monday morning

Regis is very entertaining. He woke me in the middle of the noise making a thunderous honking noise, then said, "Try...again", in a loud, robotic voice. He doesn't remember the dream.

I only have dreams occasionally and usually don't remember them since they take the form of gray, amorphous blobs that chase me. Anxiety dreams. Regis dreams intricate, Stephen King-like plots that include kindergarten classmates with complete names. I don't remember kindergarten classmates in my conscious moments.

I did enough things yesterday to cross them off a list and I made some written-down plans for the week. This is amazing progress since a few weeks ago, if I went to the store for three things, I forgot two of them.

I'm not into lists of things to do so much lately, having read the zen blog, but I figured a list would help me remember what I wanted to do and would make me feel a sense of productivity when I could cross things out. It did both of those things. I was quite proud of my clean desk-top.

We're meeting Miss Ella and Alex (and Bob) at Whiskey River for lunch today. We bought Ella and Alex the Minnesota bird guide and Regis wants to teach them how to use it. It's organized by bird color so I think they can manage it. They showed an interest in ours last time they were here, but being 4 and 7, you never know. It could have been a passing fancy.

I picked a book off the shelf this morning, Inheriting the Land: Contemporary Voices from the Midwest (Mark Vinz and Thom Tammaro, editors). I remember buying it about twenty years ago at a conference on Midwest writers in Marshall, organized by Bill Holm. It was my introduction to "local" writers and it was a dawning of consciousness. Real poets and writers lived in my midst.

This is amazing and pitiful considering I was an English major in college. One of my professors was a poet and I don't recall him ever mentioning his own writing, only dead British writers whose books I could not stomach. (Being an English major almost killed my love of reading.) I discovered his books in a bookstore later and was amazed that a man I had seen in the flesh had published books of poems.

The book's pages are well-worn, written on, flagged, and much loved. I'm glad I stumbled upon it.

This is my last week of radiation treatments and I have survived. My skin is a bit messed up but honestly, better than last week, I think. More musings on this as the week goes along. End of treatment. Dealing with life as it moves on from cancer. Letting go of the fears. Getting back to normal.