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Recipe: zucchini bread

I was in Boulder yesterday afternoon to run some errands and meet up with my guy for happy hour. It had been over a week since I had passed through town on my way to get chemo’d and it was snowing then. The once barren branches of bushes and trees are now delicately dotted with pinks, purples, reds, yellows, whites, and greens. Such a transformation, it does wonders for my mental state.

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Recipe: chicken kebabs

I can still spy snow on the ground across the valley, but the sun has been doing her work in these parts. We have one giant snow bank left in the shadow of our garage. The rest of the yard has thawed and dried, much to Kaweah’s exploratory delight. It’s beautiful, really. While I was feeling like hell over the weekend, Jeremy cracked a window overnight to let some cool air in. Although my taste is boned from the chemo, my sense of smell is heightened and in my delirious state, the smell of that mountain air calmed me. I love being outside, sleeping in the dirt, smelling the pine forests, walking the hills. It smelled like camping, because we always camp in the mountains – but we live here. Hell yeah.

I am spazzing out just like I always do the night before chemo. I started my steroids today, which make me hyper. I drank a cola tonight (I rarely do, but caffeine helps to reduce this crazy swelling I get right about now) and that makes me hyper too. Last time this happened I just rattled on and on all night while lying in bed. My mouth was running 100 mph at poor Jeremy who was trying desperately to catch some shut eye, but he’s too kind to tell me to shut it… or maybe he just knows it’s pointless. There I was, “bluhluhluhlubluhluhluhluhbluhluhluhbluh…” until I finally got up and turned on the computer and eventually went to sleep out of boredom.

Luckily, I took advantage of my spike in energy and made a shit ton of food tonight after dinner. I had an ungodly amount of egg yolks leftover from the petits fours, so I made a quart of matcha green tea ice cream and another quart of coffee ice cream – all for Jeremy. The man loves his caffeine. He drinks two large mugs of dark roast coffee and can fall asleep within the hour. That’s crazy. I wash a coffee mug and I don’t shut up all night. I also cooked up a batch of laab for the guy. It’s always a little frenzied right before chemo. Because Jeremy spends the next 4 days working, cleaning, taking care of me, taking care of the dog, I feel it’s the least I can do to prepare a bunch of food for him ahead of time. He’s got a lovely red curry waiting for him in the fridge too.

Another regularly scheduled event either the day before or day of chemo: big dump snow day. Why? It could just be some periodicity in the parade of troughs that march across the continental US this time of year. Or it could be Mother Nature flipping me the bird. Either way, it’s one more thing I’ve had to just suck up and accept. We had 4 inches on our deck when we grilled dinner this evening (yeah, great planning on my part), and the forecast is for another 8-12 inches tonight. $%#^&@*~!

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