... visualize world peace... visualize whirled peas... visualize Ballard...

Visualize food making  me feel better.

I have always loved food, no doubt there... getting it into me seems to be the daily task at hand. It is as though I have to be very intentional about what I eat. That means I can "treat" my self to a comfort food, like mac n' cheese, or ice cream if I can justify it with having coupled that with some nutritional quotient. Protein, veggies, fruit juices; pancakes, sour dough bread and english muffins get in there too, mainly as an appetizer (to get the stomach ready to feel like eating), and to hold other things together. I have over the years reduced my gluten intake considerably and have not to my knowledge been intolerant. However, even though the docs say "eat anything, just don't lose weight (paraphrased)" I take that to mean good weight, I don't aim to pack around empty pounds just too satisfy a scale. Last year at this time I had a workout partner and we were going to the gym for 2 hours a day 4 times a week and enjoying the sauna/steam room which is good for your lungs and really helps in the winter months with cold and flu prevention. I really did not want to continue going over 213 as I had always had a somewhat slight frame and trying to hold a guitar with a beer belly ain't my cuppa tea. I had my self getting to a strapping 185, and starting to shape myself the way I never could before. I was feeling good despite anything else and getting stronger. Then they asked me if I had been losing weight lately.... well yeah, but I was TRYING to. Good thing you are strong they said and were working out they said "you're gonna need that."

Now some have had the idea perhaps that this is about fighting the cancer. Not exactly... in fact the chemo is doing that because my body was losing the war. Very likely the mutation had been held at bay to some extent (while it spread all over), until my immune system had to fight too many virus's while aging, amid the stress of other survival factors which many people are facing or in the middle of currently. The body often does not recognize an antibody in the lymphatic system as being a threat, usually it is not. Hence the body does not "go after" them when they just lay around doing nothing. The mutation is that they do not develop to full function, so they do not know what to do (eliminate disease), but they are equipped to reproduce. This is what makes the tumor: healthy but dysfunctional cells that do nothing while consuming and reproducing. Someone quipped that, "oh, you have teenagers."

Oooooops, there goes another thought like a roman...

candle spinning out of control or one of those little wigglers that shoot off in clusters of tail-spins curling into the smoky night... which I said to my friend the other night in mid-sentence as I literally watched the thought disappear like disappearing ink or the picture of Marty in Back to the Future only there's no way to grab it as it flutters off the Eiffel Tower like a $100 bill suddenly and irretrievably leaves your grasp in a sigh like the impulse of a shadow of a feeling of a dream... when you regain consciousness and the dream state is an illusion about a desire to make a point about whatever it was you were discussing a moment ago as if it made any difference at all being of absolutely no consequence even if I could think of it.

Yeah, I had a tough time last week, and then I was offline for a few days over New Year... and the previous page did not turn out as I expected, and my attention is now here in the future where it belongs. I tried focusing on the present but I couldn't keep up, if I can't smell it coming the present is past before you knew it was here. Life goes by fast enough already, and sometimes it is just still as a pond in the summer, except for the constant buzzing of the June flies in the background.

Usually Dr. Eddie gets to see me when I am getting back up again, and of course that's the point- if I were not recovering or maintaining vitality it would indicate a problem. My nutripines (?) and other blood numbers are good I hear so it seems to be working, and the tumor that tried to kill me is receding, but another CT scan and they'll have another picture and then some more infusing... I get to have some laughs with him and that is a great thing to me, I dig it.

I had breakfast at 2pm today because I finally got myself over to the cafe and this time I had it in my head cos I know the menu, and they have a 222 which is 2 pancakes eggs, bacon... coffee, cream. So I start reading the menu and it all sounds good but I know I can't get a breakfast steak down, nahhh, better just get the 222, besides the clock on the microwave said 2:22 when I left. How Prophetic? I didn't get a picture, sorry, it was too dark, and it took me about a hour to get it down. The Seahawks were playing the Redskins on tv (why the bar was full and I was the only diner) and by the 3rd quarter the Seahawks were winning but it seemed like the people were cheering when I would take a bite. Quite an encouraging hallucination. The flavor is fine, and food is good, but there seems to be other obstacles to eating. Cooking is one; I have always loved to cook, however in some ways it is failing me now. Sometimes I lose interest by the time I have finished the process, am feeling fatigued, and have probably botched the simplest of recipes. Lucky if I don't burn my grilled cheese on both sides, or explode my instant whole grain oatmeal in the microwave (fun mess).

Still, we survived the Holidays and now that some semblance of stability has returned to Squeaky Hollow I can't help but notice that my world seems to have ...