I have a 7 o clock morning meeting; chemotherapy

Which makes you wonder why I am still up at 11:30. I think it is comedown from recent emotional rollercoasters. Now, normally I love roller coasters...these, not so much.
I think the stress over passing Spanish is the main thing. Ironically, when all was said and done, if I had taken it for a grade instead of being a weaselly little smurf, I would have gotten an A...but who knew? And actually, I find that quite offensive. It is just a sign of how bad our scholastic system is. Seriously. Half the term on preterite and imperfect and I have no smurfing clue when to use which or how to conjugate them. I just know how to study for tests.
Of course, the writers block I got before finally doing the review on Sayen's bizarre effort, Einstein in America; The Scientist's Conscience in the Age of Hitler and Hiroshima did not help. Typically I would have finished that 4 weeks ago, not tonight just an hour or so before the deadline. I am slipping.
And the 2 months of good times I shared with Jessica did not hurt. Oddly, though, some of the Jessica experiences are combining oddly with a random blog I was just perusing to bring an off the wall thought to my head. I know, I know, totally shocking. Whatever. Shut the smurf up before I smurf slap your smurfing little smurf all the smurfing way back to smurfing home, capiece?
Anyway, Jessica really likes Teriyaki jerky. Fair enough. It reminded me of the first (and last) time I had teriyaki.
The first time Mom got cancer they started chemotherapy treatments right away. Let me be the first to say chemo sucks. And I am going to go out on a limb here and say that a hundred years or so from now our use of chemo will be looked at in much the same way as we look at leechcraft...I mean, seriously, the best way you can come up with to heal someone is to poison them? There is a serious flaw there somewhere.
Anyway, the chemo laid her out like nobodies business. And we found out just how much people loved Mom and Dad. They were good people. People were bringing food and stuff, visiting all the time, stuff like that. And Mo and Janie brought the most food.
They brought one of those huge, huge black pebbled ...uhm...sauce pans? turkey roasters? whatever it was, it covered over half the stove. And it was full of teriyaki. It smelled very strongly. Mom could even smell it when they rolled her back in after one of the murder sessio...err, chemo treatments. (and to be fair, it DID go into remission for a while...three times I think, although my memory is hazy. To be honest, it was 10 - 15 years of pain and misery mixed in with brief periods of good health for her)
That teriyaki lasted us for a couple weeks. Dad of course loved it. He consumed it with gusto. I still don't know who gusto was...perhaps a street clown who smelled the teriyaki, I don't know. But that is who he ate it with because I wasn't touching that stuff.
Be that as it may, although I did not care for the teriyaki, I cared very much for what Mo and Janie did. And it still matters to me. Believe it or not, their kindness when Mom was sick is one reason I still think about Brian and Haley. I wonder how they are doing. I think of him laying there with those burns all over, losing his arms, legs, and eyes...and Haley still marrying him. I think of the way the community pulled together to build that house for them. I think of what I could do for them to help in the way Mo and Janie helped us when Mom was so ill.
And ultimately I know it may not be for me to help Brian and Haley but someone out there needs the help I can give. All jokes aside, I am very thankful for what everyone did all those years Mom was sick and hope that when opportunity offers I can be there for the people who need me.
http://www.yourtruehero.org/content/hero/view_hero.asp?17795
note: this next link shows a painful picture of Brian; I hesitated to include it, but ultimately his friendship with, of all people, Dennis Hart was the deciding factor: it is about half way down the page:
http://www.briomag.com/briomagazine/spiritualhealth/a0001542.html