I Hate My Kitchen!

Let me describe my kitchen. I live in an old house in Seattle that is roughly 800 sq ft; in other words TINY. The kitchen is the largest room of the house, taking up about a third of the space. Large kitchens are usually a great bonus, but not in this case…in this case the kitchen is ineffectual and utterly irritating.

To start with, it has only one counter and the space is taken up by the sink and the dish rack I must have because there's no dishwasher (oh the agony!). The counter is also pretty useless because there is not a single outlet anywhere near it. No place for a toaster or a microwave. No place to make waffles or smoothies or mix cookie dough. So my appliances are scattered throughout the room on various pieces of furniture not intended to be in kitchens. The only viable work space for preparing anything is the small table we eat on, and it has to be dragged near the back wall to reach the outlet.

The second source of my frustration is the stove, an ancient 1960s retro monster. It has two small burners (one doesn't heat up all the way), one large burner (crooked), and instead of a second large burner it has a crock pot built in. The oven is small, has only one shelf, and doesn't maintain a constant temperature because the heat escapes from the door. The only thing that is good about the stove is that it is so large it has extra drawers to store pots and pans.

The third issue I have with the kitchen is that a portion of it is completely taken up by the back door, which must be open at all times. What? Let me explain. This lovely old house has the luxury of a laundry room because the owner decided to convert the back porch into an enclosed space. Unfortunately, they took two short cuts when they built it. The first is that they left the original back door in place, doorbell and all, and simply added a second back door. The second is that they didn't bother to insulate the room. So, the door from the laundry room to the kitchen has to be open all the time so that the pipes don't freeze (don't even get me started on what an expensive waste of energy this is). Now we could, theoretically, shut the door during the summer, but we'd need to open it to get in the house so the space behind it would still need to be left open.

My final complaint, and this is really what spawned this rant, is that this relatively large, spacious kitchen has a vast expanse of white no-wax floor. Dirt sticks to it, molds to it, becomes one with it, and it seems that no amount of scrubbing on ones knees for hours will ever get it clean. I have to use a special cleaner and within hours of cleaning it's dirty again. We could get rid of the cats and use the front door to come in the house, but even then I doubt it would make a difference. I spent a good part of today trying to clean the damn floor and I gave up with exhaustion after getting to about a quarter of it. Does that quarter look sparkling and new? Hell no! There's still dirt and grime that no amount of scrubbing can clean. As a perfectionist I find it exasperating that I can't get it clean, and I can only imagine how frustrated I'd be if I had OCD. As a chemotherapy patient I have to be satisfied with how it looks now because I simply do not have the energy to do any better. SIGH

Good news? or is it?

Okay let me recap, about a month ago my CT scan results were questionable. In the words of the specialist who looked at them: "The same or worse." Monday I had another scan and got the results on Wednesday, which are "The same or better." It is clear that the tumor is not growing out of control, and that's a good thing, but what the hell is going on? Well, it's tricky because the two remaining tumors on my liver are each about the size of a pin head. In my doctor's words, "The same person could look at these scans seven different times and get seven different measurements." I've progressed into a gray area where there's no way of knowing if the tumors are active or not. Even though they show up on the CT scan does not necessarily mean that they're alive. They could be empty husks left behind when the large tumor died, or they could be a few resilient cancer cells that are resisting the treatment but too starved to spread out. So, the plan now is the same as it has always been…same treatment and the same schedule with scans every couple of months. If there continues to be no change for several more months then I'll have to decide if I'm ready to stop the chemo and just do maintenance therapy to keep the cancer in remission. It's a scary concept because as soon as my body is no longer toxic soup, whatever cancer cells are still hanging around could then flourish and spread. Many cancer patients have a great deal of trouble transitioning because the fear is always there. The chances of a stage 4 cancer returning are extremely high, so learning to live with that reality will be a challenge in itself. I remember after I was diagnosed with Epilepsy in my teens that I spent a great deal of time in fear of my next seizure. To some degree I've come to terms with the fear, but every morning I still feel a twinge of it (I have waking seizures). The same will be true of cancer, but the difference is that a seizure is unlikely to kill me but cancer is definitely deadly.