Venus, but not cancer?

I'm saving two more chapters from our trip for future days so that I can tell you about some things at home first. K had her first acupuncture treatment yesterday to try to help her leg pain. It's hard to say if it helped or not because we've changed so many things simultaneously in a vigorous effort to prevent her pain from escalating. She's taking new pain meds, she's less active, and now she's getting acupuncture.

Regardless of which thing is making the difference, her limp is becoming less pronounced. That makes me feel very good because it means that the pain is receding. Even though her lung mets are beginning to slow her down and limit our hikes, I feel happy that her leg isn't hurting much, except when she first gets up from a long nap. A sparkle is back in her eyes.

In the photo above, she was bathed in sunset light just after a thunder storm. The sun barely peeked through the gap between the clouds and the mountains at sunset, shining directly on my sweet girl with yellow flowers blooming behind her. Despite the ravages of cancer, K is still beautiful to me.

The ensuing sunset was magnificent as the sun's rays beamed upward from behind the Continental Divide.

We sat and gazed at it, listening to the birds singing at the same time. My favorite singer, the Hermit Thrush, has recently arrived so his flute-like song wafted down from the treetops. Then, we noticed a graceful and long-winged bird, perhaps a Swift, playing in the sunset light.

K has lived, so far, for 5 months with osteosarcoma. Every day has been worth living, precious and love-filled. Even if we haven't been able to slow her cancer down very much, we certainly have extended this high quality phase of her life. That's been worth every penny. This sunset felt symbolic of our journey.

I do find myself wondering why humans precisely understand the movements of faraway planets while we haven't figured out how to defeat many cancers that kill humans and other animals. Very odd. I'm guessing that biological systems are constantly changing and adapting, making understanding them much harder than predicting a planet's movements.

We watched Venus transit the sun the other afternoon, using precise predictions of exactly when Venus would pass in front of the Sun. Here is a series of photos that I took over several hours of intermittently cloudy weather. The clouds barely parted enough to let me see the sun as Venus first appeared in front of it, at the very top of the orb. It looks like a mouse took a nibble out of the sun.

Then, the black dot moved inward and to the north in the spooky cloud cover.

Much later, the Labraduo and I headed out to find a view of the sun because it was no longer visible from our house. Now, Venus was well within the Sun's orb, in the midst of clouds and some tree branches.

A little bit later, the color of the sun became more orange as it began to set. The other dark spots aside from the big one (Venus) are sun spots.

Then, the sun set below the clouds. This was my last photo before Venus was covered by clouds. None of us will be alive the next time that Venus appears in front of the sun.

The Labraduo was there with me the whole time while I photographed the Venus Transit. I think that they were confused about why I wasn't pointing my camera at them! So, I took one photo of them so they didn't feel left out.

Tomorrow, more about our Utah trip because there were a few more exciting events plus a stay in a Mars-like canyon that holds great sentimental meaning for K and me. It was the first place that we ever mountain biked together years ago...