Sylvia's Journal

I discovered how easy it is to get a lot of hits on your blog site – if that is what you want. The entry from January 1, which was named after a famous playboy and had a picture with his name embedded, kept getting hit all the time, with a record number of entries and new visits every day. It shows the power of the search engine. Apparently, anyone googling this gentleman who-shall-no-longer-be-named was led to my blog. I have removed all references to monsieur and I hope that with this, the hits will stop and I will discover the real size of my faithful readership.

I woke up to a fiery pink and orange sky this morning. The landscape outside is bleak and uninviting despite the bright colors of the morning sky. Looking out onto the yard between us and the Hoopers there is a strange design in the remaining snow. It looks like one of those mysterious patterns in cornfields or forests that you sometimes see in documentaries that prove that not everything can be explained by science. Our pattern is random, circular and frantic. From the second floor it looks like the drawing of a child that has just learned how to hold a pencil and knows about circles and lines. The pattern is probably made by moles or voles running in tunnels underneath the snow. The paw prints of a fox would explain the franticness. It is actually quite beautiful. The artists in this family are enthralled with it; the ones who believe in plots and conspiracies even more so. It does make us wonder, however, if the presence of these small rodents also means there are grubs for them to eat in this lawn that was newly seeded last summer at some expense. Why else would they be here now?

Yesterday was the 14^th and signaled the 7^th month post-crash. It seemed a fitting day to shed yet another doctor. I bicycled to the doctor’s office to see my ankle orthopedist. He gave my foot a last check up, made some remarks about the remaining swelling and tendon pains (normal, good pains) and let me go. No follow up appointment required. Now all that is left is the massage therapist, who I don’t ever want to let go. There is of course still the issue of the ‘debris’ in the right breast. The report from the ultrasound and mammogram, done last month, indicate ‘not cancerous,’ which is what I had expected, but a relief nevertheless (although I don’t understand how they know from looking). However, the nurse practitioner wants to watch things closely so she asked me to schedule another mammogram and ultrasound in a couple of months. This turned out to be a bit more complicated to organize than I had thought for the simple reason that my two breasts have different diagnostic codes for the referral. My insurance company is OK with re-examining the right one sooner but the left one has to wait until after April 9, when it has been one year since the previous (routine and bilateral) mammogram. The breast doctor wants to see both side by side. It took a couple of hours of phone calls and inquiries to get the green light from Blue Cross to admit both breasts into the X-ray suite.

The girls celebrated Valentine’s Day by going out for dinner, Sita and Jim close by and Tessa and Steve in distant London (ON). Axel and I had a simple dinner in front of the fire, watching Hercule Poirot. The Valentine part of the meal was a ‘mousse au chocolat’ that was as rich as mousse can be, including whipped espresso cream on the top. Life is good!