Dear Reader,

It has been an “activate the blue chair protocol” kind of late morning, but now, into the afternoon, Word Raccoon and I are back on the porch, writing.

The blue chair protocol, for the unfamiliar, is what we do when we are feeling too much at once: we grab our AirPods and settle into the blue chair for YouTube videos with a blanket until further notice. We cancel anything that we don’t absolutely have to do, turn off notifications, and do not cook. In fact, WR requests snacks if it’s a full-out drill.

While we only have to launch the sequence a couple of times a year now, it used to be more often. We have learned to catch it coming on and just shut everything down. Even the lights must be dimmed. Voices around us must be gentle. Nonessential communication must be muted.

Today’s edition was not a full-scale drill. The need for it was, we suspect, the result of too many competing ambitions, all of which began too early this morning. We created a space solely for tools in a lower kitchen cabinet, something we’ve been threatening to do for ages. We cleaned out, sorted, and decluttered the small appliance cabinet (it was time again), and likewise sorted out the utensil drawer. We have a box of things for Zack and Erica if they want them for their new place.

All of this before sunup. 

Instead of feeling accomplished, we felt fevered to do even more. Not a good sign.

So we set writing timers, managing only fifteen-minute stretches before restlessly wandering around trying to decide what, oh what, really needed doing.

We had work goals to meet, which thankfully we were able to push further into the week.

The writing was going well, if only we could have settled into it.

As I said, I caught WR mid-fret and told her to get herself to the blue chair. She watched Disney Food Blog videos (her go-to) and had some water.

Barry, dispatched on what we call a Mission of Mercy, (we requested a single snack cake), he returned with three boxes of them in varying flavors. Apparently, he takes his assignments seriously. Which did not bother WR in the least. 

She might have had a snack cake. Or two. 

Then she had a nap.

She woke up groggy, but better. Ready to gingerly head out to the porch and reengage with her novel. This morning she continued with the Rebecca thread and began a new document listing things to pay attention to in this round of revisions. Are we calling them revisions? We’re still not sure.

Oh, and her lab work results came back mostly fine, with her B-12 being on the low side but within the normal range, which means we’re up for an EMG next. WR still says it’s nothing, but better to be safe and all.

Psst…she still thinks it’s the medicine, but she’s not a doctor.

In any case, her PCP told WR that she needs more sleep, so going forward, our posts will be scheduled to reflect that – perhaps they go better with morning coffee?

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Woolf rejected Word Raccoon’s offering. I came downstairs this morning to see that the garland had mostly fallen off the painting. Some might blame me for not fastening it as carefully as I might have, but WR and I are convinced that Woolf is unhappy because we didn’t add batteries to the garland yet to make it light up. 

We will remedy that.

Over breakfast I was tired of (don’t tell anyone) Space Maker Method videos. I wanted something intellectual to chew along with my breakfast, so I watched a short YouTube video where a professor discussed “Young Goodman Brown.” It has been so long since I’ve even thought of that story that it took me a minute to remember what happens in it, but when she mentioned his wife, Faith, it all came back to me. The professor was introducing literary analysis. While I think I’m a tiny bit beyond introductory, it was nice brain fuel. It gave me something to think about re: Hawthorne that I hadn’t before, and it closed the gap between authors, if you will. 

WR sat there listening, her eyes wide. 

I told her that was nothing; she should have heard some of the lectures I had back in the day. How do you think we learned so much? I asked her. 

Today threatened to disappear into non-urgent tasks that WR deemed crucial. 

We: 

– Swapped out a boring light switch cover in the mudroom with a much prettier one

– Bought tickets for a birthday event in November that, though I have few ghoulish interests, is right up my alley

– Made cheddar biscuits because WR had a hankering after this morning’s bloodletting…I mean blood draw 

– Went to the gym

– Sorted the vinegar and oil shelf, discovering coconut oil in there from – are you ready for this – 2018!! I also put the white wine vinegar and the sherry vinegar on Use It or Lose It Island. I was happy to rediscover the rice vinegar. I tossed the sesame oil. I keep wanting to like it but it’s just so strong…I identified what oils need to be bought soon and loaded my online cart with them. Also, why did we have two bottles of balsamic? I’m not exactly starting up a salad dressing assembly line here. 

– Washed dishes and put them away when they were finished! What?? 

– Ordered some cloth napkins (We’re going to have a birthday dinner soon for Erica and since I tease her that she’s the Holy Vessel of Myah, only cloth napkins will do. And also, I miss cloth napkins. I find I feel utterly uncivilized without them.) 

– Also ordered a terracotta teddy bear tile for the brown sugar jar and why didn’t I do that sooner? 

– And so on. 

But I was happiest about the time I spent writing on my novel. I don’t say writing my novel because the part I looked over has already been written, naturally, and I don’t say revising because it’s so early I’m not sure I’d call it that, and yet, it kinda has that flavor. This novel knows where it’s going. It’s fun to flirt on the page again.

WR says she is happy but exhausted by the day, though I just want her to get back to the novel, please. That saucy miss says too bad, she’s daydreaming about a handsome Roman bust with a weathered, gorgeous throat and eyes that have seen things that she saw online earlier

Oh, WR. I know you like statuary but stop sighing, you sentimental thing.

Drema

Dear Reader,

You know it’s going to be an interesting morning when a print of Virginia Woolf knitting asks why you haven’t decorated its frame for fall yet, as if you ever had. Word Raccoon agreed heartily that Woolf deserved a lighted leaf garland. I shrugged and hung the decorations.

To back up, I found some decorations that had not been dispersed throughout the house yet, and so I spent the first hour of the morning putting pillows in fall shams, untangling garland and hanging it over the dining room doorway (thus taking down the heart-shaped lights that have persisted since February), and twining yet more garland over the light fixture in the dining room.

WR, do you suppose sprinkling the house with all things fall is some attempt at a protection spell (just kidding) against approaching winter?

She shushes me and says sometimes decorations are just decorations.

I am especially fond of the leaf-dotted paper lantern.

My doctor’s appointment (but isn’t it my appointment; is that ’s misplaced, WR?) led to another appointment tomorrow for lab work. Yay. Three tests to see if my ailment is anything from a vitamin B12 deficiency to something off with my thyroid (I doubt it), and we will go from there.

Before today’s appointment, I wrote on my novel, Reaccessioned. I did that thing I’m not supposed to do before I finish the draft, but I couldn’t help it. I did some polishing.

My POV character in the present-day storyline changes register so many times that it’s difficult to know whether the reader notices what she’s doing and keeps up.

Sound familiar, WR?

(Something that happened just now): Remember last year when I said I heard a squirrel squawking from the electrical lines as if getting shocked? I heard that same chattering this evening and went looking for the squirrel in distress, and yup, same squirrel, I think, same spot. I started yelling for him to come down, that I knew he was attention-seeking, and that he had fooled me last year but I knew this year he was perfectly capable of getting down. I went to get backup just in case we needed a squirrel rescue plan, and when I returned, he had jumped into the tree. Fooled me again, LOL.)

And how do you drench a passage in gorgeous detail without overgilding it? Where’s the tipping point, Dear Reader?

Do you know how difficult it is to find just the thing that says what you want to say without saying it? Like (not actually in my novel, but): The stone Rebecca bent over and chose from the lake’s edge was flat and gray, the sort her father had taught her to skip across the pond when she was ten.

Depending on what’s been going on in the story, this could show us that Rebecca has loved the lake since she was young, or that she knew how to choose a stone, or that her father spent time with her, or even that she had perhaps lived near a pond. Hell, it could mean more than that. So many choices, WR!

How many times did I stop Rebecca today as I was writing and demand she stop saying “I am”? Just show us, Rebecca, how you feel, which is a bit more difficult in first person because your first instinct is to just say it.

Psst…your readers like it when you give them something to figure out. I have to keep reminding myself of that.

Anyway, I plan to split tomorrow’s writing time between poetry and prose. I, like the squirrel, I guess, miss the electricity of poetry. I suppose I can always jump back into the novel if need be.

Drema

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon has been stamping her little foot impatiently while I have been completing annoying administrative tasks all damn day. Her eyes are squinty and tired.

Such is life, but WR says she forgets what creativity even is when that happens. She curses and whines that this is no fun! And she’s not wrong.

One thing that pleased her was using items from her newly designated “Use it or lose it” kitchen island for supper. She presto, change-o’d a can of crushed tomatoes, an onion, and some garlic all begging to be transformed into spaghetti sauce with ground beef. (Obviously she added spices.)

This is a new inventory rotation trick that she thinks will prevent the poor lonely souls in the back of the cupboard from languishing. I spied a couple of boxes of spring pasta salad mix waiting in the wings that I suspect she’s going to toss my way soon, the way she did lentils and carrots showing their age the other day when I made a red Dutch oven full of lentil stew.

A welcome task on our list today was approving the proof of our brief poem “Bonnie and Clyde Without Guns” that will be out soon. I’ll provide a link as soon as one’s available.

Oh, and my rheumatologist got back with me and said he doesn’t think it is the medicine causing the pins-and-needles sensation in my feet and hand. He wants me to go see my PCP, so I have an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. Here’s hoping there’s a simple reason for the tingles like too much caffeine, the exercise I’ve been doing, or climbing the ladder on repeat to clean windows; who knows?

WR tried to beg off the gym today, but I told her that because we were on the tedious paperwork wagon today, we needed the movement. She said we ought to wait until tomorrow to get a “doctor’s release” before rowing.

I’m onto her. 

We went. 

We need a bouquet of blooming words right now, or at least I do. Maybe I should flip through my “prose with poetic potential” notes. Which is just an alliterative way of saying I have lines that have caught my ear that I want to develop.

For example, I recently read the words “some shitty tree,” and in context, I understand the author. But WR has never in her life seen a shitty tree. Even the saddest tree is a marvel to her. She has never, ever seen a tree that didn’t intrigue and comfort her. 

Those that manage to remain upright regardless of cruel winds and less-than-ideal soil conditions inspire. Even those that give up on their own, or seem to, still at least tried, and their felled bodies still retain beauty and usefulness. Then there are the trees brought down by force majeure, or worse, by someone wanting a pool in the very spot where the tree dares stand, branches crossed.

Trees are the most hopeful beings of nature’s creation, reaching for the light even when they can’t see it. I never really thought about inherent bearing until recently, something I admire, and most trees have that. 

This post was not meant to be about trees. I could go on, but WR is begging me not to because she’s tired of my rant. 

This is just brain fluff, WR.

Drema

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon loves this weather and its accompanying droning of a lawn mower in the distance and the dribbling of a basketball someplace nearer. 

Not only did she finish most of her fall decorating, from placing acorn-hued pumpkins that give way to harvest gold below their curved sides on every available spot on the porch, she also completed her seasonal outdoor work, including the glamorous job of hosing down the trash bins, listening to the podcasts “More Happier” (the title has been debated and answered) and “No Stupid Questions” of which she feared she had more than a few.

She also spent time reading a memoir this morning. (She has opinions on memoirs.) Since she was engrossed in her book but I wanted her to go to the gym, I persuaded her to bring her book along to read on a bike. Not perhaps as intense of a cardio session as I might have liked her to have, but better than reading in a chair. 

Once home, I fried half strips of hickory smoked bacon and cracked eggs into the grease for bacon and egg sandwiches. Word Raccoon kept wafting the scent of the bacon upstairs with her hand, hoping to bring on breakfast faster. 

It didn’t work.

I gave her a Luna bar and a Coke Zero.

No writing (other than this) has been undertaken today, for reasons forthcoming. 

Alas, our time has instead been taken up with a game of What fresh hell is this?, medication edition.

Two nights ago, I noticed some strange tingling in my feet and left hand.

“That’s strange,” I thought, not attributing it to anything in particular. But when the tingling returned today, I dug further into the possible side effects of my two arthritis medications online.

For YEARS I wasn’t on a regular medication for anything, and then last year I began these damn meds. I am not a fan of meds for myself, in part because what if the cure is as bad as what it is meant to help? (But I am no doctor, and I try not to be overly stubborn, just cautious. The brain’s the thing…)

The first medication I was put on helped the arthritis but caused unacceptable side effects. My doctor swapped it for another. I have been doing fine on it, just fine. And even recently, you might recall, he added a second med, which should just now have really been taking hold, which led me to initially blame it for my side effects, except the internet says nope, that it’s much more likely to be the first and that these particular symptoms often show up, if they’re going to, about now. 

We are not amused. And while feeling as if your limbs are permanently just waking from a nap is not painful, it is irksome and could, if left unchecked, lead to worse issues. 

I have messaged my doctor and am waiting to hear what he wants me to do next. His recommendations may include, if Dr. Google (the Mayo Clinic’s website, actually) has led me down the correct path, something to help clear the offending medicine from my body. And, if this is indeed what’s happening, what I’ve read suggests the symptoms should eventually subside, since I’ve caught it early.  

And likely my medicine will be switched again. 

Merde.

At least I was paying attention. Everything I’ve read makes me glad I noticed the change and followed up on it instead of ignoring it, which I have been known to do because limitations make me roll my eyes. I do not embrace inaction. It’s not in my nature. 

In the meantime, I will continue my regularly scheduled life until I hear back from the doctor, and if all goes as well as expected, soon this will be nothing but a footnote to 2026. 

I hope you are doing all you love best this weekend. 

Drema

Dear Reader,

As Word Raccoon and I washed the porch windows, our town’s Harvest Day hayride chugged by, and it truly felt as if fall arrived with it. Two rows of flannel-and-denim-clad citizens lined the cart. I was glad they were bundled up, and I found myself wondering how old Myah will have to be for her parents to let her go on a hayride. (Counting down to March.) 

Other fall traditions bewitch me. I always want to create in the kitchen when the weather cools even a bit, and this morning the scent of sage filled the room as I fried sausage and made crisp homemade waffles while Gilbert Cruz interviewed Stephen King. (I try to save The Book Review Podcast for Saturday morning cooking sessions.) 

For a moment, I thought WR had drank all of the syrup and I would have to make a sugar syrup instead, not the same but a decent substitute. But she poked her head in the fridge and found a partial bottle of maple syrup. All good. 

I remembered (for once) to ask her, while she was in there, to get the butter out and leave it on the counter to soften. WR has been eyeing videos where people make their own butter (not with a churn; we’re not that ambitious) and is considering. I mean, she is mesmerized by the transformation of heavy whipping cream, sugar, and a hint of vanilla into whipped cream and would perform it as a circus trick if allowed. 

I did not ask her why she left a pawprint in the butter. 

While I prefer pancakes most days, waffles feel intentional. They’re not “Here, put a circle of batter into a bit of heated shortening in your fancy All-Clad skillet and walk away for two minutes,” they’re “Get out the waffle iron. Grease it. Make the batter. Pour it in. Close the waffle iron.”

Wait, is that really so different? Shh…it just seems fancier. (Kinda like quiche. You can never go wrong with a quiche. As easy and versatile as an omelet but you get so many more points for it.) 

And sometimes you just need a crisp waffle with a side of sausage. 

WR agrees. She had two waffles, and I didn’t begrudge her either because first of all, she had trouble sleeping again. Thank goodness she had a recommended movie to keep her company at 3 a.m. It didn’t make her blue, but it did keep her awake. She found much to admire in it. Something about the spare cinematography and the color scheme reminded her of 2023’s Asteroid City.  (Yes, I know that the original title had quotation marks around it because it’s a story within a story, but technically I’m supposed to just italicize it??)

Secondly, I told my prissy raccoon missy to roll up her sweatshirt sleeves and pull out the ladder this morning, because it was window washing time. Not that she did a great job; I’m going to make her touch them up tomorrow. She said the sun was in her eyes.

Uh huh.

She begrudgingly took down her lovely red metal flowers and her other solar-powered flower lovies and put them in the garage where they glowed, thinking it was night out already, until she turned them off. She gave them a hug and told them she’d see them in a few months, but that they should nap in the meantime. 

After she did her chores, WR sat on the porch with a book and read a section that made her stop and stare at the clouds. She noted how much bluer the sky is in fall and winter and how the sun behind that makes everything glow and then Maxfield Parrish clouds caught her attention and she decided to just watch the sunshine-tipped clouds which she hasn’t done in so long. 

One cloud looked like a puppy and then a dragon and then it looked like how the wind is pictured in children’s books, a cloud with puffy cheeks and pursed lips. 

I stared at the clouds shape shift for what seemed too long until I reminded myself that one of my jobs as a writer is to take things in. 

I started describing what I saw to myself and realized I feel shy about giving too much detail in my writing, almost as if I am showing off or bragging or attributing too much to what I see or trying to hold the reader’s eye too long and maybe that’s one of the things I should take a better look at in my writing.  

Woolf spent time dreaming up sentences, staring off into space, at the sky, at her cigarette smoke. She knew how to follow a thought, and the clouds led my thoughts today, too. 

Anyway.

Yesterday I took another load to the thrift shop, but this one was different: WR took a huge box of wallpaper and other decorating supplies and practically tossed it into the attendant’s arms. WR said she is DONE with this household redecorating nonsense. 

Some household projects we’ve decided don’t need doing.

Some we’ve decided we don’t want to do.

Some can just wait, HERBERT! (The nag in my head.) 

Something in me has calmed. Finally. 

What we do want is more writing time. 

I have five things I want to say at once, and all of them could be their own blog posts. So I will just stop for now. 

WR, you’re supposed to narrow your topic and deepen it. Dear Reader, have you ever tried to tame a raccoon’s brain? Pity me. Or don’t, because WR can be pretty entertaining sometimes. 

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon will not shut up about our coffee date with our friend. The friend has moved to Spain and was back visiting family, and WR could not wait to see her! (her mother, who was out for a walk, joined us for a coffee for a bit, too. Very cool. We will be sorry to see our friend leave…we have missed her energy.) 

WR loves receiving new book titles and movie suggestions, especially from those who know what she needs most, and she pushes those recommendations to the front of her TBR/TBW list. She’ll be watching a recommended movie first while she waits for her new book to arrive. Which, much to her chagrin, appears to be on a slow boat.

But the parade of fashion today! WR truly admired so much style. She admired it coming – and going – and coming again. Why, she could eavesdrop on that attire all day!

WR treasured the conversation, and was honored to be asked about her current WIP. I fear she became just a touch too animated by the audience, wishing she could talk to everyone about it. 

This silly raccoon has been floating over here all day after her energizing morning, although she got so flustered that she’s having to replay the fuzzy details to see if she can recapture them.

I sent her to the gym to calm her down, not that it worked, wee beastie. 

She was rummaging in my poetry bin earlier, and this came up wrapped around her tiny nose. She says she doesn’t know if it’s a poem or a song, but that you might, Dear Reader. She claims the artist is not necessarily in charge of the interpretation. 

Fair, WR. 

And psst…she says if it were a song (well, this is a fragment, so…), it would be in an Adele key. (WR, you don’t honestly believe you can just say “in the key of Adele,” do you? Oh, you do? Well, you may be right.) 

Imagine That

Why is it you get credit 

for every offering of nature,

every flower, every leaf? 

every cross breeze

I encounter?

Why do my ears plunder

what others utter 

for an echo of something

you once said, might say,

might have said?

(If this were a song, here’s where it would move up a key.)

Why is my mind filled with unshot footage

of unmade movies where I cast

every part?

Why do I feel most myself when

I even think of you…

Imagine that.

Imagine that. 

Drema 

Dear Reader,

It’s funny how tasks that seem small can swallow a morning. Word Raccoon says I’m not being fair, because I had a morning’s worth of activities before morning even broke, or so it seemed. But she knows what I mean.

We were entering our chapbook, God Blinked, in a contest that closes today (yes, I wish WR would be more prompt, but…do poets have trouble getting our shizz together? Some days, sure.) 

Usually, WR and I could have whipped that submission up and gotten it out in no time. But somehow, time slowed. We micromanaged the punctuation and line breaks. We remembered when we thought that line would make a great first tattoo, and we’re glad we didn’t get it during the deepest of our grieving. Among decisions that should be made with a clear head, I would rank tattoos up there, wouldn’t you?

We also submitted to another journal, one that just opened today, and at least one of the founders is from our alma mater, though we don’t know her: https://tandemlitmag.com/. We believe in supporting our writing family. This one is for women-identifying writers only, which WR heartily approves of. We have some sharp-edged poems in our files that we sent their way. Fingers crossed.

Tomorrow morning (what, ten a.m. is NOT too early, WR! You lazy beastie) we are meeting up with a friend, yay!

We did have to search to find a place where we hope we can talk freely, a necessity for catching up. Since the remaining cafe uptown is tiny, that’s a no.

We are going to try the coffee shop at the university, though it’s not a place I could see myself writing on the regular. Still, WR is looking forward to a good chat and some people-watching.

WR insists we need to get there early if we want any hope of snagging a table, so I’ll probably be holding down a spot well before the ten o’clock rush. (Can you tell I’m looking forward to seeing her? It’s been ages! She moved to SPAIN on me!) Of course, if it’s just too noisy, we’ve already agreed to retreat to some quiet nook around campus.

For now, my writing spot is primarily my own front porch, at least on days as lovely as this.

Drema 

Dear Reader,

The handyman is finished; he has come and gone, and the house thanks him. Word Raccoon was protective of her writing space and time, but I told her to snap out of it; these things needed doing.

It was magical, handing him a list and seeing the things be taken care of, one after the other. (I do my best, but I do not have the skills to do so many of these things. Barry is likewise afflicted, I don’t think he’d mind me saying.)

Watching the changes take place was fabulous!

You would like a new ceiling fan and light in the bedroom?

As you wish. (He even hung the remote’s case on the wall so we’d always know where the remote is.)

You would like a new towel bar in the bathroom?

Done.

You say you hate the upstairs bathroom faucet?

Consider it changed out.

A section of wall you’d like replaced?

At your service.

You would like a new light fixture in the downstairs bathroom?

Of course.

He even took most of the replaced materials with him. Our household list shrank so quickly we were astounded. 

Word Raccoon is still exclaiming over the changes. She’s making a new list for him as we speak, but I have told her she has to slow down. Honestly, there’s only one other real task she’d like him to do for now, but though he was affordable, the budget says to wait, because it’s not a quick fix.

Even with all of this going on, including the last of the work being finished today, WR managed to submit, are you ready for this, to ten places! Ten!

She hopes to return to writing tomorrow. Life has been harried, busy. She hardly knows if the outside world exists – does it? 

But there has been plenty of Coke Zero, for which WR is pleased.

Drema

(With apologies to Cake for the title)

Dear Reader,

Let me say right up front that I am fine. Fine, I say. And I mean it. 

But Word Raccoon has been on a bit of a nail-biting adventure, if you will. (She was concerned, me not so much.)

Two days after Mawgy passed, I had my regularly scheduled mammogram. Two days before her memorial, I was asked via a message on the medical portal to make an appointment to come back in for a rescan.

I wasn’t concerned, not really, because I had been to my GP recently and we had discussed what she was pretty sure was a swollen lymph node under my arm.

This seemed to be the reason for the scheduled rescan and an ultrasound.

I could go on and on about the labyrinthine nature of our insurance network’s preferred provider, and I will: how my doctor’s office had called me directly and how, when I returned the call, the woman who answered wanted to reply to me from my chart (which I already had access to) rather than transfer me to the clinic. When she would not listen, WR disconnected the call with her frustrated little fingers and called back and got someone else who was much more sympathetic.

The sympathetic woman, however, also began trying to read from my chart. WR informed her that we knew all that, but that we were trying to talk with the nurse who had called us from our doctor’s office, and would she please connect us.

She tried and said she wasn’t getting a response. But at least she tried. I told her that I lived close enough that I might just pop over and ask in person. (I didn’t. That just seemed a little too forward, though WR considered it.) 

I sent a message to them instead, asking the nurse to try calling again. (I had been right by my phone when she called the first time, but for some reason my phone doesn’t always ring, so I didn’t hear it. Curses.)

I was not about to tell Barry about the ordered rescan until after his mother’s memorial service, so I told my hair stylist instead when I went in for my already scheduled, conveniently timed, appointment, knowing she and I would be on the same page: very likely nothing, just that swollen lymph node, good thing to keep to yourself for now. Testing to follow.

There’s something about saying the thing aloud that bleeds the (faint) worry from it.

I decided to wait for a return call.

It came during visiting hours at the funeral home, when I was talking to Zack and Erica, and I was able to step outside and answer it, get the needed information. I still said nothing to anyone. No need to worry anyone, I figured. There was enough going on.

I did share the news with Barry a couple of days later.

Today I went for the rescan and ultrasound.

As I predicted, all is well, and it was just the swollen lymph node clouding the image.

There has to be a poem in watching a lymph node on a screen during an ultrasound. That’s not what we usually associate with ultrasounds.

I am grateful, I truly am, and though I wasn’t so worried, I did feel relief to know that I will only need a followup in three months to make sure, but that things look fine.

That being said, WR and I are eagerly awaiting the survey we will inevitably receive soon from the hospital, because we have a beef.

The imaging lab is in its own little area, and the mammography equipment is on the left, with a little TV area just outside it. The dressing rooms are across from the TV.

While another woman and I sat there in thin gowns that opened in front (mine was too small, but I managed to hold it closed) and nothing else on top, they brought a male patient through for imaging on the other side of the hall but still very near.

The other woman asked if she could go get dressed.

The man was ushered into a room and the door closed, but still…I weighed my options. I, too, could ask to get dressed. I could ask for a blanket or a bigger or second gown. Alas, I had left my jacket in my vehicle. At the very least I could complain. 

I actually got up and went into my dressing room, considering getting dressed without permission (they had told me earlier to hold off until the ultrasound was read), but I decided that surely the guy would be in there for a while and surely they were almost finished with me.

He was and they were.

While there were things I could have done (I always try to find my agency; sometimes helpless is as helpless doesn’t), they should never have put me in that position. WR wanted to make a scene, but I told her again to wait for the customer survey.

All things considered, though, we are relieved and grateful for the results, though we truly believed that would be the outcome. 

We are tired and hoping to submit some poetry. We wrote a bit last night.

Reading feels right for this afternoon.

Yes, reading.

Drema