I'm going back to work tomorrow morning after nine days off.  My schedule now gives me weekends off and taking a Monday thru Friday for chemo off gives me nine days with both weekends.  I could visit Hawaii nicely in that amount of time.  We need to go for a couple weeks again.  Hey, if you're going to have the heaves anyway, why not in paradise? 

Okay, I'm off to Hawaiian Airlines when I'm done here. I want to go back to magic sands.  My credit is good against my NADART.  We should figure out when I'm going to be through with the radiation, healed back up & ready to swim at Capt. Cook again.  Two weeks at the Sugar Shack.  Maybe in about a year or so.  Guess I have time.

Did I mention I am thinking a lot about what I should be writing.  Are you curious about my disease?  I really don't mind talking about it a bit.  There is something kind of settling about verbalizing what I understand regarding what is happening to me. 

What about a lifespan?  It really gets you thinking about just that.  What the fuck.  If you had to know today was it ..... What would you say?  What would you do?  My father wrote about fifty words to us that are like poetry.  He wrote them almost ten years before he passed but they were absolutely perfect.  Nice work Dad, you always knew exactly what to say and how to be the perfect master of ceremonies. I'll share his letter with you later.  It's a beauty. 

Ya, I want to write letters to folks.  If my bank box has a letter addressed to you the day I pass don't assume it is one that you will rush out and share with everyone.  Read it again please.  Chances are however, If I have memories of you, they are sweet ones. 

Regrets?  My first reaction is absolutely not.  I have had such a great life in every way.  So full of wonder and awe, family and friends, love and sorrow.  Then I remember there was that one time ....  okay, so I'm sorry for that.  And, all those other times.  I get it, it's a biblical thing right?  Eve gave Adam the apple & we've been rocking in the free world every since.  Maybe a few regrets but major things I would have done differently, not really.

Here's one you may not have known.  I got a lot of letters in the winter of 1971 to play football for several colleges.  Montana, some JCs', and the cream was a four year offer at the University of Washington.  Could have been a Husky in the old PAC 8.  So of all the things I am, at least I don't hump legs, sniff crotches or lick my balls when I'm out on a date. 

My one older brother had played for Boise and was on the Ducks with some scholarship money included plus my father put himself through about ten years of eligibility playing college football. So when my turn came, as the youngest boy in the family, what did I do?  I said no.  That was not in my future.

I do remember Dad and I discussing it on at least one occasion.  We were serious in our discussion and I remember being cool with it but kind of shocked by the fact that Dad just said, OK!  Ya see, I wanted to go to a Jr. College in Gresham.  No football.  It would be near Patti as she attended NW Business College for a year. Then we could, would, gulp, get married. 

It was the single smartest thing I ever did to guarantee a lifetime of happiness.  We married on a scorching August day  thirty eight years ago. and I'm taking odds that we will make fifty.  Now that is going to be a celebration.