The Good, The Bad, and the Hilarious

I'm going to have to keep this one brief as I had a rough night. For a nice change, it was not medical-related. Zack came in late from his hockey game and woke me up to check in and wanted to chat. As any of you who have teenagers know, when your teen wants to chat, you do, no matter what time of day or night it is. I did finally kick him out of my room as it started to look like it could be an all-nighter. I began to doze off when Charlotte came bounding into the room announcing "I'm going to be sick!" I will spare you all the details but suffice to say she did not make it very far into the bathroom before that occurred. It was kind of nice to have the regular kind of bad sleep that Mamas have--though bleary-eyed is bleary-eyed, and it's almost time to get up.

I am perched in my "upper office" and there is a fabulous show outside...sky slowly going from all black, to blue-black and no the still-behind-the-mountains sun is illuminating the strand of cloudless sky and if I don't get too distracted with typing I am going to witness a gorgeous sunrise.

So what I wanted to talk about:

THE GOOD
I keep telling myself and others that the best part of doing this blog is that I get to do therapy...for free...without even having to get out of bed. There is also another fabulous thing though...I am not only staying in touch with friends and family, I am reconnecting with some dear friends who I have lost touch with. Yesterday when I was on the phone with a neighbour who is hosting a reception for another neighbour who just passed away, a phone call came in. I didn't recognize the name but figuring that it was Zack calling to tell me when he was coming home from school I quickly got off the phone and found myself listening to half of the message of a woman whose voice I didn't recognize. I replayed the entire message to discover that my very dearest friend from the mid-and-late 80's was calling me to say that she was following my blog and that she wanted to get together when she was next in town. This delights me and is today's very GOOD.

THE BAD
Two nights ago, after my laughter therapy (one dose downloaded Daily Show and one Colbert Report) I checked my emails and then wondered to myself if people would easefully find my blog if they just typed in "Quash Cancer" into a search engine. I googled that and saw with great satisfaction that my blog was the very first listing on the first page (a perk I guess from using the word "Quash" out of common context or usage), then my eyes moved to the second entry, again, the title of one of my posts but with a different web address. With great fascination and some horror, I clicked on the second entry to find that my blog had been attached to an Australian on-line bookstore on a page that was promoing some "authority's" audio-books on meditation and cancer. How creepy is that? Zack says "It's no big deal, but I say it's BAD! I went back to my blog and deleted the word meditation from the entry and when I checked the next morning the link was gone. It's a really good reminder though that by putting something into the public domain of the Internet I am basically making it available to be used however anyone wants to use it.
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THE HILARIOUS
Last evening I dropped Zack off at a teammates to be driven to his hockey game. My side-kick Sadie came along for the ride. When we got back, there was another dog being taken for an evening stroll just up the street. The dog was mid-dump as we were getting out of the car. I told Sadie to "leave it" but apparently she felt that she needed to communicate to this dog that this was her block and her side of the street. The woman looked very concerned so I quickly walked up telling her that there was nothing to worry about and that Sadie was just being territorial. "Why don't you just pick up the poop and I'll take care of Sadie," I asked, remembering that I had almost walked in dog do on my way back from the bus earlier that day and being a bit suspicous if this woman is one of those people who only picks up her dog's poop is someone is watching. Sadie continued to bark madly though she was also wagging her tail and as anyone who knows her would attest, she is just not a scary dog. This woman kept staring at me and not picking up the poop. I finally got Sadie under voice control and as we walked back to our house, I mused that the woman actually looked like she was cowering in fear. All of a sudden I realized that I had whipped on a hat to cover my bald head when I went to drive Zack and the closest one had been my new black hat with white writing that says FUCK CANCER. Had she been more scared of Sadie or of me? Pretty HILARIOUS given the latté neighbourhood we live in.

p.s. I'll add a photo later.