I have incredibly sensitive skin. My skin sees a razor and it freaks out before I even take the safety cap off. Not shaving isn’t a choice for me. Why? Oh, just childhood trauma. My mother neglected to lead me into the way of female bodycare (and my mother did shave her legs) and when I was twelve, I got the hell teased out of me for not having shaved legs. So whatever, it’s society’s conditioning, but dammit, it was the South, it was harsh, and I want smooth fucking legs. Deal.

Anyway. I went to [insert evil music here] Wal-Mart and grabbed three different kinds of shave gel and four different types of razors, chosen by sight or because a friend recommended them.

The Candidates:

Shaving Cream/Gel/Whatever
Skintimate Moisturizing Shave Gel, Sensitive Skin

Gillette Satin Care Shave Gel for Women, Sensitive Skin

Soft Shave Moisturizing Shower Shave Lotion for Women, Extra Sensitive

Razors
Gillette Sensor3 3 Blade Disposable Razor for Women

Gillette Daisy Ultragrip

Schick Xtreme 3 Triple Blade Closeness Razors for Women with Vitamin E

Noxzema Triple Blade Disposable Razor

The Method:
I’ll choose one shaving cream and use one of each razor with it. I’ll rate the razor on the factors of closeness, razor rash, during shaving feel, and post shaving feel. For the cream, I’ll have to see how it affects the factors of the razor. Ratings will range from 0 (don’t try this razor unless you’ve had a recent tetanus shot)-10 (Bliss. Smooth Bliss) and have commentary.

God save my legs.

I’m nervous.

I’m not generally a nervous person. I’m generally hard to scare, with spiders, bees, and scorpions being exceptions. Mentally, I’m fantastic. I’m stable, more stable than I’ve been in a long long time. Both the shrink-docs have said it’s the best they’ve ever seen me. Nice. It’s a great thing. Haven’t been hospitalized since last August with no signs of having to be hospitalized psychiatrically again. Time to do a dance, time to get on with life.

But I think my body hates me.

Symptoms started way back in May. Way more tired than usual, sweating much more than usual (before it got hot, so it wasn’t the temperature change), headaches, fevers that’d come and go, unexplained bruising, and general feeling like crap. Stuff’s only gotten worse since then, not better. There’ve been no major med changes, no lifestyle changes, nothing different. ‘Cept the physical stuff. So, I’m all, “The hell?!” Finally saw the doc. He did blood tests, a urine tests, chest x-ray. Lab says everything is all normal. Cool.

But the symptoms don’t go away. They get worse. I ignored it, figuring it’d get better. Then I got itchy. And not your “random tickle itch” or your mosquito bite itch or your “just put on a wool sweater itch”, but itching. Serious, deep in the skin or something itching. All in random spots with no explanation. And spots, too. “Spots?” you say? Mmm. Exactly that. They aren’t zits, they aren’t generall itchy, and it’s not eczema. They’re raised red spots. In totally random areas, too. On my shin, the side of my leg, the side of my chest, on the inside of my elbow. The tiredness gets worse. Since I wasn’t terribly comfortable with my current PCP at the time, I switched and got an appointment with a “new” doc (the doc I had before she switched practices and I stayed at the old practice with a new doc). She found some swelling in the front of my neck. Requested my chart from my old doc so she could read it and figure out where to go next. We get to play the “rule-out” game! Whee!

That was…almost three weeks ago now. I called my old doc’s office the other day. Not only had they not sent out my chart, but they hadn’t even opened the mail in order to read the request to send my chart. I call the new doc’s office and they tell the doc, who then calls me. She’s ordering for me to get a CAT scan of my chest, abdomen, and pelvis. She has to make sure it isn’t Hodgkin’s.

You know, there’s something that’s really fucking creepy to hear when your doctor says Hodgkins. Over and over. And ordering tests to make sure it isn’t that. And not like it’s just whatever-bloodwork, but a whole damn CAT scan. The kind where you have to drink that nasty-ass contrast. The kind where your HMO says “Why the hell are you ordering this?” Incidentally, she also ordered a 24 hour urine test.

I didn’t know those existed, much less what they are. She said to me, “Now, you’re going to go to the lab, and they’ll give you a bucket…”

“A bucket!?”

…my doctor laughed at me. Well, more like the shock and curiosity in my nearly-outraged sounding voice. Yes. This test means you pee in a bucket for 24 hours straight. Well, at least a bucket I can aim towards much better than one of those little damn cups. Anyway, doc said that the urine test is a long-shot to see if something chemical is wrong, and we might as we do it anyway.

Sure. Because I enjoy peeing in a bucket…and carrying a bucket o’ wee into the lab.

Yesterday, the nurse called me with the day and time of my CAT scan (ass-early, in case you’re wondering). I also get another chest x-ray.

So I’m nervous. Intellectually, I know that this is just the first on the list of shit to rule out. But it’s hard to ignore symptoms that are really starting to interfere with your life. Watching that kind of impact, feeling shittier and shittier, wanting to know what’s wrong so it can be fixed, and then having your doc say things like “Hodgkins” and “lymphoma” and asking you things like “Is there a history of cancer in your family?” and it not being the first appointment with them ever. And being told by people “Well, Hodgkins has a good rate for treatment, like 90% of people survive.” Wonderful. I better not have it.

My psychiatrist asked me today, “So, um, how do you feel about this?”

After I made a comment about him actually asking me a shrink-like question, I told him, “Right now, I’m nervous. But if I have lymphoma, I will be Very Pissed.”

Yes, you can verbalize capitalized letters.

Someone on Hatrack said something very poignant about death and I wanted to remember it. No, I’m not being morbid or anything. It’s just something that speaks.

Death is only tragic when it comes before you’ve had a chance to complete your work in this world. Otherwise, as an inevitable part of life, it is no more tragic and unfair than being born. They are both parentheses framing life.

–Tante Shevester

I don’t mean the title to sound as dark as it, well, sounds. But I had some driving to do today (half an hour each way to see my new PCP, and I got to drive Nathan to and from work so I’d have the car) and got to think more than I should be allowed.

Anyway. I first got started writing way back when by writing fanfiction. Sure, some say it’s a waste, it’s total crap, all that rot. In a way, it is. It’s a type of waste, but a waste like brainstorming. But maybe not. It does take work to create a story that works. To use a point of view that doesn’t wander and is true to the narration of the story. To produce consistent characterization. Fundamental parts of writing well. And it needs to be practiced. Another thing that needs to be practiced is the task of writing itself–finding that mental state that’s…right for producing a story or paragraph or what-have-you that works. Being able to recognize a section, paragraph, sentence, word choice that doesn’t work and having the temerity to delete it or scribble it out and start over. Or see when a particular section is boring you to write, which pretty much means it will bore the reader to read.

It’s safe to play with another universe. There’s some sort of freedom in working with a structure that’s already created. Perhaps because in some way, there’s less at stake.

And other times, you come across a story that’s powerful and shows an amazing gift–that of a story that elicits the human emotions you possess because of the depth of your caring for the characters presented in the story. A story so entrenched in truth that it’s remarkable. It grabs you and takes hold and you read it breathlessly, laughing, crying, participating in their lives, suspending your own reality. It’s what I call a great story. Sure, there’s good stories. But they’re books I can set aside and remove from my mind to get on with my life and my own day. Such as Bujold’s Vorkosigan series. A really good set of tales that I enjoy reading. However, I can set them aside to such a degree that I don’t think of it again until I pick up the book.

The last great story I read was The Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. It grabbed me and wouldn’t let go until I’d finished the three books he’s published in it so far. Did I mention that the books are huge? And that the story in its entirety isn’t finish yet? Because they are and it’s not. This reality makes me both happy and sad. Happy that there’s more to read and experience, sad because I want to know how it ends, how the characters I’ve come to care about end up.

I found such a story again this weekend. Yes, it was fanfiction. But the writer did something very hard to achieve in such a framework–created an entirely new character that you end up caring about as much as the characters with whom you’re already familiar. The old characters, the ones you’ve lived with and seen through many adventures, that’s fairly “easy” to characterize. But to throw in an unknown, a stranger into this family of sorts, and make them as compelling as the existing family…it’s a gift, a talent, the signal of a writer. A storyteller.

Another confession. I am a hopeless romatic. It’s a closeted thing. Not many folks know about it, I don’t think. Maybe because it’s one of the issues within myself that I’m not at ease with at ALL, the idea of love and romance and all that jazz. Another safe place to explore writing things with which I’m not comfortable.

So, you have fair warning. It’s a “romance”…but not quite. It feels almost…real. The story, Echoes is by Ke, an author in the newsgroup alt.startrek.creative. It’s gripping. If you watched Star Trek: The Next Generation and can, I suppose, tolerate fanfiction, read it. It’s good. Damn good. However, it’s a work in progress. You were warned.

So…it got me thinking, as I said at first. Realizing the elements of characterization, narration, style, etc. I didn’t pull anything directly from the story itself, but the experience, the experience of what it’s like to read a good story, reminded me of how I write. I mean, how I mold my characters and add elements to them that give them the depth of telling a truth of sorts, some element of what it’s like to be a human being.

I’ve realized that I’ve hit some sort of plateau in the current novel I’m writing. It was missing something, and it was beginning to be boring to write. Now that boringness translates to being boring to read, meaning it certainly isn’t what I want to produce as a writer. Basically, the driving idea behind the story I’m telling wasn’t deep enough. It needs more levels. I think I may have stumbled on them, through my re-entering the silly world of fanfiction and my chances to think and stretch my writing muscle and warm it up.

At the heart of Awaken the Sleeping Gods is the notion of unreachable dreams and how they’re built into society, such as it is. One of the characters wanted the simpe acceptance and love of her mother, but she doesn’t fit society’s ideal of what a person is. This character’s society even goes so far as I cast those undesireables out. This character has held true to that part of her–she spends her life searching for that acceptance, even after she’s been cast out, cast away, unworthy.

But there’s another character, a mirror of sorts to the first character. He’s upset, but I hadn’t quite figured out why. I’d neglected to give him a dream. He’s in the formative period of expressing a mental illness, and is angry, but there reason for his anger was nebulous at best. While people can sympathize with the idea of being generally angry at the onset of a debilitating illness, it won’t quite stick and grip as much as it could.

More thinking made me remember the first dreams I had of childhood. My first book, “The Comet and You,” and another book, National Geographic’s “Our Universe.” These two books are a meaningful part of my life, they’re what inspired me to become an astronaut. Of course, my dreams changed. Thankfully, because illnesses revealed later, not limited to my myopia, would’ve prevented me from ever becoming one. I was relieved of that heartbreak before I could even realize it would happen.

But what if it hadn’t? What if I’d structured my life around this goal, dreaming of being weightless, dreaming of seeing the stars from off the Earth, of being enraptured by the first photos from the Mars rovers, dreaming of stepping onto that red rocky soil of a planet that isn’t ours? All only to be struck by an illness that takes it all away.

Wouldn’t you be mad as hell?

My character will be.

That little linky in the right menu, ADHD. New one up, FINALLY.