Category Archives: Life despite cancer

Zsolt’s Heroic Pepper Plant

Posted in Bumpboobs, Fun, Life, Life despite cancer, Love by

This is a short story about Zsolt’s heroic pepper plant.

We have been waiting and waiting to grow peppers. We have a very special variety of yellow peppers that are quite sweet and refreshing, and remind us of Hungary. So, it all started back in March. After so much delay, we finally found some little seedling planters and the big man planted the seeds. Except he didn’t quite plant them . . . he more or less flooded them. The instructions read “sprinkle with water,” and instead he “poured a jug of water” over the whole thing.

hero pepper2

For weeks we waited. I kept saying, “throw ‘em out and replant the seeds. We’ve drown them.”

But Zsolt had faith.

Then one day they began to sprout. One after the other, after the other! This was a miracle unto itself. And so Zsolt tended the plants, very carefully watering them, leaving them on the radiator, moving them into the sun.

One particular shoot was doing really well. It was the one you’d point to and think, “yep, it’s coming along.”

Except one day, after having left the plants outside to toughen up (Z is always trying to make them really tough, for some reason), our prize pepper plant somehow broke right in half.

Disappointment was felt. No way would a plant recover from such a bad break.

The next day, Z put the seedlings back outside, including the broken plant since they were all in one big seedling plastic thing. (I should win a prize for that amazing bit of description, eh?) They stayed out all day long, and then in the evening we brought them inside.

Lo and behold! The little broken pepper plant had fixed itself! Right where the bit had broken, there was a sort of swollen area, and the plant was fixed far more upward than it had been earlier.

The next day, it stood even taller.

And the next day, even taller.

Now that really felt like a miracle. Just when we had counted it out – the little guy proved its resilience and stood back up!

And now, way over in August, it has the biggest pepper of them all. Okay, sure, the peppers are all little and have a ways to grow – but it’s our resilient plant that is leading the charge!

Zsolt calls that plant his little hero. I think the meaning of this scenario goes way, way further than simply growing a plant. Obviously. Do I need to explain it? Probably not, I think.

Heroic Plant

That little paprika pepper means a lot to us. And when the day comes that we get to actually eat the pepper, I plan to make an entire meal around it – potato layer with sour cabbage on the side, maybe even a little wine, and some wonderful Liszt in the background while we eat.

Sometimes the little stories make the biggest different. This is one of those times.

~Catherine

Penny Palooza 2014 in Ottawa, Aug. 23rd

Posted in Life despite cancer by

Penny Palooza2Last year I “E-Met” Penny when she and I connected on Twitter. We live in the same town, and Penny was dealing with the treatment of breast cancer. Since then, she’s been a great supporter of my novel (even walking nearly an hour to the book launch!) and a supporter of the city where I live. As we all are, she’s way more than the trauma of breast cancer – and so she’s pulling together her many skills to help raise funds for the Ottawa Hospital Breast Health Centre.

So, how is she doing that? Wiiiitttthhhh

PENNY PALOOZA!

Basically, it’s a music festival in a park in the summer. So, that’s perfection. It is in Ottawa on Saturday August 23rd (Why is the best stuff on a Saturday, when I’m working? Let’s start having all the cool stuff happen on Tuesdays, eh?) from 4-9PM. 🙂 Admission is a suggested donation of 10$/person, or 20$ for a family of four. If you want to indicate you’ll be going, here’s the facebook event page!

She’s got a lot of heart, and a lot of drive to be bringing this out another year. For that, I tip my hat to you, Penny.

Penny Palooza1

The Locked Door – another story for distraction

Posted in Bumpboobs, Finding Home, Life, Life despite cancer by

As usual I should be busy working on something else at this very moment – but I think this is a little story that is very blog worthy. It involves one conversation, a shower, various small straight objects and one locked bedroom door. (Hmm, that sounds bizzarly racey. But don’t get your hopes up for that kind of story)

So, this morning Zsolt asked me to stop locking the bedroom door at nights. I should preface this by quickly mentioning that we sleep with the door closed. It took a considerable amount of time before my man agreed to the closed door – but with the troubles we’ve had downstairs coupled with a humming deep freeze not far from our room (because we live in an apartment, so everything is close to our room), he eventually agreed that we could close the door connecting the room to the apartment.

Anyhow, this is an old and smelly apartment. Sometimes we leave the living room windows open to allow for fresh air circulation at night. Except lately I’ve become rather paranoid about this – what if someone breaks in through the window in the middle of the night? Right? Okay. So, we are now closing the windows. EXCEPT, this remains a smelly old building, and come morning it’s worse since there has been no air circulation.

Anyhow – my solution to this was to leave the windows open, but close and lock the bedroom door so that if someone did break in, we would be separated from that drama.

However, this morning my man asked me to stop. He said, “It makes me feel trapped.” And how can I argue against that? You just can’t. So I said, “okay, I will no longer lock the bedroom door.”

End of conversation?

Well, no, not quite.

Later in the day, I decide to take a shower. Because that will later involve me running around in a towel, I therefore close the backdoor leading to the balcony in our bedroom so that I can run around without clothes later on and not be seen since we normally have it open with the screen door for more fresh air (to be clear, this is a different door that leads directly outside – which we always have closed and locked at night. What Z and I were talking about is the door connected to the rest of the apartment).

Anyhow, back door locked. I hop into the shower and get clean – because today I met with this wonderful author Stacey Atkinson and wanted to be clean, as one does, when meeting.

After the shower, I wrap up with my towel and head for the bedroom, except the door is closed.

I try to open it.

The bedroom door is locked.

Is this a joke?

I made the mistake of asking Zsolt if he locked the door.

No, he didn’t.

For about five minutes, I entertained the idea that someone had busted through the back porch door and was now in our bedroom robbing us of our bedsheets, and locking us out as they did a search. (Paranoid, much?)

But no, that wasn’t the case either. In my day dreams and reflections while heading for the shower, I simply did what I said I would not – and locked us both out of the bedroom.

!!

Zsolt was really unimpressed. Though to be fair, I seriously can’t even remember doing this – obviously I did it, but in no way do I recall the action.

Bah!

I try to unlock the door with a coat hanger.

I try to unlock the door with a meat holder stick thing.

Zsolt tries to unlock the door with a drill bit.

We unscrew the door handle and try to unlock the door magically.

We nearly break the door handle.

Zsolt attacked the door handle device vigouraly, essentially stabbing it with his screw driver.

We watch Youtube and think we’ve got it.

We nearly break the handle, again.

I am ready to take out the entire thing, but then worry: if we knock off the handle on both sides, how do we twist the actual lock device to allow the door to open?

So we do nothing.

At this point, I am supposed to be at the coffee shop to meet Stacey.

Also at this point, Zsolt (normally so wonderfully calm) has flipped his lid, and is ready to ram against the door till it breaks open. He is literally ready to run it down – and I am assuming part of this crazy was connected to that whole sense of being trapped. He really wanted to break the door.

But then I remember: the screen door! It would be better to break a screen than to break a door.

So, I slip on my PJ dress and rainboots, grab the house keys, and go around to the back yard. Here I very carefully pushed out the screen from the lining, (and then fixed, ‘cause I’m freaking lady McGuiver), and unlocked the back door to enter the bedroom!!

Holy hot dog, did that feel good. Stepping into the bedroom, I went over to the other door and unlocked it. Simple stuff.

In my head I was like, “WHO IS AWESOME? CATHERINE IS AWESOME!” and then I mentally punched the air and moonwalked into the living room to announce my awesomeness to my husband. In reality, I walked into the living room (where Zsolt was cooling off), took off my rain boots, and then put away the key.

What is the lesson in all of this? Why bother reading all the way to the end of this post? Why bother writing it? I guess I find it hilarious that one little lock can cause so much chaos in our lives. We’d be terrible on The Amazing Race Canada if they somehow randomly choose us to be on the show and tackle challenges. One door, one little basic lock, had us arguing and ready to destroy something.

So, apart from some concern over 100% subconscious behaviour that I cannot remember, I guess the real lesson is . . . hmmm . . . I’m awesome?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

; )

Distraction done!