Curbing My Competitive Instincts

I am a very competitive person. I've learned how to tame it a little bit - so while I don't try to outcook every other dish at the annual teacher luncheon, I can't help taking a furtive look to see how I stack up. (The result of too many hours spent watching Iron Chef.)

But what can I say - I am a younger sister. And one of the curses of being the second child is that you're always trying to do what the older person can do - whether it's walking, crossing the street without an adult, staying up late, or riding your bike to school. The list goes and on and on and on. Trying to do what she can do is programmed into you from the earliest days. First you just want to be like her, then you want to be even better.

It didn't help that I got born into a striving family. I can't remember a time when I didn't know that I would go to college, for example. And it had to be a good one. We heard a lot about the places we could go and the places my Dad wouldn't pay for. Once I actually applied, and really wanted to go to Duke (an approved school) my college counselor told me that out of all the students in my class applying (something like 15) I was the one she was sure wouldn't get in. That made me desperate to go. Luckily, as it turned out, I was one of two who did get in. I was pumped.

So now it's a million years later and I have cancer. I am finding my old competitive thing trying to raise its ugly head. But not in the way you think. It's so insidious. For example, my mother had a very serious stage 3 breast cancer 15 years ago. My instinct would have me be better than her. But I am learning to be very careful in my thinking. It would be very good for her to have the worst breast cancer in my family. She can win. I don't need to out-cancer her.

As they're sharing success stories, people tell me about women they know who have been sick and the size of their tumors. I try to remember that I don't need to have the biggest tumor in the room. Instead, I think about how lucky I am to have a very popular cancer - so many women have it and get cured - and I want to swim in those hundreds of thousands of women who are boringly fine years and years later. I don't want any fancy complications or interesting new diagnoses. I don't want anything rare. Give me an ordinary, run of the mill, easy to get over, lots of research on, easy to remove, tiny cancer. Save that competitive thing for a bake sale. I know, it's still not pretty, but at least no one's health is at stake.

And by the way, years later, I found a copy of my college application and re-read the essays I wrote at 17. There I discovered the secret of my admission. To the question "what will you add to our community," I found that I had the nerve to write that the school would already be filled by incredibly smart, high-achieving brains. So what they needed was somebody interesting to fill out the bottom half of the class - me. I'm guessing that after they fell off their chairs laughing, they said "sure, we'll take her."

My Unexpected Summer

The night before my sweetie and I took our kids on a surprise vacation, I got my own surprise. It was midnight, we were getting up at 3:30 and I wanted to go to sleep. But I couldn't, because the honey was busy doing who knows what with the light on.

So I said to myself, breathe, relax, we're going on vacation. Think about something else. And that's when I decided to do a breast exam. I know, who does a breast exam before going on vacation? Me, I guess. And my surprise was that I found a lump - a big, fat, somewhat hard, lump. I made my sweetie stop what he was doing and come over to feel what I thought I was feeling. We both freaked. And then we decided to pretend nothing had happened. Because we knew that if we stopped everything to check it out, and there was bad news, then there would be all kinds of things to do, and we'd never go away the surprise vacation. One week in the grand scheme of things wouldn't matter. So we got up at 3:30 as planned, woke the kids at 4, went on the vacation and it was truly wonderful. And then I came back to reality.

I have an aggressive stage II breast cancer. In the last seven weeks, my life has completely changed. I strip for anyone. My boobs have been shown so many times that my kids are lucky I'm wearing a shirt. I'm bald and I keep forgetting about it. I am trying to keep my head covered in an effort not to scare small children (or myself, for that matter). It's not elegant or pretty. I have "folliculitis" aka nasty oozing itchy stuff on my scalp which I hope will be cleared up soon with my new potions from Dana Farber.

I have become a champ at taking uncomfortable tests. I thought I was a total wuss. Among the battery of tests I had to go through was an MRI. That's the thing where they shoot you into a tiny dark tunnel.

I really don't like closed in spaces. It's just a little paranoia left over from a summer spent getting stuck in the Brooklyn-Manhattan subway tunnel under the river in a hot, dark, packed subway car. But I'm a trooper when it's a good cause.

I made it through my first MRI by pretending I was having a gentle massage - pretty impressive considering that my boobs were forced down these crazy slots and there were incredibly loud electric sounds every few seconds. (Ok, in the middle I had to stop pretending I was getting a massage and instead imagine being a test subject in a crazy sci fi movie.) I made it through.

But then I had to have a second MRI - this time while lying on my back. Now I'm scared. One of the nurses suggested that I "take a little something" before the test. It would help me calm down. I thought that sounded like a fine idea, so grabbed the newly prescribed bottle on my way out of the house. I first go to my first test of the day, a second biopsy. Waiting with my coffee, it's time to take the happy pill prior to the MRI. I yank the pill bottle out of my bag, ready to get happy. And then I look more closely at the bottle. By mistake, I grabbed the dog's hormone replacement therapy! Cursed canines! They follow me everywhere. But what do you know - turned out they were happy pills.

Spring is Here

It seems like a minute ago that I was lamenting my pathetic attempt at vegetable gardening last fall. But here we've passed through the winter from hell and come out the other side. Hope springs eternal - I planted 40 tiny boxes with at least 4 seeds each on April first. And my gardening prowess (or lack thereof) is a steady constant. Out of all those little seeds, only 5 managed to sprout.

But luck is with me on almost every other front. My mother-in-law managed to survive a horrific accident back in January and her recovery is nothing short of a miracle. Her strength is an inspiration to me. Her son has made me so happy these last months. And I started writing a new book back in December that absorbs and obsesses me.

Here's hoping that spring has managed to shoot new life into your days and nights. May the season be blessed and joyous.

Excuse Me, But That Wasn't In My Contract

Don't be fooled by those sweet puppies to your left. If you're a little squeamish about bodily fluids, I want to give you fair warning to click now, and get the heck out of this blog. It's gonna get gross in here.

Ok, this one's for the die hards.

When I married the man, we were very clear about what was and wasn't in the contract. He really wanted me to manage the food - cooking, reservations, whatever - but he didn't want to have to be in charge. Ok, it's a little retro, but I can handle that. I'm a control freak, I love to cook, this works. I can't stand poop - more specifically, dog poop - so I stipulated that I would never be required to pick up after the 4 dogs and 3 puppies he brought into the marriage, or any subsequent animals. Fine, says he, no biggie, he's got the poop under contol.

So this morning when I went down to our basement to take out the dogs, three, yes three, of them had pooped in their crates. Now I want you to imagine the disgust of this. There is a slight telltale scent when I start down the basement steps. It gets stronger as I walk through the nice big room to the unfinished crate room. But then, when I open the door, the stench of that bad boy slaps me in the face and nearly knocks me out with its evil power. It was clinging and noxious.

There, standing up in their new crates, are three of our four puppies. Each is covered in wet diarrhea. So what's my job? I have to reach in and encourage each puppy individually out of the crate, pray that he/she doesn't jump on me in greeting (fruitless) and then help said puppy up the stairs and out of the basement door to the backyard. So without actually cleaning up any of poop, I am already deep into it.

I'm sorry, I know this is really gross, but can you feel the complete and total yuck I'm having here? I'm not going to give you any more details because I hope you are feeling my pain by now. Suffice it to say that when I was done, I needed new clothes and a shower.

So what did I do after taking these remarkably dirty dogs out? I cleaned out their crates and then mopped the floor. Got on my knees and reached into the grossness to make sure it was really clean in each crate. Got dog poop under my fingernails because I forgot my rubber gloves. Dude, this is so not in my contract.

But this morning I didn't have it in me to hold the man to our quaint little contract. The mess was making me retch, and it was relatively fresh. It would be so mean to make him clean it up later, when he gets home from work.

And to me, the events of the morning are like a tiny window into the work of my marriage. This time it was me who had to do what I was never supposed to do, what I never agreed to, but that was just chance. Could have been him. Next time probably will be.

Save My Toast!

Oldest child tells me that writing about gardening is incredibly dull when I could have shared the toast incident. "Now that was funny," she says. "You have to stop writing about things that are so boring."

So here it is.

We were having our usual morning on a Wednesday. Oldest child caught the middle school bus at 7:15. Once she was out the door, I had 45 minutes until the next bus, which we spent on cartoons, cereal, lunches and getting dressed.

I got the usual request for cinnamon toast from my younger girl. Picky picky picky about her toast, it has to be just the right color pale brown, have just the right ratio of butter to cinnamon sugar and, most importantly, the crusts must be cut off. We had a misfire, that is to say that I burned the first batch of toast, requiring me to make more. Finally the toast was perfect, but a ticking clock forced the child to eat it on the road. We raced down to the bus stop, where we meet up with our neighbor and his kids. Being the slow poke that she is, she had only taken a bite or two out of her first slice (she had two) when the bus pulled up. She stopped to press the toast into my hand (no eating on the bus!) before running like heck, crying "Save my toast!" over her shoulder.

Once she couldn't hear us, my neighbor and I howled at the thought of it - right - I'm going to save the toast until she gets home. Then, when we turned around to walk back home, I lobbed the toast over the bushes and into the woods. We kept laughing about it as we walked all the way up the street.

Now it's 3:35 and my neighbor and I are again down at the bus stop, this time waiting for our children to get home from school. His dog has followed him down, because their electric fence keeps getting run over by the lawnmower, so the collar no does anything. Lucky comes and goes as he pleases, and this time he was pleased to come with us to the end of the street. Then he runs into the woods just as the bus pulls up.

Four kids come flying off the bus and the dog comes prancing out of the bushes to meet them with, you guessed it, the unbitten piece of cinnamon toast carried in his mouth like a serving tray.

"My toast!" my sweet girl cries in dismay. "You promised to save it!" and the sad thing is that there were actual tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. However, my neighbor cannot contain himself and has fallen down on the ground laughing. I have to say that I needed the laugh preventer to help myself maintain my composure and sympathy. Then the dog opened his mouth and swallowed the toast whole, making the kid laugh too.

Better?

My Hundred Dollar Tomatoes

I live in the land of apple orchards and farm stands. My neighbors all compost. There are gorgeous flower gardens and huge plots of tomatoes, cucumber and squash. There are even people who sell their backyard tomatoes and flowers at little stands in their front yards. We have a town garden, where you can rent a plot for the summer, and it is always sold out.

Can you feel the garden pressure yet?

I have lived in the country for 14 years. Fourteen falls of pathetic vegetable output. You'd think that 14 years would be long enough to figure out that I stink when it comes to growing things to eat.

I used to think my problem was water. I lived in a house that had only one inconveniently located tap in the front of the house and a big yard that was sunny for twelve hours a day. I made too big a plot that was too far away from the house. I would drag hoses from one side to the other and it was a big pain. It was so much work.

Gals I know would tell me about how much money they saved in the summer, eating produce they grew. I thought, Gee, I could save money if I would just be willing to carry some hoses.

And then I moved to a yard that was easier to water and I started over again, very hopeful. This time I put the garden in a much better spot. But my plants didn't get very big. I got like one cucumber and two zucchini. I must have planted too late.

So the next year I got plants sooner and I made an above ground bed, thinking, Now I'll get great vegetables. And I got one bigger green pumpkin and a couple of orange ones, too small to carve.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

Last year I planted heirloom tomatoes and they all died of blight. I bought special dirt - not your typical in a plastic bag dirt that you get at the hardware store. No, this is really special, in a black heap at the nursery, delivered to you in a truck load kind of dirt. I put it everywhere and I got incredible weeds. Not just crab grass, but remarkable, foot high crab grass. That and the incredibly dead tomatoes.

I bought a composter myself - and threw in various kinds of food garbage, not to mention grass clippings, old leaves and other recommended stuff. Then, to take it up a notch, I bought compost accelerator - this organic stuff (it's all organic - has to be organic) that I poured on the stuff to make it compost more quickly. Plus this year more heirloom tomato plants, because last year was so wet - you can't go by one wet year, can you? - and here is my embarrassing output for the year:

Tomatoes: Maybe 10 pounds - probably more like 5. Plant cost: $25

Leeks: They are the size of small green onions and there are 10 of them. Plant cost: $12

Potatoes: Maybe 5 pounds of harvest. Plant and pot cost: $36

We're not talking about the cost of the special dirt, the composter, the compost accelerator, the tomato fertilizer (organic is always more expensive), the cone things to give them water when you leave town, etc. etc. etc.

Will one of my devoted readers please help me remember to just shop at the farmstand next year? I don't think my bank account can take another Petter harvest.

Life on the Chain Gang

My family has a little first day of school tradition. We all go down to the bus stop together, the kids strap on their new backpacks, and we pose for pictures. I know, this sounds pretty much like every other family's tradition. Who cares! And what makes it especially fun is the annual neighborhood first day of school shot, where we line all the kids up and check out how much they've grown since last year.

This year the drill changed just a little bit - we all got up a little earlier because the oldest two, mine and my neighbor's, started middle school. So early Tuesday morning, we all run down to the bus stop, six kids and three adults, laughing and taking our annual pictures. There are lots of hugs, kisses on tops of heads and last minute adjustments. And then the bus arrives.

Now I'm used to the perky, cute, elementary school bus. The tiny kindergartners sit up front and everybody blows kisses to their mom as the bus pulls away. So the bus starts to pull in and my hand goes up to wave, just like it always does. And then I see them – a long line of enormous stony faces with their deadpan stares in every window. My new middle schooler quickly pulls away from me. I drop the camera just as fast. I don't think I've ever been so uncool in my life.

"Wow," my honey says, "She's joining the chain gang!" And we laugh, he, my neighbor and I, because it is so damn true. Clueless before, we get it now. But once the bus goes hiding behind the trees, my neighbor and I quickly blow our babies one last kiss.