the year in fears

Well, here's my second annual year end recap. all the news you can use and plenty you can't in wildly truncated form. I started bloggrilla last year at just about this time, and the 2005 recap was, in hindsight (i almost wrote "hindi-sight"), almost heartbreakingly touchingly sweet and naive, full of hope for the brand spanking new year that was 2006, a year that, we now know, will go down in the annals (yes yes, anals...) of abigail history as the year voted most likely to be expunged from the memory as a very very dark time.

However, expunge we do not, not yet anyway. before we expunge, we must memorialize. So here it is folks, I bring you, that annus horribilus, that dark year, that era of bad feeling, that era when the dark lord lifted his hand over dead sea and withered land -- 2006!!!

January: I enter the ranks of the gainfully employed for the first time in three blissful years of scholly-stipend-supported schooling. The BF and I go see Morris Day and the Time at BAM, and shake our stiff white butts.

February: I become acquainted with life as a bona fide, 9-5 (or, lets get real, 9 - whenever) proto-attorney (proto because I'm not sworn in until ....)

March: I am sworn in as a lawyah. Other than that, absolutely nothing happens.

April: I hit my first double digit run (10 miles) on the rainiest day of the year. As fate would have it, I catch a flu which sends me to a doctor, who discovers a lump, which sends me to have a mammogram, which sends me to a surgeon, who takes a biopsy, which shows cancer, which sends me to surgery, which involves a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction....shit, wait, back up this is only April. April is the cruellest month. In April, the doctor discovers a lump and sends me for a mammogram. On the last day of april, the EX and I walk the entire length of manhattan, and I convince myself, for one brief day, that I couldn't possibly have cancer.

May: On May 1 I am diagnosed with cancer. On May 19, I undergo a double mastectomy. After Memorial day, I go back to work, and no one is the wiser.

June: In June, I start chemo. And I buy a wig. Cancer grrl is born.

July: I lose my hair. I lose my eyebrows.

August: I lose my mind. I lose my patience. I lose any self delusion that I like my job or law in general as a career.

September: The Ex and I run the komen race. It is jolly good fun! Chemo ends, and not a moment too soon.

October: The BF and I go to Austin where we run the LiveStrong Challenge, which kicks my chemo-ized butt. I realize what a toll the whole thing has taken on my body, when a simple 5K run almost cripples me for a month.

November: Back to work. It just gets better and better (oh yeaaaahhh). My hair starts to grow back COMPLETELY GREY. I get spanked at work for a job crappily done. I dis and avoid thanksgiving dinner. There have to be SOME perks to survivorship.

December: I go to 2 holiday parties at work where I make nice, try not to embarrass myself, and try to keep my by now overused and severely stretched-out wig from shifting back off my forehead like some 1930s newsboy cap. I get a nice fat cold for xmas and skip another holiday dinner. I begin the foster-ship of yet another feral feline (pix to come...). The BF and I go to see Pina Bausch at BAM. It's nice, but I fall asleep.

Oh baby. From the bottom of my toxic heart, my teflon lungs, my three brain cells, I fervently fervently fervently pray to the deities for a much less interesting, much more peaceful, much less medicated, much less, um, well, terrifying year for myself, for mcuster, for carolyn, for marjory, and for all the other cancer bloggers I've compared notes with over the months. Let's all move on now, shall we?

god without man

in my dream i'm running along a gravel road. there's bright sunshine, and yellow flowers on my left side. on my right side is a forest that's close to the road. the road is like a bright tunnel, heading straight forward into the blue. i'm going fast. Out of the yellow flowers on my left side comes one big animal, or two animals chasing each other. i think it's a lion, or cougar, or two of them but i can't tell. There's a flash of grey tan fur. It dashes ahead of me down the side of the road: soft, mad, low dash. it never goes on the road, it stays by the yellow flowers. It never morphs either into one animal or two, it remains indistinct, chaotic. I don't have time to think about what it is, i keep going forward.