The Thing About the Holidays

Long-time readers might have noticed I don’t write many posts about how to handle anything at any time holidays and cancer. My view on this time of year is a bit….meh.

Oh I like hoopla and stuff to a degree. I love Halloween, as I’ve said here more times than I can count. But the Thanksgiving to New Year weeks are, um, different for me.

Let me back up. As I’ve said a few times on here, I am a pet/house sitter, and before I went full time into this business I worked non-profit, and before that—dun dun duuuuuuun retail hell. Back when I worked retail, as soon as January arrived, the outlet mall—at the beach—shortened the open hours. It was a nice reward after a hectic season. Can I be blamed for looking forward to those quiet winter months a little more than the big red and green holiday that everyone else loves? As a store manager, there were other bonuses—having a less complicated employee schedule to create being one of them. I started the house sitting while still in retail, and yes, my easier, month-long gigs happened as the older crowd took looooong trips in warmer southern areas after the new year began. Christmas was, and is, always hectic—lots of people trying to schedule me for overnight/weekend stays, or for hour long visits on the actual holidays. I work harder on Christmas days than most other days of the year.

One of my favorite films is “Holiday Inn”, with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Bing’s character had a similar complaint about working more on the holiday. He goes on to buy a farm, finds out that it’s hard work, converts it to an inn only open (with a floor show of course) on holidays. The rest of the year he closes up—so he can be lazy. (See more at end of post.) In short, maybe that film is a favorite because I related to Bing’s complaint.

So you see, when other bloggers are writing about resolutions, or handling holidays with cancer, or writing messages of hope at this special time of year, I’m either too busy to notice, or just thinking about my usual curmudgeonly complaints—because in some aspects, these days are not much different for me. Just another day of work—actually a harder day. But I try to be aware—I had a few harsh/challenging posts lined up and realize most people don’t want to read that sort of thing right now. I’ll wait until after the New Year.

The funny little thing about the holidays is, well, I find them a bit disruptive. So much of my life revolves around routine. Not that changing up a routine isn’t a good thing—it is. But when there is illness, well, routine is a friend. As I’ve mentioned a few times, my primary pet sitting client has Chronic Lyme. About 2 years ago I became less pet sitter and more human caretaker. Her day is divided into a schedule of taking antibiotics, probiotics a few hours later, medicines to alleviate the hell these medicines cause the stomach, and eating. I begin at 6AM and it ends at 8:30 PM. My day is divided up into alarms that tell me when to take her meds to her, or prepare a meal. In between times I often take her to appointments, take care of household matters, and yes, care for the dog! I do these things Mon – Fri, so her primary caregiver, her husband (who also has Lyme, but not chronic), can have a break. For me, life is The Schedule.

Here’s the thing: The Schedule doesn’t budge for weekends or holidays. The things that happen, the medicines to take, they happen every damn day. There is no day off.

I remember in 2010, I had my last infusion of The Red Devil that week between Christmas and New Year’s. Needless to say, I didn’t much give a shit about all the festivity around me. I resented the closed doors for the holidays—the disruption of the schedule, because I just wanted to get finished. I was scared and afraid if I missed a day or something, the drugs wouldn’t work, and the cancer would continue to grow. My rational mind knew that it didn’t work like that—this was just FEAR in overdrive.

My point is, disease doesn’t stop for the holidays, and it is a bit unfair to expect cancer patients, or anyone with illness, to just put it aside and join the fun. I don’t mean to be a wet blanket. And yeah I know, life goes on, can’t expect the employees (doctors and all) to ignore Christmas because of all the cancer patients. But disease goes on too—holidays be damned.

I could go on and on. One silly pet/house sitter story related to holidays being disruptive includes how garbage collection day gets messed up, which adds to my list of tasks—trying to find out why a client’s garbage has been ignored for over a week—calling the collection company on behalf of the client and being told since I’m not the homeowner (I didn’t have some account number or password to verify paying customer status), nothing could be done. Because yeah, I’m a random person gaming a system to cheat the company out of garbage collection. Eye roll—everyone knows the best way to get out of paying for garbage collection is to take your trash surreptitiously to an industry or mall dumpster—I see this done ALL THE TIME. It’s a million little stories like this—they actually happened to me—that make me leery of holidays. I just get a longer list of work tasks each Christmas. I learned long ago to not really care much about holiday frivolity, and just get my (extra) work done.

So forgive a Cancer Curmudgeon for the lack of holiday themed blog posts. I just don’t have much to say about this set of holidays. I’m not whining about it—I chose my work and it makes me happy. Having no religious affiliation makes it easier as well. All I’m saying is—hey I get it if people with illness just find all this stuff a bit disruptive. Some folks find solace in putting away their worries for a while during the holidays and that’s fine. For others holidays magnify troubles. Some, like myself, find it to be just another day, and maybe a little disruptive. Personally I look forward to less hub-bub that the boring next few months can bring (so long as we don’t get any snow in my one snowplow beach town).

The work of cancer advocacy will still be there next year, after this short break.

***The other funny thing about “Holiday Inn” is how wildly the Bing Crosby character underestimates the “quiet farm life”. He has a nervous breakdown which inspires him to turn his place into the holiday inn. You see, those cows don’t give a shit about Christmas, they still gotta be milked. So while he sought to escape his showbiz NYC life with 2 floor shows on holidays, he failed to see the reality behind some stupid image of quiet country life. I see some of that in my own area. People retire to this rural beach community and take to lawn gardening with gusto. Then the upkeep of a big lawn (or the cost of having a service do it) lands on their head and they downsize to a senior living community in which that stuff is managed. Mowing the lawn seems novel until one has to do it all the time. They were so blinded about getting out of the hustle and bustle of city life, so blinded by the idea of slower life here, and well, learn a lesson. I’m a “from here” and the “come heres” always marvel at how infrequently they get to the beach upon actually moving to it. Don’t I know it! I didn’t spend one day just lying on the sand in 2016. Maybe next year.