Birthday and rant

It's been a busy week. Mom is here for a week or so, and we've been having belated birthday parties for her; the house is filled with cake and flowers. A bunch of my friends kindly feted her and gave her a beautiful pendant, and my brothers and their families came over for lunch yesterday. So, lots of Pollyanna moments.

Meanwhile, I went to my oncologist, and she is puzzled by the fact that I've lost most of the hearing in my right ear, and was having pretty serious double vision, although the latter has improved considerably in the past couple of days. She says that if a cancerous lesion was causing hearing and vision problems, the problems would be persistent, and in fact the vision thing came and went. Anyway, she is trying to get me an MRI, and I will see the ear, nose and throat doctor on Friday. I hope I'll know soon what's going on, but part of me doesn't want to know, of course.

Completely off topic (I'm so sick of writing about cancer): yesterday I was reminded again of how little I understand society's view of what femininity is. Mom and I went to the dollar store yesterday afternoon -- it was such a glorious day, and I literally had not had a breath of fresh air or been out of my house for a week -- and were looking at greeting cards. The birthday cards were segregated into those for men and those for women, as usual. But what made a card suitable for a man? One had a quirky photo of a dog in an old car, and a perfectly neutral message inside; I seriously considered it for a female friend who loves animals and then noticed it was a card for men. Women don't like dogs? Cars? Birthday cards without hearts and flowers on them?

Meanwhile, the sound system in the store was playing a local radio station, which was broadcasting a Max Webster tune, "Diamonds Diamonds," one of their lighter tracks. Then the DJ started on about how guys used to take their girlfriends to Max Webster or Kim Mitchell concerts on the strength of their poppier songs and then the girlfriends would freak out when the hard rock began. Women don't like hard rock? I love all of Max Webster and Kim Mitchell's stuff and have seen them in concert a gazillion times, along with my sister. It's like those ads from Shoppers Drug Mart that warn men not to give women gifts that aren't womanly, like electric drills. I guess we single women are weird; we don't get romantic gifts, but we still have men in our lives, and some of my favourite gifts were from my father, who gave me, at Christmas and birthdays, my electric drill, my bench vise, a set of screwdrivers. He also gave me furry moccasins and a butterfly house and a huge fishing tackle box intended to hold sewing equipment, an ingenious idea as it turned out (he gave my mom one, too, but had a seamstress friend cover it with beautiful fabric and ruffles; I guess that's the romantic part). Anyway, I get so sick of this image of women still promulgated out there. It's so one-dimensional. Rant over.