Brain tumors?

Tonight while I was putting together something for work, Doug put on TCM and there was a movie playing with Bette Davis, Dark Victory. She's a "young socialite diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, and must decide whether she'll meet her final days with dignity." I'll say this - she lived a pretty good life post-unsuccessful brain surgery. Married her doctor, moved to Vermont to a huge farmstead, chain-smoked and drank like a fiend, rode horses stabled by none other than Humphrey Bogart, and had no outward symptoms of her inward destruction. Not too shabby!

There was a time when I thought that I had a brain tumor. Sometimes I still wonder. I don't think I'm a hypochondriac, but I do think that I sometimes manifest symptoms that indicate certain... ailments. Possibly my only ailment is that I think too much and focus too much on the ills of the world (though if I were Bette Davis, even with a brain tumor I think I could deal. She was actually quite good in this movie, animated yet thoughtful, and man, those eyes!). Sometimes it is very difficult to not worry about life. War, famine, crime, poverty, recession, depression, materialistic consumer culture, obesity, global warming, loss of natural resources, cancer... I could continue. But eh, why bother? Was there ever a time when terrible things weren't happening in the world? People used to dump their chamber pots outside their window onto the sidewalk below, and somehow I'm here to write melancholy blog posts. Mostly, people survived. I guess I can survive, too. Just like Bette Davis. For though she goes blind at the end of the movie and does not survive her brain tumor (sorry for the spoiler), she certainly decided to focus on the positives, and she was out planting hyacinths and petting her dogs, walking and talking and smiling until about five minutes before she lay down on her four-poster bed and died. How inspirational!

So here is my last list of positives for the week. Hope it's inspirational!

1. Finding a new local pizza place that's actually quite good!
2. Mochi ice cream. Have I used that one before?
3. Ebay.
4. Turner Classic Movies.
5. The sound of rain on the roof when you're trying to go to bed (and the sun brightly shining when you're waking up).
6. Iced tea.
7. The last day of work before vacation.
8. Vacation!
9. Photographs.
10. Discovering old CDs that you haven't heard in ages and deciding they're not so bad after all.