Morning in America

For the first time in a few weeks, maybe even months, I slept soundly through the entire night without getting up to use the bathroom to drain off some chemo, wheel my I.V. line around the hall to get some exercise, have a late night snack to quell nausea, or check election punditry and/or results to curb my fear that I would wake up strapped to the bed in a mild, nicely packaged dictatorship where they refused to treat my lymphoma because of my political views.

It felt great waking up to the quiet city sounds of a car driving by and a few birds. Not bad for life in our (mostly) big city. In our old apartment revelry was usually courtesy of Philadelphia Sanitation Department trucks, and the anxiety-provoking sounds of their back-up beep… Beep-Beep-Beep.

The Zen-like state I awoke in this morning has two very different causes. The first, of course, is that we again finally live in a nation of checks and balances. Tuesday’s elections addressed, for the moment, that problem.
A part of me still worried though that last night’s episode of Lost, and all TV for that matter, would be interrupted by Dick Cheney dressed up as the Emperor from Star Wars, announcing that he was taking over things now, that George Bush was no longer in power, and that the Democratic leadership had been exiled to Artus Prime to mine the planets’ crystal deposits (by the way, what kind of world do we live in where I can type “star wars planets” into google.com and get 5 million hits? Maybe that is why the country has been asleep at the wheel these last 6 years?! CUT TO:
THE WHITE HOUSE, PRESIDENT’S QUARTERS.
THE FIRST LADY: (suggestively) Now, now Georgie, you need to stop playing with the computer and come to bed. We can read the transcript from your appearance on Rush Limbaugh together?!
THE PRESIDENT: Just a few more moments on the google and I’ll have this whole Iraq thing figured out.

The second cause for my good night’s sleep is actually a few causes wrapped into one: de-lymphomatization is at least 50% complete, and based on preliminary lab work, seems to be doing its job of making me lymphoma free; as crazy and sometimes miserable as all of this has been, it has, to a small degree, become a “normal” part of my life (only, temporarily, of course); and the karate kicks of our soon-to-be-baby are always reminding me that despite all this nonsense, the kid’s got good legs, and I can’t wait to see him or her dance at their wedding. That final point especially gives me peace of mind that I can find nowhere else.

You may also have noticed, unless you are color blind, that baldmike.com has a shiny, colorful new format. The bland white background and black text was boring. Given my own dropping hemoglobin and red blood cell levels, I thought I could definitely “use a little color”, as my late Grandma Sarah used to say. As in: when I was getting off a plane in Miami from NY mid-winter and she’d say in her old-time New York Jewish accent: “you could use a little color, here’s some oil,” (always Hawaiian tropic #2) as she pushed me out the door with a towel, saying “there’s already a chaise lounge waiting for you downstairs by the pool.” Thanks for the color, grandma! And to all the color obsessed Jewish grandma’s out there, thanks for also encouraging us to get regular checkups for skin cancer.