Adventures With Patti

We returned to the Bay Area in May 2011. Gauss and I were both signed up to run/walk the Bay to Breakers “foot race”—although it is more like a 12-K clothing-optional parade. This post describes our BART ride into the city with friends from the running club. At 7:10 a.m. The cars are filling with costumed participants, already jolly and a little tipsy. A gangly young man in 1970s retro basketball shorts and a frizzy, multicolored clown wig like mine gives me the high five as we enter the train car. His pseudo-Afro is cinched in the middle with a green terrycloth sweat band to match his Celtics jersey. I sit down with my group of friends: Suzanne in a fuchsia feather boa; Gauss in his Minnesota moose-antler hat; and Sean and Jeff, serious runners in nondescript wicking tees. I watch at the next stop as the car takes on a cow and a milkmaid; a kitty-cat with pointed ears and leopard-print tail; Superman and Wonder Woman. Several of the characters discreetly sip spirits from bottles

It's 2011 and we've been back in Minnesota for almost two years. The first several months were hard. We missed our California friends and work was still scarce. A few months after our return, our COBRA ran out and we had to buy health insurance on the open market...which isn't open if you have a "medical history." And if you are over 50, you ARE a medical history. We bought into Minnesota's High Risk Pool, and for $600 a month we get the privilege of paying the first $20,000 in medical expenses out of pocket each year. The good news is that in the last year, work has steadily increased for both Gauss and me, to the point where we are both really busy and our income is up. And at the two-year point after Gauss's surgery, he remains cancer free. His doc here says he won't need to come back for a PSA test for another year, and according to our life insurance salesman, the insurance companies consider a clear PSA a year after cancer to be the same risk as