Sitting in the waiting room at the hospital and gazing out the window at the site where the fast food McDonald’s used to be.  It was just across the street and probably originally set up for the convince of staff and patients.  But it had seen better days and finally economics caught up with it and it disappeared in the wink of an eye.  Now there is a multistory building underway on the footprint.

Well, I never made it to the fireworks last night.  I fell asleep on the couch with IPad in hand.  That’s an OK thing.

So, today at the hospital for my 99th treatment!  I don’t know if I am bragging or complaining really.  I am so happy that I have my friends here to banter with.  Coming here to face the reality of the treatment center without them would be deadly.  I am looking around the waiting room and half of the folks here are looking pretty deadly.  Maybe I can pray for them as I sit.

Here I am at the comfy chair.  There is a man next to me that plays a Peruvian flute for his wife.  It is a very soothing sound.  The hospital could employ him to play.  Or maybe we could all chip in.

Well, I’ve been dropping hints all over the place that my next treatment is my 100th.  That is going to be Tuesday July 18th.  I know I usually get treatments on Wednesday but this is an exception.  I got one of the nurses to make carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for us here.  Sister Joyce is coming over to the Island that afternoon so the Phil’s Camino gang can all get together to celebrate with here at the ranch.

My nurse Becca is learning ukulele with a bunch of the other nurses.  How fun!  I have always considered myself so unmusical, it would be good therapy to take something like that up.  That’s what I need, a new hobby.

OK, I’ve blabbed on enough.  Time to go, maybe I can drum up some more cupcakes.  Love, Felipe.

I got out to the corn this morning and what did I see but two of my neighbors in there weeding today’s row.  I have been trying to get one eighty foot row done per day, my quota.  So the three of us got the quota done in no time.

So, now it is later in the day and I need to get going here in a few minutes to watch the fireworks in the harbor.  They are pretty darn spectacular for a little dinky place like here.  There is a few anonymous high rollers that chip in for that.  There is a big barge that they tow in that has the whole show onboard and the guy in charge fires it off remotely.  It’s all happening over the water, safety first or wait a minute isn’t down to third now.  I’ll have to check.

Have to mention that we had a great visit yesterday afternoon from a group from Spokane that came to walk and be with us.  Nice folks, we had fun.  Six all together so there was eight of us at tapas.  They brought food and wine.  All kinds of folks make it in here if they are carrying bags from Trader Joe’s.

It feels like Sunday today but no it is Tuesday.  I am off to the hospital tomorrow for my 99th treatment.  I’m having too much fun out on the ranch for that monkey business but oh well.  Jessika is taking me.  Let see we are going to stop at Target for jeans and Trader Joe’s for wine and olives.

There a bunch of robins in the cherry tree over my head hungry after the fruit.  They are dropping debris on me and shaking the leaves that block the sun.  They got a little light show going across the screen of my iPad.  Another case of Wild Kingdom.

Well, that is Fourth of July here, celebrating the birth of our nation.  Thanks for being with us.  Red, white and blue loves, Felipe.

Monday today and regrouping after the weekend.  Well actually it is a four day weekend around here with the Fourth tomorrow.  So maybe it is more like halftime, a lull.  Still trying to play catch up to my weed friends in the corn.  I will be out there in a moment.  Walk at 0900 and then walk at 1600 with a visitor coming then.

Father David had a homily about hospitality yesterday.  He brought up aspects of welcoming that I hadn’t considered before.  Great homily.  Maybe if you had to boil down the Camino into one word that would be a really good candidate.

The word hospitality must come from the same root as hospital.  Maybe I should look that up in the big fat paper dictionary.  Yea, it’s connected to hospital, hospice, hospitable and  hospitaler.  The Knights of St. John, also known as the Knights of Malta are also known as the Knights Hospitaler.  They opened the first hospitals which served pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem way back when.

Hospitality the bigger concept seems to be the opposite of isolation and insulation.  It is opening up rather than boarding up.  It is opening up to God also.  It is becoming part of that “flow of pilgrims” or that “cloud of believers”  or the “communion of saints”.  I think all of those are the same ultimately.

Here is one I am thinking about:  “Walking is a mobile form of waiting.”  Thomas Clark.

So far so good loves, Felipe.

I very seldom erase a new blog and start over but I just did.  Usually I have an idea and I go with it come hell or high water without second guessing.  But today I had two ideas and one won out at the expense of the other.

The thing that is really trying to get out of me is the idea that if I come back to this world I want to come back as your lucky shirt.  I realize that would mean being in a lot of different places at once and looking like a lot of different things but maybe that won’t be a problem.  Anyway, I want to be that shirt/blouse that you have had for a long time and it fits you perfectly and comfortably always.  It never seems to be too thick or too thin, too warm or too cool, too dark or too light.  It always makes you look good, not to dressy not to casual.  You want to say that you are welcoming and warm at the same time that you project a certain sense of decorum but well short of fussiness.

Whoever made me sewed the buttons on like they should and my whole being is functional although you just now noticed a little fray around one of the cuffs and oh there is the small spot on the collar that is slightly worn.   Just enough to know that you have to pamper me and know that my time needs to be drawn out and savored.

And then one day tragically I won’t survive the washing machine and you will have to prepare me for burial at sea or your equivalent.  You will be torn (nice pun),  your feelings will be mixed.  And in the end we will have a long drawn out goodbye.

Yea, love, Felipe.

Oh what a perfect day to not get burnt by the sun.  Looking forward to weed patrol again.  I am making some headway on this project.  Pilgrim Farm John calling me the Weed Warrior.  That has nothing to do with smoking anything.

It’s Canada Day to day, the first of July.  That must be something like our Fouth of July right?  We are making plans to go and watch the fireworks.  We have some really great ones right here in Quartermaster Harbor so we don’t have to travel fortunenatly.  It hasn’t been extremely dry around here so fire danger is lower than normal.  All good.

“There are things that we never see, unless we walk to them.”  Thomas Clark.

Love, Felipe.

Here is a quote my good buddy Pilgrim Farmer John sent from his home in Iowa.  I mean if there is ever a guy or a place that knows about corn and weeds he does/ they do for sure.  And he quotes his wife’s grandfather, going back even further for this:

“I feel your pain! Forty or so years ago when I first started farming here on “the prairie”, Cathy’s wise grand father said: “You’ll work all your life at it, and the weeds will still be here when you’re gone”. ?”

I’m feeling part of that long proud tradition for better or worse.  Geez, talking about pushing the rock up the hill.  There is something I am supposed to learn here somewhere.

OK, off to the corn to get some lick in on it before work.  Work before work, get it.  It will all be worth it when we sit down to a platter of the fresh stuff in August I am sure.

Love, Felipe.x

Yup, I’m deep in the race with the weeds.  All options are being considered.  I am going to leave you early so I can get out there in the corn.  Thanks for your long term loyalty.

“A journey implies a destination, so many miles to be consumed, while a walk is its own measure, complete at every point along the way.”  Thomas Clark

Walk at 0900 today.  Love, Felipe.

What in the heck do you mean by that Felipe?  OK, so there are so many great things happening in my life right now that I have a hard time keeping up with them.  But they are all good, at least the ones I choose to focus on.  Screw the other ones I say.  And have no idea what that has to do with disheveled eggs either.

But it is Padre Tomas’s birthday today or tomorrow or yesterday.  He is the only person that ever sent me five birthday cards, five for the same birthday that is.  Where does he get that crazy energy from?  Please say hello to him somehow, some way.

I am going to get out to the corn and get a half hours weeding in before work today.  Stuff is just growing like crazy out there.  Everything is perfect now.  The trouble it is perfect for my weed friends too.  Everybody is in high gear.

We are all still high, speaking of high, from our weekend retreat.  We had a planning session over tapas yesterday for the next one.  And let me announce that here.  That is the 8,9,10 and 11th of September.  The corn and blackberries will be in full stride then, Norhtwest High Cotton.  So let me know if you are interested in attending and I will get you the details.

What else do we have?  Felipe is wondering  how come the word heck seems to appear in proximity to his name so often?  Well, we will have to check that out.  We don’t need any grumpy campers around here.

Well, I guess I am out of interesting and useful content.  Time to go weed.  Love and stuff from Felipe.

Tuesday here and recovering from the four day weekend.  Yesterday noontime we wrapped up the first ever Women’s Archery Retreat.  I’m calling it a total success.  We could have had more folks but it was a great run through.  And going through the process got us up to the next level in all areas.  Saying a prayer of thanks that all went so smoothly.

So we are going to debrief and regroup and build for our next one which looks like it will be in September.  We will announce the dates shortly.  September is a great month around the Seattle area so alperfect.

Summer is off to a great start.  The Fourth of July is coming up quickly.  After that comes the Vashon Strawberry Festival which is a island wide blowout.  We are shooting to have our roadside produce stand open for by that time.  That will be too early to sell corn but we will have other stuff and it will get folks used to stopping by.

I am out in the corn daily.  It is now the big race with the weeds.  Fertilizer, water and keeping the competition down are the key ingredients to getting to the finish line and delivering the product.  We will have plenty of corn on the cob to feed our archery gals in September besides stocking the stand.  That’s the plan anyway.

OK, I am off to work in a minute, staying busy.  Miss you, love you, Felipe.

Monday morning before our 9 o’clock walk and before our first ever Women’s Archery Retreat convenes for it’s final session.  This has been grueling and a complete success.  Sounds like the Camino.  And yes, we covered a lot of ground in a very short time and have a few sore spots but we are still smiling.

By a long shot ( good pun ) this is the most intensive archery program that I have been involved in.  We went from basic form Saturday morning the Saturday to shooting moving targets yesterday.  Who else does that?  Today we are going to have fun with some games and we are going to wrap it up with some last minute philosophy.

I am so so glad that we did this.  We have another retreat in August or September, we haven’t decided as of yet.  So, hopefully I can get some more of you to drive and fly in for that one.  We will take what we have learned and improve on the program, just like always.  Always improving, that’s us.

So Felipe, what does this archery thing have to do with the Camino thing wanyway?  Why are we talking about it on Caminoheads?  Well, excellent question and I have been thinking about that.  They both seem to offer a gateway to things deeper not only in our past but in our basic makeup.  Things that are hard to get to from our high tech world of speed and progress.

We seem to live our lives in the thin layer of the upper most layer of the body of water called life.  We live in those fast moving reflections of other things.  Taking the time and effort to dive down to the depths is refreshing, fulfilling, vital.  That’s what we were trying to achieve this last weekend.  I’m pretty sure everyone felt that.

OK, the walk here in a few minutes.  We are on our way back from Muxia to Santiago on our “walk in Spain”.  Here I go, love, Felipe.