I don’t get a lot of time to myself these days, so I am happy (happy?) to report that around noon today I will be the proud owner of a completed colonoscopy (which I have had to reschedule three times since January) and the best nap of my life. As part of that I had black coffee yesterday as I wrote this, dark, black, full of caffeine with no dairy to mitigate the bitter, so, you know, I might bite. Be careful.
My little sister, some folks know, is dealing with mucosal melanoma, and it’s a beast. She’s incredibly healthy, looks better than ever, but the treatments are not the kindest, and the beast is always on the move, so her doctors are chasing it. We’re hoping to see TIL treatment work for her this summer. We tried in the fall, but various vagaries of disease resulted in it not being possible. She is the reason for the colonoscopy reschedules, not her fault, and certainly her treatments are a priority over my colon (which, let’s be honest, was hoping for a fourth reschedule).
There we are at Cyndi Lauper’s last tour right after my sister was diagnosed, November 2025. It’s important, I think, to write the dates, because they start to collapse in your mind, and you think, Can it have been that long ago? It can. So, date things people. Cyndi, by the way, was magnificent. I first saw her on a stage two feet off the ground in the middle of a walkway at Temple University when I was a freshman, about ten feet away from her, drinking Knickerbocker beer (hey, I was seriously broke. Really broke.). She was just as beautiful, feminist, and talented in 2024. And there were some years in between… something on the order of geez, forty. 1984, just as Orwell predicted, was one of the worst years in my life. 2024 was no banger either. In 2026 my sister has a different hairdo, and a smaller size of pants, so different a little, and is as beautiful as she is there. I was eight when she was born, in April, and when summer came my mom went back to work, and my grandmother and I shared baby-sitting. (Listen, 1970s parents did stuff like that. We survived.) So, in some ways, when I look at her I see my first daughter, and I love her face.
My own daughter is growing up relentlessly, no matter how much I wish otherwise.
Beginning of 10th grade, still a little baby left in that face.
And the end. So freaking adorable, but more grown.
She refused to take this photo, the morning of the last day of school. She just wanted me to drive her to school already. I told her, “No worries,” and tossed the car keys on the sofa.
“Fine. Be quick,” she said.
She’s crazy about me. We all know it.
We did do a sort of tradition for Mother’s Day, we went for dim sum. Another day where I took off from the world for myself.
When she was small, and one of her toes, this little piggy had none, was still curly. And she would sometimes let me kiss her feet.
The little toe has straightened up over the years, and now lives either wild and free or firmly in a pair of Doc Martens. She takes gym in her Docs. Hardcore. OMG how do I not smooch that face constantly? Nah. She’d straight-up smack me. She’s my colorful language buddy. Every mom needs one. We’re what they call salty, together. Long-suffering Dave is a colorful language teetotaler. He married poorly for that!
I have some pet updates as well since I last posted here. We have one guinea pig, two cats, and a dog. GP: Punkus, Cats: Finny and Patrick, and Dog: Oliver. Well, the last thirty or so days haven’t been the best time for us pet-wise.
Punkus left us in May, I think just a teensy bit after Mother’s Day, which it was lovely of her to hang on for. She was our third GP. GP’s act fine, playing, squeaking, eating constantly, and then, suddenly, they seem to not want their dandelion leaves anymore, their romaine goes untouched, and, only really hours later, they leave you. Punkus left. It breaks my heart every time. So little, so cute. GPs require a lot more care than pet stores lead you to believe, and there is a kind of lovely rhythm to having them and caring for them, and I will miss that as well as her sweet little face, and the feisty way she would grab treats from my hand, yank! It was really such a joy to have her. We miss all three of them, all very different in personality, so much. The produce section of the grocery store is now a very lonely place for me, and, as part of my spring gardening madness, I had planted sweet corn for her. She got the first cucumber I’d managed to grow, but she didn’t make it to the sweet corn, poor little girl.
We got our first GP, Addie, from the school when it had to close for Covid, 2020. Luckily we were able to trade the GP classroom teacher (science, and she didn’t want to take Addie home) the hermit crabs. Hermit crabs, worst pet ever. So complicated and difficult to keep happy and alive. No no no. GP was definitely the winning end of that trade.
But now our GP days are done. Dave had built this wonderful cage with levels and ramps (Punkus is peeking out from under a level, we called them condos, in that photo), and we found a young woman on FB marketplace who had just gotten her first apartment and two GPs to gift the cage to, precisely so that I would not fill it again.
Our cats are Patrick and Finny. Patrick is what is called a Turkish Van, and was one of the last cats my brother, who died in 2020, rescued as a kitten. Bill was a crazy cat lady. Patrick is long-haired, which is not the best for a highly allergic woman like me. Because he has long hair he has the furriest back legs, like a pair of furry chaps, so I also call him Mr. Pants. He is absolutely devoted to me, and has little to no time for the other humans in the world. He chatters at Dave the way he chatters at birds outside, “I will kill you. I will kill you. Soon you will be eaten by me.” Patrick often tells me when it is time to go to bed. The other night it was time, but I just flopped back on the sofa, too lazy to get up in the moment, and, as you can see in this video, he dealt with it the best he could.
Our other cat is Finney, a TUOS (tuxedo of unusual size). He’s always been a big boy. We got him almost the same time as Oliver, our dog, and he and Oliver have always been besties.
Which brings me to my second bit of sad news. Wednesday Oliver crossed the rainbow bridge.
Oliver acted like a terrier, and a puppy, right up to last Friday. And then he stopped eating, and flopped like a wrung out rag on the floor, and had no interest in pets, or walks (he absolutely loved walks!) or treats, or anything. It appeared he had a very swollen stomach on one side as well, which, as a boy who loved his belly rubs, he had not had before. Ollie, btw, was a life-long allergy sufferer, so he had monthly vet check ups. He was diagnosed with lymphoma, and a very swollen spleen. The vet told me that cancer is sneaky in dogs, and one day just explodes, and basically lays them out flat. I gave Ollie a day off medical visits, the day after his diagnosis, because he was so tired. On his day off he had a little energy and seemed glad to go on a very short walk. Wednesday we went again to the vet, who told me Ollie could do chemo, and maybe get another six months, or steroids, and maybe get another six weeks. But Oliver, who never was comfortable at the vet, dropped down flat out on that exam room floor, like he was just going to nap where he was, so calm, and refused to rise to show the vet his gait. He did take us up on water, but otherwise he really just was flat out, the life-long puppy, somehow, finally, exhausted. I called Dave and Sophie, and we discussed it. They came to meet us at the vet, and we discussed it some more, and we all decided we couldn’t keep pushing him simply because we wanted more from him. Our vet agreed with us that Ollie was very uncomfortable and not sick with something that could be fixed, only held back for a small amount. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to make him keep going for us. Our vet was so sweet, got down on the floor with all of us, and we all hugged our Oliver as he relaxed at long last, into the spirit realm where he was able to be a kooky puppy again.
Finny doesn’t want to eat, which is unheard of; he is depressed, and we’ll have to keep an eye on him. And, of course, all of us share his depression. Well, honestly, not Patrick. Oh Patrick….
This is Ollie when we adopted him from his foster mom at one year old. He’d been dumped in a shelter in North Philly. His wonderful beautiful foster mom, who has fostered over 100 dogs while being a mom to two physically disabled sons, saved him. We love her so much. She chose us over several other applicants, because our previous dog, Chad, had been a very high energy and feisty schnauzer mutt, so we convinced her we could handle Ollie’s high spirits.
Ollie and his waffle.
My two favorites, as my perennial screen saver.
Ollie as he always was, sweet, happy, puppy. And me singing to him in my funny “I’m singing to my pets” voice. He loved my singing, as you can clearly see.
We loved Ollie. We feel his loss acutely. I got up from my desk yesterday and was able to easily push my chair back, because he wasn’t up against it. I’d rather struggle to get out of my chair in a haze of dog farts, honestly.
Oliver Possibly Pearce, aka Ollie Bollie, we’ll miss you and think of you with nothing but pleasure, forever.
Dianne Pearce Writes 