Carmel

Fred and I would like to live in Carmel, at least as a vacation home, with our real home to be in Palo Alto, when we grow up.

We'd like a lovely cottage on the ocean with large windows facing the beach so we can watch the sun set. Those are about 2 million, so it might take a while. (The house in Palo Alto would be about 2 million as well, so it might take a great while! And of course you need a house to live in before you can buy a vacation home.)

We walked quickly down a side street as the sun quietly decided to dip into the ocean. The golden hour making the trees look a little more beautiful. "It wasn't supposed to set yet" I told Fred, even though he had predicted that it would set at exactly this second and I had wanted to stop at the small grocery store to buy some ginger ale to calm my stomach from my overdose of dark chocolate from the candy store. "It isn't set yet, you aren't supposed to look directly into the sun as it sets, you are supposed to wait until it goes down and the look at the colors of the sky it leaves behind" he said trying to console me. I wasn't in the mood to be consoled "Yes you are supposed to look directly at the sun until it sets, seeing it the whole time" I said.

We made it while there was a beautiful tall stretch of bright orange meeting the green blue of the ocean and a periwinkle blue sky overhead. As we watched the orange turn to yellow and the sky darken shade by shade, we sat on a halved wooden log and discussed lots of everything and nothing, important in its forgetableness.

Lovely weekend in Carmel, and back in time for the last day of the weekend (Sunday, we left on Thursday evening) so we can feel rested before the week begins.

I decided to have a biopsy of the suspicious area, either a fine needle biopsy (comfortable procedure) or a core needle biopsy (more painful and traumatizing, but at least I know what to expect and the lump is right next to the skin, so not a lot of really deep digging into the flesh of the breast) and will schedule in Monday, so that I can wait for the whole mastectomy crazy until the turn of the new year so I can save on the yearly minimum requirement of the insurance company. Otherwise the whole procedure will begin this year and end next year and I will have to pay a thousand or two for each year instead of just the one year.

Tears

I found out that the surgeon requested to me by a friend is "out of network".

Do you know what that means??

It means that, for example if the entire bill for all of the services (surgery, reconstruction) came to 10,000 dollars but the insurance company decided they would pay 5,000 for it (if you've ever looked at an insurance company's explanation of benefits that is not at all unlikely), I would have to pay the 20% of the covered part to the insurance company as well as the 5,000 dollar bill that would remain as unpaid by the insurance company and belong to me as the patient.

Can you believe that? And there is no way I would know how much that bill would be until the services were complete, so if something unexpected came up, my portion of the bill would rise and rise with no cap.

So, I guess surgeons like that are only for rich people, which I am not.

So, I continue my search for a surgeon and hope for things to move along quickly, as I am putting off the "starting to try to have kids time" until I now recover from the surgery.

Cancer Sucks

I got that embroidered in a nice script by a friend of my mom on a fitted pink v-neck t-shirt last week. It looks lovely and is probably surprising when it is read.
But it is so SO true!
I am not sure how much I've written about cancer in my blog. I do try not to think about it unless it is a current concern, which it has not been that much in the last 5 years. But it is becoming so now, so I am going to write.
I got cancer in 2004. I was about to turn 29, had a small lump, and an excisional biopsy (meaning they cut open and remove the lump as opposed to a core needle biopsy, where they put in a huge gigantic needle and extract an amount of tissue, or a fine needle biopsy, where they put in a smaller more comfortable needle and take a little amount of tissue) because the lump was hard to discern in an ultrasound, and the other two kinds of biopsies are performed with and guided by an ultrasound. After the removal of the lump, and the discovery that it was indeed cancer, the surgeon had to do another surgery to take a larger area and make sure it had negative margins (no cancer in it), and also to check the lymph nodes in my armpit area to see that the cancer had not spread. They thought there was no spread.
I had had a second opinion clinic of doctors before the surgery to determine whether I should get a lumpectomy (which just removes the lump and not the breast) or a mastectomy (which removes the whole breast). My take after that clinic was that a lumpectomy was good enough and with radiation, my likelyhood of getting cancer again was the same as any other woman.
Turns out that that is not true. The fatality rate might be the same but the recurrence rate is not the same at all.
I have 1% more likelyhood every year after I had breast cancer to get a recurrence. It caps off at about 25-35 percent. WOW. If I get a double mastectomy, my likelyhood of recurrence is less than 1%.
I watched "Why I wore Lipstick to my Mastectomy", wherein a 27 year old woman gets breast cancer and is advised by multiple doctors, some to get a lumpectomy and to keep what she can and others to have a mastectomy. One of the doctors in the movie said "Why hit it with a feather when you can hit it with a hammer." She decided to get the mastectomy, has two kids now and is doing fine.
I met a person in my bible study who got cancer at 28 and decided on a double mastectomy and reconstruction, she is happy with that decision and is doing well, about to have her second child.
I have been thinking about these things in the last few weeks and talking to people and doing a lot of reading on reconstruction techniques. After feeling like I was getting a punch in my stomach looking at online pictures of post mastectomy cancer survivors without reconstruction yet (two huge scars across a shrunken area which should have had breasts) and studying a lot of reconstructed breasts, I can say that I have thought a lot about it.
The last 5 years of my life have been yearly mammograms, (which show nothing because the breast tissue in young women is very dense), leading to an ultra-sound, (which always shows some things that are usually nothing and treated as such unless you have already had cancer and then they become maybe somethings ) and then MRI's (which show lots of stuff in everyone) which leads to a recommendation to have a nother MRI in 6 months to remind themselves of what they saw last time and whether anything has changed, and then to a biopsy to check out the suspicious area that they are just not sure about. All of which time I have lived in three different states and had to run my records to every new doctor I go to.
I was so hoping that when that "magic" 5 year mark happened, that my cancer doctor would do a quick check of me and say, all is well, move on and have kids and don't worry anymore.
Last June was that check up and none of that was said. My doctor felt something and requested that I get a mammogram and an ultra-sound. (Where had I heard that before????) After 2 1/2 weeks of agony and waiting I got the tests and the radiologist said that I am fine and should just come back in 6 months or 1 year (Where had I heard that before???) to make sure that nothing had changed.
This was when I realized that it is not just the 5 years after cancer. It is FOREVER. One test after another, one suspicious lump and feeling after another for the rest of my life. There is no "magic" time when worrying ends.
I also still feel that little lump, right in the same area as my previous lump, showing calcifications in the mammogram, that makes me worry.
I then decided to try another doctor, who gave me the statistics on recurrence mentioned above and to seriously think about double mastectomy with reconstruction. A little pain in the present, when I have no kids, or a job and can handle healing, versus a lifetime of suspicious crazyness in my breasts, who have already tried once to kill me.
I think I have thought about it! (It bugged me yesterday when the surgeon I consulted with talked very condescendingly about whether I had thought about it or not.)
I am going to try a consult with another surgeon, hopefully I can get to her this week, as well as see a plastic surgeon. I want it done and over!

Time Change

So, so tired, but if I am going to keep to my goal of writing every day, I can't skip today just because I'm tired.

Got home from Tennessee and Ohio just yesterday. Lovely, lovely trip. Saw my family, went to Target to take family pictures, (did you know Target did that, I didn't, very reasonable when I printed a coupon from online), enjoyed the international contest in Nashville, placed 12th, very respectable and 3 spots higher than last time, when we were 15th, went to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Went to see a surgeon regarding my lump today. Very interesting. Everyone (the surgeon) is asking me whether or not I've thought enough about my decision about having a double mastectomy and reconstruction, because of course it can't be undone. duh.

What means thought enough about it? I've thought about it for about 3 weeks, how long do you need?

Thinking about getting the breast cancer gene test as well, I guess the insurance companies expect to pay for more, like ovary removal after pregnancy and more extensive surveillance if the gene is present, haven't decided though.

Must go to sleep!

Vegetables

I am beginning to enjoy vegetables.
One of the three things I am charting daily as an activity from the Mindless Reading book in an attempt to make a habit is whether or not I have eaten 5 fruits/vegetables a day.
It is a little more challenging than you might think.
If you eat cereal for breakfast, burger and fries for lunch and then pasta for dinner you maybe have 1 serving of fruits and vegetables in that whole meal.
Notice the amount of vegetables on a plate of food from a restaurant. If it is not a form of potato or an iceburg lettuce salad with one slice of tomato and cucumber there may be no other vegetables.
I have been making weekly journeys to a store here called The Milk Pail, which has very reasonably priced fruits and vegetables, so I don't feel bad buying them. Whenever I step into Whole Foods, I can't convince myself to purchase much because it is so expensive.
A few experiments have been:
Grilling vegetables on our grill pan and having them with a homemade yogurt sauce. I put some greek yogurt with some dried sage, basil, parsley, celery salt, grated garlic and either parmesan cheese or small chunks of whatever cheddar or gouda I have in the fridge. It makes a nice flavorful sauce that has very little fat. (Have you seen how much fat is in Ranch dressing, or how many hard to pronounce things are in Fat Free Ranch dressing?)
I grill red peppers, zucchini, mushroom caps, yellow squash and eggplant, whatever I have on hand. The zucchini and red peppers are the best.
Stir Frying vegetables either green beans or broccoli or green leafy stuff. With a little olive oil and salt and pepper.
Spaghetti Sauce, I always start with a jar of sauce to make sure there are the seasonings I am used to (my favorite right now is the Arribiata sauce from Trader Joes, it is a little spicy) but before putting the jar in, I chop really small, zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, onions and stir fry them with a tiny bit of olive oil and italian seasoning. I use not too many noodles or whole wheat noodles.
Apples If I am bored of eating plain apples, I peel and chop an apple and put it in a bowl with a teaspoon of sugar and some cinnamon and nutmeg and then microwave it for a minute or two, it makes a quick tasty inside of an apple pie flavor.
Nectarines are really good cut up in a bowl of steel cut oatmeal. I use the 8 minute kind from Trader Joes, it has a nice nutty flavor and texture. They make it 8 minutes by grinding or chopping up the oats very small, which increases their surface area and makes them cook much faster, it is more the look of a cream of wheat cereal, but the taste of oatmeal.
Oven Baking Vegetables, sometimes I chop up lots of vegetables and then bake them in the oven mixing them first with a homemade dijon mustard vinegrette and salt and pepper. They are good cold with or without a little cooked pasta to make it seem like a pasta salad.
Salad is always good too of course!

Exercise #7 - Emptying a bucket

Write a piece in which a man or a woman empties a bucket.

In our bible study this morning, the leader mentioned that God keeps our tears in a jar, remembering our sorrows. I think mine is more of a bucket. Not that my sorrows are so extreme, compared to many other people, but I've certainly cried a lot of tears.
In the prayer request time, I was crying like a baby because I am so uncertain about what is going on with the lump in my breast that my oncologist found, but looked like nothing in the mammogram and ultra sound. I am trying out a new doctor to see if I can get something more conclusive and that will be tomorrow. I also got a suggestion from another young cancer survivor for another doctor and surgeon to try.
There is a verse somewhere that says something like, our sorrows and frustrations are for the building up of other christians. That we suffer for them, so that they may be encouraged in the encouragement that we have received in the Lord.
As I was thinking about a bucket and what it was for and thinking that even though these writing exercises seem to be getting simpler, they are actually getting more thought provoking and challenging, I thought of the Lord.
He has my bucket of tears, from when I woke up with a bad dream as a child and prayed for him to end my fears, to when I broke up with a boyfriend in high school, to when I was diagnosed with Cancer, to now as I think of having children, and hope hope hope that my cancer has not come back, all of my tears are there in that bucket.
All of my experiences both when I have come to seek God for help and when I have choosen not to and tried to figure out things on my own, or even actively turned away from Him because I would not like his decisions, all of the tears from my experiences are stored by him in this bucket.
He can empty the bucket on whomever he wants, watering a dry and thirsty and suffering heart, and that is okay.

Exercise #6 - Hoopies

Write a piece about Hoopies or zazen, or one in which either hoopies or zazen appear. You must of course decide what you want hoopies or zazan to be.

I was teaching fourth grade in a small private Catholic school in Pittsburgh PA. Not the type of Catholic school you might picture in your mind, blond wealthy students in uniform plaid skirts or suit jackets, but a Catholic school in a poor neighborhood, at one time close to being shut down for lack of enrollment, that is now funded privately and allows parents to pay less than 1,000 a year for their children to attend, with siblings at a significant discount and additional scholarship funding available.
My students mostly bought their outfits at Wal-mart or Target, their navy or black pants or skirts and white, navy or black polo shirts and 95 percent of them were on the free/reduced lunch program.
I had a class of 23 wiggly, enthusiastic kids, who I had decided to give a 20 minute afternoon recess to at all costs. The result of my summer of research into behavior and classroom management and the advice of my kindergarten assistant from years before. My school did not give recess other than about 10 minutes attached onto the lunch period that my kids were mostly too full or too excited to take advantage of.
I sat outside on the picnic bench in the sun watching all of my efforts paying off. My kids loving their daily recess and my satisfaction with the sunshine and the few kids who liked to periodically sit next to me and have a chat.
Some of our daily equipment included hula hoops and some girls were flipping them over themselves and the jumping over them sort of like jump ropes. They called this doing hoopies. I was of course too tall to do a hoopie myself. They would count who could do the most the fastest and we had a reigning champion.

Exercise #5 - Something that goes too far

Write a piece in which someone or something goes too far.

We have gone through a lot of phases in our television viewing history. Our first phase was "Friends" every week with a fellow teacher after a spaghetti dinner. Then the "Crocodile Hunter" reruns, "CSI" every week, "Lost" with friends after a spaghetti dinner (I make good spaghetti and for some reason see it as a no work dinner and make it in great quantities for friends.), now reality shows, "So You Think you Can Dance", "Dancing with the Stars", "Project Runway", "America's Next Top Model". For a while we loved "Trading Spaces".
A friend and I would watch it together, or apart and with much phone discussion, every week. We liked most of the designers, but feared Hildy. She usually went a little too far. One episode she was making over a very large master bathroom and staple gunned fake flower heads to all of the walls, as a type of 3-d wall paper.
What we thought was the most crazy was a living room for a lesbian couple with two small children. Hildy painted the walls a maroon color and then slathered them with a gloppy glue and put pieces of hay all over the walls. When asked what would happen when the little toddlers would try to pull the hay off the wall and eat it, she said, "tell them not to", making me think that she had never had children, or spent any time with them at all.
We sat aghast as the room took on the look of a messy barn floor and repeated that, nope if we were ever on the show, we wouldn't want Hildy to be our designer.
She just went too far.

Exercise #4 - Painful Experience

I have been writing the exercises from a book "Writer's Course" as I become a more experienced writer. I am up to Exercise #4. It is:
Think of some of the incidents, events, and experiences in your past that were painful to you, either physically, emotionally or both. Pick one, write it up from beginning to end, be as truthful and accurate as you can not reporting how you felt. Just the incident, step by step, as it happened to you. Prose.

It was the beginning of 2004, the year in which I was to turn 29. My husband and I had moved from Orlando back to Columbus Ohio. He had just finished at a school there for animation and special effects as I had been teaching middle school math. It had been about a year since I had seen a doctor. Nothing was ever wrong with me so I went for long periods of time sometimes, not seeing a doctor. I decided I should have a physical as well as a woman's exam. I called to make an appointment with my husband's family doctor. Everything was routine. He did the pap smear and the breast exam. He said he felt a lump on my right breast and that he wanted me to come in a week after my period was to finish to see if it was still there as things change in the breast in relation to your period.
I drove back a few weeks later and he said he still felt it and gave me a script for a mammogram and an ultra-sound. At only 28 years old, mammograms usually don't show much except dense breast tissue, hence the ultra-sound.
I went to Riverside Hospital and during the ultra sound, a radiologist was called in because the person doing the ultra-sound was confused about something. He came in and had his fingers on the area with the lump and was pressing as his other hand held the paddle looking for the lump on the screen. Everything looked different shades of grey to me. He said "I am feeling it, but I can't see it" a couple times. That it all blended in together.
The surgeon said it was probably nothing, but it would be good to remove it so I wouldn't worry about whether or not it was growing or be anxious over it. I went in for an excisional biopsy. My husband told me that the surgeon had brought out a lump of tissues and showed it to him and my mother-in-law (a cancer nurse) in the waiting room and told them that this was it and it was most likely nothing, but they would have it checked out and that I was fine.
I went home that night with a huge ace bandage wrapped around my chest, but not much pain or discomfort. I slept that night sitting half way up. The next morning (Saturday) we got a call from the Surgeon who said that it was cancer and that I needed to come back in to the hospital.
Things began to move in fast forward for the next 3 weeks or so. I needed a CAT Scan, PET Scan, MRI, Ultra-Sound guided biopsies in three locations to make sure everything else suspicious looking was okay. I went to a second opinion clinic where an all new doctor, surgeon and radiologist looked at all of my charts and information and gave me their opinions.
It was an option for me to get either a mastectomy or a lumpectomy. I got the impression that they thought that the lumpectomy was good enough so I went with that.
I went in for real surgery this time. They inserted dye into the breast so that it would hopefully go to the sentinel lymph node (where they think cancer would go first if it decided to spread to another part of the body. They can remove only that node if they can find it and avoid removing the other ones.) and then put me under and removed the area around where the lump had been as well as took 11 lymph nodes under my right arm.
As soon as I recovered from the surgery, I was to begin chemotherapy. My mother-in-law talked to the doctor about getting me a port (thing they put inside you in the upper chest area that they can insert a needle into and put the chemotherapy as well as take your blood from so that they can avoid using the veins in the arm. After having the lymph nodes removed from the right side, that arm should not be stuck with needles anymore as the lymph fluid is now somewhat restrained.) which they put in, another small surgery. The chemo was to take place once a month for four months. It would happen near a Monday and then I would have 4 weeks to recover until the next injections. I got pretty sick and ended up coming in every day for the week following the injection to get fluids intraveinously. I could hold almost no food or drink down for the week after the chemo.
After the second or third round of chemo my hair began to fall out. I followed some advice and had my hair cut short, from shoulder length to what I call mom length. A short layered cut. A few weeks later I could pull a thatch of my hair right out with no effort and it was time for me to follow some more advice. I went to a friend and she buzzed my head.
A few weeks earlier I had gone to a wig store to get a color match for a wig. It was to be a bob with bangs, similar to my hair before cancer. It was 250 dollars, which was a little expensive for us. My husband's brother and sister-in-law bought the wig for me and I had a very realistic wig.
After the chemo ended, I began radiation. I needed to drive to the hospital every weekday for 6 weeks. It was a quick appointment, taking about 10 minutes start to finish and there was a small car parking area right next to the door, so I did not need to use the big parking lot at the hospital.
One day I left my keys in the unlocked car with the car still running as I went in for my appointment. Afterwards as I wondered where my keys were, I realized that they were still in the car. One time I had a long discussion with my husband about a trip I wanted to take with my chorus and the next day completely forgot and began to have the same conversation all over again until he reminded me that we had already talked about it. Someone told me it was called "Chemo brain" when you become absent minded that way.
From that time, I have had yearly or 6 monthly appointments with cancer doctors, a new one every time we move. I have had MRI's because the tissue is still dense and ultra-sounds are somewhat inconclusive as well as another biopsy.
It has been 5 years. I have finished taking tamoxifen (a drug for cancer patients who have had estrogen positive cancer that reduces your chances of getting it again, but causes birth defects) and have waited almost 3 months to try to begin getting pregnant.
The last time I visited my doctor, she felt a lump, not sure if it was scar tissue, since it is in the same place as the cancer was, and requested a mammogram and ultra-sound. These were done and they say, come back in 6 months and we'll check again. Since then I have also brought all of my films from my initial cancer diagnosis for them to compare the new films to and they say see us again in 1 year.
I am switching doctors to a new one, this Friday. Maybe he can tell me something slightly more conclusive than see me again in a year. If the first cancer couldn't be seen on the ultra-sound, why would this one have to show up? Should I have had a mastectomy?

Oktoberfest & San Francisco

We had a lovely day in San Francisco, Fred figured out that we walked a total of over 6 miles today! All in flip flops, which is not such a good idea, says the two blisters on my two feet.
We took the Caltrain to At&T park and then walked to Pier 48 for what I thought was going to be a fun and exciting Oktoberfest. Maybe because Oktoberfest in Milwaukee was supposed to be a big deal, even though I never went, but have heard about it in every state I have lived in since then, that it attracts big name singers and lots of fun stuff.
Not so fun here though, it was a large pier room with some vendors and lots of picnic tables full of people. There was also a largish band and a dance floor in front of it. We bought a sausage for 6 dollars, a side for 4 dollars and a large beer for 10 dollars. It was 30 dollars a ticket, but luckily we got them 2 for one for Sunday. That was about it, some people dressed up in German type clothes. We left after about 1 1/2 hours.
Then we walked up the Embarcadero, hoping to get some Salumi at Boccalone and alas, couldn't get the salumi cone as suggested on the Food Network episode we watched about a month ago because of a special fund raising dinner that was to be held in the hallways and had caused the stores to close early. So we bought a special kind of dry soda kumquat flavor for 3.25 which is a crazy price for some soda that didn't even taste any good at all.
Then we kept walking, stopped into Starbucks to try the Via test, which Fred and I both passed. If you have not been watching television commercials recently, it is Starbuck's new instant coffee. The taste test had two small paper cups of coffee, one instant and the other Starbuck's regular coffee. We could both tell the difference. Fred attributes it to all of the coffee samples he has at Trader Joes, since that is the only time he drinks coffee.
One interesting thing. Two people were walking in front of us and the lady gave a small Taco Bell bag to a man who was a little shaggy, but both Fred and I didn't think he was homeless. His socks were clean, and his backpack looked expensive. Anyways, she handed him the bag and I heard something behind me get thrown. He had thrown the bag next to the side of a building in rejection. Fred said that if he was given food from a stranger because she thought he was homeless he would throw it away too. But, I think I might have eaten it!

Zombieland & The Informant

Fred and I saw TWO movies in the last two days.
We saw Zombieland on Friday but Fred, knowing that it is not my type of movie, all of the blood and gore, promised that we could see The Informant the next day. They both had good ratings on SmashedTomatoes. That is the site we always go to to check out how a movie is rated. We were only once severely disappointed with it's rating system. It (as a drawing together of lots of ratings from both critics and regular movie goers) said Burn After Reading was so great and we hated it. I actually came as close to leaving mid movie as I ever have. I remember saying to Fred. "I'm bored, this is stupid, do you want to go now?" Right in the middle of the movie.
Zombieland was actually really good. Funny and touching, and appropriately gross, zombie people were eating each other of course. But, all in all, quite entertaining and a fun premise. What would you do if the only people left were zombies and everyone that was human now is not, except for a couple people. Hmmmmm.
The Informant on the other hand was not that entertaining at all. I asked Fred at the end "Wasn't this a comedy?" Because I think it was supposed to be, yet it was not. The music was the best part, bringing levity to a serious subject matter. It was mildly good, but on the long side and even the surprise ending was not all that interesting. I didn't really care anymore.
Tomorrow we plan on going to Oktoberfest in San Francisco, after church.
They were giving a special on Sunday, tickets were 2 for the price of one, which at 30 dollars, we couldn't resist. It was interesting though, how sneaky they were. When you went to purchase the tickets at the web site, they said, 30 dollars for one. So when we bought the one ticket for 30 dollars it printed out two tickets with values of 15 dollars each. So this is one time when two for one is not the same as 1/2 price. If you are the only person going, you are still stuck paying 30 dollars, for two 15 dollar tickets and either need to find a friend, or the deal is not for you.
It should be fun and anyways better than The Informant.

Exercise #3 - Haunted Toll Booth

Write a piece that takes place in one of the following locations:
A parked car
A phone booth
A closet
A walk-in refrigerator or freezer

It was Halloween night and I was 15 years old. A few friends from school wanted me to go with them to a haunted house. My family didn't really celebrate Halloween, but as practically an adult, I believed this was a decision I could make on my own.
"Going out with some friends" I yelled on my way out.
"Make sure you are home by your curfew" my mom called back from the kitchen. "And don't get into any trouble" she added, remembering what day it was.
My friend Molly at 16 had her parent's old light blue Civic and was already honking outside of our house. I jumped into the back seat and said hi to Barb and Molly's boyfriend Jack.
None of us were dressed in costumes. Barb's party had been the previous weekend and we had all worn costumes for that. We were just doing this for the thrill.
As we drove down the gravelly, grassy, twisted dirt drive towards the mansion I began to shiver already. Molly had done some online research and found that there was a haunted house near the river. She read that there was supposed to be a family of ghosts there who had died when a tree had gone through the roof in a storm and fallen onto the couch in the living room, where they were all sitting listening to the radio. Unfortunately, they were not found, not having many friend in the area, until a few weeks later. Their bodies were removed and buried and the house had remained empty for the next 70 years. People had thought about buying the land and the house, but when they visited to see it, they felt the air chill in the rooms, and heard unexplainable movements on the floor above them and in the basement. It had been empty for so many years now that it had fallen into much disrepair. Molly had read of kids visiting it during Halloween and refusing to talk of their experience afterwords, even to each other.
We stopped the car near the front door and all got out as Molly pocketed the keys.
The porch steps were damp and rotten but they held our weight. We pushed the door and it creaked open. The locks had been removed. The inside was about what you would expect, spider webby, dusty, damp, and falling apart. The furniture was between ornate and comfortable, black with mold. We heard some scampering as we entered and figured there were mice and saw evidence of mouse droppings on the floor. We tiptoed across the foyer and into the living room where the tree still lay near the crushed couch and a giant hole was ripped through the floor above, we could see outside,through the fallen boards of the roof, the full moon shining brightly and naked branches of autumn trees barely moving in the breeze.
None of us were talking, we were close together, looking at everything, a little spooked. We decided to split up, just like in scary movies, when the characters split up and the one cop is facing the bad guy in the dark of night and you wonder who will win and why the cop didn't wait for back up. It was really an unspoken decision, Molly and her boyfriend wandered towards the kitchen and Barb was looking closely at something in the dining room. I decided to go upstairs. I creaked up the stairs, barely touching the splintery banister. The first room I saw at the top looked like a child's room. There was a small bed in the corner and a dresser. The closet door was open a crack and had a little light coming out of it. I thought that was strange and decided to investigate. I opened the door and saw an old phone booth. Did they even have phone booths 90 years ago I wondered. It was an old booth, very dusty and the glass smudged and dirty. The phone was in the corner of the booth and dim light was shining from an old light bulb hanging from the small ceiling.
I saw a phone book (I don't think they had those 100 years ago either) and decided to look up my family's name. My parents and grand parents had all grown up in the area. It might help me to figure out what time this booth was from. I looked up my last name Morrison. My great grandfather's name, Morrison, Alvin, was there with a phone number. I felt compelled to try to call that number. I put a penny into the slot (It said 1 cent above the slot) and heard it clink down and dialed the number.
"Hello" a young man's voice said.
"Hi, I am Laura Morrison, who is this?" I asked.
"It's Alvin Morrison" he responded, "do I know you?"
I began to shake, my great grandfather had been dead for about 30 years at least. He spent his last years in a retirement community, my father had said.
"I think I am your great granddaughter" I said slowly.
"I don't even have children yet, is this a prank call?" He asked starting to sound angry.
"Sorry" I said, hanging up.
My palms were wet, my voice was quivering.
I turned to leave the phone booth in the closet, feeling very strange. I seemed to be shrinking, my chest felt very heavy, as if someone was sitting on it. The bedroom was now well lit, the furniture and floors clean, the bed made in fresh linens.
"Sarah" a woman called from downstairs.
I looked down and was now dressed in a gingham nightgown. I saw brown braids reaching over my shoulders. What was going on?
I opened my mouth to say, "Molly" but out came "Coming Ma" in a different voice, higher pitched and younger.
As the months passed me by and I waited for the tree to fall on our house and hopefully pop me back into the future, I had moments of almost forgetting. Was I really Sarah? Did I really live here? I looked back in the closet over and over for the phone booth, but it was gone. I had nothing to prove that I was not Sarah other than my memories. Sometimes I thought those were dreams and Sarah was the real one.
What would happen if I made sure that we were never all sitting on the couch during a storm, would I grow up here and live my life out in this past era? Would I just die with the family? Would I become the ghost of the little girl if we did die?
A year and a half later, I was listening to the radio after helping ma set the table for dinner. A storm was forecast for later that evening. I made sure we were all on that couch as I did not want to remain Sarah forever and thought even an unforseeable future would be better. We were listening to the radio and I heard a crack of thunder and heard a crashing sound.
Molly called from downstairs to see where I was. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, realizing that I had caught up with the future and become myself again. I looked into the empty child's closet and ran downstairs to catch up with my friends.
For years I have looked for that phone booth. Searches online, research and visits to multiple haunted houses, all have resulted in nothing, but this is the first time I've told my story.

Exercise #2 - Photos of Family

Imagine that you are browsing through an old family album, looking at photographs, clippings, and other memorabilia. Suddenly you spot something that surprises you.

I was staying at my parent's house for a while as an adult and noticed that there were no pictures on the wall. They had many framed pictures of the family, but they had not gotten around to hanging them since they had moved into the new townhouse a year or so back. I remembered seeing, usually on television shows, how people hang a bunch of framed pictures on the wall leading up the stairs and thought it might be fun to surprise them with that. I found a hammer and nails and sporadically began to arrange the pictures onto the wall. It looked really nice. There were pictures taken at Sears with coupons, and my sister's senior picture, and a picture of me from high school and my baby sister before her prom. But one picture caught my eye.
My dad and mom and younger sister and I were all sitting on a piano bench in front of a small piano at my grandmother's house. My grandmother lived in Grangeville Idaho and we lived in Milwaukee Wisconsin. We never had money to fly so we drove out to see her and my great grandmother a time or two (I honestly don't remember if it was one time or two) during my childhood years. This was when I was about 9 and my sister around 4. My youngest sister had yet to be born.
I stopped and looked at that picture for a while. My parents must have been about 30 years old at the time and I was now 32 years old. A young cancer survivor with no children yet and no prospects for one for a few more years as I finished taking Tamoxifen for the prescribed 5 years. How strange the passing of years, the changing of society's expectations. Myself, feeling so old, yet really so young. How must my parents' life have been, so young with two small children. I feel barely old enough now (34) to think of being a mature parent, with so many years of living and teaching under my belt.
They looked so young and pretty and happy. How old will I be when I have a 9 year old? I am thinking about 44 at the youngest. I know this is normal, but will I be full enough of energy to participate in my kid's life as much as I want. Will the child keep me young?

Fred thought that I needed more of an interesting ending to Exercise #1. Hmmmmm. Maybe I just peter out as I get to the end and then have no idea what to write. It happens when I write e-mails as well.