9. Laura Went Gluten-Free
Don’t ask her to explain exactly and scientifically and bio-chemically and bio-engineeringly why Ed Schaeffer, her fantastic physical therapist slash spiritual guru told her to do this but she finally did, about two months ago, and except for cheating here and there, she’s been really trying to be almost entirely gluten free as much as possible. You’ll nice there are a few mitigating words and phrases there — like almost and trying and except for and as much as possible — and Ed’s wife Liza, who is in charge of the book group Laura belongs to (and only sometimes reads the books for), would say that being “sort of gluten-free” is like being “a little bit pregnant” — in other words, it’s ridiculous — but Laura is still proud of her efforts to curtail her intake of gluten, for whatever reasons she’s supposed to do it. The only positive effects she’s noticed — and not to venture off into dreaded TMI [too much information] territory — is an improvement in her digestion, if you will, and that’s the reason she’s going to continue at least trying to be as gluten-free as she possibly can. As for why this constitutes a valid partial excuse for her lapse in blogging, you try tracking down gluten free waffles and bread and oatmeal and a bunch of other “safe foods” at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and on various gluten free — known in the trade as “GF” — websites. It takes hours.

10. Laura developed what she thought were the painful beginnings of lymphedema arm.

Back in June, when Laura was supposed to drive to Buffalo, her arm — the one under which the nodes were removed during her surgery way back when — started to kill. It hurt, ached, and was tender to the touch, and Laura actually had to postpone her trip by a day or so in order to squeeze in an appointment with the aforementioned Ed Schaeffer to get her arm at least semi-painless. No offense to Ed, but the pain and enormous discomfort came back, no matter how much she elevated it during the middle of the day and how many pillows she shoved underneath it before she went to bed — it still hurt like a mother-effer. Finally, at some point, when she was browsing through the website she’s supposed to be regularly blogging for — the Health Central Network site www.mybreastcancernetwork.com — she realized, Hey! Maybe I have lymphedema arm!!

Accessing her deep need to self-diagnose, Laura immediately hit the site with ferocious curiosity and then began hitting other sites, all in an effort to figure out whether or not she had the beginning symptoms of lymphedema arm. In fact, she emailed one of her fellow expert bloggers and new online friend, writer extraordinnaire and breast cancer survivor PJ Hamel, with her questions — including whether or not she needed a compression sleeve-type arm garment — who told her swiftly and without hesitation to get herself to a physical therapy practice that specialized in lymphedema prevention and treatment ASAP. So Laura did. And after her first two sessions with someone named Linda, her arm has been miraculously pain free.

11. Laura got a new color printer to print out the new book.

This might seem like a throw-away excuse — I mean, because, like, how long does it take to get a printer and plug it in — but you’d be surprised at how much time it took Laura to figure out what kind of printer she should get. It’s not like she can’t make a move without consulting Consumer Reports — in fact, she’s too cheap to get an online-subscription because for some reason she thinks it should be free to browse their archives — but it still takes time to poke around online, looking for a color printer that isn’t too big or too huge or too expensive or too-office-like. Then, once you decide on what you’re going to get, you have to order it, or go to the store — like, Staples –and then you have to shlep it to your car, shlep it inside the house, in Laura’s case, shlep it up to the fucking third floor where her desk is and which is accessed by this weird set of StairMaster-type stairs — and then of course you have to take it out of the box and set it up. This required knives and scissors and bubble wrap and wrestling Ben OUT of the big printer box once it was empty and figuring out how to get the ink cartridges flowing and all the computers networked with the new printer without fucking up the network with the old printer. Easier said than done. Laura thus feels no guilt whatsoever about including this as an excuse for not branting for so long.

12. Laura actually got a paycheck and had to make a deposit.

This was really big news — Laura got paid! – an on-signing payment for the Patti Novak project — so she had to take time out of her busy busy month to open yet another new business account at her local Bank of America branch since her other two business accounts had been closed over the years due to inactivity. Laura was, to be frank, and to use Boston vernacular, wicked pissed when she arrived at the bank with her check and her deposit slip only to find out that yes, once again, her two-year-old business account was closed and she was going to have to waste another hour and a half opening another one. You see, when you have a business account you have to prove that you’re a business — even if you don’t earn any money for years at a time like Laura’s business — and that means you have to show the bank your Articles of Incorporation. Luckily they had those articles of incorporation on file electronically so it only took an hour and fifteen minutes to get the account open. But as you can see it took a lot of time and energy to deposit that check so it’s yet another valid excuse to add to the list.