One of those weeks!

I woke up this morning smelling bacon and wondered why Richard was up, making breakfast so early. The aroma was from the smoke from yesterday's fire lingering in the air. Our wonderful firefighters appear to have the blaze under control although people are still evacuated and some of the roads closed. People who have horses and other large animals have the worst of the evacuations having to trailer panicky animals and move them (with food) to temporary shelters. The electricity was off for a few hours and that was our only inconvenience although I'm still shaking off adrenalin. My anxiety goes through the roof when fire is nearby having had several near misses. At last report, the fire is sixty percent contained and has burned three hundred and sixty-five acres according to the Facebook page called Brush Fire Partyline/San Diego North County, which provides a ton of information.

Photo from our local paper, The Village News

As Richard was in Fallbrook when the electricity was turned off he couldn't get back in through our gates. I finally learned how to open them in case of power failure. The incident served as a reminder to restock the emergency boxes...with insurance documents, a copy of our address book, spare credit cards, memorabilia...and have them ready to go when we're next evacuated. 

It's been one of those weeks you hope never happens. My car failed to start when I was parked in the shopping center lot which has a seven-foot clearance. It's very difficult to get towed out of such a lot. After two days on and off (waiting for AAA to get a towing vehicle for low clearance) we were able to get the car going with the help of a kind man from BMW who drove to the car with us and got it going. No charge. They performed an all-points inspection on it, washed it, did some recall wiring work and returned the spanking clean vehicle to me. No charge. 

And the worst thing that happened. A friend in Canada who's been suffering with ALS for two years, died, at the time of her choice, Saturday morning. Even though we knew her death was imminent and even though we knew of her plan to check out when she'd had enough, it was unsettling. She's the first person I know to have chosen her exit in this way — it's called MAiD (medical assistance in dying) in Canada. She was a lovely person, generous and talented.

I met her in HoChiMinhCity at 1:00 a.m. many years ago when I arrived there to do a food tour with her company, Lemongrass Tours. I couldn't believe she came to the airport so late to meet me! Who does that?? She was thoughtful and kind. It's hard to believe she's gone. RIP Annie.

"A Parable of Immortality"
by Henry Van Dyke

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch until at last she hangs
like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
“There she goes!”
Gone where?
Gone from my sight . . . that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment
when someone at my side says,
“There she goes!”
there are other eyes watching her coming . . .
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout . . .
“Here she comes!”

Facebook Post

There's a great Facebook page for people with acoustic neuromas—Acoustic Neuroma Friends. It's like a never-ending twenty-four hour a day support group where you can find answers to all kinds of tumor-related questions. One thing that's quickly revealed by reading the posts is that everyone reacts to this situation differently and all recoveries are different—some people cope incredibly well, others are left devastated for the rest of their lives. 

I liked this very positive post by Kevin Watts which speaks volumes about having such a tumor when you're young. What a recovery he's had! In a later post, he states that he's back to music and has adapted to his SSD. 

Post by Kevin Watts
For the newly diagnosed:
Hi all, I thought I’d take a moment to share my story and philosophy with you, ESPECIALLY for the benefit of those of you who have just been diagnosed, are scared and are wondering what the road forward looks like.
The top picture was taken two days after my surgery in Dec ‘16 to remove a 4.2 cm AN. I was scared, sad, and contemplating my new normal. Single sided deafness, paralyzed face, dry eye, persistent headache and the inability to walk. All alone in my hospital ward, I did not know how I would end up. It was a rough time.
Fast forward to 18 months later, the bottom pic, and I want you to know that you get better. And IT gets better. I’ve never been stronger, fitter and maybe even happier. They say that the difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do. In my case, I decided to meet my highest suffering with my highest hope. I trained my body daily and my mind as often as possible, to deal with my new normal. I sought out the right books and podcasts, tried to eat the right foods, found the right trainers and promised myself to never force my body to ‘recover’ again. Instead, lesson learned, I was going to shift to the front foot this time.
These are the things that worked for me, and I know that my condition, situation, and experience may be vastly different to yours and others; but the point remains - I got through it, and so did others, and so will you.

We have been dealt a strange hand, those of us with these rare and exacting tumours. There is irony in it, as even in the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent. As for me - I think of the scorching irony of life to take my hearing, being a musician and a former pilot. It is a reminder of the paradox of life in general. How strong and fragile it is at the same time. How cruel but rewarding at the same time. And because it is both, we get to choose which of those two meanings we want to ascribe to the irony. And that’s the greatest lesson I learned in all of this.

*******************************************************************************************

I 

I wish I could post before and after pictures of myself showing an amazing recovery like Kevins. Mine has been pretty good, much better than many others treated by radiation but the older you are at diagnosis, the longer the recovery, if at all. The biggest challenge for me—the most difficult to cope with has been single sided hearing. My new earrings may help. I wear the NO earring on my left side and the YES earring on the right side. 

Heat disaster!

Heat disaster!! Prolonged high heat devastated our baby avocados, next year's crop. The temperature in our grove was 114 degrees on July 6th and reached over 100 degrees for several days in a row. The avocado leaves burned up. Our grove looks like a madman ran through it with a flamethrower. One side of a tree can be burned and the other looks green and lush. We saved our potted plants by moving them into the shade and watering three or four times during the day. A few bougainvilleas died; the dragon fruit, roses and passion fruit look terrible and may not make it. The pomegranite trees and the succulents loved the heat. 

Our trees were too big for efficient watering and picking so it was time to either radically prune them or stump. We've chosen to stump all 850 of them to about 5 feet high. Water use goes down radically because the trees have no canopy which is where water loss occurs.  We have to be very careful about irrigation because root rot is a danger. Fertilization can be stopped until regrowth appears. 

We'll miss the forest the grove has become with the huge tree canopies meeting overhead to create a park-like area below. But it wasn't very practical. Birds and critters that have made their homes in the trees will have to move over to our neighbors. 

New growth should appear in six months. 

Sounds like rain as the baby avocados drop from the trees. 

Can you see a couple of avocados hanging on for dear life. We're keeping a scattering of trees around the house for
privacy.

Sepia Saturday #428. Hats!

Maybe this is a cheap shot. I love the original photo and resorted to captioning as once again I have nothing sepia to match the prompt. The photo is from a collection of Norwegian county archives. I looked through them on Flicker at Fylekesarkivet: Sogn og Fjorda and found them fascinating. Don't go there unless you have an hour on your hands. 

I do have contemporary hat photos. This one was taken in Seattle where all four of us bought Tilley hats, prior to boarding an uncruise. I've never worn mine as I only cover my head in the heat and a black hat? What was I thinking? I got swept up in the shopping frenzy. The sales people were excellent. The hat languishes high on my closet shelf gathering dust and will probably end up at the Angel Shop in Fallbrook. The other three made better selections and use them often.

The last photo is my French-Canadian grandparents who lived on a farm in Letellier, Manitoba in Canada. I included it because of the background. And to be fair, I added a caption. My grandmother always did the talking if English was necessary. My grandfather understood but spoke little English. Instead, he used his generous eyebrows to convey his opinion when English was being used. 

Grab your hat and dash over to Sepia Saturdayfor more interpretations of the theme.