3 Negatives, 3 Positives

1. Planning blight.
What are you doing next Tuesday? Living with cancer treatment turns our calender into a tombola. Pick a date. I might be able to leave the house for more than one hour. Or not. We might be at hospital. I might be recovering from 2 hours sleep after a night spent on a plastic chair in Accident and Emergency. We can't plan next Tuesday like we can't plan a holiday or secure a day trip.

2. Income drop. Sudden, severe, scary.
The accountant has called Dig's career path, adventurous. As in, we work on our wits and make an income from what we can. So far, twenty years on, it worked! But our client hears that word, cancer, and the income of 25k drops to 12k overnight. Maybe it will disappear altogether. Say what? Disasters come in threes? The icing on the cake will be rep from the VAT office come round again to scrutinise the accounts because we have no invoices going out.

3. Increased expenditure in unexpected areas.
Who knew I would need to buy a plastic sleeve? And another one! Thanks to the first being thrown away by accident. Um, maybe because it looks like a plastic bag with a string at one end. And the hospital car parking! Parking the car at the oncology ward, I whisper my gratitude to those people who fought to get free car parking for cancer patients. If it were not for you, my last and treasured one hundred pounds would vanish in a trice.

1. Gratitudes.
I can chronicle the mood swings, tears and temper tantrums, the sleeplessness, terrors, anxieties, hiccups and nausea, and I will. All with the usual and pervasive tone of woe and mortality. But we're still laughing, sitting together round the dinner table, getting jobs done and notching up big successes. Like the children's playhouse, end of garden, now project-planned for conversion into Squirrel's writing shed. Looking forward to that summer clear out, paint from scrapstore, freecycle, old desk installed with home-made bookcases. Ta-da!

2. The people we meet.
People who live another day, ring bells, clap, laugh, tell stories, find beauty in the everyday, count blessings, chase butterflies, watch birds, ask how are things, forgive me, say hello, and simply smile, when I am searching in my heart for the tiniest thing to be glad about.

3. Family and friends.
People, I love you for being so warm and happy to share your thoughts for us. The only downside to this is that I am usually very bad about keeping you updated. I keep resolving to do so on the blog. (Which I know I will do badly.)

My 2 and 3 there, they sound the same. Maybe they are enormous positives, growing beyond numbers.