07.30.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:54 pm by Bridget Zinn
I must acquire ice cream TODAY.
For one thing, my little love affair with the heat is going to be coming to an end soon if you can believe what you read online. This could be the last truly hot day of the year and ice cream is definitely called for.
For another, I won’t be able to eat ice cream after today for at least a week — longer if I’m feeling especially wussy. I have not yet shared with most of you The Worst Side Effect Ever. Actually, death is listed as a side effect on all of the chemo lists, so this isn’t really the worst worst, but definitely worse than losing the ability to clap. It’s the Cold Hurts Side Effect.
So weird, I know. A nurse told me that macho guys (who I’m sure there are a lot of as I seem to have contracted Old Man Cancer) often leave the first round of this type of chemo and go right for the ice cream, not believing it’s possible that cold can hurt. They learn fast.
It’s a different hurt depending on the part of the body that comes in contact with the cold. If you’re outside and there’s bit of a cool breeze it feels kind of like Vick’s Vapor rub has been smeared all over you.
If you wash your hands in cold water or touch a cold doorknob it’s a really intense pins and needles.
If you take a slug of ice water it’s like you’ve swallowed pointy, rusty nails as it goes down.
And apparently, if it’s moderately cold out which it hasn’t really been since I started this, it can feel like you’ve stepped out into below zero weather — it takes your breath away. Same with sticking your head in the fridge to look around for treats which I have done and regretted. (A better tactic to get treats that I’ve discovered is to stand in the kitchen doorway looking sad. Barrett seems hyperlinked to the sad look and before the look really gets a chance to properly develop it’s shattered by “Yay, snacks!” as he piles them on me).
I have tested the limit of how long the Cold Hurts Side Effect lasts. In my very scientific study of this, 5 days is too soon. The blizzard I tried at 5 days was quite painful. Unfortunately, it had been so long since I had a blizzard that I couldn’t stop eating it. There was a lot of yum, ouch, yum, ouch, yum, ouch. Taste buds appear not to be affected by the side effect.
At 7 days, the pain has dulled to a twinge and I can suffer through it if I’m really desperate. After day 7, ice cream can once again enter my life.
8 days is a long time to wait for ice cream.
So today I’m going to make up for it. But there are SO MANY OPTIONS! I don’t even know where to start. I’ve seen all sorts of good suggestions in the comments from last time — all very tempting, thank you Carolyn and Susan! Malted milk shakes, real cream ice cream, snow cones from the park, and fresh fruit sorbet all sound SO good. Then there’s gelato and mochi and exotic ice cream that they serve at a lot of ethnic restaurants and that place on Alberta that has ice cream and donuts (has anyone been there? is is good?).
Which one will create the ultimate cold-treat-on-a-hot-day experience?
I invite everyone to celebrate today as Ice Cream Day with me — enjoy!
Love to you all,
Bridget
photo credit:
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07.28.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:49 pm by Bridget Zinn
It’s 105 degrees or something outrageous here in Portland and, like most Portlanders, we don’t have air conditioning, but I have to admit I kind of like it. Granted, it only gets this hot a couple of times of year here, so there’s definitely the novelty factor. Plus, it isn’t even humid like it was in Madison when we’d get a heat wave. I’m sure it’s very annoying when you live somewhere where it’s like this for months on end to hear that I’m welcoming the heat wave like an exotic bird visiting me on vacation, but I can’t help it. It’s kind of fun now and then.
Reasons I Love the Heat:
1) This is a rather long reason, but to sum it up, extreme heat gives you a bicycle high with virtually no effort on your part. Normally I’m a peddle, peddle, coooooooaaaaaaasssssssst kind of biker. I like to take the scenic route and take my time sucking it all in. When we lived in Madison and I biked downtown to work I made sure I hit every possible beautiful thing on my way to work weaving in and out of neighborhoods to hit them — the Thai Pavillion at Olbrich, the community gardens, every park along the lake, streets with particularly beautiful houses or gardens, even a little trip along the Yahara River (which runs north/south, my workplace was directly west of our house).
It took me 1 hour and 45 minutes (or so) to get to work.
It took Barrett 30 minutes.
His work was further away.
When you bike in the pedal, pedal, cooooooaaaast fashion, taking in all the sights at your leisure, you really don’t ever exert yourself enough to get a biker’s high. EXCEPT when it’s 100 degrees and so humid it feels like you’re biking in molasses. Then it’s pedal, pedal, aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh, that’s niiiiiiiiiiiiiiice. The biker’s high hits fast when you’re so unbelievably hot.
2) As someone who is a bit cold nearly all of the time (any temperature below 90), it has to be this hot to wear cutie pie tank tops and skimpy sun dresses without wearing a sweater over the top. So liberating.
3) Everyone tends to slow down when it’s this hot. I love that everyone is going Bridget Pace for a little while. Especially now that Bridget Pace has slowed down even slower than the previous pedal, pedal, coast pace that I was used to.
4) Ice cream. Also gelato which isn’t anywhere near as good as Wisconsin Ice Cream, but it’s pretty good for being just down the street. (I don’t want to go on too long of a tirade but I was once at home writing away when this loud, awful music came from outside and my response involved a lot of curse words wondering who was interrupting me in such a vile way and it turned out to be the ice cream man. I felt a bit bad about hating the guy so much sight unseen and cursing him behind his back when he was probably bringing joy to the masses, but I still can’t bring myself to buy from an ice cream truck — the music is just too, too vile).
5) The heat really makes me appreciate all of the rest of the spring, summer and fall when it’s nice and cool here with just enough sun and a bit of a breeze to keep things just perfect.
I hope everyone else is surviving the heat wave!
Bridget
photo credit
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07.20.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:27 pm by Bridget Zinn
I was going to title this post “Anti-Nausea Suppositories Are A Girl’s Best Friend” but was advised that no one really wants to hear about that. But I feel it’s an important public service message — I know the whole thing sounds gross, but not as gross as actually throwing up. Which is really no fun at all. So if you are in bad shape stomach-wise and your doctor recommends anti-nausea suppositories, I have to tell you, the things work. Like little miracles in a convenient pinky sized blob. I’m planning to go back to upping my ginger to try and curb the nausea ahead of time, but when you are in a situation of sheer desperados, you do what you must.
Of course, I probably shouldn’t be blogging at all as I’m just starting to recover from a worse-than-usual bout of Jelly Brain from the last round of chemo and am probably making very little sense. While the extra weekend of chemo-less-ness over the 4th was awesome and got me out of town it offset my whole schedule so that the last two chemos were closer together than usual. The Jelly Brain has been extreme. Like not remembering conversations from years ago or from ten minutes ago. Poor Barrett. It’s very Flowers for Algernon around here except cyclical so I always get back to normal which is way better than the permanent decline that poor sop Charlie had to deal with so I can hardly complain.
On an important note, I did manage to get my toenails done before this chemo which is my contribution to the massage therapist’s day. The first time I got a massage from her, I’d tried clipping my toenails right after surgery when it was still difficult to bend over and they were a horrid, jagged mess. I discovered this when holes started getting ripped into my socks. So the next time, I took another go at it AND got rid of some old red nail polish. Only later, I took a closer look and realized that my nails were a bit shorter, but still jagged and I hadn’t gotten all of the red nail polish off so they looked all bloody and sharp like cave man nails. I can’t imagine that is much fun for the massage therapist at chemo — I know I would be freaked out by Cave Man Toenail Girl. So I did my duty this time (in better lit conditions), clipped and re-painted and there was no running and screaming from the room. I take that as a good sign.
Okay, totally rambling from the Jelly Brain, but I have more presents to tell you about. You have no idea how lovely it is to get presents and cards in the mail when you are sitting around jelling. So, so fun. Last week, I received a package of clothes from my bra-supplying aunt (pics of bras are here) as I’ve been trying to break into wearing “Semi-real clothes” as opposed to just sweat pants. They still have to be comfortable, but I want to look a bit more like a normal healthy person when I go out into the world. Huzzah for awesome aunts! Another aunt sent me a check to go on another driving trip (complete with a little drawing of a car on the check) after hearing about my successful adventure up to Port Townsend. Double huzzah for aunts!
Today I got a package where I exclaimed so loud that Barrett thought someone had sent me the crown jewels or some such, but it was even more exciting — four of the cutest little homegrown garlic bulbs you have ever seen and TWO jars of raspberry jelly from my wonderful childhood neighbors. I’m positive that homemade raspberry jelly is the cure for Jelly Brain.
I’ll keep you posted.
I hope everyone is having a lovely summer!
Love to you all~
Bridget
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07.13.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:33 pm by Bridget Zinn
Many of you have commented on my last Happy Gift Receiving post by mentioning that Meg Cabot is awesome and I have to agree and also direct you to her blog post today which is entirely about cake. I know some of you have been reading this blog for a while and/or had lengthy conversations with me about cake and know the extent of my love. There is just nothing like it.
Now I have an admission: I haven’t had cake since probably when we got married which was a million years ago (or at least a whole season ago) and I was on heavy narcotics from having just had major surgery so it’s all a bit fuzzy except I’m pretty sure that the cake was brown and pink, that the wedding took place under a bridge and that we had a reception in our bed just like John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
That is a long time to go without cake and it isn’t as though I haven’t had things to celebrate. When you are sick a good chunk of the time, you find all sorts of reasons to celebrate. Got out of bed by myself? Yes! Cause for a party! Woke up without feeling like evil faeries have been poking me and pulling my hair? Bring on the good times! I just haven’t been celebrating with cake.
Because I found a new love. Cupcakes. I know, they aren’t the same. Not nearly as decadent or luxurious as cake. BUT you buy them in multiples so you can have more than one kind. AND if you pick bad ones, you can always steal someone else’s like when Barrett picked out some weird banana fudge monkey cupcakes which turned out to be the best ever when I had picked out boring vanilla chocolate and chocolate chocolate buttercreams.
I know cupcakes are trendy which means that the trend could pass and all of my favorite cupcakeries will turn into frosted donut shops or something, but I’m doing my best to keep them in business. My two favorites in Portland are Saint Cupcake and Cupcake Jones. They do mail order too.
I’m pretty much recovered from chemo this week, except for the feeling like evil faeries have been beating me up in my sleep thing which isn’t actually on the list of chemo side effects and seems to be unique to me (why did I go and piss off the faeries?), and I’m using these good days to work on agent revisions.
Also, spending time cursing agent for making me work so hard and then cursing him for probably making me a better writer (the nerve) and for making me laugh with his funny asides even while I’m cursing him and then realizing that I will probably be thanking him later and should not e-mail curses until I’m quite sure he deserves them and also realizing I would probably work just as hard on the cursing e-mail anyway to make sure it had the proper effect as I would on actually changing the manuscript so I might as well just give in and work on the revisions.
I will most likely need to celebrate having worked on the manuscript with cupcakes by the end of the week. If I can figure out the day they have banana fudge monkey cupcakes I’ll be all set.
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07.08.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:07 pm by Bridget Zinn
The weekend up in Port Townsend was so fun and such a nice break — it was hard to come back to chemo-land, BUT I got prezzies this week that softened the blow. V. thrilling ones too.
First, there’s the bling I got while in Port Townsend. My dad and Diana’s friend Dan the Jewelry Maker of Bridget Zinn auction fame gave me this very cool and flashy ring which I have been wearing everywhere. It dresses up the yoga pants look perfectly.
Then when we got home from our mini-vacation there was a large envelope waiting for me from one of my aunts and inside were some brand new flowery bras which I’m very excited about. By the end of a chemo session everyone in the place has seen your bra what with all of the tubes and things needing to be adjusted and if you’re going to be flashing your undergarments about you should have something decent on. Huzzah for cute underwear!
Then, to top it all off, the day of chemo I came home to a box FROM MEG CABOT! 
My Other Mother (new mother-in-law) bid on some of Meg’s books at the auction and when she won, had them sent to me. And what I got in the box was so much more. Besides a lovely handwritten note on adorable stationary, there were all sorts of cool things like books on cds and “princess” bracelets.
Plus, there’s the box, which our cats found thrilling.
Hope you’re having a great week!
Bridget
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