August 2024 Island Trip – Day 3

As promised, it rained all night. A benefit of trailer life is hearing the rain on your roof. I don’t know what it is about that noise makes for amazing sleep, but it does, and I’m thankful. When I visited with our AN today, their rain gage showed 3.5” over the last week! Not our usual August. We are not complaining.

I took care of some communication tasks this morning (Making sure Tim was ok, checking in with a friend, and our neighbor to the east, about their schedules for getting together, and connecting with a girlfriend who runs a B&B in Mexico). Then I deployed the sewing studio (it was still raining) and chose a block from the 2008 ‘Shop Hop’ to construct. I ended up having to redesign the block because there were errors in the instructions. I, of course, initially thought I’d done something wrong. The block came together, and then I chose another one to work on. It’s instructions made it impossible…. I went to the internet looking for help with the pattern, found a variant, and then had to stop. My patience was done in. This was because,

When I visited with my AN and his wife today, I learned what his diagnosis is. It’s a tumor that few survive even with treatment. I suspected glioblastoma when he described the nature of the tumor, and the fast moving symptoms he was experiencing. It was good and hard to see him. He’s house-bound due to the 26-steps to get into the house. Wheelchair dependent. His humor is nicely intact. His amazing wife is rolling with the day-to-day. They’re engaged with someone who wants to buy their property. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like to pull out of there… And they need to be, ideally, in a location that is not dependent on a ferry system to get them to medical services.

After my visit, I checked on my one producing apple tree, picked the ripest apple and headed into the woods. While there I thought about all the plans my AN and I talked about: Shelters for the trailers, re-siding the drier/tool shed, a road he wanted to create from my property to his (he’s created miles of paths/roads on his 40 acres), and when we hiked the path where this road might go… There was a perfectly conical holly tree in the way. “Oh, I’d go around that!” I learned in that moment that he had an appreciation for hollys. I thought about all the things he was in the middle of that an illness like this just halts. One side of his body doesn’t work… He’s unable to jump on the trackhoe and grade the road after all this rain. He’s unable to get to the loo by himself . It happened so fast. This is devastating. 😓