Another year gone by. I always say I will post more but am wrapped up with stuff.
This year Genevieve continues at college in year three as a senior. She is working on getting into grad school. I figure anyone should want her at their school. Here she is on the couch with Nancy, the very spry cat, who will be eighteen in April.
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| Like most young people Genevieve knows how to take "selfies." |
Genevieve still gets very high grades and does not get into trouble. School is a difficult place, beyond the work. Sometimes I feel bad that she is somewhere having difficulty, you know? She was home for Thanksgiving and we watched Sumo together those few days. She picked Ura this time. Though he did not come close to winning, he will likely get a promotion into the higher ranks.
I picked Kotonawaka. He started out very strong, but did accumulate losses.
Regina went with the new kid, who is very strong and shows skill, Atamifuji. He was in the running for the cup. But, Kirishima won again. There are also the other guys we root for, which is most every other wrestler. They all have personalities, but are not ostentatious about that.
Maybe we get snippy with Takekeisho. 😔
I like that Sumo is down-to-Earth -- well mostly. Sometimes the people get into, well, stuff. We featured Ichinojo a couple of posts ago. After he won things became difficult for him. Winning can hurt some people I guess. Now he does not even wrestle anymore. I hope [one] who still suffers can find a way.
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| People watch Sumo from the high-up seats. Many fans are women. |
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I did not think there would be more war this year than last. Wow. Wrong about that.
Regina lost her mother this year, so Gen's last grandparent has died. It is good she got to have Regina's parents as figures in her life. I liked Regina's mom and she liked me. I called her Mom. She would praise how attentive I was with the baby. She was well into her nineties. Genevieve has lots of relatives, all of them Regina's relatives. The only relative of mine she ever met is me.
I had two more operations during this summer. One had me in the hospital for a couple of days. Summer vacation, I called that. No pictures! (ha)
Regina's Mother died right before I went into the hospital and Regina had to stay home to be with me. I feel guilty about that, but I needed this operation and had already gone through a painful preop procedure.
Genevieve is uptight because I got my third kind of cancer, but we assure her that it is nothing in relative terms, because they've all been removeable. Not like I have needed chemo, or to use the survivor word.
The most recent is was the least dangerous kind I've had, albeit in my face. There was more cutting than I expected, but I understood the method described to minimize scars because it was how I put together the turf on my front lawn where the area was radiused in the same way. Though the surgery center was called mohs, I refrained from making Three Stooges jokes. No sense introducing fail sense.
I did fall when I was there, so when I was in the hospital for the other surgery, a couple months later, they made me wear an embarrassing bracelet saying "fall risk." I was going to point at it and complain but it is still Summer and how can I hurt a season?, but meh. Somehow I am worn out on the delivery side of old-man jokes. It was an average hospital. It felt humid.
I was troubled by the hospital's food. It is pretty crazy to have people try and cajole me into eating, especially on seven drugs. Some person called me from the food place, a dietician I assume, but I had no idea what was going on. I thought my sense of taste had gone wrong, but I did find some decent chicken broth under (four hour cooked, how are they whole?) noodles at some point. But the noodles kept getting in the way and on the spoon so I gave up halfway through because I found them offensive.
I refused to tell them I thought the food was bad.
They would be pretty insistent about me consuming nutrition drinks. I would drink half of one to get them off my back. I did not think much about not eating. Just the way it is, it seemed, nothing to get alarmed about. What am I doing but lying there doing nothing.
I mean if some folks want to, they have no problem doing npo for weeks on some guy. *Cough*
When they needed to put Regina's father into a nursing home, my advice was to make sure the food is OK. That's what I would tell anyone.
Two days after I got out of the hospital we all caught the 'Rona. So there was more fun. Right when I came out of that, after weeks of just being home sick after taking the drugs (which worked ok), was the New War. Kind of stressful, the kiting of things like this.
But we're OK here. Our lives go on. I do some things around here that are cool enough, like build non-wobbly pool stairs. I don't worry much about getting sick at all.
When I see some guy wailing up a clown show on TV about how he needs revenge for being stupid -- now that's what is scary. I've been around long enough to know that.
So anyhow have a good holiday and New Year. Don't sweat the big shit. It's living.
