progress

ok, so it's slow progress. my first post-chemo ponytail. or sprout, I guess. (and today, I'm 1/3 through radiation -- so far, the calendula cream and emu oil seem to be keeping the radiation burns at bay; I'm hoping that continues!)

Otherwise, we had such a sweet time celebrating the birthdays in our house (everyone but mine is in september) -- from the combo of parents and greandparents: movie tix and baseball shirt for the pre-teen; balance bike, rain boots, and hippie clothes for the toddler; a zoom lens, Haitian tree of life, and beautiful quilted-silk jacket for the wife who's been on cancer-support duty for a year... and on the non-material side, homemade cake with cream cheese frosting, friends and family, bowling, low-key and nice.

I'm in the countdown to the high holidays, and as a rabbi, I should be further along than I am on the sermon front. I was in a completely terrible mood yesterday when I went to meet with my teacher MF -- but within 40 minutes, she said that what I'd written was 3/4 of the way to being a sermon, and she suggested we meet by phone in three days, with my having sent ahead to her what I'd written. An extra session with her, when that was exactly what I needed. a teaching-pushing-inspiring companion in this work. I'm a procrastinator by nature, combined with utterly exhausted from daily radiation treatments -- and while I've been thinking I could-would surely get a great sermon out of this cancer thing, I'm really just trying to get through each day. It's a strange thing, this cancer.