Not Being Busy

Have you ever heard the expression, "You want to get something done, give it to a busy person"? My father used to say that. It pissed me off when he did because in it was the jab that he hadn't given the thing to me...I was not busy enough. Not that I wanted to do it, whatever it was. I just wanted him to think I could. I remember him describing a person he admired..."That boy can juggle more balls than anyone I know."  (Jab, jab, you can't juggle at all...) So once again I have revealed another unattractive scar left by the chip whittled off my shoulder by a hypercritical and occasionally mean father. He died in 1997, and oddly enough I frequently miss him.

The point of this is that I have never been more unproductive in my life. Now that I am not working I fill my day doing all of the things I used to do before and after work: laundry, grocery shopping, tidying, bills, making doctors' appointments, parenting, exercising, personal email, facebook stalking...I feel like a slug. I wonder if my father would cut me any slack when he considered how much time and energy chemo and physical therapy consumed. Probably not. He would notice that the 55 hours I used to spend working and commuting in a week were not entirely filled by those things, and he would ask why I was wasting away the little bit of life I had left. (Well, maybe he wouldn't have been that mean.)

So I have had two treatments of the new chemotherapy regime (Taxol and Herceptin). As promised, it is easier. No queasiness. I have a few other minor symptoms including a constantly runny (and by runny, I don't mean drippy, I mean marathon runny) nose, continued baldness and achy fingers that are losing strength and dexterity, serving as an excellent, additional excuse for less juggling.