The Film at 11

This is just a quickie update, with the promised film at 11. Here are some pics of Beaux Eaux at his new home. He looks happy, and God knows the terrain is a lot more luscious than ours here.

I don't have snapshots of the aforementioned breast anomaly; there are some things that are just way too much information, even for me. About that, though: the lump has all but disappeared, after the application of some do-it-myself Reiki and a couple days' worth of broad-spectrum antibiotics. I am, however, bowing to the considerable pressure and getting screened next week. (Okay, okay, OKAY. Jeez.) I found that there is a program in New Mexico for just this situation, i.e., a woman of a certain age has a breast anomaly, and needs to be screened and can't pay for it, so a branch of the state's Medicaid program covers it. The program was not easy to find (11 phone calls), nor yet to arrange (5 more phone calls to date), and I cannot imagine what would happen if I were (a) illiterate, (b) non-English speaking, (c) intimidated by officious, SUSpicious and overall disinterested bureaucrats, and/or (d) had a real and serious, malignant mass in my breast. I would die, I guess, and in a particularly horrible way.

On the other hand, I am here to tell you that should something come up, I will NOT surrender my body to the tender mercies of the New Mexico welfare health system. Make no mistake, this state is a Third World Country, Bill Richardson notwithstanding. It's the Haiti of the continental United States. If I happen to turn up with some kind of cancer, I am headed for Sloane-Kettering on the next plane. If I need a hip replaced, ditto to India, Thailand or Belgium. Et cetera. Let the word go forth.

Right now we can't be bothered with such trivialities; on Friday my oldest bestest friend comes to town for a few days, and we are scurrying around cleaning up after the Beaux Eaux scourge, planning trips to Santa Fe and Taos, stocking the fridge, preparing the Margarita mix. This is almost an annual event, looked forward to by all of us. I can't WAIT.

So, I'll get back to y'all after she leaves, and after I've been screened. (Let's not kid around: a mammogram is what someone described as lying down on the floor of your garage in sub-zero temperatures, placing your breast behind a back tire, and getting someone to drive over it three or four times. It won't kill me, but it will be NO FUN.)

I do thank you all for responding with concern and encouragement. I really have the very BEST friends.

A smorgasbord of Life Events

Beaux Eaux has gone to a new home. Dear friends are separating. And then there's this lump in my breast.

Relatives of neighbors showed up last weekend to audition Beaux, and for 48 hours we all danced around (well, Beaux did most of the dancing, bless his little white socks), and in the end we sent him off to Colorado (yes, that's right -- Colorado, the land of the brindle-killers; they tell me that they will see to it that the brindle-killers will not have cause to come after Beaux; I keep my fingers crossed). We are all happy with this choice; Mary and I felt a clear resonance with the adopters, Beaux hopped in the car with his usual elan, not even looking back (except when they actually drove off -- that was a little rough on me), and the adopters seemed to me to be glad to have him. I understand that there's been a rocky adjustment in his new house, e.g., it turns out Beaux isn't housebroken, but then we crate-trained him and so we didn't KNOW that. Also, the adoptive family has found him to be a Project, though that's not really a surprise; they've had (and presently have) big dogs, and while it's been some time since the resident big dog has been an enthusiastic big puppy, it's all coming back to them. As we all know, you can't hate Beaux Eaux -- his sense of humor is just too apparent, and his basic sweetness always gleams through in the end. So it's fine; we miss him, but we are glad to have our lives back.

Well, I was glad to have my life back for less than a day after the departure of Beaux; these old friends each individually called me the next afternoon telling me that their marriage is probably over. It's not that I didn't expect it: it's been rocky and painful and dramatic for over a year now, and I've held the odds pretty much at 50-50 all along. It's not even that I think they should preserve their union at all costs (God knows I'm the last person to suggest that, being the ragged survivor of non-divorcing parents, and a contented multi-divorcee myself), it's just that we all thought -- hell, we all knew -- that these two are soulmates, and their connection has endured for 25 years (some kind of a record in the modern era). It gave us some hope for life-partnerships in a few golden cases.

Richard, the husband, has been wandering out in the ether with a classic midlife crisis, not really making sense, not really behaving like the Richard we all know and laugh with. Linda has been in turn hurt and frantic and frightened beyond measure, not to mention angry (angry being something she's never really been very good at or enjoyed at all). It's unfortunately a very familiar story, and I just wish it were not so. I would have thought that Richard would find a more creative, original way to express his mid-forties angst, and I grieve for that as much as I do for the collapse of the Empire. Linda will be fine, eventually -- she's stronger than she had thought, and once she realizes that she hasn't been a complete fool, she'll rise up and expand to fit her enormous spirit. Richard will one day come to his senses, we hope in time to catch up with Linda, but if not even then he'll be okay. I look forward to having him back in the land of the laughing living. In the meantime, we all continue to cling to the bar of the roller coaster car and try not to puke.

The breast lump I am assuming is a bizarre kind of mastitis, attributable to the estrogen/progesterone imbalance I've been struggling with lately. It is tender to the touch, and I'm told that Bad Lumps don't hurt; it feels like the early stages of nursing, and that's really a strange sensation at my age. Since I don't have any health insurance, and am 8 months away from qualifying for Medicare, I am going to continue to work under that assumption, tweaking my supplements (I really kind of like my progesterone cream) as necessary, and work Reiki magic. If it isn't better in a week or so, I'll do something else.

I don't want to scare anybody, but I don't want to be in this alone either, so I blog (Blogito ergo sum?). Film at 11, dear friends.