So far away

You want to disrupt your life. Deal with cancer. Or its after effects. Or any major illness. The universe gives you a big timeout, no matter what you want to happen. Beats any one of the many current natural and unnatural disasters and tragedies I could list but we all know what they are and I will spare you. But you better learn to either surrender or experience a lot of frustration.

As I have mnemonically squealed like a damn parrot on repeat mode, I have been basically worthless for the last three months, so stupid really, just that the effects of my treatment have been hard to function with. I basically [redacted}.

Thankfully I have one treatment left, this Friday but I have been sorely tested. About Wednesday next week, after the stuff has worn off, perhaps I will be able to resume my life. But the eight ball I am behind feels more like one of those big rollers they use to lay the asphalt with on the freeway. Soul crushing. Not the physical stuff, the emotional toll and the worry about keeping everything together. Not poor me, mind you, just reality.

*

I had to get labs yesterday in Temecula in the early afternoon. Said, fuck it and drove up to my special spot to look for birds. I had basically killed my day anyway, like so many others of late.

It was not an optimal day.

Very few birds and everything I did see was like that Carol King song, so far away.

Like this kestrel here.

I did see a white tailed kite, a rare favorite, but it was so far away I couldn't even get close to a decent shot.

I did manage to bag a pretty young red tailed hawk, always reliable. Saw a couple other birds, egrets, a heron, many more kestrels. which were feeding on a huge dragon fly population.

ash throated flycatcher

Nothing that you would call a keeper. 

But always a beautiful, replenishing day, birds or no birds, hot or cold. 

Mosquitos had a field day on me yesterday, had to cut my hike short.