Pantaloons, 2.0

Last weekend I went a-spending with my mother and bought a romper (you may recall).  Whether or not the romper was a useful purchase will out later in the summer, when it's warm enough to feasibly wear said romper out of doors.  Am I going to wear it every day or never?  These are my options.

ANYhoodle, that trip wasn't all potentially ridiculous purchases, because I also got a new pair of gym shorts, and I got them for $12.  I've been putting off buying gym shorts for almost a year because I didn't want to spend more than $20 and I didn't want to spend any time looking for shorts that were less than $20, so you see my bind.  But also, see my old gym shorts.

Embarassment, yes?  My t-shirt is long enough to cover those peep holes when I'm jogging, but I JUST REALIZED that when I'm down on the mat stretching, or whatever, that everyone can see how derelict I am.  So, rest in peace, old gym shorts that I accidentally stole from Chelsea (sorry, Chels).

Also being retired this year but with way more sorrow are my Trees of Mystery sweatpants. 

A roommate in Austria gave them to me in 2001, and she'd already had them for five years or so AND she'd bought them second-hand, so clearly they were hella old.  They held up against all odds until late last year when the waistband finally gave out.

There was nothing I could do.  I tried sewing them and pinning them, but the elastic was so brittle that it tore every time.  It was, I imagine, like putting sutures in old people.  Fond farewell, pants.  You have been up to many shenanigans with me.

Spring has sprung

I have been doing a wee bit of gardening.

All both of my plants have gone up a size.

Speaking of gardening, since we don't have any grass anymore because of the moat fiasco, our troll has been grooming the dirt.

We have the loveliest dirt lawn.   Look how level it is.  I can't wait to have a picnic on it.

As per request...

Here is a photo of my sister's legs, looking like they belong to two different people.

You're welcome, boo.

Target and treats

So Friday morning we're leaving school to hit the ferry to come to the mainland to throw my sister a wedding shower to stock up her new kitchen (to catch the fly, etc.) and my mom texts me all, Do you want to drive down to the States to check out Target?  Ha ha, what?  Of course.  So we booked it down over the border in mom's hot car with the top down so that I had to tie my hair back like Audrey Hepburn-slash-a refugee.

Target has just put out the Liberty of London line, which is sort of a big deal in the world of Cheap Cute Clothes, but none of the dresses were kind to my body and I had not yet read Lauren's post about how the juniors stuff is also adorable.  Alas.  Fortunately, Target also had a reasonable supply of rompers.  I've been pretty fatalistic about the likelihood of me ending up in a romper (a whole outfit in one piece! pockets! romping!) so buying this comfy beast wasn't something over which I had a terrible amount of control.

Also featured in that picture is the leftovers from our stop at Paso Del Norte.  All you Murricans have no idea how good you have it.  Our best Mexican food is literally Taco Bell (our second-best is Taco Time, which is incidentally also our worst).  Mom refused to be in any pictures with me because she said her hair was dowdy, so I ate both our meals while she was taking the picture.  HAAAAA, no.  You know I kid.  I didn't even eat all of my own meal, because look at those portions!

H'ANYvays, after downing said leftovers the next day, me and boo baked up a storm for the shower, where 'baked' translates loosely to 'got into the chocolate cupboard' and 'took unflattering photos of ourselves.'

Baking is hard, y'all, because sometimes recipes have directions like 'blend for ten minutes' and 'chill for an hour up to a week' and we are not good at pre-reading, and then sometimes cookies are like, Guys?  I'm making a break for it, and that makes the house smell like burning.

We ended up with a giant mess and a slew of treats

and eventually what passed for a party feast.

And then we had a good lie-down to rest up for the ensuing hijinks.

All of the pictures from the party are grainy because my camera takes shoddy indoor nighttime photos and my sister is allergic to the flash, but I might throw them up on facebook for sharing purposes.  Pretend you can see it, though.  All the aunties and the flowers and the tea towels and my grandpa banished to the family room and forced to watch tv on headphones.

Merry greens, folks.

Sam Skellington would like to wish you the jauntiest of St Paddy's Days.

You can't tell, but he is winking at you drunkenly.

Teeny updatey

Amigolings, I am starting to taste foodstuffs again and it. is. amazing.  Everything is still a little bit off (and cheese is still gross) but food is discernable as food and I want to eat it all.

Other than that, school is as school does, and the weather is great out here.

Three Things I Learned from Invictus

1.  Morgan Freeman is never not adorable.

2.  Sports will make people not be racist.  If you win.

3.  Rugby is down near cricket on the sense-making scale.

Hope on the horizon (in a box in the pantry)

Ok so tonight I was eating some frozen blueberries and they were tasting like crunchy balls of lard because I can't taste anything sweet (or salty, or spicy, but I can feel spicy so I put tobasco sauce on everything now) and I was ensaddened because this is crappy, you guys.  I ate bland, nasty food for a month and then I had three glorious days of waffles and pizza and cookies and now I'm back to the bland and it's better because I'm not so damned hungry all the time, but it's worse because at least then things tasted like things.

So I'm on the google tonight all, Dear google, please tell me this will go away. And most of the google is like, It'll take a few months to a year, but you'll be fine, but then that sneaky nasty part of the google that is always telling us that our symptoms are fatal is like, This could be permanent so get used to sucking at food.

I didn't mean to be so bleak, bloggonets, because the upshot of this story is actually kind of awesome. So one helpful googlebit was all, If you gargle with baking soda it will speed up the healing process! And I was all, Yerk, that will be gross but I am desperate so I will try. And guys, it was so not gross because (you may recall) I CAN'T TASTE ANYTHING!!!
So that was kind of fun. I feel like this is my new superpower, like I could drink a bottle of sriricha sauce and suffer no harm. I am going to gargle with baking soda until it starts being nasty, because when baking soda tastes nasty then food tastes like food.

A mouthful of change

Ok, I told my book blog I'd stop talking about my cancer now, but if you are here it's because you WANT to hear about my cancer.  Or about my weekend in Uclulet, which basically consisted of a hot tub and a puppy and he ate a bouncy ball and then I snuggled him.  See facebook for photographic evidence of snuggling.

I've been done my radiation and saltless hell for almost two weeks, and those first few days were a glorious frenzy of eating.  I. ate. everything.  I thought I'd make myself sick, but I felt amazing and everything tasted like babies' faces and rainbows.  But somewhere along the way the radioactive iodine seeped into my salivary glands and now everything tastes like dirty pennies.  Dirty pennies with an undertone of cereal, dirty pennies with an undertone of brownies.  Water tastes like straight-up dirty pennies so I'm kind of dehydrated all the time.

And I haven't seen a doctor in what feels like ages but is actually maybe twelve days, so I haven't been able to ask but extensive interwebble research says this is normal, and that it should go away.  Eventually.  If it doesn't, so help me I will stab something, because I baked cookies today and I can't even tell if they taste good.

In other, better news, I was scanned yesterday for I dont even know what, something cancery, and the nuke med tech said it looked clean.  My radiation-doctor is super old, and I'm not even sure he understands telephones so we might be waiting on a call from him for a while, plus I have bloodwork scheduled for well into May, so there might not be a doctory stamp of non-cancerness for some time.  I'm just going to assume that everything's fine now, and move on to Operation Side-Effects (see, for example, mouth-pennies).