White Hanukkah

We had a white Hanukkah! We had a MAJOR snowstorm - MAJOR. On December 19th we got like, over 20 inches of snow! Okay, it was after Hanukkah, but whatever. Close enough. The snow was beautiful - so light and fluffy and soft. I'd never seen snow like it before - it always gets so icy up here as soon as the snow falls. But this time it stayed soft and beautiful for days - and we had a lot of fun walking around our condo complex, up to our knees in snow. Photographic evidence:

Us out front when it was still snowing, and my cute little car, all covered with snow!

Knee-deep in snow in the parking lot in front of the condo:

The snow plow made this crazy wall of snow - it was so high!

The snow behind our house, and Gus standing in it:

Me, walking down to the creek behind our house, and my snowman!

I insisted on making a snow angel:

And me, walking in the snow:

We enjoyed it for a few days - it's good exercise, walking in knee-deep snow! But it rained on Christmas Day, and all of the snow melted. :( I guess it's better than having huge drifts of disgusting, dirty snow everywhere (which is what usually happens), but it was so pretty and soft.

In other news, no news. I went to Hopkins for my monthly blood test on December 22nd, and my "report card" (blood counts) was all normal and good! I got my H1N1 shot, and I even got to walk around the hospital without a mask for the first time! No more mask in the hospital, wooohoooo! Unless someone near me is coughing or sneezing or sick. In which case I'd probably punch them in the face (I'd put on a glove first, of course, and then use Purell) and then walk away before I'd actually put that damned mask back on. :)

I've also been cooking/baking, of course. I haven't posted in SO long - there have been a lot of yummy things around here. Some highlights:

Couscous and Feta Stuffed Bell Peppers





"Chocolate Decadence" - only 315 calories, people!





1 Jessica's Pizza





Parchment Baked Salmon with Lemon and Basil





Pumpkin Apple Pie





Portobello Lasagna Rollups





Linzer Cookies





Chrismukkah Cookies





And our beautiful turkey breast and holiday dinner spread - latkes, cranberry sauce, green beans, challah, and caramelized onion, apple, and sage stuffing:

And as a direct result of the holiday turkey - turkey club sandwiches (with turkey bacon, of course) and turkey stock! The funny photo of the stock in the pot in the sink - it's surrounded by snow -we needed a quick way to cool the stock down before putting it in the fridge, so Gus went outside and got buckets of snow. Worked like a charm.

Italian Wedding Soup







Gus's birthday cake! It's my favorite chocolate cake/frosting recipe, courtesy of Nigella Lawson.








It's not too beautiful here, but it tasted amazing - Pear Crisps with Vanilla Brown Butter







Herbed Baked Eggs (or if you want to be fancy, oeufs en cocotte)

And last - Chrismukkah photos. The first is of our pretty tree, the second is our fireplace and mantle, and the last is us video chatting with Bev, Bill, Emma, and David on Christmas Day - being 3,000 miles away really sucks, but we used the video chat to open presents with Bill and Bev in the morning, and then chat again in the evening, so it was kinda sorta not really but a little bit like being there with them. And hopefully next year, we will be there with them.

I think that's enough for one post - geeze.

I guess it's settled!

They're huge hamsters. I was mostly convinced, but I'm grateful to Kia for finally clearing it up for me with some finality.




This is in reference to my post last May - I really wanted to believe there was another, tiny, complete hamster universe somewhere. Dreams smashed again.

Happy Hanukkah!

My chimera and cytogenetics tests came back (actually they came back quite a while ago), and everything is normal! My chimera is still 100% donor blood. Yay!

I haven't been posting because I've been living life as a normal person - what a concept. I've been working from home a bit; we turned the 2nd bedroom into a kind of sewing studio, so now it's easy to work on projects or freelance from home. I've been hanging out with friends, going out to dinner, cooking, etc. On Friday I found myself in Whole Foods around 4pm, and it was quite crowded - and I realized as I was checking out that I was okay with it! It was a weird feeling. I mean, I'm really vigilant about staying away from anyone sniffling, coughing, or sneezing, and obviously I won't be going to any concerts or crowded restaurants any time soon, but I'm okay with being around (some) people again. And I can even eat salads and raw vegetables in restaurants! My doc okayed it - I actually emailed him and asked explicitly whether or not raw veggies at restaurants were allowed, and he said YES! No sushi, no raw eggs, no carpaccio, but a salad with wine poached pears, blue cheese, pecans, and a red wine vinaigrette (what I ate on Friday)? Yes, please!

I'm posting today for 2 reasons - to wish everyone a Happy Hanukkah, and to make sure everyone has the opportunity to see this video, which can make someone smile on even the worst of days:



I mean, seriously?!

Cancer-free!

I'm cancer-free! My tests came back negative, showing no sign of leukemia in the marrow (or blood). Unfortunately the chimera test and the cytogenetic tests aren't back yet, but the doctor says he doesn't anticipate anything bad, and that if the chimera is less than 100% donor blood, we have a plan in place.

I'm relieved - for now! Just wanted to give a quick update, since it's been a tense few weeks leading up to this. More later - just wanted to post the good news!

Now we wait.

Sooooo...I celebrated my 6 month birthday on Sunday. It was a nice day, and it happened to coincide with a dinner hosted by the Buck Foundation that we were invited to at a fancy restaurant in DC, so that was kind of fun. As far as my 6 month milestone, it came with a 6 month bone marrow biopsy, which I had yesterday.

NOT FUN.

I know I've already ranted at length about how awful they are, about how it's a "10 out of 10" on the pain scale, about how I'd pretty much rather do anything else than have one, but seriously, it all came flooding back yesterday. It was awful. I don't like conscious sedation (fentanyl and Versed) because while it does take the edge off during the aspiration/biopsy procedure, it makes me feel like sh*t the rest of the day. The alternative being having the procedure done with no drugs at all, or some very light oral meds. I ended up taking 1 mg of Ativan and 5 mg of Oxycodone. In other words, I was basically doing it on NOTHING. Because 1 mg of Ativan is child's play at this point, and 5 mg of Oxycodone, while slightly taking the edge off the pain I feel after the procedure, does nothing to help with the pain during the actual procedure. It wasn't pretty.

There's this waiting area right outside the room where I was having the procedure, with a few padded benches where outpatient people can sit and wait (what for, I'm not sure, but I know it's not for a bone marrow aspiration, probably chemo or some IV meds). The room I'm in is not a padded vault - in other words, you can basically hear everything going on in the room. I can only imagine what those poor people in the waiting area were thinking! The NP told me to "breathe in slowly, hold your breath at the top, then exhale very slowly". Sure. That's all good and well when you're just sitting there, but start drilling into someone's pelvic bone and that becomes pretty difficult to do. So I'm breathing fast and loudly, and screaming, and crying, and the NP is saying, "You're okay, we're almost done, I'm in, okay, you're going to feel some pressure," and Gus is saying, "You're doing great, it's almost over, you're okay," and I'm screaming some more - it totally must have sounded like I was giving birth in there! There's a little bit of residual soreness today, and I've had some slight nausea all day (not sure why), but otherwise, I'm fine now. NOW WE WAIT.

Waiting - it's the worst part - I'd say it's as bad as the aspiration itself, only it lasts MUCH longer. The aspiration is over in 5-10 minutes (I lost track of time, to be honest), and the waiting lasts a WEEK. I get my results on Monday the 23rd. Now I have a good feeling - I think it's going to be good news - but that doesn't really diminish the fear. Nothing does. My blood work yesterday was the best it's ever been - everything is completely normal. Like if I walked into a hospital and they took my blood, I'd look like a completely normal, healthy person. This is reassuring, but as I've learned from past experience, cancer defies logic and reason, so there you go. All I can do now is wait.

Now for something other than cancer talk! Last week it was so beautiful outside that Gus and I decided to go for a drive in the country. Luckily, we live so far friggin' north that that is easily accomplished. We drove out to the Monocacy Aqueduct, and it was so beautiful. I'll let you read the wiki page for more info - it really is an interesting place, I'm just not qualified (or in the mood) to do the explaining myself. In any case, it was beautiful, here are a few pics:

The next two are from our Indian feast - we had chicken tikka masala with basmati rice, naan, and some bastardized (and really unappetizing and not at all tasty) version of palak paneer. The chicken was awesome - the spinach was awful. For dessert I had rose Falooda ice cream with chopped pistachios - it was so good.

Another night I made a spinach frittata - eh. It was good, but nothing to write home about. Although apparently I am writing home about it, so whatever!

But this next dinner - this was totally worth writing home about. It was soooooo gooooood. So so simple, and so, so good! Barefoot Contessa's shrimp scampi, which we had with homemade sourdough-ish bread and a green salad with vinaigrette (actually Barefoot Contessa's vinaigrette, hehe). And just for reference, if anyone plans on making it - cut the butter in half. You'd have a coronary if you used 12 Tbsp of butter - we used 6 and it was more than adequate.

Another night I made a ratatouille tart from Ellie Krieger's cookbook The Food You Crave, which was so so so good! And healthy! I highly recommend the cookbook - everything we've made from there has been really delicious. And it's healthy!

And last but certainly not least (anyone else notice I used a lot of italics in this post?), here are photos from my 6 month birthday. Like I said, the Buck Foundation hosted a fancy dinner in DC, so we got all dolled up. Unfortunately the photos are from the end of the night, when we got home, so I'm a bit shiny and well...full of food! Here's one full-length of me in my dress:

And here's one of Gus and me:

Hopefully we'll be celebrating again soon - after the 23rd. :)

In other quick news - I had my first haircut! You can tell in the 2nd pic especially - I now have a proper pixie cut. Jennifer was there with me for the big event - and I even saved a lock of my hair (although I do think that's a bit weird). I LOVE my hair! Short hair is awesome - I highly recommend it. So low maintenance! Who'd have thunk it - Jessica with a pixie cut. Hunh.

Thank you to everyone for the thoughtful emails, voice mails, texts, and Facebook messages yesterday (and today). They make me smile, which is a good thing. I think that's all for today - we just finished salmon with basil and lemon with Gus's awesome asparagus, and there's a pumpkin apple pie cooling on the counter (more on that later), so I'm going to go digest and get ready for pie! Which I swear isn't that bad for you - you can see the nutritional info on the recipe page. ;)

Saint-André cheese is manna from heaven.

Saint-André cheese - have you guys ever had this stuff? It's magical. It's manna from heaven. I can't stop eating it. I don't even want to know the nutritional info.

If you've never had it, go out and get some - I promise you'll thank me later.

And yet, there's more....

Just when you thought it was over...I have more photos. :)

First off - Halloween! We didn't get to dress up and go out or party this year, the flu being what it is at the moment. So instead we had brunch with Julia and Alan (and Roscoe) at their place in Arlington, then came home and Gus and I carved pumpkins, ate candy, and watched movies. It was mellow, but fun. Anyway, my pumpkin is the one on the far left - it's a kitty! I printed out a picture of a kitty and then traced it onto the pumpkin and carved - very cool. Gus's pumpkin is on the far right, and the kitties' pumpkin is in the middle. Notice how happy Gus's pumpkin looks:

After a while, Gus took his pumpkin into the kitchen and started carving it again. He decided it wasn't scary enough, so he made him scarier! So take a look at his pumpkin above, and now:

Much scarier! These are unrelated, but autumnal all the same. We drove north of our place to see the pretty leaves on the trees, and stopped at a little stand in the country. They were selling all kinds of gourds, squash, pumpkins, etc. (those probably all fall under one category but I'm not looking it up). They were beautiful. Unfortunately, all we had was a little point-and-shoot camera and the weather was awful, so the pictures aren't as good as Gus would like:

So Sunday night I decided to make us a huge Indian feast, and well, we ended up with pizza (we had the feast the next night), but we saw these items in the Indian market and I was pretty tickled. Who knew?! Pillsbury does Indian food!

Lastly, here are some AWESOME bumper stickers I saw in the Whole Foods parking lot. The owner of the car came out of the store while I was there, and we talked, and she told me how to get the stickers, so if anyone wants one, let me know. I think a few people need them, so I was planning on ordering a batch. :)

The owner of the car was a scientist from Cornell (shout-out to Val!) who had recently moved to the area, and said she needed to "represent". I think she's doing a good job.

And last...but certainly not least...Roscoe. Because he's THAT cute. Just tush and paws, but well, it's still cute.

THE END! ;)