Binge Watching

Generally speaking I am not much of a binge watcher since I rather like structure in my life which means I like to watch a show week to week rather than a ton of episodes all at once. However in the past few years there have been very few shows that keep me entertained week to week. I think the only one that I watch regularly is Law & Order SVU and of course, Dancing with the Stars (though it has been on a long sabbatical this past year).

As a result I have been buying older shows on DVD (I cannot get Netflix in the countryside without losing my mind – that’s a tale for another time) as well as buying the Game of Throne series because I was not buying HBO for just one show so I would wait patiently for the latest season to come out and then watch the show, usually one episode per night. Now having the whole collection except for the final season (not yet out) I confess, I have done some binge watching! But even that was mild compared to what Mom and I have now been doing – we are again watching Prison Break and oh my goodness, our hearts are palpitating so much that Mom came in one night and said “my heart is still beating so fast from the show”! We haven’t watched the show since it first appeared some 10 years ago so we forget a lot of the intricate details of the story and even though we know they escape we get so tense at every little twist that it is awesomely exciting!

Yes once in a while a truly great innovative story will appear on television but they are so far apart that it is really a shame. In the past decade I can think of Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones as true standouts. John also has really enjoyed Poldark but since I missed out from the beginning I can’t get into it at all which is rather a pity because I do enjoy period pieces. He also watches Victoria but I loathe historical dramas that are not accurate and the snippets I have watched portray a very different Victoria from her true self (she was really not a very nice person at all). A show I am watching now (in its final, third season) is Jamestown which is pretty good entertainment.

I really miss the great miniseries of yore, Rich Man Poor Man, Roots, Captain & the Kings, Testimony of Two Men and Centennial. Now those were really great serials!

My Cancer, My Pain

My readers know that I have not written very much about my cancer or my situation, merely alluding to it once in a while but today I want to write a little bit more.

A little over two years ago I received the shock of my life when I was told that I had Stage Four Cancer, “that I was terminal”. With true Scandinavian phlegm I held the strap tight and carried on. I have taken all the various treatments they have advocated and have managed to survive the side effects (thankfully they have for the most part been fairly mild, barring the neuropathy). I haven’t complained and have been rather stoic about what is happening inside my body. I even managed to be heroic when they performed the ileostomy and within a few days I was handling the change of the bag myself because I took the philosophy that I had to do it sooner or later. My sisters were staggered but proud of me because they know that of the three of us I have had the reputation of being the “medical wimp”. I don’t like to know, hear or see anything horrid but now I was having it happen to me and I took it like a man. (here you are supposed to laugh since we all know what babies men are when it comes to a splinter much less an illness).

Yes, I have taken it all “with a grain of salt”. I have been tough, resilient and not terribly modest about it (evidently).

Last September I started to get a pain in my side and I was told that the tumour had grown and was pushing on my pelvis. I have not had my CT scan yet (another couple of weeks) but the pain I am now experiencing is becoming progressively worse and I very much fear that it could be the tumour. My blood work has shown that my cancer marker has gone down in my body and I have been so hopeful that the medicine has been working and that maybe, miracle of miracles, I could even be in remission. But last night I was close to tears and terribly distraught because even lying down I was feeling such pain along my back and leg that I had doubts I could carry on.

Today the sun is shining and while sitting here in my big leather chair typing away I feel pretty good, pain free even. What a difference a few hours make. I am back to feeling optimistic and thinking that the pain is really just a pinched nerve in my back and that maybe I should see the chiropractor and have an adjustment.

“One can always hope.”

Crying as Therapy

My family are not criers; I am not a crier. Once when I was at work a person upset me so much that when I ran into a good, kind colleague a few minutes later I actually began crying and then apologized “for losing my composure”. I did the same thing when I was in the hospital two years ago when I suddenly lost my Scandinavia phlegm and began crying because of more negative news about my condition and then I apologized to the nurse who was so kindly holding my hand. She condoled with me, telling me that I had every right to cry.

I am not a crier about myself or my plight. I will, however, sob unashamedly over a movie, even a commercial can bring tears to my eyes but that isn’t real “crying”, in my view.

Last night my mother came into my room and hugged me and held my hand and choked out her words to me because I had to lie down in order for her to give me my blood thinner shot. I have been in so much pain the last two weeks whenever I stand or walk for only a minute or so and it is becoming almost too much to bear. She said she wished she could do something to help me. Then she began to cry.

“Oh Mummy, don’t cry. I am alright. I will be alright. Don’t cry Mummy, you do everything for me. You are the best mother in the world.” I condoled with her but I know she went back in her room and cried some more.

We are not a family of criers but in our hearts, we cry just like everyone else.

Good Bones, a poem

Coincidentally the PBS program “Story in the Public Square” last Saturday did an interview with Maggie Smith, the poet whose most famous poem is “Good Bones”. It was published three days after the Orlando shooting and the poem was shared on Facebook and Twitter in response. Ms. Smith said that every time there is a tragedy the poem goes viral again. How very strange that only a few hours after watching this interview 2 more mass shootings occurred in America and one can assume that the poem is again being shared even as I am now doing.

I had never heard of MotionPoems before but here is a link to this one. It will make you appreciate the poem so much more, particularly if you are not given to poetry reading usually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6tokL583A8

Good Bones  By Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

 

 

 

 

Agnotology

Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.

I thought I would use this title for my subject rather than one that would cause too much angst in the initial viewing. The subject is capital punishment and how it is used by Americans in answer to this weekend’s mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso. I could use words such as moronic, ignorant, and capitalistic or a string of other negative words to describe some of the emotions I feel every time I hear about another tragedy in America but what does that do?

The truth is that the bottom line of what I feel is complete and utter bafflement that the American people are more enamoured of their “God given right to own guns” than of the logic in NOT owning guns, period. What is the use of bewailing the shootings and holding candlelight vigils AFTER THE FACT? What is the point of talking about capital punishment AFTER THE FACT?

Many people, many times, have spoken about what ought to be done but as I have said before “you can’t fix stupid”. One can point out the action of New Zealand immediately after their first and only mass killing (passing a law banning the sale of assault rifles). One can point to Europe’s stance on gun ownership but does any of that make a dent in the collective heads of Americans? Apparently not.

I am sorry America but I am not mourning with you. I am berating you for being so damn ignorant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology