Unearthing a life.....

Granddaughter Jessica is still deeply wed to the business of becoming a horsewoman (rider) and does a lot of 'barnwork' to help pay for her lessons. Sometime back I remarked that "Grandpa ought to be allowed the honor of buying her her first saddle." That remark caught up with me during their visit last weekend. Seems the place where she's taking her lessons only provides Western saddles .... and she prefers the English saddle that she grew accustomed to at the first place she took lessons. With that information in mind, I concluded that it was time for Grandpa to step up to the tackroom and do the right thing.



Strange as it might seem, Jessica had a tack catalog with her. With certain circled items. A certain circled saddle, etc.,.



Even stranger, the saddle seemed to come a la carte. The stirrups came separately. The straps that attach the stirrups to the saddle, keeping them from falling in the dirt, came separately. Then there was the bridle .... but the bit came separately. Only the saddle blanket came as a stand alone item. It was an education. So I sent her home with a check big enough to cover all the required stuff .... and I was pleased that she would now have some personal control over her style of riding and saddlery. A grandpa's reward.





These are some pix of Jess at the weeklong horse camp she attended this summer. This was the final day when parents were present and the young riders performed their (hopefully) new level of riding skills.

It's 3:00 on a semi-fine Sunday afternoon and Bookworm and I are back to being a two-person household. Granddaughter Rachel, who has been with us for the past six weeks, has sallied off to get herself established back up at Ferndale ... where it is her plan to be a starving musician, maybe working part-time in the school system, maybe giving lessons in the percussive arts. It will be a shock to our systems to be suddenly deprived of her presence, her help, her humor, and her occasional cooking. And she painted most of the inside of our house while she was here ... and carried out the garbage ... and made sure the house was properly locked up at night. In her first week here, she slipped seamlessly into the currents of our life and became an operating, embedded family member. It was kind of amazing -- really.

Daughter Erin and granddaughters Michal and Jessica arrived here late Thursday morning and stayed until Saturday morning. So, with Bookworm and Rachel included, I was seriously interluding with five women ... wife, daughter and three granddaughters. Such is the fate of Man (man) ... if he plays his cards right.

Sky-diving at Rotoura, NZ. Of course Michal was strapped to the front of an expert. They bailed out at 12,000 feet and were in freefall for 45 seconds before going to the chute.



Happy sky-diving survivors .... granddaughter Michal and Chandra (the mother of Michal's 'family').



The 'going away party' as Michal prepares to return to the U.S. These are her two wards(?) .... Becca and Chris.



.... and a standard party glamour shot of Michal and a friend .....

Splashing into the Pacific. Her 'family' owned a rather good sized boat and seemed to spend significant time on it.






One of the hazards of being gone from home for a year is that of having a birthday amongst relative strangers. Michal didn't face that problem as the 'families' of her au pair friends tended to stage substantial celebratory events. This is Michal at her nineteenth birthday party, a costume event, and she is costumed as "Pretty In Pink".






White water rafting at Rotoura, New Zealand. Michal is on the left in the second seat back.

Granddaughter Michal (center) 'Zorbing' in Auckland, New Zealand. Becca, on the right, is one of the two children she was 'au pairing' for the past year.



To 'Zorb', one or more people climb thru a small sealable hole in these big plastic balls, along with six inches of water for lubricant, and then they are rolled down the hillside.



The successful 'Zorbees' at the end of their run. Michal appears to be shivering a bit.



Michal and her friend Lynsie. They graduated together from Ferndale, WA, and both went to New Zealand as au pairs for a year. They were able to stay in close contact and be more-or-less running mates for the duration.



Lynsie, Michal and (another au pair friend) Shawna from Canada .... dressed up to have a drink at the Minus Five Ice Bar, where even the glasses are made of ice. [Auckland]



The Harbor Bridge, Auckland, NZ. From which granddaughter Michal is going to bungee-jump.



Michal on the catwalks beneath the bridge. She's the third in line - with the ponytail.



And there she goes folks, plunging towards the earth upsidedown. Nary a care. But I think I heard her say it gave her pause when she rebounded and found herself zipping back towards the metal structure.

Note: these photos are all post-chemo by maybe three hours. We are gathered on the deck, Kay and I with granddaughters Rachel and Michal, after a fine dinner of shrimp stir-fry and rice prepared by Rachel with Michal's veggie slicing help.

As to the day. It had its ups and downs, but the ups hit a couple bases loaded homers and won by a large margin. In the doctor's words, my blood numbers were "Great!" The fluid in my right lung was almost all gone. The plural thickening was only a slight bit advanced. The several involved lymph nodes that had been two to three times larger than normal were shrunk back to near normal. In the doctor's additional words, "That is tremendous ... it means you are responding to the chemo." AND "I'd say for a 73 year old guy you are doing very good. Good job!"

Howsomever, at the six hour mark, 2/3's of the way thru the big bag of Sisplaten (sp?), I began to scratch at my palms and then at my scalp and then I noticed that I was doing it with exceeding vigour and so summoned a nurse and brought it to her attention. She exclaimed "Allergic reaction!" and shut down the Sisplaten, then gave me a couple small bags of meds to curtail and ward off the evil allergic reaction. Once that was under control she fed me the remainder of the Sisplaten without selling me the farm. Now there may be some question as to whether I will get that sixth and last Sisplaten treatment, or maybe be switched to just the other chem they've been feeding me. Anyway all the extra baggies turned my 7-hour treatment into an 8-hour treatment.


This here be Michal all back from her year of au pairing in Auckland, New Zealand. It was a job fraught with hardships and danger. And she brought back photographic proof of the horrors she survived ..... sometime back I posted a shot of her kissing the first fish she caught, but that was nothing compared to what followed [To be posted soon as a separate set of photos and event descriptions].


I think my day-after chemo-brain is catching up with me and I will have to pause this post for now.

"But I'm still here."

Good afternoon and good love!

Here we go again .... with the pre-chemo medication. A very small pill (twice daily) that makes me very hyper. This pill (for three days) will prevent a serious rash that one of the chemos will give me should I not take this very small pill twice daily for three days. So I took it. I'm not at all partial to rashes.

My five week chemo hiatus is over and tomorrow morning I must present myself for treatment number 5, to be followed in three weeks by treatment number 6. In none of the scenarios I've heard discussed by my doctor, have I ever heard mention of the existance of a treatment number 7. So pardon me if I leap upon the assumption that I have four down and two to go and that that will write finis to the chemotherapy.

But what do I know?

One thing for certain, I had a new cat scan this past Friday, and I will expect, on the morrow, to be medically informed as to how it compares with the one taken back in February or March. [As you may have gathered from Bookworm's blog of earlier today, becoming 'medically informed' is not the simple conversational process it was a couple score years ago.]

THE PHOTO ABOVE is granddaughter Jessica "Tex" Ho at a weeklong horsemanship camp, tooling along on her good steed 'Chappy'. Somewhere down in the Vancouver, WA, area. Attendees and parents are not allowed to communicate by phone .... only by writing. Erin is there today to attend the week's end 'performance' and to cart Jessica home.

Granddaughter Rachel (the infamous Mrs. H) will be leaving soon to drive to SeaTac and pick up granddaughter Michal and bring her back here for a couple of days. Michal's flight from New Zealand has already been moved from 5:45 pm back to 7:00 pm ..... this is a situation that could well deteriorate even further as the evening progresses.

As to the car we are trying to give Michal [Kay's former little red Ford Focus Hatchback], there's been a governmental hitch in that department. I paid off the loan at Kitsap Credit Union two months ago tomorrow. They said I would have the title in six to eight weeks. Eight weeks is tomorrow. I do not have the title. I have no idea when the State will bless me with a Title. So, I guess Plan B would be to have an "under twenty-five" driver added to my insurance policy .... which should (might) protect everyone's interests after I hand her the keys. Can't do that till Tuesday though.

Well, y'all say a little "Go get'em, Cowboy," for tomorrow and I'll ride this thing out.

Good night and good love.