That is a partial quote from this article. The full quote:
“We know who gets head and neck cancer — people who smoke and drink a lot and tend to be at an older age. The problem is that it’s sometimes difficult to diagnose until it’s at its late stages and difficult to treat and cure,” researcher Dr. Joseph Califano of the Johns Hopkins department of head and neck surgery said in a phone interview.”
I’d say it’s even more difficult to diagnose in people who don’t actually smoke, don’t drink a lot, and who are not of an older age. I’m all for things like this where a large number of people who potentially be aided, and all for making known the primary causes of this sort of cancer. But it also pisses me off a little bit: this is exactly the reason the first question I get from people is “Are you a smoker?” and the reason some of them look at me as if they don’t believe me when I tell them I am not and never was.
Once again, here we are at the end of one year and the beginning of another. Once again, it will be time for people to make a list of resolutions the cynic in me says they will never keep. Ironically, although I have never really been prone to making such lists, I had started one the other day, and one of the items on that list was to be less cynical about people and their motives. Another is to be calmer in the face of abject stupidity – I suspect that these two actually go hand in hand. Years ago – and this is many years, since it was two exes ago – I had a fairly profound interest in Zen Buddhism. Not to the extent that I am a particularly spiritual person. I am not. I am also not a religious person, much to the dismay of my sister, who is, and who finally settled on Catholicism as her religion of choice. Most of my interest in this is for the human factor, and to me it’s a lot like any other stress-reducing pursuit. As I was reviewing the past couple of years and all the assorted activities that have occurred, I told myself it would be worth my while to take up that interest again, and so I have. I expect this will help immensely in dealing with the people we have to deal with every day, and also help with the anxiety that every day brings as a result of that one singular day when the biopsy came back positive and the snowball that developed from there.
I also told myself that getting back out in the yard and working around the property will help, both physically and mentally. Getting the greenhouse built – what, you didn’t know that was planned? – will enable some experimentation with growing things out of season, inasmuch as anything really is out of season down here. This is Florida, after all. Plus, I’ve decided to take up another hobby: soap and candle making. Not very complicated (or, rather, only as complicated as you make it), relaxing, and in the end, a useful product, all of which satisfies both the left and right brain requirements. Who knows, that might be another side to the business here as well, but we’ll need a snappy name for it. My lack of sleep combined with one side of that (the soapmaking) may bring about echoes of something else entirely, but I think leaving out the underground fighting and general mayhem won’t be a real issue to overcome.
With all of that, plus two additional brands to finally launch, 2008 should be very active indeed. Here’s hoping it will also be happy, prosperous, safe, and healthy for everyone.
“Where are yooooouuuuuu?” asks one of my loyal, even if slightly deranged, handful of readers.
Well.
I’ve been busy with work-related stuff, trying to get some things done for the end of the year. I’ve also been dealing with a couple of the absolutely, without a doubt, unquestionably dumbest, rudest people I have ever had the misfortune of encountering. Let’s face it, if you call me by something other than my own name, when my name is in the dozens of ticket responses you’ve received, including the very one you’re quoting, then you are indeed a rude jackass. If you also can’t read plain English and suggest that we’re lying about something, you’re just ratcheting down our already low opinion of you. By the way: if your domain expires, and you don’t notice the fact that it doesn’t go anywhere for three entire months, don’t whine to us about how important it was to you, and that you were “busy” getting married and working. I’ve been dealing with cancer-related crap for over two years now, and I’m guessing that my employees, the state, and the feds wouldn’t accept that as an excuse if I neglected to pay them or file paperwork because I was “busy”.
In any case, I finally unloaded the camera the other day, and was shocked to discover about 500 pictures on the thing. That’s a lot of review and selective editing to be done. First, though, the goal is to complete the rollout of our gift to our clients before Santa shoves his butt down the chimney (what? no chimney?) so I can move on to other things. And since it’s just me on the job today – everyone else is at the football game or off having other fun – and since it’s quiet, I’m hoping to use today to bang out quite a number of things on my todo list, if only to see if there’s any hope of shrinking that before the new year rolls around.
Hope everyone is well and enjoying their holiday. Be safe, be well, be happy.
There is something about baking that is tremendously satisfying. I’m not talking necessarily about the eating of whatever has been made – since that whole cancer thing, I can’t eat half of what I make for everyone else anyway – but rather taking disparate ingredients and turning them into something greater than the sum of their parts. When you cook, say, a chicken, in the end it’s still a chicken. Delicious though it may be, or prettied up for those people who complain that chicken tastes like chicken, it’s still fairly recognizable as it once was even though it is what it is now.
But baking, oh baking: a pile of flour, some ripe bananas, chopped nuts, and a few other things (including, I might add, that homemade vanilla extract that is ready after some months) turn into something else entirely. Like this.
I figured we would freeze some of the mini loaves, so made a double batch.
Six loaves later, there was still batter left. Muffins it was. Big ones, as there was slightly too much batter for the six-cup pan.
What does it look like, with a dab of organic butter? This.
Mom also got in the kitchen and made some peanut butter cookies. Another wonderful combination of ingredients. The only regret I have is that it’s yet another instance of something quite difficult for me to eat.
I managed one, though.
In the past, I’d have eaten a handful. Now I leave that to others.
So, say my handful of readers, faithful although I am not: where’s the food, already?
With a test run of a roasted butternut squash dip already deemed suitable for the feast that is to come, I had picked up another squash and was deciding what to do with it. Given the horrible tooth pain I’d been experiencing – I thought that it would simply be an issue of digging out the existing filling and replacing it, as it had been on the lower left (and how wrong I was about that) – and given that it’s finally feeling like fall around here, another soup.
There was no real recipe for this. I took stock of what was in the kitchen, what needed to be used in addition to the squash, which was sitting forlornly on the countertop, and started throwing things together.
But first, the onion harvest.
This is a mixture of mini reds and mini sweets that I finally pulled out of the ground completely. The onions, much to my surprise, managed to grow respectably in the poor soil conditions. And there’s nothing better than a fresh onion you’ve yanked out of the ground yourself after planting and coddling it. Especially when you combine it with a little carrot.
Add an apple, that squash, some garlic…
Everything in the pot before the broth and seasonings are added.
Simmer for a bit, then use that handy immersion blender and add a touch of cream.
Soup’s on.
I had some of this for lunch after my two hour visit with the dentist, when the novocaine was wearing off and the pain meds had to be taken. They were kind enough to work me in today and do a root canal – something I was not expecting but which both my mom and one of my employees tells me they knew would be happening. And neither of them bothered to share that guess with me.
When it all comes down to it, life is just a series of small steps on the way to somewhere else. It’s never as simple as, say, telling someone you’ve bought a house. What you’ve really done is saved up the money for it, decided what you want, scouted properties, negotiated the deal, signed a thousand pieces of paper, taken the keys, packed and unpacked, sorted things over, and then started the things you want to do. But it’s much easier to say “I bought a house.”
In the same way, it’s easier to say you’re improving the soil on the property. What has actually happened is that you’ve looked over the soil, discovered that fill dirt and sand from other lots was dumped on yours, dug down a foot or so in various places looking for the real soil you know is there, tested the soil, brought in a ton of topsoil and compost, and sweated your way into what is the beginning of returning the top layers of nothing to a form that is rich and loamy and beautiful for growing Stuff.
I think the one thing that pisses me off above all else is a lack of gratitude from people for the things that others do for them. In our case the other day, that translated to keeping a server up and running and answering as many requests as possible under a crush of traffic from not one but two largely-read sites to a particular site. A server where we’ve had to move other people off – and thus inconvenience them – so they would not be impacted by the site that was the recipient of said traffic. A server that was working to the fullest extent it could to handle the processing required by this one site. What did we get in return? Whining from the user, who is paying a grand total of $11 a month and getting the use of almost all the resources available on a very big server, and then a post from him on his site, quoting us entirely out of context and proving that he doesn’t understand a damn thing about shared hosting (that was a given).
Good luck elsewhere, because your account here is toast.
Last night we had my sister’s birthday: black bean and corn flautas, at her request, with some yellow rice and salad, then angel food cake, homemade whipped cream, and fruit for dessert. The flautas were quite good, and disappeared very quickly. Those are definitely something to make again.
In other news, had a brief chat with the broker today, and he doesn’t need anything else (yet – there’s always something else they need, I’m sure, even though I’ve never been fully through this process). Also had a chat with the builders, who have blocked out the pool and deck and who have started to pull the permit for the pool so it can be dug and hopefully completed by closing time. Wednesday we’ll meet with the builders to choose the color of the wood for the floors in the living area.
I’ve also been putting together a seed order and thinking about trees and grass seed and yard tractors. Sweet dreams indeed.
When you’re in recovery from some traumatic medical situation, you take any bit of progress you can get. Sometimes, it’s just a sip of water. Sometimes, it’s managing to walk an extra 20 feet. And sometimes, it’s getting rid of the everyday reminder of when you couldn’t eat and had to feed yourself through a tube.
In some cases, perhaps, but not this one: my breakup with PEG is imminent. We’re scheduled for tube removal on February 8th in the afternoon.
It was a little amusing, our visit with the gastro guy. Young guy, friendly, funny. He tugged on the tube, pulled it back and forth (which made me want to smack him, since, you know, it hurts a bit when they do that and then for some time afterward, not to mention it allows more granular tissue to form – the stuff that makes it look like the insides of your gut are trying to escape – which sticks to the gauze dressing and pulls if the gauze rides up too closely to the tube, and which then dries and has to fall off or be cut off, etc.). He tells us that he can probably pull it out right then and there, but it would be painful, a bit barbaric, and pretty messy. The more humane way, he says, is for them to knock me out, send a scope down to snip the balloon, then pull it out and sew me up. Hey, I’m all for that, since that’s how they put it in.
I’m looking forward to it, although I know it will involve some discomfort again when they pump air into me. It will be so very nice not to have to worry about the tube getting tangled, not have to do the daily cleaning rituals to keep things clean, and get rid of the itching around the tube placement – since it’s a wound that’s constantly trying to close, it itches almost all the time, and it’s a bit raw where the flange of the tube rests and rides against my skin.
Of course, this means that any medications I may have to take in the future will have to be crushed and I’ll have to drink them down. Eww.
I sincerely hope I’m not the only one in this world who couldn’t care less about the nuptials of Tom and Katie. It seems to be the only thing plastered all over the news (besides the Michigan – Ohio State game).
Anyway, patience. Ever since beginning treatment for cancer, that’s what everyone counseled. Be patient, you’ll get your speech back. Be patient, you’ll get back to eating. Be patient, you’ll get back to eating normally. Be patient, you’ll get your range of motion and strength back.
I’m not the patient sort with myself, as anyone who knows me could say. And being patient is making me tired and crazy. So is having my eyes glaze over from looking at properties.
I stepped out the front door the other day, as the tow truck was bringing my sister’s car back to the house. It has been raining a bit, and was still sprinkling, but directly in front of the house was a huge, perfect and vibrant rainbow, with a smaller rainbow shadowing it.
Fall has arrived, sort of. At least the trees seem to know something that may not be entirely apparent to the rest of us.
I’m sure if she could speak, she’d be saying “Put me down, dammit!”
But what have I been doing? Working a lot after firing some support people. Tending my garden. Not cooking much, although we are having Thanksgiving dinner here and there will be a pack coming in – the menu will be a traditional roasted turkey, a honey-brined, smoked turkey, ham, beans, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, stuffing, yams, pies, and all sorts of other things. The cranberry-apple compote is already made and in the freezer. Should be a good time for everyone.
So we’ve seen the peas when they first started sprouting. The looked like this last week.
Last night, they looked like this.
I sowed more peas of a different variety last night after we returned from a brisk walk in the cool weather.
Everything else is popping up and thriving.
Catnip.
The carrots have sprouted.
The zucchini is moving right along.
Cilantro is growing out of its starter pot and will need to be transplanted next week.
Most of the tomatoes have been transplanted, with just the big boys to be done. The leeks are now on the outside of the row with the collards and broccoli, both of which are growing like (if you’ll pardon the expression) weeds.
The sky is a clear and piercing blue as we make our way into evening. The weather has turned cooler now, giving rise to thoughts of having a fire going tonight while football plays on the tv and Boots curls up against my leg, dreaming whatever it is that cats dream when they really go to sleep. And I keep watch over my plants, patiently awaiting the first flower that is the omen of the bounty to come.
