Perfect, or something like it

Pretty nearly perfect day today.

* Pain levels are low

* My mom's going to be getting a knee or two replaced, which may end her horrible pain, which keeps her up nights

* Two-year cancer checkup, at which the doc says there's not only no sign of cancer, but 99% of thyroid cancer recurrences happen in the first two years, so there's a 1% chance I'll have to deal with this cancer again some time in my life, beyond monitoring, and basically, I have, in his words, "licked the cancer".

* Lovely walk in the rain with someone who just got paid. Ambled through the neighborhood to several great places, spending a little bit at a time of his money as we went:

- our newly opened neighborhood cheese shop, where we got grilled cheese and tomato soup and sweet iced tea
- Peet's, to get coffee (they don't sell coffee (yet?) at the Sacred Wheel)
- Creative Reuse, where we got a couple books, some mint tins to use as dice boxes, and some art supplies for the kid
- Clausen House, where we didn't buy anything, but we did drool over some number of things
- Tara's, where I had a lovely little scoop of raspberry sorbet, even though james_huber thinks it's too cold for ice cream
- Casper's, where we had a second-lunch snackish thing while exclaiming over what a perfect day we were having

Forget the fact that the IRS has written to tell me I have two weeks to give them $929. Forget that completely, because today is a GOOD day, and I'll deal with that tomorrow.

A few more notes

1) Got my flu shot today, on the theory that the one that made me really sick twenty or more years ago really isn't good justification for risking the health of the folks around me. This one hasn't made me even a little bit sick, so far.

2) I've been working through the application processes of the two schools I applied to for fall. Looks like my original first-choice school (#1) may not accept me because I'm deficient in prereqs for the major, but I'm finding that the more I look at them, the more I like my second choice (#2), which accepted me last month, so I'm in a win-win situation here. I'm liking the course descriptions at #2 more, and I think it will take me less time to finish there, but #1 has two advantages: a MUCH shorter commute (yes, I might actually work at the school in question, but I'm trying to be circumspect), and an English degree program that feels like it's straight out of a pameladean novel. :-)

3) I have a really amazing family. Everyone takes care of everyone else. I mean it; this is a group you can count on. Some examples:

• The kid has offered to go down to my mom's to take care of her after her knee replacement


• I know that it's hard on stonebender when we don't see each other in person, but he's been super-sweet about the fact that my pain and fatigue mean I don't get the energy to make the trip out there very often, and was more than willing to set up frequent online dates with me while we weather this stuff.


• loracs has dropped everything to put in a new floor at dbubley's so that it'll be easier for her to get around when she comes home from the hospital


• someotherguy is out buying me potato chips and ice cream, because I have a deep need right now for potato chips and ice cream. And he made sure to ask me which brands are owned by Nestle so that he wouldn't accidentally buy those.