“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.” — Mary Anne Radmacher

Badger's doctor appointment is done until next year.
I'll have to call to schedule that; I need to check on mine anyway.

There was this one woman at the checkout; she'd been standing there trying to make an appointment, I guess for a good ten minutes before Badger came out.
Badger and another woman stood waiting at least another ten minutes before they were told that if they didn't need to schedule an appointment, they could just go on and leave.
Badger did need an appointment, but that could be done over the phone.

We stopped at McDonald's and brought lunch home.
Badger said that she deserved something for getting felt up.

I've become addicted to their dirty Dr Pepper. 
I can count on one hand how many soft drinks I've had since the 90s.
Not very many.
But these are hard to resist.

We're not stopping at this particular McDonald's again.
They forgot one of my sandwiches and then acted like I was lying when I told them I was missing one.
They not-so-carefully took everything out of my bag, not once but twice, to count it, then just slung it all back in.
We got home, and our food was a bit mashed.

We were home by 12:15 p.m.

Badger and I ate and then took a quick walk around the block. 
I don't know about her, but I like to walk off my dinner sometimes.
Then we came back in and went to my room to watch TV.

Cowboy headed out to take care of those birds of his.
Then he came back inside for his before-work nap.

Just as Cowboy was leaving for work, a little storm came through.
Mostly just a lot of rain and some thunder; it didn't last long.

Badger and I moved to the front room to watch TV the rest of the evening, although we did take another small walk to the Senior Citizen Center.
We got rained on, but we don't melt.

Badger was in bed by 9:30 p.m., and Heron headed down to his RV.
I'm all alone in the creepy living room.

I got the kitchen clean, and then ADHD boredom hit. 
I went into Canva and created a new photo icon.
I managed to get it to look a bit like Badger.
I've got the blog private until I can get the old icon deleted and the new one uploaded.
Firefox and Blogger refuse to upload pictures; I have to go to Edge.
That's annoying, but if it works, it works.

Now to something weighing heavily on me tonight.
My grandmother had four kids; two of her divorced daughters moved back in with her after the divorce.
That would be my mom and my aunt.
The house was my grandmother's, make no mistake about that, and she had rules we all followed, but that's not important right now.
My two cousins and I grew up in the same house, but I won't say we were close.
My cousin's mom was unpredictable, and depending on her mood, they might be allowed to talk and play with me or they might not be.
Not as hard as one would imagine in one small house.

I lost one of my cousins to the prison system, and the other cousin graduated in 1985 and just disappeared.

Somehow or another, Girl Cousin got in touch with me probably four years ago; I'm terrible with time.
We've been texting off and on ever since.

She says we share a bond of trauma. 
I mean, our moms and our grandmother were abusive, flat truth.

She also apologized for running away, getting put in the foster care system, and basically abandoning me, but she was a child and I was a child, and it wasn't her place to rescue me.

Anyway, a year ago she had surgery to remove her colon, and today she found out she has stage 3 cancer. She found a mole, let it go too long, and well… here she is.
It hits hard. 
She's family somewhat of a stranger, but still blood.

I feel so terrible for her. 
She was always an athlete, and she'd been counting down the days after colon surgery until she could go back to Florida.
I think she's spent the majority of her adult life in Florida.
She was counting down the days until she could go back to running her Spartan marathons and going to the gym again.
Now this.

She's got two autoimmune disorders, so she said chemotherapy and anything like that is off the table. 
They don't think she could survive it.
She can have her lymph nodes removed, she's already had some taken out, and she's also had to have a skin graft with donor skin.
Or she could do absolutely nothing, and she said she'd be dead in three months.

I told her I wouldn't give her advice, but she's been a fighter all her life.
She survived a car wreck that almost killed her, and she had to have her face totally rebuilt.
She's lived with these two autoimmune disorders.
She's survived having her colon removed.

She's a fighter.
If anyone can beat this, it's her.

But it's a shitty hand she's been dealt, and that's the truth of it.

And my heart breaks for her.