I’m so touched by all the support I’ve been getting from everybody over the past couple of days. It’s overwhelming, and deeply, deeply touching. And it certainly brightens up the darker, scarier corners of my mind.
I’m still getting used to the idea that I have cancer. One of the things I’ve noticed is that my own reaction to this information is wildly unstable.
Sometimes I feel scared half to death that I have cancer. It’s the thing I’ve always dreaded. I imagine it creeping stealthily through my body over the past few months or years, seizing territory, staking claim – a dark malignant force with a big head start.
But then GC will hug me or Duncan will purr on me, or I’ll read some of your messages, and then suddenly I’m fine, confident that I have a good chance of emerging strong and healthy. Who knows, I might even be stronger and healthier than ever before. And maybe even wiser! And maybe I’ll have a whole new sense of clarity about the meaning of life! And maybe I’ll finally organize my art supplies! And write a book! And….! (As you can see, I have outrageously high expectations of cancer’s potential to improve my life.)
Yesterday I had lunch with Marta, a storyteller who wants to tell one of my stories at a conference for teenagers. Near the end of our conversation, she brought up the subject of my cancer diagnosis, and said she believes every experience comes with gifts. I knew exactly what she meant, because I believe it too. I know it sounds a little pollyannish or new-agey, or at least a little grasping-at-straws-y. Call me an incurable optimist, but I honestly believe good things will come of me having breast cancer. That’s not to say that these good things will necessarily be worth the ordeal of breast cancer, only that it won’t be all bad; some good will emerge.
And already good things are coming out of it – for example, I had no idea I had so much support from so many people until this week. No idea at all. It makes me very happy to know that so many people care about me and want to help me. You’re like a protective force all around me.
After lunch with Marta, I went for a massage and then took the bus home. I was thinking about my son. I’ve been on his case for years to get the chicken pox vaccination because if he gets pox as an adult, he might be unable to have children. Clearly this is something that matters more to me than to him at this point, but someday it might matter very much to him, so I’ve been urging him to do what he can to keep his reproductive options open. Anyway, on Wednesday night I told him I had cancer and we talked about that, and then, as usual, the subject of chicken pox came up. This time he promised me he’d call and make an appointment the very next day to get the vaccination.
So I was sitting on the bus, thinking about James and his future children, and of course that made me think about knitting, and then suddenly it occurred to me that maybe I’d never meet his children and maybe I should knit something now, just in case. Well, that struck me as so sad I started weeping right there on the bus, and that struck me as so funny I started giggling. So if you happened to be on the #14 yesterday afternoon and saw a woman laughing and crying at the same time, now you know why.
So yeah, I have my moments. But most of the time I’m doing okay and gradually coming to terms with the idea that I have cancer.
*Just a note to those of you who have been sending emails – thank you so much, and I’m not ignoring you, it’s just that I’ve fallen way behind on my emails the last couple of days. I’m trying to catch up.
It all started with a routine mammogram in March, just a few days before I got laid off. The mammogram was no big deal: I’ve had haircuts that hurt more.
Did you know that immediately after they do the mammogram, a nurse conducts a physical breast exam? The nurse found a lump, but for some reason the lump was not visible on the mammogram.
I was referred for an ultrasound, which took place a few weeks later. The ultrasound confirmed the lump and did not rule out cancer, so I was referred for a biopsy the following week. That was last Monday.
When I had the mammogram and the ultrasound, I didn’t think it was cancer. We were just being cautious. We were just ruling cancer out. But by the time we got to the biopsy, I was getting a bad feeling. The odds were turning against me.
I got the results today. I have Infiltrating Ductal Carcinoma. I have breast cancer.
To be honest, I’ve spent more time setting up the Getting Things Done systems than I’ve spent getting things done. At times it makes me wonder if GTD is just another way of putting off actually doing things.
Tickler File System
But you have to admit it looks cool. This is my Tickler File system (as opposed to my real file system, which is in a filing cabinet). The Tickler File system is a series of 43 folders. 31 of them are labeled 1 through 31, and 12 of them are labeled January through December. This is just one small component of the Getting Things Done system.
First thing each morning I empty today’s tickler folder into my in-basket and then move the empty file to the back of the numbered files. Throughout the day I add time-sensitive material to various folders in the system. For example, I’ve got a requisition form from my doctor to get a follow x-ray done in six months – I stuck the requisition form in the November folder. My books are due back at the library on May 19th, so I’ve placed a reminder in my folder labeled 18.
You can use the Tickler system to store reminders and actual documents so they resurface precisely when you need them. My old system involved leaving everything lying around so I’d see it frequently and therefore not forget about it. This system is so much more elegant, don’t you think? (See Tickler File description and instructions.)
The Labeler
At the heart of the Getting Things Done system is an electronic labeler, which makes everything look far weightier than it is. Psychologically, this is very helpful.
The Getting Things Done system requires that you break everything down into next actions. All you need to know is what the very next physical action is that you need to take to move the project along, and then you just keep doing them and updating your Next Actions list as you complete each action.
Okay, so apart from setting up files and binders and a desk and so on, what have I actually done? Well, I’ve done lots and lots of Next Actions. But so far I’ve only completed two projects: I did my taxes on tax deadline day (yay me, I’m still capable of impressing myself) and I bought and installed a doorbell. These might not seem like huge accomplishments, but they are. Especially the doorbell. I’ve wanted a doorbell since I moved here two and a half years ago.
These were the steps involved in Project Doorbell:
Go to Home Depot and buy a doorbell.
Find glasses strong enough to read the sub-microscopic installation instructions written in six languages on a one-inch square piece of paper, complete with cryptic diagrams.
Fail to note that the unit requires three batteries, and only one of them is included, which is an easy mistake to make when the packaging says BATTERY INCLUDED!
Buy two more batteries.
Put two batteries in chime unit. Put one battery in push-button unit.
Test doorbell and figure out why it only works when the back is off.
Attach push-button to door frame with double-sided tape.
Attach chime unit to inside wall with screws.
Test unit/scare cat.
Cross Install a Doorbell off the Master Projects list.
Celebrate!
I’m interrupting my humble (and deeply, deeply humbling) trek down Lovers’ Lane to bring you some community announcements about events taking place around Ottawa this week.
Just Foods is offering free Beginner Organic Vegetable Garden Workshops which will be at various locations around the city on May 5th, 6th, 12th and 14th. There’s a free downloadable veggie growing guide specifically for Ottawa gardeners on their website too.
The annual Great Sandy Hill Garage Sale and Plant Exchange, for those of us who love community garage sales, is taking place on Saturday May 9th, throughout Sandy Hill. (There’s also one in Stittsville, same day, but my experience is that the Stittsville one is mostly about toys and baby gear.)
Young at Art at Ben Franklin Place in Centrepointe features art by high school students around the region, from now til May 26th. David Scrimshaw blogged about this, and offers a bit of a preview on flickr.
And of course the Tulip Festival is on until May 18th. Frankly, I’ve always thought this festival was a bit lame (even though I attended faithfully year after year because it was so inexpensive and it symbolically kicked off festival season here in Ottawa. For a mere $15 you could spend two weeks freezing your ass off in wind-whipped downpours at Major Hill Park). But now it looks completely different and better than ever. The down side? It’s not cheap anymore. But there’s a vintage carnival! And an acrobatic troupe! And Rick Mercer! And “Surveillance: a fascinating discussion of the many ways we are being watched monitored and spied upon by government and the private sector.”
Many moons ago, Dave, Dave and Bob shared an apartment in the Glebe. My friend D was dating one of the Daves, and it was through this connection that I met the other Dave.
We had quite a few adventures during the month we dated, because weirdness seemed to follow Dave around. For example, we went fishing in Brown’s Inlet in the middle of the night one night and saw a body floating in the water. However it was dark and the body disappeared and we weren’t positive, so we didn’t report it. (The next day we heard on the news that a body had been recovered from Browns Inlet.)
Another time we took Dave’s guitar and a coconut head from my place down to Irene’s Pub, and Dave propped the head on the table and played the guitar and sang – both quite badly – until the bartender made him stop. We were then approached by an Aboriginal elder who spoke (and smoked!) through a tube in his throat. He had the freakiest, spookiest mechanical voice.
He asked us where the head had come from. I said I bought it for a quarter at a garage sale on Irving Avenue. He gravely informed us it was originally from a native burial ground and it would bring bad luck to whomever possessed it or touched it, until it was returned. He said three deaths would occur if this did not happen.
Maybe if his voice had been normal it wouldn’t have freaked us out so much, but that spooky voice sounded so ominous that we believed him. We took the head and the guitar and headed out onto Bank Street. Moments later we passed a woman on the street who gasped when she saw the head, and then our eyes locked and she looked petrified.
That did it. The head had to be returned to its sacred burial ground posthaste! But first I had to find out where its sacred burial ground was.
The very next morning I started making phone calls. Eventually I was put in touch with a curator of aboriginal artifacts at the Museum of Civilization. He asked us to bring the head in, which we did.
He tried to maintain his professional demeanor as he told us the head was a decorated coconut from Hawaii, sold as a cheap tourist souvenir.
Dave attracted weirdness because he emitted weird vibes of his own. Half the time I had no idea what he was talking about. He’d chatter incessantly about stuff that made sense only to him, punctuating his monologues frequently with “You know what I mean?” or “You see what I’m getting at?” And I would nod, even though I had no clue. (In retrospect, I think he probably had an untreated mental illness.)
Just one month after we started dating, Dave suddenly vanished, without warning or explanation. He resurfaced a few months later and explained that the reason he had disappeared was that he couldn’t handle my son’s incessant chatter. (James was five years old at the time, and he did talk a lot. But at least he was interesting and I could always follow what he was saying!)
It’s been over twenty years since that month-long relationship ended, but I still hear from Disappearing Dave once in a weird while.
I got the last available plot in the Organic Community Garden behind the Carlington Community Health Centre! Can you believe my good luck?
I’m very excited about this, even though gardening has never been my forte and my own yard is overtaken each year by forces beyond my control.
It might be a little tricky in the beginning. My back feels much better but it’s still quite weak and vulnerable to re-injury so I have to be careful. GC just had surgery on Tuesday, and he’s not allowed to lift anything heavier than a pound for awhile. But I figure I’ll drag the bags of sheep manure to the plot, and GC can sit on a stump in the plot and read to me while I dig and mulch and stuff. It’s going to be SO much fun.
I’m taking a brief break from embarrassing myself with previously untold tales from the relationship crypt, to show you a picture of me and my Farmtown llama. I do this only because The Elgin Street Irregulars are on a quest for llamas. (Click the picture for a larger view – unless of course you’re scared of llamas.)
Okay, so the burning question is Why did I marry George, the incompatible stranger? (I know this, because any time I’ve told this story in real life, it’s the first question people ask: Why???)
The answer, quite simply, is I married George because he was different from Bob.
Bob and I had been together for a few years and had only recently broken up when I met George. Bob was a nice guy, and he played the guitar and sang and wrote me songs and loved my son and my dog. But he just could not get his shit together. He seemed utterly blind to the relationship between actions and consequences.
“If it weren’t for bad luck,” he’d moan, “I’d have no luck at all.”
He attributed everything that happened in his life to luck.
Here’s an example. He couldn’t afford to drive, but he couldn’t imagine life without a car, so he bought some piece of crap car on its last legs for $140 and said he’d drive it til it died. Okay, fair enough. But the piece of crap car had a broken gas gauge and Bob couldn’t afford gas. So he’d only put $5 worth of gas into it at a time, and he’d drive it til it ran out of gas. Then he’d go on about how unlucky he was, running out of gas and having to walk three miles to the nearest gas station and not having any money for the deposit on the gas can, and why do these things always happen to him?
Sometimes I was tempted to point out that running out of gas three times every single week is not bad luck. But I didn’t say anything because it seemed somehow mean-spirited to kick a man when he’s down. And Bob was always down.
Another example. Bob couldn’t afford to pay for parking, so he’d park at an empty meter and hope for the best. Naturally, he got a lot of parking tickets, which he couldn’t afford to pay, and which again he chalked up to bad luck. One time he drove to Pembroke to visit his daughter and got pulled over for unpaid tickets and jailed. JAILED! Such bad luck.
No matter what was going on, he felt powerless to do anything about anything. His favourite expression was “My hands are tied.” More than anything, this drove me crazy. He’d just sit there shrugging his shoulders, giving up on everything without even trying, and resigning himself to his fate.
I often pondered where that sense of powerlessness came from. I think it was because as children he and his little brother were sentenced to St. Joseph’s Training School in Alfred for stealing a plastic wading pool from someone’s yard. I think they were 12 and 9 at the time. (Coincidentally, their youngest brother, who had been given up for adoption at birth, and who was raised in a different city, and who they didn’t even know existed, also did time in Alfred as a boy.)
Bob was in Alfred for years. Alfred, if you recall, was the subject of a huge investigation in the 90s which resulted in multiple charges being laid against many of the Christian Brothers who ran the place, for decades of sexual and physical abuse of the boys in their care. There were trials, convictions, suicides, and, eventually, paltry compensation packages and half-assed apologies.
Although Bob said he was never sexually abused, he was frequently beaten and he saw other boys taken from their beds at night to be sexually abused. He also told me that some boys simply disappeared without explanation, often after a beating or under suspicious circumstances, and that the children at the school believed these boys had been killed by the Christian Brothers.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be a little kid living in an institution run by deviants with so much power? And how powerless you would feel in the face of such institutionalized abuse? I think that’s why Bob grew up to be the man he did, and why he felt his hands were tied and there was nothing he could do about anything. To his credit, however, he also grew up to be a decent, kind and gentle man in spite of it all.
So what does any of this have to do with me marrying George the Incompatible Stranger? Well. Bob and I broke up at least in part because it drove me crazy to be with someone who was perpetually plagued by preventable problems. In a relationship, you have to share each others misfortunes to a certain extent, and I’d had enough.
Shortly after breaking up with Bob, I met George, who billed himself as a problem-solver, a man of action, a man who knew how to get things done. At this particular juncture in my life, these qualities were undeniably appealing. I was blinded by his bright shiny problem-solving skills, by his confidence, by his power. I was drawn like a moth to a flame by the ways in which his strengths corresponded to Bob’s weaknesses.
I realize, of course, that it was mind-bogglingly dumb of me to marry someone for those reasons, especially after knowing him for less than a hundred days, and especially when he’s still concealing all his own weaknesses. But that is why I married the Incompatible Stranger.
Did I ever tell you about the time I married a completely incompatible man less than a hundred days after meeting him?
We’ll call him George, because that was his name.
We met online, back when meeting online was practically unheard of. Our courtship was brief but intense and involved lots of fancy restaurants and good wine. Within 10 weeks we’d secretly bought a house together at the top of a hill near Wakefield; two weeks later we eloped.
We were married in a highrise on Ambleside Drive by a Liberal Catholic priest. Two building janitors served as witnesses. They didn’t stay to actually witness the service, they just signed the paper, collected their $5 each, wished us well and left.
My child (age 13) and George’s children (ages 5 and 7) watched solemnly from the couch. The priest conducted the ceremony in front of a blaring TV; there was a chest-beating gorilla on TV. I got a terrible case of panicky giggles halfway through my very brief wedding, and we had to interrupt the service for a few minutes so I could compose myself.
Immediately following the service we drove to Lake Placid where George was playing in a hockey tournament. (I lost his seven-year-old son in an arena there, but found him again before anybody else found out. It was terrifying.)
Anyway. A week later we moved into our house in Wakefield and discovered we were completely incompatible.
Here are some examples:
He was a clean freak. I wasn’t.
He was a control freak. I wasn’t.
He was a productivity freak. I wasn’t.
He was a status symbol freak. I wasn’t.
I’d never even heard of anybody hating books before I married George. For some reason he never mentioned it during our courtship. In our shared house, my books were relegated to the basement, because he said they made the living room look like a student’s dorm. Okay, whatever. But he went even further than that. It was okay to read for information, but one should never read for pleasure. Because, reading robs us of valuable time and we should all be accomplishing as much as humanly possible every single day. He didn’t even like his children reading, or me reading to them. (He wanted them to be able to read, but not to enjoy it or spend any time on it.)
The clean freak stuff was tied into the control freak stuff, because nobody could do anything to his standards except him. If I wiped down the counter, he’d re-wipe it immediately. So we hired a cleaning woman to come in once a week but he didn’t think she was good enough either. (She was so interesting though – her new husband had talked her into moving from Toronto to the country, and then into adopting two Romanian orphans, and then, three months later, he dumped her, leaving her to raise them alone!)
George’s control issues extended their creepy tentacles into everything. We had weekly meetings. With agendas. And spreadsheets.
We hadn’t even been married a month when I realized that the only way this marriage could work was if I were to change.
Now, the thing was, I knew I wasn’t perfect and there was room for improvement, and I didn’t want to give up on my marriage without even trying to make it work, so I tried to change.
Two years later I decided he wasn’t worth changing for, and besides, it wasn’t even really about changing me, it was about controlling me. So I took my son and my dog and my cat and moved back to Ottawa, where we lived happily ever after.
Part II to follow, in which I answer the inevitable question: Why did I marry the incompatible stranger?
GC and I found sitters for the pets and headed for the hills on Friday afternoon. We drove through Quebec along the winding, scenic 148, through the stinky town of Thurso, and then stopped at a casse-croute in Papineauville for a traditional supper of Steamies and Poutine. (Poutine, for those of you from “away” is a French-Canadian delicacy of french fries, cheese curds and gravy. Steamies are hotdogs.)
We arrived at our destination – a summer house on Lac Cardin, near Ste-Agathe – in time for a glass of wine before tumbling into bed.
Saturday we woke up in a different world. Ste-Agathe is ski country. It was the oddest thing to be surrounded by snow while the mercury climbed to an unseasonably summery 27 degrees Celsius (about 82F for my American friends).
GC sketching on the deck in his bathrobe
We took chairs and coffee out onto the deck and sketched the lake, which was still labouring against a crust of ice. Bare feet. Ice. Snow. Sun beating down. It was weird and lovely.
Later we went into town and found an art supply store (GC bought a tin box of 12 pencils in varying shades of greys) and we had a delicious breakfast of french toast and fruit at at Restaurant des Mont.
Pottery House Under Construction
Afterwards we toured around Val-David, and tried to go to a pottery shop. We couldn’t find the potter, but we saw the most amazing things in her back yard. She was building a house with pottery-filled wire walls!
Close-Up of Pottery House Wall
Back at the summer house we played Trivial Pursuit. (I was so impressed that GC got this, since I had no idea: Which English and Spanish writers share April 23, 1616 as the date of their death?)
Then we hit the sauna. According to the thermostat, it was 90 degrees Celsius in there! A few more degrees and our wine would have boiled!
We had pumpkin-seed salad and barbecued kebabs for dinner, and we even managed to squeeze a little TV in. (TV is a novelty for me now because I don’t think I told you this before, but I sold my TV a few months ago.)
Around 3:00 am a noise woke me up. One of those noises like there’s a diabolical stranger creeping around the house with a big sharp pointy knife. Naturally I woke GC up and told him, and naturally he insisted on getting up to check it out. I didn’t want him to do that. I wanted him to cower under the blankets with me until the diabolical stranger found us and butchered us together in our bed. But GC insisted. (Afterwards he was kind enough not to suggest it was my imagination, but instead attributed it to “house noises.”)
Today we had to come back. Sigh. But it was a good drive home and we had breakfast again at the incredible breakfast place, and when we got home I was so happy to see Duncan even though he turned his back on me and pretended we’d never met.
My cat-sitter had taken advantage of my absence to redecorate my house. There were odd bits of art hanging in odd places all over the house. (He also left a note saying the state of my art studio made him feel better about the state of his den…but that’s okay, because my art studio is still in its pre-Getting-Things-Done state, while his den is in its permanent state.)
The other surprise waiting for me at home was news that I’d won an F-Word award for the Best Personal Feminist Blog over at A Creative Revolution. I love that! Thanks very much to Chrystal Ocean and Naci for the nomination, to the organizers for organizing it, and to everybody who took the time to vote. Also, kudos to the creative team behind this awards video. It’s hilarious.
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