The Comfort of a Good Pair of Slippers

Saturday Sayin's

Post Op

After four hours of surgery, the removal of the evil cancerous paw tumor, the extraction of three teeth, including the two upper canines,and a dental cleansing of tartar and gum glop, The Shone is recovering at home on his dog bed:

 

Is a canine still a canine without his canines?

I'm sending out a big thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers for The "Gummy" Shone's speedy recovery!

The Zadge watched the American Idol Finale so you didn't have to

You can thank her later.

Because it was painful.  And dated and out of touch.  Cringeworthy, really.  What the hell were the producers smoking when they came up with this line-up?

The Zadge figures that the average age of the contestants was 22, but the real age of the finale was a senior-citizen-discount worthy 62.   Follow my math:

7:05 p.m.:  Alice Cooper , 62 years old, is the first "celebrity" to hit the stage in the Big Finale with the young Idol Top 12, singing "School's Out for the Summer." 

The last time that Alice had a school summer break Eisenhower was President. Even when Alice was 22 he looked 62, so let's just use that as the starting point.
 
Real age = 62

7:22 p.m.:  Two of the younger Idol rejects sing some Bee Gees crap.  And then look who joins them on stage!  The two remaining Bee Gees themselves!

The real age of the finale gains two points because Bee Gee Barry is still sporting the Long Baby Goose Bob that he did in 1976, although now it is the Gray Goose (and not the kind that The Zadge prefers)  and Bee Gee Robin, well, he looks dead already anyway. 

Real age = 64

7:27 p.m.: Oh.Em.Gee.  Next up is some bad Kenny Rogers/Mafia Don cross:
Oh no! It's white haired Michael McDonald, singing "Taking it to the Streets" with big, young buff Michael Lynche. Because the producers at American Idol should have left White Mike on the streets, real age goes up another point to 65.

7:31 p.m.:  Wait! All the reject girls are singing "Beautiful," a Christina Aguerila song!! And now "Fighter!"  Christina is significantly under 60 years old  and a true pop legend!  She could significantly lower the real age of the finale.  Could she be in the house?  Yes, yes, there she is!!

Oh geez, she is sporting two Princess Leia hair doughnuts circa 1976 on either side of her head and sings some boring ballad thing.  The momentary peak in young hipness factor plummets back down, but does serve to lower the real age to 40.

7:40 p.m.: Oh god, the reject boy Idols are singing "Maneater."  That can mean only one thing - Hall & Oates are in the house.  Yes! There they are!! And they are wearing the same black leather jacket (Hall) and red plaid shirt (Oates) that they sported when The Zadge saw them on some MTV video when she took a break from playing Ms. PacMan in 1981.

Real Age = 59

7:50 p.m.:  Alanis Morrisette hits the stage with Crystal "I'm probably going to win" Bowersox.  While 25-30 years younger than the other "celebrity" performers, she is sporting some George Hamilton-looking fake tan and singing her last hit, which occurred at least a decade and a half ago.  Which bumps the finale age back up to 70.

8:00 p.m.:  Ok people, Carrie Underwood is up!

She's only like, what, 25?  And she's sporting tight leather pants with over the knee leather boots and is about to marry some pro hockey stud!  She MUST bring the real age down right?  WRONG - she's sporting the same bleached blond hairdo that Barbara Mandrel still wears, along with Barbara "I dream of Jeannie" Eden, and ZsaZsa Gabor.

Real Age = 60

8:10 p.m:  Casey James is singing "Every Rose has its Thorn?"!! No freakin' way - could it be?!! Baby Jesus of Bethlehem, it's Bret "Brain Hemorrage-Stroke- Hole-in-the-Heart" Michaels?!!! YES!!!

People - this is HUGE!!!  Considering the dude was lying in a hospital bed one millimeter away from death four weeks ago, The Zadge is giving HUGE points to this one!

Real Age = 30

8:20 p.m.:  My man Lee "I should win but that hippie Crystal will kick my ass" DeWyze is singing with the band Chicago.  The Zadge has a real soft spot for Chicago - one of her big time favorites in the late '70s.  But geez-us, this latter day version of the band, is PITCHY-DAWG!  Sentimental points outweighed by sheer embarrassing vocals.

Real Age = 25 or 6 to 4 59

8:30 p.m.:  That "Pants On The Ground" fool is doing some half-assed rap - and he's at least 60 years old.  But unlike all the young fools around him, he at least keeps his pants on.  A couple points for that.

Real Age = 55

8:35 p.m.:   Paula is in the house and my lord is it painful.  She makes some awful joke about why she really left - implying she had a baby with Simon - yeah, she of 48 years old and he of 55 years old.  My god, it's painful - not a single person in the audience is laughing.  Major point penalty for old people having baby jokes that no one is laughing at.

Real Age = 65

8:45 p.m.:  Seven of the previous eight winners come out dressed in black singing some horrific song in tribute to Simon.  Then god knows how many previous Loser Idols run out in tight white leggings! It's horrible!  It's like some bad scene out of "Heaven Can Wait."  The Zadge is so grossed out by all the white get-ups that she can't even calculate a real age of the finale.

8:50 p.m.:  Shit! Is that Michael Jackson?  Now that could bring this show back to life!  But no, it's just some butch version of MJ - his sister Janet:

Will she flash her boob a la Super Bowl 2004?  That would deduct at least three decades from the real age.  No, she will just lipsync sing yet one more boring-ass song that no one has ever heard of.  But she is wearing a tight, one-piece catsuit, so we'll give the finale a few points.

Real Age = 55

8:55 p.m. : Oh no, Lee and Crystal are singing one of The Zadge's favorite's - "Get By With A Little Help from my Friends" - that can only mean that Joe Cocker is up next.  Yes, there he is.  The Zadge saw Joe Cocker play in Denver last summer and his concert lasted a whopping 51 minutes! Apparently 74 year old men can't jam for that long.

Real Age = 74

9:05 p.m.:  And then there is the announcement of the winner.  Shocker!  My man Lee beats out the hippie chick with the snaggle teeth!  And just because The Zadge has been rooting for Lee from the get go, she shaves  12 points off - in honor of the 12-year old Shone -- and is back at her original starting age of 62.

Which is a fine age.  Hell, Betty White is the hottest thing on TV these days.  Cuz she's hip.

But the finale was not.

So there you have it.  I hope you spend those two hours of your life that I just saved you wisely!

The Cancer Rollercoaster

First, I found the lump on The Shone's paw.  Then the vet said it was cancer and we should Xray his chest to make sure it hadn't spread.

Gulp.

Then we did the Xrays and the vet said they were clean.

Yippee!

Then The Zadge flew back east for her cousin's wedding, where she danced like a fool.  And by "fool," I mean not in a good way.

But while she was back east, the vet called to say that a radiologist had looked at The Shone's Xrays and saw a suspicious spot on one of his ribs that could be a very aggressive spreading cancer.

Big gulp.  Lots of tears.

The vet recommended canceling Monday's surgery to get a consult with an oncologist - the gist being, don't put The Shone through the surgery to remove the paw tumor if his body is shortly going to be riddled with bad cancer and he doesn't have long to live.

This might explain The Zadge's subsequent consumption of copious amounts of champagne at the wedding and the resulting dancing histrionics.

So we met with the oncologist yesterday.  The Shone is getting used to being in examining rooms:

But the cancer rollercoaster continues:  basically, the oncologist said it could either be an aggressive cancerous lesion on his rib OR it could be an old fracture, maybe even from when he was born.   The only way to tell is to get a CT Scan (for which he has to be under general, at a cost of $1000) and then do a subsequent biopsy.  And then, if it is cancer, the treatment is removal of his freakin' rib and/or possibly chemo.

See here's the thing - The Shone is 87 in people years.  I am NOT going to remove his rib or put him through chemo.  So why bother doing the CT scan at all? 

However, it doesn't solve the problem of the slow growing cancerous tumor on his paw.  Which the oncologist does not believe can be completely removed without amputating at least one of his toes.  But she also thinks it is about to rupture and should be biopsied (where they take most of it, but not all of it).

So this Friday, The Shone will have surgery to remove as much of the paw tumor as possible (leaving his cute little toe!), as well as to have some dental work done.

And The Zadge will just keep praying that the big bad cancer rollercoaster stops here.  She has always hated rollercoasters.

White Women Can't Dance

What do you get when you combine a middle-aged woman, her 21-year old cousin/bridesmaid, lots of champagne and a wedding band?

Unfortunately, my friends, you get this:

Play that funky music, white boy!

Waiting for Mom

Family Time

Check out The Zadge's wall of Family:

A photo homage to my family.  The Zadge just loves the word "homage."  The Zadge loves her Family Wall of Fame because, well, she moved 2000 miles away from them and just misses their faces.

Here's The Zadge and The Sista at a very early age, best buddies even then:

And The Zadge was quite the baker, even at 8 years old, showing her younger bro and sis that you don't need a freakin' KitchenAid mixer to whip up some high class baked goodies (although she is very glad to have one now!):

But sometimes the photos just aren't enough.

So The Zadge is super-psyched that she is going to see their faces IN REAL LIFE this weekend, when she flies back to D.C. tomorrow for her cousin's wedding.

Except there is going to be one little face that she won't get to see because the wedding is a no-kids zone.  And she misses his little face so much it hurts.

Happy Birthday to my little Bro...

.....and to me!

Yes, The Zadge and her little bro have the same birthday, four years apart.  And he's really not so little anymore, what with him being 6' 2", a Doc, a husband and a father of two kids and two dogs.  But he'll always be my little bro.

So The Zadge had a happy birthday, celebrating with a little happy hour after work.  If, by "after work," you mean 4:30 in the afternoon.  She and her merry band of sisters (plus a couple of dudes thrown in for fun) gathered at TAG, a hot Denver restaurant, which was also celebrating its birthday!  One year in business.

The Zadge was celebrating 29 years in business. Again.  And again and so on until you get to 46 years in the business of life.  Her favorite sisters joined her for cocktails.  Like Babe The Builder and Trixie:

And The Hazz and Terri:


...and PugMama and friends from the Top Secret Day Job:


The Chilean and Wayne Gretsky showed up too, but The Zadge forgot to take their picture!  She loves them all and thanks them for their warm birthday wishes.  Especially PugMama, who fed The Zadge's parking meter after PugMama left the festivities so that The Zadge would not get a ticket!! Go PugMama!

But the best present that The Zadge got today was this:

Shone and I went to the vet today for more tests and it appears that The Shone's cancer is confined to the tumor on his paw and the vet is optimistic that they can get it all out on Monday! She thinks he will then be like new!!

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

Flower Frenzy

Baby Jesus of Bethlehem, The Zadge has been having some frenzies lately!  First fabric, now flowers!

Remember how Martine built The Zadge new flower beds?    Operative word - flowers -- the beds need to be filled with flowers.  And flowers don't grow on trees, my friends.

Oh, wait, yes they do.

But my point is that The Zadge had to go buy flowers for the beds.  So Sunday morning, she hit the biggest garden nursery in Denver.  And that's when she came down with the Flower Frenzy.  Colorful, cheerful flowers everywhere.  All ending up in The Zadge's shopping cart.  Ca-ching, ca-ching. Hundreds of dollars later, The Zadge arrived back at Old Vicky laden down with perennials and annuals and herbs and roses and peonies and compost and potting soil.

Meet her gardening assistants:

"Dig" is their middle name.

Together, The Zadge and her assistants spent hours Sunday afternoon transforming the new, nekkid dirt pits into promising beds of flower profusion.  Building a flower bed from scratch costs a freakin' fortune requires vision - you must imagine what these scrawny little 4 inch pots of flowers will look like in a year or two.

Here's a sampling of what the Mad Gardening Trio planted in the back bed today:


And here's the side bed, filled with rose bushes, peonies, delphiniums, verbascum, poppies, zinnias and sunflowers:


Notice that one of The Zadge's assistants took her planting instructions a bit too literally and planted himself in the shade corner of the bed while The Zadge toiled tirelessly in the yard:

Container pots of annuals were assembled on the deck:


Tomatoes were planted in pots by the sunny side of the garage:

Although The Zadge is not optimistic about the lifespan of said tomatoes -- read here to see why -- she is already dreaming about homegrown tomatoes and basil, paired with fresh mozzarella, olive oil and sea salt! 

The Zadge's third new bed is a shade garden.  The Zadge is more of a Sun girl than a Shade girl, so this poor bed is getting the short shift:

Just three little plants for now: one Japanese Fern and two Bleeding Hearts (really, how can you NOT love bleeding hearts - they are the sweetest little flowers!):

At the end of the day, The Zadge was happy with what her latest frenzy created.

Her assistants, on the other hand, were just frenzied-out:

Saturday Sayin's

Hungry Doggies

So the vet got The Shone's test results back this afternoon, and alas, he does indeed have cancer. She said it's a slow growing kind and they can hopefully remove the tumor and get it all. So The Shone is going under the knife a week from Monday. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers, since he is my angel and what's a Zadge to do without her angel?! (And you know Harry is my devil.)

In the meantime, The Sista sent along this video to cheer me up..and it did!

The Zadge and The Shone on the road

Bossy's recent visit to Old Vicky as part of her (No) Book Tour stirred up memories of The Zadge's own cross country trip that she made three years ago.

She also had no book to promote.  She did have an enormous amount of stress from her life in D.C., a pervasive sense of ennui (see how well those seven years of French have paid off?), a lackluster love life, as well as a slightly disfiguring case of Bell's Palsy.  She needed a freakin' break!

So The Zadge took a five month sabbatical from her D.C. Top Secret Day Job, rented out The Little Yellow House, and with nothing more than one suitcase, a laptop, a yoga mat and a bicycle (oh, and a stock of Ketel One), she set off on a drive across the country....

....with her number one Partner-in-Crime, Sweet Angel, Love of her Life - The Shone!  Here we are on a cold, rainy January morning, setting off on our adventure in D.C.:

Jackson was the absolute best companion on the road!!  We were "walking in Memphis," along the Mississippi River:


We hung out in the Grand Canyon, which, by the way, is butt-ass cold in January:




We drove a long, snow-covered road to Santa Fe:


And this is the precious view I had everytime I looked over my shoulder from the driver's seat:


This is the view everyone on the road had of The Shone on the road:


After a week of travel through snow and wind and rain, we happily arrived in warm, sunny California.  Here's The Shone on his ninth birthday, January 15, 2007, running on the beach in Santa Cruz:


We spent a month with friends in San Francisco, where Jackson frequently hooked up with his friends on Crissy Field, right near the Golden Gate Bridge:


We hiked the Marin Headlands, with fantastic views of San Francisco:

We rented an adorable house in Mill Valley, a fantastic small town right outside of San Francisco, with phenomenal views of Mt. Tam:


We hiked Point Reyes, a breathtaking National Park about an hour north of San Francisco:


A cow at Point Reyes tried to give The Shone the Stink Eye, but then fell prey to his charms, as everyone does who meets him:


We visited California's wine country:


..and hit some vineyards in Sonoma:


The Shone apparently had too much wine, as he ended up going for a dip at one of the wineries:


The Kaiser came out to visit us one weekend, and we went wine tasting in Healdsburg, one of The Zadge's favorite towns:


Wine country is fun even in the rain:


All this fun would frequently wear out The Shone:


But I couldn't have done it without him!  Sadly, The Shone was preliminarily diagnosed with cancer this morning.  Please forgive any typos - my eyes are swollen from hours of crying today.  We get the final test results on Monday, but please keep my sweet Angel in your thoughts/prayers/karmic shout outs.

I think he has at least one more road trip in him!