One Day at a Time

Martin, colored pencil, 8x10 inches

I just finished a new portrait in colored pencil, just in my sketchbook, for the online group, Julia Kay's Portrait Party.  This group has been very inspiring to me, and I've enjoyed being challenged to do my best work.  This is Martin Beek, whose paintings I have admired for quite a while. I have another started, but life has gotten in the way.

What a roller coaster of emotions the last year has brought, thanks to last year's cancer diagnosis.  For the past three months I have been on what I called my cancer vacation, since in March my CT scans showed that radiation had apparently shrunk my abdominal spots, and eliminated some gynecological ones.  So, no oncology treatment for a few months.  I got my cataracts fixed, and we went on two cruises. I've had two haircuts, which made me improbably happy.

Then, in May, some symptoms returned, and I had a biopsy which did not indicate cancer.  This week I had another CT scan, which came back looking OK, and still another biopsy, which did not come back looking OK.  For a day I felt confident, and now today, not so much again.

I am learning that this is what life with cancer is like.  Sometimes hopeful, and other times terrifying.  Sometimes both in the same day.

So, now I have another whole raft of medical appointments, and I do not know what the doctors will plan for me.  I'm not at all sure how many Monday evening figure drawing sessions I'll get to this summer, how many times I'll be able to visit up north, or if I'll be able to, as I hoped, write and lead a new cemetery tour featuring some fascinating local people.  In short, I cannot really make firm plans.

But I should be able to draw more.  I just need to keep focusing on what I can control, and take it one day at a time.

What Was Lost, Now Found

Altered photo, Caribbean Sunset

In April my dear husband and I went on a week-long cruise to Grand Cayman, Cozumel and Havana, Cuba.  The Havana part was the main reason for the trip, that plus wanting to get away from the cold and wet spring, and cautiously celebrating a good three-month check up at the oncologist's office.  Havana was a "bucket list" destination, a place that during most of my lifetime I was forbidden to visit.  What is it about forbidden fruit being the sweetest?

The cruise was good.  We flew to Fort Lauderdale, got on our Holland America ship, the Veendam, and sailed off into the impossibly blue Caribbean.  We ate and drank too much, and I enjoyed just sitting on our little balcony watching the flying fish skittering away from the ship.  We toured rum distilleries in Grand Cayman, explored a Mayan ruin in Cozumel (one we had failed to find on our own twenty years ago), and we lunched, listened to music, and smoked Cuban cigars in Havana.  And, as always, I took photos.

When we returned home, I hooked my trusty old Canon Powershot up to the Mac, and POOF!  The photos all disappeared.  Now I realized when we got home that there was a problem with the date and time function on the camera.  A little flat watch type battery had expired, and a Google search helped me figure out how to replace it.  What I didn't realize was that because of that dead battery, all our trip photos had incorrectly been time stamped for 1980.  And that's where I found the photos this week, back in 1980, where I was looking for something else altogether.

So, I am thrilled to discover that the pictures were not lost after all.  So here are just a few to highlight our lovely spring fling.

Best Laid Plans

So, the good news is that we had a nice, relaxing and interesting cruise on Holland America to Grand Cayman, Cozumel and Havana, Cuba.  I've wanted to visit Cuba for ages, at least since my ninth grade Spanish teacher, a Cuban refugee, told stories about her childhood in Cuba, the beaches, the food, her family. 

The bad news is that when I got home last week I somehow deleted most of my photos, including one of my dear husband sitting with a Romeo and Juliet cigar, a glass of rum, and a wee cup of potent Cuban coffee.  Oh, and one of the two of us on the ship, with a Caribbean sunset in the background.  It's possible that I never actually got those pictures, since a little secondary battery in my old PowerShot point-and-hope camera had died.  Before this I had no idea there was a secondary battery, much less that it was depleted,  but I have a fresh one installed now.  It's done.  Like a Disney heroine, I am just letting it go. 

The picture here is a public domain photo that I ran through a fancy filter.  It's probably better than any of the photos I took.  There are actually lots of these sorts of old cars in Havana, though everyday folks don't seem to drive them.  Rather, they seem to be pricey taxis for tourists.  They circle the city blocks endlessly, like a perpetually cruise night from 1957. Many are colors never imagined by Detroit.

We were only in Havana a few hours, though I did have some general impressions.  First, getting into the city wasn't as daunting as I feared, though we did  have to get a $75 visa, and fill out some paperwork indicating we were on a tour.  We also had our photos taken in immigration (no glasses, no hat, no smile).  But after that it was pretty standard.  People were friendly, and the food and drink we sampled was fine.  It is true that even in the National Theater, where we had lunch and listened to some good music, that the toilet, while working just fine,  had no seat and no paper, but I came prepared.  No problem.

Our guide, a thirty-something young woman was no-nonsense and honest.  Someone asked her if Cubans hated Americans and she assured us they do not.  I asked her what her favorite thing about her homeland was, and she said it was the people.   The people, we learned, make about $50 a month, and get rations such as rice, beans, flour, and five eggs a month per person, from their local bodega.  If they have the cash they can buy more.  Of course all Cubans have free healthcare, and free education. The people smoke like chimneys, not only cigars but cigarettes as well; so that healthcare is good.  The sight of so many people puffing away was strange to me. 

The one thing I gathered from the comments of our young guide that was nagative is that she wished she could travel freely.  Things are changing rapidly in Cuba, so I hope she can do that at some point.

At the end of our tour of the old city we were all on the bus, headed back toward the dock.  Jenny, our guide,  launched into a speech about how the people in our lives are important, and how we should never forget our blessings, and should appreciate the people we love, and so on.  She seemed sincere and was warming nicely to her subject when the door to the toilet at the back of the bus slammed open, and a man poked out his head and called "Hey! What should I do? The water in here won't stop running."

Speech over.  Sometimes things don't go as planned.

Anyway, we're home, safe and sound.  It has been snowing like it's January instead of April, burying my blooming snowdrops and squill.  My brother called this afternoon to say that our sister's farm house was in the middle of burning down, and he was heading out to see if he could help.  My niece called later to say everyone is OK, though the house is lost.  I remembered to tell her I love her.  It remains to be seen how I can help.

Coming Back

This morning I'm honking into my Kleenex, barking out ragged coughs, and slouching around the house in my wooly socks and slippers.  And the thing is, I'm feeling much better.

What is it about taking a nice winter vacation?  Why can't I just pack my bag, go have fun, and be done with it?  Why must I be a magnet for other people's viruses?  It happened last year in Mexico, and this year it happened again, after our cruise into the eastern Caribbean.  I'm not sure If I was infected by our chatty team trivia players from Memphis, or from one of the many coughing and sneezing fellow travelers in the Fort Lauderdale airport, or even from other human sardines on the airplanes.  It's a mystery.

It doesn't matter.  Colds happen.  And they spread.  Now my dear husband is sneezing and coughing and stretched out full length on the sofa.  I used up all the cough medicine, so I need to go out and buy some for him.

But back to the trip.  It was good.  Windy, but good.  This was our sixth Holland America cruise, this time from Fort Lauderdale to Aruba, Curacao, the Panama Canal, and Costa Rica.  We were supposed to have a day at Half Moon Cay, but there were 40 mph winds and high seas, such that the ship could not safely tender in, so we had an extra day at sea. Oh well. The cruise accomplished our greatest winter goal, which was to warm up and to see green. 

What I like best about cruising - coffee delivered to our cabin in the morning and then sitting on the little verandah to drink it,  the incredibly pleasant staff, walking around the navigation deck looking at other passengers and whatever else is out there in the sea (other ships, islands, flying fish), playing trivia in the Crows Nest, cocktails in the Crows Nest, catching some sunshine, meeting interesting people from around the world, seeing new places and wild creatures. Seeing masses of Pepto-Bismol colored flamingos standing in a salt flat was a wonderful surprise. I also enjoy having time to read.  This time I plowed through three enjoyable books: Life after Life; Life Itself; and Miss Hargreaves.

Things I don't especially like - worrying about how the cat is doing back home, sleeping in a strange bed, constant time zone changes, constant commercials for spa services and consumer goods, clueless people in the buffet lines, loud music piped into every public space, toxic individuals at dinner, the mild vertigo I get from the rocking of the ship, getting there and getting home again.

Anyway, I took a few photos, some of which follow.