7.2 A Bit of Normalcy

My first week of treatment was completed a couple of days ago.  Not sure what to call the first weekend after the first week of treatment, but it was great.  I felt good all day Friday. Suzy and I went over to Lee and Heidy’s and had pizza, wings, and beer.  It was great to just to hang out with them and talk.  It was almost like covid or cancer wasn’t going on.  Saturday was even better. The four of us went four wheel driving northeast of Scottsdale.  We didn’t get to our ultimate destination, but we achieved our goal.  We got away for the day and just spent time together.  Lee and Heidy have the sweetest dog, Oreo, and he came with us.  It was a super nice day and we topped it off with burgers in the parking lot at Chuckbox.  It was so nice to feel almost normal.

Today, however, was not as fun, but just as normal, in a weird kind of way.  Early in the pandemic, I decided to start baking.  At one point, in June or July, we began to worry that we may run out of flour, so we stocked up.  (I am going to throw Suzy under the bus here. Sorry, honey!) I usually did all of the online ordering at Walmart or Safeway.  Suzy decided she wanted to update the Walmart order to add a few things.  (Suzy’s note — in my defense, on the Safeway app, you order bananas by the each!!!)  On the Walmart order, I decided to get two 25-pound bags of flour.  I was baking every day, so that’s not as unreasonable as it sounds. Suzy decided to add bananas.  We eat a lot of bananas, so she added 16.  When she scheduled it, the app gave her a message that the 25-pound bags weren’t available, so she added five ten-pound bags.  We went to pick up the order, in the middle of the Phoenix heat.  We expected just a few bags.  The guy loading our order went on and on and kept moving things around in the trunk and adding more bags.  He must have been dying in the heat, but we were nice and cool in the car and didn’t think much about it.  Turns out, Suzy had inadvertently ordered had 16 BUNCHES of bananas and 90 pounds of flour. The entire trunk was full. 

I guess I am making a short story long, but back to today.  Suzy kept finding little brown bugs in our kitchen.  At first Suzy (here comes the bus for a repeat performance) accused sweet little Oreo of having fleas.  Turns out, they were flour beetles.  I opened a big cabinet, where the Walmart flour was stored, and the bag and everything else were just swarming with bugs.  I am not sure whether it’s coronavirus or the cancer or just 2020, but even a day like this seems really good.  I mean, what else do we have to do but clean the kitchen cabinets with a vacuum cleaner? 

Oh, remind me to add flour to our next grocery pickup.

Well, it’s Sunday night, and I am beginning to think about tomorrow – radiation and chemo.  When I first discovered I had cancer, chemo really scared the shit out of me, so I thought surgery and radiation was the best path.  Now that I am on the chemo/radiation path, chemo doesn’t seem so bad (at least 1 out of 1 times was OK), so I am not quite as worried.  Radiation is my bigger worry as it causes so much damage.  I am breaking “my no looking too far ahead” rule, but it’s impossible not project myself forward every once in a while.

Suzy’s cooking her wonderful heart attack chocolate chip cookies.  I can make a pig of myself since I have to eat 2500 calories a day.  I can even have a glass of creamy whole milk with my cookies.

This weekend, life is good. I’ll deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.