I Hope I Keep Grinning....

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When events happen as they are promised and planned, I am a very happy person, which is probably why I'm sitting here at my laptop grinning ear from ear. Just like the Cheshire cat. (Hm...methinks that there is more similarities shared between the CC and me besides the grin....like whiskers and the belly....)

The infusion staff told me six months ago, "This one is the worst. It's so much easier the next go-around." Whaddya know? They were right. As I recall, on my first cycle of rituximab, the whole week immediately following was just a blur of fatigue, a strange metallic taste in my mouth, and the feeling that I was wearing a lead suit.

This time? Not so bad. As promised. Yes, I did sleep away the day of the infusion and mostly the day afterwards, but this morning awoke and tentatively stuck my toe out of bed. I stood up. I walked around. I went to the bathroom. I changed my clothes and brushed my teeth. I.......did all those things without breaking a sweat.

This is a very good thing! Yes, I still can detect the mouse fatigue that I experienced earlier, but it seems to be a bit more manageable this time. So far.

Grin inducing incident number TWO: Somewhere in the flurry of wedding stuff and vacation plans, John found time to hire someone to paint our house. Which really was needing to be painted, since we haven't repainted in sixteen years. SIXTEEN years. Oh, John has repainted the trim repeatedly etc etc., but to actually repaint everything? Not since the house was constructed. And actually, there's a reason that the buttery yellow paint on our house should remain relatively unfazed by time and weather: it had four coats of paint put on it initially. The compound used to seal the joints where one plank of siding met another was faulty in that the paint would bubble up over it's surface. So the compound was repeatedly dug out, reapplied, and then the house completely repainted so that the overall effect would be consistent. Seemed like the fourth compound worked like a charm...

So when our Mr. Painter Man showed up on time, equipment ready, in beautiful painting perfect weather and got right to work on the house as promised and planned, John and I both were happily grinning. He's nearly done and it looks beautiful.

I'm also grinning because I noticed that my toilets needed scrubbing.

This is not as crazy of a statement as it may appear. I've written before that one of the signs that a flare is approaching it's end is when I am able to look around the house and notice things like dust, or cobwebs, or clutter, or........gross toilets. I think the last time I commented on this phenomenon went something like this after I was recovering from pneumonia:

Call me weird, which of course I am, but it appears to me that my attitude towards the cleanliness of my house is inversely proportional to my overall feeling of well-being. Or to put it another way, the worse I feel, the better the house looks. And vice versa.

For example: Post-pneumonia Julia looking in bathroom - AAAAAAACCCCKKK! Where's the toilet brush?? And the bleach?? And the Windex?? And my extra-thick rubber gloves??

Pneumonia Julia looking in bathroom - Oh, good. We have a toilet. *cough* *hack* *wheeze*.

Like that. So I quickly swished out the toilets and, yes, grinned.

Ahhh. John is smoking a ham, we've got sweet potatoes in the oven, and friends are stopping by for dinner. It's all good.