Uncommon Is Good.

Birthdays are a scam. There's nothing that impresses me enough to celebrate the fact that you fell out of your mother's vagina at 9am on a Tuesday. Unless you were accompanied by a marching band or carried out by Ernie Keebler, your day of birth was no more grandiose than any other day of the year.

The picture pretty much tells the joke. I feel as though I don't actually have to talk about the size of your mom's twat.

Everybody has a birthday, they say. 

Everybody's birthday is special, they say. 

Quit licking cupcakes at the supermarket, they say. 

I hate to sound like the dopey downer that bitterly exclaims "Big Deal, it's always somebody's birthday" while scratching my crotch and hating on the joy of office parties. (I'm looking at you, Jared.) While I do see the merit in congratulating humans on their obvious journey through the birth canal and emerging victorious and without tails, I am more apt to believe the day that we are born is not always the same as the day we were birthed.

Confucious say "You sound like an asshole."

Every October I avoid Facebook for a few days to save myself from the hand-cramping chore of typing THANKS! on all the posted greetings. I stubbornly refuse to hop onto my mother's wall and spew out a 

♥♥ Hppy Bday 2 tha BEST mom evr!!!! ♥♥

in lieu of a phone call one on that day in May. Social media has again ruined everything. I have become so desensitized from the onslaught of fake-ass well wishes that the heartfelt ones feel meaningless and empty. Birthdays are just another reason for me to avoid people. Don't get me wrong, I fully engage in activities to make my daughter feel wonderful every October 23, for reasons beyond my control. My heart, it seems, insists on telling the world that IT IS A BETTER PLACE BECAUSE MY CHILD WAS BORN. AND WE SHOULD HAVE CAKE. But despite it being the day right before hers, I haven't celebrated my own birth since I was knee-high to a Grasshopper.

You're a real smartass, Joleen Doreen.

There was a JoJo who was always on the GoGo and didn't hold with feelings and such. Then along came a spider, who sat down beside her, and it was cancer. 

What? 

You were expecting a better fucking nursery rhyme?

Ok. 

Humpty Dumpty sat on a cervical wall. 

Humpty Dumpty needed to fall.

Humpty was scraped, with little haste, because he was a cancer-filled cyst.

Old Mother Hubbard

 had drugs in her cupboard 

that medicare wouldn't cover.

 She became very poor 

and couldn't afford more

 and then she died.

Mmm. Tastes like a forgotten generation!

I digress. We all do, we're human. 

And we were ALL born. What an amazing and magical thing that has happened a million billion times since the beginning of man! We should celebrate! EVERY year!

Ugh.

My birthday came and went without nary a sound. A few more months flew by and it was Christmas. Long-time readers will know my love of the holiday stems from a complete appreciation for the confusion, chaos, and panic of others during the stress-filled season. I worked triple-shifts this year and felt absolutely great. I'm back to doing my favorite job and I'm getting increasingly better at it. I make fun of grown-men a decade younger for not having biceps as big as mine. I run 5 miles three times a week.

Yes.

I fucking RUN 5 MILES three times a week.

A little over year ago the scars of surgery were so fresh I was afraid I would never walk again. When the doctors told me that things were starting to look good, I did not believe them. When scans and exams were continually positive I remained prepared for the worst. Week after week I was convinced that every sneeze meant a growing cyst. Each time I farted I called the doctor to request a pelvic. 

Pessimism is the family way.

I'm surprised we haven't burned down the tree.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

This is what was happening. Just wanted to make it boring for you guys too. I went so long without anything happening I started to miss my doctor. His laugh, his paper table, his prescription pad. When we were reunited we laughed and hugged.* After catching up a little we realized it had been a year since we hung out last! Imagine that! A year! How time flies when cancer isn't slowing it down. And a year without cancer is like two years of awesomeness. 

When the crying and squealing finally stopped (GET AHOLD OF YOURSELF, DOC) I lept from the exam table. With paper cover stuck to my ass I knelt before the Good Doctor and his Nursely Assistant as he swung his chart from one side of my tear-filled face to the other. And when I raised my eyes to meet his his solemnly declared "Kneel, Joleen, cancer-patient. Rise, Joleen, Cancer-Survivor."

Well, the tears are all true.

It took the patience and perseverance of an amazing team of people to get me here and I can NOT thank them enough. From doctors to nurses to outpatient staff to nurses rehab specialists to nurses to support groups to nurses to awareness groups to nurses to the entire cancer-treatment community. And nurses. I highly encourage you to find a facility in your area and volunteer time or money or whatever you can do. Send a nurse flowers. 

The care team and doctors that I encountered are above and beyond the real heros of my story. My family, friends, and surrounding support helped me survive. A stronger bond can not be found.

Closer than chips on a cookie.

The doctor reminded me of something on that one-year checkup day. He reminded me that sometimes life begins in the middle. And nearly everybody know that the middle is the best part. It's where they put the fudge, for christsake. Or the peanut butter. Sometimes them motherfuckers put another fucking cooking RIGHT THERE IN THE MIDDLE OF A COOKIE. There is nothing in life that could be better than the middle if that's where you find another cookie in the cookie.

I'm getting hungry for cookies, so let's wrap this up.

I walked out of the doctor that day and I know that I had been born for that moment. I know that calling a day in October my "birthday" for all these years has only been preparation for feeling this alive.

I will celebrate EVERY DAY as my birthday.

You can find me more often doing this loudly and with just as much class and decorum at Joleen Doreen Dot Com and of course I will always keep feeding the Killer Cooter from time to time. I'd love to thank you all for reading and hope that you follow me for the next part of life's journey, wherever it may lead.

Keep reading.

Kisses for you.

*In this instance, "laughed and hugged" means he shoved various medical instruments in my cooter and.. ahem.. 'swabbed' the deck. Of my junk. A LOT. xoxo

Speculumation

There are very few people that I let shove random objects up my twat. I reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. But if you show me a distinguished degree from a school of medicine with concentrated study in gynecological oncology, I'm dropping trouser faster than you can ask me to take my pants off. Nothing gets me naked like a smoking hot nurse telling me that the gown opening should be in the rear. THE REAR. My only complaint is that the distinguished looking gentleman seems to have more clothes on than I do. And I always have a co-pay, which seems a little ridiculous now that I say it outloud.

If there's cash involved, your bedside manner needs more oral.

Despite feeling as tatty as a tramp on trash day, my 13 year old ("Soon to be 14, MOTHER!") tells me I only look as bad as a one-eyed hooker named Steve. I blame the hormones. Moustaches can be tricky.

 I think my cooter is mad at me. We can go back and blame it on the lack of action, or we can create an entirely new pseudo-reason. I vote for fresh bullshit. We'll throw our heads together and concoct the most ludicrous explanation possible for why my uterus doesn't play well with others.

I usually do.

From hearing the causes of cancer: cigarettes, asbestos, artificial sweetener, uv rays, cfc's, abc's, qvc's, arch-nemesis, your mom, my mom, her mom, peanutbutter, and living anywhere near Erin Brokovitch, we can look for common patterns and then make more shit up as we go. The most consistent element to most kinds of cancer I have knowledge of, including my own twat trouble, is that most patients that are diagnosed with cancer seen to be PEOPLE.
So, we'll start there.
Being alive seems to be a cause of cancer. Not many patients are diagnosed after demise. Even though we all may know a few dead people with the disease, it doesn't seem to bother you as much after the funeral. Maybe embalming fluid holds the cure.

You clowns took it too far.

My cooter is a real piece of work. Cramps be damned, I'm going to curse the cervix and vilify the vagina. That pussy is a pussy. Just because we have such a busy fall and winter and things are going our way is NO reason to grow a crop of fresh cysts. Self-sabotage is NOT the answer, you useless twat. (Hormones can be replaced you know, YOU'RE ON YOUR LAST WARNING BEFORE I YANK YOU OUT OF THERE!!) This fucking game was already over, I fucking WON. You can't rewrite the rules and play again.
I was blindsided.
 When the going gets tough, the tough do not curl up in the fetal position and bleed for 10 days. Survival of the bitchiness is not what Darwin had in mind. Sniffling and snuffling is a bad frickin example of "not going quietly into this good night." The funeral parade when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil will include several marching bands, a convoy of 18-wheelers, tweeters, Shawn Spencer, a laser show, barking dogs, CARNIES, a Pat Benatar tribute half-time show, Disney-costumed preschoolers, 3 Bagpipers and a Bollywood dance number, a 2100-gun salute (aka; a buncha hillbillies firing illegal weapons at 9pm), and I'm assuming a gaggle of monkeys driving miniature sports cars.

And that's just day 1. The Wizarding Army comes on Day 2.

Keeping me alive to gather all those components is the key to a good funeral. The ringmaster to lead me to the events will need to be knowledgeable of both the cooter cavity AND monkey-based mechanics. Auditioning physicians is a task that I will only partake based on their willingness to keep their opinions out of the practicing part of medicine. I'm tired of guesswork and I'm done looking for the "WHY". If, in all these years, no doctor has been able to figure out what in the fuck is wrong with me, what in the fuck makes you think I want another batch of half-assed assumptions on what you may think the cause of my Uterine Cancer is? I'd rather eat my feelings.

They're colorful coming back up.

"I'm Sorry, you have a malignant humor. The prognosis is grin. We can try a hysterical-ectomy, but it's already spread to your laugh nodes." -Trick IX (@TrickIX)

I don't care what caused my cancer, Doc. Yesterday is so far behind us it's impossible to even remember why we were even talking about it. Quit trying to speculate at the origin of the Killer Cooter. Maybe it came from outer space. Make up some equally nonsensical bullshit and shove it right up your fucking ass. I don't give a fuck why it's there, just fucking get rid of it. I don't know why it comes back. Lonliness, maybe?
I. Don't. Fucking. Know.
All I know for certain is that as broken as my bajinga may be, it is the greatest source of happiness I have ever know.
Long ago, on a planet not unlike our own in a universe eerily similar to this one, a child was born under the Libra moon who would go on to change the lives of every soul she managed to touch. Her beauty was accented by an inner calm, and she was fair and just and kind. (It was the "inner calm" that made you guess it wasn't ME, right?)
And they said she could never come to be, this opposite of everything I see, But I knew, I KNEW she would be a queen, much better than me.

Sweet Child of Mine.

Thanks to Trick IX for permission to use the wonderful hilarious words. Never has a more truer phrase been  posted here on the Killer Cooter.

Cancer Romancer

Since when the fucking fuck do I need permission to fucking curse? Is this not MY FUCKING BLOG? Fuck your fucking opinion on how I should express my fucking thoughts. If you really think the writing would be 'better without so much swearing', then an easy edit is to close one fucking eye and skip to these words: KISS MY FUCKING ASS.

He likes to cuddle afterward.

Words are just words, assholes. It doesn't bother me that maybe you can't fucking handle the JoJo, but I'm not here to fucking judge. And if you feel the need to, by all means, pucker up

(see above).

Turns out I've never been good with human relationships. I think people make less sense than a penny-pincher trying to earn extra cash waiting tables in Poughkeepsie. As anybody who has spent time with me will tell you, I'm at my very best when there's nobody else around to screw it up.

I like pretending to be 

All By Myself.

There's been a lot of chatter lately about my mood shifting as I get closer to another birthday in my mid-30(something.. grumble.. I SAID WE WEREN'T DISCUSSING THIS ANYMORE, YOU ASSHOLES!!!).  Ok, so maybe the chatter has all been from me, on here, pointing out how my attitude is worsening as the years advance. But even so, there has been a lot of bitching and maybe it should be toned-the-fuck-down because life after cancer shouldn't be so FUCKING VULGAR and maybe I should find more to be happy about. But unless you can break in these new shoes for me, get the fuck out of the path that I'm trying to run here. The hills I accidentally climb are steeper than the mountains most make for themselves. Kicking through cancer is a driving force that I will hold behind me for the rest of my days. And just like the incredible positive force that is provided, a negative side seeps beneath the surface with more sinister sorrow than simple sadness. In my mind, I had lost everything upon being diagnosed. Only to fight with all my being, and then lose everything upon recovery.

My eyes are that black and I'm not even wearing makeup.

It makes me miserable to be so unhappy. I think that I'm gaining ground on the darkness only to wake from a random dream with a weight in my chest that has nothing to do with the cat sleeping on my boobs. I don't want to be the girl that complains about how awful life after cancer is. "Things are soooo much better than when I was in the midst of machines and medicines, but, like, I'm just not, like, HAPPY, ya'know?"

Nobody wants to hear that shit.

Yet, logic says you're still reading.

Because there is no time like the present to ponder how the poisoned pussy pertains to that cheeky-bitch's predicaments. I conclude, with a reasonable amount of confidence, that you're genuinely interested in how my cooter copes with spewing out chunks of hormonal word-imbalance at the computer every time a tear drops.

I hate everything!!

Until recently, as discussed before, I thought the "future" to be a vague concept for the rich and/or fancy and/or famous. Sickness makes health a goal rather than a given. Imaging life that is forthcoming is more of a luxury that average people take for granted. Eternity is a four-letter word when translated by a diseased Rosetta Stone. Avoiding talking about what might be coming takes as much energy as surviving chemotherapy without Zofran. Or weed. AND weed. The current moment is a comfortable topic, can we stay here?

 Every SINGLE FUCKING time my heart & soul discussed our future I laughingly changed the subject to the present. Until the day came that he realized that today fucking sucks, and he took off for tomorrow. 

I'm just thankful there wasn't a sibling involved. Although he is my brother's type.

I keep getting weepy over the way things went when I should be wondering where things are going. So often lately I feel like I'm beyond myself, I'm dwelling in the past while running into the future. I'm angry over sadness and sad that I'm angry. I'm a fucking walking contradiction (♫and I aint got no rights, for those singing along♫). I've been crying in the shower when I thought I was beyond that by now. I get so sad lately it's been cramping my style. Cramping my stomach, too, for that matter. Cramping it hard. The pangs were so painful I called the Dr. WhoWho and scheduled a new looky-loo. He took a gander and called for a camera, and now I can't believe you all were expecting a rhyme for pelvic ultrasound time. 

fuckin sickos.

So, for the masses, a few masses.

Less drinking, more thinking.

GROSS.

Good Point.

I love cancer.

I wasn't weak and tearful; the hate was growing on the inside and trying to contaminate all of my emotions. Not this mother fucking time. Now I have no time for anymore nasty hopeless bullshit. I'm off to fight another motherfucking round, and just because you dared to grow another disgusting tumor on my motherfucker cooter, this time I'm going to run a 10k when this motherfucker is over.

What now, Cancer. 

YOU PUSSY.

Let's do this!

But can we wait until after Christmas? I'd really like to get through peak season at work and finish fall semester before I have time to knock out another round of cancer. Have your people call my people and we'll set up a date.

Listen, don't get all weird on me, you fucking douchebags. A small setback is NOTHING compared to what we have been through so far. Maybe, just maybe, the cooter has her own way of moving life along. It's been too many months of moping about how bad the good things were. I lost sight of my perspective, again. Again. Again. Again. Again.

It's a never-ending source of entertainment to look back and wonder why the fuck I was being such a bawl-baby. I needed something to push my despair into a lesson, I needed time to focus on the joy that being healthy provided. I could not have asked for a better time to have blood clots and bleeding and barfing and diarrhea (doesn't need to start with a B, because DIARRHEA.) All that destructive negativity now has focus, to rid the ill from my WILL. (hehe)

I love with a complete heart.

I love forever, without exception.

I will remember, sans deception,

that of my soul, you hold a part.

In the rear-view I see my broken heart, as I step blindly back on the road to recovery. It's never easy to jump forward when you lose the push of the love you devote to another. But why do I let this bring me down when I know I can rise above so much better? I keep returning to the only constant in my life, a gynecological oncologist with a sweet speculum, and I giggle at my own nativity that LOVE is everlasting.

NO.

But cooter cancer is forever.

Of all the lessons I keep learning from the disease, whether it's our first date or our 50th anniversary, is that although my killer cooter I may adore, I am certain I will always love ME more.

For Now,

Forever.

♥

I'll Write, I'll Write, I'll Write

The rumbling of footsteps echoing in the distance furthered the illusion of a coming storm as the sound bounced from the gun-metal-grey walls to the sterile light of the overhead fluorescents. The shuffling of shoes pushed the procession of people closer to where I stood, terrified that the jostling of bodies would disturb the solitude I had found in a dark little corner. A number of unfamiliar dialects reached my ears as I pulled my lone bag of personal belongings closer and shivered. “Being nervous won’t make time go any faster” I whispered to myself as I thought about the years ahead. Failure to control the savage beast of discomfort growing in the pit of my stomach could destroy the life I had worked to build.

It would be a CATastrophe.

My mind briefly flashed to my daughter and the strength she would give me to go on. I wondered if any of the other approaching abecedarians were struggling as I was to be without children and family.
As the faces began to stream by I noticed the young were still the most rambunctious, eager to cement a reputation without fear of repercussion. The uniformity of their desired individuality added a tinge of desperation to the air I had not previously noticed. I turned my head slightly and sniffed at the scent… Axe Body Spray.

Douchebag is their signature fragrance.

Too tired to stand still any longer, I apprehensively made the decision to move forward while questioning the strength of my own momentum. I quietly fell in line behind a man with no legs as the metaphors propelled me into the now-crowded hallway. I looked down at the tattered paper clutched in my hand as another wave of uncertainty washed over me. The numbers were so small I could barely make out where a 5 had once been before my worried fingers had rubbed it away. Abruptly I turned and fled through the pylons of people, bouncing off shoulders as broad as my social-anxiety issues. The tide turned against me and I waded through wailing and careened around complaints, the cries of “Wrong Way!!” barely cutting through the fog in my mind. My own resolution to abandon ship buoyed me beyond the bitching. But I had reached the end of my rope, I was scraping the rocks at the bottom. I was running back to nowhere.

Turn around,

You Dick.

Suddenly I stopped, drawn by the faint squeak of a dry-erase marker. I stood facing the influx of other students squeezing around me while a myriad of insults and obscenities filled the little remaining space. As the “dumb bitches” merrily danced by I pirouetted out of the social spotlight and craned my head around the corner of an open classroom door. The lights were not yet on but a spattering of sunlight had eased in through the open cracks of the window blinds and illuminated the stubborn flecks of eraser clinging to the tops of the tables. The lowest notes of blues could be heard in the faint hum of an overhead projector and it pulled me in closer, like a moth captivated by a glowing light (yes, of a fucking soulful overhead projector). At first glance I thought the room to be empty and I took the time to escape the angry din of the hallway and formulate a fulfilling mental description of my surroundings. As I paused for breath near the center of the room my eyes landed on the bemused expression of a professor no longer surprised by every marker-huffing stranger. Tipping my nonexistent cap at the gent, I barely had time to concoct a bullshit reason for intruding when I spied a sight my eyes had only heard of. Whiteboards! Whiteboards as far as you could see! (we're assuming you can only see to the front of the fucking room. Settle down, Chainsaw).

Did she say White Bunnies? Oh, the HORROR!!

Graduating high school waaaay back before the introduction of whiteboards is one of the true injustices in my life. Followed closely by death divorce and disease, the lack of whiteboards in my educational background is an atrocity that will haunt me to my deathbed. The glorious way in which the color glides across the smooth surface marks upon the day words that shall be remembered! It was with utmost restraint that I breathed out the hushed words “May I draw on the board?” to which the kindly sir chuckled “be my guest” on his way out the door. And, Oh how I drew. Mostly with letters, and words forming sentences, but what art the story can be! After the third set of quotes from Albus Dumbledore (ALWAYS) and an acceptable number of Deathly Hallows and imagined Death Eaters upon the board, the name Joleen Doreen also adequately displayed for my brain to absorb, I sighed in content and wiped my anxious feelings away with the same motion as I dispatched the Dark Mark from the again white board.

Eraso Negativityus!

Skipping back to the hallway I considered the residual effects of such a wonderful moment on my educational career. Without the whiteboard I may have walked away that fateful first day. My mind still fully occupied with the memory of polished blank shine being colorfully violated by my imagination, I hardly noticed I had merged back into the throng of jumbled bodies. Talk of boys, bands, and boobs surrounded my sanity and threatened to erase the dry-humor I had conjured. I quickly peeled off from the crowd again to duck into the destination I had intended from the start. I gulped down the last of my trepid thinking and retreated to the corner of the room away from the noise of normalcy. The euphoria of the whiteboard was nearly gone as I took my seat, and this time I was better prepared when I looked up to a dry-erase board as grand as where my magical moment had just occurred. A slight smile on my face as I recalled the magnificence of my name in color, I only then noticed the abundant youth of the classmates who had heaped into the room around me.

How fucking long did I stand at that whiteboard?

Half my age plus two, as a mathematical expression, is written: 

O+L/D.

 (The algebra alone might make this my best damn smarterest writing-thingy ever.) Coming to terms with a solution for such a gaping set of numbers is the one thing an education cannot provide for me. I anticipated adjustment issues, being a mid30’s (grumble.. pffft..) non-traditional (and completely fucking irrational) student. My study skills still lean towards writing things down with a pencil on paper. Typing is for fancy secretaries. But the problems I've encountered have little to do with my outdated practices and more to do with my expired frickin social skills.

 Even more so than old people, young people suck.

Where the hell do you see yourself in 20 years, JoleenDoreen?

Knowledge is power. No exceptions. Of all the things I intend to learn by returning to a formal education setting, increasing my skills with the written and spoken word are among my top priorities. Fifteen years ago my goals would have aligned more with the angry eye-rolling fuckballs of jejunity I must for this brief moment considered to be my peers. Then came love, hate, birth, death, cancer, remission, love, and hate. Age has never made me wise, but life sure fuckin has. Learning from passing moments is the slowest lesson. The briefest bits of time often last the longest. But I've got to keep livin', L-I-V-I-N. I may have no more desire to make an impression among my current colleagues than I do to rehire a divorce attorney or bury another sibling, but I sure as hell remember the importance of those events as I am sure I will eventually find the importance here.

By that logic, my failure is one of those moving walkways.

Even now, as I doodle on a whiteboard to clear my mind (because I bought one for at home) I've begun to develop ideas on what I could be learning from the experience of learning. I tap my 10½” Cypress Wand with a Unicorn-hair core against my horn-rimmed glasses and I giggle, thinking “if my oh-so-mature classmates could see me now.” Older than Harry Potter himself and in full costume on a random Monday afternoon, writing a paper on a whiteboard in my living room with a pink dry-erase marker. I've worked very hard, and been even more unluckily lucky along the way, to get where I am. Do I need to feel socially fucking awkward simply because my age makes people jealous but my behavior makes them act pretentious? 

What if the lesson here is I fucking pay for college; I can act as damn immature as I want.

You know what I love about High School girls?
Not a single fucking thing.

Turtle Power

Welcome back, familiar readers!
    (Welcome aboard, people looking for puke!)
Just as you are sure that this post will contain a photo of something vomiting and 5 different terms for a vagina, I am sure that I will be forever trapped in the shell cancer creates over normal social interaction. I have far from ever been able to reel in the behavior needed to be called "normal". I have never wanted to take the bait to belong. And even now, while most people pretend that the direct path of life that they are on isn't ultimately leading to their demise, I am certain that I wander aimlessly to the only optional destination.
Undoubtedly I will die at the vicious hand of a Killer Cooter.

Did you motherfuckers know that there's a turtle called a COOTER? And why in the fuck has NOBODY TOLD ME THIS SOONER?? FUCK ALL YA'LL!

I shouldn't spend so much time looking back when I know where this is headed. I know that. You know that. Hell, the turtle knows that. But I can't help but wonder where things went and how they got here. Everybody has their story, mine more illustrated than some. (Because I like pictures, that's why.)
 I know the things I have done have not always been right, I just didn't think I would be left.
You know what? Unless this conversation is about my cooter it's already boring me.

I can talk about Cooter all day!

Divorce, death, debt, and disease: every one of these dastardly damnations that have darkened my door can be traced back to a tainted twat. Like Dad always said, "Nothin' good ever comes out of a cunt. Just ask your mother."
(Alrite, probably it was Old Grand-Dad Whiskey that said it, but Dad was there.)
 Getting sick ruins everything from your credit rating to your relationships, and fucks all perception of reality in-between. Everybody wants love, health, and money when they are good but what about the bad? Who gets that? I've never wanted to let those things come back and bite me in the ass like the cancer has. I can deal with a tumor better than a bill collector, even when I have trouble differentiating between the two.
 Cancer may surprise me but I've always known where it was all going. In the race to the end, the daily trappings of life are the hare that rushes by while Uterine Cancer is the slow and steady tortoise that marches resoundingly to the finish line.

Can anyBunny Shell me where the punchline is here?

I've always tried to make the best of what surrounds me while I am where I am. I've never had a problem with the past, minus that pesky dead brother that Caspers my ass every single day. But if we can't be haunted by our siblings, what's the point of burying them?
 Did I sufficiently creep everybody out?
Good. Then the losers that left will miss some of my funniest stuff yet. AND THAT SURE IS A METAPHOR, ASSHOLE.

After the shit I've been through I feel as though I'm entitled to start every sentence asking the relevance to my cooter. From now on I will only respond to questions with:
 "How does this pertain to the pussy?"
Between broken dreams and broken promises there sits a broken Joleen, still waiting for the explanation of what she's supposed to be. There comes a time when the life that's mine starts to leave me behind.
Defined for years by the brouhaha,
So tired of answering for the hoopla of the hooha.

It's a love-hate relationship.

I've always carried my home on my back. The only roots I need are the ones to my plants thankyouverymuch. The crazy vajayjay has always flown me over the cookoo's nest to the land of NOT HERE. I don't need to pay attention to surroundings because I can blend in with any old dirty ninja-fighting sewer rat. If I dwell on something long enough to leave a mark, I chalk it up to public-service graffiti and move on my merry way to impact another soul circling the drain. I don't give a fuck what people think, I've had cyst that burst with more intelligence than some of the assholes I encounter. Dwelling on the departed is NOT ME.

So who the fuck is writing this?

I feel about this big.

COOTERS!!!

You fuckin fucks.

It's this god damn turtle-race that I didn't know I was in. I've always been slugging along happy with my pace, until the young ones started laughing at my shoes.

And then my shell got broken.

Sometimes I think yesterday is way back around the bend only to look and see that same painful curve in the road.

I've been working quite hard to train for another run. Metaphorically and in actual honest real-life too. Sometimes I shake my own damn head at how slow I've been to recover. This cautionary tale just keeps being told and the lesson I'm missing is the one I need to learn the most.

Still don't know what love means.

Listen, there's weirdness afoot. More than normal, it seems. After checking to see what the people are asking for, it appears that a large number of folks who land here in CooterTown find it by googling some form of cartoon vomit. Now I may be a Duke short of a Hazard but I'm not the one googling cartoon vomit.
(Because I already know where to find it. Suckers.)

And not being one to disappoint,

The way his heart seems like it's puking from his chest might be considered Art.

In Portland It's Still 9 O'Clock.

I'm hip enough to be a loser. I see it in every Fleetwood Mac cassette I pop into the tapedeck.

It's been many many years since I've had the task of admitting it. The wonderful part of the new-found (old-lost?) "hipster" culture is that my penny loafers look super with my white t-shirt and rolled up jeans, and THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. If being behind on the times is cool again I think I'm the Fonz.

Who has 2 thumbs and can't believe Henry Winkler is still kicking it?

I'm stuck between generations. It pains me that this is seen as a fad. I want to throat-punch each and every hipster I see. (ironically, of course.) 

In my hometown we call this trend "Amish".

Seriously. AMISH. They were my neighbors growing up. In the grand old PennsylTucky Mountains. I have quite fond memories of dodging steaming piles of horseshit on my bike as I sped to the ball-field aboard the Pink Schwinn. I was always one ride through a cornfield away from ending up on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. 

My older brother had this little crap Honda "motorcycle" that he would use to ride to his girlfriend's house in the middle of the night. (I remember the fatboy rear tire made him look like the coolest mulleted douchebag on the farm.)

Watch out for your cornhole, bud.

Each of my older brother's late-night journeys was punctuated not only with the likelihood of him scoring some teenage action, but also the promise that he would celebrate by revving his 70cc engine next to the Stolzfus' mules on the way back home. (A jackass antagonizing jackasses.) The damn donkeys were never happy to hear another farmhand being louder than they can be and would bray long enough to piss off their owners at the glorious hour of 3am. Not that they knew it was 3am, what with them BEING AMISH and all. Them fuckers don't have clocks. And I can trash talk the shit out of the Amish because they won't even be able to admit they read it. You buggy-driving sonsabitches.

My touchscreen doesn't get me. (Or maybe it's trying to change me.) I thought the concept of a "smart" phone was that it learned your text-speech patterns over time. (Text-speech? Touch-words? Finger-idioms?) Yet for some reason my HTC refuses to learn the concept of Metamucil and BenGay. It wants to change anti-inflammatory to anti-hierarchy.

Look, I get it. 

Fight the power, Damn the Man.

But can we do it by 7pm? I really want to watch 60 Minutes and grab an early bedtime.

 But I will be.. On the day AutoCorrect thinks I'm looking for the word "Bro".

Every time I try to send that text that says "I don't need you" my phone automatically changes it to "I can't believe I'm mid 30(something.. grumble.. WE'VE TALKED ABOUT THIS YOU ASSHOLES) and I am still pondering my own failures instead of embracing changes that I know are necessary.

 I hate you. Can we cuddle?"

Here's what happened. (And I know this is what happened, but yet I can't kick my own ass in gear to get beyond it.) I grew up while I was fighting cancer but nobody fucking told me.

But now I resent the concept of youth, and all that it stands for. Yada, yada, Hope, Change, Strength, yada yada. 

Fuck You(th).

I didn't have one of those. A Youth. Didn't ever want one either, until I got sick. It was the children's hospitals that changed that attitude for me.

My branded strand of Uterine Cancer is manageable. Often difficult, sometimes unpredictable, mostly a pain in the ass; but still manageable (Not ME. the cancer). Tumultuous, the both of us. And I would land in the hospital and would wander the halls with my 3rd-shift ass peek-a-booing out the back of a blue-snapped gown (always covered in pink shorts, I'm not a damn pervert. All the time.)

Late-night travels on the floors of the wards inevitably leads to overheard snippets of tidbits that you'd rather not know. 

No matter how many times you hear the word terminal, 

you never remember that the end is an ember

glowing a finale that is ever irreversible.

"JoJo", you snap, "You're going to ruin that poetry with something foul, arent you?"
Yes, Yes I am.

I can gush blood from the cooter for 2 weeks straight and be hormonal and sweaty (but in the good, nasty-smelling way) and be exhausted to the point of drooling on myself and still have to work (mostly) full-time. And yes I might need an occasional i.v. of antibiotics between classes, but I still have the chance to forget it all with a few steroid injections and a glass of wine at the end of the week.

Not the same for the kids who are not leaving the hospital bed they now call home. 

I can flit in and out of a cancer reality with a D&C and some hormone pills. Maybe I need to put 5 pounds on my ass by taking 30 days of birth control, but I'll sure as fuck whine about it as I add another miles to my daily run.

But the kids.

They never get to grow up.

Way to bring us down, Bro.

If ever there was a moment that I had dreams I didn't want to let go of, it was while overhearing 2 very weary nurses discuss a boy that wouldn't make it through the night. And I wanted to be young For Him.

So I make changes, facing the future with the uncertainty of knowing nothing, save that tomorrow is on the horizon. And knowing what I know, after hearing what I've heard with such enervated eyes, I should be more comforted than this.

But yesterday still makes things so dark. And douchebags cloud up the matter. I can't hold out hope that they have any appreciation for what is handed to them.

I see them stare at me, no understanding for who or what they have. The strangers that judge. And I find that behind their eyes all I spy is the telltale signs of a mind not matured. The Youth that has betrayed me.
I wonder if their blisters from whacking off match mine from digging graves.

Thanks for creeping things up again, JoJo.

Danced with cancer, waltzed with death.

Addicted to all the drugs (except for meth).

Been one step above the law 

(and under, and over, and without a bra.)

Handled motherhood,

joined a brotherhood.

(The Teamsters, you racist ass.

I wouldn't belong to anything crass.)

Buried family way too soon,

been drunk twice even before noon.

From a pig roast to the parcel post,

been coast to coast, and lost more than most.

Without a vice there'd be no spice.

Name so nice they sang it twice.

What I've wasted 20 minutes pointing out, like a fool,

is I'm far too fucking cool to be this uncool.

Words, Weed, & Whiskey

Direction is a funny thing.

It can point you right, bring you down, fuck you up, and spin you round. Staying on path is a matter of course, moving to the destination is a matter of force. The right way will steer you wrong if being left behind is where you should be all along. 

Without knowing where I'm going,
I wander aimlessly as life is slowing.

I need a map.

And a Nap. 

Rhyming is fun.

Many years of being pointed at the general goal of survival have honed my directional skills to a precision unseen prior to GPS. Forks in the road are wiped clean, spooning is not allowed. Meandering is met with resistance, replaced by focus so intense (would you fucking believe I focused so intently on coming up with something to say here that I flaked on what the point was?

 If you read today's title you'd believe it.)

Anyway.. 

There's no fuckin way I was getting lost on the way to beating cancer. There are no rest stops on the road to remission.

There's also no Matchbox 20. More on that in a minute. 

(take 2 points if you got the reference)

Wait, who the fuck is keeping score? Since the inception of the Killer Cooter, I've been awarding points and taking points and throwing points out the window.

Has ANYBODY been writing it down?
We could already have a winner! What if the game ended weeks ago and I'm still giving out points like useless words upon the screen that you're reading? 

What if they DIDN'T MEAN ANYTHING AT ALL??

Well, this ain't over. 

No. 

Not here, not while I still need you around.

(take 2 more points if you got that reference.)

Sorry to get sidetracked, I wasn't looking ahead. 

And therein lies the freaking problem.

Almost. But I have a few years.

Looking back, it was easier to fight cancer than it is to face an uncertain future.
"But JoJo", you may cry,
 "Isn't battling cancer the most uncertain of futures that there could be?"

To which I would reply:

Tone it down, fuckwad.

Nobody likes the melodramatic.

And then I would lay down the fact that as unpredictable as crotch tumors can be, with extraordinary exactitude I can expect them to erupt like eggs at Easter.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

When everybody is finished cursing at me for the tumor visual up there, would you kindly join me down here?

Putting one foot in front of the other for the daily struggle of pills, poop, and pussy doctors (what? it fit) that uterine cancer provides requires a soundtrack a bit more pumped than pansy punk. 

For many years after I moved to the city, I surrounded myself with angry Irishmen and we Flogged Molly and Dropkicked Murphy all the live-long day. I couldn't turn a corner without hitting somebody with a barstool.

And although Matchbox 20 has a song for every moment,

There is no place for depressing music in a depressing existence. 

If Rob Thomas really wanted to impress me he'd write a song over the agonizing decision of which end to put on the toilet.

I've been arriving here a lot. Which is good for you guys? (Get over the tumor visual already! Oh, you did? Now you remember it again? YOU'RE WELCOME.)

I keep hoping that if I put the notes on paper maybe a graph will appear to help plot my next location. But it seems I always end up in the same ass-backwards neck-of-the-woods.

Too stupid to realize I'm lost, 

fucked from the paths I've uncrossed.

(rhyming! now you try it!)

My bearings are off balance because I wonder why I've not been programmed in a while. I have no destination or goal at the moment. There is no route planned.

As I never expected to get to grow up,

I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

Plus,

FUCK.

Yet I can't help but wonder who will have to clean that graffiti up. Will my AARP card just arrive in the mail now or do I need to fill something out?

I need better perspective.

I've always seen the way to get there instead of the journey, I've always read the directions prior to the trip. How does one switch to planning on an unknown destination?

Because for the first time EVER, in my truck-driver's daughter life,

I don't know where the fuck I'm going.

Sigh.

It's time to update my GPS.

(that stands for Good Pot Smoking, yes?)

*this points post provided by: ImadeItUp;

Johnnie Walker is in the lead.