Condofire

Dave: My brother in law commented on the “nine eleven “post yesterday. I think the story he told needs to be read by a few people so I’m posting it here. It makes you think.

Jim: I was helping someone out last night with their bookkeeping. This guy is in his eighties. During the course of the hour or so I was at his house, a friend of his, also around 80, came over. These guys were chatting away and the friend said “Can you believe it. Sept 7 came and went and not a word”. I looked at them both in that deer in the headlights kind of way and was informed that Sept 7 was the start of WWII, which of course both of these guys were part of. I felt a little ashamed, a little stupid and a lot humbled. Seems Sept 11 is the new 7.

Dave: This is our little hero that is struggling through each and every hour right now. He’s such an awesome dog…. he’s in so much pain but doesn’t complain about anything. After six days without food, he’s just started to eat small bits from my hand .  picture-002.jpg

Dave: I’m sitting in a waiting room, waiting for Tessa to get her results from her mole biopsy. I’ve waited in waiting rooms before and I fucking hate it. I hate it more this time than any other time, I’m scared.

I flick through the pages of a magazine not really seeing anything. I try to hear what the receptionist is saying to the person on the other end of the phone… no luck. 

 Tessa has been in the doctors office a long time, too long. I hear her laugh from down the hall and for a brief moment feel relief… but I quickly realize that her being the kind of person she is, that she’s probably trying to make the doctor feel better after him having to tell her some bad news. That’s what makes her so special, her heart goes out to other people before she feels for herself. It’s a beautiful thing to see in a person; natural empathy.  I admire it and look up to her for it.

I put the magazine down and get up to look at the chart on the wall. It’s pictures of big cancerous moles… I can’t figure out why the people in the pictures wouldn’t have gone to the doctor a little earlier.

Tessa finally comes out of the doctors office and smiles at me. It’s not until we get out into the hall that tears fill her eyes, she tells me that it’s melinoma and they had to take more tissue out of her arm. And true to form she says to me; “This is unfair for you, you’ve been through so much already”. I want to grab her and run away somewhere where this doesn’t happen to people like her. 

She has to go back to the doctor this Thursday for the next results. She’s scared but says; “it is life”. I’ll be waiting in the waiting room for her, or maybe she’ll want me to go in with her.  All I know, is I’ll be there with the person I admire most in this world.

Dave: I was looking at video’s on a site called Metacafe and found one that I laughed my ass off over. I think it must be because it’s a Dutch commercial… and after all, I am Dutch. Here it is: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/521170/funny_dutch_commercial/

Dave: I just read a quote by author Gail Sheehy that I think is very insightful.

“Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.”

How true.

Dave: We heard some great news the other day; our friend Genevieve was nominated for sales rep of the year for the CBA Libris Awards. Tess and I were thrilled by the news and had an extra dance on our Saturday night date night… and will have many more when Gen visits in April (which reminds me… I have to buy a pack of smokes).  It’s great when nice things happen to nice people.

Tessa: My brilliant niece who is six and who sings Christmas songs all by herself in front of her class is running a race in May at her school. Her goal is to run five times around the school. And win. The last race she was in every child got a medal. This is the same medal she wears when she has to do other challenging things like the Grouse Grind. This time she has to be in the top three to win a medal, so the pressure is on. I thought it might be an idea to do a few training sessions with her to prepare for the race so one Sunday I went over to take her for a run. I chose a trail that I thought would be challenging yet doable. So off we went. She announced that she likes to get off to a slow start which I thought was excellent because that’s my style exactly. Start slow and then build to a full out blistering speed. So we got to the start line and she took off like a bat out of hell. Gasping behind her I wondered how I would keep up. Thankfully a large hill full of boulders and rocks appeared which I knew would slow her down. Thank god. I saw her little legs flounder on the boulders but because of this militaristic streak in her character I knew she would overcome it. At one point she mentioned she wasn’t so crazy about the rocks when all of a sudden she went down and she started to cry. Fuck. This is supposed to be a FUN outing. Not a death defying treacherous one. I had no idea what to do. I don’t know anything about kids. Blood was running down her knee and she was HOWLING. Fuck again. So I sat down with her and told her to share her war wounds with me, share some blood and get dirty in the name of the cause. So in her good heart she got some of her blood and we spread it all over our knees and faces so we looked like we’d battled DINOSAURS on this outing. When she fell one more time and we went through the ritual again I realized that maybe my idea of a run wasn’t quite what T-bone had in mind. Or me for that matter. When I brought her home though I felt kind of triumphant almost as though we had been through a little something together. Her pappy looked at us when we came through the door and possibly the only time I’ve been afraid of Jim was when he said he had no idea he had to take life insurance out in order to survive my outing with Taya. Well now we have life insurance and T bone and I are going out again on Sunday for another training run. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Dave: I often see those little containers full of  pop can tabs. And if I have a tab, I throw it in. I think; there must be someone somewhere doing something good with those things. Today I decided to look it up and found an interesting story that will keep me tossing in my tabs.