Health Status Update, Blah Blah Blah

Actually I don't have that much to report. I'm doing pretty well, and feeling good, thank God. My CT scan is tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. — my first followup cancer screening since my all-clear PET scan back in May. I'm not as nervous about it as I thought I would be, thanks no doubt to the love and prayers of family and friends. (Where I would be without all those who have supported me throughout this past year, I don't even like to think.)

Anyway, I have to be up early to get ready for the test (i.e., to drink an entire bottle of contrast dye — yum!), so I'm heading to bed soon. Goodnight, with kisses from the frogg princess...

Cold Snap

As the nations continue to deliberate in Copenhagen about what to do to stop the temperatures from rising all over the planet, I'm sitting here in my living room, bundled up in a long-john T-shirt under my regular T-shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, a beanie on my head, and a thick cozy scarf around my neck.

The temperature in my town right now is 49 degrees Fahrenheit. Do you know what the temperature is in Copenhagen right now? 43 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, DENMARK is only a tiny bit colder right now than SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

Someone obviously forgot to give the Golden State the global warming memo.

Now that I think of it though, Copenhagen in winter seems like a strange choice for a global warming conference, doesn't it? Oh, I know they are calling it a "Climate Change Conference", but that's probably because Copenhagen starts with a "C" and so do "Climate", "Change" and "Conference." And everyone knows that alliteration is hot. But I mean, honestly, it's a little hard to swallow the idea that the world is about to burn up into a raging fireball when outside snow might decide to start falling at any moment. If I were in charge of the event, I'd run away to Tahiti. But if I were caught and forced to actually do my job of planning the conference, then I'd suggest meeting in the Sahara in July. Believe me, by the end of a week in the desert at the height of summer, some new policies would be in place.

In the meantime, I'm voting for any legislation that makes time travel legal, so we can speed up winter and get summer going again. Stat!

Here's Some Food for Thought...

...since you wouldn't want to actually eat any of it. (Although I admit to being personally intrigued by "It seems Honey.")

Holiness Burns

The desire to see the resurrected Lord Jesus with one's very own eyes has a long and respectable tradition, starting with one of Jesus' very own friends. I speak, of course, of Doubting Thomas, whose one claim to fame (poor guy) is for missing out on one of the Lord's first live appearance post-crucifixion, and then offering up this classic response when his fellow disciples told him about it: "Yeah, well, I'll believe it when I see it." (OK, those may not have been his exact words, but they might as well have been.) Frankly, I think most of us can relate.

Fortunately for Thomas, he got his chance — Jesus appeared to him later in the flesh, and he believed. The rest of us, unfortunately, have to make do with stuff like this.

Well, I'm sorry, but the bottom of an iron does not the Shroud of Turin make (although admittedly it might do a good job of smoothing out any of the relic's wrinkles).

To be fair, I have a superstitious streak myself, so I guess I can't make too much fun of people who take these "appearances" seriously. I mean, I may not see Jesus in inanimate objects, but I have to make a conscious effort not to get nervous when I get an offer for a pre-paid cremation in the mail. (I think I'm up to at least five of them now. Woo-hoo.) Never mind the time I pulled into a parking space and found that the car parked next to me belonged to a coroner. I believe that was in the same week of getting one of the pre-paid cremation offers, too. Fun.

But it does seem to me that there's a fundamental difference between alleged omens and dubiously shaped burn marks on potato chips, pancakes and now this iron. I don't know what the difference is yet, but I'm working on it.

(By the way, isn't it weird how Jesus mostly appears in food form? Then again, he did say, "This is my body, take and eat," which I guess is weird enough in itself. But still. The Bread of Life and the Pancake of Life so don't have the same ring.)

On another note (yeah, I know, finally!), how does one score a job where you get paid for digging up bizarre "news"? Not to mention making up your own statistics in support of your story.

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I love Thanksgiving. As a holiday, I mean. (Two words: pumpkin pie. Two more: yeah, baby!)

However, as an act, the actual giving of thanks, well, I tend to like it in theory a lot more than I manage to accomplish it in practice. I wish that weren't the case, but too often it is.

This year, though, helped me a little bit in the whole "being thankful" department. Granted, that was after it threw me first into the "being scared I was going to die" department, but hey, go with what works, I guess. And the truth is, I don't think I'd ever given much deep thought to how thankful I am simply to exist, to be alive, until cancer forced me to realize the unwelcome fact that someday I won't be. Cancer may not be the thing that kills me, but something will. And there's nothing I can do about it.

I know that probably sounds both morbid and cliche, but oh well. It's still true. That's what makes me so grateful every time I slow down enough to notice that yes, I am in fact still breathing and what a miraculous gift that is.

Also, when I look back on this year, it seems like every horrible thing that happened opened a door to something good. Here's a few examples of what I mean:

Finding out I had cancer = horrible.
Friends and family who rallied around me, held me, prayed for me, encouraged me = wonderful.

Losing my hair = horrible.
Finding out to my surprise that I actually like how I look with short hair when it started to grow back = pretty cool.

Chemotherapy = HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE.
Friends who sat with me during treatments and parents who cared for me after each one = AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME.

I could go on. And since it IS Thanksgiving Day, I will! I'm thankful that my cancer symptoms waited to flare up until after I'd returned from Thailand; just a week sooner, and I might have had to be treated in a Bangkok hospital, awfully far from friends and family. I'm thankful for the doctor and nurses who took care of me and never made me feel like just another number, and never rushed through spending time with me to answer questions and concerns. I'm thankful for the countless people (even some strangers) who told me I looked beautiful even when I had no hair, barely any eyebrows, and just a handful of lonely eyelashes left. Though I still can't run as I used to, I'm thankful that I can run at all.

And I'm so, so thankful that I'm in remission.

I don't know what the future holds and I confess I still get scared. My CT scan is in a few weeks and I don't know what I'll do if, God forbid, anything turns up. But today, I'm working on being thankful. And you know what? It's not nearly as hard as I thought. After all, there is so much for me to be thankful for. Amen.

With kisses, hugs, and lots of thanksgiving love from the frogg princess...

The Right Frogg is Right Here, Larry!

When I saw a link today on CNN.com to a Larry King blog post entitled "Blog From A Frog", for one crazy moment I thought that perhaps at last the world at large was about to discover the incredible genius so often on display for lucky readers of the frogg files (see, for example, my last post). I mean, how many other blogs from frogs can there really be?

Apparently, at least one. Boo.

Oh well. Someday, kids. Just you wait...

This Post Needs A Better Title

I've noticed a weird phenomenon at my favorite local bookstore on my last few visits there. The store has two entrances — one opens onto the street, the other leads to the parking lot in the back. There's a register located by both entrances, but the one near the parking lot always has a long line, while the one on the other side is home to a lonely clerk with nobody to wait on. I've wondered why this is the case, until this Saturday when I finally asked the clerk at the streetside register what was the deal.

"People say it's too far from the parking lot," he said.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I mean, I strolled from the streetside register all the way to the parking lot doors in about 30 seconds, maybe less. So that should tell you something about the size of the store. Also, as the clerk pointed out, "I can see the other doors from here." Hmm.

So yeah, I just realized this story doesn't have what you'd call a "point." I know that's really unusual for my blog, but sometimes these things happen.

On a not entirely unrelated note, it's Monday.