The Convivial Gist

Rem, Adel, Cecil and Au circa 2004 Cecile at our high school reunion giving a speech on being a cancer survivor 2009     Finding out that Cecile , one of my  best friends succumbed to cancer  while perusing the news feeds on my Facebook account last Black Saturday, seems surreal to me.  I am more of a visual person, hardly taking note of the written postings, more interested on photos and inane you tube cat  videos.  When I came across the condolences at her  siste r's page ,  I was reading  but not really comprehending what those words meant. Realization hit me and I started mourning her death with copious tears . We went to the same school in elementary and high school but  only became very close when we attended a community college, hooked up with 2 other girls Au and Rem.  I never imagined that it will be the start of fun friendship that anyone would wish they could have on their transition to adulthood.  We connived on lying about our age when we applied f

Fifty Three and Counting    Birthdays are always fun no matter what age and status in life you are in.  I celebrated mine with an early chat  with Gina, a mammography technologist , We had a discourse on  the weird weather in St. Louis, the Hobbit movie which should be watched in 3D to fathom  the slyness of Gollum and what I should do the rest of the day.  Yes, I had my annual date with  my own version of Terminator , the GE Senograph Machine and Gina was my Arnold Schwarzenegger (before the infidelity scandal) . Having born with a small but very dense breast, more often  my breasts would be  scrunched  by the unforgiving paddle more than twice for better image. I will dread the day when some Facebook people would start posting their mammography x-ray film on their timeline just to com pens ate for pain . Now I have to wait for the result from the beast, oops D r. Biest. Yes, I have a male gynecologist and his name is Dr. Biest. An acquaintance of mine questioned why I