The week of our wedding — 44 years ago.
Sunday, July 7
Started off with no wind, but the temperatures keep climbing, and now before 2:00 they’re up to 93, and the winds just started this hour with 22 mph gusts. We accomplished a lot this morning. I slept in, while John went and watered, moved water, even to the sunflowers up by the road. He has to bucket them because they are uphill from the irrigation ditch. I cleaned the kitchen, and he came in, and put the pork loin roast on to cook at 11:00 a.m.; then he made us a yummy brunch–small cheese omelet, bacon, grapes, and strawberries. We’ve been working on our respective computers, but need to get to some household paperwork clean-up, before we take off for the party 6 miles down the road, that starts at 5:00 p.m. (Food needs to be on the table for eating).
It’s tough typing right now. Rascal cat joined me in my lap (on my chest) because I’m sitting in a recliner with my laptop on my legs. He had been earlier for several hours in the middle of the love seat, where two of the dogs like to rest. Now that he’s gone, they can return. Occasionally, one will share with him, but there’s not usually room for more. Taking off for the potluck jam session soon. Checked the roast and poured off the grease (John did), and then I helped cut up some apples to add to the chunks of pineapple and raspberries, with brown sugar, he’s cooking for a side dish, to go with the roast, rather like a sauce. Everything was great. Lots of food — afraid to start listing because I know I will leave out something. Our roast, a large container (hot) of potatoes, cheese, with ground meat, spaghetti with mushrooms, beans, a bunch of different salads, slaw, green, congealed with fruit, and rolls. A couple of cakes. Then we played after dinner until leaving at 8:30 (John needed to get home before dark to feed the horses and the feral cats). We are ready for bed, and have had some ice cream and nuts with chocolate for dessert.
Monday, Jul 8
Need to get INR reading today. Went to Cle Elum for it and had lunch at the Cottage Cafe, where we got $10 off our bill for our anniversary. I also used my gift card from my donation last year to the Brittany Specialty (I won the raffle), which gave me $250 to spend anywhere. Also delivered raspberries for a fellow from there, to the clinic for pickup. We met him at the Big Pines area on the Yakima River at a bluegrass jam the week before Mother’s Day. He loves raspberries better than anything around, so we promised to give him some of ours. They are not as beautiful and big as usual because of not watering them enough, but they are all right–they taste yummy. Also stopped in town for thyroid pills for Shay. Lots of family medications to worry with.
Report on a great lunch. I had my favorite, Corned Beef Hash Skillet (stacked on top of a layer of hash browns, and a layer of corned beef hash and two eggs on top of those stacks, finally ending with a thick covering of melted cheddar cheese. The best cook must have been there today. This was the best I have had there over several occasions. John picked a Black & Blue Salad. On lettuce, it had Cajun steak pieces, black beans, corn, some sort of spicy sauce, and blue cheese lumps all over the top. He enjoyed it more than anything he’s had at that restaurant. Good. And, we got our $10 off, plus a happy anniversary wish from a neat waitress. We actually went in the back door after parking under the shade of a tree, and ended up in the Fireside Lounge. Comfy chairs, and tables, because it is a “bar”. We will always go there in the future, not out front on the barstools or the booths. We also brought home half of our lunch for another time.
Tuesday, Jul 9
Started out with meeting with other Emeriti geography professors. All but one was there. Got a nice report from Jim Huckabay about his recent trip across the trans-Siberian railroad and on down from Irkutsk on another train to Beijing. John and I went to our favorite grocery store on the way home, and also I picked up almost $90 worth of medications. Considering one is for a 3-month supply at $20/mo makes it sound not as bad to be getting 3 different meds. My bad INR yesterday made my Dr. suggest to me this morning to eat some green veggies each day to try to lower it, so we bought some broccoli and lettuce for salads.
Now John is napping, but I already slept in this morning. The temps keep getting hotter. Supposed to be a high of 81 but already has topped it at 93, and we are not to the warmest part of the day yet. I must go back to town tonight to play music, at 6:30. Salad for dinner: pork, bacon, lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, yellow squash (small, our own), croutons we made; hope it helps adjust my INR down. Also, there should be a nice green salad tomorrow at the Food Bank that I do not have to refuse as usual.
Wednesday, Jul 10
Going to pick up 20 pounds of Sweetheart cherries 6 miles down the road this morning at 10:00 a.m., already boxed. * report below on disappointment*. Then off for Food Bank Soup Kitchen music (where I was presented with a nice mixed greens salad, green squash, scalloped potatoes, and ham (rather overcooked dry sadly), and a nice dessert of fruit cocktail in a raspberry cool whip kind of mixture. SAIL exercise went all right, but I was low on energy. Wind is blowing consistently all day above 30 mph, mostly above 35. Now last hour it was 37 at the airport, and it sounds worse out here.
Cherries disappointment: I know when a person buys bulk cherries they have to expect some bad ones, but we think the seller, in the future, should perhaps add a couple pounds to the box to make up for the bad ones. We also understand the problem of obtaining quality pickers, and we appreciated the time and money to deliver them from Wenatchee. However, we came directly home with our box and sorted. We put the best in a flat box with newspaper and laid them out to dry. Some were at room temperature and dry and some were chilled and damp. We had 14.5 pounds of good (not great) ones. We had sorted out another set with injuries or ones off the stem, for eating now. We had 2.5 pounds of those. We had a 1/2 pound of ones that were so bad, we couldn’t do anything except compost them. The other too-bad-to-eat fresh ones (2.5 pounds), we can probably make into a sauce after the bad spots are cut out. (Turns out we had to dispose of 1 and 1/4 pounds of those too, after I wrote that first statement). The quality of the good ones didn’t anywhere match the photo in their ad. I took a photo of our box when we got home. They look all right in the box, except for not being the same ripeness; they are very tasty. Perhaps we are spoiled by having and picking our own cherries, but this year ours were frozen out, all but the pie cherries, which John plans to pick in the cool of the morning. We have no Bings, Rainier, or Queen Anne–so, we decided to try some locally obtained Sweetheart cherries. We did receive the 20 pounds we paid for, but we’re not sure paying $1.75/pound for the less than nice ones was a wise decision (especially the 3 pounds).
local news brief (Associated Press) in our paper: Man started wildfire with luminaria
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Selah police said a man started a 500-acre wildfire by launching a floating luminaria. The bag heated by a candle drifted into a hillside Friday and started a brush fire that took 100 firefighters to extinguish.
The Yakima Herald-Republic reported police are recommending a reckless burning charge against 36-year-old Alejandro B. Olivarez.
He spoke to firefighters at the scene and said he intended for the luminaria to rise into the sky.
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Thursday, Jul 11
Today was a lunch with a friend who is moving completely out of state, to Borrego Springs, CA.
The couple does like lonesome, so it’s okay.
It was very nice to see her, and I don’t plan to go to CA any time soon, especially with the hot weather there. Last weekend it was 120° at their moving-into house and the a/c couldn’t keep up, so they installed a swamp cooler. We had a very nice visit and lunch at a new Mexican place in town, called Fidelitos. Great food without a lot of grease, plus a huge tree on the back of the property to park my car in the shade, so I could leave my violin there and not cart it in. On to the lab, where my first lab test indicated 1.4 for my reading. Later, after 5:00 my Dr.’s nurse called to say the actual blood test on the withdrawn blood showed 1.5. That’s a ton better than the discrepancy between the different measurement devices the past two times. My dosage was readjusted, and I go for a reading again July 20 th. They wanted me to go the 22nd, but that is the start of my week of the WA Old Time Fiddlers’ Workshop. They’ve decided to have me eat a little green each day, and they will adjust the dosage appropriately. Suits me as salad season is here. From the hospital, I went on to play music at the Rehab. We were moved to a different room, with less space for our bunch and the audience, but it worked all right. We had 2 violins, viola, trumpet, clarinet, 3 guitars and a timbrel for part of the time. My first roommate there when I was in the Rehab came with her daughter (with whom she now lives). Mae is now 91 and loves our music. She was quite an inspiration to me when I first arrived hardly able to move myself. I wasn’t holding food down either, which she reminded me today. I thanked her for encouraging me by telling me when she arrived there she couldn’t walk either and by the time I met her, she was motoring around the place, and doing things for me. We became fast friends. I fixed Tacos again for dinner (with the leftovers from yesterday, plus new salad stuff). Tonight John went to a trail riding meeting. While he was gone, I cleaned strawberries, and the kitchen. Now that he’s back, we will put up the raspberries, have dessert, and go to bed. I spent time today constructing an animated Happy Anniversary wish for John for tomorrow. I added some photos of us back in the sixties, and was allowed only 3. The 3 I picked I had gotten on my camera from close-ups I took at the family reunion last summer of my aunt’ scrapbook. You may enjoy seeing the old photos. This might be our 44th, but we have been friends since 1965. If you wish to see the card, you can follow this link.
Friday, Jul 12 Our 44th Anniversary!
John’s off to the Washington Horse Park, 40 miles west toward Seattle, to watch the first day of a horse riding clinic with Buck Brannaman. John and horse Teak were participants 17 years ago and the clinics are now at year 31. Buck was an adviser to Robert Redford for his 1998 movie, “The Horse Whisperer”, and there was a movie about Buck’s life recently, called Buck. Watch the video on the right at this site. John took this photo on Friday of Buck listening to a question from one of the young riders. (Click on photo for large image.)
Listens to a question
I stayed home because of the long walk to the arena from parking, and the long day… gonna try to surprise John with a couple of cleaned up flat spaces in the house. Well, the cleanup is going slowly, but I have succeeded in fixing me a cool salad for lunch (added some pieces of fresh cherries), and need to cut up more for future salads. I have had grapes in salads before, but never pitted cherries. Got the house insurance straightened out (they had taken my check for $53.00, and kept it in their files, but debited it electronically from my bank account). I requested my original check back and that they should have told me what they did. “Well, we wrote “posted” on it,” but I worried that someone later could have cashed it. The original request was from them to write a check and bring it by, so why didn’t they use it? I guess I have been in a mood recently to complain about business practices. The medical stuff is bad enough. More sorting is happening. I just took a break to print off a copy of music for 3 people in the group, in a different key. And, now, I’m going to use the new printer to copy another one for 2 people that is not in my computer to print the music.
That’s the reason this process is slow. As I go through the stacks, I take time to take care of it so as not to create yet another stack. Yippee, that chore just was completed. John thinks the goal ought to be to handle a piece of paper only once.
Speaking of music, I received a very nice thank you from the Adult Activity Center today, for our Patriotic music performance at the BBQ last Friday. In the process, while I was arranging things in my music to make copies to get in the mail to a player who drives up from Yakima, I came across a copy of the lyrics the center had printed out for people to sing along with us. Interestingly, I looked at the back page and saw it ended with page 6. I knew I had sent them 9 pages to assemble. On those 3 pages are 5 songs . . . and we will be using those lyrics for the audiences at the nursing and retirement homes for the rest of July. There are patriotic ones, and also songs of America, such as This Land Is Your Land. I need to print the 3 pages back to back and add to the booklet (of which I have 47 copies). Well, this will be a way to use up the ink on our old printer. I didn’t accomplish that until Saturday morning. Have only printed; not yet assembled. (Now have while John was working on posting this). Rest of the afternoon — lost track.. one thing after another, and not a clear place in sight yet! I did make the stacks lower, and filled more boxes. One bin now has almost been filled with sweaters and sweatshirts for winter.
Saturday, Jul 13
John picked 2.5 pounds of raspberries in a cool morning shade, and I worked on finishing some information I needed to accumulate to get in the mail before it was picked up. We have yet to do the raspberries. John also spent a couple of hours watering gardens, trees, and sunflowers, up by the end of our driveway. On my way back from the mailbox, he had me come over to the new garden to see the empty space where the horses ate some of the growing corn. He had a fence, like this on the left, with other fence (right) tied to the rails
and the horse(s) managed to push and pull it loose. 10 plants were eaten by them turning their head sidewise and reaching through. He replaced the small pieces with a 5 X 20 ft section and used the small pieces to protect a tree trunk from either horses or deer.
Supposed to be the day to finish the blog, but we visited on the phone with John’s sister Peggy, and nephew Rod and his wife Gail, who were visiting with her in Parma, OH. We had a good time reminiscing about their childhood (and even mine). They were talking about the height they used to dive or jump from (the remains of a long gone bridge) into a river. Rod thought it was 25′, and John doesn’t remember. John says people who claim to remember the ‘60s weren’t actually there. Anyway, that got us on the issue of size of things seen as a kid. Right after our wedding, we drove north through GA to PA and I wanted to go by two things I remembered as a kid. On was a “huge” apple in Cornelia, GA. Below is a current day picture of the Apple Sculpture, and another comparing it in the distance to a motorcycle. As I child I thought it was much, much larger. John was not impressed.
The other memory looming larger in my memory was Bridal Veil falls in Highlands, NC, which I remembered as a falls going all the way across the highway. Turns out when I took John by, the road past was new and the falls was coming over the old road, which wasn’t that large, nor were the falls as large as I remembered. Here’s an interesting comment from the web: “Bridal Veil Falls is one of the most unusual and most popular falls in the South by virtue of its location along scenic mountain highway US 64. The old road, in fact, passes underneath the 60-foot high falls.” Some photos below will resemble my memory and then what we saw in 1969 on our way north. Oh well.
Two thoughts from our telephone conversation. I had surmised the reason for the spelling of Raspberries to be because your hands get rasped by picking the berries. Gail checked on line and found the real meaning, which none of us knew. Here is the explanation from the etymology online site: [1620s, earlier raspis berry (1540s), possibly from raspise “a sweet rose-colored wine” (mid-15c.), from Anglo-Latin vinum raspeys, origin uncertain, as is the connection between this and Old French raspe, Medieval Latin raspecia, raspeium, also meaning “raspberry.” One suggestion is via Old Walloon [Nancy’s insert, Walloon is a French dialect once common in Belgium, and detested by the French] raspoie “thicket,” of Germanic origin. Klein suggests it is via the French word, from a Germanic source akin to English rasp (v.), with an original sense of “rough berry,” based on appearance.
Next comes a term (seen by the relatives) that may go back to the Latin toga but the origin seems a bit uncertain. “Toggery” seems to be a used in the sense of school apparel or a collection of clothes somewhat “uniform” or as an approved selection. When John was in about 9th grade the boys were to wear ties and trousers (not jeans). The specifications were not specific and this led to outlandish outfits with ties a foot wide, down to the knees, and garish colors. The rest of the story is very fuzzy and maybe didn’t last too long. Over many years and many schools there may have been a tightening up of such ideas to thwart the innovativeness of young teenagers.
Hope your week was great.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan