A lovely weekend

Saturday

I’m laying on my couch, it’s raining gently outside, I close my eyes, I’m contented and happy and I hear the feint sounds of the raindrops hitting the patio doors. They form a rythem as if they are singing to me and I just listen and count my blessings just feeling grateful to be able to listen to the rain, it is enough to just experience this. I’ve had a great day, I layed in unexpectedly and that was despite going to bed early, my body is obviously saying “Woody it’s ok you can rest a bit more now” I make that a twelve hour sleep, wow thats like the equivalent of two nights of my old sleeping schedule in one night. I’ve lived for years on not much sleep, perhaps five or six hours used to be my normal, not any more the new normal is ten hours minimum.

Despite the twelve hours of sleep, I had breakfast, done my morning medication routine and then needed another short nap. I was nodding off watching the morning news, my daughter says I look like a nodding dog. I often wonder how this affects them, they have been so good with it all it’s as if they don’t know I’ve got cancer. Sometimes I even get a bit cross and think why are they not treating me like I’ve got cancer don’t they care, and then it dawns on me that this is there coping method and I’m glad it’s this way. I then feel selfish for wishing they would aknowledge my cancer every now and then of course that’s stupid, they are incredible and I don’t know how they do it, especially my Ella who is a sensitive soul she must be incredibly brave to make sure that everything appears to be normal and now I think of it like that I love her even more dearly than I thought possible.♥️ I hope one day they will read these blogs and know just how much I love them both even though in their early lives I didn’t show it enough. I found it hard to come to terms with being a dad at first, I had years of doing what I wanted and then I had a child to be responsible to and then soon after Nieve came along and I had two. My cancer has given me a love for my children that I can’t possibly explain and I truly thank it for teaching me that lesson.

Today was time to put together a new BBQ that I had brought, for the first time ever the Woody’s were the proud owners of a brand new gas powered BBQ it was time to ditch the old charcoal one that we had for years. The problem was it was in a box in bits, and I’m not the best when it comes to putting stuff together. I asked Ella to help me then watched in complete surprise as she took control and bit by bit she followed the instructions with just a little bit of guidance from me. It was another few hours in time that will stay with me forever, I kept getting little eye contacts from her which just made us both smile and my heart leap right out of my chest. Cancer has taught me the power of love, something that may have passed me by untill this illness came along, how can I feel hate towards it. It took us several hours and the job was done. I took a couple of pictures and then we went back indoors pleased then with our afternoons work and me beaming from the quality time we had just spent together. Life has funny ways of teaching us lessons and sometimes I guess we don’t even realise we are being taught something, it just passes us by like a cloud in the sky. As every day passes I’m becoming surer that my cancer was sent to me for a reason, I’m learning things every day that would have before just never occurred to me, I don’t know what the universe has in store for me yet but I’m beginning to think all of this is no accident. I wonder why it takes something that has threatened my very existence to realise just what ive been missing for so many years.

Some days I get completely over whelmed with it all but rarely now in a bad way. I’m not the same person I was before this changed my life, in many ways for the better. Of course there is some nasty stuff I have to deal with on almost a daily basis but they are not for this post, today I’m celebrating life. It’s now midnight and for the first time in a while I can’t sleep, I’m honestly laying here buzzing on life. My thoughts are very positive, I’m enjoying work and again thanking the universe for allowing me to go back to a job that I do with love and passion. I know that it won’t be like this for ever but while it’s good it’s worth celebrating and being grateful for the good things I have. Gratitude alone is an extra tablet I take each day, it gives me a new depth of strength to keep going. Just saying thanks sets every cell in your body into a dance of joy, I wonder how much it affects the cancerous ones, do they change when I feel deep love and appreciation, I’m sure they do, even if it’s just a little bit it’s a start. I often try to visualise what’s going on in the parts of my body where the cancer is. I sometimes picture the cancer cells as dark red ones in a sea of white ones. Almost like little red boats on their own voyage vastly outnumbered and growing weaker as time goes by.

Sunday

It’s Sunday morning, we have a cold wind blowing but the sun is out saying good morning in my little part of the world. I’m wrapped up warm in my getting older bright blue jacket that’s kept me warm through the winter months, I didn’t expect to be using him again so I had put him to the back of our wardrobe where the winter clothes are confined. It’s crisp and its beautiful and I’m drinking a cup of decaf coffee not the stuff from jars today this one is out of a packet and made in a cafetiere, proper coffee☕ the birds of course are telling the world how happy they are with life and I just close my eyes sit back and totally agree with them. I take another sip of coffee but before each sip I take a long moment to saviour the smell as it races through my nostrils up to my brain and paints a picture of warmth and coziness in my mind which then rushes through my body telling all parts of me not to worry the coffee has this. I call it the coffee experience, drinking coffee slowly using almost all of the senses is a perfect way to be mindful, to leave the world for a few seconds at a time and just be in the present moment where nothing matters. My cancer recognises this too and lets me have my moments the ongoing pains melt away, we are all good. The sky is an impossible blue, one that blue does no justice, the Italian word for blue is azzurre and that fits just perfectly. The air is really cold and now as happens so very often I’m experiencing a really powerful hot flush from my hormone treatment, it’s worse when outside in the cold because once it’s over I’m left in a damp shivering mess that no blue coat can keep me warm from. The hot flushes have been really intense lately it’s like someone is burning my skin I will bring this up with the oncologist at our next meeting in a month’s time, I mean while I can only assume that the intensness and higher frequency of these hot flushes is a good sign that the hormone therapy is working.

I’ve noticed that a lot of my body hair is dissapearing, being a naturally blonde guy blond hairs are not so visable but the hairs on my arms legs and chest are thinning away and my head hair or what’s left of it grows in strange patches now there are other side effects from hormone treatment that are too private to go into on here but are a real struggle to deal with mentally. I have over recent months come to terms with lots of this stuff but the hardest thing is to look like a man still but not to feel like a man so much anymore, of course the upturn of that is the sole reason I’m still about, alive and reasonably well. Without this treatment I would most likely have left this beautiful place called planet earth a while ago. So for that reason the side effects are a welcome trade off for the fact that I’m still sitting here able to enjoy my coffee love my daughter’s and of course my wife who like my daughter’s is incredible in putting on a brave face. If I can, if I may, say one message whilst I’m in this mood you’ve got to look at what you have, not what you haven’t got. The modern world turns on its axis around a need of always wanting more, always striving for more and more untill the day we die. Take it from one who knows we have everything already, it’s all inside, buying stuff we can’t afford is only a short term happiness fix, we have happiness inside, we have love inside there is no need to buy it. We have everything we want inside of us go for a walk open your heart and soul to the world around you and you will find all you will ever need. You are enough, you always have been. I spent so many years thinking I was not enough striving to be enough when it was all there I just didn’t see it. I’ve been given the gift of a second chance, I see it now and if I can share just a little bit of the way I see and live in this world then it’s worth the time spent typing. The world is experienced from within of that I now have no doubt. I could be sitting here complaining how cold it is for the time of year or how noisy the dam birds are or how shit it all is right now, but I don’t because all of that comes from within me. Nothing that happens on the outside of me can change how I feel or deal with it unless I chose to change it on the inside. Every single person has a unique gift and that’s to chose how to deal with their own crap, I chose a while ago to see it with kindness, gratitude and positivity, my first blog over 100 blogs ago said that too. Nothing that happens to me or my body will change that. My body is connected directly to my mind that is a fact, I am living proof, I have been delt a shit pack of cards yet on the inside I have found things that I never thought possible to find. Cancer will never be my excuse it will be my teacher, I am learning everyday how life is controlled from inside out not the other way around as so many of us believe. Take life and love it on the inside and the outside stuff will change, that is a promise.

Wow where did all that lot come from earlier today, sometimes my head gets full of stuff and needs a place to get out and here is that place. Sometimes I just want to scream this stuff out when I see people arguing over petty stuff or worrying about stuff that really doesn’t matter if only they could step in my mind for a while and experience life from within. Here I go again back on my soap box preaching to the world😃 I do get frustrated at times though listening or reading about people’s problems that seem quite trivial to me now, of course no one knows what’s really going on we are masters of disguise but social media often let’s the mask fall off and the real person is exposed. I promise I’ll stop the preaching now. The wind has really turned up now to blow the clouds that are forming into all kinds of wonderful shapes, when the sun goes into hiding or is it being kidnapped by the clouds as they gang up on it that’s when for a while it goes cold and less bright as the shadows race across the land below. The cats have a appeared, they both simultaneously yawn and stretch before wondering off to explore their territory. Surprisingly there is no sighn of the rabbits both of them are content hiding under the dining room table in their little tunnels occasionally hoping out to see what’s going on. Later as it gets towards evening they usually put on this fantastic show as the two of them dance and run together and jump for the sheer fun of it in what’s known in rabbit terminology as binking. They move at lightening speed sometimes a blur of fur and change direction impossibly fast. I like to think the show is for their humans who feed them keep their homes clean and generally love them, but these are not and have never been the type of rabbits that will allow you to cuddle them, they are wild at heart and we are just people they will never fully trust and that’s fine by me, they have the freedom of the house and don’t have a bad life. I do feel though when they are charging around the garden and binking at the pleasure of it all that there instincts are they want to do the same thing in a big wild field free with no limits.

Well that’s all for now on what has been a really lovely weekend. I hope yours was too

Love Woody ❤️