I made the coffee this AM and announced that it was ready to My Rebecca. She gave me a big, “Oh boy!” It just struck me as the perfect reply and was a great way to start my day.
We got an “Oh boy!” kind of day shaping up here in Puget Sound. This is exactly what my rootin tootin, crime fightin, first string varsity corn patch needs and has been waiting for! And I got the irrigation pretty well fine tuned to match this welcome development.
I think that I am going to use “Oh boy!” all day long today. Thank you Rebecca!
My mind is cluttered this Memorial Day. It is hard for me to say anything coherent about this important holiday. But as I try to think my way through it I come to realize that my own personal history is so wrapped up in this. If I would have been killed in the Vietnam War I wouldn’t even have the opportunity to be here and be wrestling with my problems. Opportunity is a interesting word to use there Felipé.
Opportunity to walk the trail of life. Opportunity to experience so many things good and bad. Opportunity to eat dust and then again to have tapas with friends. Opportunity to witness births and deaths. Opportunity to have the opportunity to grapple with my current health problems too.
It might feel like Sunday but it is really Monday today. And I have a walk in a few minutes.
Just got done with a archery lesson with Catherine y Dana. They haven’t shot in three years, for this reason or that, but they are back in the saddle. And they did great for all that time. There is a lot of muscle memory that develops that is hard to forget. It’s sticks with you because it is beyond thinking.
We just worked at close range, 10 yards. Have to work on safety and getting the gear sorted out, making sure that everything fits. And working along tweaking here and there getting the form organized. They enjoyed the session and we quit before they were tired which is important too.
There is always a lot of attention paid to the target and whether there are hits or misses. The coach watches the shooter though and is more interested in that. When the shooter gets organized the target gets organized. That’s how it works when you are not longer trying to “luck them in” but are doing things consistently.
That reminds me that one of my walkers on Camino last week was inquiring about lessons for her and her daughter. I will have to email back to her when my schedule settles out.
Sunday afternoon walk coming up here in a few minutes.
Oh, today is the first day of the promised warmup. Supposedly we have five days of heat coming up. OK corn, on you mark, get set, go! It’s not exactly the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer but maybe a glimpse.
Our Camino friend Steve down in Arkansas posted a pic of his corn after some heavy wind and rain and it was all flattened. It was probably three to four feet tall to start with! Farmer John had that same thing happen back a few years ago more toward harvest time though. Geez, there is some weather!
Of course I can’t say that that wouldn’t happen here but it is uncharacteristic of the area. We are pretty sheltered here in Hobbit Town. No big wide open spaces, over land anyway.
I guess that I am sort of rambling away here today. A sign of where my brain is lately with all this new treatment and it’s complications. Obviously I’d rather be going to Cabela’s.
So maybe I will shove off and hoe a few weeds or something else useful. Thanks for coming by today.
That is the general idea but we have some exceptions over the next few weeks. We have to cancel walks at the following times due to my treatment schedule:
Boot in Finisterre (Argentina should be in the distant horizon) by Cris (CSABC; Oct2014)
It seems that the Caminoheads Bureau Chiefs have lost our calendars in the last couple weeks and the boss (a.k.a. Phil or Felipe) blogging week have returned to a daily schedule… I am posting today just because, and maybe we can all (very much talking to myself here!!!) “go back to work”… (believe me… the boss is very generous with his checks ;))
Life in the south cone has become blurry again… vaccination is moving slowly and rightfully covering the frontline workers, and the high risk groups first, but indeed very slow… we only have less than 5% of the population with 2 doses of the vaccine, and we have started our fall/winter season, and Argentina is right now the first country in the world with the highest number of cases and deaths in a day per million habitants… We are back to a full lockdown (no circulation is allowed, shops other than groceries and pharmacies are closed, and we are asked to stay inside…)
Anyone who knows me, knows that I may have some Irish gen because I can be a windbag even more when writing, so let’s go back to the title of this post. Binoculars. A few days ago, Phil posted about a zoom call with the radiotherapy doctor and going to Cabela’s, the island outdoors gear store, and maybe look for “binoculars”, and that post hit close to home, as since my teenager years, I have been working on finding “my way to see” my life story. Why? Because all I knew was what I was told, but as I moved along in life, my point of view of things changed, and my canvas became wider, and I realized the way I was looking at things till then was true, but wasn’t mine.
The Camino was great for this purpose, maybe this is why one of my favorite quotes is the one from Martin Robinson in “Sacred places, pilgrim paths” that says something like “the familiar obscures the eternal not because it is not present but because it simply cannot be recognized without the experience of a broader canvas”… a similar idea is present in Rebecca Solnit’s book “A field guide to getting lost”: “Getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are”, and lastly, this other way of seeing that Padraig O’Tuama tells in “In the shelter: finding a place in the world”: “… some call it Northern Ireland and others call it the North of Ireland. These aren’t wordgames either. Depending on what you believe, death was called murder or legitimate aggression.”
Phil’s mention to going to Cabela’s and check the binoculars aisle, made me think it would be sooooo great if the “key” is in the outdoors gear store… sadly it is a bit more complicated than that… but in another way, isn’t this true too? At the end of the day, the outdoors gear store also sell walking shoes…
Got so extremely changeable weather here today. Topsy-turvy. Screwball. It’ll fool ya type day. Got two laps of the trail in earlier. We ducked in and out and stay pretty dry, the five of us. That is a good turnout for a morning walk. Plus one of them was the infamous Kelly, my partner in Camino crime.
So great to see Kelly again. He seems in pretty good shape and looking particularly dapper these days. Let’s see what has he been up to? He had some family business to take care of lately and he is doing his annual Springtime deal of giving away tomato plant starts. He grows hundreds of plants in little yogurt containers and then hands them out, his gift to the community.
Maybe horsey pics would be a better description. These flatcoat retreivers can move around like horses on you. They are big and can be in constant motion so they take up a lot of space.
The reason I am going into this is that our dog Sturé that you know from Phil’s Camino is a flatcoat that Steve-O originally gave to us way back when. So, these pics are of Rasmus, Steve-O’s current dog. He is about three years old and weighs in at 90 pounds I’m guessing.
I hope, I hope that these guys will show up for the Oasis. Would love to have Sturé’s spirit running hither and yon around the grounds while you are here. So, let’s get on to the pics. You will see why I called Sturé, goofball or spaghetti head.
Rasmus. (photos S Sunde)
OK, perfect. So, I noticed as I looked at my emails this AM that good friend Nancy from Port Ludlow sent a gift certificate to Cabela’s for me. Wow, Christmas in May! Thank you Nancy.
It looks like I will be in treatment Tuesday Through Friday next week and a couple of days the following week. So, the walking schedule will be disrupted for a while. I will have to figure that out.
So, I am off to weed the corn. Starting early is the key to weeding. Maybe I can follow my own advice.
Setting up irrigation system on the corn. (photo S Sunde)
Both Steve-O and I agreed that we would rather be going to Cabela’s to fondle outdoor gear than where we are both headed today. We are off to our respective hospitals to get started on treatments for our individual ailments. Yea, rather be looking at camping and hunting gear, maybe check out the boots.
I had my conference via Zoom with my Radiation Doc about a newly discovered tumor yesterday. And I am happy to report that I am starting treatment today. We are going to zap this guy in six sessions. I was expecting something more drawn out. As fun as that all sounds like I would rather be walking the aisles of Cabela’s though. Maybe check out the binoculars.
It is finally supposed to warm up starting this weekend. It has been unseasonably cool here for a while now, not exactly corn weather. But we got the irrigation hooked up yesterday so when the heat comes we will be ready with water. So, things will come together shortly.
Setting up irrigation system on the corn. (photo S Sunde)
Monday today but yesterday we had a big group here to do Phil’s Camino. It was the Phil’s Camino Experience. I think there were fifteen folks who were cancer patients, caregivers, survivors. Didn’t get all their stories but that’s OK really. We filled two hours with walking and talking and of course laughing.
Thank you Patti the Hummingbird for bringing them all for the outing. They all had a good and memorable time I hope. And maybe they will come again to be with us now that they know the way. To know the way, that is good. And that is what we are working on in the larger sense too, to know the Way.
OK, back again after a break, had some other business to attend to. One thing is that I did the Monday morning walk and I was able to do all three laps which hasn’t happened in three weeks. I was just too fatigued to accomplish the task. So happy now!
And I had a Zoom with my Radiation Doc at the hospital just now. That sounded less grueling than I had imagined. So, that is going to happen in the next few weeks. I have a new tumor which has appeared recently and it needs to be taken care of. So I am happy about this too.
