Last night, we went out for dinner with three guys with whom Eric works. It was, surprisingly, a pleasant evening; I won't get into details about these guys, because I'd never met them before last night, but from things Eric has told me, at least one of the gentlemen in question has a reputation for being something of a jerk. Laying that aside, we had a nice dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse, and we left the restaurant smiling and happy. Everything was roses until the car began to whine and stall.

"Is this car safe to drive?" I asked, gripping my seatbelt.

"Sure, it's safe," he replied. "It's just not as safe as it could be."

I told him that I wanted him to drive my car to work in the morning. After all, I reasoned, if I were to get stranded, I'd still be in our hometown, within walking distance of both home and work. If he were to be stranded, he'd be on the interstate, potentially miles away from any help. He agreed to leave the dying car for me. This morning, though, he had changed his mind; he woke me with a kiss and the new plans. Those plans lasted about ten minutes, at which point he came rushing back inside: "The car won't start. I'm taking yours."

So I walked to work, I'll walk tomorrow, and we'll try to buy a car over the weekend. Nothing quite like a rushed decision, is there?

She's been wandering the web, looking for information and support for thyroid cancer survivors. One of the places from which she's really gotten a ton of support has been ThyCa, the humor section of which has made her alternately laugh so hard her stitches hurt and cry her eyes out. The crying, of course, is not a difficult task these days; last night, while she was on the phone with me, she started crying when my brother got tangled up in her phone cord. Her Synthroid has apparently not yet kicked in all the way. Her brain still feels fuzzy as well.

The good news is that she'll be coming up to visit next weekend! She and Dad are hitching a ride with some friends who are going to visit their daughter in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I can't wait to hug her. I've been so scared that I might lose her. All the years of fighting and hitting, while on their way out of our hearts anyway, disappeared completely the day she told me about the malignancy. My God, I'm crying now. If anything had happened to her...

Cancer took my grandfather - he died when I was in fifth grade. It was on the way back from his viewing that I heard, on the car radio, about the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Mom pulled over, and we got some ice cream at McDonald's, which we ate in the eerie, hushed silence of the crowded restaurant. For about a year, I frequently sat by myself at recess, trying to "talk" to Grandpa. We weren't really close; he was huge in my eyes, grizzled and mean. He was a retired high school football coach, always smelled of pipe tobacco, and liked to lay in a hammock in the backyard with a rifle, shooting any groundhog who dared raise his head in the distant field. He referred to his grandkids as "polecats," and when he said that he was going to eat my brother right up, I believed every word he said. Still, I loved him. My grandmother remembers a visit from me when I was four or so; I wanted grapes, but green ones, not the red ones on the table. In a torrential thunderstorm, my grandfather shrugged into his raincoat to battle his way to the store for green grapes for his granddaughter.

He loved lemon drops. My mother, eating piles of sour candy during the course of her radiation treatment so as not to lose her sense of taste, was filled with the reminder of her father and his lemon drops. He lost his fight with the disease. She won.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I only know that there's a special sense of victory in that the cancer lost this time. It lost! My mother is still with me, and I need her so much it hurts.

Anybody want to guess what I registered? Think of it as both a personal reflection and a tribute to a recently-passed cartoonist.

We did the Mr. Sun song again, and it again was stuck in my head for the following six hours. Catchy melody, let me tell you! If only I could write songs that stick with such tenacity... Also hanging over my head this time was some new information sent to me by Piper; there is, apparently, a second verse to the song. It is nowhere to be found in any of my songbooks, but now I've made it a personal mission. I will track down the rest of the lyrics if it kills me!

Well, maybe I'm not that devoted to the cause. Still, my curiosity has been piqued. Anybody know the rest of the words? Something about "Mr. Moon."