It’s been a year since I updated Slow Southern Style. How did an entire year go by so fast? Covid has made time slow down and speed up, with whole months flying by followed by long, excruciating days. I won’t attempt a full year summary, but here are a few notable moments to bring things up to speed.
First off, I graduated in May 2020. According to my degree, apparently I’m now a Master of Creative Writing. Graduating during a pandemic stripped away the traditional pomp and circumstance, so I ended up taking my own graduation photos and threw myself a socially distanced party in the front yard. Not having all of the end of year festivities felt anti-climactic, so I was glad I created my own celebrations instead of just waiting for my degree in the mail.
As tough as living in Covid-19 times has been, there have been good things to come out of this experience. Thomas, my husband, is a counselor. He was fortunate to have a fairly smooth transition from seeing clients in person to all telehealth. With him able to work anywhere, this afforded us the luxury of fulfilling a long term dream of ours– spending summers in Northern Arizona. Last July, we spent a month in Sedona, AZ and took trips to the Grand Canyon and other neighboring areas on the weekends. We hiked nearly every day, found an excellent swimming hole, kayaked on Watson Lake in Prescott, and caught sunset at the Grand Canyon multiple times at the spot where my sister was married. The trip was so wonderful that we’re doing it again this summer. A good friend of mine is housesitting for us while we’re away, which eases the burden of what to do with our cats and dogs.
Oh, y’all thought I was done with school? No ma’am. Right after we got back from Arizona in August I started another MFA program, this time in Studio Art. My focus is photography, and I was thrilled I got into the program and somehow tricked enough faculty into thinking I’m a “real artist.” Prior to this program, I had no academic experience in photography. I took two noncredit college classes back in 2014 when I bought my first DSLR, but aside from that it was all fumbling along as I figured it out on my own.
I felt overwhelmed and intimidated my first few weeks in the program, but somewhere along the way my confidence grew. I’ve been working as a Teaching Assistant, which was daunting at first but helped me realize I know more about photography than I thought I did. And, just to jump ahead a little, I started to submit my work to open calls at museums and galleries.
This July my work will be in my first group gallery show, curated by Loosen Art, at Millepiani Exhibition Space in Rome, Italy. My photo was chosen out of nearly international 1,500 entries. All of this still doesn’t feel real, like I’m reading about someone else’s life. My photos were SO BAD when I first started blogging here, but I was determined to get better. I still have a long way to go, but I can’t freaking believe this is where I’m at.
I lost my hair as soon as I got used to having it again. Right before we left for Sedona, I hoped I was done with cancer treatment for a second time. I went through fourteen more rounds of chemo and five rounds of radiation. I was off chemo for six glorious months. Shortly after we got back from the summer of a lifetime, I was told that the cancer was still in my lungs. And if that’s not bad enough, I also found out I had unrelated melanoma in my arm and a brain tumor recurrence. In the span of about a month, I was back on chemo, this time for life, I had surgery to remove the melanoma, and gamma knife radio surgery to my brain, and I found out I had Covid and didn’t know it.
Yea, it was a lot.
I’m still on chemo for life, but of the three lung tumors I had one disappeared, one shrunk to an insignificant size, and the largest appears to be dying. I’m hoping to transition from full blown chemo to maintenance chemo soon, but we’ll see.
Photo by Luscia Sophia Photography
One of the hardest parts about finding out I was back in treatment indefinitely (and there were many) was losing my hair for the third time. I just started to enjoy having a full, albeit short, head of hair. I managed to keep it until after Thanksgiving, when it started to fall out to the point where it warranted a shave. This go round, I’ve fully embraced wearing wigs. I’ve been having fun changing up my look and an essay I wrote about hair loss was published in Entropy Magazine.
And as if having cancer during a pandemic wasn’t bad enough, even my damn dog got cancer. Yup, two bitches in one house on chemo at the same time. We had to get her leg amputated and she had six rounds of chemo. She was doing well as a tripod. We’ve been going on our regular walks and taking more breaks. However, she took a turn this past week and has been struggling with inflammation, to the point where she’s having major trouble walking and falls down a lot. We’re hoping this is temporary; it’s heart wrenching watching your dog suffer.
Just like every other big event, Mardi Gras 2021 was disrupted because of Covid-19. Nearly all of the lavish parades and balls we are accustomed to got cancelled, so the people of New Orleans decked out their houses to look like floats. If there was any year to sit out, this was it. Temperatures dropped so low that we were afraid of pipes bursting. Thomas and I didn’t go full throttle on Mardi Gras Day like we usually do, but we did meet up with some friends and family, dressed up a little, and drove around and looked at house floats.
So, what’s next? I’m looking forward to a break from school this summer. This program doesn’t feel like school to me, but not having deadlines will be nice. I’ve also been working a little here and there, but I’m on disability so I can only do so much. I’m taking more freelance writing jobs, doing headshots for people, working the occasional catering gig as a waiter, and I have a (super) part-time job as a social media manager. We’re still going to Sedona again, but I’ll have to fly back to New Orleans for one round of chemo and lab work while we’re out there. In the meantime, if I forget to blog, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram. I also started selling photo prints, which you can buy here and I’ve got a portfolio of photos and my published writing here.