Seattle (Chemo Day 12 of 21)

Olympic Mountains across Puget Sound

I was super tired yesterday, which landed within the five days of my 'immunity nadir'. Also could be because of a longer-than-usual walk yesterday*. On the pos. side, I am able to sleep a bit more. My friend Oscar has the most comfy guest futon imaginable. What's his secret?

I've gotten together with a few people here: Melissa at the arboretum and Cafe Flora, Kerstin for Thai food in Wallingford and then sunset watching at Shilshole Bay. Will see Lynne D. later today, who I haven't seen in around 15 years, and then Taraprabha...it's been really sunny and mild, perfect weather. Oscar and Debbie have a case of the most delightfully ripe peaches.

Apples

Melissa told me about some studies done in Japan on 'Forest bathing': men who took two-hour walks in a forest had a 50-percent spike in levels of natural killer cells. Another study found an increase in white blood cells that lasted a week in women exposed to phytoncides in forest air. (Read more about it in The New York Times.) So there is more motivation, other than how I feel, to get out of the city fairly often.

Chatting about this blog/book project with Oscar's partner, Debbie, who has a used bookstore here in Seattle, I realized making these words into a book isn't as straightforward, necessarily, as I thought. Are the updates interesting to anyone who doesn't know me? I don't think they necessarily are. And if not, how do I broaden out the appeal? There's a lot of material here. What is of interest and useful to the average...cancer patient? I don't quite know how to shape it. I need to do some research, I need an angle. I don't know much of anything about publishing. I need for it to have a good design and layout, too. I'd like to start blocking out chunks of time to work on it.

* Yesterday I logged 12,048 steps, which might be why I was so tired (around three miles.) Jane says the goal is at least 4,000 - don't recollect if that was only a starting goal. I've been doing between 4,000-10,000 per day since I got the pedometer, around three weeks ago.