When I Grow Up

Pretty in Pink was the first PG-13 movie I ever saw. I saw it somewhere in Santa Monica, at a birthday sleepover with my best friend Brooke. I think Ramey was there and Brooke's mom, but I can't remember any other people who might have been there with us... my long term memory is pretty awful. Anyhow, it was the best movie I had seen and it remains one of my all time favorite films.

I wanted to grow up and have Andrew McCarthy fall madly in love with me, I wanted to have romantic make out sessions in hay barns at country clubs, and I wanted to have the best soundtrack ever to my life, but honestly.... I didn't want to be Molly Ringwald, I wanted to be Annie Potts. Iona, is quite possibly the coolest fictional woman I have ever seen portrayed on the big screen. I'm pretty sure was my first girl crush. I mean, come on... how can you resist her?! (Picture above borrowed from someone's blog... they only JUST saw Pretty in Pink... kinda criminal.) I wanted to be Iona when I grew up, and I still do. She ran a kickass record store, had the coolest apartment on the planet, the best hair, the best clothes, she was the oracle of cool for all the alienated punk rock kids, and she had fun being single! All things that I have only half-way done so far, or will forever struggle to accomplish for myself.

I thought of her a few weeks ago, when my dog was diagnosed with cancer. At the end of the movie, she falls in love with a handsome veterinarian. I should have paid closer attention to make that part of her fictional life my reality, not just the part about working in a cool record store and serial dating. If I had a veterinarian boyfriend, I'd make him sell me chemotherapy drugs at wholesale so I wouldn't have to worry about not being able to pay for the chemo sessions still ahead of us. If I had Iona's boyfriend, I wouldn't have to have art auctions to try to raise money to pay for the chemo and the follow-up treatments that will keep him in remission until his time really does come to leave me. (More on the art auction later, and how you can help Praxis and end up with some amazing art from some of my amazing friends!)


As far as I understand it, Praxis is doing fairly well with the chemotherapy. He has Lymphoma, and if left untreated, he would be dead in a week or two (they gave him 2 months at the time it was diagnosed). With chemotherapy there is the chance of remission, and maybe extension of his life with happiness and comfort for another year or two. We're in our third week of chemotherapy and the negative side effects have been a lot milder than I imagined, and he's maintaining pretty well! He's his normal sleepy/pokey/quiet self. He's been my steady companion since 1994... He's lived everywhere I've lived, loved everyone I've loved, and has unfailingly been one of the positive beings in my life. It's been hard trying to imagine him as sick, and to think of his body slowly failing, and me eventually having to let go.

This has been a rough year for dogs in my life, and the dogs of friends... This weekend the universe lost another good dog, Hanako. She was loved, and an important part of a family that I care a lot about. I hope these pups are leaving us for a good reason - and not just for our hearts to break. I think it gets harder to recover from loss as you grow up, not easier.