A bad sunburn, minus the sun

Yesterday's PDT wasn't as bad as the one the previous year, and in fact each one gets easier. Dr. Lin said that is because my skin is looking better and there are fewer areas to treat, which doesn't quite make sense to me because the blue light is directed at your entire face.

In any case, my memory had deceived me, because I wrote in my last post that I thought it was only five minutes (I corrected it) but it was actually 15 and so I wasn't entirely mentally prepared.

Although the time under the lights was easier, my face felt like it was on fire afterwards. Comfort food made by Margaret – shepherd's pie – and one of my little pills took the edge off. While we sat on the kitchen floor with her dogs, Margaret humored me by letting me show her third installment in the Marcel the Shell series, introduced to me by Joe and Katie.

Margaret giggled. I giggled. I do it every time. It can only help. I know I am not alone because as of this minute, it was viewed 2,433,667 times. So here it is, Marcel the Shell with Shoes on, Three.

On a more serious note, it was an incredible day to be in Boston on the day the city's beloved and longest-serving mayor, Tom Menino, died. There was such an outpouring of love, everywhere you looked and listened, even on the Pike, where signs at the eastern end read, "Thank you, Mayor Menino."

Naturally I couldn't take anything for my burning face while I was driving. I made it home, ran some errands and got Maddie from "Aunt Jane" and "Uncle Jim," who now take the same kind of good care of Maddie as Jane did when babysitting my children.

I wanted to see if I could do without another pill, but when I noticed that I was all clenched up in pain I decided that it was time. For Halloween I am playing the role of someone who fell asleep while lying in the sun on a very hot day. Luckily, although the treatment was not fun like a day at the beach, it should have the opposite effect – preventing skin cancer instead of creating it.

Chased out by crazy storm

I am writing this from a warm house (my sister's, in Newton), which is more than many people in parts of the Northeast, including South Hadley, can say after the crazy snowstorm that ended in at least 2.3 million people losing power.

As the snow fell and winds gusted Saturday, the trees practically groaned under the weight of accumulation on all the leaves that had not fallen. There were crashes and loud thumps. The microwave light went on and off, on and off. I peered out at all the trees surrounding the house and thought this might be the end of me. Then came the thunder and lightening. I looked it up and learned this is a rare occurrence called thunder snow. It sounds kind of poetic on paper, but in reality it is just plain weird.

The lights went out after I had gotten into bed with a book Saturday. The power has still not come back, which means no heat, no nothing. The house escaped damage, but there is a chunk out of the front of the garage roof and a hole in it from where a tree fell through.

Sunday night I slept at my friend Mary's in Chicopee, one of the communities that did not lose power. Last night I slept at Diane's; I was going to come here anyway because she is taking me for the Mohs surgery on Wednesday.

Joe drove me here, through streets strewn with fallen branches. We got stuck behind a line of cars that we thought were waiting to turn at a light, until we finally realized these people were waiting for gas and we needed to drive around them.

The drive was taking longer than usual and was making me antsy. The occasion seemed to call for car food, i.e. junk food. We stopped at a rest area, where Joe got a Snicker's bar (and kindly gave me a bite) and I got a "sharing size" bag of peanut M&Ms. During the rest of the ride, I popped one after another into my mouth until almost all were gone.

"Joe," I said. "This was meant for two, and I ate almost the whole thing!"

He shot me a glance as if to say, "So?"

If you want to get some sympathy for this kind of remark, you really need to tell it to a woman. (Reference the separate pie charts of men's and women's brains that I've seen, where on the woman's pie there is a slice for "what I ate today" and another for "things I should not have eaten," while the man's pie has no such thing.)

But I digress. The car ride was actually good "bonding time" where we listened to music and talked about different things.

It is more like normal fall here in the eastern part of Massachusetts. Yesterday actually felt kind of warm. As soon as Joe dropped me off, I headed out for a run. It was Halloween, and it felt like the peanut M&Ms had given me super powers.

I hit my stride pretty easily even as I zigzagged around little witches, ghosts, princesses (and one particularly cute tiny ladybug) getting an early start on trick-or-treating.

I ran for about an hour. Near the end, when I had picked up speed, I got a touch of that old feeling, the runner's high. It has stayed with me, a reminder of why I want to run.

As a bonus (or perhaps a bane), Diane bought was too much Halloween candy, and it is sitting in a big bowl for the taking. My only complaint is that she bought Milky Ways instead of Snickers.