Thursday night

I began the day with another walk with Jessie at the park. I'd like to keep doing that as often and as long as I am able to. I saw the great blue heron, but barely, on his perch on the small floating raft-like thing. It was just after dawn and overcast and his/her color faded into the color of the pond and the sun rising behind him/her just showed his/her shadow. At the end of our walk, I sat in the rock garden where I sometimes have tied Jessie to a bench and then practiced my Tai Chi. No Tai Chi today; just sitting on the bench in the sun, thinking about time and seasons, about how green growing things will fade and seem to die back and then revive and burst out again in the spring.

Quiet day today. I did have a call from the Cancer Center where I am to meet with Dr. R tomorrow morning for my "meet-and-greet" in which I am to learn all the gory details about the "treatment" and its side effects. Another slight ... hitch. My cell phone rang. "Hello" I said. A woman said, "this is St. Francis Cancer Center." I said, "Yes," She said, "May I please speak with Laurence." I said, "this is Laurence." "Oh," she said, "you're Laurence? Oh..." Okay, she's just calling with an appointment reminder. But somewhere I hope there is a record that Laurence is the person to be treated for uterine cancer. Not sure how many men in the world have received that diagnosis.

The thing stirring my emotions today is this: worry that Dr. R is going to be pissed at me because I refused to accept the appointment next week, and insisted on one this week. I guess that's displacement. I'm really scared about facing the chemo, but I'm displacing that fear into an irrational outlet - revenge of the MD oncologist for appointment-changing-high-maintenance patient!

I had a lovely chat with V last night. And today I received a wonderful note from my sweet daughter, snail mail no less (we both like snail mail), and a package from my son sending me a dvd with copies of the short films that were included in the film festival he just organized (successfully!)

All in all a good day. Nervous about tomorrow. I'll be going by myself; need to take a notebook and write things down.

Peace.