The New Normal

So, today I did what it looks like I will be doing off and on forever.  Back to the hospital so they can pull more blood and see how this new drug is affecting my little Invader.

They do this in the room where chemotherapy  is administered via IV.  Old men and women looking tired, blank... and sometimes forlorn.  Young, French-manicured girls texting on their smart phones... Varying faces of the same insidious crap.
Believe me, I am very aware that I have it easy in comparison, but it is odd to sit in this room, in these chairs on the same level and see who is affected and how.
Clearly, cancer is extremely ecumenical in its choices...

It is an unpleasantly decorated room.  Robin's Egg blue walls, baby-shit brown easy chairs... no magazines and pictures of THE LORD are everywhere.  It's a 7th Day Adventist hospital... whatever that means.   I've always gotten 7th Day Adventist and Latter Day Saints mixed up... so maybe the nurses wear magic underwear and are good at math while being vegetarians.  All very confusing.

I stare out the window at the vivid blue sky and green mountains that surround the building--contrasting with the very deep and apparently damaged red coming out of my vein, through a small tube into a vial to be dissected by triage nurses and interpreted by my Oncologist.

This is the new normal.  That and fighting dizziness and humourous onset of fatigue that has me bumping into things, reeling and forgetting what I'm saying in the middle of a sentence.

What is also strangely new is a deeper and surprising appreciation of ... well...everything.  Conversations, food, friends...  Focusing on things and finding that it is indeed oddly easier to be more present for the present.  (Taking the moment present as a present for the moment.  Ah, Stephen...)

Had dinner last night at Sierra Nevada and the table ordered things like Pig Cheeks...
Someone ordered bone marrow and my inner inappropriate thirteen year old almost asked the waitress to check and see if it was a match.  I may need it.   Ah, black humour...

In the middle of all this, Spring has descended where I live; the rarefied splash zone where The Smokies meet The Blue Ridge and Appalachia.
So, what to do...
Well, garden my ever-narrowing arse off.  How about that?

Today, I put up a Bluebird house made of cedar and a "squirrel-proof" Bluebird feeder filled with mealworms.  Oregano, Parsley, Mexican Tarragon, German Thyme, Lavender, Chives, Dill, Marjoram, and--just because I want to watch them (hopefully) grow and bloom, Dahlia, Lilly of The Valley, Morning Glory and a very aptly named Sarah Bernhardt Peony... Seemed appropriate... The Drama Queen of Flowers.  And a magenta hanging petunia.

I have this weird feeling, I may start growing vegetables and generating my own electricity out of what Dawg leaves in the ivy.  Beard to my belt and spouting Foxfire quotes while looking like a ZZ Top refugee... I'd fit right in.

They say every seven years, time waves a hand over your face and your soul... Aging you and adding vintage.  I have to say, looking back, that is absolutely true.
So... bring me your tired, your poor... your hungry wine snobs yearning to breathe free.
Here I stay.