreTurning Sadness Upside Down, Big Time
The Sadness I started off this morning crying before I even had a chance to drink my coffee. Last September when I went to Albany, NY, to participate in the fundraiser for pancreatic cancer research my parents spearhead every year, it was bittersweet to bump into Janice, an old high school friend. We hadn’t been close friends, but I’d sure liked her a lot. It was sad to see her because her family was at the fundraiser to support her father, who’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It’s very hard to talk to people who love someone who’s recently been...
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