I slept in this morning for the first time since the diagnosis.  THAT was heaven, indeed.  Dan and I passed a lazy Saturday morning filled with yummy food, email and facebook catching up on my part, and then we took a nice long walk at the local Aliso and Wood Canyons Park.  There were tons of families out, a couple of Girl Scout troops as well, so we had plenty of company on the four-mile, fairly flat hike.

I read an article in the LA Times this morning about the Chino Hills State Park, which recently burned over during the wildfires of the past few weeks.  I remember being devastated when a similar thing happened to Towsley Canyon in Santa Clarita where I hiked so often with my friends Lynne, Theresa and Connie. 

The first few times we went for a hike after the fire, I was overcome by sadness at the burned hills, the dead oaks, the blackened sticks thrusting from barren ground.  But as time went by, nature reasserted herself and the first evidence of that was the greening of the ground and then a miraculous profusion of leaves bursting from absolutely black oak tree branches. 

Ever since I took the photo above, the rebirth of Towsley Canyon has been a symbol to me of what is possible, how even the most hopeless situation can be redeemed.  I am sure that the folks who are currently mourning Chino Hills State Park will be overwhelmed with the beauty that blooms there this Spring.

After we finished our hike, Dan and I grabbed a quick bit to eat and then headed to Verizon where we outfitted me with a new Blackberry phone.  The idea is that I'll be spending a lot of time in offices and chemo rooms and this will be a much better option for texting and emailing than my beautiful, impractical Razor.

So now, in addition to figuring out Facebook, I'll have to figure out my new phone.  I suspect these will be nice distractions though in the coming days.  Lynne, Ken, Jessi and Erik Secrest are on their way here for a quick, just passing through, visit.  Looking forward to that and then a bit of feet up time.

There's the bell!

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