Sticking Close To "Home"

As you have noticed, I have not been writing on this blog very much lately.  The fact that we have been sticking pretty close to Port Orford, Oregon is one good reason.  The other is that we haven't been doing much beyond the usual day to day activities that keep body and soul together.

Fall weather here has been fairly normal with a total of about 8.5" of rain in the month of November. We just had five straight nights of colder than normal temperatures with low readings of just under 30 degrees.  The first night of the cold temps was also fairly damp and the resulting ice on our elevated deck nearly killed me when I first walked the dogs early in the morning.  I was only saved by crashing into the side of our trailer door.  That left a mark!

I took my DJI Phantom 3 Pro quadcopter out to Cape Blanco on Saturday morning for a little exercise.  The weather was absolutely beautiful with no wind and bright clear skies.  I flew through four battery packs and put in over an hour in the air, resulting in 45 minutes of raw video of spectacular scenery.  I was able to boil the total video into the following 4:10 minute clip on YouTube.

Juanita is doing quite well with her chemotherapy treatments and had her second two day outpatient session two weeks ago.  On the Wednesday immediately following the chemo she felt just fine and thought that the second treatment would be followed by few side effects.  Wrong!  By Thursday morning she was suffering many of the side effects listed in the "textbook" and not feeling well at all.

In addition to terrible fatigue...she described it as having all of her blood drained...she had no appetite, her taste buds were shot and she was meaner than a rattlesnake caught in a buffalo stampede.  I found out about the last when I tried to force her to eat, drink and go back to bed.  This caregiver is a tough old dude, however, and I got past the chemo induced anger to get the job done.

By Saturday she was pretty much back to her good old self and life was good.  Juanita had to generally stay out of public places all of last week due to a suppressed immune system but is completely back in the pink as of today.

We enjoyed our small version of Thanksgiving by putting an eight pound turkey breast on the wood pellet grill and joining it with all the usual stuff for a fine dinner.  I also baked a sourdough gingerbread cake with lemon sauce for dessert.  Awesome!!

Juanita will join all of her local quilting friends for a quilt club Christmas party tomorrow and we hope to join friends for seasonal activities for the next couple of weeks before the next chemo session in the middle of December.  

A week of rain is forecast, so we plan to stay low and slow until the storms pass through the area.  Regardless of the weather, we spend a good amount of time outdoors and don't mind the wet stuff all that much.  In fact, the two Beagle girls just love playing with their drying towels after walks in the rain.  

I'll check back in with you all again soon.  Everyone please stay safe during your holiday travels.....