Nice and Quiet

There's not much going on, starting this Thursday morning. But that's quite alright with me.

Excitement is not what I need. A hammock, a couple of palm trees, my ipod and a good book maybe.

Just give me a quick moment here . . . ooooook, (sigh) I'm back.

We saw that poor Florida was down in the 30-degree range this morning. Actually I hope they don't suffer from a frost, oranges are expensive enough up here. But my friends and family probably enjoy breaking out that one long sleeve shirt from the bottom of the drawer for a change.

It's been a cold, cold January in Pennsylvania this year, which on the good side has resulted in little snow.

We're hibernating, recovering, rejuvenating, trying to get ourselves in decent shape to blossom by Spring.

I can still feel the radiation treatments working on me, which is normal. I still have some soreness in the right hip bone, and I still feel a little punched around in the head.

Everyday I take it slow but steady and try to get myself into better and better shape. Some days go the wrong direction, but most days go the right direction. Life is rarely, if ever, a straight line.

I've cut my steroid dosage in half aiming to be off of them completely by next week. I'll still take a very occasional pain pill for the hip, but I've cut those back drastically. One thing cancer has definitely taught me is to take as little medicine as possible.

Painting is looking like a good way to keep my mind and body busy though. No, not painting landscapes or portraits or even abstracts - just walls. And painting trim and doors and ceilings. I've been slowly working on getting every inch of this old house painted for a period of years now. I'd say I'm almost 75-percent done, including the entire exterior of the house.

Growing up we had a large deck on the back of the house, and a small barn/shed for tools. Both were all wood, and both were my responsibility to scrape and paint every summer. It kept me out of trouble.

This is not exciting work. But I always enjoyed it. I'd set the radio up, take the shirt off, and genuinely enjoy being able to step back at the end of a day of brushes and rollers and say, "Hey, it does look better."

As I was painting the top stairway landing yesterday a lot of those memories came flooding back for me.

In a way that is my hammock and two palm trees.