Common Yellowthroat

Or so it seems. We have for the longest time, had this little, I’m talking 5” maximum, little yellow bird trying to get to the nectar in our hummingbird feeder. I think I mentioned it once before. I believe it’s a Common Yellowthroat. It’s the closest I can come by picture if I look at the range of the other little yellow jobs in the bird book. Some look like better possibilities but wouldn’t live in this neck of the woods. Anyway we’ll call it a Common Yellowthroat and today for the first time ever (a musical) ‘ta da’ and a drum roll here, it landed on the feeder. What a struggle, and it’s been a long time. So then the poor little thing, or dumb yellow job, DYJ, as opposed to the normal LBJ, finds it can’t get anything from the feeder anyway, except maybe a better sniff of the nectar. All those days of work for naught. So maybe I’ll look up DYJ and see if there isn’t something we can fix up to feed it. What a softie huh?  Alas, there is no picture. He may have landed but I’m not that quick. But here are a couple of other pictures. One you will recognize and the other is of two Green Jays.

 

  

 

At coffee this morning Kat says she had this dream and it was ‘maybe?’ about me. I ask if it was somebody with Fame, Fortune, and Good looks. She said ‘yeah’, I said ‘it wasn’t me’. That was the end of that! I guess I ruined her train of thought. Dreams are elusive buggers aren’t they. I did tell her that ‘I wasn’t dreaming when she kicked me in the shin last night. But it was probably my fault. I was trying to snuggle up too close. We do sleep well together. More information than that ‘you don’t need’!

So it’s about 12 days since my last chemo treatment and I am finally beginning to feel better. But my two week break is almost over and it’s time for my last, hopefully, three sessions. I start again on Tuesday. And if it follows the same pattern it will only be a couple of weeks until I can look forward to being ‘all better’. It takes about a week to get the full impact, so by then I’ve had two treatments and then one more week ‘till the third treatment and then I can look forward to feeling better. ‘Piece of Cake’, as they say. While I’m on the subject of chemo, Kat spotted a car from Washington State in the Texas Oncology parking lot and put one of our business cards on the windshield saying, “we’re almost neighbors”, Oregon-Washington you understand? Turns out the folks are from WA and are both being treated for cancer. They got back to us via email and Facebook and we got together and had lunch Thursday and again on Saturday. They are also fulltime RV people and stay at a park not to far from here, also in Mission. Kinda’ neat in that we don’t see many West Coasters down here in the Valley. They all go to California or Arizona. I haven’t seen any Left Coast folks in our park this year. My standard joke is that when we have our Oregon Potluck all we need here is a TV tray and two chairs. Sharon, of Sharon and Chuck, is scheduled for her first chemo on Tuesday so we’ll no doubt see them and compare notes.

One thing I forgot to report and that is I had to get a haircut this week. You guessed it! I’m losing my hair to chemo. Started a few days ago. I fill up my comb like you wouldn’t believe. So I decided to take the initiative and get my hair cut ‘high and tight’. I pretty much look like a recruit or as Kat says a Marine. But shorter hair falling out is better than long hair falling out, trust me. I suppose it will come back? That’s what I’m told anyway. And the Doc said I could lose some. How much, I guess time will tell?

I also see the Doc again on Tuesday and we will discuss long term plans. We have already made it clear, and will again, that we intend to head to the Northwest in the early spring. For us that may be as soon as mid February. I want to transfer my care to Seattle where the VA has a Cancer Treatment Center. I could go anywhere but that seems like a good idea to me. Other possibilities include, Phoenix, Southern Oregon, and Portland. We intend to check them all out. Because of my stents and hormone therapy I have to be treated every six months. Stents replaced and hormone shot. When you figure two weeks prior and two weeks post for what needs to be planned and then checked on, that requires a seven month stay in one location. As much as we like south Texas it is just too damn hot to stay here again in the summer. That’s April through October the way my treatment falls. So, I figure if we get to the NW we can be treated in April, hang out on the West Coast, and come down here in November for three or four months. The other thing about staying here is distances. It’s 1500 to 2000 miles from here to halfway to anywhere. So there isn’t much roaming around down here if we spend the summer. Not so in the Pacific Northwest. There we can go anywhere from Washington to California in a 1000 miles and throw in the whole Pacific Coast, plus Alberta and BC, Canada if we want. And there is always a cool spot even in the hottest of summers. Kat is a little concerned about being stuck in the cold and wet but I think it’s better than summer in south Texas.