The Conseption.... this one isn't so immuculate

In the spring of 2008 I had my first brush with melanoma.  A brush that left me with a battle scar on my left collar bone.  A brush that taught me to be sun smarter then I was.  A brush that changed my life forever.....

I guess this brush is what began my wanting of this outlet that I didn't think I could actually put on there, keys to fingers, words to screen, and strangers reading.  Well at least not until I started reading Marian Keyes latest novel of the Walsh Family sisters, The Mystery of Mercy Close.  In this book she is writing about Helen and her adventures as a struggling PI in recession hit Ireland.  Helen is the youngest Walsh and probably the quirkiest of the 5 Walsh Girls, not always my favourite character in the previous books but that changed when I read this on the back cover.  "I employ this thing called the Shovel List."  "A shovel ......?"  "No.  A Shovel List.  It's more of a conceptual thing.  It's a list of all the people and things I hate so much that I want to hit them in the face with a shovel."

From this perfect description the only thing I add is then burying said person or thing in the backyard.  I take this idea from one of my oldest friends, Cassie.  You see she and her husband my have only been married for the last 10 years, but they have been a couple since 1995.  They are that couple that has come to the realisation that no relationship is perfect and that agreeing to disagree saves marriages.  However, that doesn't stop her from occasionally wanting to 'bury him in the backyard' when he gets to that point of over bearing assholeness that most men can. 

I will admit that I may have needed this Shovel List before I met Melanoma.  I am a person of opinions, some that get me in trouble.  I am that person that just can't keep their mouth shut, which also gets me in trouble.  The one thing I can say for sure though is that Melanoma has made me even more of that person with an opinion that just can't keep their mouth shut.  So I am hoping that this Shovel List will keep me out of trouble; well at least a little bit any way.

This is my outlet for dealing with Stage IV Metastatic Melanoma.  This is My Shovel List.  This is my Life.  I hope that it helps everyone reading just as much as it helps me to get out there those things that life and this horrible disease make me want to hit with a shovel and bury them in the backyard!