When is my zenith?

Saudi Lucas McCain

It's really hot today. Ninety-six down at Julie's (not as hot here.)

Here's a new manual about exercise for people with cancer produced by UCSF. It has a table (page 13) that shows how much exercise to get based on your blood counts. I got the link from the UCSF pilates teacher's website, Sunflower Wellness. I'm hoping to get a scholarship with them so they can help me with exercise during chemo.

Tomorrow is supposed to be my nadir. When is my zenith?

Cull and I went to a Writing for Wellness workshop in Berkeley, or maybe it was Oakland, at the Women's Cancer Resource Center. It was really fun (though the traffic coming back reminded me why driving across a bridge always sounds so far.)

Here is what I wrote (unedited) in answer to the prompt, "Waking up tomorrow with my ideal body." I had a lot of fun writing it.

My ideal body has hair in all the right places, mostly on my knees.

The people who come to the Mission on weekends to party, I become one of them, I braid my knee hair into trendy patterns over my high-heeled patent leather boots. It's beyond glamorous.

I was at the table next to Channing Tatum – he's just a regular guy. He does yoga for two hours a day. I don't need to do yoga. My hips are so flexible I could give birth to conjoined twins today, no problem. Everyone wants to know me. Oprah feels insecure.

Because my hips are very flexible. My knee hair is unusual. I'm bald by choice. I was caught on camera scoffing at eyebrow pencil, which Mick Jagger's daughter copied and created a line of non-eyebrow pencils.

50 is the new 15. Justin Bieber dyed his hair gray.

My abdomen looks like a 6-pack of watermelons, the old fashioned kind, with seeds, so sweet, so wet, protected from this harsh cultural desert by a wall of rind.