ammogirl

Well, damn. The entire year is over! WTF, you guys? This has been the fastest year in my life. Let’s see…I spent January, February and March studying for my next stripe, April and May in various trips back to the states, found out I made that next stripe in June and went for a fabby vacay to see so many people who mean a whole lot to me in July. I almost went topless in August during our first visit to the Canary Islands, and then that whole biopsy thing, where I actually DID go topless, just in an operating room. John turned 30 in October, and the year-long secret of his entire family coming over to celebrate with us finally, finally came to an end, and we all had a great time all over Europe. And then, all of a sudden, it’s the last day of the year, day 365, and here we are.

Like everyone else, I make resolutions every year, and every year I break them. Last year I said I would keep in touch with everyone more–I’m pretty sure I still suck at that. But this year, I’m keeping my resolution. I swear!

See, sometimes there are those really coincidental things that you know really don’t mean anything for real, but if you are so inclined, you can attach a LOT of significance to them and use them to your advantage. You know what I mean? Well.

I have a friend, a girl I’ve known literally my entire life. Her mom was the delivery nurse when I was born, and this girl and I, although we have never been best friends per se, we have a connection that will always, always be there. A few months ago, she was diagnosed with colon cancer, and since then has had to endure both chemo and radiation treatments. It’s been hard on her, but she has always been upbeat, and the day after Christmas I got an email from her that said her tenacity paid off; the cancer was undetectable. She still has to get surgery in a few days, but the doctors are very, very optimistic. I was ecstatic to hear this, you can imagine.

The next day, we found out that John’s (and mine, really) surrogate grandfather is in hospice. With colon cancer.

I can’t overlook the coincidence of these things. Dawn is young, full of life, years ahead of her to experience new things. Sam is in his twilight years; he’s led a very full life, and is happy, and content, and ready. They have no knowledge of each other, these two very dear people in my life, but I can’t help but wonder if some deal was made–a trade, an old life for a new. Dawn’s cancer can’t be found, Sam’s is giving him less than 30 days.

You can interpret that anyway you want, or not at all. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about it, none of which I want to share but all of which work out to me honoring Sam and his love for life by finding my own. By not being afraid. By having courage.

By being adventurey.

To Sam. And to Dawn.

Happy New Year!

Tschuss!!

Kari from The Writing Life tagged me on those worst of memes, the ones that make you think. Sigghhhh…why can’t I just answer 50 questions about myself? My favorite color is not what you think! I don’t like okra! I’m afraid of the dark!

No, instead I have to come up with three things that I think make for good writing.

1. Dialogue that is not trying to convey a conversation being interrupted by one or more people. I hate reading choppy dialogue–just let the person talk.

2. A well-worded debate for or against an issue people many people (or not many, whatever) are passionate about, put into layman’s terms so I can read and determine whether or not I also want to be for or against the said issue. I want to feel strongly about things other than ice cream and Xanadu, I just don’t have the patience to weed through jargon of any sort.

3. Descriptions. My very favorite stories make me see pictures in my mind. They feed my imagination and draw me into their world.

That was actually easier than I thought it would be.

So anyway, John’s going to Iraq in a couple of weeks. I’m less nervous about this than you would think, mainly because I have the benefit of also being in the military and knowing exactly what goes on over there, but still nervous enough. He’ll be gone around six months, hopefully no longer than that; the lucky thing about being in the Air Force is our deployments are much, much shorter (and less dangerous, actually) than the other services. But until he leaves, I’ll be taking an unofficial break–I’ll still be posting, but it might be pretty sporadic.

The nice thing is we have the next week off to take care of stuff, and one of the things we get to take care of is fixing this stupid site. So that’s exciting.

And now I’m going to bed.

Tschuss!

You know you should never really bitch endlessly about something like, say…being able to drive to Switzerland for the weekend, right? Yeah, because when you bitch and bitch and bitch and bug everyone around you about things like driving to the Swiss Alps, and socializing, and bathrooms (or lack thereof), the beings in charge of Karma…they get notified. And after listening to you bitch for awhile, they start rolling their eyes and getting all, “WTF, you’re going to SWITZERLAND, come ON, whiney”. And when you, unaware of the Karmic eye-rolling going on, continue to bitch and moan and complain, they go, “DONE WITH YOU.” And then? Do you know what happens then?

I will tell you.

I woke up at 2 am on Saturday morning to prepare for our 2:45 am departure time–something else I bitched about, you can be sure of. It was still like, yesterday evening, so I didn’t have any coffee, and when around 6 am my headache started kicking in I attributed to lack of caffeine and popped a few Excedrin. Voila, no more headache. In fact, I was downright chipper! Feeeeeling good. The sky was blue, the drive was relatively easy. I even convinced John to play MY iPod, and when Xanadu came on, I broadcast it over the walkie-talkies connecting us to the other three families in our convoy. Happy times all around.

When we hit the Alps, we discovered after a few small detours that the easy way up the mountain is through it, on a train-ferry, and while riding on this totally cool invention (a train! that ferries cars inside and up a mountain!), I said to John, “My EAR hurts” and, “My eaaarrrrrrrrOOOWWWWW” and, “omg my freaking ear!” but attributed THAT to the changing altitude. A short while later, we found our destination of Fiesch and the chalets that were to be our (shared) homes for the next few days, and quickly unloaded the vehicles.

The chalets were completely contained apartments, one upstairs, one downstairs. I checked them out to confirm. Yes: only two bathrooms. I tallied up my travelling companions: eight adults, two teenagers, five smaller kids. I sighed.

After a short lunch break, we all bundled up and drove a short distance to a very small hillside that was begging for us to defile it. The guys taught the kids how to snowboard, and there was a great deal of sledding, and it was really a great time and I thought, “Wow, I’m so DUMB for bitching about this!” Unfortunately, I thought that too late. Karma? Had come full circle.

The plan for that first night was to do pizza for dinner, and while the guys went to go hunt that down, us women stayed behind and got the younger kids settled a bit. I was up in my chalet with my house-mate and her three-year-old son, and as we sat watching a video, we talked about how freaking cold it was inside and gee, they should really put curtains up blah blah small-talk, and shortly after the men came back pizza-less, for Switzerland is spendy and nobody wanted to pay one million dollars for a supreme. Quickly a new plan was thrown together, and downstairs we headed to eat, and here is where I cover my ears and close my eyes and tell you, finally, What Happened in Switzerland.

As soon as we got downstairs I commented, sort of to myself, that I thought that mayyybe…possibly? I didn’t feel very well? I think? But figured it was just my anxiety about not being able to go to the bathroom, and grabbed a beer (a real Heineken, bought in the Netherlands) and started cutting up Spam for the fried rice, or whatever it was, I never got to eat any of it, that’s for sure. When I was done I used my Spammy hands and the totally overcrowded downstairs as an excuse to run upstairs and have a little privacy with my toilet. Feeling fairly relieved, as I was quite certain I could take care of any pending issues without anyone knowing, I ran up the ten outside stairs, unlocked the door, entered the bathroom, and immediately started…you guys, it sounded like I was peeing, and I totally wasn’t. And as soon as that started I thought, “whoops!” and grabbed the garbage can and, god, barf everywhere. Barf, and waterpoop, and it went on for ten minutes at least and I was all sweaty and shaky like you get, and then someone came in the house and I croaked out, “hello!” and fortunately it was John and I was all, “I am SICK and that sound you hear is the BARF being poured in the toilet NOT ME POOPING” and then I got into bed.

That was at 6pm. From then until around 1am or so, I got up every twenty minutes and (unwillingly) purged every drop of liquid from my body. I started barfing exclusively around midnight or so, after everyone had a chance to realize the irony of me having a stomach virus, but by that point I wouldn’t have cared if they were all standing in the bathroom with me. Honestly, I got to the point that I was certain we would have to call the Swiss 911, and I know at least once I said to deliriously to John, “I think I’m dying.” I was so cold that between attacks I had two down comforters and two mink blankets wrapped around me and was still shivering uncontrollably. In fact, because I happened to pack a thermometer (what?), I was able to take my temperature and find I was hovering around 95 degrees. My feet were cramping and my legs were cramping and my stomach felt like knives and I was pooping blood and it was the scariest sick I’ve ever been.

I would puke for five minutes, take two sips of water, two sips of Gatorade, and pass out for twenty minutes until the next round. I puked gallons that night. I know this because I was so exhausted I didn’t have the energy to empty out my bucket the entire night–I just didn’t care.

I finally stopped throwing up around 4 am, and fell into a completely hallucinogenic and restless sleep, and woke up four hours later with a fever. I slept the whole day, and the whole night, and the next morning (Monday) I woke John up at 7:30 and said, “I want to go home.”

I still don’t have my appetite back. In fact, until today, I hadn’t really eaten anything at all. Christmas dinner? Nope. Christmas dessert? Nope. Breakfast, lunch, or snack, ever? Nope. I lost TWELVE POUNDS. Yeah, I know it’s water weight, but still.

I wasn’t the only one sick, either. Yesterday when I got in to work my friend Bobby walked in while I was telling my story and said, “ME TOO!” And then a little detective work uncovered our boss had gotten so sick that he actually HAD gone to the hospital! I tried to convince them we had cholera, but they wouldn’t believe me, I don’t know why.

Anyway, so that’s the deal. I complained too much about sharing bathrooms, and karma said hi, here’s the worst diarrhea ever! With an audience! And now I will never talk about this again.

Tschuss!!