RESILIENT AS A COCKROACH

...I think I've found my new "animal".
Things are tracking back to "normal" here at the Nobel-Rudolph household (wherever that may be). The Liam-sitting schedule is filling up incredibly well (our village ROCKS) and he is pretty much back to his now-crawling, squealing self (plus the oxygen leash, which doesn't seem to hinder him much). I am finally bouncing back from this last chemo round-- unfortunately, it hit me harder than the others (as expected) but I'm looking forward to my "good week" here shortly. And unanticipated upshot to the whole wham situation is that I've completely lost any self-consciousness I had about my lack'o'hair. Again, it's all relative. I must say though, we get some incredible lookaways when we're out and about-- sweet liam and I, with his O2 and my bandana. It's like the Red Sea parting at times. (dearLORDwhat'swrongwithTHEM?!). When a kid at daycare asked what was wrong with Liam's face (he has stickers on his cheeks to hold the tubes on) the teacher sagely said "everyone has things they need to deal with, this is just his thing right now." Fair enough.
I've heard a lot of expressions lately, the two most common being "When it rains it pours" and "God doesn't give you more than you can handle." (Although someone corrected me on that second one, in that it should be "God doesn't allow more than you can handle, since God doesn't give people illnesses"-- seems a little biased that God can grant miracles but shirks the sickness rap, but I digress.) Good to know, really.
Somewhat not surprisingly, I've been hypersensitive to platitudes and the how are you doings from people who aren't really "in the know" (and that doesn't count you, dear readers). I know it's not fair, people really do mean well, but it's kind of like when I was really pregnant and would say things out loud and think, "was that my outside voice?" (let's just say I wasn't known for my tact at 36+ weeks, and apparently that saracasm demon wasn't exorcised with the baby...) A fun-for-me (if not exactly fair, but hey, they asked right?) way for me to deal with this is to try to make up something that would make them never want to ask me again (granted, I could tell them the truth, but it's more entertaining to be imaginative.) For example:
Them: "How are you?"
Me: "Well, I only vomited for 4 hours yesterday and that was good because it distracted me from the boils, which, by the way, you should see them, they're quite beautiful, really..."
I guess we all deal with things the best we can, day to day, and dark humor is where it's at for me right now (although images of the aluminum foil deflector posse has really helped this week- thanks :) ). On a lighter note:
Things to be happy about:

• Flordia won the National Championship (which T attended, BTW) which bodes really well for the power of her lucky underwear, from which I assume all powers will now be redirected on me.
• Mike and Andrea come back from their amazing journey to antartica today. How we've missed them!
• Liam thinks my fuzzy head is hilarious. He loves rubbing it and I can get the biggest guffaws from him by putting him on top of my head and tickling his belly. Granted, he gets a bit of road rash on his tummy from the stubble, but everyone has their things they need to deal with, no?