Hold me like a gun

Today is supposed to be the day we find out if my stepmother, Stacey, has cancer...but then again it might just be the day they do the final tests.

I guess I should mention that November makes me superstitious about death. I always assume that it's right around the corner for the people I like in November. I suppose that a thing that I saw one November years ago--the boy that I liked that had just kissed me got shot in the face--was disturbing enough and I was impressionable enough that I've been mildly haunted by it ever since. (That isn't a story I'll ever tell here.) November makes me uncomfortable and the holidays always seem sinister, although I make quite an effort to get past it.

Stacey and I have grown apart over the years; or rather, I've distanced myself because I'm a huge sucker when it comes to guilt and she's past master at administering it. But when she and my father first got together she was like a cool older sister. I was only five or six and unsure of my identity as a divorced child. No one had wanted me in the divorce and I was disappearing into myself, trying to make myself less of a nuisance--I still do this today, don't want to bother anyone. And then along came Stacey who was even younger than my young mom and so fresh and untainted and she liked me. I talked about her so much that it made my mom jealous and that was fun too. In the end her sensative nature proved to be no match for my father's indifference or my own emotional closed-offedness and she has turned shrewish and slightly shrill. But she is still my stepmother and has been so almost as long as my mother has been my mother. And cancer is such a scary thing even though it's highly treatable. A different kind of cancer is slowly destroying my maternal grandmother but Stacey is so young, only 36. And the chances are good that they've caught this early enough for things to be fine, but the thought that something hs been growing in her all this time just waiting to spring up and consume something vital concerns me all the way back in my reptile cortex.

But then again, maybe I'm just being overly concerned and a big worrywart as usual.

Welcome: Feed the Need

On the way home tonight, looking out the window, I glanced down Denny and saw three men protesting something. They weren't close enough for me to read the fine print; all I could see was three big "NO"s. I wondered why there weren't more of them. Maybe their friends are only dedicated enough to the cause to protest when it's over 45 degrees out. Maybe they didn't have any friends and that's what they were protesting. They were shaking their signs angrily at the cars but the sight of the three of them was so pathetic that even the cars were looking bemused.

On the other side of the intersection was a car accident. I didn't see what had happened but I did catch a glimpse of a car whose front end is now residing in the front seat. I hope that everyone was ok.

I tried to make the two events--the protestors and the car accident--connect, but I couldn't.

With any luck they sliced out all those misfiring proteins today and life can go back to normal. It is cancer, but they think that it may not have spread. My father is still pressing for a hysterectomy but I'm pretty sure his reasons are selfish. They also let me know that if anything happens to the two of them the boys will go to me. I guess this makes sense but it still sounds like theyre planning on being vengeful even from the grave.

Yesterday I moved the pumpkins over by the front door in the hopes that I would quit being lazy and take them to the trash. I didn't and walking up to my apartment tonight they were grinning at me through the glass. I wonder how my neighbors feel about this.

I purchased a comforter today. I'm really clueless when it comes to this whole winter thing, but I think it's an alright one. I was that girl on the bus again, this time the one with the big package. I could use some company to help me try it out...you know, for a second opinion.