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.

It’s ironic I guess, that I am so tired from the anxiety to celebrate a very good scan result. Things have had slight growth and it means that the cancer is basically on hold for the time being and treatment remains the same. So, yea, how about that? Have to rest. Hello from Our Jennifer who remains my trusted Cancer Companera. Alperfect really, will try and say more tomorrow, love you, Don Felipe.

Really, truly, thanks for putting up with me as I wrestle around in the goulash trying to get a grip on my situation. It’s not always pretty, obviously. But that is how I handle things, wrestle with them. Remember the biblical character that wrestled with an angel, was that Issac? Anyway, it is one way to try and get to clarity.

Off to the hospital today for my scan. It’s a very easy procedure for my part. It is just the waiting for the interpretation which will be tomorrow morning that always seems difficult. Well, small price to pay for all the good side of my treatment.

All of this wrestling and goulash and other monkey motion is going into a story that is on my bucket list to write. Sort of boil down my last few years and pour it into that one thing. So there, I said it now I have to do it.

OK, I need to get organized to go. Stopping at Our Jennifer’s on the way to the ferry to have one of her coffees. Thinking of you, love, Felipe.

I switched those words around didn’t I? Maybe it is Moreons In The Goulash or The Possibility Of More Goulash. I’m getting confused here. I think what I am shooting for is More On The Goulash Of Possibilities. Yea, that’s it.

Our Jennifer had this conversation yesterday while we walked sparked by our visit to the neighbor with the cancer hobby. He left an impression on us with his methodical manner in finding his way down his walk using building blocks of logic. These are my words. Jennifer was analyzing his method and trying to find parts and hints for her own thinking for her own walk.

All this sparked some words from my thinking which I have been rethinking and mulling over since. Somehow my thinking is less logical, precise, scientific. I tend to work off my gut, my instincts, my intuition. My right brain straining against the harness wanting to go to work. So in that realm what do I come up with?

I tend to gather broad landscapes and try to boil them down to their essence.
All mechanisms have a central underlying idea. Getting to that and understanding it and ultimately putting the concept to use seems a way, a method, a guiding principle. Sometimes I find a part of something that seems to explain the whole. Maybe like finding a table of contents to a book will give you a pretty good idea what is going on. Yea, so?

Well we were talking about the phenomenon of cancer and our ability to deal with it on a personal level. Personal is the keyword here. That is how I am viewing my Cancer lately. It is very very personal to me now. It does not have to do with anything external to me. It’s all mine, every single cell. It’s my own body run amuck, a loose cannon, an onboard fire. Somehow I created it, caused it, encouraged it, kept it going. I did? I did.

That’s mysterious. Just why would I do that? I don’t know the answer to that but realizing that I did so much to put me in this particular situation may mean that I also have some room and ability to start to heal from the inside out so to speak. In other words if I have the ability to move in one direction maybe I should stop and see if I can move it the opposite direction. What would that look like or mean? Does that make any sort of sense?

When I look at the goulash of possibilities in the area of cancer cure presented to me I glaze over. There are so many and they mostly seem plausible and on top of that they seem to have a certain amount of success individually. How can one choose in this goulash of treatment ideas? And how come they all seem to have a certain amount of success that keeps the idea alive? Is just sitting still and smiling also in the goulash?

Somehow I am guessing that the individual, the cancer hobbyist, is a big factor in all these equations. His or her very personal makeup, energy, thinking, being, fear, is the center of gravity around which the other factors revolve and are influenced by. I’m on thin ice here but there is something going on and I am hot on the trail of it.

Oops, time to go walk and get to Ronsavalles on Phil’s Camino. Thanks for putting up with me and my half baked goulash, love, Felipe.

Yea, a phrase used by Our Catharine at tapas today. Nice huh? It was a heavy duty tapas with no need for dinner. Everyone brought amazing contributions to the menu. Sort of a mini Thanksgiving Dinner at the end of August.

Our Catharine and Our Jennifer accompanied me for the walk today and darn it we are just short of Ronsavalles, tomorrow then. It was beautiful with nice weather after the storm. Two people were killed in Western Washington during the storm by falling trees in the last few days.

Yea, the day was a goulash of possibilities. I was booked every minute with something. Catharine went with me to Mass early. Then a visit to my client who I have been repairing a deck. Then Jennifer and I went to visit a neighbor that also has a cancer hobby going, a Commando mission. Then off to an hour with Sister Joyce. Ah, Sister Joyce, what a joy getting my batteries recharged. Then back to walk the Camino clearing the trail through the woods of downed branches as we went. Wasn’t this supposed to be a day of rest?

Just as well that I keep busy. Tuesday I have a scan at the hospital to check on my innards. This is the part of my Cancer Camino that is the hardest for me personally, full of anxiety. I guess I am blessed that it is this minimal, just a few days of anxiety every three months. Yea, could be a lot worse.

Well there you have it, a day in the life of a Cancer Commando. Maybe have a couple of scrambled eggs before bed. Yup, always in your corner, Don Felipe.

A stormy day today here on the Island. The trees are bending this way and that. Weather moving through at a fast rate. The power is down so we have the generator fired up. Trying to get the blog out to you where you are, Radio Free Camino.

Met with my Telious Bible Class early this AM and we covered The 10th chapter of Matthew. In the second through the fourth verse my version says: “Jesus called twelve of his followers and sent them into the ripe fields. He gave them power to kick out the evil spirits and to tenderly care for the bruised and hurt lives. This is the list of the twelve he sent:
Simon (they called him Peter or “Rock”),
Andrew, his brother,
James, Zebedee’s son,
John, his brother,
Philip,
Bartholomew,
Thomas,
Matthew, the tax man,
James, son of Alphaeus,
Thaddeus,
Simon,the Canaanite,
Judas Iscariot (who later turned on him).”
And going back up the list to the third name of James, Zebedee’s son, that is St. James or Santiago in Spanish, who we know and love.

Locally, in the corn news, the field has been harvested of remaining ears to feed a neighbor’s hogs. And I will chop up the stalks with my brush cutter and till that into the soil with the rototiller to get some more organic matter in there. Then a cover crop of rye and red clover goes in for more organic matter. Big fun. Then next spring after the field has a winter of sleep and I am still around we can start the process all over or Wiley can.

Our Anamaria is back in Madrid after spending a week or so on the Camino in between Burgos and Leon. I will try and pry some insights from her when she is ready. We will not rush the Princess.

We here at Phil’s Camino are going down the west side of the Pyrenees and into Roncesvalles. We are terribly slow but maybe things will pick up with cooler weather. It is good to be walking with the Spanish overlay in place as it sparks all kinds of great conversations.

Let me repeat our current walking schedule for you. Please come and walk with us if you find some time and energy.
Monday 0900 – 1000
Tuesday 1600 -1700
Thursday 0900 – 1000
Sunday 1600 -1700.

Well, have to go for now. Check the generator, wrestle with paperwork, look out the window, all that good stuff. Electric loves, Felipe.