sewloud

https://www.vice.com/en/article/sweet-old-mister-rogers-thought-ripping-mean-farts-was-hilarious/
(From November 2019)

Sweet Old Mister Rogers Thought Ripping Mean Farts Was Hilarious

Every couple has their “things.” You know, the weird, funny stuff you do just to make your sweetie smile, like the stupid faces and the fully nonsensical language and the inside jokes you’ve developed over your time together that you’d be absolutely mortified if another human learned about. We might know ours, but the silliness of relationships in private usually remains a tight-lipped secret.

When it comes to her relationship with the late and deeply loved Mister Rogers (legally known as Fred McFeely Rogers), however, Joanne Rogers recently opened up a bit, sharing with the Los Angeles Times a tidbit that makes us more deeply appreciate the wholesome TV icon. When it came to the Tom Hanks-starring A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Rogers wanted to ensure that her husband wasn’t treated “as a saint,” but that it emphasized his sense of humor. And it wasn’t all sweaters and songs—sometimes it was more crass.

In particular, Rogers told the Times, her husband knew just how to lighten the mood at boring events: Simply put, he’d let out a huge fart.

Specifically, Rogers said, “He would just raise one cheek and he would look at me and smile.” All the while, presumably, he’d be letting one rip. The veracity of the toots in question was unclear, but the retelling still made Rogers “[crack] herself up” as she spoke with writer Amy Kaufman.

It also remains unclear whether Mister Rogers’ unexpected fart jokes made it into the biopic currently in theaters, but hell, even if they didn’t, go into the movie remembering that the man made fart jokes just for the sake of making his wife laugh. And somehow, Mister Rogers might warm your heart even more.

Remember when I had a breast biopsy last December? Well I had another 6 month follow-up mammogram at 11:00 this (Friday) morning.

I don’t know if I ever fully wrote up the whole thing. I did post about the second mammogram that led to the biopsy, but I don’t think I ever wrote up the actual biopsy experience. It wasn’t fun.

I’ve been having annual mammograms ever since I turned 40. Mom has had breast cancer, and that means I get to go get the girls squished on the regular. And up until last year, I would not have said that mammograms were painful. Uncomfortable, yes. But the way getting your blood pressure taken is uncomfortable, it’s squeezing, and then a release just before it gets to the point that I’d consider painful.

All that has changed now that they discovered calcifications in my left (sinister) breast in December 2024. That was the trip where they took probably a dozen images of just my left boob. And then said they wanted to do a biopsy (no shit Sherlock, I could see that was coming a mile away.) The area with the suspicious calcifications is low on my breast, about where an underwire bra would hit, and it’s far back in the breast, against the muscle. So getting a good look at the darned thing means that I really have to get jammed up inside the mammogram machine, to get the muscle into the image. And unlike breast tissue, muscles don’t compress. So it always hurts now. And they almost always have to take extra images, because they didn’t get enough chest into the image the first time.

And then there was the biopsy, which is done with you clamped IN the mammogram machine, to hold you still and let the doctor zoom in on exactly where they want to jab the needle. I was fine for the biopsy, they numb you all up with a local. I couldn’t feel the first needle at all.

But then they wanted to put a little marker in my boob so they can track that clump of calcification. (IIRC it’s a little infinity symbol?) And when they stuck me with the needle for the marker I almost jumped off the gurney (remember, my left boob was still clamped TIGHT in the machine!). Apparently they had placed the marker right up against a nerve. And that fucking HURT. They apologized and numbed me again immediately. I’m still a bit peeved that the report writeup says “Pain control was adequate.” Lies, lies I tell you!

And even worse, I can still occasionally feel the damned marker. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s sitting right next to a nerve, so every now and then, depending on how I move, that marker bumps up against the nerve again and I’m aware of this sensation deep in the base of my left breast. That part doesn't hurt, it’s just hella weird.

So, had another mammogram today. And the technician gave me false hope that this might be the last one for a while, she said something about not having to come back if things looked good. But after the doctor looked at the images, we scheduled another mammogram for July. *le sigh* Even though the writeup (which I already have access to via the App) says, “Calcifications in the left posterior breast remain unchanged. There are no other mammographic masses, suspicious calcifications, areas of unexplained architectural distortion, or other secondary signs of malignancy. There are no other significant interval changes. Right breast findings - There are no masses, suspicious calcifications, or other secondary signs of malignancy.

And I keep thinking back to an article I read a couple of months ago in The New Yorker (cheater link to get you past the paywall)

The Catch in Catching Cancer Early
New blood tests promise to detect malignancies before they’ve spread. But proving that these tests actually improve outcomes remains a stubborn challenge.

… false positives abound: tests that suggest cancer where none exists, leading to unnecessary procedures, anxiety, and harm.

In 2021, according to one estimate, the United States spent more than forty billion dollars on [breast] cancer screening. On average, a year’s worth of screenings yields nine million positive results—of which 8.8 million are false. Millions endure follow-up scans, biopsies, and anxiety so that just over two hundred thousand true positives can be found, of which an even smaller fraction can be cured by local treatment, like excision. The rest is noise mistaken for signal, harm mistaken for help.

I can’t stop thinking that these calcifications are a false flag, and I’m going through all this pain for no good reason.

OK, so this is a totally random thing I’ve done this vacation, solely because I had plenty of time to waste. This feels a little silly to admit, but I have a favorite place setting; probably just a single fork, one or two spoons, and a knife, no idea where they came from. I could have stolen it from my parents when I moved out. I could have stolen it from one of my many housemates when I was in college. The Wasband could have stolen it from his parents. Who knows? Anywhoo, I just really like the shapes of all of the pieces, the shape of the fork, the shapes of both the teaspoons and the soup spoons. The weight of the butter knife. And a while back I got it into my noggin to try to find more of them.

This was a couple of months ago, and I got as far as digging the pieces out of the silverware drawer, finding the name “Wallace Stainless” stamped on the back, and doing a little bit of googling. I found the company, but wasn’t surprised to find that whatever the pattern is, it was no longer available. It looks vaguely mid-century modern/1950s to me, so I figured it was probably discontinued. I spent a little bit of time poking around on Google, but without a name for the pattern, I didn’t spend too much time on it.

But last week, I decided to give it another try. I went on Replacements Ltd.’s site and scrolled through the thirty four pages of results for Wallace Stainless, and finally found the pattern. It doesn’t even have a name, just a number. So pretty sure this was the sort of everyday flatware that you bought at Monkey Ward or Sears, or maybe even traded in Green Stamps at the grocery store for. But now that I had a pattern number, I could look for it on Etsy and eBay. And I now have a 20 more pieces of the pattern headed my way. So that was a nice little Christmas present to myself. More of my favorite cutlery.