1) This week’s fruit selection is watermelon. I bought a hunk of it at the store (I just cannot handle a whole watermelon. It takes up too much fridge space and is just to fucking unweildy) and just now used my melon baller (you must get yourself one of these) to carve it up into balls. Tasty! I gave Allen a small dish of it because it’s likely the last taste he will get before I eat it all.

2) Let’s switch gears to another sort of melon: my breasts. That’s right the saga of the lingering-handed mammogramist did not end on Monday. Oh no, not at all. In fact, she called me late on Tuesday afternoon to let me know that I would need to come back in for more screens. The radiologist, it seems, saw something in the screens of my left breast which he was labelling “superimposed flesh.” What does this mean? You have got me and the mammogramist did not have a good answer either.

So, me and my super-imposed flesh made our way back to the radiologist on Wednesday where (thank god) we had a different tech–she was all business, no lingering hands or inappropriate questions out of that gal. Nope.

And when I told her that I was nervous because, well, I am just a year shy of the age my mother was when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in her left breast, she assured that she would call me as soon as the radiologist had a look.

Yep.

So I left there, scared but comforted that I would soon know. As I drove home, I thought about my mum–how it must have felt for her at age 39, four children–the eldest 16 and the youngest 5, to find out that she would lose her breast, that she might die. What she told me growing up was that what kept her alive, what gave her determination that she would live, was her thoughts of her girls.

And she beat it.

And what would keep me alive? So much. There is so much. Too much.

So I got home and I waited and by the end of the day when I still had not heard, I got angry. I am merely flesh to these people–superimposed flesh. That’s what we all are. Not human, not emotional, and certainly not scared. We are flesh and tumors and scars. That’s it. That’s all.

The next morning, nothing. I call and am told I’ll hear back within the hour. The hour passes. Nothing. Another half hour. Nothing. I call back and am told the results are in transcription and I will hear once the typists are done.

Transcription? What the fuck kind of ridiculous answer is that? I should have said that to her but was so shit scared that could not formulate words.

And so I waited and finally, late in the afternoon, I get the call. “Benign,” is what she said. “Benign.”

So here is all you really need to know: You are not in control here. Do not labor under the illusion that you are, because you’re not. You are flesh. You are superimposed flesh.

But for now I am out of jail again until the next time I return. I am free.

3) It is raining again and will be for however long it must rain. Yesterday we had several torrential downpours and today more rain and rain. Everything feels damp, sticky. Welcome to summer!