Road Trip The Arrival

I pulled into the only open spot of the property.  Property  that has otherwise and rightfully been left wild.  Thanks to Mom, no leaf blowers and weed whackers here.  Much to the dismay of the human neighbors, she knows we are leaving a footprint but wants the footprint to be as small as possible.  For almost four decades I’ve never cared what the human neighbors thought and I think they are finally starting to get that.

It was cat’s light.  That magic time between dusk and twilight.  That, anything goes time of day, when you just might see the stray elf or pixie.   Before I had my second foot down on the ground a brush crashing non human neighbor, a doe, came bounding by startling me.  At that moment it seemed the only magic this evening was going to be how to clean my underwear with no washing machine.

As I mentioned previously turning the water on was a boring adventure.  Finally, while holding a flash light in my mouth the luke warm beam of light allowed the universe to come together and long metal tool grabbed small metal valve and there was water.  Note to self, flashlight batteries.

Water on, hot water heater on, electric on and all my stuff inside I started to unload my ice chest.  It was still very odd to be here by myself until I started to get the feeling I wasn’t here by myself.  The cabin is an old a frame and because of the incredible view of river and mountain the entire front wall is glass.  Beyond the glass is a little deck perhaps eight foot wide and three steps leading down to the little path that gets you to the river. 

Loading the refrigerator means my back is facing that wall of glass.  Glass that anything can get through including the psychotic axe murders I’ve never seen but to this day I’m positive roam the woods intent on doing me harm.  Knowing one of these miscreants was poised and ready to break through the glass I turned and…saw a young buck standing at the steps staring at me surely wondering what I was doing.  We stood staring at each other for minutes.  It was truly a Carlos Castaneda moment sans the peyote.  Apparently, staring at him bored him to tears and the buck turned and walked off, well sauntered actually.

I did the mundane things one does in the evening later finding myself reading at a little table large enough for two but tonight only full by half.  The table is a favorite spot of mine as it sits close enough to the window you could be as close to outside possible when you had to be inside.

I looked up from my book contemplating the coming day with excited anticipation while filled with trepidation of the night in front of me.  That’s when the ghosts showed up.

Alive and passed they all showed up.  Not all at once of course.  Though the cabin isn’t petite there is no way it could hold five generations of memories at once.  Much of my life has happened in this place and very few times was there sadness in this place.  To be sure there were times when the occupants might have had a strained relationship, a sad memory of sometime else someplace else but for most of the countless hours the cabin protected its inhabitants they were happy hours.

I count myself fortunate beyond belief to have this place to come to.  Even though, for the last twenty five months, I can’t help but think each time I leave if I’ll ever be back.  I’m trying to teach myself not to think like that.  A skill I haven’t quite achieved but work at diligently.  But even with that thought, and the axe murders roaming the forest intent on my harm the space put me at peace as it always does

So I sat and let the ghosts roam about until my eyes grew heavy.  I left them on their own and wandered off to bed.  I was looking forward to what tomorrow would bring.

A Tale From The Road a Few Hours Later

I’m  Barbarian when it comes to AC in an automobile.  Ride with me in an Eastern Washington heat wave and you’ve better pray to your Gods that the ambient temp goes above 103°.  If the temp doesn’t then you will live with at a minimum the 480 AC and in the right place at the right time you may enjoy the 490 AC.  Could be worse I drive a mini club cab “pickyup”.  Used to be my rig only had two windows. That reduces cooling capacity vastly.  Go ahead and call me on it.  I actually have the math skills to tell you it reduces the cooling by half.

The fact is, at this point, I’m running through some of the most beautiful Kittitas Valley land filled with scent fresh mown and baled Cowboy bales.  Once more,  I’m belly laughing and hanging on not only to the visual but the scent.  All of that has officially sealed my fate.  I’m trapped in my road trip.  Sealed into an envelope no one sealed.  No one mailed.  Someone kindly left open so I could peek out as I headed toward my destination. 

The cool thing about not using the AC  is when you hit the summer mountains. Every scent comes rushing in at 80 mph then  caress’s  your face.  At that moment you know road trip is on and every scent jacks your library of memories.  Yup that’s a pine scented stockyard.  Yup that’s a spruce scented stream, that’s the scent of a stream trying to hang on until next.   Aspen trying to hide the odour of the hill laboring RV in front of you.  Heady, and very heavy at all that August meadow blanket  with... 

I wound down, around and up.  Left, right, starboard and port round and round. As the sun started to Wester odd things began to happen as they always do during that time in the approaching the cats night that makes all nervous.

I pass under an overpass and way way out of the way and spy five planes, each on a train car, destined to Boeing West all wrapped in green something.  Just in case there was someone in the wingless planes the person that had wrapped the Liners made sure anyone would have a view out.  Each plane happily headed West clinking and clanking and the ghosts that one worker guy spent hours cutting the green stuff off each window so they who were flying the wingless train could blindly view the switchback that is the method to get into this valley. 

I dropped into a valley lit the light of the Westering sun.  About the time that was light enough for the young to read  but for those of us with glasses meant turning on the reading lamp.

So carefully I drove the stretch that is Beaver Creek Valley where old eyes need help.  As I passed these rural abodes wondering about what was happening. 

That house had a family that wondered how they were going to make their mortgage payment.  On the other side of the road Grandma was sick and husband had to cook his own dinner because his wife was sitting in a hospital fifty miles away.  The husband discovered being on your own wasn’t very cool.

Yikes, that house without the porch light was filled with an angry angry man that drinks himself asleep starting about noon.

Then there was the home in happy but fearful frenzy as they prepared for their daughter departure clear across the state five hours away from meeting her destiny as a freshman.  Parents were hoping beyond hope the home town boyfriend wouldn’t have the last say.

So the miles went by.  I was close to the cabin and filled with overwhelming anticipation.  I could tell by the long shadows from the sun sliding in orange behind the peaks I would be turning the water on at the cabin by brail.  Crap, even in full sunlight turning the water on with the “tool” was/is a lot like dousing for water with a Willow Y.

Wow.  I guess this is a longer story than anyone wants to hear.  Guess what!  I’m going to add something, that is hopefully more exciting tomorrow.

Talk to you tomorrow

Tales From A Road

Sorry I’ve been gone for so long.  I really did and do intend to write at least once a week but sometimes, I’ve found out here in last couple of years,  life just has other plans.  But now, I find myself sitting in a beautiful garden blanketed in the sweet smell of Jasmine and thinking I might actually have a thought or two I can put down on “paper”.  You see.  I did something I hadn’t done for probably thirty years [no, not that], I went on a road trip.  Yep.  Just a story about a road trip…get out your “ho-hum.”

For those of you that know me you are thinking, “Thirty years that’s impossible.”  OK, but twenty years isn’t stretching it especially when I’m using the definition of "utterly by myself."  Not working, not on a vendor junket, not at a trade show, not doing the daily commutes, but by myself and I have to tell you at first it kinda’ freaked me out.

As I was getting ready to leave, where my wife would be visiting while I was gone, her folks house, I was as fidgety as a whore in church [never could figure out why whores supposedly can’t believe in God thus being nervous in church].  Noticeably and it was noticed.  How could this nervousness be?  Especially in a man who has been told more than once he walks like he owns the world.  Admittedly now, walking with a cane has leeched some of that aura from the impression.  None the less, sick or not, I still have an arrogant amount of self confidence left so this nervousness made no sense.  And with trepidation that’s what I did, I left.

I have been poked and prodded.  I have blindly joined research trials.  I suffered through the especially incredible humiliation of a prostate biopsy performed by Dr. Doom [for you guys that read this I will be all telling about a prostate biopsy in a future blog and you are not going to like it] himself while he was accompanied by the beautiful blonde urologist trainee Anna who asked me if she could feel too.  Radiation,  chemo,  dark nights.  The list is stupidly long and I was heading off to my favorite place but heading off full of trepidation.  What the hell?

I guess we get so caught up in the new challenges in our lives we forget we were and are capable of living the old joys.  As I pulled out of town I found myself comparing a road trip into the known with a visit to an Oncologist who was explaining my trip into the unknown.  The more miles I put between that thought and each mile closer to my destination I realized I was comparing apples to oranges. 

Then BANG! Just like that I started laughing.  Not just laughing, laughing.  The wind rushing in through the windows.  The speed-o-meter at a number that was just right for me and illegal for all.  Dropping over the top and starting down into the Kittitas Valley.  Laughing like a berserker because I was on a road trip with the only terms being what the next four days were going to bring me and they brought me a lot.

But enough.  Those of you that stayed with me to this point, well there is more and I will share it.  There’s the deer, the apparently broken ankle, the monk effect and of course as we all know I’m sure I have an epiphany or two along the way somewhere. 

Talk to you later.

Do You Have Anymore Room?

When I first decided to do a blog I said it wouldn't be all cancer all the time.  I've tried to make that true.  Like an annoying leaky faucet I always seem to have something to whine about though.  No one likes a whiner so in the past few weeks, for a number of reasons I've been posting my whines only about once a week.

Some people actually really and truly don't like that lack of entertainment.  Some can wait and still others just go to Starbucks.  I like all three groups.  Each and everyone of you gives me little nuggets of perspective that I would not normally perceive or prospect.  Yep nuggets just like you see in the bright red packages at Rite Aid, Beef Teryiaki Nuggets.  Seriously, Nuggets?  Who eats any food that is called a "whatever" Nugget.

Tonight's blog is so totally totally about cancer.  Your going to wish you started reading a blog about being a midget curler in the Olympics by the time you are done with this one.  Yep, you are right,  this blog I'm going to ask you all for a favor.  Stop it!  The favor will cost you nothing but a millisecond of your energy.

A near and very dear friend of mine has breast cancer. We all know them, have them or are one.  She's a  friend of decades for me and a couple decades for my wife.  It's safe to say we both count ourselves fortunate to be on her friends list.

She's been through her Chemo Regime and this coming week she is headed for the "Double".   Of course after that is Radiation.

So, here's what I'm asking.  You have all been so kind to me with your thoughts and prayers.  I'm hoping you have one more spot on your prayer and/or thoughts list for my/our dear friend.  I know as we all move along in this life our lists get long.  I get that.  

So.  I offer up this.  If your list is long, and by the time you get done it's time to go to work the next day, bump me and my spot on your list.  You've done so well for me I think I can forge ahead.  She, on the other hand needs everything she can be given including the thoughts of those who have taken such great care of me in these last two years.

Hell who knows?  Maybe I'll come up with something entertaining to thank you all.

Talk to you later

To Tap or Puncture That is the Question

This past Wednesday I arrived at the hospital bright eyed and bushy tailed for yet another procedure.  This procedure was painless, interesting and an earnest effort to define my new malady.  The procedure?  Just a Lumbar Puncture.  The most exciting part of my Lumbar Puncture was the head rush I received when they made me sit up because apparently my spinal fluid dripped about as fast as molasses in winter while I was laying down.

Some of you may be wondering, "Is a Lumbar Pucnture the same as a Spinal Tap?"

In the medical world it is.  Much the same as Bi-Polar and Manic Depressive are the same.  The name has just been changed to, well, the only thing I can think of is to confuse us.

When a friend asked what "they" were doing to me next I replied "Lumbar Puncture."  And, I explained what a Lumbar Puncture was.  Naturally she said.  "Oh you mean a Spinal Tap."

Then quite abruptly she laughed and laughed saying.  "Can you imagine the band named Lumbar Puncture?"

She's right!  Would the cult classic, the holiest of holies, Spinal Tap, become the legend it is today if they were named Lumbar Puncture?  I think not.

Of course, once again, I started thinking.  I wondered if I life would be the same if ny name was Frank, Bob or Jedidiah?  Seriously, think about it.  If you hear the name Wilbert you probably think pocket protector. How about Chip, Chris and Kip?  Yikes.  [No offense guys]

So like a dog worrying a bone I've been wondering more than I should.  If my name was something other than it is would I live somewhere else?  Be married to someone else?  Not have this disease?  Wow.

Truth be told.  I like my name and I wouldn't change it.  But, I do wonder......

Talk to you later

Orange Legs II

Hmmm.  It appears, in order to make them play fair, when making deals with lofty angry deities one needs to be more specific.  Upon waking I still seem to have my new affliction and now....

 ...orange legs.

Orange Legs

My apologies to my cadre of readers for my absence.  Cadre?  That sounds like a lot of readers.  I've been angry.  So angry that everything I typed with these fingers was so toxic I could never blog the words.  Truth be told I was duck angry.

Duck angry?  Yup, duck angry.  Have you ever listened to a duck?  Their quacking has the tone of the angry ninety year old neighbor yelling at the neighborhood kids to "stay off his damn grass."  The tenor of a bull's glare when you've trespassed into his field.  They sound like they are saying a gravelly "fricken fucken shit fricken fricken fucken shit" and you know why?  They have orange legs for God's sake.  That's enough to piss anyone off.

Obviously the ducks pissed someone off up above.  Who knows how they pissed off one of those lofty deities but orange legs are definite proof of the duck's errant ways.  Perhaps they shunned the God of Orange in some original way.  Who knows?  But piss someone off they did and blam...orange legs. 

As you know I have a fairly major affliction..  One would think that would fill anyone's plate to overflowing.  Ask anyone of us in this position and we'll smile and say something like,  "yeah that sucks doesn't it?"  Rest assured it is a full full plate for those of us with the disease and our loved ones who also have to live with the disease.

So imagine my anger as I left my neurosurgeon's office the day after my real birthday.  Why thirty days after successful research study results did I have no feeling in my right leg and a neurosurgeon telling me it could be a form of MS.  Wait damn it say again?  

"Bad luck" he said, "especially everything you've been through.

The unfortunate thing is they only give you one plate when you start out on this journey and my plate was just about full.  Angry.  More angry then I've ever been including my anger about my cancer.  Boy, one would think I'd have learned a lesson from Mr. Orange Legs.  Apparently not.


So here's the deal Mister Up Above That I Pissed Off.  I'll make you a deal.  I'll take back all the words I screamed at you from the emergency lane on Sylvan Hill.  You take away the numbness in my legs and we'll call it even.  Hell, I'll even sweeten the pot.  I'm willing to wake up tomorrow morning with orange legs.  Deal?