Friday and I wake up having have a much better nights sleep. I check my vitals and they are okay. There are no messages or cyber litter that needs to be done so I get up and make breakfast. My morning meds are taken and I note I still feel under the weather. I am beginning to thing that this is related to the growing cocktail of drugs I am taking. In particular my gut, which seems to be particularly sensitive at the moment. I am trying to get in to proper clothes everyday and not slob about in lounge wear. My first move of the day was to finish reading Prospects by Kate Wilson and send her an email telling her how much I had enjoyed it. My second chore was to nudge the landscapers about when they are going to deliver and fix our new gates.

By the time Wimbledon starts I am fed up with myself and start to tidy my little corner of the world, putting books away and repositioning the garden camera. While I am in the garden I fill the bird feeders and put the few peanuts I have left in the squirrel feeder in the hope of seeing him/her again soon. The garden is still providing splendid flowers, mostly due to the hard work of my partner and the garden guy. I empty the water tower and discover that the middle tank is not filling, meaning that a replacement tank is needed if it is going to work at full capacity, it will however continue to work as it is for a while.

By the time I have finished my excursion in the garden I am breathless and tired. I get myself a decaf coffee and retreat to the recliner in the lounge where a couple of men are slogging it out in the Wimbledon semi finals. I root out my jotting journal and write a “thing”, possibly a poem trying to capture my frustration of how I am at the moment. The important thing for me is that I am trying to get myself creating again. Of course the aim is to create the third collection in the Cancer Years series.

400

I go back to 
"to this pen, this ink"
as my starting point.
It cuts away the blankness
of a virgin page
and a listless mind.
This discontent with self
and sense of distance 
from where the being 
wants to be.
Ill at ease with body
and struggling of mind
it is difficult to find beauty,
energy and direction. 
Bogged down in desired recovery
and feeling a disappointment
to all those trying so hard 
to love and nurture.
Here on the page 
lays the battlefield
with its cover and camouflage,
trenches and emplacements.
Having escaped from the wreckage,
a survivor swimming upwards
hoping the breath holds out
until that lung filling moment
when air washes the face
and life is affirmed
with a gasp. 
Not a last gasp 
but a babies first,
life assuring
full of the journey to come.
So up I swim
straining for the surface.
It hangs in the balance, 
I hold my breath
and hope it lasts. 

                                                                        400 12-07-2024

I scribble some other bit and pieces but it is senseless and I stop, enough is enough. My partner returns from an afternoon of pampering and talks to our youngest daughter and our grandson. A friend rings me and we chat for a short time, catching up with what is going on in our families and with ourselves. The evening arrives and I start to draft the blog while the evening meal is prepared. There is no plan for the evening, I guess I will see what comes along. What will come along are meds and bed with the hope for a good nights sleep again.