Monday, December 18, 2006

A Morality Tale

This is me:



This is me with my good friend kd:



Kd lives with my designated driver, but she likes to come over to my house to keep me company sometimes.

I'm mostly a pretty decent person. I floss, I vote, I'm sound on dogs. And I never ever forget to blame the patriarchy.

But I'm also stubborn. I'm grimly determined, excessively autonomous, rabidly independent. Sometimes when people try to help me I bare my teeth and hiss. I'm not very good at letting people help. But cancer is doing its damnedest to try to change that.

This is my home office:



My friend Lisa who's into feng shui says my office is in the "helpful people" area of my house. She says the fact that I have a dead woman falling off of an exercycle in the midst of festively deranged chaos just might indicate that maybe I'm not doing my very best to attract helpful people into my life. Snnrrt.

Nevertheless, this is a package that appeared on my front porch:



It's from my very helpful friend Julie who lives in Brooklyn. But only because she has a hotshot job in Manhattan; if it weren't such an inconvenient commute, she would live here, in my upstairs rooms. I'm afraid Julie has sent me a rather large gift.

This is my extremely helpful designated driver:



He drives me to chemo, he drives me home, he drives me mad with desire. He's opening this package for me because he believes I'm weak and anemic and severely neutropenic and could die from a paper cut any minute now. He's pretending that he's not intimidated by my bared fangs.

What could be in the box? Kd watches but doesn't try to help. Good dog. She respects my fangs.



Oh my stars, it's....it's a super efficient electric HEATER!



It looks like something the Jetsons would own. For the first time this winter, my helpful people area will be warm! Yay Julie!



Moral of the story: It's good to have helpful friends you can lean on when the going gets rough. Thank you.



7 Comments:

Blogger buddy39 said...

Great Gift! From your chair posture, it appears you're warming from the bottom up. Or both ways.
These are terrible circumstances to rediscover your writing, but I'm so pleased to be reading you again.
Keep writing on to the next chapter in your life.

bud from Crockett

4:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Woo hoo, designated driver! I will never hear that term quite the same way again.

5:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am so glad that you now, have a good heater! Warmth, is not overrated...even in the Inferno...or maybe because you live there. I am thinking about you, Liz...you have meant a lot to me, not sure if you know the impact you have had with me, and my roses. I thank you for that.

7:44 PM  
Blogger Alto2 said...

When your life meets a crisis, you know who your friends are. They're the ones who just show up to help or send you just the thing you need to get you through one more day. Or, they're the crazy bloggers who leave you peppy, insane messages ... like this one. I'm glad you have a "designated driver" (ahem), and kd, and Saint Julie of the Heat Source. Maybe, despite the ugly chemo, this will be a great Christmas for you.

10:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

KD! What a cutie!

My favorite part of the internet is the part where I get to ogle other people's pets.

12:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the smile on your face as you lay near KD's heart, that's priceless. Independence, interdependence, dependence, codependent, whatever the state, you are loved and that smile says so much, I saw no grey in it despite the grey you speak. You are very wise to have never let me know just exactly where you are in this state, because I'd be barging in to hang out with you in that gorgeous house eat up all the grey for a bit (I'm not dieting right now, you see, so I get to eat lol)

12:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i love that you say "oh my stars!" reminds me of my favourite TV show as a kid, Bewitched.

YAY JULIE!!!! thanks for keeping our beloved granny warm!

12:54 PM  

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