Siouxanne

In 2002, Randy and I wrote a song called "Siouxanne." He was just playing guitar in the living room and I was kind of humming and thinking aloud about a friend I lost touch with. It is always weird writing about people you know.

One of the first big shows we did in Denver was at our friend's art studio just after our friends' wedding. For the wedding, they asked us to learn a secret dedication from each one to the other. At the reception, we sang their surprise dedications to each other as a special gift. Well, bride & groom showed up. Let me back up and say that the bride and I had fallen out of touch for several years, and in the meantime, I had written a song called "Simplicity" about some of the things the bride in my story was going through at the time and my part in how the story might have unfolded differently, etc.

Knowing all of this, you can understand my puzzled look when, at the art studio show, my friend yelled out, "Do my song--you know the one you did for me!" and I suddenly thought she knew...In front of a crowd of people, I told her I didn't realize she knew I had written a song about her. She said she didn't know that either. And so, after many years, I confessed on the spot and sing "Simplicity" followed by the original misunderstood request of "Tupelo Honey." Yikes.

Well, thanks to Facebook and myspace, tonight, I sent an mp3 to Siouxanne (now just Zanne) of her song. I am nervous, nervous, nervous, but I have been wondering if she was alive, how she is, and if the day would come when I'd have to tell her that this song exists with her name on it.

New Duke Special!

Yaaay! New Duke Special album out soon!

One Week In

I have lost my voice. All the songwriting I was hoping to do has been put on hold because my throat is killing me, and when I can manage to make a sound, it's the sound of a frog. Apparently, surgery can lower your immunity to viruses and I have one. I'm tired and lethargic. 

Yesterday, I got out of the house and ran a bunch of errands and felt pretty good, but today I am wiped out. 

All this time alone in the house makes me question the meaning of life, my purpose on earth, and every question leads to fifty more questions. Google is no help and I am drowning in "possibilities" but not sure what action to take. 

The presidential debates are on tonight so that should further frustrate and confuse my sense of justice and truth. Maybe I will skip it for a Monarch of the Glen marathon. Thank you Netflix.

Hysterectomy

 

Back in January, I finally went to see a doctor about pain I was experiencing every month. Yep, the girl kind of pain, but worse. 

Doctor #1 sent me for an ultrasound and then called me on my way out the door to catch a plane to inform me that I had a birth defect - something called a septate uterus. The best way to describe this is to say that if a woman's womb is the home for her unborn child, then I have a duplex without enough square footage on either side for a kid to live safely. She suggested something called an oblation.  She also said this would not explain my pain at all so this explanation did not sit well with me. Her non-chalant attitude in telling me that I was deformed also didn't charm me much.

Doctor #2 looked at the ultrasound results for a second opinion, and correctly diagnosed me with something called a penduncular fibroid. This thing was apparently pushing into my uterus and splitting it in half (without breaking it). THAT explains the pain! She ordered a laparascopy and hysteroscopy to be sure. 

Surgery #1 was in April (with Doc #2) and confirmed this diagnosis along with the discovery of endometriosis. Conclusion: I need a hysterectomy.

After reading up on all the different kinds of hysterectomy (total, supracervical, laprascopic, abdominal, etc. etc.) I made a decision to go with an LSH (Laprascopic Supracervical Hysterectomy) - the conservative choice with the least scarring and recovery time. When I informed Doc #2 of this, she said it was a newer operation and she did not perform it and promptly referred me to Doc #3.

Doctor #3 was a laid back but thorough and knowledgeable guy who made me feel instantly comfortable and confirmed that I had made the right choice about which kind of surgery to have. He even scheduled my surgery on his day off since I had been waiting a while. Of course, he loses points for saying when Randy came in to the room for my pre-op appointment/exam, "Oops. I forgot to do a breast exam! I'll just do that now." AWKWARD!

Monday, the surgery went very well and I was done by 1:00pm. They told me I could go home as soon as I "peed." Of course, with nothing to drink or eat for 12 hours, this was no easy task. The anesthesia made me incredibly nauseated, and I had a migraine going in, so I wound up there until 5:00pm because they maxed me out on nausea drugs and I was still sick as a dog. At last, I lost my liquid lunch and felt okay enough to get out of the backless gown and head home.

Once home, the process started again and it was a long night of migraine, nausea and soreness. Randy is taking amazing care of me. Our church is bringing meals by three days a week right now, and lots of love is being sent my way. I feel lazy and spoiled but very glad to have this behind me.

This morning I looked at all the photos from my surgery. Randy is easily freaked out by this stuff, but I am fascinated. They're really gross though. I found some other photos from a similar surgery online tonight that helped me figure out just what I was looking at, and I feel like I have a good understanding of why my body felt the way it did for so long. I look forward to much better health in the coming year. 

I'm sure there is a lot more to say about the emotion of losing something as significant as my womb, and the finality of it all, but for now, I'm just grateful to have a solution without major complications.

Postcard from Invesco Field

Last night, I worked a teambuilding event for RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) who rented out Invesco Field. Part of the fun was a relay race covering lots of the stadium. My job was  HEAD CHEERLEADER. (I have never been a cheerleader, but I did play Patty Simcox in our high school production of Grease.) 

I sat alone in the Visitor's Locker Room, most recently inhabited by the New Orleans Saints, and waited for teams to find me so they could perform their cheers for me. If I approved, they got a hole punch on the score  card. I get paid for this stuff!

One or two middle-aged male bankers who may have had a few beers or perhaps just didn't possess the greatest social skills looked me up and down and said with a little frown, "Oh, I was hoping to meet a REAL cheerleader." Yeah, well, I was hoping to work with a gentleman, but such is life. You have to live with me--some people love fake cheerleaders.

Afterwards, I had Bob, the photo guy snap my picture in one of the quarterbacks lockers. Why not? 

Life Happening at the Airport

I'm kind of an airport geek. When I was a broke college kid, I used to go to the airport just to watch people. Parking was the only expense and parking was pretty cheap back at Stapleton. On September 12, 2001, Randy and I rode the blue line to O'Hare to see how airport life had changed overnight...

This is where I have been spending a lot of my time lately. Meeting and greeting people -- just to the right of that fountain at the top of the escalator by where the train lets people out at Denver International Airport. This kind of work suits me just fine.

Greeting people changed a lot (probably forever) in those 24 hours following 9/11. Suddenly no one got to meet their sweetheart at the gate with roses. Since that day, all the greetings (from domestic flights anyway) happen in one place at DIA--right there by the fountain. This means I don't have to roll the dice to see where I think something interesting might happen. I'm right there. Here's just one day:

-met Doris, a tour director with a British company who may be the only person I know who moved from Wheaton, Illinois to Colorado Springs, Colorado in the mid-1990's without being relocated by a Christian organization!

-greeted Eric, whose wife is back in Houston waiting for the power to come back on after hurricane Ike swept through town more than a week ago.

-saw a Colombian exchange student meeting his host parents from Kansas for the first time.

-learned that the French onion soup at Pour le France pretty much rules!

-asked my local police lieutenant to stop by and let my dog out and he agreed! (It helps that he is married to my college roommate).

-met Sheila & her husband who moved to Glenwood Springs 35 years ago to build ther dream home. They said I could stop by anytime.

-talked to a man who had been in Moscow in 1981 with the federal government...Hmmmm.

-watch a grandparent and three young siblings give the sweetest welcome home to parents and the new addition to their family from China.

-saw a lot of Saints fans coming to cheer against the Broncos.

-talked to people from Brazil, Spain, Japan, USA, India, Indonesia, Kazhakstan, Tajikistan, and Viet Nam.

And I used to sit at a desk all day.

This House is Not a Dome.

One question I get a lot when giving tours of Invesco Field is why the field does not have a dome. The Broncos play in all kinds of weather and I honestly don't know the real answer as to why they do not have a roof for their stadium. Maybe it makes them look tougher to play in the snow, or maybe it's just that after $400 million, they were done spending.

Speaking of the Broncos, I worked at the airport Tuesday and was amazed at the number of people wearing Raiders gear. What gall...don't they know we killed them the night before!? Hooray for the Broncos. I am not so much Bronocomaniac as I am anti-Raider, and specifically anti-Al Davis. It makes me happy to see them get beaten so badly by our home team. 

So...back to the roofless concept, I went with my friends Gary & Melanie to a Rockies game on Labor Day. It was blazing hot and our seats were definitely without cover. The reason for the occasion was to see my friend and college roommate Cheryl sing the national anthem at the beginning of the game. She did a great job! 

 

It was so fun to see her up on big screen. I was really proud of her, and selfishly, I wanted to tell everyone how we used to practice together in college and be awfully critical (in a constructive way) of each other's singing so we could get better, how we used to sneak into that tiny echo-ey room in the music building of CCC and find songs to harmonize on. But of course, I kept mouth shut, stood up, put my hand over my heart, and tried not to cry. She really nailed it, and I didn't want to sing along so I could listen.

Afterwards, we relocated to a spot in the shade at Coors Field--to the purple ring of seats, the mile high row. The staff at the stadium said it would be fine since the stadium wasn't so crowded on Labor Day due to Taste of Colorado going on downtown. Not only was it cool to sit in the purple seats but the overhang shading us from the sun made the whole thing much more bearable. Everyone needs some cover...

 Now it's all fine and good for stadiums not to have roofs, but homes need them, and yesterday when it started raining, I noticed that what had been a small crack in our ceiling was starting to get bigger. By mid-day, we were watching the ceiling peel away! Here is what we had by the time the rain stopped. A soggy mess of a ceiling and obviously, an imminent roof repair. 

My brother Matt and his family were staying with us so it was a good chaotic morning at our place, but thanks to the company he works for (ServiceMagic) we had two quotes by evening and we should have things repaired affordably - the necessary stuff, not the cosmetic stuff - tomorrow or Monday. Let's hope it doesn't rain between now & then.