Visualization Request

If you did not receive this email already, then, thank you for reading! And please consider joining the visualization . . .

Hello, my dear friends and family: 

About a year ago I went in for Gamma Knife at Harborview Medical Center (my 3rd time?). This treatment focuses gamma rays on specific lesions in my brain, allowing the lesions to be treated with very few side effects. It's a finite experience, ideally painless (the first year I needed an extra squirt of lidocaine in my forehead as they were screwing in the "halo"), plus I get some Ativan and a sedative. Also, the barbarity of the apparatus appeals to my sense of humor, in a way that chemotherapy has never done. Fun times! 

Last year, I asked many of you to visualize cascades flowing freely out of my brain, draining all unnecessary fluid and keeping the inflammation down. This worked really well--I had to pee like a race horse for about 3 days afterward. Thank you all for your kind assistance. 

This Thursday, October 30, I am scheduled for Gamma Knife again, and I would like to ask for your visualization assistance again, but with a difference: I would like you to picture my brain healthy and free from lesions. 

It doesn't matter if you believe or not that your visualization will have any effect. You don't need to do anything to prepare for it. It doesn't need to happen a lot, nor for a long time--a moment will do. You do not need to participate. 

In my mind's eye, my healthy brain glows with a coppery light--gold and pink and bright, swirling and flowing around. When you think of me this week, all I ask is that you picture my coppery, glowing, healthy brain. 

Thank you. 

Love,
Calin 

note: One thing I wanted to clarify: You don't need to think of me Thursday morning; any time you think of me this week, you can picture my healthy brain. Timing--linear timing--doesn't matter at all.

one-fingered on my phone

Knitted In

Every time I've been on Orcas in recent months, something has occurred to clarify, more and more each time, that the island is our community--and all that's missing is us.

As the days grow rapidly shorter, colder, and wetter, I've been feeling Orcas knitting itself cosily around me with local merino wool, protecting me from the elements, and making my home--although physically still months in the future--homier and homier.

In fact, this sweater knitting around me is *so* complete that, a couple weeks back, I began to feel slightly uneasy. I don't want Orcas to be a straitjacket, no matter how fleecy. A cardigan, though--ideally a zipped hoody--allows for quite a bit of flexibility. Too warm? Unzip. Chilly? Zip up to the chin. Super cold? Pull up the hood. I can live with--no, bask in--an Orcas cardigan.

As Orcas enfolds me in soft warmth, Seattle is rubbing me more and more like a hair shirt. At best, each return to the city ends in Wallingford with my back tense and my shoulders somewhere near my ears.

On my most recent arrival back in Seattle, someone had parked exactly right to screw me over with my heavy unloading and the late afternoon rain. I raged and wept and threw a royal tantrum (once I'd unloaded and was inside), in part fueled by my bitter recognition that I have absolutely no claim whatsoever to any stretch of any city street. This was one of my worst arrivals, for sure.

BUT! The short island visit that Ian and I had just completed (with him being dropped in Lake Forest Park on our return, and therefore absent from my puerile raging) knitted a whole skein into my sweater.

Last weekend I emailed the West Sound Neighbor-to-Neighbor email list asking for medium-term housing. We need someplace with an indoor toilet through the winter (and indoor cooking facilities, and electricity, and consistent heat, and, and . . . ), and as of mid-February when we vacate Wallingford to put our house on the market in the city, we'll need full-time lodging somewhere.

Within 24 hours I had two responses from Orcas (and emailed my thanks to the community), and one of them is PERFECT (and we look forward to being community members with the other as well).

As of December 1*, and through the remainder of our build, we will live in a little guesthouse with a great view, a kitchen, and a ten-minute walk home to get in the way of the construction crew. The guesthouse is mostly furnished, but we can add our own guest bed (come visit!), and my piano, and Spackle.

It's marvelous, the island element of my life's current upheaval, and I am continually thunderstruck by how quickly Orcas accommodates any request I make. I love it!

More pictures posted: I recommend looking at the night shots with the lights off, on your largest screen. Photogenic place!

one-fingered on my phone, and then edited on my computer.

*We'll still be "living" in Seattle . . . more or less . . . until the house actually goes on the market in March. But I'll be on Orcas as much as possible. Ian will be, too, but his "possible much" is slimmer than mine.

ALASKA!

Just arrived in Juneau for a brief getaway--that is, I'm having a getaway; Ian is teaching a two day course--and it looks nice, although rainy. I'm hoping I'll have time to catch up on posting my Orcas pictures, but in the meantime, enjoy this view from our hotel room at the Baranof Westmark.

one-fingered on my phone

The View From Our Bedroom

I'll try to get a few more pictures up tomorrow, and an update, but for now, get a load of this:

Reformatted Photo Album

I've posted yesterday's pictures in the usual album, WITH a change: I reversed the date order in the album, so the most recent pictures will appear at the top, instead of you having to scroll, yet again, down to the bottom of the exponentially increasing number of shots. A thank you to Ian's friend D, who brought the issue into my more immediate attention.

I was about to say that I assume things will slow down once we're done with the exterior . . . but I *do* like to take close-ups, so I'm guessing I'll find plenty to photograph from *inside* as well. We'll see! In the meantime, Ian and I will be up tomorrow night for a mere 2-night visit, but a visit richly imbued with island community. More on that after the fact ;-).

New Pictures!

I just want to make it clear that the fact that I haven't posted any pictures in the last week or so is NOT that the house hasn't been growing like a weed, but that it *has* been. I took a bunch of photos last week and then left my camera on the island, and then discovered (some days later) that I had, indeed, brought it home, and then life got in the way and then more pictures came in and AAAGH!!! So far behind!

Well, we haven't moved in yet, so I guess not *too* far behind, after all.

New Pictures Posted Here!

Second Floor!

I've just added four new pictures from Burke to the end of the slide show. I took several pictures myself, including many of young mountain goats clambering over the framed walls--usually with nail guns or, between two of them, beams weighing, in my estimation at least, about a billion pounds. But, alas, I seem to have left my fancy camera on the island when I dragged myself away yesterday. So there will be a retrospective coming, but also, I suspect the mountain goats will be even more dizzying as the house grows taller.

Yep, it's exciting, if anyone was wondering ;-).