Yea, all of a sudden it was there! Dana just midwifed it’s before our eyes. She saw it vailed but hopeful and called it forward. “Go big or go home! We’re having it!“ Kudos to you Dana!

So, we have eight months to procrastinate, ah plan. That is an over abundance of time to engineer a heck of a party. And pray for a vaccine and a loosening of restrictions. We need to operate inbounds of all that obviously. But I have high hopes that things will look much differently by then.

My coffee is hot as I watch the morning develop. We went from rain earlier to wind, lots of wind and now a lull. Walking in a few minutes so I’m glad that it is settling down. We had a nice walk yesterday afternoon just before sunset. Jim and Jen came to be with me and Wiley. So we had a foursome which is rare these days.

Speaking of Wiley and Jim and Jen I have some pics for them that I could put up today. One of the doors that I am making in the shop for Jim and Jen’s art studio. And one of Wiley and James from the top of Sunrise Peak from our snowy hunting trip.

I have to thank My Rebecca for helping me figure out how to do some corrections with photographs on the blog here that has been plaguing me since the beginning. It all seems so simple in hindsight but it took six years to accomplish. Thank you Bekka. I get so wrapped up in producing the content here that I seldom leave time for niceties.

So, it is that magic time to get my boots which have been warming by the fire and get geared up for the morning walk. The leaves are all off the hawthorns but the handfuls of red fruit are gorgeous, ready to feed the robins and waxwings. There is no standing water on the trail and the creek is dry as of now.

handfuls of gorgeous red fruit loves, Felipé.

We had wintertime outside tapas yesterday evening with the lovelies, Catherine and Dana. They have a new social space that is out of the rain but outside and named it the Covid Cafe. So we went and tried it out for size. What fun as we are all so starved for interaction.

Can you have enough tapatime I ask? Impossible, you say, correct answer! Catherine y Dana purchased a parcel of land next to their piece. And on that is a ruin of a house that burned down long ago. But the small one car garage with a concrete floor is still standing and they cleaned that up for a little party space.

So the tapa conversation roamed all over the place as usual but I wanted to report on the part about POSTcovid! Yea, POSTcovid, you know, remember PREcovid? This talk was specifically about the possibility of a 2021 Veranda. And Dana said loudly, “Go big or go home, we’re having it!” So there it is gang. We are willing this thing into being; we are putting our energy in this direction! This was the tipping point, November 28th 2020 tapas. Thank you Dana!

And Cris anticipating all this said that she is coming for forty days, biblical there, and then added four more days for good measure for the 2020 missing time. So, the momentum has shifted. We pivot! Mark it down, August 20th to the 23rd!

little bird at the window loves, Felipé.

Here are a few words from John in Iowa, CHBC

“Hola, Felipe, et al!!

Today is the Saturday following Thanksgiving, which translates in this casa to the second day in a row having PIE for breakfast!! Love that part of the Holiday. It’s also the day we start organizing and prioritizing our ‘Giving List” to send out on Giving Tuesday. I would encourage this for others on this world-wide-reach Blog as there are just so many worthy organizations that get a big boost from the “matching funds” that are available on that day. Check it out!”

(Our moon is waxing gibbous, 99% illumination)

Cris had a nice comment on yesterday’s post:

I am just imaging the chit-chat between Marynell and Dale after you left!

You are actually doing what Pope Francis has instructed: smile and laugh ❤️
​
“…Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humor.
Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke to discover in life a bit of joy,
and to be able to share it with others.”
Saint Thomas More’s “Prayer for Good Humor”

Love you,
Cris

OK, I think that we are on the right track. Thank you Cris for that reinforcement! We are in the swing with the Pope around here I see.

Backing up a few days to Friday a week ago when Annie and I had that QandA with the cancer support group. I really love this work right here where the rubber meets the road with these support groups. I always tell these folks that no questions are off the table, to ask away. And one person asked what was my relationship with my Cancer? That was a first for me after all these years of QandA’s although I have been blogging about it for years.

So briefly, I never considered that it was a foreign invader. I choose to believe that it is an imbalance in my own body, a renegade part of me. It is a revolt or revolution, so to speak. If I keep in this zone it helps me to move around in the world. I am pretty fearless of it all out there in front of me.

Annie then told the story of me having a meeting with my tumors where I told them that they had better keep it all low keyed. They needed to not get too rowdy with me. “Because if I go you guys go too!”

Yea, that happened back a few years ago. And back at the QandA some conversation went back and forth with several people. And in the end I characterized my Cancer as a unruly roommate. Someone that I could get along with if I put in the required amount of extra work. You know, picking up used towels and old pizza boxes and such for the general good of all. And if I kept in good humor about the whole thing.

Thank you Cris and thank you all for checking in.

let’s see, does this go in the garbage or recycling loves, Felipé.

(Our moon in waxing gibbous, 97% illumination).

There is a little blue sky out to the Southwest so there is hope of maybe a sun break or two. Well, on the far side of Thanksgiving. It’s all turkey sandwiches from now on, which is a major good thing. So, our meal was great, thank you Rebecca and Henna for the food engineering. The TV football was fun. We had good prayers and a field trip.

Not every holiday dinner has a field trip but I thought that it was a good idea and everyone honored me on it. I drove the four of us to the Vashon Cemetery to see my new plot. Kind of a crazy deal but what the heck. I think Henna got a little weirded out but what are in-laws for? So there is the pic of Felipé checking out the view. There I got Marynell to my right and Dale to my left, close neighbors.

Well yea, I thought that it was a good idea. Sometimes you just have to have some fun with stuff. Maybe other people don’t quite get it always. Oh, and speaking of fun, we also listened to the recording of Alice’s Restaurant and Massacree. That is a piece of history there.

So off we go to turkey sandwich land. Maybe some leaf raking land and some football land in our future too. Thanks for checking in.

gratitude over all loves, Felipé.

I fed the woodstove a load of firewood and the Hummingbirds got some new syrup. Got myself some peanut butter oatmeal to tide me over to the big meal. Yea, now I get to write to you, then off to the morning walk around the Camino.

We have had Thanksgiving greetings come in from different places, thank you. Ronaldo sent in this link to the original Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie. Thank you.

Alice’s Restaurant

But that was the 1960’s and this is 2020. Maybe someone could rig up an updated version of that for our pandemic times. “You can get any thing you want, if they are still open, at Alice’s Restaurant excepting Alice.”

Speaking of the grip of the pandemic I am liking the news lately about the progress of the vaccines. This is really exciting. I have high hopes that the Veranda will be going deal for August! So that is the start of an encouraging rumor right there.

But for right here and right now on this specific day of thanksgiving let us concentrate on that. Let us put gratitude forward above everything else. We need to pray for all. It is time for a big heart as we await.

So, I will go find my boots and walking sticks and get ready for an hour of Phil’s Camino. Best wishes to you and yours on this day.

big heart loves, Felipé.

A day to clean the house and take a last minute run to town for Brussel sprouts. I was just thinking of holidays past. Happy ones stuffed with crazy family memories. And the old sad ones where we are far away with not a chance of getting there. I guess it takes all of that to make a lifetime.

This year is special though as we all share the common burden of the pandemic. Well, at least we are all in it together. That seems kind of a consolation prize I know. But maybe we can expand on that as it is about all we got to work with.

Somehow Alice’s Restaurant is coming to mind. A tale built on the dump being closed. “Who ever heard of a dump being closed on Thanksgiving?”. I don’t think that we are going to get into the kind of trouble that Arlo did but it is kind of making something out of nothing on Thanksgiving.

I have an account on Spotify that I pay for and can’t use. I got my password so gumboed up with them that it wouldn’t even let me get close. Felipé persona non grata. Maybe Henna could figure that out tomorrow while she is here since she is such a wiz. Then we could listen to Alice’s Restaurant at our own little gathering, maybe. Would they even have it? Probably too antiquated but will give it a shot.

And what about the old televised yule log? Maybe time to light that sucker off! My Rebecca says, “The yule log instead of football?” She has a point you have to admit.

Well whatever, we need to pray for nurses and doctors who are not getting the day off. This I know. And of course there are the folks with the Covid and we need to pray for them. OK, good.

giving thanks loves, Felipé.

I was gifted a most important item yesterday. It is a little piece of ground in a peaceful pretty place with neighborhood friends all around. Given to me by a kind friend was a plot at the Vashon Cemetery. I went and looked at it for the first time this morning. Couldn’t be happier about this development.

My Rebecca and I went and had an hour with the local Funeral Director, also a friend and total wonderful person yesterday. We hammered out some important details for the future. It was time for that or maybe way past time for that really. So, good for us!

And Thanksgiving on our doorstep. We have a turkey thawing. And the time now to gather ingredients for the meal. Wiley and Henna will be here. Henna to make mac and cheese as a side dish. That was to please me as I wanted to try it. So we will be small but mighty.

Last year we were at a large family gathering with Henna’s fam here locally. It was really fun and of course we are mourning the loss of such excitement but here we are. Well, we are all promising to be good this year and are keeping it small and local, right?

I heard some optimistic news on the radio this morning about how the States could have half of our population vaccinated by May coming up. This would put a major crimp in the plague. Is there hope for Veranda 2021? Do we have dates for that?

that’s all for now loves, Felipé.

Clear, clear and clear. There is a wind and the leaves are falling like snow. Soon, in days, they will be all down for the year. Overhead the clouds are scudding by. We hunker down by our fires thinking our thoughts.

Geez, by the sound of that we are living in a cave somewhere in the land before time. Well, we still remember all that I am sure. And in some ways we are reliving it with the darn hunkerdown pandemic shrouding the entire globe.

I thought that it would be a good idea if I made a few phone calls to check in on friends that I haven’t seen for a while. I have gotten some awfully nice emails from friends lately that mean a lot to me. Maybe it would be good to keep that going.

Just that simple thing on my mind today, to check in. Let’s make sure that we are all OK.

off to walk loves, Felipé.

It’s like living in a cloud, this fog. I suppose it is good for the complexion, how could a wrinkle survive? It is moist out to the nth degree. Visibility sort of comes and goes on a whim. Driving is hazardous. Your car could get wrinkles pretty easily.

So, we walk and say our rosary here in a minute. It will be eerie and mysterious like the Holy Spirit is. We will be walking inside the Holy Spirit and we will produce a glow which will be mysterious. We could become part of the mystery, hopefully.

I have to go and gear up, it’s time.

be where you are loves, Felipé.

Monday 0900-1000
Tuesday 1530-1630
Thursday 0900-1000
Sunday 1530-1630

Felipé.