Judy and Paul "Step Out" Halloween 2008!
Me without my hair! I'm into Goth now...
Millet's "The Gleaners"
Dear Spirits of the Departed,
I will welcome you tonight in full drag when the barriers between our ghoulish world and your spectral one dissolves.
If my cancer does not behave I may be directly invading your living room, Dearly Departed. Watch out! Judy is trouble. But, I have no intention today of letting anyone or anything (including cancer) misbehave in or within my presence. Don't count on a visitation soon.
My "Daddy's Girl" purple tootsie polish was put to good use. I poured it into a bottle of vaseline and "CoCo Chanel Sun Bronzed Pop!" base, microwaved it for 20 seconds then stirred vigorously. Paul Edmund then slathered it on my face. I asked him to create a vision of his own "Judy: Aspects of Love".
If you are faint of heart or delicately esthetic do not gaze upon Paul's Halloween Masterpiece: http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=zewqzoqom5j&thumb=4 Personally, I think Paul created a view of his own derriere and stuck it on my lovely countenance. Villain!!
The incarnation you see above honors Millet's "The Gleaners". Tis Autumn after all! I had hubby trot out and gather up some of the straw and nettles round about to make my noggin' a sunburst of glory.
The Departed Spirits may not be interested in my living physical condition but you might be? After my last chemo I developed a new set of symptoms...generalized joint pain. Bummer! It is not too, too bad and does seem to be decreasing in severity just as the fatigue tends to over about 10 days. Let's hope that new even more obnoxious problems do not develop when I receive my final two treatments.
They (the Medical Powers that Be) zapped me two days ago to replicate my original CT Scans from July last. I suspect that Dr. Muldoon will meet with me early next week to announce that the cancer has taken a hit and that chemo therapy has been effective. Clinically that is already obvious? The question that can only be answered weeks from now is whether the cancer has mostly vanished and, in the mists of future time, when it will return. For return it will. I hope I am one of the lucky minority that milk this for years and I slip out the in door 2037.
My son-in-law, Chip, who is going through this cancer thang with me has his surgery on Thursday the sixth of November to remove the tumor he has in his colon and to determine the extent to which it may have spread. I wish him the very best. The fear of the unknown can be a heavy burden. I know.
Paul and I have not been doing anything much except enjoying the cooling weather and the peacefulness of Shangri La by the Lake. He went to his GP yesterday and was proclaimed a fine specimen of manhood. Everything about the dude is tweaked and buffed to perfection. Paul has even managed to shed 15 plus pounds. That fellow will cause the taste of sour grapes to percolate throughout your mouth. Trust me!
I have been reading a number of wonderful page-turner historical novels. Caleb Carr is a real turn on. Jeff had me read some Susan Sontag ("one of the great female writers in America today"). Well...my take? Weird. Yawn. Besides, Susie is dead. But then what would you expect from a recommendation that Jeff would provide? He's my son but what an eccentric. Well, by local standards anyway.
Which makes me think of my daughter, Janet. I found a piece from the London Times circa 2005 which features the mutterings of my dear baby girl. If interested you can download it here. Janet is indescribable especially when sloshing about in the Vortex of Despair. The London Times writer obviously struggled to capture Janet's Ineffable Essence. ***see below
My disembodied life in the realm of the Internet continues to be bizarre. I still cannot handle any part of the computer and depend on the kindness of strangers. I am convinced there is an aura or powerful "hex" field that surrounds my laptop.
May all the Imps of Heaven and Hell infest you this day!
A British friend sent me a clip of a television commercial. The commercial was completed but during editing an object was noted that the cameraman had not mentioned. What could it be? Someone had been killed one year earlier on the exact spot the object was seen. The ad was never televised because of the unexplained ghostly phenomenon.
Closely examine the car as it clears the trees. If you are lucky you may see a hazy object moving before the car then following it along the road. Is it just mist? You decide.
Turn your volume up so you can hear the cameraman whispering in consternation near the end of the commercial. What is it he is trying to say?
Spooky!
IT HAS .been a month since Hurricane Katrina visited New Orleans, creating a catastrophe that uprooted more than a million people and left the city for dead. They were promised a reawakening, but no one said it would be easy.
The floodwaters have been largely pumped out, but the festering sludge left behind is so deep that N'awlins is baked by the sun into a modern-day Pompeii.
When the roadblocks are finally lifted and people return to see what is left of their homes, many will find only destruction and a layer of slime slathered across the area. Yet the more upbeat might note the green shoots sprouting from the crap colored slag of debris and mud.
One of the Indomitable is Janet Wusthoff née Jones ("QueenJanita" to friends and family) a nurse in the area. She was the focus of a glittering San Francisco fête when she learned of the windy miasma of death called Katrina bearing down upon her beloved hometown. Instantly she jetted her way Southward into the eye of the storm to provide succor and salvation.
QueenJanita is now confined to East Jefferson Hospital sleeping fitfully betwixt long hours of shiftwork in this Living Hell.
Saint or Martyr? You decide.
"We have to move on and move up. It can be boom, or it can be bust," pipes this brave and bouncy lassie. "Unfortunately, I missed the boom!"
Our lady of bequiling mirth later trudges away empty-handed and puff-eyed. Everything she owned, not much to begin with, has been swept up by the torrent and then cooked by the tropical sun into a solid mud-cake. An alligator gazes upon her plight with torpor and hunger.
Most of metropolitan New Orleans remains so crippled and dangerous and rotten and smelly that only a handful of residents and business owners have been permitted to return.
Only one of the four parishes that make up metropolitan New Orleans is open. Electricity, clean water, sewage, hospitals, telephones — and residents — are barely there in the other three, which remain mostly deserted apart from soldiers, police, sheriff's officers, National Guard and search teams still clearing the bodies.
At Café du Monde on Decatur Street, one of the trademark tourist haunts, owner Jay Roman expects to be firing up his kitchens and sizzling the beignets — sugar-dusted doughnuts — within a fortnight. "The hard part is getting our customer base back. "
The US Army Corps of Engineers expects to have all the water out again by next week.
"This city is desolate, it's like a volcano of mud erupted over us," Janet offers in her perky fashion. "Now it's time to raise the dead!" QueenJanita then abruptly turns and toddles briskly away, body bag dragging, chuckling softly all the while.
