LOVE IS ….

Thanks very much to so many of you who have taken the time to write in the guestbook the past few days with your well wishes and good thoughts for Blaine. He tried reading the notes on the hotel computer but wasn’t able to get through them all …. A pretty nice problem to have. :) He’ll read every one when he gets back home and I know he appreciates them as much as I do, so again, thanks.

I *did* send him, just for the record, with a list of questions for the oncologist. Unfortunately, they were all relevant for either scenario #1: “Yippee the cancer is gone now what do we do?” or scenario #2: “Oh dear its not gone now what do we do?”. Like Chandler’s mom Kim said, Blaine and I were both expecting a declaration of NED “No Evidence of Disease” and when they tossed out the word "dormant", I think it took him a bit by surprise as well. And then the doctor started talking in that Charlie Brown-Teacher voice, “Wah, wahh, wahh” and all the questions I had written down flew right out of his brain.

He is meeting with the oral surgeon today to discuss plans for reconstruction, which he is really excited about. Kind of like the way you get excited to have a huge boil lanced off your butt ---- you know it’s going to hurt like hell while you’re doing it, but in the long run, you and your tush will feel much better. While he’s at the clinic, he is going to ask for the oncologist’s e-mail address so I can write him with my laundry list of questions. You *knew* I couldn’t just let it go, right?

And that, officially, is two and a half journal entries dedicated to Blaine and his cancer. Plenty of time, I believe, in between journal entries about me, myself, and I. Because as anyone who follows this journal can tell you ---- IT’S. ALL. ABOUT. ME. My mother should have named me Mimi.

So, with that out of the way, let’s go back to the second half of my birthday entry, which I didn’t get to write about when it was happening.

When you turn 40, Love is:



Love is pretending to believe your wife when she tells you she could really, truly, HONESTLY start working out if only she had an iPod to listen to some jamming tunes while exercising.

Even more importantly, love is not pointing out the fact that the iPod is still sitting in it’s original packaging a week later, and your chubby wife hasn’t downloaded a single song or as much as walked to the mailbox. Luckily, Blaine is polite enough not to mention these things.





Love is having a great group of girlfriends who not only invite you to lunch on your birthday, but even pick up the tab and bring you really cool presents. Hmmm. Wonder if they'd believe me if I claimed to be turning 40 again next year?????







Love is having neighborhood friends who think it will be funny to position 40 pink flamingos on your front yard, along with a “Lordy, lordy” sign. Actually, I must confess, it *was* pretty funny. :)





Love is coming to visit from OKC and bringing two dozen delicious gingerbread men from your daughter’s favorite bakery …. Cookies that your daughter makes you bring every time you visit, because she loves them so, so, so, so, so, so much, even though thanks to the new airline travel restrictions about food and water on the plane it meant you had to totally check your luggage so you could get the stupid cookies to Atlanta and then fight the crowd at baggage claim all for two dozen stupid cookies.

But evidence of the biggest, most all-encompassing love of all:



Photographic proof that I shared the cookies with my children, and didn’t even complain when they left a bunch of crumbly arms and legs, and one half of one gingerbread head, in the bag. THAT, my friends, is love.