happy birthday to me!

Wednesday was the one-year anniversary of my last chemotherapy infusion. It was also my 36th birthday.

My sister arrived in town that morning, and we spent much of the afternoon unloading 50 pounds of yarn she brought in a checked bag and replacing it with about 100 pounds of baby clothes and toys for our younger sister. The net result is that I am now the proud owner of one empty bin, and two bins that previously held baby things now hold an abundance of yarn.

I am inching closer toward my goal of reducing the volume of stuff I have in my garage from ‘mountainous’ to ‘hill-like.’

This summer we have embarked on a home renovation, finishing our basement so that we will have an office/guest room and a large playroom for the girls downstairs, as well as a bathroom and a storage/utility room.

I’m very excited about the project being finished—less excited about the fact that there is a path of plastic and brown paper from my front door to the basement stairs, lots of dust and noise, and currently no end in sight.

The contractor found a crack in the foundation, likely an outcome of our last renovation. The house was originally built in the 70s, and I have been faced with a lot of questions about rebar—questions I have little hope of comprehending, let alone answering.

The result is that progress has stalled for the past few weeks while we get in engineers and specialists and pay lots of money for invisible outcomes in the form of stamped documents saying our house won’t fall down.

I think I’ve bored nearly everyone in my life by now with my highly developed theory that humans are like gas: We expand to fill whatever container we are put in. Accordingly, in the 8 years we’ve lived in this house, my basement has filled with old furniture, Christmas decorations, unused bed frames, stained carpets, lamps, unhoused art, and boxes and boxes of STUFF.

Some of this trove has made me wonder if at some point I was planning to curate a museum of technological artifacts from the early 2000s. What other explanation could there be for my bin full of digital cameras, a kindle Fire, an old iPad, multiple iPods, an Envy 3, and my very first LG picture flip phone from circa 2003? Many of these items are of course in their original boxes.

….no, I did not get rid of them. Yes, I have a mental illness.

The bins of ambiguous “art supplies” also must stay, naturally. That scrap of wood? Art. Those random bits of ribbon? Irreplaceable, of course. The bag full of gift bags, and box full of salvaged tissue paper? Useful trash, all of it! Keep!!

But I did get rid of all the girls’ old clothes and toys with minimal sniffling over the tragedy of time’s passage and the fact that my babies will never again be babies. They have irrevocably outgrown their need for tiny booties and tiny mittens to prevent them from scratching their tiny faces with their tiny nails. Those days are gone. And these days we are gearing up for Violet to start kindergarten in just a few weeks.

So what else have we been up to?

We’ve been spending a lot of time at the pool. Violet has gotten much more confident in the last few weeks, and will even paddle around without floaties, which is an improvement.

Luke took the girls to the east coast to visit family for a week, while I stayed behind and lolled about the house. I spent the first two days furiously cleaning and purging and making the house perfect, and then the rest of the week living lightly off the land in an effort to preserve the rare state of order. I don’t think I cooked once, just nibbled on various fruits and cheeses like a mouse in my own house.

It was glorious.

I got a massage. I swam laps at the town pool. I drank rosé on my patio, and had a girly slumber party with a friend. I listened to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for the second or third time, and then the sequels in quick succession.

I tried to read, but every time I sat down I fell asleep, which was also nice.

I sewed some new outdoor cushions, and added bead fringes to various lampshades. I did a puzzle. Went to yoga. I crocheted a sweater of granny squares. I assembled flat-pack furniture while listening to Swedish crime novels, which might be one of my niche favorite pastimes.

I did not do nearly as much writing in my week alone as I had hoped to, laying to rest all my excuses that I totally would finish writing that novel / editing that memoir if only I had more time!

This is a lie I have tried to persuade myself of many times in my life. Usually I see through my own lies, but lately I had become somewhat persuaded again that it was true. Kids are exhausting! Of course I was too tired by the end of bedtime to do any real writing!

But no. It turns out that in the absence of all responsibility, I still won’t be in any way disciplined about my creative process. Oh well. Maybe next year.

For my birthday we went to trivia and then karaoke at a dive bar across the street. I attempted to sing “1985” by Bowling for Soup and it turns out I do not know all the words quite as well as I thought I did. It was fun though.

When Luke sang I threw my bra at him, and he didn’t even notice. SMH.

Oh, and I got a tattoo! It’s a little curled up fox on my left hip, with the nose overlapping with one of my radiation tattoos. Since my chemotherapy drug was FOLFOX, I had long told myself that if the treatment worked then I would get a fox tattoo. My little spirit animal who saw me through many of my treatments during visualizations in the radiation machine.

My godfather reminded me on my birthday that 20 years ago (!) I was with him in Alaska, desperately seeking cell service to call my best friend (and massive crush) Luke. Here I am, a freshly minted 16 year old, wishing on a candle that Luke would fall in love with me.

Guess what? He did! And it only took 8 years. So I guess the moral is, if you want your birthday wish to come true 8 years from now then you’d better go to Alaska on your birthday and make a wish on an enormous candle in a baked Alaska.

And because I am a hoarder, I do still own those flip flows. As well as that bag. And this sweatshirt, purchased on that trip.

I started my 36th year in a cancer ward, so this year was a definite improvement. Here’s hoping there are no cancer treatments on the horizon as I make my 37th turn around the sun.

Leave a comment

Share