An Ordinary/Extraordinary Tuesday

When you get older (As Someone Whom I Know Very Well Has Been Doing), you begin to cherish the ordinary. When I was younger, of course, I found the ordinary "boring" and raged, raged against the dying of the extraordinary. Endless days of going to school, doing homework, making my bed, eating repetitive meals--all of this seemed to Schoolboy Me a great imposition. I could not wait to get older when every day would be ... an adventure!

Sigh.

Today--so far (it's nearly noon)--has been blessedly ordinary. I got up (when I arose about 6:20, Joyce had already left for the health club ), emptied the dishwasher, plugged in my iPhone to charge, made the bed (yep: last one up does it!), showered, headed downstairs to post a Daily Doggerel and to update my journal (which I commenced in January 1997).

Then it was time to walk over to the Open Door Coffee Co., where I ate one of my homemade scones, drank coffee (great coffee there!), read the New York Times on my Kindle, checked email and Facebook, then read a dozen pages of Joyce's mss. about John Brown (oh, it's good!), made a few notes for her. I read 25 more pp of My Name Is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout's new novel that's getting great reviews (I really like it, so far, too--I've read about 50 pp). I sat at my table (yes, my table!) and reviewed some of the poems I've memorized--my "morning set").

I walked home about 9:30, headed upstairs and chatted with Joyce about those pages I'd just read. Downstairs, I mixed and baked another batch of maple-pecan scones (Ohio maple syrup is the sweetener). (They looked/smelled really good when they came out a little before 11.)

today's batch

In my study I fussed with additional email and updating/downloading stuff for Quicken (a daily task).

And now it's about 11:05. As soon as I finish this, I'll post it, then work on the text of a speech I'm giving up at WRA in early April.

Then ... lunch with Joyce, another round of reading and editing and writing at Open Door, then off to the health club to punish myself on the exercise bike. Home for supper with Joyce. (We'll watch last night's Daily Show while we eat.) Maybe an errand afterwards. Some books in bed. Maybe some Netflix later ...

Sleep.

I used the word blessedly ordinary a little earlier, but, of course, I actually consider all of this absolutely wonderful. The quotidian, to me, is miraculous because the older I get, the more I realize this cannot go on indefinitely.

Yesterday, for example, I had my PSA blood test--every six weeks now because my PSA is rising again. As I type, in fact, I'm waiting for the email from my oncologist, the email that will tell me the result. I already know that my prostate cancer is active again and will likely move next into my bones.

Which is why, tomorrow, I go up to Seidman Cancer Center near Cleveland for a full bone scan (I've had several of these in the past few years--and I'll write more about this one later). Based on those results, I may be undergoing some medication in addition to my quarterly Lupron injections, which have kept the cancer under control for a couple of years but are now having a diminishing effect. There is no cure. Just things to retard the progress.

So I'll take a Tuesday like this one. I'll take a universe of them.