Sunday, Oct 7 Spent much of the day resting from my several days away in Olympia, and working on the blog update from Wed to Saturday because I never had time while there to enter anything. Not much else happened.
Monday, Oct 8 Another day of rest and playing catch-up. John is collecting and placing rocks along side of the hay barn to prevent gravel from inside leaking to the outside – at one corner the original land surface was 23 inches lower than the opposite far corner – the catercorner.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kit1.htm
Smaller rocks go in an excavation along the garden wall that is a parking/turn-around space. We do need to try to winterize our travel trailer today or tomorrow, and go for a fast dinner at our neighbors. Then we need to get our materials together to go see an estate lawyer tomorrow afternoon. Not a fast dinner. It was quite long, but enjoyable. In addition, I came home with 5 new blouses. Three of them are mine that my sweet neighbor gave me earlier but kept to fix buttons on. We took tomatoes from our garden (picked not quite ripe) over to add to dinner. We had red ones and yellow pear ones. Both were excellent. For dinner, we had corn, pork roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, salad, and applesauce; had cake and ice cream for dessert. Sad part was I started coughing.
Tuesday, Oct 9 Interesting and full day. Morning was spent looking for legal paperwork and other stuff to take to the lawyer’s. I called a title company and was emailed a scanned copy of two deeds from Idaho for our old timeshare weeks. That was time-consuming on the phone, but ended up not costing me $1.00/ page to have it mailed in hard copy. (That still would have been reasonable and surprised me a lot). Foot care for Nancy at 2:00 (which I wore a mask for not to spread germs at the Sr. Center); visit with estate planning lawyer at 3:00. I cancelled music at Hearthstone at 6:30, because since last night, I have been coughing regularly – seems a big nuisance but not overly serious, yet. Menthol cough drops do not help and a spray (red stuff) is ineffective too, but it was for sore throats that I did not have. I guess we made a little progress in the hour we were with our estate lawyer. A solvable issue is figuring out whom to get to take care of immediate needs of feeding animals and finding them new homes if we die in a common accident. A bigger deal is what to do with our “estate” insofar as the common plan is to leave stuff to the children. I don’t even have a sibling while John has an older sister and a still older brother. Then there is the dispersal problem after the cleanup around the house. Cars are somewhat valuable. Much of the rest is practical. Much could be thrown away now and save someone else the chore. Anyway, who will handle everything. It is not an easy decision, and just by looking for legal papers this morning, we realize that we surely must spend a lot of time organizing and tossing the hundreds of pounds of papers that have built up through the years. I found 5 drawers of filing cabinets and maybe more in two others I haven’t searched that can be immediately recycled. Maybe after I dump that, I can use some of the drawers to fold clothes into! We don’t have enough closet space, because I’m still sorting out old large clothes and not having a place to put the smaller ones. I have already dispensed a lot of the larger sizes, but I know there are more to go. [John says: We have lots of space but too much junk.] But back to the big question: Assume you have $XX and need to write down exactly what it should be used for following your death – what do you write? Having no answer for the lawyer — on to the grocery store! I needed a resupply of meds. While there, on the last day of a weekly sale we loaded up on our favorite mixed flavor large (mostly blueberry) muffins. Unfortunately, they put them in boxes of four with two others of a different flavor. It was two boxes for $3.98 each (plus one box free). Not a bad price considering we bought a box of smaller muffins (4) for $2.00 each in Olympia. Home for a good dinner, but I’m still miserably coughing.
Wednesday, Oct 10 Today did not go according to Hoyle. I coughed much all night and awoke with sore muscles in my body and chest. I interacted with my family physician’s nurse throughout the morning and finally decided I was improving. I canceled both trips to town, however, and rested the entire day. The only thing I did was feed the cat and clean up the kitchen sink and counters. Oh, I also looked through papers I had packed away when we were preparing to evacuate from the advancing wildfire. Most importantly were insurance papers for all the vehicles and the registration (with a new yearly tag) for the old Chevy ’80 pickup because John needed to drive it to town for gas (a thrice yearly thing) and to go pick up some concrete culverts tonight from a friend on the other side of the valley. He also packaged up some boxes filled with recyclable paper and took them to town. John did a ton more around the place in addition to normal chores of feeding animals. The funniest thing that happened today was his working around the deer in our yard. He had been cleaning out the garden, and was going to need to mow the strawberry plants tops off, but he hadn’t done it yet, and when he left the garden last night, he left the door ajar, into the 6′ fenced area. Overnight, the deer cut the tops of the plants off for him, saving him the effort. Then today he picked the last of his blackberries. He started making good headway picking the Carpathian walnuts before the Douglas squirrel squirreled away a bunch. He still has more to pick. Okay, another chore I must finish is recording on an Excel spreadsheet all the mileage driven and hours spent on volunteering efforts around town for me and in the Cascades on trail work for John for the month of September. It is due around the beginning of the following month for the local RSVP,
http://www.seniorcorps.gov/about/programs/rsvp.asp
and I’m behind, with going to Olympia the first week in October. These numbers go to the retired volunteer group and helps in their acquiring funds. Almost done. Only to put in John’s mileages, and time.
Thursday, Oct 11 Awoke without coughing finally, but still very sore. I knew I was up to making it to the two musical venues and did, even managing to sing. First, I notified my Dr.’s nurse that I wouldn’t need to be squeezed into see him. It was nice they cared enough to double book me. I still cannot imagine what I had that came on so rough and tough but cured quickly with a lot of rest and a lot of liquids. The first venue was Community Days at the F.I.S.H. Food Bank, for needy folks in the community. They have free medical attention (shots), haircuts, clothes, food, and a meal. I don’t know what all happened in the “back room” warehouse. Two of my friends and I played for 45 minutes in the front room where they served a nice meal: ham, mashed potatoes & gravy, a very nice fruit cup, some sort of pasta, some tomatoes, squash, and other stuff. From there I went to the Rehab center where I spent 7 weeks in 2010. We had 8 people show up for the music. A sweet lady on a walker got up and “danced” because she said when the music began that her feet just started and had to keep time! John went to a meeting tonight of our trail riders club, but it was 2 hours (home to return) of nearly wasted time. There was no program or business to speak of but he did get to visit some with friends. Neither of us have been riding since summer of 2009 so the connection is fading.
Friday, Oct 12 John spent much of the day picking walnuts and drying them in the sun, but having to put screens over them to keep the Jays from carrying them off.
http://www.nps.gov/band/naturescience/images/stellers-jay.jpg
He picked them to keep the squirrel from eating them. Funny thing was that when he saw the Steller’s Jay going after them, he put out two of our Brittanys. Annie simply went over and picked up a Carpathian walnut, proceeded to shell it and eat the inside meats! Today on the evening walk, Annie brought him a live vole, and Shay brought him a dead squirrel. He was not just killed but assume one of the cats got him. That’s good. He was ready to take his gun out. I hope that is the only one. [It’s not – at least one more.] We’ve brought the nuts inside as the Jays were coming onto the porch. When he was picking day before yesterday, the squirrel was up in the trees chattering at him. I need to explain why we are against having the squirrels around. They have done past damage to our truck engine and especially in our shed, stuffing black walnuts away for winter in the insulation until it has shredded and fallen loose. It is a total mess that we haven’t had time to repair. The truck incident was covering the air cleaner and motor with husks and very fine shavings from the nut shells such that we had to haul it to the mechanic to have it air cleaned and fixed.
We did not get the travel trailer winterized because John spent hours this morning fixing up a nice certificate of appreciation to give at tomorrow night’s dinner. He was a little miffed at me for waiting so long to give him the parts (photos and text), and he had problems with his computer and the MSWindows Word to put text and photos together, but it is very nice and now framed, ready to go.
Good dinner tonight: Salmon, shrimp, and our yellow tomato. We grew several large tomatoes of this type and the elderly neighbor would not eat any because “that’s not a tomato.” Except for being yellow, we can’t tell any taste difference although some other variety might be:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-yellow-tomatoes.htm#
There was an extra orange cat in the haymow tonight eating the cat food. John shooed him off. I spent time this afternoon working on the notes from a panel session I participated in, in Olympia. Oh, that reminds me; I must put together an email address list of the audience there and the panel members. I was in charge of that. That finally was accomplish Sat. a.m.
Saturday, Oct 13 Tonight is the special event, a Musical Appreciation Celebration for the Gordons, Jeanne and Gerald. Jeanne’s father started the Old Time Fiddlers music in the region in the 1950s. They are in their eighties and we are having a dinner in their honor tonight to thank them for all their musical offerings to the community for all these years. Jeanne played the accordion and Gerald a guitar. One of our members (now we are called the Kittitas Valley Fiddlers and Friends), has written words about them to the tune of Jeanne’s favorite song, Just Because. I will share below. Thanks Evelyn (our banjo player) for your resourcefulness–(because just because).
Just because you really have talent
Just because you really have heart
Just because you really have something not too many people have got
You give of your time and your effort
Year after year after year
Well, we’re telling you, Gordons, we’re telling you
You real-ly are so dear!
Evelyn printed the lyrics so we can all sing it to them.
I’m finishing this now so John can return, add to, and post this. He is now over in our neighbor’s field loading future firewood. Last year beavers dropped several large trees (12-15 in. diameter) into a hay field. John cleaned up the mess but left the large pieces along the edge of the field. They get lighter as they dry and so are easier to load. We now have rain in the near future so it is time to get the wood out before dry/hard is replaced by wet/sloppy in the field.
He finished just as we got a little sprinkle. Being on the lee side of the Cascades means mostly dry for us (8 – 10 inches of precipitation per year), but the north Pacific atmosphere has just changed and Washington and adjacent British Columbia is undergoing a rapid switch to a stormy pattern. The region just off the coast has had a High Pressure cell blocking flow eastward. That’s now gone. Cold air is moving south from the Bering Sea
http://unboxedwriters.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/sea.jpg
and moist/warmer air is sliding across the Pacific. Typhoon Praipiroon has charged that air with moisture. See image and location here (in a looping .gif file:
http://earthweek.com/2012/ew121012/ew121012e.gif
And what NASA thinks here:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2012/h2012_Prapiroon.html
A 170 knot jet stream is now aiming this atmospheric river toward the west coast mountains. There will be major rainfall and reports thereof. It has been very dry all summer. Just today the WA-DOT was warning about the buildup of oil and dirt on the roads and how slick it will get when wet.
We need the rain. Bring it on!
All from here for now.
Hope your week was a good one.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan