cancer – day 51
It’s getting into this weird phase where a daily cancer journal doesn’t really make sense to me right now. There are almost two weeks now where there isn’t going to be anything going on in terms of treatment or doctor’s appointments, and I hope to have a little time for my old simple during-the-week life of work and quiet. So what is there to journal about? Life, I guess.
Mark’s out in the garage doing man-stuff. Rearranging things so he can set up his workshop. I went out running more errands to set up my office. I’d rather get some of this done on my own, rather than wasting Mark’s time with it. And we shop differently, he’s a lot more careful about scrutinizing his final selection to make sure it’s as cost-effective as possible, no money wasted on features he may not need. I tend to find what I’m looking for, decide fairly quickly if I think the price is reasonable, and then get the hell out of the store with my purchase. I hate shopping! Find what I went into the store for and get out again as quickly as possible, that’s how I shop!
What else can I write about today? We went to a birthday party last night for Riad (darn, how does he spell his name?), who is basically the instigator of the wine club Mark is, no wait, that “we” are in, and so the birthday party was for a friend of “ours,” to use Mark’s vernacular. Anyway, besides the whole we’re-a-couple-not-just-two-separate-individuals way of talking that I’m finding so amusing and heart-warming in Mark’s conversational vocabulary, there are also a couple of neat little things or stories to write about.
I got off to a fine start at the party, I was the first person at the party to spill red wine. I wasn’t the last, and luckily it was on the lawn instead of inside the house on the white carpet, but still! I was holding a plate and a glass of wine, and trying to balance the plate and glass while trying to eat obviously required more dexterity than I could manage. And of course I did manage to spill it on the skirt of the woman I was talking to, Meagan. Luckily she was wearing a red dress! We went inside and rinsed it with cold water and used a blow dryer on it (cold blast! stay away from using heat on wine stains), and after it was all dry and everything later you couldn’t even tell. What a relief, I felt terrible about that. So, that’s how I met Meagan, who was really interesting and fun to talk to, and now of course we’ll never forget that we met at Riad’s birthday party!
I also had an interesting conversation with Lia, who I remember meeting and dancing with at the last wine party a month ago. I didn’t recognize a lot of people from the wine party to Riad’s birthday party, but Lia was one of the ones I remembered (though admittedly Mark had to remind me of her name). But we ended up having an interesting conversation about breast cancer (she’s 5-year survivor, almost), and she was very interested in the details of my treatment (she’s also a doctor, a dermatologist) and she has a very supportive and caring personality (wouldn’t it be great if all doctors had those characteristics?).
And, after it got dark, there was dancing. Mostly salsa, and some club music. At the beginning of the salsa dancing, I was standing a bit away from the patio with Mark, just enjoying the music, and I think we were chatting about something, when Mark saw Lia looking around from where she was dancing on the patio and, seeing Mark, waving and exclaiming “where’s my salsa partner?” So Mark gives my back a little nudge and I go and lead Lia for a salsa. Man, I have GOT to increase my repertoire of salsa moves! Just like all my students say. I know a lot of salsa patterns, but I can’t lead much well going that full tempo! I need to practice leading someone slowly first, just like my students do, to get comfortable doing my more complicated moves out in public. But it was great fun anyway, Lia gets such a kick out of a simple underarm turn, I think she was making the other girls want to do it too, because there weren’t any guys there who led salsa (I would have loved to be led in a real salsa myself!). Then for the next song Mark came out on the patio too and we freestyled together, which was tons of fun. He’s so uninhibited dancing, it’s just a blast. He has no problem with doing something that other people would be self-conscious attempting in case they looked silly. He hams it up and has such a great time, and that makes him so much fun to dance with regardless of whether he “knows” salsa or whatever. We mess around and he makes stuff up that I try to play with and we also move together to shake a tail feather, just having a great ol’ time. One of the things that I liked and appreciated with him last night was that I felt both free to dance however or with whomever was nearby, but also like there was that special connection between he and I no matter where we were. Plus I get a kick out of seeing him dancing with whomever, just this free happy person somehow connected to me. Meagan commented on it later, she said something about how Mark and I have a good energy together on the dance floor. She seems pretty dialed in to that sort of thing, the energy stuff, and she and I got into some of that a little late in the evening, I was sitting with Mark on the couch (Mark was “trapping” people coming in the door by snapping photos from behind my shoulders) and Meagan came to talk with me, and we ended up talking about her husband, whom she’s been separated from for a year and a half now, and how he’s coming to Sacramento tomorrow, and we talked about some of the feelings she’s having about that. And we got into the same space somehow, just a huge energy connection, in that brief conversation. Very interesting.
Quite a lot to write about for someone starting out wondering what the heck to journal on, eh?