Sunday, July 15 It’s a little cooler here today and windy again. John has returned from several hours of outside work, including picking raspberries, Rainier cherries, and working on the pasture fence demolition. John’s resting now and then we will tackle putting up the berries. We just had a nice long telephone visit with his sister Peggy in Ohio. I just got off my computer and have thrown a bunch of clothes that have piled up, in for a wash. Most of the first load is John’s clothing that gets dirty and sweaty from his outside work. We are concerned we haven’t seen Rascal since yesterday morning. It’s not like him not to return a couple times a day for food, a sleep, and cuddling.
Early morning has in store leaving for a trip to Yakima. We need to have John’s root canal checked after 6 months and to take the ’09 Subaru for its oil change and lube (maybe for a 48,000 mile warranty thing, or we might have to go back for that). We have 49,500 miles on the car now. I almost always drive it and leave the ’04 sit in the driveway because it uses (or likes) higher priced gas. [The ‘09’s next major shop-time is at 60,000 miles, not now. Good thing, as that one will be about $1,000.] While we are in Yakima, we will cross the street into the town of Union Gap and go to Costco.
We left for Yakima this morning at 8:45 and didn’t get home till after 2:00. Kitty Rascal was awaiting our return on the bed when we got home. This is so unlike him. We figured he was coyote, cougar, or owl dinner. He appears in good shape, just very, very tired. I wondered if he went across the creek on a limb or bridge, and couldn’t find his way back without swimming. We had storms in the hills that raised the water level a lot. We’ll never know. John thinks he’s found a friend, maybe north of us a bit. I rubbed him all over, talked to him, and told him how happy I was to see him, and asked where he’d been for 3 days. He didn’t respond, except to yawn, knead his feet, stretch, and roll over. Dang, it is nice to have him back. He has NEVER done this in the time we have had him (since August 2011), when he was small. We all slept for two hours this afternoon. Rascal slept hard himself and has eaten a lot of canned food. We put up about 5 pounds of strawberries tonight.
Tuesday, July 17 Light day, except for a concentrated shoulder massage and check up from last week to see if the work helped. The verdict is that my 4 muscles controlling my rotator cuff are in bad shape. They’re called the S.I.T.S. (stands for Supraspinatus, Infraspinatus, Teres minor, and Subscapularis) muscles. There is also involvement with my Deltoid muscle. If you follow this link, you’ll get a good explanation of the anatomy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotator_cuff
along with this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deltoid_muscle
My light day turned into more stops. Needed to pick up thyroid meds for our sweet Shay (oldest Brittany). In addition, I contacted the Better Life Natural Foods store in EBRG to see about the samples of the popped wheat berry products (of our friends in Condon, OR) that I took by for them to consider adding to their inventory with an order. See this link to see the description: http://www.wheatspringsbakery.com/
Wednesday, July 18 Back to the regularly scheduled Soup Kitchen, Food Bank stint, at noon followed by SAIL exercise. Today’s food was good again, being donated by the Ellensburg Pasta Company.
The opening page has a slide show that changes every 6 seconds.
It was a tube like pasta called penne, with tomato sauce and sliced bratwurst; garlic bread, green salad (too much dark green for me and my need not to have Vit K stuff such as spinach), and cranberry cake for dessert, also which I cannot have. But when I got to the AAC for exercise, they put out some nice chocolate frosted chocolate cookies and I had one big one. While there, I heard about the mud/rock slides in the canyon that have closed off Hwy 821 again, from Selah north about 17 miles. Seems to be at highway mileage marker 20 where the last one/two were in 1998. There are two reports on the web from the Daily Record (Ellensburg) and the Yakima Herald.
And, at:
http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/2012/07/18/landslide-closes-yakima-river-canyon-road
Finally tonight at 9:00 p.m. it is down to 76 degrees.
Thursday, July 19 We had the 2:00 gig at Dry Creek this week. It was fun to see my friends living there, plus all the new folks we have met through the years, with playing our music. They love it and often we have a couple of people dancing. Everyone sings along and appreciates our being there. We give them a book of lyrics. John and I are driving to the other side of the valley tonight to load the horse trailer with hay. We did, and have 30 more bales of really nice hay, for $10/bale. They are quite heavy but the loading chore was mostly done by David Hammond, son of our friend and Geog. Dept. colleague Ken (also retired now). Thanks, David.
Friday, July 20. This morning I slept in late after having a rough sleepless night. John took a lot of time and unloaded all 30 bales into the runway of our old barn. I have been taking care of stacks of mess in the den, very slowly. We had a (small, short, fast) hail-rainstorm this afternoon, and the wind is still blowing, but the sun is out, and the storm has moved on to the northeast. I thought about going to Kittitas to check in and buy a tee shirt, but decided I’ll wait till Saturday or even Sunday. Starting Monday next week, is the WA Old Time Fiddler’s Workshop and camp out. John will be taking a 1/2 day beginning guitar class, and I will take my usual Intermediate & Advanced fiddle class with Roberta Pearce (She of Nampa, ID.). I have been in her class since she started and we think that was at least 15 years ago. I’ve written of her and daughter Katrina previously:
http://bluegrasstoday.com/29406/left-handed-fiddler-katrina-pearce/
Katrina will be teaching an advanced class call Hot Shots.
Saturday, July 21 We have nothing truly planned until leaving about 3:10 to go across the valley for a Mormon celebration with grilled chicken, veggies, potluck, and our group providing the music, from 4 to 6:00 p.m. and we are invited to come, play, and eat free along with our spouses. This is being held at the (public) Damman School [Google Earth: 46.9703, -120.5705 ] for reasons unknown to us – if we find out why, we’ll add it next time.
Now it is still Friday, but I’m going to pass this along to John to put on the blog, because we will be busy tomorrow at the time we would normally do so.
Hope your week was a good one.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan