on vets

veterans day was this week.  when i was a kid, veterans were a bunch of old guys in long-outgrown uniforms, reminiscing about the old days. today, they are young people, fathers and mothers, who spend harrowing months away from their families in a desert.

as a kid, i marveled that vets had their own day. i did wonder why so many of those old guys dressed up and celebrated a day that was, in my view, only for uncle red, him being the only vet i knew. it took me years to realize it meant veteran and not veterinarian.

snow days

i remember one particular snow day when i was in the 4th grade. i wasn't supposed to go to school because we were going up to pierre to visit dad in the legislature. it was snowing like mad and mom decided not to make the drive. however, school was NOT dismissed and although i was going to be at least 2 hours late for school and no one was expecting me, mom made me go. and she made me walk, it being too dangerous to drive (but apparently fine for a 4th grader to walk the whole way across town).

i remember trudging through the snow from our house on the west side of town, dragging my feet, dreading getting there so late. by the time i got there, i had myself pretty upset and worried about being several hours late. i think i was pretty much in tears by the time arrived. i remember that mrs. petersen said my being late was no problem, they hadn't been expecting me anyway, thinking i was going to pierre.

i wonder why school wasn't let out with all that snow that day? they always said that if mr. walker could see his black house across the street from his office then it wasn't snowy enough to call off school. i suppose he could still see it that day, tho' it was apparently too snowy for mom to drive me across town.

p.s. the picture above isn't from that day, it's from a couple of weeks ago when i was in oslo. it was just the snow picture i had at hand.

The C-Word

Hello Nachtigal's:

Sorry to have been out of touch. A new adventure called colon cancer has occupied me since late June. I certainly never anticipated venturing on this path and it has at times been very rough on me physically and yet laden with blessings. I relay this information in the hope that all of you nearing 50 will get your colonoscopies promptly.

Evidently I should have had one at age 42-44, when my tumor would have been just a polyp. Two different oncologists have told me that I must have an underlying genetic tendency for my body to have manifested this at my current age of 52. Neither of my folks can think of any family members who succumbed to the disease, although when my dad was out visiting recently he said that Uncle Jim thought that possibly their Grandpa and Grandma Sabin died of some form of cancer. Back then I'm sure people just didn't know what was actually making them sick.

In an effort to spare you the gory details I will just say that I'm glad that the six weeks of combined radiation and chemotherapy I finished on October 6 is behind me. My mom had to (once again...this is my third abdominal surgery in four years) came out to take care of me once I got really sick in September. I have a port implanted in my chest that expedites the delivery of chemo. In the first phase I wore a pump on my waist that delivered the chemo drug 5FU (appropriate acronym) into my veins 24/7. My world-class medical team at The Nevada Cancer Institute gave me a glorious respite from treatment after finishing the first course. My body recovered quickly (no doubt due to that strong prairie stock heritage). I began my latest course of chemo a week ago today. I get a two-hour infusion of two chemo drugs Oxaliplatin and Leucovorin on Monday and then they saddle me with the pump (loaded with 5FU) and send me home. I return on Wednesday for pump removal. Then it seems I get really sick (nausea can mostly be controlled by medication) and feel like I've been hit by a truck for 2 1/2 days. By Sunday I was mostly recovered. I am currently in a blessed week free of treatment. Next Monday I will return to the Nevada Cancer Institute to do it all again (I should finish the 11 treatments by the first week in April).

My brother Jerry is a survivor of non-Hodgkins lymphoma and he is cancer-free now for a few years. Jerry was very private and stoic about his treatment and recovery. He says he got tired of talking about being sick. He once mused that he may have been exposed to toxic chemicals when he and Dad ventured over to Molokai to work on some test plots. I don't suppose we will ever know what exactly caused our cancers. Envirotoxins are certainly a likely possibility.

I understand that there is a DNA test just created that will allow everyone (for $399) to examine their DNA along with all the genetic tendencies of likes and dislikes, allergies and aversions and propensity to illness. It would be interesting to see what the Nachtigal DNA dictates.

The very good news is that my doctors have given me an 85% chance of full recovery with no reocurrence of the colon cancer, and as someone who lives in the gambling mecca of the world I will gladly take those odds.

I know that nobody likes to hear about the C-word so thanks for indulging me in reading my little story. Life is precious every day. I can cry at the drop of a hat now because my heart overflows and spills out through my eyes when I think about how much I love my precious Dad and Mom and how blessed I am in so many ways.

Cherish every day.

Love, Nancy

cousins julie & gisel are fishin' for stories

Julie is right! We need more relatives participating in our family blog! So, this is an invitation to all aunties, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and friends of the family - we need your input!

HOW TO POST: E-mail Julie for a link to post. You will have to open a google account, but this is free and easy to do. If you need any technical assistance, call me and I can talk you through it. Julie's e-mail and my phone number are on page one of the family newsletter. We're looking forward to expanding our contributors and continuing to share family stories, photos and fun.

Funny story I heard

My friend from South Dakota was telling me about his mother-in-law who lives in Sioux Falls. An older lady, she's had a couple of strokes and is not one to listen to doctors' advice. When she was recovering from the first stroke the doctor was trying to determine the severity of the damage. He asked her if she knew who freed the slaves. "Janklow" she promptly replied.

of dialogues and polemic

i was asked in a message on my wall on facebook to remove the political postings i put on this blog and to post something warm and fuzzy. i'd like to write here about why i'm not going to do that. as i see it, a very big part of why i have grown up with strong political leanings is due to being a nachtigal. nachtigals are political and i know that some nachtigals are even republicans--why not be one if you can afford it, right? my dad always said that he was hoping and striving to be a republican himself one day...as soon as he had made enough money. we're still working on that in our branch of the family.

so, it seemed natural to me to write about politics and share political articles of interest on our family blog during this most important and historic election in at least a generation (certainly in my lifetime). the purpose of a blog is to be very immediate...so i shared my immediate reactions to videos and articles i saw as the campaign progressed. what i had HOPED would happen is that if other nachtigals reading this blog (all two of them) didn't agree, they would post something themselves and engage in an argument--presenting another side. because in this case, there was only one side that i could defend. i hoped that other articulate nachtigals, even if i disagreed with them, might at least post their reactions to my postings in the comments.

that did not happen. there could be a number of reasons:

1. no one is reading.
2. people don't care.
3. everyone agreed with me (unlikely).
4. the technology is beyond those nachtigals reading this blog.
5. people didn't have an opinion about this important election (i could scarcely make myself type that one).

i don't know what the reason was, but i will say that i am disappointed that no one engaged and even more disappointed to be asked to take down postings. this election is a part of all of our stories and to edit it out can only be an echo of what became acceptable to us during the past 8 years. 

i'd love to know what my fellow nachtigals are thinking and feeling about this election. so please, use the comments or send me a mail and i'll add you as an author on this blog.  what i'm thinking and feeling about it is a tremendous sense of relief and hope for the future. i can feel as well that my pride in being american (which had definitely been in hiding) is returning...i think that tomorrow when i'm standing in line at passport control in manila, i will not be hiding my passport away until the last minute as had become my custom. i don't feel ashamed to be an american anymore. and that's something special. 

i hope you'll share your reactions here. and i hope you'll also understand why i do not intend to remove any of the political postings i did here in the weeks up to the election.

snow days

I read this morning on Facebook.com that cousin Monica's boys are having a snow day today in Iowa City. Just the words "snow day" bring back so many wonderful South Dakota memories:

*Listening to WNAX radio station as the school closings were rattled off. Hoping to hear "Platte School District".
*Mom couln't get us out of bed for school on a normal day, but on a snow day when there was NO school, we'd launch out of bed at the crack of dawn.
*Eating hot Cream of Wheat with grape jelly toast. (We loved the lumps in the Cream of Wheat. We would demand that it not be stirred during the cooking process to insure the lumps).
*Running to the window for a look outside - making nose and hand prints; usually there was ice on the inside of the window.
*Cracking out the Monopoly game. We would play with several sets of money. The games lasted for hours. There was always a fight over who got the Scottie dog marker. We'd put the money collected from Chance, Community Chest and Get-Out-Of-Jail "in the middle" to be won for landing on "Free Parking". (Now that I live in California, I realize there is no free parking, but I digress). No one ever would put the game away when it was all over.
*Getting Dad to pull us on a sled tied to the back of his pick-up truck. (You know, people, this is not all that safe.) I remember cries of "faster faster" and then watching wide-eyed as we'd accelerate towards UNDER the truck when he had to slow down or stop. (No, not really that safe at all).
*Going to Platte Lake to sled down the lake hill on the West side of the lake.
*Watching the snow plow go by and marvelling at how wide the spray could be and how tall the snow mounds piled up.
*Going outside for a big chase game of tag on wheel-shaped circular paths we trudged out of the snow. The center was the "safe zone".
*Making snow forts.
*Snowball fights.
*Icicles sparkling in the sun and later, melting - dripping water onto the porch.
*Hearing the phone ring for Dad, the town veterinarian - some unlucky farmer usually had a calf or cow in some type of distress. Wondering how Dad was going to make it there.

I'd love to be there today for a snow day! Dibs on the Scottie dog.

thought for the day....

get out there and do the right thing!

because if we don't laugh...

we must cry...

keep this in mind when you go in to vote

because SNL has got it on the nose:

larry david is waiting for nov. 4

this was just so good and so encapsulated exactly what i'm feeling about the madness that is this campaign, that i have share larry david's oct. 22 blog from the huffington post in its entirety: I can't take much more of this. Two weeks to go, and I'm at the end of my rope. I can't work. I can eat, but mostly standing up. I'm anxious all the time and taking it out on my ex-wife, which, ironically, I'm finding enjoyable. This is like waiting for the results of a biopsy. Actually, it's worse. Biopsies only take a few days, maybe a week at the most, and if the biopsy comes back positive, there's still a potential cure. With this, there's no cure. The result is final. Like death. Five times a day I'll still say to someone, "I don't know what I'm going to do if McCain wins." Of course, the reality is I'm probably not going to do anything. What can I do? I'm not going to kill myself. If I didn't kill myself when I became impotent for two months in 1979, I'm certainly not going to do it if McCain and Palin are elected, even if it's by nefarious means. If Obama loses, it would be easier to live with it if it's due to racism rather than if it's stolen. If it's racism, I can say, "Okay, we lost, but at least it's a democracy. Sure, it's a democracy inhabited by a majority of disgusting, reprehensible turds, but at least it's a democracy." If he loses because it's stolen, that will be much worse. Call me crazy, but I'd rather live in a democratic racist country than a non-democratic non-racist one. (It's not exactly a Hobson's choice, but it's close, and I think Hobson would compliment me on how close I've actually come to giving him no choice. He'd love that!) The one concession I've made to maintain some form of sanity is that I've taken to censoring my news, just like the old Soviet Union. The citizenry (me) only gets to read and listen to what I deem appropriate for its health and well-being. Sure, there are times when the system breaks down. Michele Bachmann got through my radar this week, right before bedtime. That's not supposed to happen. That was a lapse in security, and I've had to make some adjustments. The debates were particularly challenging for me to monitor. First I tried running in and out of the room so I would only hear my guy. This worked until I knocked over a tray of hors d'oeuvres. "Sit down or get out!" my host demanded. "Okay," I said, and took a seat, but I was more fidgety than a ten-year-old at temple. I just couldn't watch without saying anything, and my running commentary, which mostly consisted of "Shut up, you prick!" or "You're a fucking liar!!!" or "Go to hell, you cocksucker!" was way too distracting for the attendees, and finally I was asked to leave. Assuming November 4th ever comes, my big decision won't be where I'll be watching the returns, but if I'll be watching. I believe I have big jinx potential and may have actually cost the Dems the last two elections. I know I've jinxed sporting events. When my teams are losing and I want them to make a comeback, all I have to do is leave the room. Works every time. So if I do watch, I'll do it alone. I can't subject other people to me in my current condition. I just don't like what I've turned into -- and frankly I wasn't that crazy about me even before the turn. This election is having the same effect on me as marijuana. All of my worst qualities have been exacerbated. I'm paranoid, obsessive, nervous, and totally mental. It's one long, intense, bad trip. I need to come down. Soon. 

* * *

and i have the benefit of an entire ocean between me and the madness. how are all of you coping when you're subjected to the hateful ads? i'm very grateful to escape that.

time zones and news cycles

when i get up in the morning, there have still been a lot of news hours going on in the US, so these days, i'm quite entertained to see what the latest madness from the US campaign has brought while i slept.  here's just a few from this morning:

1. sarah palin's $150,000 shopping spree, including $75,000 at neiman marcus. hmmm, i wonder how many other hockey moms and joe six-packs she ran into while she was there? i also wonder what her old clothes were like that she needed to go all imelda to that extent? perhaps tho', she was just trying to stimulate the economy.  good on ya, sarah!
   
2. in new mexico, you can be drunk when you vote (is THAT how people will bring themselves to vote mcpalin?), but not wearing a t-shirt with a political message. especially if it says "obama."
3. this morning, on CNN i saw a story about electronic voting machines in west virginia that just "happened" to switch votes to mccain, despite the obama line being clearly pressed by voters. officials claimed there were no irregularities and an especially dopey official was trotted out to assure viewers that even if he, who happened to be republican, wanted to tamper with the machines, he sure didn't know how. yeah. right. strangely, i can find no link to this piece on the CNN website.
4. sarah palin flies her kids around on alaska's tab. for personal travel, like watching daddy's snowmobile race. (this one seems familiar, i think it reared its head a few weeks ago too, either that or i dreamed it.)
5. sarah palin thinks that the vice president runs the US senate, going so far as to say that "if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom..." call me crazy, but when i apply for a job, i try to know what it actually entails. and who is brandon anyway? joe the plumber's son?

i don't know about you, but i'm going to miss this when it's all over, for the sheer entertainment value.