By Lucy

14 Days Remaining

Done work. The final week was boring and I checked out for most of it, eschewing the ‘cool kids’ table I had cultivated in favour of sitting by myself again. When we were done working in second sort, I wandered off to a mostly empty part of the building to walk laps, which everyone mocked. Hah! As if most of them will even remember my name by this time next week. Still no word on if they were keeping any of us, but my contract is officially over.

I made some blueberry tarts last weekend. It’s a simple recipe, doesn’t require any sugar. You need 12 baked tart shells and 2 cups of blueberries, scale up or down as needed. Put half the blueberries in a saucepan on medium with some cornstarch and cook them down until you have jam. Take it off the heat and stir in the other half of the blueberries, then spoon into the prepared tart shells. Tada! Cooking down the blueberries concentrates their sweetness, but it’s all blueberry sweetness with no added sugar. I scaled it up and brought some in for my friends, and I gave Fab the packet of Italian salami I had but didn’t want to use cuz I’m tired of sandwiches. She confessed on Monday she had eaten the whole thing over the weekend and made me this almond chocolate bark in return. Foolishly, I assumed we’d be getting only four hours and didn’t pack a lunch, but they gave us six, so all the chocolate was my lunch. Oops!

We’ve been getting slammed, alternatively, by rain and snow. The snowstorm on Friday was so legendary we had ‘thundersnow’. Thundersnow, as it sounds, is when you have lightning and thunder during a thunderstorm, and it’s even more dangerous than it sounds (which is pretty dangerous). It’s caused by warm air getting sucked into the cold front, like a vortex, and since it hasn’t been cold enough for the lakes to freeze, the warm air is pulling moisture off the lake and adding to the snow.

Had Luna over Saturday to clean out the basement. Plugged in the freezer for an hour to kill some of the mold and the smell. My bright idea was to push the freezer over to the drain in the basement (if you don’t know Canada, almost any house with a basement has a drain and a sump pump) splash some bleach around the inside, then open the plug on the freezer and watch it all melt away.

That didn’t work, because turns out, there’s a plug on the inside of the freezer too, which was frozen under the inch of water and mold when I plugged it in!

We ended up hosing down the inside with some hot water and bleach, letting it percolate for a minute, and tilting the freezer so it spilled out the top. It’s hard to aim a 5 cubic foot chest freezer at a 2 inch drain, but we got it all cleaned up. Chipped off the rest of the frozen mess. Wiped it down with a Mr. Clean magic eraser, let it dry out for a day, wiped it down with a clean rag. Looks like new!

Cleaned up the three boxes that were down there too. Threw out a box of jars that I’d canned myself. Hated the waste – the food, the glass jars, the hours spent prepping them – but there was no other way to do it. I don’t have time or energy to go through which jars are still good, to donate the good ones and clean the rest. Threw out a box of boxed goods; biscuit mix, cornmeal, stuff like that. A vial of star anise extract leaked and the whole thing reeked of black liquorice. Hard to say which smells worse, the star anise or the bleach.

The third box was cooking utensils I forgot about. Some of it hurt to part with, like the giant potato masher you could beat a zombie to death with. I rediscovered the two cast iron pans you see above and honestly thought that my ex had taken them. I should probably get rid of them, but I can’t bear to, so I’ll clean the rust off and re-season them. I have to get steel wool to clean the toaster oven for sale anyway.

My health problems strike again. Went to the dentist last week, just for a cleaning and I knew I’d need one filling cuz I could see it. The chemo rotted my teeth (they don’t tell you that), but I’ve been pretty good since then. Fab’s chocolate notwithstanding, I don’t eat candy, I don’t drink pop, I use a high fluoride toothpaste twice a day. The only sugary drink I have is Gatorade at work, which is a necessary evil. Lack of a colon means dehydration is a constant concern. I laugh at the guys who go for half an hour walk and do maybe 10 pushups before having a Gatorade and protein bar, they’re just loading up on sugar when they didn’t actually work out. But carpentry is hard work, especially the shut-downs – me and Mark had to argue with Adrianne to get her to drink a Gatorade instead of water. In the June heat, you can lock up and end up in the ER with an IV. I’ve been in the ER on saline enough times that I don’t risk it anymore, but it’s hard to find something that is good for me without being full of sugar.

The hygienist noted it’s been three years since my last set of Xrays and offered me some, saying it was no big deal if I didn’t. I declined – I figured I should get those done by my new dentist in Thunder Bay. This dentist came in and tutted about it, before noting that I’m favouring one side of my mouth. I have no pain – I didn’t even notice. When they were cleaning my teeth, they said I was experiencing decalcification, and my heart dropped.

I’ve gotta do a full summary of my condition at some point, but for now, osteomas and odontomas – bone tumors – are something I could potentially have. I’ve been waiting for one to happen since the desmoid. It’s frustrating, I’ve been taking care of my teeth better than most people, and I might still lose some because of this damn condition. I still don’t even know if that’s what’s causing the decalcification and cavities, because I declined the Xrays. They offered again to do them, but I’ll deal with it in March. It doesn’t hurt, and odontomas with my condition tend to be slow and benign. It’ll probably end up being a simple extraction, like wisdom teeth removal – three days of soup, no scars, right as rain. Or it might be a nothingburger, just a delayed side effect of the chemo.

Just frustrating. I’d like to be focusing on the move and my trip to England, not my cancer.

Today’s title is an Olivia Rodrigo song. It’s not my usual, but someone put a pop radio station on at work and it’s been stuck in my head. I was upset when the Try Guys blew up and they stopped selling Ned’s “I ❤ Bad Ideas” shirt (although totally justified, what he did is unforgivable). People have been posting rip-offs versions, so I might get one of those. I’m all about the bad ideas now.