No Hair Anywhere Yesterday I lost what little was left of my eyebrows and eyelashes. This morning I used an eyebrow penscil to draw new eyebrows on, which made me realize just how weird it looks to have no eyebrows. What I find particularly strange is that I see women all the time who pluck off all of their eyebrows and then draw new ones. What is that all about?

http://www.hilandcarmetkiki.blogspot.com/

Check the link above. The family that blogs together . . ..  ¶ 5:51 PM 0 Comments

  Viva Las Vegas Back from three days in Las Vegas. We took the kids for the first time, and went with another family - mom and two 14 year old friends of Hilary. I won three hundred dollar in about fifteen minutes when we got there and basically stopped gambling in any major way after that, since I had to give the winnings back. Michael broke even after a struggle, but he's lucky in love so what does he want . . . . I finally got really tired of wearing hats etc at the the pool and took my scarf off. I guess you get an idea of what it's like to have an obvious deformity when you are bald and have a port-a-cath* that sticks out of your chest like a third breast. You'll be lying on a beach chair with your eyes closed or looking a particular direction, then suddenly open your eyes or turn your head to find the person next to you fixedly staring at your shiny scalp or your third breast. Thank God I'm not sensitive. Michael said maybe people were confusing me with Sinead O'Connor. What a dreamer!

*I had a catheter surgically implanted just below my breastbone before chemo to avoid destroying my veins. It is a bit unsightly but I can swim and do any activities with it, and I recommend it to anyone undergoing chemotherapy.   ¶ 8:29 AM 1 Comments

  Back to the Y Chromosome Tedious woman that I am, I cannot let go of this story I began and lost. As I was carefully explaining before my musings were ignominiously deleted from the screen, my niece Anna comes from a long line of distinctly and biasedly Y chromosomes on her father's (my brother's) side. Indeed, I was the only girl child born to the Himmelriches in three generations. First there was Bupee (pronounced Bup' ee) with the Bup rhyming with shtup, aka Alfred Sr. Bupee was the only child of his generation. His mother so doted upon him that she checked into Shepard Pratt, the local loony bin, when she returned from vacation to find him married to my grandmother, Hilda. Bupee was the sole heir to the Himmelrich name in his generation and honored accordingly. Then came two more sons, my father Sam Sr. and uncle Alfred Jr. (not to be confused with Anna's uncle/ my brother Alfred II). Now you understand the preeminently sensible Jewish tradition of NOT naming after the living. These days, we frequently have three Sams in a room.

I divert from my story. So Alfred Jr. had two sons, while my parents had one girl -- me --and three boys (still called "the boys"), Anna's father Samuel Jr., Alfred II described above and in Anna's baseball card entry, and our youngest brtoher, Bill, sensitively described by my parents as their "accident" conceived in San Francisco with no diaphragm.

But it wasn't until Anna came along that things really began to change. Silly but notable is the change she engineered in the Himmelrich Christmas eve day tradition. Though we are distinctly if not devotedly Jewish, the men in our family went to lunch, generally fancy lunch, and then shopping for my mother, Barbara, on the day before Christmas eve. I know little about the goings-on of those days, as I was never invited. Like the family business and the golf course and the off-shore fishing trips, this Christmas eve day was a pointedly male-bonding event. All I ever knew was that every year, my father would proudly present my mother with yet another ugly present (my personal favorite was the fake fur coat) that she returned on December 26.

Anna changed all of that. As soon as Jacob was old enough to join the troops, Anna went along. And though I never went myself, I always thought that was the beginning of a sea change in our family.  ¶ 7:15 AM 2 Comments

  Y Chromosomes in the Himmelrich Family Don't you hate when you forget to save and then you lose your connection and drop a full page of text. So more on Y Chromosomes in my family tomorrow. Believe me, it is a strange and fascinating subject (again inspired by by niece Anna).  ¶ 12:09 PM 0 Comments

  Boo Yankees! We have a severe rift in my family. My husband and younger daughter, Molly, are fans of the team that bought MLB - the Yankees. I, like my niece, Baltimore born and bred, am an Orioles fan, while my older daughter, Hilary, is a Dodgers fan. Thanks to two very generous friends of a friend, we actually had the privilege of watching the Yankees trounce the Dodgers 6 to 2 at Dodger at Dodger stadium. The pros: the seats were field level, practically on the field; the company was the best; the weather was perfect. The cons: the Dodgers lost (if you are an Orioles fan, all you ever want is the Yankees to lose); the parking is absolute chaos, more like carnival bumper cars than a professional event; and the peanuts are all salted. We had a lot of family togetherness, though, especially in the parking lot after the game. Finally, an intelligent fan pulled aside a barrier that allowed a few dozen of us to sneak out a service road. So arrest us!

Happy Father's Day to all of the daddies, especially my own father and my sweet husby who is not yet mature enough to be called a husband. Maybe next year.  ¶ 8:21 AM 1 Comments

  One step back and two steps forward . . . So to move forward, I should back up a little. It all started with the hives (well, Barbie, it really all started with you but that goes too far back). Not bee hives, hives on my back and my arms and my stomach. The worst of it was that the hives were not in any visible locations, so my suffering was pretty much in unobservable silence. Underwear was unbearable; elastic meant an instant eruption; and a bead of perspiration created angry welts wherever it fell. The doctors, and there were a few, were less than helpful. The male doctors in typical fashion thought it was a neurotic reaction to god knows what, despite my total avoidance of doctors for 50 years. The female docs thought it was a "female" problem, and missed the opportunity to diagnose my swollen lymphs nodes, seeing them instead as endometriomas. Not that I'm angry, mind you. Just a little bit amazed that all of this medical talent couldn't quite sort out my misery. I even had a $20,000 gynecological procedure in hopes that it somehow would relieve the itching. But I'm not angry . . ..

Finally, after many months of itching and scratching myself raw, of eating until I had packed on 20 unneeded pounds, of tearing off my clothes before the front door was even shut behind me, all of my lymph nodes swelled to visible proportions. Now the doctors could make a diagnosis - even I could make a diagnosis. I had lymphoma.  ¶ 7:08 AM 0 Comments

  Am I 2old2blog? This blog was inspired by, and therefore is dedicated to, my beautiful and talented niece Anna (see http://himmelwriting/blogspot.com) who began her own blog several weeks ago. Perhaps it might have been more brilliant to begin a few weeks ago myself, when I had more pressing news to deliver to a wider circle of family, friends, and others. But now that the crisis is over (more on "the crisis" later), I suspect my ramblings will be more entertaining and amusing, unless you are of goth persuasion or overly fond of Doc Maartens. So do you think 51 is 2old2blog?  ¶ 6:51 PM 3 Comments