100 Words

Warren and I had a long evening last night for First Friday. We ate at home, then went back down, Warren working,  Amanda and I chatting with parents looking for their children’s artwork on display.

Once back home, we were tired and cold and hungry.

“What about popcorn?”

So we made a bowl of popcorn and sat together on the couch eating, the shared contentment reminding me of my childhood. Popcorn was the go-to snack in my family when I was growing up: it was cheap, it was easy to make in quantity, it was filling.

There was always enough.

Small Moment: A Glittering Evening

In a few hours, my husband and the other musicians of the Central Ohio Symphony will take the stage for the March concert, which is always held on a Sunday afternoon. Two guest artists, violinist Simón Gollo and violist Randolph Kelly, will play the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola, and orchestra. Right now, Simón, who stayed with us for the weekend, is upstairs warming up before he and Warren head to the concert venue. I'll follow in a few hours.

For the last two days, Simón  and Randolph sat in our percussion room, emptied of its timpani, and played together, working out the rhythms and pairings that two virtuoso performers need to share to put on a stellar performance. So all weekend I have had the supreme pleasure of listening to world-class musicians work together, collaborate together, compare techniques and approaches on this measure or that passage, laugh together, and fill the rooms of this house with exquisite sounds.

Last night Warren and I hosted Simón , Randolph, and Randolph's wife Barbara in our home for a small, informal dinner. (Dinner followed a two-hour rehearsal in the percussion room.) The meal was simple and delicious, there was homemade apple pie for dessert, and the five of us sat and laughed and talked and shared our lives for two hours. Randolph especially had many, many orchestra stories to tell, as he is ending four decades of a stellar orchestral career. Conductor and musician names were sprinkled liberally throughout, most of whom I had only the vaguest idea of the person. Some of his stories centered around his relationship with "André," and he was well into several emotional stories about his last conversations with "André" before I realized "André" was André Previn.

Even I know who André Previn was. Those are the kind of stories shared last night.

 Our talk ranged far and wide, from instruments to music to childhood memories to tomatoes to, yes, end of life.

It was a glittering evening of good talk and good laughter and good fellowship.

And good pie. There is always good pie at the heart of it all in this house.

Crossroads

Photo by Mike Enerio on Unsplash

I am at a crossroads.

I have had some weeks that have been more challenging emotionally than usual, both in good ways and in harder ways. My article at Medium on my recognizing I'm dying? Wow! Last week, one of the editors emailed and asked if he had permission to feature it. Seriously? Okay, now I've gone from getting a base hit in my first time at bat (when it got curated) to getting a triple (to being featured). I just signed off Thursday on the final edits and formatting. So that was a good, no, GREAT thing.

Then my "replacement" column for the Myeloma Beacon ran this week; I found out when Reader Comment emails popped up in my Inbox. The column was deliberately safe and non-threatening, likening the persistent physical weight of my chronic cancer to the chains Marley's ghost drags with him. And damn if a well-meaning fellow columnist didn't comment sincerely and warmly about whether there might not be some other reasons I was feeling the way I felt, have I investigated those possibilities, we're all aging and that makes for different bodies, and remember to savor each day.

Talk about mixed feelings. On the one hand, I appreciated her concern. On the other hand, I emailed my editor that those well-meaning and totally-missed-the-mark comments were exactly why I wrote the column (the rejected one). As to any option of answering that comment online as the author, the publisher, who would not run my column to begin with, curates the comments and would probably not be comfortable with even a benign comment such as "it's not something else."

OTOH, OTOH indeed.

 I have been stewing on the whole rejection/acceptance thing. I struggle with whether I continue to write a column for the Beacon, not because of the rejection in and of itself, but because the rejection threw up a barrier which is making me reflect on what I am writing and in whose voice. I am second guessing myself as to the next one: if I write this and that in the course of the column, will it be rejected? If I don't write this and that, am I censoring myself in ways that I cannot accept?

Add to that stew of feelings the fact that the Beacon has been home to my column since January, 2013. More important, its community of readers have been a support group for me in lieu of a live support group (we have one in the greater Columbus area; I attended it twice very unsuccessfully). Most important, my editor Maike (who is married to Boris, the publisher) is a close, personal friend in addition to being my editor, and both she and Boris have been guests in our home. I don't want to jeopardize that friendship; I don't think I would if I stepped away from my column, but there would likely be some fallout on all fronts.

I have been turning this over in my head much of the day (it is now mid-afternoon); Warren and I discussed it at lunch. I am tired; other matters call.

Hanging out at the crossroads, wondering which way to go.

100 Words

Good friend Tani read my Medium article and suggested I write a memoir. "You've got wonderful insights."

More than once I have thought about writing a memoir. Flax Into Gold would play the tale of Rumpelstiltskin against my growing up on Flax Street. Spinning straw into gold? A magic trick. But turning my hardest experiences into gold? There's a winner. It would be witty and moving and insightful...

I've never written it for lots of reasons ranging from my subconscious refusal to honor my writing time to my belief that, frankly, I'm not gold. Brass maybe: less valuable, still durable.

Observations About January Money

So here I am, on the last day of January, a month that for many of us felt like it would never end. But here we are and I can finally flip the calendar over come the morning.

As I type these words, two (yes, two!—count 'em!—two!) plumbers are deconstructing tearing out part of a bathroom wall to reach otherwise inaccessible water lines to the shower. The shower has been dripping since sometime in December. We have been frugally capturing the drip water and watering the household plants with it; they have never looked so lush. But the time had come to take on the drip professionally and about twenty minutes into the first plumber's foray, the problem suddenly became much larger and much more labor intensive. Plumber #2 showed up with #1 after the first went for more supplies and lunch.

Their work and some other events of this month have caused me long periods of thinking about sustainable household income. A sustainable household income is one in which you have enough to pay certain items deemed necessities (housing, food, transportation, healthcare, utilities, among others) and, then, in the acid test, could put your hands on $400.00 for an unexpected bill without having to borrow it, put it on a credit card, or skip paying a necessity to pay it.

We are a sustainable household here. Or, rather, we are two sustainable households as we keep separate accounts and there are some expenses that one or the other of us is solely responsible for (major household repairs: Warren because it is his house; my medical bills: me because it is my health). Warren is on more solid financial footing than I am, but, again, we are both sustainable. Still, listening to the plumbers work away, I wince. I just paid my first large medical bill of 2020 (and I have truly excellent insurance, so I am grateful it was only what it was) and I am feeling the need to watch my pennies closely while I rebuild my savings account.

That being said, I am particularly pleased that we are finishing January with decent expenditures on the food/household fronts. In previous posts, I had not yet set a monthly goal for that kind of spending. For the last few years, we had been shooting for $175.00 a month for food and common household items (dish soap, laundry detergent, and the like). The Department of Agriculture has predicted that food-at-home costs will rise only slightly in 2020 (an average of 1%), so tweaking my goal number would be not due to inflation in the outside world but internal inflation (as in "why exactly did you buy that?").

That being said, I'm moving the dial slightly upward for 2020 to $180.00. which is almost halfway between last year's goal of $175/month and our 2019 average of $186/month.

So what did we spend this month? $156.88 in food and $21.44 in household items, for a total of $178.02. And yes, I took that amount into consideration in setting the new monthly goal.

There are a couple items in that $156.88 to which I want to call particular attention. One is that

So many apples in the freezer that I just shoveled them anywhere they would go

we spent $28.99 on apples, all of which I peeled and either froze sliced to make pies with or made into applesauce (much of which went into the freezer). Why so many apples? Because they were there. Because I had the chance to buy several huge loads at bargain prices (lots of culls). Because the Symphony may participate in Pi Day (Warren and I thought about National Pie Day this month, but we just could not pull it off). Because...well, just because.

The other purchase I made note of in my monthly sheets was two bottles (48 fluid ounces) of canola oil marked down to—wait for —75 cents each. Unopened, not leaking, but put on the Kroger bargain shelf for some inexplicable reason. I was not going to leave those bottles behind.

Our eating out costs in January are solely related to necessary travel: the trip to Mayo in early January and Warren traveling to NYC for the Midwinter Managers Meeting by the League of American Orchestras. When I analyzed our eating out costs for 2019 and noted how much was due to conferences and training, Kim at Out My Window commented that I was being too hard on myself. Thank you, Kim! For 2020, I am not going to track food costs related to Mayo or conferences (for the record, I did note the January Mayo costs: $112.28 for 6 days). Those trips are unavoidable and we both work to keep our food costs as low as possible (we always start to Mayo with a packed lunch; Warren boarded the train to NYC with the same). So going forward, I am not tracking those. I will track our local eating out, from coffee dates to "too tired to cook" to "let's treat ourselves."

Those costs in January? Zero. And since I already have supper thawing out, I know we won't be adding to that princely sum.

Heck, at that rate, my anemic account will be flush in no time.

100 Words

A recent submission to the Myeloma Beacon got rejected: too dark and blunt. I really believed in it, so I self-published it on Medium. It got curated, which means the folks at Medium liked it.

For a first-timer, that is like a rookie getting a hit on the first at-bat in the majors.

I write about the inevitable choices I will have to make. At 15+ years of myeloma, I am wearing down. 

And I write about what an amazing world it is.

I am stable. I am not stopping treatment. But I am looking ahead.

Here's the link: https://medium.com/@aprilnelson56/the-exit-door-up-ahead-aab21150ae7a

Some 2020 Thoughts

Everyone—everyone—is writing about the new year, their ideas about what the year may hold, some goals they hope to attain. Letters from friends reflect the same: what will 2020 bring?

Writer Katrina Kenison is standing on "pause, choose." Ben Hewitt, whose writing I greatly admire, just posted his first 2020 words at Lazy Mill Hill Farm, reflecting on being too busy to take notice and write, then promising himself to "pay attention," if just for the moment. My child-in-law Alise has set the intention to step free of "that old' gifted child' trap of perfectionism," being okay with not being immediately good at something, and hoping that her 35th year (she's a January 2 baby) she can give herself "some grace to continue to learn and grow."

The new calendar year is not yet three weeks old and I find myself wondering about 2020 myself. I feel I have only half-baked thoughts at best, but here are some of them.

HEALTH
The myeloma, progressive and incurable, continues to be surprisingly stable. My longevity (15+ years), flatline labs (no gains, no losses), and other medical markers, including no bone involvement, make my oncologists shake their heads. I am truly an outlier. Nevertheless, my overall quality of life, including declining energy and dragging around this disease's growing weight (figuratively speaking; think Marley's ghost), continues to deteriorate. I've had to step back from commitments at work and in the community, and from coffee dates with dear friends. I've met with my supervisor about changing projects I am too ill to undertake to the same degree I had intended. It has been several months of coming to accept that my body is wearing out.

That being said, I go on. "Persist," my longtime oncologist Tim told me Tuesday, as we discussed this. And I will, until it is no longer beneficial to persist. Part of my persistence in 2020 will take the form of being even more mindful of my daily life activities, especially diet and movement.

WRITING
In the last months of 2019, my writing trailed off. I only have a few posts on this site (and some of those just about the mundane topic of money); my last Myeloma Beacon column was in September. Perhaps, like Ben Hewitt, I have been too busy to take notice and need to pay more attention.

Something I will try in 2020 is a once-a-month 100 word post on this blog. Over my most recent trip to Mayo (just last week), I read the excellent Shapes of Native Nonfiction, a series of contemporary essays. One of the writers (and I did not note this closely enough) spoke about a series of 100 word essays she and other Native writers had published and the discipline it takes to write in only those few words. I was intrigued. Cait Flanders writes several 100 word posts within a larger post, which is one approach, but I am more interested in the spareness of just 100 words.

I am looking for ways to write more, be it this blog, poetry, or other forms. I just got my first poetry rejection of 2020 (okay, listen, one of those poems was really superb) and am aiming for 100 rejections this year. They don't have to all be in poetry.  As I think about it, I have TWO rejections for 2020 as in a first-time-ever move, my editor and publisher at the Myeloma Beacon rejected probably some of my best writing ever for being dark and too blunt. Only 98 to go.

ESSENTIALS
I continue to work at cutting out the noise (literally and figuratively) of daily life. My phone is often on silent; I try not to automatically turn to the electronic siren of Facebook and email and Google. I find I am still breaking that twitch, sometimes hourly, sometimes daily.

I still tend towards piles building up before I sit down and tame them, but I am getting better at reining the flow in before having to tame it.

Concentrating on writing more (see above) should help. (I usually write with pen and paper before turning anything with a keyboard on.) And although it is only January 18, I am increasingly thinking of this year's garden. I want to join Thoreau in fishing in that stream of time.

MONEY
I'll write about money issues in a separate post. As I looked back on 2019 spending on food, I made some observations and I am still turning those over. Stay tuned.

Although my earnings have increased in 2020, the demands on my money have become much tighter. I'll write about that too in the weeks to come.

Warren and I have been doing some retirement planning, realizing that it will be him alone in retirement as even with persisting, I likely do not have that many years left. Our mutual goal is to make sure he is in a good position after I am no longer alive and part of this household.

More to come.

TRAVEL
We (Warren and I) don't know what this year holds in terms of travel, conferences, and such. As I noted in my last post, we did treat ourselves to a slightly longer excursion to Mayo last week. Instead of blasting up and back, we meandered up and dallied back, spending two nights in Chicago (with the additional bonus of Warren being able to attend a board meeting of KV265 in person instead of over the phone). There are grandchildren in the Pacific Northwest, and dear friends in Maine, one place in this country I would very much like to see again. The League conference is in Minneapolis this June and I string together wild plans to travel to PDX (solo), meet up with Warren in Minneapolis, and then drive home via Mayo (my next appointment will be that time). I don't know if I am able to fly solo that far (see HEALTH, above) or able to afford that side trip (see MONEY, above). But it's fun to think about.

ALL ELSE
In the aforementioned rejected column, which may see light in some other site, I noted the amazing freedom in saying out loud that I can feel my body (and life) starting to wind down. It is as if the emotional and psychological equivalent of the 4th wall in the performing arts came down with that acknowledgment. The world has become far more immediate, far more real. Amazingly, it has stayed that way since that moment.

And that is something I can carry into 2020.