deep in the ocean, there lies a wave for you

Clark’s been having a lot of good days lately. The pain in his leg is significantly less severe, and the other day he stood up straight-backed for the first time in weeks. I can just tell by looking at him that he’s more comfortable. He’s tolerating the chemo pretty well, and the other day, baby Joey came over:

Every day is a new adventure in chemo side effects. Will he be super-constipated today? … or maybe, we’ll have a poop-pocalypse on our hands. Some days I am drinking protein shakes I made for him that include not only protein powder, but whole milk and ice cream as well, and other days he drinks it all himself. But through it all … “we start the week with a bang, and end the week with a bang,” as Clark said today.

What is he referring to? Our Monday night television ritual, of course! There are two solid hours of “Intervention” followed by a Spencer-solid episode of “The Hills,” followed by a solid 10:30 p.m. bedtime. 

Right now, it’s a good half hour before it’s time to change the channel to A&E. And I’ve done all the dishes and the laundry’s going and Clark’s having a snooze. I’m bored, and nothing besides ‘ANTM’ reruns are on TV. I’m really, really wrestling with scanning ahead on the cable to see which episodes of “Intervention” will air tonight. Will they be reruns? If it’s a rerun, is it one of my all-time favorite reruns? Or is it one of the episodes with a painkiller-popping mom and really sad children? 

If I scan ahead, and it’s one of those sad-mom episodes, I’m likely to skip it and try to find something else to do, even though that ruins what had been shaping up to be an amazing night of television awesomeness. If I don’t cheat, and I go to the channel and discover a crappy episode WHILE IT’S AIRING, I’m more likely to just watch it anyway. Why change it at that point?

So do I want to prevent myself from getting stuck watching a crappy episode? Or should I just handle what I’m dealt at 8 p.m.? Probably the latter at this point.