Sunday, Oct 28 A truly needed day of rest for both of us. I slept in until almost 9:30 and didn’t eat some toast until almost lunchtime. Managed to get last week’s blog out late this morning to John to post. It’s been a quiet day. The weather was scheduled to be rainy, but it is lovely with a shiny sun. I spent much of the morning recreating the events of the past day for our widowed friend. There were so many messages I needed to share from yesterday and the days before, which I had forgotten to pass along, so I wrote them all down and sent to her. John worked on the blog and then I went to the back computer room to review it. He added many interesting links, as he usually does. For lunch, he heated up the leftovers from the roast beef stroganoff he’d fixed for himself yesterday. I had a little bowl and it was quite good. We had red grapes along with it. [John says: The stroganoff was imitation stuff. Last year, at Costco, I bought a 3-pack of canned beef. The reasoning was that it would keep well and be available in emergencies. The first use was not satisfactory. Last week, I thought I’d better use up the other 2 cans as it is a bit expensive. So I used a box of “helper” and a few added vegetables and, eureka!, it was better than using their suggestion of thinly sliced steak.] Back to Nancy —
In the afternoon, I delivered onions, apples, and pears to my neighbor, the one who cuts my hair and who lives around the rural block. In return, we will get some of their deer sausage. When I returned home, I went out to admire John’s manual earth/rock/dirt moving around the new pole building. Dirt-splash marks 18 inches high — caused by recent rain — were on the new metal of a light beige color. He is digging out the soil along the side and filling in the shallow trench with rocks. We should have used a dirt-brown color. {Although, this is Nancy commenting, the dirt was not brown, but black.}
In addition, I needed to have John move a large container of clean clothes from the top of the clothes washer, because we are almost out of underclothes! First, I cooked bacon and fixed all the other parts of a BLT with one of the huge tomatoes from our friend where we got the apples & pears. It was yummy. The dishes never got finished nor the clothes washed. Oh, well, another day. Instead, I got John’s help with a scanned image of some music, and I punched (:-)) it into my Songwriter software. It is Marianne, the 1955 song most everyone knows. It is easy to sing and play, so we will add it to our repertoire, for the group on Thursday.
Monday, Oct 29 Hmmm today the only thing on the calendar is SAIL, but depending on the weather, we may combine it with going to town for some other things we need. Nope, I stayed home and am washing (drying) the first load of clothes; I already did a load of dishes. This morning while John was making a path to the clothes washer for me, he decided, with my help, to take a new bag of 25 pounds of white sugar and repackage it in plastic bags we put into over-sized plastic containers and an old coffee can that we normally use from the counter. It is a nice sunshiny (but windy) day, so John needs to work outside. It was supposed to be raining all day, but it rained all night, and that provides for some nice welcomed weather during daylight. I made nice BLTs for lunch again today and have been working on several musical chores. I’m finishing putting in Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes with 3 verses; all on one page of music with the chorus separately, only once, at the bottom. It’s taking me a lot longer than usual for some reason. Perhaps it’s because I do not have a complete musical score and have to figure the chords on the missing parts. Also, the two pieces of music I have are by different arrangers, one with a chorus only (with verse words), and the other, only the notes, no words, for the verses. It’s weird. One is in F and the other in G, to make matters worse. On line I can get the lyrics and chords in yet another key. Bummer. After a lot of work over the next day, I succeeded, only to put the verses in the wrong order for what our normal lead singer uses. I may just leave it, because it’s a lot more trouble to switch, and we can just tell people with the music and singing, to use the order 2, 1, 3. Ha ha.
Well, it’s been awhile since I made dinner for us, other than something simple, but tonight John was extremely tired from his day of outside work, and I “made” spaghetti sauce, adding onions, ground meat, and tomatoes, to some store-bought sauce. He grated the cheddar cheese for the topping and cut a pear, which we had with it. It was very good. Now I’m back working on music for this week. I may have finished Ashokan Farewell in D, and then for all the music mentioned above, I will transpose it for our Bb Clarinet player (using the software). I only have to get it in for a violin, once, and then can change it to the proper key for her with about 3 commands.
Tuesday, Oct 30 Back from town. We took Meghan (12-year-old Brittany) to our vet for checking out what we suspected was a fatty tissue lump. However, it seemed important to have it checked out. Turns out there were more than one, but they all are in the right places so our vet was happy it wasn’t in concerned places near lymph nodes or mammary glands. It was a $38 well spent, and happy we don’t have to go through an operation at her age. She is in good condition, heart is good, and her weight is fine (31.3#). Also, called to check on our widowed friend and then delivered some apples to her.
On to the new grocery outlet to buy cat food canned for only 39¢/can. We went to our normal grocery for some more things which were on sale and to get our flu shots from our pharmacist (also a fiddler). The cost of flu shots is covered by Medicare, but a couple of weeks ago John got the shot for Shingles and that one we had to pay for ($137) – Ouch! That and a couple more chores got done. It was misting when we left, but when we returned the rain had stopped, so John went out to do some fence building chores. Then he took the dogs for their exercise run. I’ve been working mostly on email and putting in another song into my music software program. This one is Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” It is in a book John’s sister Peggy sent us with the Melodica. I’m just getting around to transcribing a few of the songs. This is my first. I’m really quite happy to have the musical scores completed with guitar chords, so our musical group can use the stuff I put in. The only problem is I have to rearrange it, because there are some flowery notes that the original group probably played, but I only remember the sung melody of the words, without embellishments.
I forgot to say we had a nice phone call on our way home from town with John’s sister (near Cleveland, OH). They had some rather high winds recorded at the airport, and she said her house was creaking, plus noisy from the raindrops slamming against the windows. She weathered the storm all right, by changing bedrooms from the Lake Erie (~8 miles away) facing window to a bedroom on the quieter side of the house. When we got home, after John did the above-mentioned chores, we called his brother in San Jose, CA and had a nice visit with him. He is sounding better from his ailments. He is 11 years older than John, who is the youngest of four.
Wednesday, Oct 31 Happy Halloween. Hmmm-long day in town. This morning was busy getting ready to leave. Was at the Food Bank Soup Kitchen for music. Food today was interesting (strange), but palatable. From there I went to the SAIL exercise class at the Adult Activity Center. My friend and I left 10 minutes early to get to a nursing home to perform at a talent show, Halloween Party. I played and sang with two groups a total of 4 songs. Home to work on a bunch more music for our group tomorrow and to re-order my music. We are going to be short a number of people tomorrow, so it will be interesting. I carried in my trunk 50 pounds of onions plus a box with 10 more but didn’t have a person to help move the large bag. I hope that we can get it transferred tomorrow. The two of us gals cannot manage it. There are no handles on the bag for leverage. Tonight we had a nice salmon dinner with a cooked winter squash (inside had walnuts, pears & apples cut up, and brown sugar). Table grapes made it all healthy.
Thursday, Nov 1. Up to sunshine! John had to go herd deer out of the yard and pasture to be able to run the dogs. This is a morning and evening occurrence each day. I don’t have to get to town until before 2:00 and it is the shortest distance I have to go to play music. Turns out John took me in the truck and while I played music, he went to the Co-Op to buy fence posts. He moved the onions to the truck and deposited them in the front of the nursing home (in a raised flowerbed), not wanting them in the way of the posts he was going for. He came back for me and to help get the onions into her trunk. While in town, he also dropped off some onions for another friend (who just had hip surgery). We came home and turned around after dinner to go back to town, — we will pick up a friend to go to a free Celtic instrumental and dance group (3 sisters– the Gothard Sisters) at CWU Thursday night.
http://gothardsisters.weebly.com/about.html
First large image cycles through many photos. Also, you can sign up for their newsletter and receive notices of when they will be in your area, as well as receiving two free downloads of their music.
John’s going to wear his Irish sweater with shamrocks and Claddagh design:
http://www.ancient-symbols.com/images/irish-symbols/original/irish_claddagh.jpg
His sweater is much nicer, with blacks, purple, gold and green colors, and less “loud” as the graphic above.
The performers are sisters with the one playing guitar and occasionally in blue being the oldest and the one in yellow the young one. All very accomplished. They were great. They also all play fiddles in some tunes, and sometimes a drummer is added. Also, the middle one plays mandolin. They change costumes during the performance and have all the same color (white) for later in the program. It was really worth attending, and we will try to make another event when we can.
Friday, Nov 2 What another day this was. We both slept in late and John worked hard all day. I left about 11:15 for town, taking along tomatoes cut up from our garden that have been ripening slowly in the garage. I picked red and yellow ones, and cut into a bunch of wedges to fill the casserole bowl. It was the normal first Friday of the month potluck at the Adult Activity Center, but today, they fixed a pot roast (very tender), with potatoes, carrots, and celery. We SHOULD have taken by some onions yesterday, but what they fixed was quite good. They served it on a biscuit (if you wanted), or you could eat it separately. I had mine on the large biscuit. Then all the folks eating brought a potluck item as I had done with our tomatoes. There was a corn casserole, sugared carrots, baked squash, green beans & bacon, and a host of salads, including slaw, and deviled eggs. Many desserts to pick from made with apples, cherries, plus cupcakes, brownies, and ice cream. Actually more stuff than I’ve listed. Then there was a speaker, a new orthopedic surgeon in town, who left Ohio for the PNW. He is over 65 and was excellent in explaining arthritis and hip and knee joint replacements, passing some examples around the room, (of metal on metal, which they have decided against using) and now use metal with a plastic inside layer in the ball joint replacement. He talked about how things have changed and what used to have to be replaced in 15 years will go longer. It was a fascinating talk, and he was open and willing to answer questions. After that, I went to the car to put my leftovers there and to grab some acetaminophen to get me through the rest of the afternoon at our exercise class. While there, I met one of my former non-traditional students, who now works with community recycling. We had a nice hug and talk. When I went back in, the staff had taken the leftovers from the beef stew and combined all the cooked vegetables into a soup, in containers on the counter for any of us to take home. I took one with two cups in it, to share with John for part of our dinner. It will be a side with bratwurst and a leftover piece of salmon from last night, which ended up getting in the stew. It was a pretty good variation on surf and turf soup.
Saturday, Nov 3 We have nothing planned away from home today or tomorrow, so I am leaving this blog for John to tackle in the morning, to add his touch and links.
Hope your week was a good one.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan