April, come she will....

My hair suddenly decided to abandon half measures.

Yes, it looks like seventeen cows have been licking it. But! Brown is back!

In which it is possibly explained why people call me "Upbeat"

Well, you know how it is. You find out you have a life-threatening illness, and you have to annouce it to your friends.

I was reading over some old emails prior to deleting them, and found that this is how I had announced TWCT to a friend who is an Episcopal priest (but hasn't found a place to exercise that priesthood since moving to New Mexico):

" Hi,

First, thank you for your long and newsy letter. I understand – not as fully as you live it, but I do understand – what it is to have a sense of unrealized priesthood. Lately, the desire to preach is on me again, not that our priest isn’t good at it, but I have Thoughts.

Or I had thoughts. Since the 17^th, they’ve all been focused on one thing. I have breast cancer.

(This space reserved for a variety of highly mixed emotions)

I won’t dump all the medicalese on you. [Her spouse] can do that if he wants, and you want. Suffice to say that my choices (oy, such choices!) are between a lumpectomy followed by chemo and radiation, or depending on some genetic stuff they are now doing, a double mastectomy and ovary removal.

I never expected to live a long time, but I was really hoping for heart disease. Of course, I may beat this and emerge a curly-haired blonde. I’ve already decided that since I have the most beautiful middle-aged hair on the planet, and since anything less would make me very sad, I am going either with bandanas or really cheesy wigs in colors like bright green. But not pink. The first person to pin a pink ribbon on me is getting a punch in the eye."

My hatred for pink is undiminished. But this also made me realize that "someone is getting a punch in the eye," has pretty much characterized my approach to dealing with the Boobeaucracy. And you know, while it may have been a bit hard on some of the people who had the misfortune to get in my way and some of them may not have deserved it, on the whole it wasn't a bad approach.

Except for one thing. I have already told the Bravest Man Alive loudly, vociferously, repeatedly, and with great variety that any obit for me is never, ever, EVER going to say, "after a long battle with cancer." It may say, "died, after a long battle with what she called the Boobeaucracy, from cancer."

I will most certainly end up dead. But I will never be defeated.

(And no, I haven't had any bad news. Just... going through a few things, is all.)