What a week.
Grania on Jun 26 2009 at 10:30 pm | Filed under: Cancer, Friends, Soapbox, The Journey, home sweet home
We lost some huge personalities this week.
Personally I’m a lot more upset about Farrah Fawcett than Michael Jackson. I respect his talent, which was huge, but he had so many problems, and that negativity overshadowed the pure energy that he was when he was performing. His life was twisted and tortured by his own personal demons, but his music was amazing and he contributed a huge body of work at the time that my generation was listening. I’ll remember that about him and not the bad stuff.
I also watched Farrah’s story. Her documentary about having cancer aired in May and again this evening. She fought the good fight with grace and as much dignity as her particular kind of cancer would allow. That story touched me on a personal level. She worked at living, and literally fought for her life, for more than two years after her diagnosis. Y’all know my personal opinion of that particular disease. I believe I summed it up with two words on my private blog that I kept when I was going through my own very minor & curable version of it – Fuck Cancer.
Cancer takes thousands of lives every year. Farrah’s last production was her documentary, and the unfortunate timing of Michael’s death somewhat took the spotlight off of the good that she did to show what cancer really does to a person. Her death is tragic, she was a good person, and also a hugely talented actress, but the one good thing that could have come from it was the education and potential for donations to whatever cancer cause people are closest to. We won’t beat cancer until we throw enough research dollars at it to finally figure out the puzzle that lays in learning what makes a person susceptible, what causes cells to shift, and how to stop it from happening and cure it when it does.
Most of my donations go to the cancer society these days. It’s a worthy cause. There are very few people that aren’t affected by it, whether it’s from having a loved one with it, or in my case, experiencing it myself. I wouldn’t wish what I went through on anyone, and what I had was extraordinarily minor comparatively. I didn’t have to go through chemo or radiation. I had surgery, and I go to get checked every 3 months, and that’s it. Before my surgery, I did have to face my own mortality, and prepare for the inevitable. Nothing teaches a person what is important more than deciding who gets what piece of crap is left behind when they die. How useless, how futile, who cares who gets what, really!?! If I die, they’ll work it out. All I could do was offer my guidance and my wishes and realize that I’d have no control over whether any of it actually happened. That was a hard lesson. Cancer has no bias, no prejudice, it takes whoever it wants. I believe that cancer is curable. I do what I can to help find the cure.
*stepping off the soap box*
Other things happened, or didn’t, this week.
I had registered for a photography class that I really would have enjoyed if it hadn’t been canceled. I didn’t find that out until I showed up for the class. Oh well. At least I left work on time one day this week. I hope the school doesn’t hassle me about getting a refund.
All of the pieces of my waterbed have finally arrived, so tonight I’m spending the last night I’ll ever spend on my old beaten up rag of a mattress. Tomorrow morning the new mattress will take it’s place. It will take a few hours to get it set up and filled, but when that’s done I’ll finally have the new bed.
I’m taking a few days off next week. I have plans that I’ll share as the time gets closer. At least one day will be spent with my best friend. She had a birthday this week too. Her husband threw her a very cool suprise party. If nothing else, it makes me happy that she’s got someone that loves her so much in her life. She deserves that. He got all her good friends together in one room for a few hours one evening. She was so happy, it was great to see.
So, it’s been a rollercoaster of a week. The good news is that my company is doing well, and I got caught up with one of the three parts of my job today. I’ll work a few hours over the weekend and get a significant piece of another part of it done, and that will leave one project for the 2 days that I do work next week. It’s been a challenge lately but I haven’t felt this on top of it for a while. I have the weekend to get caught up at home too. Once the bed is set up, the rest of the weekend will be dedicated to housekeeping. It needs it. Physical work is more difficult than I want to admit, but I at least want the house clean for the 4th. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a barbeque or something.
