Amaryllis sillyramA

Drawn with dabs of river water last week, by little M.
Partway finished:

Mostly finished. “This is a cheek! This is another cheek!”

And these are drawn with countless raindrops, by Mother Nature:

We happened to be down at the river during a light rainfall, after the tops of the rocks were soaked but before the sides were completely saturated. Nice stripey patterns.

This one looks to me like a piano.

Mother Nature had also been busy decorating the shoulders of the mountains with a little bit of snow. And showing us a bit of blue sky. Strange light that day.

An advertisement on the side of a bus. It took me a second to figure out what the problem was. (Click to embiggen a little bit.)

Haha! So, who has time to do this? Someone with access to the bus while it’s parked, I would think. Subversive bus driver? Bus fixer? Or someone who can hang from the side of the bus while it’s moving? I would think Spiderman had better things to do.

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*Reading aloud in my Honors English class in high school, I pronounced subtle sub-tle. The whole class laughed. I had thought suttle and subtle were two different words. I felt a little better when, years later, a very smart friend said gaze-bo. That’s what we get for having been avid young readers.

We had a lovely weekend at the cabin. Highlights: we got in a couple of good walks to the river, and had some great food courtesy of big M: taco soup! homemade chicken pot pie! beautiful little steaks on the grill! We are lucky indeed.

Sunday was gorgeous, cold and sunny. Monday, our last day there, it rained a bit. Sleeted a bit. Sometime after dark, it started to snow. Just a little while before we left. By the time we were underway, it was coming down pretty hard. Big wet flakes putting lace all over the trees. Beautiful.

Homeward bound! We head the truck down our little gravel road. A few minutes later we’re stopped at the highway, waiting until the coast is clear to pull out and head west. The snow is whirling all around. The traffic is sparse, slower than usual, but the surface of the road isn’t too snowy yet. Good. We pull out. Accelerate. The snow flies at us. It’s like going to warp! Or engaging the hyperdrive! It looks so cool… until we realize we can’t see the road. Can’t see the yellow center line. Can’t see the white line on the side. All we can see are big glowing snowflakes, all lit up by the headlights. And the tail lights of the car in front are disappearing fast.

I’m terrified. It’s a curvy mountain road, complete with steep dropoffs and narrow bridges. Big M is driving (my hero!) and concentrating on trying to see… anything. There are occasional moments of relief. When we pass under a big tree, the snow thins and we can see. And once in a while, when there is an oncoming vehicle, we can see. It’s funny — usually I curse the oncoming traffic on that road at night, because of the glare of the headlights. But this time I am wishing there was a constant stream of it, because the oncoming headlights light up the road for us, and the snowflakes become invisible for a few moments. Street lamps have the same effect, but those are few and far between.

This goes on for about 12 or 13 miles, until we finally reach small town civilization. The roads are better illuminated here, and the snow is mixed with rain. And we can stop holding our breath. Or at least I can. Big M has been remarkably calm throughout. I did notice he kept both hands on the wheel the whole time — even asked me to adjust the back seat temperature for little M so that he wouldn’t have to let go the wheel. I hadn’t even heard her asking us to turn it down. Too freaked / mesmerized by the snowflakes flying into my brain.

The next day, around midday, the cabin cam had this to report:

So perhaps it was a good thing that we came home when we did. Driving through this large amount of snow would have presented a whole different set of problems. Still! Lesson learned: Snow in the forecast? Come home during the day!

Earlier this week I went in for a skin check. I’d been putting it off for over a year, but then recently I read a description of a skin problem I recognized — a flaky little spot that never really heals or goes away — which turned out to be some kind of precancerous thing that should be removed. I’ve got some of that kind of spot. So, yikes! I finally got around to making the appointment.

[Aside: I’ve been on an appointment frenzy the last week or so. My car’s going in for routine maintenance, my baby finally got her 2nd of 2 flu shots, hmm what else… well that makes 3 appointments including the skin check, and 3 totally qualifies as an appointment frenzy for me. Go me!]

The skin check went well. The main spot of concern turned out to be nothing to worry about. The doctor did find two places that are like pre-precancerous, and froze them then and there. The freezing was neat. She used liquid nitrogen. It was in this steampunk-looking brass canister contraption. When she came at my arm with it I kind of flinched, and so she showed me how it works by shooting a little of it onto the paper table cover. But then it stopped working, so she opened up the canister and poured some into a styrofoam cup. It hissed and smoked like dry ice in water, but more exciting. She used a cotton swab to press it onto the two bad spots. It hurt! But was not unbearable. After she was done she poured the cup out directly onto the floor and we ooohed and aaahed at the instant evaporation. Like magic.

I showed her one last spot, almost as an afterthought — a place I’d been noticing for a while, where if I lift up my arm, I can see and feel an elongated sort of bump on the front of me, right next to my underarm area and above my milk area. When my arm isn’t raised there’s just a little bump under the surface of the skin, which is nothing at all weird for me. So I showed her that spot, just on the off chance that she might find it important, and she immediately did a breast exam and put in an order for a mammogram and ultrasound, with a possible bonus biopsy. Holy dang! Wasn’t expecting that.

So I scheduled an appointment for Friday morning. [Oh yeah! That makes 4! That one counts separately, doesn’t it?] It was kind of hard to have a normal week after that. The morning of, I was running late and all freaked out. Thank heavens for Big M, who helped me get out the door — and who had offered, late one night earlier this week, to come running to the hospital to be with me in case a biopsy was called for. My hero.

It had been a while since I’d had a mammogram. I’ve had several, starting when I was about 24, because of a lump that turned out to be not-cancer. Sometime in my 30s, they finally said Okay, nothing to see here, come back when you’re 40. And can I just tell you, between that first one a thousand years ago and this one, the technology has improved dramatically. As Julie Robichaux mentions in her brilliant pictorial, there is no longer any cold steel in contact with the delicate tissues. In fact at one point I noticed that the machine was pleasantly warm. That might sound kind of yucky, but it was actually quite comfortable: warm not as the warmth of sitting down in a recently vacated chair, which I have always found to be not ideal, but warm, as the warmth of a machine that has been deliberately warmed in just the right places for the comfort of the patient. I’m not sure how I could tell the difference. But it was obvious somehow that some machine designer was being really smart somewhere.

After the mammogram was done, I gathered up all my clothes and purse and water bottle and forms-to-still-fill-out and trundled down the hall to the ultrasound room. The radiologist in there was very kind and fast. Aaaaand, he said it was nothing! HURRAH! (cf. palindrome up top.) I asked if the mammogram results also said it was nothing, and he said he hadn’t seen them and I could ask my doctor. And he said I was free to go. No biopsy! I was and remain giddy with relief. A few minutes later, when I was dressed and almost ready to go, he came back and said that the mammogram also found no problem. Woohoo!

I left the building in a happy fog, and as I drove out of the garage, I decided a small celebration was in order. I pulled over and consulted the smart-phone oracle to find a nearby breakfast place, and wound up at a little coffee house on Capitol Hill that was reputed to have nice crepes. And indeed it did — Joe Bar, in case you’re in the vicinity. Right across from the Harvard Exit. I can’t remember the last time I had a crepe. It was a lemon & sugar crepe, and it was quite delicious. But you know, I think any decent thing would have tasted like manna from heaven at that point. I have not been that irrepressibly giddy in a while. At least not out in public.

Last: if you didn’t read Julie’s post yet, please do. It made me lol. I don’t use that term lightly.