OOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday, Oct 31st, was not only Halloween, but also the last day of Breast Cancer Awareness month. Without crossing the line into TMI, I had to have a repeat mammogram done first thing in the morning, and most importantly I will tell you, dear readers, all's clear, no worries.

But the second thing I have to say, just briefly, is, #!!%?#% frickety frackety, that hurt! The first time around, I was all smiles, thinking to myself, What is everyone whining about? That was cake! But this time, the tech whips out the smaller squashing paddles, and, frickety frackety, she really squashed. To her credit, she was nice about it, but "I'm sorry, it's gonna be a little tight," was a grave understatement.

I was still smarting a full hour later.

Anyway, I still do encourage all the ladies who are of a certain age to get their mammograms done. And for all the ladies who are not yet of a certain age, and of a certain age, do your breast self exams every month, preferably after your period ends so as not to provoke premenstrual jibblies tenderness.

In the meantime, I will be taking a sabbatical from blog writing for the month of November, so that I may participate in National Novel Writing Month, nanowrimo.org

If you have ever had the inkling to actually write a novel, check out this website and sign up, and join the rest of us crazies in the push to spit out 50,000 words by Nov 30. Yes, that would be 2012. I'm working on a story that has been in my head since the winter of 2009. And when the film gets made, I want Alan Rickman to play the lead. Just putting that out there. I did have a dream about him yesterday morning, and I'm taking that as a sign. His birthday is also only 6 days before mine (and some years, but who counts the years), so that's also some sort of destiny in my warped internal landscape.

So... I've officially signed up on the nanowrimo website, and I've also officially made this endeavor terribly public. I wrote 1227 words today, and that was in between tweaking the nervous system exam for my Santa Monica College class next week and sending it off to the reprographics office.

I will check in here again for sure by Dec 1 to post my final word count. And to announce that Alan Rickman has, in fact, contacted me directly and bought the rights to the as-yet-unpublished-but-obviously-brilliant novel himself and will star, produce, and direct.

And I may write something here before Dec 1 if I need to procrastinate on the novel.

But in the meantime, I'd like to ask a favor: Please post here some common names for body parts or physiologic processes or diseases, whether you know the proper medical term or not, and I will work from that list to write some posts over the winter.

I will leave you for now with this example, a common name for an area in the perineum, specifically between the anus and the vagina/scrotum: taint. Just giving that as an example because the reproductive system is coming up in my classes, and that's a word that, well, someone always asks about. Plus I wanted to make you laugh. As always...