Harry the conure

Naomi occasionally watches my friend's conure Harry. Harry doesn't like many people and it took a while for him to get used to Naomi but as you can see here, they are now friends. Below is Ms. Tess happy to be here.

Today I tried to transplant some of the snapdragons. They don't like to be moved. We'll see what survives.  I bought some $1 perennials. Hope they take. Only about half of what I plant survives to the next year. I bought a few cheap annuals to provide color. I didn't plant seeds in advance as I was out of town though I have a few zinnia babies and the snapdragons, morning glory and cleomes seeded themselves. Only one California poppy reseeded itself though many alyssym did.

In one nostril; out the other

We practiced one nostril breathing at my breast cancer yoga today. We are not so good that we can do this without the help of a finger.
What do I hope to get from this?
I am so inflexible. The latest indignities: it hurts to look over my shoulder to see if there is traffic while biking and it is even harder to get off my  bike. We stretched those inner thigh muscles so maybe that will help.

Yesterday I found 3 deer in 3 different places on the road while I was biking. They stopped and stared.
Today it finally rained. We really needed it. The expressway was closed the other day due to a median fire.

Yesterday, a good portion of the day was spent with Josh. Today: grandbabies. Maya in the morning and Shanna's three this afternoon. In between, I ran in the rain.

Snapdragons

These love growing in between my paver blocks. They drive Steve crazy as he thinks they are destroying the patio and look messy. But I can't kill snapdragons. I transplanted some of the smaller ones but the large ones' roots go under the pavers. The cleomes loved germinating in between the paver blocks too but their roots are straight and transplantable

Salmon colored petunias: never saw these before

Some how the container gardens don't look as pretty as they are in real life. Yesterday it was over 90 and very dry. Today will be a repeat. I got up bright and early for a bike ride. I figure if I have 300 miles under my belt, I'll be ready. Well 180 to go. I went 21 miles this morning and managed to avoid traffic. Added bonus: no wind except a slight south wind that faced me as I came back down hill to home.

Elevation

I love Google Earth, particularly the altitude feature. I can see how high up I am running. My house is at 924 feet. The river, about 3 miles away, is at 749 feet. Running back against a north wind can be a pain. At least I am not in its flood plain. The steepest hill that I routinely ran  was the Arb Hill starting at 757 feet and going to 871 feet in less than a mile.
My brother now lives around a half mile away from the ocean. His house is at 376 feet so I imagine that is quite the climb. The moving truck was unable to handle the switchbacks.
Where Shanna lived was only 2 blocks from the Mystic River. It didn't seem such a steep hill either with her being only 21 feet higher. Was she is a flood plain? Allegedly not though Alewife Brook, about  a half mile away flooded often even though it is much smaller than the Mystic River.
The house I lived in New York did get flooded. According to Google Earth, it was 31 feet higher than the nearby river which was surrounded by a fairly high dike. During Hurricane Agnes in 1972, this dike was breached. Hurricane Agnes was the only level 1 hurricane to have its name retired. The rains were the killer, not the winds.
So far, my bike rides this year haven't resulted in much change in elevation, 50 feet at the most. The steepest hills I have biked were in California. In the 7 miles between Santa Ysabel and Julian, I climbed from 2900 feet to 4220 feet. Earlier in the day, I pretty much was at sea level. Going next to the water doesn't guarantee flatness. Approaching La Jolla from the north on PCH 101, one climbs from 18 feet to 440 feet in less than 2 miles (quite the trip flying down that hill). I did that to prepare for my mountain riding. It is even steeper on the interior park road at Torrey Pines Park ( I admit to having to walk part of that but I didn't on the PCH)

And hiking the Cinque Terre trails: It seems to peak out at 550 feet (sea level there is about 16 feet). But sheer drop offs were involved and my lack of balance no thanks to chemo and some wine at lunch made that trip extra interesting (but so pretty!).

So it's my favorite month. There are still some cool days (though not in the near future) and plenty of summer ahead.  I've been busy working my garden. Still it doesn't look as good as I want it too. I love making container gardens the most. Yesterday was devoted to grandbabies. I had the boys and Maya for most of the morning and a good part of the afternoon. Ages: almost 2 , almost 3 and 4. Pure chaos! Then I went to visit my friend's 3 grandbabies who were in town. Fun! I used to babysit their father. How time flies!

Why I was watching the kids? Naomi and Shanna made a trip out into the country to our hairdresser. Fortunately most of Naomi's red hair remains but she wanted blonde streaks. Don't know why young people like to make those kissy lips.

Lucky

You are lucky that you just got the cancer with the 70% survival rate; you could have gotten the one with just the 10% survival rate.


What an awful thing to say to someone who has cancer? The only thing that would be worse is speculating out loud why you have the first cancer in the first place. If no medical reason could be figured out, well maybe a karma reason. People get what they deserve, right?

No one has really said this to me per se. People have recounted all those they knew who had breast cancer and survived with the message You should too! And I was told repeatedly, Don't worry! Easy for them to say, they aren't facing a 30% chance of death in the the next 5 years.
But I have survived though the five years aren't up. Most of the bad stuff happens earlier so I am thinking my chances are fairly good. Cancer isn't my biggest worry.

 I am lucky.

Early on my blog was sort of like an on line pity party. I was very upset with having to deal with BC especially TNBC. I remember writing that those who are estrogen positive are lucky because their survival rates are so much higher and their treatment wasn't initially so horrible. I think I erased this once someone with estrogen positive BC reminded me that was a very poor choice of words. And I probably have more readers who have had ER+ than ER-. No one with cancer feels especially lucky even if it could be worse.

One thing I fortunately do not have to deal with is blocking the little bit of estrogen my body still produces. Not only are these estrogen blockers very expensive, they are chock full of nasty side effects. Post-menopausal women are told that they should take aromatase inhibitors, which prevent estrogen from being formed but for some reason cause crippling joint pain. Tamoxifen causes less joint pain but its side effects are more insidious. It acts as an estrogen antagonist in breast tissue but as an agonist in uterine tissue. It is not clear if it actually can cause uterine cancer but it does encourage it to grow faster if it is there. It can also cause blood clots leading to strokes. So women are left doing their own cost benefit analysis. Their physicians can give them the chances that their cancer will come back minus the drug  and the chances that the side effects will be deadly. Most of the time, the drug presumably has more benefits than risks but the pain and other uncomfortable side effects usually aren't part of the equation.

One of my readers was told she should take Tamoxifen. As her biopsy samples were not preserved due to some horrible error, she could not be accurately staged and so the benefit of the Tamoxifen could not be accurately calculated. Now she has uterine growths suspicious for cancer. She didn't sign up for that.

New research is emerging that 88% of  ER+ breast cancers are also fed by androgens. Blocking the androgens gives the same survival as blocking the estrogens with hopefully less side effects (and a positive side effect, no extra hairs). 25% of TNBC is sensitive to androgens so for those 'lucky' women, antiandrogens could help survival. Do they test routinely for androgen sensitivity? Not yet but maybe they should.

Another friend was not told that the high dose steroids she was told to take could lead to osteonecrosis. Although both hips have damage, one hurts so badly, she can barely move. They both now need replacing.

Yesterday was spent with grandchildren: Maya in the morning and Shanna's kids in the afternoon. I was able to get down to the Farmer's Market very early to buy supplies for my container gardens. Alas no giant phlox!!! So my patio is gradually shaping up with my 3 new containers. The excess plants flank the ground around the patio. I also bought a e angel wing begonia with its huge feathery red flowers. It doesn't like sun and mostly what I have is sun. I am hoping it will survive.
Today I biked and ran. In the next few days, it will be too hot to run far.

Thyme on my hands

Some how I manage to keep busy despite all this time on my hands. What do I have in my herb garden? Thyme, fennel, dill, cilantro, rosemary, chives, and basil. I suppose lavender could be considered an herb too. My mint all died. I am probably the only person in the world who has killed mint. Apparently it likes to be watered.
The other day, I thought I had touched a baby poison ivy. As it is now 4 days past and no rash, I guess it was not. I am now to the point that one touch equals 3 weeks of misery.

I had placed a few leaves of basil on the cauliflower I served at our family dinner the other day. It was greeted with suspicion. The scapes went into my orzo risotto. Our kitchen is getting too small for our family dinners. Steve uses the dining room as his office although we have an office upstairs. I guess that room is considered mine. There would have been 12 of us now at the family dinner if my DIL did not defect. A decision  will be made soon on how to handle that. It just makes me sad.

I have been trying to get into shape for my bicycle ride. Biking takes so much more time than running, which I have been doing too. Today was cool in the morning so I was able to do my long run out in the country.
Over the weekend, I was treated to a wonderful sushi dinner. Yum. And later we sat drinking wine watching the fireflies twinkle. Yep, fireflies. Usually they first appear closer to the beginning of July but everything is happening earlier this year.

My hair now is darker and more shaped. I  made the long trip out into the country yesterday where my hairdresser now does her work. Two new birds for my list just outside her window: a red headed woodpecker and a phoebe though I probably have seen the latter before. It looks like a cross between a sparrow and a tit mouse but its identifying feature is that it likes to shake its tail feathers when perched.

Today's battle is with the credit card company that used to do Northwest Airlines miles. I didn't cancel it because I still had miles on it when the airline was sucked up by Delta. It charges an annual fee which I usually get them to add more miles into my account when I try to cancel. They also let you pay the annual fee with miles. Good but there is a catch. You may be thinking you have paid the annual fee with miles but they take so long to credit your account, you start to accrue late fees. Evil, evil. Why does it take more than a week to credit ones account? Thanks bank deregulation!

The Great Scapes

What are scapes? Blogger is underlining the word in red as it isn't in its vocabulary. Scapes are garlic stems minus the flowers. Good garlic farmers keep harvesting these stems before they flower so that the plant devotes more of its energy into bulb formation. The scapes themselves taste very garlicky and chopped up, give quite a bit of flavor. We will see what I can do with them for our family dinner tomorrow.

I purchased scapes yesterday from The PrettyGoodGarlic farm, which features 40 kinds of artisanal garlic, owned by former neighbors. The man is a former colleague though I never worked directly with him. The woman is 3 time cancer survivor and nutritionist who has written a famous cookbook for cancer survivors. I have the fifth edition of the thirteen published so far. Somehow our paths have never crossed until yesterday though I have read her blogs. The following is what she has written about Komen. http://www.dianadyer.com/2012/02/komen-their-money-and-our-money.html?spref=fb
Basically she believes (as do many) our high fat diet contributes to many of our cancers, particularly breast cancer. To purchase pink buckets of fat-ridden chicken to combat  breast cancer is akin to smoking a particular brand of cigarettes to stamp out lung cancer. She is a delightful person appearing much younger than she is. They invited me to run over to their farm. Well that would be a 14 mile round trip but certainly bikeable.

She had neuroblastoma as a 6 month old which was treated successfully with massive amounts of radiation. She and her parents were worried about the long term consequences. They were warned that secondary cancers could develop. When she was 34, she had breast cancer than had spread to one node. When she was 44, she developed a new breast cancer that had spread to multiple nodes. She had chemo both times but wanted to ensure that she would not have a fourth cancer. What could she do? Live as healthily as possible which included a major overhaul to her diet, which already was fairly healthy by most standards. To sum things up, the diet is very low fat, all organic and lots of fruits and vegetables. It is similar to the one that my cooking class recommends (the instructor and her are good friends).

I've been fairly busy. I went to Maya's It Takes Two to Talk class bright and early yesterday. I was annoyed to find out that the class was missed last week as I failed to remind Naomi. Maya was removed from the class for some additional testing. When the tester switched activities, Maya became upset and pinched the tester. I told Maya that she should not pinch. Later the tester came up to me and told me that I shouldn't tell Maya not to pinch as this just brings attention to her negative behavior and makes her want to repeat it. Just love it when someone without kids and who is younger than my kids, tells me what to do.
Arghh!
Then I went out to lunch and coffee with Shanna. Fun. After my food digested, I went for a run in the drizzle (better than the pouring rain earlier). Then it was time to replenish my cheap book supply at the local elementary's book sale, then the Dixboro Farmer's market where I had my scape episode. Then a visit from Naomi and her family....

I meant to garden more today in the cool weather. But the Farmer's Market was so crowded today, I couldn't walk freely in the aisles. I left without anything. Wednesday morning, I will get up early and buy flowers for my container gardens.