Unearthing a life.....

July has started working its way into August, the steady rains of last week have given up the ghost, and I was able to venture out, once again, onto my deck where I finished off the last couple hundred pages of the new and last Harry Potter novel. Was I happy with the ending? Not totally. But I'll wait till September to do my whining about it.

Aleister continues to adore his cousin Rachel and doesn't miss a chance to come to our house and take his position as her one true sidekick. I think Allie hates trying to ride his bicycle, but here he is giving it a royal try .... because Rachel [AKA Mrs. H, Cousin H, Mrs. M, and sometimes just Rachel] said he couldn't watch her play her computer game unless he went riding with her first.

In other news from our homestead, Rachel is progressing nicely with the painting of the inside of our house. With help from Arlis and Rich and Reba. Michal is due home from New Zealand about the 6th of August. Kay & Rachel just went out to Barnes and Noble, putting Kay's new VW Beetle through its maiden voyage. This evening, Rachel is going kayaking with BrownShoes husband out in the far reaches of South Kitsap. Rachel also seems to be a somewhat expert frisbee-golf player .... and what has Michal been up to as she wraps up her New Zealand stay? Skydiving? Bungee Jumping? That's the rumor .... photographically supported.

This is the first of my two extra weeks between chemo session 4 and session 5. I had hoped for some noticeable strengthening, but until yesterday noon, I've not had a good week. But at noon the VW dealership called and said they'd just gotten in a red Beetle with automatic transmission and that distracted me. Today I'm feeling pretty good and conserving my energies for a trip to Seattle tomorrow afternoon for our Ocean Cooking Group's mid-summer get together at Steve and Katie's. As always, NoApologies' mother will be behind the wheel, dodging the various SeaFair Parades and what have you.

I am not normally a fan of the 'distance shot', rather more of a "let me focus on your earlobe" photographer.



..... or "let me focus on your elbow" .....



.... whatever it takes, just get in close ...... that's where the personalities hide ....

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has been busy figuring all the angles on how to jack up the fear level of Americans for the remainder of the summer. Tuesday, Chertoff noted that he was experiencing a "gut feeling" about an impending new period of rising risk .... from the likes of al-Qaida, warm weather terrorists that they apparently are.

Now why is that?

What is there about these various middle-Eastern terrorists that makes them more agitated and dangerous as the summer advances? Does a low tolerance for heat drive them to violent extremes? One might be excused for assuming that, after populating the region for upwards of six thousand years, these folks had adjusted to the discomforts of summer heat waves and would have found some way to progress fairly peacefully into the few degrees cooler it might get during whatever passes for Fall there. Apparently not. Chertoff wishes us to worry. And to be vigilant ... "our edge is technology and the vigilance of the ordinary citizen," he said.

Now that last statement worries me a little. As an ordinary citizen, of mature years, I confess that I have fallen behind in the millrace of technology. In fact, I fell off my innertube and drown about the time cell phones became prevalent. So -- Secretary Chertoff should not bet his bundle on me being able to text message him reports of observed terrorism. I'll be coming through on land line, Qwest, and will likely have to study the phone book for a half hour with a magnifying glass just to find a number that will trap me with an endless automated response.

Secretary Chertoff also urged Americans to be watchful for suspicious activity. Okay. I am an American. I have one pretty good eye. I can be watchful. Maybe not during a Mariner's game, Big Brother, or a NetFlix movie, but generally speaking - big picture 'n all - I can be watchful. For suspicious activity.

Suspicious activity is, however, a level of difficulty harder to spot than those bald-faced acts of upfront terrorism that can be combated with vigilance and handheld technology. The identification of suspicious activity requires some significant iota of paranoia .... and I don't think my paranoia level is high enough to come to serious grips with 'suspicious activity'.

But I WILL DO MY PART! Although I am officially only on yellow alert, I will spend the rest of mid-summer pretending that I, like the airlines, am on orange alert. Granddaughter Rachel suggests that the friends she left behind in South Dakota have probably bounced up to 'purple alert' ... "a color even darker than red".

..... that makes them do strange things. For instance, today is coming close to setting a heat record for a July 10th and here is my granddaughter Rachel setting out for an hour's ride on her bike. Sure it's six in the evening, but the sun is still up high and the heat is still percolating! It's maddness! She's taken' leaf of her centses.

I'm in 'recovery' again. Weathered last week's low ebb and am now climbing back aboard the boat. Thanks to all the helping hands and well wishers who boosted me along the path.

No. It is not the Coalminer's Daughter. It's the once and future Bookworm, PhD. I think friends and clients alike might be surprised at the gusto with which she once wielded a pick at the Fossil Boys' dig site out there in the Columbia Basin. The long shadow stretching west and the jacket-vest suggest to me that I took this shot about 8:00 AM on a brisk May morning (1990 per the date on the back of the pix). Ahhhh .... those were the days! Days of sunrise at the digs with a thermos of coffee and giant cinnamon rolls from a QuikStop gas station. Listening to the coyotes yipping their 'good mornings' to each other. Flights of Canada Geese and Sandhill Cranes and Airforce Cargo Planes overhead. Wondering what exciting bone might sneak to the surface on this particular day.

As I've mentioned, granddaughter Rachel is here ... or was here ... yesterday. She went to Seattle last evening to have dinner with an old friend. But then was apparently telephonically besieged by one parent and/or another about her plans for her 22nd birthday (today) and has subsequently evaporated into the geographical mists. It would be safe to speculate that she's still in Washington State. I hope.

There are issues bobbing on the surface of this section of the River of Descendants. Control issues. Parental grips that refuse to relax and let the young lady get on with making her own way. Rachel is fine. Bright. Articulate. Funny. Conversational. Helpful. Tidy. Generous. And employed. That may be a trait or two more than I had going for me when I turned twenty-two. That was the year (1956) that I got married the first time, drove a '53 Chevy Bel-Air, and became the father of a baby-in-waiting. If my parents had any surviving control issues or bon mots of advice that late in the game, they had the good grace to keep them to themselves.

I'm into my week two recovery period.

I guess I have chemo-brain today. It took me six shots to enter my e-mail address correctly to access this account. I did 'go down' for a couple, three days, but I think I'm beginning to come back towards the light. I'll aim for Monday. In the meantime .....

I was sitting out on the backyard deck this afternoon, getting re-acquainted with my senior granddaughter Rachel (who will be twenty-two this coming Sunday) when I glanced over her shoulder and saw these two bucks grazing on my greenery. Their historic route through the neighborhood included passing behind our house and they probably would have done that had we not been sitting out on the deck ... where we had earlier been comparing digital cameras, so had them at hand to grab some snapshots.

The near deer has a total of four points (the number of chemos I thought I might get to stop at) and the far deer has a total of six points (the number of chemos I will be getting. How's that for symbolic? As to the chemo, it's a good news - bad news - good news sort of thing. The good news is that the doc is quite enthused about my breathing gains and healthy resistance to the poisons pumped into me so far ..... and the bad news is that that earns me two more goes at it, which I suppose is actually good news. Just doesn't feel like it. But I get a five week rest-up before session #5. That's good news!

What I'm really impressed with is the acupuncture. I had a session this morning and, so far at 5:30 PM, I have not done my standard toppling over act. The six needles in my head were to keep me from getting fuzzy-brained and that seems to be working also. And my feet, which have been slowly going numb for at least three years, seem to be recovering their feeling and range of toe movement. Yesterday I told my oncologist doc that I had had one acupuncture treatment and that it had helped clear my week three symptomology. His reaction was zero. It was like he did not hear the sentences I uttered. I had heard that he was anti-alternative medicine and I did it on purpose to check him out. Anti was it!

And it's great to have Rachel back close at hand where we can enjoy her company. She will be staying with us until she can find a place of her own.

Four. Four blooms in one of my deck pots. And chemo session #4 coming up on Monday (July 2). That could be the end of my chemo 'treatment'. Or it might stretch out to six. It has not been made clear to me what that extended treatment depends on. Even when you ask the right questions, the answers you get tend to leave you pretty much in the dark. Come what may, I'm hoping that this is the last. And for the 'recovery' period following, I have two acupuncture treatments a week for three weeks lined up. Maybe that will drop kick me through it ... especially that first week after when my brain and body go out to lunch and forget to return for five or six days.

Last Monday's initial acupuncture session seems to have done some good in giving me the energy to avoid the 'konk-0uts'. My third week experience after the first two chemo sessions was that I would physically konk-out around noon and fitfully sleep the afternoons away. My third week experience this time (after acupuncture) is that I had only two konk-outs and they came around six in the evening. So I give the acupuncture three stars out of five for that. She also worked on my numb feet and now they feel a bit more normal and I can curl my toes a lot tighter .... four stars for that.

Noapology's parents dropped by yesterday afternoon and we enjoyed a bottle of wine out on the sun-drenched deck surrounded by my potted garden. The Mariners won their seventh straight game last night. This is likely my last posting for maybe a week .... and I can not think of anything significant and/or interesting to say................

[Off to my right sits a 2' X 3' black and white framed poster of my parents and me - being held by my mother ca 1934 - and my father is wearing a necktie. He had very few occasions to wear a necktie. Maybe once in a while to church. And he never really learned how to tie one and they somehow often appeared to be inside out(?). Once tied, his neckties never came untied. He would loosen it enough to dodge his head out and then retain the loop .... so that his neckties looked like nooses waiting for a passle of condemned rustlers. I can tie a necktie. And wear it correctly and neatly once tied. But now I'm wondering if my son can tie a necktie?]

This is the sort of mental junkmail I pump out when inspiration totally fails me.