fourteen tomorrow

Tomorrow is my 14th radiation treatment. I'm not sure that's cause for celebration so I decided not to go with fireworks. It means I can start counting down. As I told a friend in the coffee shop yesterday, this is not something a guy would sign up for but it's gone alright for something to be dreaded. Friday I start counting down.

I'm ambivalent about finishing radiation because I'm ambivalent about cancer. I still have moments when I realize this is me we're talking about and not someone else. Wait, wait...what? I feel like I have done pretty well through this, even with my mental phase in the winter, but it's been a long ass haul. Can I ever go back to my normal self? Do the fears go away?

This looks like the radiation machine I hook up with every day. It might be called a linear accelerator...I'm not sure. It works like this: the blue thing shoots out a ray of particles and the rectangular thing shoots out a ray of particles and then there's a particle shit storm somewhere over my chest. It's what I visualize as I'm lying there...tiny Star Wars like figures having a light saber duel in the air. Fucking with those cancer cells.

This is Mr. Crane who lives in a pond near my niece, Darby. She's been fascinated by him and got her mom to help with the stake-out so they could get this shot. Nice work!

This is Mr. Tinkles. He's a 20 pound cat who has scraped a bald streak down his belly by dragging himself onto furniture. I think he has learned to open the Friskies cabinet while they are at work.

We have been amazed at the birds this year, as you know. This afternoon there was an oriole family reunion in the yard, with sometimes six orioles at a time fighting for a place at the jelly bowls. I filled them up last night and then again this afternoon. They were picked cleaned.

With all there is to eat out there, you wouldn't think they would have to scrap but they do. There is one very temperamental Orchard oriole, a second year male, who thinks he rules the roost. Maybe birds get that testosterone thing going on, too.

I lounged in bed for a while this afternoon nursing a sinus headache and reading. I finished The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout and started Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kruger. I've only just started the second one but it has a similar tone to the first...regret, poignancy, grief, redemption. Sad and powerful. I might have passed through my mystery phase for a while.

I think I'll wander down to the liquor store to buy a nice pinot noir for dinner. Red goes well with hot dogs, right?