I have a new climbing partner, yay! (My old one retired from climbing last summer.) So I did an hour on the walls with her this morning, and then 30 minutes on a recumbent bike. And yesterday I went for an easy mountain-bike ride. Gotta get back into condition (although it would be easier if I weighed a bit less, sigh).

Saw My Chem this weekend. That was some dark, Brechtian shit. Good times... good times... Really suited my mood nicely. Properly theatrically cathartic.

Artaudaste, Gerard Way... the Art School Kid in me greets the Art School Kid in you.

I have 2 friends (one from here, one from college) having surgical procedures today to remove cancer (breast and endometrial). Tim's second biopsy is next week. I'm just really fucking sick of fucking goddamn cancer.

Totally unrelated: out of all the electrolyte/hydration products out there, my favorite is DripDrop Hydration's lemon lime flavor. Tastes like Country Time lemonade. I should sit in the rocking chair on the front porch and sip on my electrolytes, like we did in the good old days.

Okay, but good news: I just heard back from my OB/GYN; she said that in May I was tested for HPV (Tim's cancer is HPV-positive) and my results were negative. So that's a plus.

That is good news.

My good news is that it was going to take until October for me to see a neuro in our new health system, but on Saturday they had a cancelation, and now my appointment is today.

That's very good news, Dana!

Woo negativity! Hooray cancellations!

There's a Fred Flintstone disability meme going around and I've seen it twice and I already just...HATE IT SO MUCH(Which makes me feel like a bad human being, because they're trying to be so nice, but it just hits me so wrong in that way, like when people say that the real problem with racism is that we can see the difference or that we're not all blue like smurfs.) At the same time, if they could find one that was George Jetson in a space-chair all "Stop that crazy thing!" it would feel like a cromulent part of my disability experience. But "nice" ableism is still ableism--most of the non-institutional kind I have faced is, you know, the "You speak *so well*,"sort that led people to describe me as an "intelligent young lady" until I was 38 years old and begging them to stop. ETA: Not that anyone here would post something so...unhip, but do me a favor and don't. Maybe it is not too late for it not to be a Thing.(If you feel brave, tell your friends...I bet I've got people rethinking their commitment to be unthinkingly nice to crippled people already today. Like death, it's my gift.)

But it's just, like, if somebody is a real part of your life, you don't need a primer that they're real boys, girls, All or None of These.

Woo negativity! Hooray cancellations!

I like the way minus-t put it.

I have done the Monday morning Pilates, and it was sweaty and stinky and good.

This week is all geared towards Matilda moving into her dorm on Wednesday. She's very excited that she got a Banker's Lamp for her desk. So classy!

My FB memories are now cycling through all of the end-game with Jacqueline two years ago. Yesterday was the second anniversary of bringing her home to hospice.

I've made a conscious decision not to repost those things, even though I do re-read them and look at the pictures. Since her illness and treatment and death occurred over the course of 8 months, there's no part of the year which is untouched by those memories.

Christmas week has that shadow of her first ER visit and diagnosis. The summer is all the time we spent in LA, at the WeHo doggie park, and eating brunch at our favorite spot.

September was always the beginning of our holiday season with both Emmett and Matilda having birthdays then, and Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas - all things we did with EM. And now, that stretch is notable for her absence. Our first Thanksgiving without her loomed large. Xmas is still a little off.

And September now has the anniversary of my sister's death as well. And JZ's funeral in October etc.

But two years on Matilda and I are moving forward with our lives. Not stuck. Emmett's found his career, Matilda starting college, changes for me.

Her brother, Chris, texted me on her birthday and said how much he missed her. And I didn't know how to properly respond because "missing" her is such a small part of the loss, of having our lives blown apart, the present and the future.

For Matilda and myself she wasn't just in our lives, but our lives were defined by being with her.

Anyway, if this sounds down, that's not how I'm feeling. I am learned in loss at this point. My wife, my sister (my only sibling), both parents. I don't know anybody who knew me as a human child in single digits.

The loss does not make me darker or more bitter, but more open, more attentive, more appreciative, kinder. Just trying to love and support as many people as I can during our short little mayfly lives.

And remembering Jacqueline alive instead of dying.