Tag Archives: life stuff

anybody listening?

25 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by in casa azahar, cats, life stuff

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I have long been in the habit of talking to the cats when I am at home. In fact, I tell them everything! But lately I have noticed the somewhat alarming habit of speaking my thoughts out loud when I am out of doors. Alone.

Seriously. I’ll be in the supermarket and say – OUT LOUD – oh! I almost forgot to get coffee!. Or out in the street I will comment – OUT LOUD – on something that catches my eye. Stuff like that. And I can’t seem to stop myself. Heck, I probably don’t even notice I’m doing it half the time.

Then I remembered how we used to think that people talking to themselves in the street were, well, nuts. But now it’s commonplace to see people talking to their mobile phones with an  earphone/microphone set up, so it’s more likely these days that we will assume the person seemingly yakking away to themselves is taking a call, not crazy in the head.

Hence my new plan to wear a earphone/microphone set while out and about, with the jack end of the cord just tucked into my top. That’ll keep ’em guessing!  🙂

hope 2018

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in cancer, friends, hope, life stuff

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hope-2018

My first Photohunt entry was on January 3rd 2009 . The theme that week was “hope” and I put up a photo of my battered old daybook turned to January 3rd 2010 with the words “STILL HERE!” written on it. After having just finished a second stint on chemo a few months previously this felt like a very bold thing to do.

Since then I have continued this “tradition of hope” and have posted a similar photo on this date each year. So, as always, here’s hoping that I will still be here next year on this date, and will see this page… and smile just like I did this morning.

unprintable

03 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in cancer, chemo, weird

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FingerprintsToday I went to renew my residency card, which included getting a fingerprint taken, and the woman at the immigration office couldn’t get the machine to “accept” my print. She said they were very faint. It was then I remembered hearing something about this while I was on chemo, that taking Xeloda could actually wipe out your fingerprints, as happened to this guy. After quite a few tries with both thumbs and a couple of fingers the machine finally gave a little “ping” and I was okay. I was beginning to worry, wondering what would happen if they couldn’t get an acceptable print. So that was a relief. Also a good thing I never tried using the fingerprint ID option on my new iPhone…

the best I can be

06 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by in blogging, cancer, change, chemo, friends, hope

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polaroid patThe other day I came across this post written by Pat Is this the best I can be? in which she’d linked to this post that I’d written on the same day in October 2009, and in those blog posts both of us were questioning our lives and our behaviour, ways of coping, etc. And it got me thinking…

First of all, I spent a bit of time on Pat’s blog listening to her voice again. She was such a naturally talented writer along with being wonderful in so many other ways. And I realised that it’s been almost three years since we wrote those posts. I’m still here, Pat is not. But who knows what the next PET scan in September will reveal?

And so what I mostly started thinking about was “wasting time”. It seemed that for awhile I was doing everything very intensely because it truly felt like DEATH was just around the corner. These days I am mostly aware of my condition (stage 4 cancer survivor – at least so far!) during my monthly visits to the hospital to get my chemo port cleaned out, and of course every six months when I go for my PET scan. The latter always terrifies me and I’m a mess for about a week or so before. Lucky for me that I get the results straight away and don’t have to also go through the stress of waiting a couple of weeks afterwards.

Anyhow, there are, and always have been, a lot of things I don’t like about myself, so that is a daily struggle. I mean, I think I am mostly a “good person” (whatever that means) but my days are full of self-criticism because I could always be Doing Better. And then I don’t do better because this (rather abusive) inner-dialogue tends to wear me out, though I think I still end up mostly Doing Okay. When I was going through chemo and recovering from operations I tended to cut myself some slack and not be so hard on myself and I guess that reading those blog posts made me aware that I’d slipped back into this beating-myself-up rut. Which is, frankly, a waste of time. Not to mention counter productive. And exhausting.

When Azar, the love of my life, died last September I made a promise in honour of his memory to try and be the same person I was with him when with other people. You see, he was just so easy to love and it turned out I actually really liked who I was when I was with him. Because with Azar I was always the best I could be. And well, I haven’t always remembered that promise but all this recent thinking has brought it back. So I’m going to start making that my daily goal, and I even think I’ll try to include myself along with those “other people”.

Wish me luck!

the sunshine of my life

05 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by in animals & pets, cats, home, love

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sunny the dudeMy big handsome Sunny was born twenty years ago on August 5th, sometime between 10 and 11 in the morning. I was there and held each kitten in my hands shortly after Lua had cleaned them up. Later when I was trying to decide which kitten to keep for myself (there was a queue of people waiting to take the others) Sunny made the decision for me by being the only kitten to wait by the door when I came home. So doggy. And he stayed very doggy all his life.

These days I have a splendid and equally huge orange boy who is so similar that I often end up calling him Sunny.

But Sunny will always be my big cuddly bear cat, so solid, so constant. He died in my arms sometime between 10 and 11 in the morning on November 18th 2009. I still miss the sunshine of my life.