All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

I had a dream last night of the town I grew up in. Well, less the town (Garden Valley) and more the home and land I grew up on. That happens to me all the time. I always see it in my mind as it was when I was a kid, rather than how it is now. Unfortunately, the area has become highly developed and huge, expensive homes take up many of the places that I used to play. I guess in some ways I should be grateful for that--my father was a real estate developer, and what he sold kept us fed. One way or another, it's sometimes hard for me to go back because the reality does not at all match what is in my head.

So Freya and I went back today. We drove around the ranch development and then went to the house I grew up in. Sadly, I discovered it is for sale. The woman who lives there now has unfortunately lost her job, and is in the process of being foreclosed on. I can tell she cares so much for the house, and she's done some major renovations that have made it a really beautiful home. She said I could probably buy it for $160,000. I have no idea what that's like as far as comparable value for the area, but I gather it's pretty cheap.

Freya and I were lucky to be able to wander around the property. I introduced her to my favorite tree near the house, we visited the apple tree in the front yard and Freya devoured one of the apples, and I got to sit for a few moments in my favorite sitting spot. I took a picture of Freya there, and it kind of gives me a crazy time warp sort of flash to see her there. I'm not sure that back in the day I would have thought that one day my daughter would be there with me, and I definitely wouldn't have seen the path my life took to bring me back there. What I do know is that as I was sitting there next to my favorite tree, in my sittin' spot, I started to develop my land ethic. It sometimes feels as though the atoms from that place make up a part of my body now, and they yearn back toward that ground and those trees. Looking at it from that standpoint, it was definitely very cosmic to share an apple from the yard with Freya.

A part of me really wishes we could buy the house and that I could raise Freya there, with those trees and that ground. I wish that we could turn her loose to ramble around like I did without fear for what I'd encounter (although walking down the hill to the bus stop during those dark winter mornings caused me a lot of concern about hungry mountain lions). But I don't think that's in the cards, and I wonder if it would be foolish to think that I could recapture any part of who I was back then. I think the memories and the pictures will have to be enough.

I am absolutely falling in love with this duo's music! (Rather, their covers.)

Just in case anyone reading this has been, like me, on pins and needles waiting for Stephen King's new book, "Under the Dome" to be released on November 9, I have good news for you:

Amazon is having a pre-release sale on the book and you can buy it in hardcover for $9.00. That's less than it'll cost in paperback. And though it's more than it'd cost me to get it from the library, now I don't have to wait for my turn in the queue to get it!

Freya has been sick for the last couple of days, and I have been staying home with her. Additionally, I have some kind of sinus crud going on. Neither of us is in particularly bad shape, but...what if we were?

I ask because I often try to work remotely at least part of the time when I or Freya am home sick. I have my computer here, and I am generally reachable by cell. But I also have a "back-up" person at work that people can contact directly when they need one-on-one help. (And for those who have lost track, I'm a cross between a secretary and an executive assistant--yes, there is a difference.) The good thing about this arrangement is that I can get some work done and don't have to use as much sick leave. The bad thing about this is that I can't seem to just disconnect from the office and deal with being sick or taking care of my sick child.

Let's take this last couple of days as an example: there was one travel thing that really had to get done. I couldn't do it remotely, so I called not my back-up person, but the one person in the whole office that is the expert on these situations and she did the work for me. And then she went on leave today and tomorrow, and it turned out there was an error in the work. I don't know if she made the error, or if it has to do with our total piece of shit travel system that generates ridiculous errors independently, but the fact remains there is an error. And she's gone. And there's not one damn thing I can do about it.

However, that doesn't mean that everyone back at the office doesn't freak out and lose their shit about it and call me when I am napping and trying to feel better. I just want to ask, "Okay, what would you do if I was in intensive care at the hospital with a virulent case of swine flu and you couldn't talk to me because I had a tube stuck down my throat and all my fingers were broken and I couldn't get online? Okay, now DO THAT. Quit calling me!"

I should just be grateful I have a job, huh?

Several Thanksgivings ago, my Uncle Fred dropped a bit of a bombshell on me at the dinner table. There I was, minding my own business, when he said, "So my first wife and I had a son that we put up for adoption at birth. I've been back in touch with him lately." The only sound, and scarcely audible was it, was my salivary gland encouraging me to do something with the mouthful of stuffing that had gone still in my mandible.

I'd never had the faintest idea about a son; hells, the first wife was only a vague whisper of a memory for me. Progeny having issued whence was indeed unknown.

Since then, I've sort of just had the thought rattling around in my brain. But then the whole Facebook thing got rolling for me (I know, I know, talk about something else, Casey), and my uncle told me to look up my cousin. And I did. And you know, it's the damndest thing, but there's gotta be something to this genetics business I hear so much about.

My cousin and I are both flaming liberals, atheists, voracious readers, outspoken, and we both love sushi. I've found all this out in about a month's worth of posts. I'm sure there are more commonalities, and I know you can also point out about 150 people each of you know who possess all the same traits and to whom I am not closely related, but...still. It's pretty damned cool, if you ask me.

I hope I get to meet him in person one of these days. He's in Florida, so it won't be happening anytime soon.

When I first joined up on Facebook, I have to admit there were a few people who sent me friend requests and I thought, "Why the hell do they even bother?" These are folks I went to school with who were either several grades below me or people I barely knew, and in either case people I wouldn't think cared in the least about keeping tabs on me. Generally, I went ahead and approved their friend request.

And then other people started coming out of the woodwork. These were the people I was once close to, but had fallings-out with for one reason or another. Most of those folks I "friended" too. From my perspective, enough time had passed that I was over whatever perceived wound had ended our friendship, and evidently the same could be said for them. Live and let live, you know?

But there have been a few people that I felt like I owed a sincere apology to. In those cases they were friends from my early twenties, which was a time of major personal upheaval and evolution for me. I had just left the Jehovah's Witnesses, and had set about proving to myself that everything the religion had taught me was wrong. In a lot of ways that was a good thing; in a few ways I made some major mistakes. What I also ended up doing was getting extremely defensive about my new self, and when people didn't live up to the standards I set for them, I wrote them off. It was pretty unforgiving and immature. As a mature, relatively stable adult, I am working on making myself into the best person I can be, and part of that process is clearing out some of the shame for the things I did before and some of the bad I did.

I got to write out an apology to one of those people tonight, via Facebook. And it felt really, really good. The friend had already forgiven me--she friended me, anyway, and we ended up in a discussion about those years. I took the initiative to identify what I had done to hurt her, tried to explain it a little, but then point out that it was wrong and said how sorry I was for it.

I must be growing up, huh?

Freya just brought her Little Red Riding Hood book out to where we were gathered around the dining room table, and she opened it right to the page where the wolf eats Grandma.

She's subtle, isn't she? The good news is that Grandma gets on an airplane back to Wisconsin tomorrow.

We were downtown last week for First Thursday, an event in Boise where galleries feature new artists, and local vendors set up booths in public areas with all kinds of different goodies. Down near City Hall, the Komen Foundation was set up on the sidewalk with a number of booths and the mobile mammography vans as a sort of kick-off for next year's Race for the Cure. (I guess they start early.)

We picked up some information and trinkets from the booths, and I asked a few questions of the representatives who were there with the mammo-vans. See, my elder sister was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 34 years old. She had a double mastectomy, and both chemotherapy and radiation. She's been cancer-free for about 12 years now, I'm very glad to say. But it certainly has made me wary of the potential I have.

I've been deeply frustrated that I have a higher risk of cancer myself, and yet I cannot get any of the 3 insurance companies I've belonged to over the years to cover a mammogram for me until I turn 40 years old. Had my sister not found a lump in her breast, she'd have been long dead of the cancer by the time her 40th birthday rolled around. (Don't get me started on how the insurance companies shouldn't have more competition and how the free market will reform insurance naturally.) Essentially, they'd evidently rather I get diagnosed with cancer before they'll fund any treatments. It would cost them exponentially more money for my care after a late diagnosis than an early one, but they will never acknowledge that.

Anyway, there was a booth from Intermountain Medical Imaging in Boise, and they have a coupon for a $140 digital mammogram. Of course, it's only good for folks 35 years and older, but hey, guess what? My birthday is November 2, and I decided that's what my gift to myself and my family will be. So I have scheduled my first mammogram for November 5. You can be sure I'll blog all about it.

In the meantime, please remember that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This is a good time to schedule your own mammogram (because it'll be harder to forget to reschedule in October). Do your breast self-exam, and make sure your doctor gives you a clinical breast exam at your next annual appointment.

Take good care of yourselves, please.