So, I mentioned earlier that a windstorm blew over our fence, right? No? Oh, well, a couple weeks ago Southern California--and Pasadena in particular--was raked by unusually strong winds. Once-in-a-generation type winds. In addition to our fence being blown down, trees (many, many trees, over 200 in Pasadena alone by the last count I heard) were blown down. Millions in damage. The city still hasn't finished cleaning up all the debris.
It was windy, is what I'm saying. And it blew down our fence. I should have known it was coming, the posts of the fence were either rotted through or in the process of becoming so (happens to all fences, not much you can do about it), so the fence just never stood a chance.
Anyway, I'm now in the proces of rebuilding the fence. Yeah, it's taking me a while. I've had trouble motivating myself to dig the post holes (land sakes, that's a lot of work), but I've finally dug all the new holes I'll need (I hope; I'm hardly an expert fence-builder). So today I decided to cement the first post in place.
I put my keys in my pocket, slipped my phone into my shirt, and went to work. It went something like this: Drop an 8' 4x4 post into a 2' hole, attach supports, level, pour in quick-set concrete, re-lever, add water, and stand back and hope I'd gotten it right.
Satisfied that it was what it was, I put away my tools, locked up the garage, and went back in the house. Upon emptying my pockets, I found, to my horror, that my phone wasn't there. It must have slipped out sometime when I bent over. Like when I was pouring the concrete into the hole....
I had visions of it being exactly that. Too much TV, I guess. After all, if I lived in a sit-com, that's exactly how it would have turned out. Alas, the title of this post gives away the ending; it just fell out when I bent over to pick up the bag of concrete, so I found it sitting harmlessly on the floor of the garage. Luckier than I deserve, really (it was pretty damn stupid of me, all things considered). Still, for a moment there, my life was sit-com-ish. Too bad it wasn't funny.
A week ago (plus a day) was the 7-year anniversary of the end of my treatment for cancer. It's a pretty big anniversary in some ways. Sure, the risk of recurrance statistically goes down with every passing year, but honestly it's so close to zero already that it hardly registers. My onco, however, seems to be getting ready to give up with CT scans at the 7-year mark (and if he's not, I'm sure as hell going ot try to talk him into it), and that's pretty darn good news to my ears.
That's not the point of this post, however. No, the point is that the anniversary just passed me by, unrecognized. Ordinarily, forgetting an anniversary is a bad thing, but not really in this case. Indeed, I've been waiting for a long time to wake up and realize that I'd spent an entire day without thinking the word "cancer" and it seems I finally have. A grand, utterly unremarkable, day.
The Girl told us her first Knock-Knock joke tonight (apparently one she made up all by herself):
"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Snowflake."
"Snowflake who?"
"Snowflake because it's snowing!"
And then she laughed her head off, completely unfazed by the fact that we weren't.