4 Things You May or May Not Know About Me

My dear friend, Joanne, sends me these chain-letter emails, knowing that I'll never respond to her! But, this time, I am (albeit with edits)!

Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. Amelie: oh my goodness, I love this movie!
2. The Road Home: I cried my eyes out watching this movie in the theatre for the first time. Very embarrassing for the people with me.
3. The City of Lost Children: quite weird movie, but amazing visuals.
4. The Dish: the scene with the American national anthem cracks me up every single time.

Four TV Shows that I watch:
Ok, so I think this is a terrible question, so I'm going to change it to:
Four books I would read over and over:
1. Animal Farm, George Orwell: greatest book of all time.
2. Perfume, Patrick Suskind: beautifully written, creates beautiful images with words.
3. The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling: obvious choice!
4. Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck: one of my favourite writers. And it has a dog. Of course I love this book!

Four places I have been:
1. Havana, Cuba: walking along the Malecon (sea front) at sunset, hearing the salsa music playing in the homes across the street...
2. Bangkok, Thailand: haggling over designer knock-offs in the street markets.
3. Venice, Italy: wandering around the streets and alleyways, getting completely lost but loving it.
4. New York City, USA: one of the best trips I've had, because I was with a great friend, Carol.

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Southern biscuits: so unhealthy, but so good...
2. Australian lollies: I miss these so bad: licorice bullets, Minties, Pascall chocolate eclairs, Allens snakes, pineapples, etc, etc, etc.
3. Thai curries: this dinky little town does amazingly have a Thai restaurant. Trouble is, it's a 30 minute drive from our house.
4. Chinese noodles: if they're cooked right, they're amazing.

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. NOT AT WORK!
2. NOT IN AUGUSTA!
3. Diving in the Caribbean somewhere
4. On Dustin's family farm, sitting on the porch with a cool drink, watching Bonnie run around the fields chasing butterflies

Four things I am looking forward to this year:
1. Getting my hair back after chemo (it's already starting to grow!)
2. Going around the country with Dustin for his residency interviews
3. Our third anniversary
4. Christmas!

Left-over news

Just a little update on how things are going here in Augusta:

Dustin: he's studying very hard for his "Step 2" exam, which is coming up on Friday. It's an all-day exam, and is the second in a series of three exams he'll have to take to become a licensed doctor. I've never had to take an exam that was longer than 4 hours and my exams were always on specific subjects. These exams are ridiculously long, and the questions cover every single thing they've ever been taught. Yet another reason why I am not the one who's becoming a doctor!

Bonnie: my little girl is 2.5 years old now and has really slowed down over the past few months. She used to badger me constantly to play with her, and wasn't shy about nipping me when I wouldn't get off the couch (she'd just nip my clothes, not my skin; she knew what she was doing). Now, I get about 30 minutes of excitement when I get home, then she flops back into a comfy position and dozes off. When we adopted her, I read that Golden Retrievers take longer than other breeds to leave the childhood puppy stage: most puppies calm down after a year, but Goldens take 2 years. She definitely lived up to that part of her breeding.

V: my big news is that my hair is growing again! After I lost my hair, I did not look at myself in the mirror without my scarf or wig on. That's almost 6 months of purposely avoiding my reflection. But last weekend, I was brave and looked in the mirror. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I didn't look so bad after all. My head is now a light shade of brown, rather than stark white. But the best news is that I am getting my eyebrows back. No more drawing them on like a scary old lady! And I don't look quite so much like a bowling ball!

Harry Potter fever!

This month has been wonderful for us Harry Potter fans...

First, I saw the movie when it opened in regular theatres, then a week later, saw it in IMAX 3-D, which was absolutely fantastic! Definitely worth travelling 2.5 hours to the movie theatre! Then, of course, the final book came out last weekend. I didn't want to buy an American version of the book (I'm holding out for an Australian one to match the rest of the set), so I've been conscientiously editing what I hear on the news about the final book. Amazingly, though, I found out that someone at work had bought one, but then gone on holidays this week. So, I borrowed their copy and read it in 3 days.

After reading that really exciting book, I'm now a little lost. The book I've started reading, about threatened languages around the world, really doesn't have the same thrill!

Food Network and our new toy!

Of the dozens and dozens of TV channels we have access to, my favourites are E! (mindless celebrity gossip) and the Food Network (obviously cooking!). When I first came to the U.S., I wasn't allowed to work. I quickly got into the routine of watching Food Network in the morning, going to the supermarket in the afternoon, then spending two-three hours making elaborate meals for Dustin and me. That all ended once I started working! We now live on frozen dinners and pasta-and-sauce boxed meals.

I do miss cooking, though. One of my favourite TV chefs is a Georgia lady named Paula Deen. She has the most wonderful personality and of course, has the beautiful Southern drawl. Everything she cooks is hideously unhealthy, full of mayonnaise and butter and cream, but she's wonderful to watch. When my dad came to the U.S. for our wedding, we actually went to Paula Deen's restaurant in Savannah. We didn't see her, unfortunately. Another favourite TV chef is Nigella Lawson, an English lady whose recipes are very similar to Jamie Oliver. Just throw it all in a bowl, mix it and cook!

Dustin may find that I start cooking a little more often again, after our weekend shopping trip. We bought a beautiful KitchenAid mixer! We've both eyed them enviously in the shops, but at an average price of USD$400, we weren't in any hurry to get one. But, on the weekend, we found them on sale for $140! So, we lined up at the cash register to buy ours. When we got to the check-out, we were asked if we would like to open a store account to get 15% off our purchase. You better believe we did! Our sales girl was new, so she had to get her manager to help her with our sign-up. We waited maybe a minute, but the manager said he'd give us 20% off for our patience.... So, we got a $400 mixer for $100! I love shopping trips like that!! So, we brought it home, set it up and promptly made 2 loaves of bread. Yummy!

I do not!!!

Had a funny moment yesterday: Spoke to my dear friend, Carol, in Adelaide, who told me that I've picked up a bit of an American twang.

I do not sound American!! (add petulant stomp of the foot!)

(-:

A brush with nature

I've always wondered if Africans drive home from work, see an elephant on the side of the road, and think, "oh, how boring". As Australians, we tend to take our amazing and unique animals for granted. Seeing kangaroos while driving on the highway, most people just think, "that bugger better not jump out onto the road!".

Being here in the U.S., though, I'm still discovering their natural wonders. It doesn't last long, so I guess it's something I should enjoy while it lasts. When I first arrived here, I remember sitting on my back porch and watching the squirrels for hours. I hate seeing them now, because I know I'm going to be dragged behind Bonnie as she tries in vain to catch them!

Walking an hour with Bonnie (usually) every day allows me lots of time to enjoy our area. We're very lucky, in that the land opposite our house is vacant, about the size of 3 city blocks, I guess? The richest family in Augusta currently own the land and they've done nothing with it, so it's turned into a sort of local park area. There are huge magnolia trees everywhere, and the grass gets cut regularly, so it's a wonderful place for Bonnie to meet up with all her friends.

Last Thursday evening, as we were walking through the park on our way home, Bonnie decided she was hot and wanted to just sit quietly for a moment. As we sat there, a raccoon came out of the trees, sniffed around for a little bit, then trotted off into another grove of trees. Raccoons are very shy creatures, and Dustin tells me that if you actually see one, it's probably rabid. But this one seemed like it just didn't realise we were there. It was so cute: little bandit mask, beautiful striped tail ... that was a cool moment. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon: the one we saw was actually much heavier than this one pictured.)

Another very cool moment happened on Sunday. Dustin and I bought some Adirondack chairs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adirondack_chair), so we were sitting in our backyard, enjoying the serenity (I can't use that word without thinking of Seinfeld!!). He was looking over at the plant bed, I happened to look up, and out of nowhere, a hummingbird appeared and hovered right above Dustin. I quickly tried to tell him to look up, but by the time the words came out, it was gone. That was very cool, because I've never seen hummingbirds at our house before. The moment actually seemed very Harry Potter-like: this tiny thing, appearing out of nowhere, then taking off before you realise it's there... sounds like the golden snitch!

Speaking of our backyard (that's a whole other story), here is a photo that I took about a month ago. 'Til next time...

Final round of chemo- update

As usual, the week after chemo was yuk. Each round of that horrible stuff seems to hit me differently. This round gave me the wonderful experience of terrible reflux, ulcers coating my throat and gut, a completely numb tongue and mouth, and the usual fatigue and bone aches. My boss is currently in Athens, Greece, so it was great to be able to just sleep 16 hours a day and groan pitifully the rest of the time.

Friday morning, though, I woke up feeling much happier and was even able to work the whole day. Today has also been a good day, so from here, I should start feeling better and better.

My princess

Here she is, my little princess.

Living in the South

We went to a wedding today. The bride and groom are classmates of Dustin's, and I'll call them "Jack" and "Jill". While we at the reception, we were told the very sad story of Jack's family.

Apparently, they are very faithful Southern Baptists. The mum had a revelation from God when Jack was 10 years old, that Jack should marry the child of one of their family friends. So, when Jack started dating Jill a few years ago, the family refused to acknowledge her. Apparently, they still hold the belief that Jack should marry the girl that God chose, and since he chose to marry Jill, he is defying God's will. So, the wedding was held today without a single member of Jack's family in attendance.

I can't imagine how sad he must feel. I can't imagine how his family felt when they looked at their clocks today at 11:30am, and realised that their son was now married.

Earlier in the week, I spoke to a business colleague about his experience of being black, and being married (for the last 40 years) to a white woman. I was astounded when he told me that even today, there are still parts of Augusta that they cannot go to together.

I just can't imagine holding a conviction so strongly, that it would cause me to hate like that. I just don't understand it...

Let's try this... see how long it lasts...

So, having become addicted to the blogs of my friends, I thought I would try it out for myself. Y'all know how I've struggled to keep up with the emails, so I'm not sure how successful this experiment will be, but here goes!