My experiment with a new chemo schedule was short-lived.  Having taken the three pills every morning for two years, I decided to shift to taking them before bed, hoping that I could lessen the number or depth of crashes during the day.  But once I made the shift, I slept as much as, if not more than, I had before.  There were no changes in my stomach problems.  We usually eat dinner between 8 and 9 p.m., and I have to wait two to three hours after eating before taking the chemo.  That timing wasn't in itself a problem: I usually go to bed at 11:11 p.m.  No, that's not some weird superstition.  If I watch the monologue and the first half of the first interview on Letterman or Leno, I find myself being tucked in at 11:11 (and falling asleep by 11:12).  But perhaps because I couldn't eat after 9, almost every evening, I found myself with a hankering for a later snack--some fresh watermelon, a Dove bar, something.  So with no real benefits evident from the change, I'm back on my old schedule. 

My theory is that if I accomplish one thing a day (beyond sitting on my tuches watching TV or reading), the day has been a success.  Yesterday, both Mohamed and I got much needed haircuts.  Success on Saturday!  Earlier in the week, I spent 90 minutes at the DMV waiting to get my driver's license renewed.  I was uncharacteristically a little paranoid about this.  Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, is busy around the country working to reduce voter turnout.  He was instrumental in writing the very restrictive immigration laws in Alabama and Arizona, and his current project is disenfranchising indigenous peoples in Alaska.  Kansas passed a voter ID law that went into effect with the last election.  Since I let my passport expire, the driver's license would be my sole government-issued photo ID.  Now, according to the renewal card I received in the mail, I needed to bring proof of residence to renew the license.  The card suggested a utility bill, but I don't get utility bills anymore; I went paperless a long time ago.  I had just gotten a property tax bill, so I brought that, though I realized that the fact that I paid taxes on a certain property doesn't necessarily mean that I live there.  My unease was groundless.  After the hour and a half wait, the renewal took about five minutes, and the examiner didn't ask for any documents other than my old license.  My photo even turned out decently, so another day, another success.

Visitors came this week bearing gifts: a homemade pumpkin pie, a selection of muffins, and a boughten coconut cream pie.  I don't understand why spell check doesn't recognize the perfectly good word 'boughten.'  I have support on my side in the last lines of Robert Frost's extremely dark poem "Provide, Provide": 

The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag
Was once the beauty Abishag,

The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.

Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.

Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.

Some have relied on what they knew,
Others on being simply true.
What worked for them might work for you.

No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!    

The bleakness of the last tercet is only reinforced by Frost's use of the regionalism, probably unfamiliar to most of his readers, the colloquial and discordant 'boughten.'