Bowling and Chemo on Wednesday

My bowling league starts at the Elks on Wednesday night! I'm really looking forward to it. I only got to bowl a few weeks last fall before all this cancer stuff came up. I didn't get to do the "No-Tap" league last spring either. (In No-Tap, if you knock nine pins down on the first ball, it counts as a strike. I love that.) I also have chemo Wednesday so hopefully I won't be delayed getting to the Elks Club on Wednesday night. I'll get to bowl on steroids! (Before chemo, they give you a steroid which always gives me good energy for two days.)

Speaking of energy, I've been feeling better lately except for that pain in my lower left abdomen. I haven't been so tired, and the flu-like symptoms are gone. The pain in the abdomen is something I've had for 16 years. I've been told that it's scar tissue on my ovary, ovulation (not the case now!), spastic colon, or a cyst in my ovary which I've seen on an ultrasound. It was a perfectly round bubble. I could be a level if there was a window on my ovary. The cyst sometimes goes away. At first, I thought this pain was spastic colon when it came back recently, but after reading about it, I don't think so. I think it's the cyst in the ovary. Anyway, Tylenol has been helping that.

I don't think I'll try to do tap dancing this fall as much as I want to. The Xeloda makes my feet swell and get sore, and I just don't think that will work for me. (I have been religious about putting bag balm on my feet twice a day, plus on my hands and night and wearing gloves to bed. This has helped tremendously.) Tap class is up in Ridgway, and I'm into things that are closer to home. I just don't get to fling myself into life like I used to.

The Elks Club is half a block from the bookstore and two blocks from home. The bowling alley only has two lanes, and we have to hire local kids to do pinsetting. There are these old-fashioned lights over the lanes. It's like an antique bowling alley - the lodge itself is over a hundred years old. The lanes are warped which I like because sometimes I find the groove and bowl really well (for me). Also, I think the ball stays out of the gutters because of the warped lanes. My average used to be about 115. Since I haven't bowled in a year, I'll be lucky to start out over 100, but hey, that just means my handicap will be higer.

I have two 10-pound bowling balls. One I had especially drilled for me, the other I got from my neighbor (who is C.W. McCall's daughter-in-law) at a garage sale for$1.00. The dollar ball will curve if I throw it just right and hit the head pin at an angle. The other ball rolls straighter and is good for picking up spares. I tend to flip my little girly wrist so throwing a straight ball isn't easy for me.

I was in a writing workshop all weekend and got some good feedback about my memoir I'm working on about having cancer.

The weather was beautiful here this weekend and the fall colors are stil good, so we had lots of people in town. I have to work quite a bit at the store this week as our main employee, Elwood, is taking time off for his wife's knee-replacement surgery. I'm hoping all goes well for Roseana whose surgery is today.

So I better scoot. Happy Autumn to everyone! Just up here in Colorado excited about hurling those bowling balls.

Sincerely, Caroline