answering questions and setting dates

My last chemo session is this coming Monday.  Three weeks later they will remove my right breast.  I will heal, take another trip to SD for a friends wedding whom I've known for almost 33 years, and come back just in time to bake XMAS cookies with my sisters and mom.  I will have radiation, probably in December,  yet it's not set up yet.  I don't know how much the chemo has benefited.  I'm sure more test will come after the operation.  As of now, "they" haven't said anything about further chemo treatments.  However, I will continue to research on my own and volunteer for clinical studies (if they'll have me).
I will be writing again and posting pictures (because I'm not shy) after the surgery.  Stay tuned.

Cali, My Home!

I’ve had an epiphany:  the last time this broad took a holiday from her home for longer than four days was the summer of ’98.  It was my last trip to Europe.  Now, you won’t hear any boo-hoos coming from me; for I’ve traveled a bit since then… Maine, RI, Penn., Connecticut, NY, NJ (and it’s oh so popular shore), Vermont, OR, ID, CO, Wash., Cali, all of which include at least two full days of site seeing.  Then there is a list of cities the four cross county road trips have deemed “drinkably” acceptable.  Some I have forgotten, other’s not even Google maps have remembered, and then there are Little Rock, AR, Cheyanne, WY, and Las Vegas, NV. 

Escaping to different environments was made possible by my “pick up and move” philosophy; that, and the geographical closeness of eastern states.  The drive from our abode in New Jersey to the shores of Maine took 11 hours, passing five states between.  You could leave San Diego driving north and not exit California in that time.  I’m not trying to convince you, nor tell you as if it’s new information.  I’m simply in awe like when watching a wunderkind completing the Sunday New York Times crossword in record minutes.  If I get five I know it’s going to be a good week.

I will fan away the crooked brow of my Cali. readers by saying that along the 5 freeway, I’ve encountered as much richness and diversity from the trees, to the sand, to the cities as I have on the east coast.  Cali is better than multiple states, it’s home.

You can imagine my excitement when after all these years my first “real” vacation, 7 days 6 nights, was a trip to back to my roots.  I’ve always adventured with the understanding it’s best to see a place through the eyes of its citizens.  Luckily in all my moves I’ve kept many friends at a phones length.  And when I finally reached out and touched them, some after seven years, I found more than a connection.  They offered their time, experiences, and most amazingly their homes.

I flew from Boise to San Francisco, starting off with a bang.  If you knew the three ladies I’d met you’d agree such a decision synchronized a bang with a boom.  San Fran-fucking Cisco!! Individually, Trisha, Michele, and Carla led me through the city taking on public transport, the arts, food, drink, music, and even found time to sleep.  Wonderful, brilliant, simply breathe taking, oven baked bread and whole fresh boiled crab, a bicycle festival with staged racers, a back-alley lesbian bar, a gay-boy disco club, house-made brownies topped with mint ice cream caramel and chocolate syrup, a bloody-mary breakfast with 10 sliced pickles (my own demand), and a history lesson by a friend who’s love for the city shines like the glitter on a tranny’s nails.

I could have stayed another week, a month, the rest of my days but the city of angels was calling.  Los Angeles had a different plan for me. Dinner and wine anyone?  Don’t mind if I do!  In a last minute decision, Amy and Patrick were there to pick me up.  (A savings of around $50.  Thanks again guys.)  After a brief stop at a local wine shop, we headed to mannequin heaven, also known as West Hollywood.  What do you get when you mix 216 vintage mannequins with a chemotherapy patient?  A lot of bald heads!

Chad-Michael is known for many things, and parties are one of them and never let the amount of intimacy fool you.  There was (did I mention) wine, gourmet vegan cuisine, laughter and catching up, some German folk singing (schinken!!), wine, gardening, the masturbating tortoise, a large eye sculpture, walks to the liquor store for more wine, pictures, and mannequins.  Through the laughter, bottles of wine, lost purse, trips to the liquor store I saw us clearly.  We were no longer twenty-somethings, but thirsty, wise, humble, strong, determined, ambitious adults.  And it was a spectacle to cherish.  We didn’t compete for stories or favorite moments but offered them up as reflections of ourselves or as pieces of advice gift-wrapped and labeled for use at a later date.  Who we’d been was no longer up for discussion. Instead who we’d become gave tranquil responses to those previous experiences like we’d recorded the past and now felt at ease in its proof.  I would have loved more time, but slept well knowing one night had had given me back ten years.

Brother Doug, the bestest brother in all the land, picked me up from The Alibi where I nursed my hangover with a shot of patron and a Corona.  The two hour drive back to San Diego was sobering.  We arrived to home-made lasagna and more wine, conversation that continued to revisit “the meaning of life”, and warm sheets in my old room.  The truth of the matter is I’d called every bedroom, half of the garage, and the den, “my room” at one point, with the exception of my parents’ master suite (which had also been redesigned into two separate rooms, but only after my departure).  A quick dip in the pool and it was lights-out for me.

Only two full days left.  However, the agenda was simple: friends, La Torta, and the flight. The old Pizza Nova gang made it real easy on me by showing up at Gorden Biersch with photos, stories, and an appetite.  In a few hours we devoured years of house-parties, trips to Vegas, beach bathing, bike rides, clubs, dinners, hole-in-the-walls, wine tastings, and every employee or infamous customer who happened to breach our little pizza home.  Oh, and the course wouldn’t be complete without some Charger girls.  Just in case I’d forgotten to represent the team as their token lesbian, they bought me a Charger cheerleading calendar to remind me.

Hugs and kisses to: Emily, Cindy, Laura, Amy, Britt, Amanda, Laura, Kris, and on to my last day.

Had I known the lunch with brother and dad at La Torta would have been our last meal together, I may have convinced myself to chew the most delicious sandwich in the world.  Yet, as the odor drifted from the warm bun to my nose my hand to mouth movements became involuntary.  And thus the end! 

Oh, not of my story, just of that meal.  We parted ways in La Mesa as I took the trolley downtown and they headed back to East County.  Who knows, maybe it was chemo brain, maybe I was comatose from eating a sandwich the size of my head, or maybe it was due to drinking three of the last five days but I could not for the life of me give Michelle the correct cross streets to where I’d gotten off downtown.  She got there nonetheless.

On the drive, we both realized that born and raised we had not frequented the world famous San Diego Zoo quite enough, and that the only thing that had stopped us was ridiculousness. The zoo is a work out, centralized, fairly inexpensive, beautiful, educational, and down-right fun.  We felt like Crocodile Dundee, Siegfried and Roy, Dian Fossey, Steven Irwin (except protected behind think glass or large metal cages).

Now, what led up to this is debauchery (of the best kind) but the details are a little muddled.  I spent the last night of my California vacation on a fairly cushioned 5 by 4 foot jail mat.  Sure I was drinking.  Sure we closed down the bars and that wasn’t quite enough.  And sure, I had friends with me throughout most of the evening.  But when and how exactly I wound up bruised from falling sitting Indian-style on the dirt staring at a bush when two nice, handsome, San Diego, police officers tapped me on the shoulder is beyond me.  I mean how, as my day started off with a family meal at La Torta and a trip to the zoo, could it end purse-less, phone-less, friend-less, and bruised?  Well, the only real cushion here is knowing that I can finally count that one off my bucket list.  Next in line, fist fight. 
Shout out to: David, Carla, and Jacqueline