Yes, a carpenter without his hammer is like a haystack without it’s needle. Something like that. Funny because just yesterday before I lost it I was thinking about getting buried with it, sort of a representative of all my tools. Kind of cool that the darned thing disappeared in such a timely fashion.

I was trying to get my job finished or close. Just replacing an old window for a friend. And my hammer disappears. But just driving on Vashon today and getting to the job is problematic. Town is clogged up with tourists visiting the Farmer’s Market. Right around the corner from the ranch are the now a little too famous Sheepdog Trials and the traffic from that. Then the clincher is the back roads being filled with bikers racing in this 70 mile race (on a 14 mile island) called, ready, Passport to Pain, yea. OK people, out of my paradise please.

Now just a little story about the new us and the old us that this Passport to Pain is reminding me of. A friend of mine here had a great friend who was this old cowboy. I think his name was John. So, John is riding shotgun on a little trip here on Vashon and they pass this jogger running on the side of the road. John gets excited and wants my friend to pull over and help the guy out. What do you mean help the guy? Well, he obviously lost his horse, why else would he be running?

The more I think about my idea to get buried with my hammer and then promptly loosing it, the more I have to laugh. Goes to show, quit trying to think too much about the darned future. Maybe I got more life to live, hey? If I find that hammer I’m throwing it in the Sound, love, Felipe.

Yea, Catherine’s first salmon! Well done! I’m sorry I wasn’t there for it. But my excellent tutoring paid off. Haha.

She caught that off the beach but I see that we need to get the canoe out. Maybe Our Jennifer is feeling better, she will want to go. I have to get my work done first.

What else is in the news. My Rebecca was over at Jennifer’s last evening for a food production, for lack of better words. Jennifer’s house has two kitchens. One is really big and open with tons of counter space which was designed and built as a teaching space. People come and give classes there. Anyway, neighbors got together to build a hundred peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I think that they went well over that as they were using up the supplies on hand. They will be passed out to the homeless in Seattle today. How about that? Kudos gang! Angel on!

Well, that’s the news from the neighborhood. Pretty much everyone is scrambling around trying to get their projects done before the monsoons. That’s the basic drill.

Oh, I know, you need an update on Phil’s Camino. We are on our virtual walk through Spain for the second time and we got 42 kilometers logged in. So, we are up and over the Pyrenees, past the town of Biskarreta and almost to Zubiri. I can see it in the distance! Yup, miss walking with you.

If you are local come and help me along. Monday 9-10, Tuesday 4-5, Thursday 9-10 and Sunday 4-5. Need you in the conversation, love, Felipe.

Sometime before noon yesterday our friend flew away. He was surrounded by his family and friends, alperfect. I was outside his door about that time, he saw me there. I left some sunflowers and a note.

But today I want to transition to something, I am not sure what at the moment. This death thing takes too much energy. But before we leave it, it did spark some good conversation between Our Jennifer and myself. We actually talk about this more than usual. Maybe it is a way of preparing ourselves.

I was relating to her a story about the Camino and death that we could reflect on. There in Spain along the trail every once in a while would be a small shire to someone who had died on that spot. There would be the usual pile of rocks and pictures and notes in memory. The thought crosses my mind that millions of pilgrims walking there over 1200 years there had to be deaths all over the place but these few are marked.

I remember standing at these little places and gazing around at the local landscape and saying to myself that this woundn’t be a bad place to die. Of course it is hard to find a spot in rural Spain that is ugly really. So any place becomes a good spot. See the thinking there? Yes, I could die here or here or here, yes. Dying along the trail with my boots on looked like a preferred way. So, yes, no problem. The Camino provides.

OK, tomorrow we will come up with another topic. Something will happen to spark comment. I am walking in a few moments. Have to remember to bring dog biscuits for Scout. She really thinks I am lame since I forget most of the time. Maybe our friend will be there with us today as we walk. Yup, and so it goes, thinking of you, love, Felipe.

Fortunately it is not everyday that we have to deal with death. Well, I mean in our community of someone that we may know well or not so well. A few weeks ago Jennifer and I went to visit a man who I didn’t know so well but he had walked Phil’s Camino months ago. I was off to some special visit to the hospital that day and wasn’t walking at the regular scheduled time. Jennifer and Catherine walked with him and it created a bond, especially with Jennifer.

So yesterday this dear man was dying at home with his family around him. I had a chance to go but passed. Jennifer went over and left flowers outside. So she has me going over this morning to check on the situation, she’s insistent. I will go in a few minutes and show up there at 0900, not too early.

I said a rosary for him yesterday as I walked the Camino. And I texted Catherine and she said one also. “Hail Mary full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” Maybe you can tell that I am feeling guilty for not going yesterday. I did what I could yesterday without getting too close. But I will courage up here and go this AM. The dear man may have left his body but that doesn’t mean that he can’t see me there. Yes, that’s right.

Yup, maybe I will pick a riot of sunflowers to take over. Have to go, love, Felipe.

ps ~ just back and it seems that our man is still hanging on. I have to make an appointment and I can sit with him for an hour. Later, Felipe.

I think that is kind of like working in your pajamas but yea here we are. I woke up in one of those anxious modes (moods maybe) when I am spinning my wheels with all the thoughts of things that need to get done, or it would be nice to get done or things that I want to do vs all that. Yuk. I ate some breakfast and retreated to the hammock.

And what should happen? Popping out of the funk of my morning is Our Anamaria on Instant Messaging all the way from Madrid. Here I am outside in the hammock rolled up I my Camino sleeping bag out under a threatening sky at a time half way to winter. Sort of a mini of my life and I could dwell on that but who should walk in (electronically speaking) but the Princess of Viana just at this time. Ah, I am blessed.

So we messaged back and forth for half an hour and I got a rough idea of her latest Camino experience. She sent some nice pics. So we will soon put together a post on the POV’s solo across the Meseta for you.

A couple of days ago we did the Rule of Exceptions post and two tremendous comments came in on that. Look those up if you haven’t yet. Going to the next level here at Caminoheads when we get on this wavelength. So have been thinking about exceptions and miracles since. And this morning as I stumbled around the kitchen I came across this quote attributed to Uncle Al that I have taped up to a cupboard: “There are only two ways to live you life: one is though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein.

Well, doesn’t that seem to snuggle into the conversation so well. And somehow from a heavy hitter like Uncle Al I can lean on it more than the usual quote. Somewhere out there in the universe there is a place where the hard cold facts of science kiss the warm spirit of God and all is well. Uncle Al has been to that place I think or close enough to it to live and come back.

I’m weeping, I know that this is a good blog, love you, Don Felipe.

I was just saying to My Rebecca, what am I going to write about? I said that I had seen the littlest snake today and she reminded me that I had a knock out blog post about the Itty Bitty Spiders a while back. OK.

And then here we are with Our Jennifer watching Roger Federer in the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament at our place and we are giggling and trying to tie the snakes in with tennis somehow to come up with this post. Everyone is helping. Something about “if pigs could fly” or “if snakes could wear tennis shoes”. I don’t know, I don’t have much hope that this thing will come together.

Well, it is Labor Day, here in the States anyway, which is a day to not labor, is my take on it. So maybe I will go with that and say I’m just going to not labor too hard on this one. We got some giggles out out of it so far and that is a good holiday sort of thing.

But hark Our Jennifer pulls it out last minute with, “I’m going to name my next cat Roger!” Of course she is thinking about her tennis idol Roger Federer, that Roger. Sounds like a pretty innocent thing for a person to say except Jennifer just got a new cat and Jennifer has a serious cancer hobby. She is not supposed to be thinking like that. She is not supposed to be talking like that. Ah, so nice, right? I am so happy for her that she can we escape once in a while like that. Spoken like a true Commando, Jennifer, well done.

OK, that’s it for Labor Day and Labor Day marks the end of summer in Americans’ minds, so yea the end of the end. Good bye summer but autumn is full of good stuff in my mind like football, apple cider and hunting trips. Off we go then into the future, love, Felipe.

We are having our funky weekend here, our low tide in the chemo cycle. Sometimes this is easier than others. Maybe different factors conspire to trip us up. Anyway I just talked to Our Jennifer on the phone. We were trying to cheer ourselves up.

Some of the conversation revolved around books that have been given to us by good hearted folks. Sometimes it feels like I get two books a day. Jennifer was doing a cleanup of one of her spaces and sorting through a pile of gift books. We talked about amazing books that have come from those piles.

The amazing stories to us are the ones that that revolve around the topics of Near Death Experiences or of turnarounds in disease. You know those incredible exceptions that seem to exist in spite of all the cold hard facts. Life at the hospital revolves around statistics, a close cousin to cold hard facts so it is good to contemplate something else, something more cuddly.

What is the deal with exceptions anyway? How is that the cold hard rules have these amazing exceptions hanging around and not nervously hanging area but cool as a cucumber hanging around. Maybe even an exception with an attitude. Maybe even an exception with it’s hair on fire. Yea!

Here we are playing defense, with cancer on the offense and there seems little leeway in the system. How do we dial up two of these exceptions? Felipe y Jennifer.

I made great progress about getting out of my quagmire when Our Catherine and I went canoeing yesterday morning. She is a great boat person and generally good Companera. Good healing being out on the clear salty fluid in the sun in a light responsive craft with someone you trust, alperfect.

Today Our Jennifer and My Rebecca and myself are off to the hospital. We all have stuff going on there. Try to catch some Thai dinner afterward.

But here is something really good on the horizon. I am always looking for activities to do on the long winter evenings coming up on us. There are meetings, clubs and such to give a person something stimulating to do. So we came up with Belly Laugh Theatre for one night a week. Folks could get together have dessert and coffee and watch some hilarious film to lighten the load of the week. Maybe Marx Brothers, What About Bob? I am sure there will be plenty of choices once we start digging around.

This is just were My Rebecca and I met way back when. We were both in a group that met Tuesday evening to share a potluck dinner and watch MASH and Monty Python, same idea, laughing as medicine. OK, I think we have a plan.

Well maybe we could get some random laughter in today at some random moments. Thanks for sharing your time with me. Laughy loves, Felipe.

Does it happen? My guilty self keeps imagining some innocent gal just looking on the Internet for a goulash recipe to feed her lovely family and she pulls up my last three posts about goulash wrestling. Better than some of the other stuff one could pull up these daze. Well maybe it is just what she needs Felipe, hmmm.

I have to admit that I am still wrestling and not quite to the basking in victory stage. Maybe what I need is a canoe paddle to tip (good pun Felipe) the scales. Our Catherine is calling for one today sometime after our walk. Yes and where are we on our walk? Let me consult the new logbook: we have made it through the town of Burguete and today should get to Espinal at 36.68 km. Looks like we are putting a dent in it now. But back to canoeing, don’t let Dr Gold (callsign Nugget) know that I am screwing around in small tippy boats with my portable chemo pump hanging around my waist. Just like I wasn’t crawling around on a wet roof Monday doing emergency storm repair. Must be another Felipe. He does greet me with, “Keeping out of trouble Volker?” at my appointments lately. Hmmm. Deep down he is really a big gold nugget.

Well time to get up and make some cafe con leche. Have been up half the night with steroid jitters and tangles from chemo. Now I want to drink coffee? Hmmm. Oh well, what’s a few more chemicals. “Better Living Through Chemistry” was an old slogan, probably older than you can remember, but I’m living proof hey?

OK seriously, I have to get out of the sleeping bag and get my butt in gear. Have a morning walk coming up. So, we have JenniferXO and Angelo X (amazing characters from PFJ’s posse) started their Camino in France today. Prayers for their wellbeing and enlightenment. And to you on your personal Caminos I pray and encourage in any darn way I can think of. Let’s invent some new ways. Love, Don Felipe de Viana.