Baby steps

The year was...1993....Assiniboine  Park in Winnipeg Manitoba and the event was an obscure sport called ultimate, a game frisbee/football if you will . We were a bunch of newbie misfits under the leadership of our willie veterans Mike  and Danny. At the start of the season, we wondered if we would be able to move the disk down the field without hurting ourselves or others, let alone score a point or win a game. But we created our own little mantra, and I have used it in my life ever since, "Baby Steps! Baby Steps!" . Don't let the daunting enormity of the task ahead of you cause you to freeze up and prevent you from moving forward. That my friends is exactly what we did, step by step we made small victories, one day to the next.

Now I'm not about to naively think that this blog has a tremendous number of followers, I mean there are some, and those some are a dedicated bunch. So much so that when I have a down time or fall off the blogging wagon, I often get a good humored shot to the ribs. My last enters was a healthy two weeks ago, and I would love to say that I have been working away on Fillmore and have simply neglected to download and post...but that is not the case.

Before the lull in posting, Ron and Verna came out for a visit, a little skiing, a little Fillmore time. Here we are, the boys starting to prep the interior of Fillmore for a visit to the paint shop. Jeff removed the couch moorings while Ron and I worked at removing the wall boards and the inside window wells. I have said this many times, two steps forward one step back, it's just that sometimes the step back is a planned step!

I have faced many challenges in my life, business wise, relationship wise , and even health wise ( insert eye link). But on Feb 12, I got some news I wasn't quite ready for.

My old man sore back that I have complaining about in these pages, turned out to be something else. I have a tumor growing through the bone in the L2 vertebrae, it is degrading the bone and the vertebral body is structurally compromised. As luck would have it, about a week after discovery I had an innocuous slip on the ice and fractured the vertebrae. Since then I have been flat on my back unable to stand or sit, all the while the doctors are trying to figure out the best way to handle it.

In the meantime, my ever resourceful wife has been deputized to take care of all home repairs and maintenance....while I affectionately watch from the comfort of my floor bed.

The doctors have been poking, prodding, irradiating, x-Raying,scanning and testing for the last two weeks. The consensus is that I have a very aggressive atypical tumor that resembles a hemangioma, and it needs to be removed.....breathe...... I have a date on the operating table next week......breathe.....and a long recovery ahead.....breathe......

Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps....start with the small victories.

Fillmore is old, wise and patient....he will wait for me.