Cancer Update

Julie had another full-body PET scan this week, and the results were negative - no cancerous cells anywhere. It's been about a year now since she finished her treatments; just four more to go until she is considered "cured". Which is really an aknowledgement that you've been cured the whole time, but we weren't sure until now. Very inconvenient system, but it's the best they've got. Of course, there's still about a 20-25% chance that there's still mutant cells somewhere in her body, just laying low until they decide to start making tumors again. And if they do, well, that would be really really bad. So, every few months we'll be going through this, worrying and scanning and then worrying more.

Unfortunately, not having any cancer doesn't mean she's free of the consequences. Between the cancerous lymph nodes being taken out and the scarring from the radiation, Julie gets a lot of swelling in her chest and arm as fluids build up and can't drain efficiently. It can get very painful, and pretty much the only thing that helps is for me to massage the affected areas. It may get somewhat better with time, but for the most part she's going to have to deal with it for the rest of her life. I was talking to a friend whose wife underwent treatment for leukemia about seven years ago, including a bone marrow transplant. We agreed that if ordinary people were coming down with these kinds of chronic issues, it would most likely be labeled a major health issue and billions would go for finding cures. But since it's cancer, the medical industry shrugs its collective shoulders and says "well, it's better than being dead isn't it?" Yeah, it is, but that doesn't make the pain any less.

Cancer sucks.

Out Of Context

Talking to Julie while she is playing World of Warcraft can be damaging to one's self-image:

"Can you bring me a soda, baby?"

"Sure, love."

"You asshole!"

"Huh?"

"Stupid gorilla."

Happy Mother's Day

"I love you more than you love me."

"That's not true!"

"It is."

"We both love each other more than we can count. So how can you say you love me more?"

"Because I do."

"If you love me more, how come I'm the one who logged out and am giving you a backrub so you can keep playing?"

"Because it's Mother's Day, beeyatch."

Daaaang.......

Well, there's your problem!

From seniorgif.com

5 Things I Have Never Done

...and really hope I never do.

1) Follow the "Shake well before opening" instructions on a can of Slim-Fast, forgetting that I'm actually holding a can of Diet Coke.

2) Drop my cell phone in the toilet.

3) Use two cups of salt instead of two cups of sugar when baking a pie.

4) Call my wife my ex's name.

5) Convince myself I can manage to carry a really big really expensive tv up the stairs without help.

AvP Poker Faces

Yeah. I nerdgasmmed.

Winter Is Coming

This Sunday, at 8:00 pm Central time.

Pimp My Sith

Culture Fail

Julie:  Turkey is Emerilized!

me:  is wha?

Julie:  BAM!

me:  are you drunk?

Julie:  YOU DONT KNOW WHO EMERIL IS?!

me:  no....

Julie:  FFS use Google, Michael
he is probably one of the most famous chefs of current times

me:  ok
does he say "bam!" a lot?

Julie:  YES MICHAEL
GOOGLE BAM

me:  ok, I got

Julie:  omfg
you have just traumatized me
guh.

me:  I sorry

Julie:  I just don't get how you didn't know who he was
and since you didn't, you don't realize how nice it is that I am using his recipe to make you a turkey

me:  I am sure it is awesome


EDIT: Yeah, it was the best turkey dinner I've ever had. BAM!

World of Warcraft: Now What?

For the most part, I have been quite pleased with Cataclysm. In particular, the difficulty levels in the dungeons and raids suited me just fine. Julie and I were in a brand new guild, with people who had similar ideas of how to balance fun and progression, with minimal personality conflicts, and a raid schedule that happened to line up exactly with the only times we could both make. Oh, and for the first time ever, I was getting to do real progression raiding on Ratshag, the character I've always thought of as my main. We had two bosses, if not yet on farm, at least dying predictably, and were making good progress on the next one. It was all going as well as I could have hoped.

But the fact that things were just as I wanted them did not mean it was working out for the other people. Two weeks ago, one of our raiders announced he was canceling his WoW account, and within the hour four more raiders made similar announcements. Clearly, there was a general sense of wanting or needing to do other things, and folks had been holding off, not wanting to be the one to break the camel's back. Julie wasn't officially part of the exodus, but she had a lot on her plate between work and classes, and the only thing holding to raiding was not wanting to let me down, so when it happened it was a relief to her.

So... now what?

I like raiding. I like the feeling of being part of a team, of achieving shared goals. I also like the structure which comes from having a fixed schedule. Unfortunately I don't see a way to fit a raiding schedule anywhere into my life right now. Julie works three nights a week (except when she doesn't), she takes classes several nights a week (except when she doesn't), Taylor spends a couple nights a week with us (except when she doesn't), the dogs need to be walked (no exceptions), dinner needs to be cooked (usually), homework needs to be checked (often). Right now, there just isn't much room for any commitments - I was able to bend life a bit to fit in a five-hour-a-week schedule, but life has now snapped back and that window is shut.

This summer things should be different - Julie's plan is to be taking more on-line classes, the hospital workload will drop some, Taylor's stays will be longer allowing for more flexibility. It's probable that if I gear up one of my Alliance toons that I could get to raid at least part time. But nothing is certain (as recent events have shown), and the gearing up process is slower and harder than it was a year ago. So, I'm feeling a little gun shy, I suspect. Do I want to invest the time and effort again, knowing that it might not pay off? Or do I just want to level alts, learn professions, complete achievements - all low risk activities, convenient, not dependent on others? The other night I had the rather disturbing idea of converting Ratshag, with all his hard-fought raiding gear, into an Alliance race. Would simplify things, sure, but I think it would cost me a part of my soul to lose the amazingly virile one. Weird to care so much about a lump of pixels, but I do.

So, now what? This weekend I've been leveling my paladin, Kinnavieve. Got her to 84 last night. When she gets to 85, will I keep on playing her, pushing through the gearing up grind for the potential rewards? Or will I change to leveling another character, perhaps with the goal of raiding on that one? I'm really not sure. Wish I could just figure out what I really wanted to do.

Does Brett Have Any Marbles Left?

We got to visit my parents last week at their new home in Colorado (They're not in Ohio anymore, because Dad gets insanely restless every few years and needs to move. When he dies, my sister and I plan to put his ashes in an urn and move it around the country periodically so he doesn't get annoyed and go haunt people or something. Anywho.). While we were there, we had several discussions about Brett. We know Brett thinks that she can use Taylor as leverage over my parents when I start cutting off the money flow, and we wanted to make sure they understood that we won't let the utilities get cut off or the food run out. We just aren't going to give Brett cash anymore (much of which I'm sure is going to support her cows and goats and whatever else she's keeping).

Along the way, an interesting datum came up in all this. Brett's secret plan for when I cut her off is to take me to court and claim she is entitled to .... who knows what ... because I was seeing Julie before the divorce went through. Which shows she is pretty ignorant of the law. If at the divorce trial she could have shown that I had spent some of our joint money on Julie (which I admit I did) she would have been entitled to that much more than 50% of our net worth. However, I was already voluntarily giving her significantly more than 50%, so it would have been moot. And of course, there's the small fact that the trial happened over a year ago, and there's no do-overs.

But it's not her secret plan that dumbfounded me. It's just sad, that she thinks she can still avoid having to, you know, support herself like any other adult. What amazed me was that she confided her secret plan to my father. She actually believes that she is so in the right, and I so in the wrong, that my own parents are taking her side. The reality is that they think she is a lunatic who should be committed for her own good.

Twenty years ago, I fell in love with a bright, ambitious young woman. It hurts my heart to see what a pathetic, delusional, train wreck of a human being she has become.

THIS Is Far Freakin' Cool

Ward Shelley's map of the history of science fiction:

click to embiggen

I was particularly pleased to see Cyrano de Bergerac's Empires of the Moon included in the pre-SF speculative branch. Awesome as Jose Ferrer's portrayal of the man was, he was much more than a swordsman/poet with a big nose.

Oh Shi-

It's Not Easy Being Green

I'm still wondering what's keeping her car on the road....

Partners

Julie's at work tonight, her third twelve-hour shift of the week. That's what she is supposed to work, but for the first seven months she's been at this hospital it never worked out that way. Either she was in too much pain from the lingering effects of her surgery and had to call in sick, or there weren't enough patients and she would get put on call. But last month, for whatever reason, the patient load finally picked up enough to match the staffing level, and she hasn't been called off once. This is putting demands on her she hasn't had to meet since before her diagnosis, but she is handling it.

Julie is taking a heavy class load at Austin Community College - eighteen hours. This year she has started working towards earning a bachelors degree in nursing, to open up career options that aren't available with just a two-year degree. Possibilities like becoming a nurse anaesthetist, with great pay and regular hours and no muscle-pulling labor. She had intended to do this a couple of years ago, but then some guy came into her life and thoughtlessly disrupted everything. And then the cancer disrupted things more. But she is stronger now, the strongest she has been in over a year. And she thought she was ready to take on both work and school. It was hard at first, and she was afraid that maybe the cancer and the chemo had damaged her brain. That she might not be as smart as she once was. But after a couple weeks, the rust got knocked off, and her brain remembered how to learn new material and take tests and write papers, and she currently has an "A" average in all five classes. This is putting further demands on her, but she is handling it.

At home, there is much to do. Cooking and cleaning and laundry and grocery shopping and managing the animals and harassing the teenagers to at least make token gestures toward living like civilized human beings. It isn't fun, it isn't very rewarding, but it is so important to me that these things are covered, that Julie not feel like she needs to worry about anything more than what she has to. This is putting demands on me, but I am handling it.

I am very, very proud of Julie. Her ambition, her strength, her determination. She has made it clear that she loves me more than ever for stepping up and supporting her. You know what this feels like?

It feels like we are partners.

For so many years I wanted to feel like Brett and I were partners. Like we were working together to make a better life for both of us. But it never worked out that way. The more I tried to make it happen, the more she focused on herself. But now, with Julie, I finally have that. And it feels wonderful.

One. Million. Coconuts.

'Cause I's fuhggin' worth every one of'em.

Vader vs Goats

Because there is no such thing as too much Darth Vader. I should make him a weekly feature or something....

Atheist Vader

This

Cutting the Umbilical Cord

It's been nearly two-and-a-half years since Brett and I separated. Nearly two years since I filed for divorce. Fifteen months since the divorce was finalized. In all this time, Brett has made no move towards finding a job so she can support herself. Instead she continues to life off of the $1600 a month I give her (on top of the child support payments). Nor has she gone back to school, which she had talked about doing and I had said I was willing to extend the support for. Much of this money is probably going to support her livestock hobby (cows, goats, whatever) which she pretends is a business but is really a hobby.

Well, I'm done waiting for her to get her shit together and become an adult. I'm not going to cut her off cold turkey, but I need to make it clear she does not have unlimited time. So I e-mailed her this:

About spousal support. These payments are intended to give you time to find employment so that you can support yourself. As I said several times during the divorce process, I was also willing to continue this support for up to three years so that you could go back to school. Now, it is your life and I have no interest in telling you what to do. However, at this point  I feel no further moral obligation (nor do I have one legally) to continue making payments to you while you do neither of these....I will keep the payments at their current level through September and then stop them. (This does not include the mortgage payments, which I will continue to make until the September following Taylor's 18th birthday.)

So how did she take it?

This is not something which you get to decide unilaterally....Well I guess we will go back to court only this time I will show up. I am still seeing a therapist and on medication, but am no longer clinically depressed to the point of only marginally functioning. So I won't be such a pushover. Agian, you have rationalized that you are "the good guy" and don't have to be "generous". Well, we disagree about what is fair, about what is legal, about what you get to unilaterally decide.

Well, guess what Brett? If you check the divorce decree, it says I only have to pay you $1000 a month through last September. What I am paying you now is entirely my choice. The law is completely on my side. I can be as unilateral with my money as I want. You've got eight months to become enough of an adult to at least attempt to support yourself. Get cracking.