Bread and Bread

I woke up at four a.m. this morning to fly to Houston. In the shower, I realized that the metal ports in my temporary boob implants* would create all sorts of good times at LAX. “Fuck,” I said out loud to the soap. I know that airports are prepared for this kind of things. There are probably all sorts of ADA guidelines in place to minimize my humiliation. But fuck. As I packed my antidepressants and a bag of Lifesavers, I practiced explaining in the simplest way possible. “I’m between reconstructive surgeries for breast cancer, and the temporary implants I have have a metal component.” The good part was that it avoided using the word “breast” except in association with “cancer,” which pretty much de-sex-ifies the word. I could say “breast cancer” to a TSA person, but I would rather not say “breast implant.”** I didn’t like the double “have.” It slowed things down. I also thought that anything short of a body cavity search couldn’t be worse than an average day at t...

1. my best life may or may not contain cheese It’s the first day of spring. I love new beginnings—I love the metaphor of life regenerating after a long hard winter (we had SEVERAL DAYS OF RAIN this year in L.A.). On a less poetic front, I love an excuse to convince myself that starting now, I’m going to do it all right. I know better, and I know the danger of this myth, but the more I see it for what it is, the more pleasure I take in it. This spring, I’m telling myself that I’m going to sidle up to veganism. I’m going to keep eating fish, and I’m not going to check every baked good for eggs, but I’m going to try to eat less dairy. Estrogen-positive breast cancer and all that. Right now I’m at Poquito Mas, where I just ordered beans, hold the cheese. It took more willpower than you can imagine. According to Facebook, my primary news source, it’s also International Happiness Day . Despite my love of new beginnings—or maybe because of my susceptibility to self-improvement na...

At Thursday’s chemo session I grabbed a copy of TLC, a catalog of women’s cancer accessories published by the American Cancer Society. It includes lots of hats like this: Everything's coming up roses...um, I mean, generic flowers. And turbans like this: In this case, "royal" means "Come into my moldering mansion and watch silent films starring meeeee." And wigs like this: The "Amanda" wig. Don't hurt yourself on its pointy ends. Okay, so the American Cancer Society is a nonprofit that does a lot of good work, and I would rather they put their resources into finding a cure for cancer than finding a cure for the humiliation-on-top-of-humiliation that is cancer fashion. But the latter is at least highly treatable, and I’m here to do my part. Tip 1: Own it. In previous posts , I’ve discussed the cringe-y nature of anything that looks like it’s trying to pass. That’s why these models have got to go. I hate it when plus-s...

Even the most bad-ass dinosaurs have a dapper side. Once upon a time my friend Rhonda and I admitted to each other how much we hated that bumper sticker that says: Well-behaved women rarely make history. We sighed. Looks like we’ll never make history . She called me in tears the other night. She’d taken three hundred kids on a field trip to the Natural History Museum. She didn’t have as many chaperones as the museum’s guidelines stipulated, but the administration at her school assured her they never check those things. And her kids were well-behaved, mostly eighteen, and really wanted to see a T-rex or two. Nothing went wrong in any serious way, but some kids wandered too far off grounds for lunch, and others laughed at an elementary school kid who dropped his lunch box, and a girl with mental health issues strayed from the group. Next thing you know the cops have an APB out for the girl, and Rhonda’s school is getting kicked out of the museum. “I try to follow the rules...

Julie's zombie impression. "Too much," grunts R. AK and I celebrated our seventh anniversary (which is actually March 12) yesterday with a pilgrimage to the Flatiron Truck , where I decided that crispy fried broccoli doused with ponzu sauce and flecked with bright pink pickled onions totally still counts as broccoli. Chef Timothy and Heather were celebrating the truck’s second birthday, and their daughter Skylar, who wasn’t even eating solid food the last time I saw her, was running around and demonstrating her arsenal of animal noises. Oh, time. Year seven was hard for me, hard for AK, hard on our relationship, although not always in the ways or at the times you might think. That made food-truck dinner and a movie that much sweeter. Warm Bodies , the movie we saw, was the sweetest I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a perfect date movie, which usually means “action for him! romance for her!”—but I just mean it made you have genuine faith in love without being too...

[Interior, morning, La Quinta Inn in Fresno, California. Guests help themselves to cereal, coffee and make-your-own waffles. CHERYL walks in, blinking and squinty-eyed, having slept with her contacts in.] CLERK [calling from front desk]: Good morning ma'am! How are you? CHERYL [blinking, trying to figure out whether a container of cereal is Cocoa Pebbles or granola]: I'm okay, how are you? CLERK [running up to CHERYL, nearly touching her arm, speaking intimately]: We have some yogurt. CHERYL: Um, okay. CLERK: Some people like yogurt. We don't have it out, but I wanted to let you know it's available.  CHERYL: Thanks, I'm good, though. [Camera pans to a tray full of yogurt, which is TOTALLY ALREADY OUT.]

[Interior, day, La Quinta Inn in Fresno, California. A CLERK looks at the ID of a road-weary woman, CHERYL, as she checks in.] CLERK: So...you don't have hair no more, or you're just keeping it short under that hat? CHERYL: No, I'm going through chemo right now. CLERK: Oh, yeah, I had a feeling. I didn't want to say anything, though. I didn't want to ask and be rude. CHERYL: But you did ask. CLERK: Sorry, I shouldn't have been intrusive. CHERYL: It's okay, I could have lied if I wanted to. CLERK: I don't like liars.

If you like hookworm and Honey Boo Boo, you'll love this book. I only finished one book in the whole month of February. And when I say that to people, in my usual self-flagellating way, they’re like, “Yeah, but you have a lot going on.” By which they mean cancer. I think what I have going on is Words With Friends and an inability to go to sleep without watching bad TV on my laptop. Of course, these things are not unrelated. I’m helping my aunt build a website for her therapy practice, and in going through “other resources” links, I stumbled on a quiz that told me there was a good chance I was mildly depressed, but I should consult with a professional to be sure. Part of me was like, Fuck, another diagnosis? Another part of me was like, I’m only mildly depressed? Well, that’s pretty good. You could live your whole life like that. My belief that It Doesn’t Get Better—which is also a stubborn refusal to put all my eggs in the Future basket, when who knows if that basket even ...