Today Mother Nature has been busy all day long creating patterns on everything in sight. She is using snow as her medium today. Lovely, fluffy, snow that has been accumulating all day long. Finally.

While she’s been busy outside, I’ve been working on my own pattern while sitting by a cozy fire inside. My chosen medium is yarn. I am attempting the Japanese Vines pattern from Michelle’s blog. Blogger Not Plain Jane is to blame for this newest obsession of mine: lace. I must have started this scarf at least ten times, only to frog it. Have you ever had something that you just couldn’t seem to get right? This was it for me. But I kept trying and finally have it going. It’s very addictive! The pattern is gorgeous (at least I think so). It will be a gift for my friend, Carolyn.

The color is actually a plummy purple but it looks more blue in the photos. Yummy indeed! The yarn is a silk/wool blend from String Theory and is wonderful to work with. It’s hard to put down now that I finally mastered it!

Now back to enjoying our snow ...

Today I’m taking a short break from bringing you armchair travels and instead we are going to come into my back yard. The weather over the past week has been very strange. We’ve had rain and fog.

Friday morning we had thunder, lightning, and pouring rain. In the winter. Saturday morning we had a few brief snow showers that left about an inch of snow. About 11:00 Saturday night we were quite rudely awakened by an enormous clap of thunder, followed by three large dogs jumping up on our bed. Several more very close, blindingly-bright lightning strikes and ground shaking thunder claps followed the first, then torrents of rain pounded down on the roof. In the morning we were greeted with a solid sheet of ice on everything.

Sunday morning it snowed very heavily for about an hour.

An hour later all that was left on the trees were fairy drops, the sun shining through and illuminating them.

Another heavy little snow squall came through late afternoon and left tracings of snow on our front door mat, the pool cover, and the trees.

We are obviously seasonally-challenged here in New Jersey this year.

Sailor Update: Thanks to all who have expressed concern over Sailor’s lymphoma. He has had two chemo treatments and so far all is well. His lymph nodes were down by 50% after the first treatment and the vet was very pleased. This past week they have gone down even more. He has tolerated the chemo very well and each treatment was a different drug. He will continue weekly chemo treatments for another five weeks, then they will be every other week with one in four being just a pill at home. He is eating well and happy. If you didn’t know you’d swear there was nothing wrong with him.

I don’t know what the future holds for him, but all we can do is take one day at a time and make the most of it. Keep sending those good thoughts. I think they are working!

The ball game, or pok ta pok in Mayan, played an important role in Mayan society, for both religious and entertainment purposes. In nearly every Mayan city there is a Ball Court, but the great Ball Court in Chichen Itza is the largest at 551 feet (168 meters) long by 229 feet (70 meters) wide. It swallowed up the tourist crowds like we were nothing. Enormous.

The court today consists of the Jaguar Temple that sits atop the east wall, a ruined platform on the west wall, the North Temple which is in fairly good repair, and the South Temple.

Here is the Jaguar Temple.

The North Temple. Here it is thought that the King would preside over games. The acoustics are also of note. It is said that if you are standing in the North Temple and another person is in the South Temple, you can converse in a normal tone of voice even though that person is 551 feet away from you.

The game itself was played with two teams consisting of seven players, each with an appointed team captain. They tried to either hit (to score) a stone ring 23 feet above the playing field with a large rubber ball, or put the ball through the ring to win.  Sound challenging? Under normal circumstances this would be challenging enough but how would you like to do that without using your hands? The ball was propelled by using either the knees or hips. (Note: some references say the use of wrists and shoulders were allowed as well.)

I’ve added arrows to this duplicate of the photo I used above earlier to show you where the stone rings are located. Look closely and you should see them. And, actually, you can also see a ring in the photo of the Jaguar Temple if you’re looking for it. See it you can find it.

Of course, getting the ball to actually pass through the hoop didn’t happen very often, but when it did it ended the game. Now what happened to the “winner” (aka the team captain) is a source of debate. It was first thought that the losing team’s captain “lost” his head, but today’s belief is that the winning captain won the honor to become a sacrifice if he so chose. A great honor indeed since this meant he would get a straight ticket to the Gods instead of going through all the underworlds first. And oh, did I happen to mention that only the nobility were allowed to play the game? Hmm… maybe there’s something to being lower class after all ...

The benches that line the court on either side are carved with images of players wearing protection on their arms and legs and the rituals of the game.  A snake runs the entire length of the bench. In one scene, a player kneels as his head is severed; blood spurts from his neck in the form of writhing serpents which then become garlands of flowers and leaves. Rebirth. Giving back to the Earth. If you look closely at the scene depicted in the third photo below you can see him on the far right side.

I couldn’t help wondering as I gazed upon all these carved reliefs about the time it took to create them. And the detail! Just amazing! By this time I was falling under the spell of these ancient people.

On our first full day in Cancun we signed up for a tour to one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, Chichen Itza, thereby ticking off one of the things on Rick’s ‘Bucket List.’ This well-preserved Mayan ruin is well worth the trip to the interior of the Yucatan Peninsula.

The Mayan civilizations were very advanced. They had their own writing and mathematical systems. They practiced astronomy, tracking the annual cycle of the sun and other heavenly bodies; even predicting when eclipses would occur years in advance. They created two different calendars: the solar calendar which consisted of 18 months of 20 days each plus five unlucky days (18 x 20 +5 = 365 days); and the other for calculating religious ceremonies and festivals and predicting the destinies of people. They built temples in such a way to correspond with the spring and fall equinoxes, where light from the setting or rising sun shone precisely through windows or doorways. Amazing.

There were so many interesting things to see and learn and I took so many photos that I’ve decided to break it down into separate blog entries. This entry will be about the most famous of the buildings here: The Castle, or Pyramid of Kukulcan.

The pyramid has nine terraces symbolizing the planes of the underworld. Up until two years ago you could still climb the stairs and reach the temple at the top, but no more. Maybe it was a good thing since there are 91 steps on each of the four staircases. A significant number since 91 steps x four staircases + the temple on top = 365 for the number of days in a year.

Only two of the staircases have been restored; the other two lie in disrepair. This is partly due to the fact that many of its stones were removed in the early 1920s to build the house of an American, Edward H. Thompson (an anthropologist and a diplomat) who bought the land where Chichen Itza stands. Can you imagine? His house is now a hotel close to the site. Here you can see one of the unrestored staircases on the south side.

The east staircase with its numbered steps.

The north staircase is the most impressive and the most important. This staircase ends dramatically, flanked by two colossal heads of feathered serpents, their jaws agape.

It is also a feat of astronomical genius. At 3:00 p.m. on the spring and fall equinoxes (March 20 and September 21) the sun forms a series of seven isosceles triangles of light and shade on the terraces adjacent to the staircase, giving the impression of an undulating serpent, culminating when it reaches the serpent head at the bottom. It is thought to be symbolic of the return of the god Kukulcan to Earth as the rebirth of the agricultural season.

It all makes one feel tiny and insignificant.

I really didn’t want to share this with the world,l but now I have to own up and tell you. I’m so afraid you will think we have the worst dog luck in the world. Cursed. Horrible dog owners. Frickin’ unlucky. It’s mostly the reason why I haven’t been posting non-stop since we arrived home from an absolutely wonderful semi-vacation in Cancun. That reason being because we arrived home on Monday evening, and after picking the dogs up on Tuesday morning and getting them settled back here at home, I reached down to scratch Sailor under the chin only to discover huge LUMPS. My heart plummeted in my chest because there is only one thing to think at that point: lymphoma = cancer. I quickly checked his other lymph nodes and it wasn’t good. Crap. How could this happen in one week? I got an appointment with my vet for that afternoon but only after literally screaming at them over the phone that NO, next week was not OKAY. I needed an appointment today. Time was of the essence. I got my appointment, knowing what they would tell me anyway (and yes, the vet concurred) and they took aspirations of the lumps to send to cytology.

At least we didn’t have to wait for long for results from the lab, as the next evening the vet called to say the slides were positive for lymphoma. I got on the phone the next morning (Thurs) and the best I could do was to take a cancellation of the referral vet for Tuesday. In the meantime I opted to hold this cancer at bay and use prednisone to reduce the tumors. Within a few hours the tumors were reduced to half, but Sailor was not tolerating the higher dose of pred very well. So, the next day I reduced the dose and he seemed to be better.

This morning they called with a cancellation for today, so Sailor and I took the appointment. I waited nervously for Sailor to be taken into x-ray to see if the cancer had spread to his lungs and to do bloodwork to see if he was a candidate for chemo. The good news is that his lungs were clear of any cancer, but his liver was showing signs of infiltration.  She quickly assured me that the liver involvement didn’t impact his long-term prognosis, just the amount of dosage, so we were good to go with the chemo treatment. So, tomorrow bright and early, Sailor and I will be on our way to what we hope is a road to “recovery” or at least remission. Fingers crossed that he doesn’t turn out to be in the very low percentile of dogs that don’t deal with chemo well, or that the little bit of prednisone that I did give him will alter his cells into not accepting the chemo treatment. Only time will tell.

It’s very costly to have him undergo this treatment (think in thousands of dollars) but we both feel we can’t give up without at least giving it a try. I asked Sailor tonight and he agreed that he is not yet ready to give up. In all other respects he remains the energetic energizer bunny he has always been.

Please send us your hopes and “prayers” (however you may pray) as we will be needing them. Those of you who know me best know that I am not a religious type of person, but I will be offering up prayers of hope to whoever is out there listening to my plea. How much can one person really take? Really, folks, look at his face. Could you say no?