I'm at a loss for words right now. While I'm not fearful (and I am glad for that) I find it a little hard to be positive and optimistic. This roller coaster ride has had one dip too many, I guess. I cannot think of one single thing to say.
Today, I was dipping in a catchbasin. This place is wild with plants, and I love it. I heard a cheerful voice hailing me from the fence. "Hey, Rusty, how's it going?" I greeted him right back. He marveled over the biodiversity. I said, "I know, isn't it excellent?" He can name plants, and began doing so. I listened. "That's pretty neat that you can do that. I'm ignorant. There's a lot to be said for ignorance though, because every day I'm learning something new and that is exciting." Rusty laughed, but agreed that learning something new every day was exciting stuff, and that he himself made a point of trying to learn something new every day.
As I was out and about collecting sample after sample of mosquito larva (dear heavens, let it
stop raining...), I found myself really enjoying the quiet. I did not play the radio. I just drove, and I thought, and I dipped mosquito larva, and filled two solid pages of notebook documenting samples. It felt good to be still.
Today, I ran into a charactor who has imported five Texas Longhorns. He was chock full of stories, and I enjoyed listening to him. I was amazed to hear that number one, long horns grow slowly. I guess that I figured that cattle used to desert conditions, once imported to the lush and rich Pennsylvania hills, would develop just as quickly as any other cattle species. Not so. Also discovered that Texas Longhorns are, in the words of this garrulous charactor, 'dumb bastards'. He was burning brush in the pasture, and to his astonishment, one of them walked right through the fire. Burned itself so badly that it stressed its immune system, ultimately winding up with lysteria, circling in tight left hand circles, until he had to put it down. Listening, I said, "You can't use that meat, right? So you lost the whole cow?" And the farmer nodded his head and said, "Yeah. We even had to be careful not to splatter any of the blood on ourselves." Fascinating stories. It felt good to listen to someone else's stories.
The PET scan is scheduled on August 31st. We're giving the incision from the latest biopsy a chance to heal completely so that the doctors have no doubt about what it is that they are seeing. I think this makes perfect sense. This is an expensive scan, and you might as well make sure that the results are unequivocable, to the best of your ability anyway. I imagine that it will be a long and sobering month.
This is what I think. Sometimes, life just knocks you on your butt, and the shock is so great that it knocks the words clean out of you. I can't imagine that this will be a permanent situation. I'm an excitable ignorant person, learning something new every day. But I do think that it is a time for me to be still, and to listen to the stories of others. Your stories too. And when my own words come back to me, I'll start writing again.
Today, I was dipping in a catchbasin. This place is wild with plants, and I love it. I heard a cheerful voice hailing me from the fence. "Hey, Rusty, how's it going?" I greeted him right back. He marveled over the biodiversity. I said, "I know, isn't it excellent?" He can name plants, and began doing so. I listened. "That's pretty neat that you can do that. I'm ignorant. There's a lot to be said for ignorance though, because every day I'm learning something new and that is exciting." Rusty laughed, but agreed that learning something new every day was exciting stuff, and that he himself made a point of trying to learn something new every day.
As I was out and about collecting sample after sample of mosquito larva (dear heavens, let it stop raining...), I found myself really enjoying the quiet. I did not play the radio. I just drove, and I thought, and I dipped mosquito larva, and filled two solid pages of notebook documenting samples. It felt good to be still.
Today, I ran into a charactor who has imported five Texas Longhorns. He was chock full of stories, and I enjoyed listening to him. I was amazed to hear that number one, long horns grow slowly. I guess that I figured that cattle used to desert conditions, once imported to the lush and rich Pennsylvania hills, would develop just as quickly as any other cattle species. Not so. Also discovered that Texas Longhorns are, in the words of this garrulous charactor, 'dumb bastards'. He was burning brush in the pasture, and to his astonishment, one of them walked right through the fire. Burned itself so badly that it stressed its immune system, ultimately winding up with lysteria, circling in tight left hand circles, until he had to put it down. Listening, I said, "You can't use that meat, right? So you lost the whole cow?" And the farmer nodded his head and said, "Yeah. We even had to be careful not to splatter any of the blood on ourselves." Fascinating stories. It felt good to listen to someone else's stories.
The PET scan is scheduled on August 31st. We're giving the incision from the latest biopsy a chance to heal completely so that the doctors have no doubt about what it is that they are seeing. I think this makes perfect sense. This is an expensive scan, and you might as well make sure that the results are unequivocable, to the best of your ability anyway. I imagine that it will be a long and sobering month.
This is what I think. Sometimes, life just knocks you on your butt, and the shock is so great that it knocks the words clean out of you. I can't imagine that this will be a permanent situation. I'm an excitable ignorant person, learning something new every day. But I do think that it is a time for me to be still, and to listen to the stories of others. Your stories too. And when my own words come back to me, I'll start writing again.