There goes my dream of being a Flying Wallenda. While getting my hair cut and colored before spinal fusion surgery in March, I lifted my head from the sink and had a sudden “As the World Turns” experience. Everything spun, slipped and spilled, and I felt like I was in a Salvador Dali painting.
It’s time to update our Spokane Valley library system. Really, really time. The current library on Main Avenue has insufficient space for materials, meetings and parking. Opportunities are continually lost because the small, outdated building can’t cope with 2014 needs.
Some people get the breaks. For a fictional example, let’s say eccentric Great Aunt Matilda dies leaving a full attic. Armed with trash bags, the family wades through the detritus of generations, sneezing as they dig through moth-eaten clothing, chipped lamps, worn rugs and knickknacks. Good grief, did Auntie never toss out anything?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock – and given our tumultuous times you might wish you were – I’m sure you’ve noticed that, thanks to a popular television show, we’re having another big resurgence of nostalgia. I’m not talking about “Downton Abbey,” whose styles and fashions define elegance. No, I’m talking “Mad Men.” We’re swinging in the ’60s again and nuclear age retro is everywhere – only without the bomb shelters, and the air raid drills in which we practiced “duck and cover” under our little school desks that would protect us when the bombs rained down. And the cheap white bread slices you could squish and roll into tiny balls to bounce off your friends.
I stood in a sea of pink and felt my eyes well up with tears. The breast cancer survivors surrounding me, as we posed for a photo on the INB Performing Arts Center steps, were my new tribe. We had all made it.
A while back my husband, Richard, mentioned an advertisement he’d seen for a book on how to make sense of black holes. “Are we supposed to make sense of black holes?” I queried. “Aren’t black holes pretty much a mystery?”
When it comes to breast cancer, modesty freaks need not apply. My right breast (which had a surgical lumpectomy) has, during the course of treatment, experienced more exposure than “Harlem Shake” videos on YouTube. During my extended treatment I’ve been endlessly flashing the girl to my medical practitioners who want to see it, touch it, handle it, and write graffiti on it.
