Scattered Thoughts . . .

This morning was another morning darkened by a medical appointment for ongoing cancer. Sheila and I seem to share everything and, unfortunately, this is one of those things we have in common. Today was my turn.  To be honest, even after all these years of never-ending medical appointments, I still have difficulty seeing anything on my calendar beyond these important medical appointments... I just see darkness. When I pictured my calendar in my head, the months and days only went to January 11th... Monday... 2016... then complete darkness.  No matter how hard I try, I just cannot shed any light on this calendar in my head until I get beyond these dark appointments.  On the positive side, these appointments allow us to spend more time together rather than apart while Sheila is at work. We always eat out on these days as well. And, that is always nice.  Before Sheila was in my life, I seemed to know more medical professionals than others. I would walk into a hospital and the peopl

My health crashed again last night due to some typical Systemic Mastocytosis issues affecting my blood pressure and gastrointestinal tract so I had to take some emergency medications to help stabilize my body.  Today I am recovering. One of the emergency medications I had to take makes me extremely drowsy so I must recover from this drowsiness and avoid all potentially dangerous activities such as using power tools and driving because this drowsiness also affects my cognitive abilities (of course, my mast cell issues also affect my cognitive abilites). I also need some time for the medication to balance out my body allowing my health to recover. On days such as today (and I have far too many of them which is why you are seeing a flurry of blog entries lately) , I try to indulge in some art therapy by working on photos... sometimes painting... sometimes working on model railroading models. Today, I chose to work on some photos. As I mentioned yesterday in a blog post, I am trying

As I've written in a few other blog entries, I occasionally miss a good photo and it just sits in a folder on one of my hard drives.  Months later, I stumble across the photo while looking for a different photo and I say to myself, "Wow... how did I miss this one?" This photo of Kenzie is one such photo.  While at the lake house recently, Kenzie and I were about thirty or forty feet apart... on different levels... and I had my long telephoto kit in my hands hoping to get some photos of the sailboat, ducks and loons out on the lake. I noticed that Kenzie was a bit more animated than usual so I pointed the camera in her direction. This camera and lens combo is not one I would use for portraits nor in this particular situation but it was all I had at the time. I quickly changed a couple of settings and then fired off one shot before she was no longer facing me. The result, however, is a pretty decent photo... not great... but a keeper for our purposes.  I can'