Okay, so while the pre-surgery diet is not exactly on schedule, the pre-surgery workout regiment has been kicked into high gear.  I have officially become the crazy lady dancing around her living room.  I have continually told my physical therapist that I intend to do thirty minutes of cardio everyday to help kick up my metabolism.  Well, walking a seventeen year old dog, while very pleasant, was not getting the old heart rate up so I invested in a game for my wii- Just Dance 3.  Now, for those who have never played the wii, you hold a remote in your hand and a sensor bar tracks your action.  With the dance moves, it is VERY particular how your move that arm and you get scored on each move.  There is an added feature called ‘just sweat’ where the system will choose high energy songs and count your calorie burn and I have managed to burn about 2000 calories each time I fling myself around the living room.

Now, for those of you who are like me and think that working out basically blows, I am directing this at you.  For those of my friends who love their morning run, or morning yoga, or morning whatever, you can skip ahead to the next paragraph.  Okay, lazy asses like me- here is what rules about this exercise.  First, I can wear anything.  Black bra, white t-shirt?  Who cares, I’m in my living room.  Total panty line under the most unflattering, here are my thunder thighs leggings?  What, you think the dogs are judging me?  And even if they are- they can’t talk so fuck ’em.  My point it, I fling on whatever is closest, and I dance around like a silly spaz, which I fear is an insult to people who actually suffer from spasticity, and here’s the kicker- I smile and laugh through my entire workout- whilst sweating my ass of, literally, and burning up to 2000 calories.  If I can keep this up until the end of June, I may not be thin for surgery, but I’ll certainly be heading into the operating room in good physical condition.

I am still continuing with yoga, pilates and pool workouts as well, much of which focus on weight training and muscle building so if you laugh at me dancing around my living room, I can totally kick your ass.

An update on my dad, and thanks to all of you who have emailed and asked after him.  He’s still waiting on surgery, but they are hopeful that much of it will be done laprascopically (sp?) and as I understand it, there is also a robot involved in the procedure which is pretty freakin’ cool.  But apparently, the hospital only has one of these robots, hence the waiting time.  I’ll update everyone when he is engaged in his speedy recovery- he doesn’t piss fart around with these things, he’s keen to start lapping the ‘old’ people in the halls of the hospital.

In nipple news, my friend Cara has graciously begun the design process for my new tattoos- she has, of course, already solved some design flaws- with the tattoos- not the nipples- and she is going to try and have a revised design for me when I meet with my plastic surgeon and breast surgeon in the beginning of May.  Although I am fairly married to the quote I have chosen for the tattoo- I thought it would be fun to make a contest out of it- whoever comes up with the best quote for my nipple tattoos gets a prize- I’m not sure what that is yet, but I promise to think of something great- maybe Just Dance 3!!

Last week I had to start telling colleagues that I am going on leave this summer for two months and that has been rather strange.  We’ve hit the point though where we are scheduling play readings of commissioned works and while normally I am present for any and all of these readings, I am simply going to have to miss some.  Just as I am going to have to miss our annual trip to Yosemite with the Cohen-Roberts clan, and the 50 mile MS walk that I try to do every year, and various other events that I look forward to with great anticipation.  Instead, I am grateful that I have enough vacation time and sick time saved up, from missing all of these much beloved events, that I can take two months off of work and it will not be a financial hardship.  And I know in the long run I am giving myself the possibility of a lot more of these trips in the future, by limiting my risk of cancer, but try explaining that to an eight year old.  Shit, try explaining it to a 40 year old.

The last topic, not nearly as fun as the living room dance tid bit- I did start putting my will together and I have to make decisions about who is going to hold my durable power of attorney and manage my advanced directives.  This is a tough call.  The way I see it, parents aren’t supposed to have to deal with these things with their children, that’s nature looking backward and I hate the idea of any of my four parents (that includes two steps who have always treated me as their own) having to make decisions on my behalf.  My sister seems the obvious choice but the nature of the responsibility is more than I want to ask of her in a year when she has had to examine her own mortality.  So I suppose I will just put everything in writing, as clearly as possible, and hope that these documents will be nothing more than filed papers, of little use for at least another 50 years or so.  By the way- who knew you could create a will on line for 69.00 bucks- which mind you is probably more than the value of all of my possessions.  But this is what grown ups do- we make wills to protect our children, we create advanced directives to protect our loved ones from impossible decisions, and if we are lucky, we dance around our living rooms experiencing inexplicable joy in the midst of all of life’s curve-balls.