of summer. Yikes!
Sunday, Sept 14
Took 1/2 day to finish and publish last week’s blog because of all the fancy things to describe and picture. John spent much of the rest of the day on yard chores, and I spent time on house chores, and email stuff too. Late afternoon he picked 3 types of tomatoes and some blackberries. I managed cleaning and sugaring them when he brought them in, and we will have on our apple/caramel piece of cake tonight, actually on top of the ice cream on top of the cake. I brought it home from yesterday’s music event. They always encourage us to take some of the leftovers. We are happy to oblige. I gave away my tomatoes I took to two of the musicians and to the lady in charge of the food prep – today she did a superb pulled pork BBQ dish. I was behind on my jobs list email, so processed a few of those. We just finished a dinner of roast chicken with our own corn and tomatoes. Surely is nice having the garden and all John’s hard work is appreciated by us and others we share with. We don’t do canning, but we do freeze a few things.
Monday, Sept 15
Today was catch up day. I managed to pay some bills awaiting, but still have a couple more to do. We picked corn for dinner and feed the horses some shucks along with cut up stalks John gave them. Then he picked tomatoes. We had some of each with BBQ pork ribs (country style, no bones) he had fixed previously.
I took a photo of the prime apple in our almost completely pruned apple tree that John left because of its beauty on a sole limb. We finally harvested it later in the week, and it was scrumptious – except for the bird damage (2 oval hollows). The deer have been waiting near the edge of the orchard each night to eat the leaves off the pruned branches. We have a peach tree but after the peaches got the size of golf balls they froze (we think) and stopped growing. They have been mottled brown and pale green all summer. Now they have softened (ripening just a little) and we pulled some and tossed on the ground. The deer will now eat them and leave the seed. John claims they have no flavor and do not seem sweet. Apples are much preferred but we don’t have many.
Tuesday, Sept 16
Annual physicals for both of us in Cle Elum; mine at 10:15 and John’s at 11:00. By all accounts we are stable and more-or-less healthy. Our doctor is 68 but is not planning, yet, to retire. Still, the clinic – that he helped start and is now part of the local hospital group – could use another 1 or 2 primary care specialists. There is likely to be a shift toward care from middle level trained folks, such as physician assistants and nurses, as a national shortage of regular doctors seems to be in our future. Walk-in care at some places is growing. The Clinic used to have special flu shot days and there would be a line out the door. Now every pharmacy in the area gives flu and other sorts of shots and the clinic no longer even asks about flu shots. Change is good; right?
Back to town for lunch, and on to Rite Aid for a special reopening sale with 2 liter Pepsi products for only 88¢, and no limit. Guess what! We filled the cart. While there, a salesclerk arrived to tell us that through December, we could get 20% off everything in the store by getting our flu shots there. So, while I had had a shot at the doctors visit today, it was a Tetanus (Tdap) /Pertussin, and normally we get a flu shot with our annual physical, but they did not have the vaccine yet in the clinic (part of KVC- our local hospital). Rather strange that they were told there is a shortage, yet all the pharmacies have managed to obtain them. We were able get it at the Rite Aid pharmacy by using our Medicare card. While there, they asked if we wanted a pneumonia or the Tdap (Tetanus I had just had), that includes Whooping Cough protection. We were going to get it for John, but turns out it would cost $41 on our Group Health policy. We skipped and I asked our nurse later if it would cost us to have gotten his with our annual physical, as I did. She checked and he had one in 2013, so is not due even though he is doing outside work that exposes him to the need.
Had to go back to town by myself to play music and deliver some produce. Came home to a dinner by John with a Cajun Jambalaya mix (Louisiana Brand) he bought today in town. It had rice and peppers, onion, and spices. John added our cherry and pear tomatoes and chicken and pork (from last night) – he had found the mix knowing we needed something special to finish off the leftovers. It worked! I cut up two pears (our own) that we had ripened in a bag with a small apple and we each had a full pear with dinner.
Wednesday, Sept 17
Food bank music, and SAIL exercise class. Between I dropped off $8 for 50# of yellow onions from the basin, to be delivered later (we will pick up a few miles from our house, right on the way to town). Gave away tomatoes and Acorn squash today, even delivered a yellow one by a friend’s house on the way to Royal Vista to present pictures of her great granddaughter to my neighbor, who’s in for a fall that bruised her hip and leg badly and dislocated her shoulder. The shoulder is fixed, but the body limb and groin pain remains. While there, I visited with another friend, and at 3:00 p.m., my friend Karen was scheduled for playing her accordion for the residents. She asked me to stay and play along (my fiddle was in the car from my noon engagement). We entertained the residents for an hour, and they truly enjoyed it.
Thursday, Sept 18
Finished 3 music pieces to take to Dry Creek today. Re-did two songs in a different (more sing-able key), and tried The Old Rugged Cross in a different key (G), better for more people, and easier to play than the one we had it in previously. I needed to try out the notes before putting in the rest of the verses. Success! Now I can change for next week and give a copy to everyone for their songbooks. I’m sure we did a lot more today, but it was likely the same ole, same ole. Interestingly, I looked on line to see the history of that saying. It supposedly did not begin as same ole, same ole, meaning the same old thing — doing something you’ve always done; but, in fact, the earliest version mentioned was workmen’s complaints on pay day. Their accents sounded close to that, but actually what they were saying was Same Old, Same Hold, about the money employers held out to pay for “expenses” that the company charged each workman. That reminds me of the history of the coal-mining company town, Carbonado, WA, where the pay was in “company scrip.” It could only be spent in the company-owned store in the town, and only by the employees. The prices were highly inflated, because no competition existed. Country musician, Merle Travis, made a reference to coal scrip in the song, Sixteen Tons, on his Folk Songs of the Hills album.
Chorus: You load sixteen tons and what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
All the words can be found here: Sixteen Tons
I need to find the music score for that and add to our repertoire. It has always been a favorite of mine. This history is very interesting and so here is the link: Ernie Ford
Carbonado was mentioned above. The Story of Carbonado is summarized at the link and John adds a little too. Other small historic towns are mentioned and most are now gone. Many of the old railroad beds have been used for years by hikers and horse riders. Pierce and King Counties now own much of the land and are adding facilities for recreation. I, John, worked on a trail in that area. We wrote about that last fall.
More about Nancy’s connection to an awareness of the company town of Carbonado, WA. Nancy here again with this comment: I served as a major player on a master’s thesis committee (in History) at CWU, after participating as an adviser for a term project in my senior Urban Geography class researched and written by my then student. In subsequent years of my teaching the course, John Streepy made a guest appearance every year to share his knowledge and slides of Carbonado with the class. (He still works in the CWU library, so was available locally.) If anyone is interested in using Inter-Library Loan, a copy of his thesis is available on the 3rd floor, Brooks Library, CWU. See this citation: John Hamilton Streepy. Carbonado: The History of a Coal Mining Town in the Foothills of Mount Rainier, 1880-1937. 1999.
Friday, Sept 19
Busy all day doing paperwork about sleep apnea and never finished. Paid bills and straightened out (I thought) forwarding of my email to nancyh@cwu.edu to come to our nancyh@ellensburg.com account, but it did not refresh and start working overnight. So, come Monday, they will get another call. Tried to pay some bills on line, and that failed too. Computer technology was overwhelmingly a pain today. Our Internet connection has also been sporadic.
Up late washing and drying a huge box of pretty tomatoes for John to carry with him for sharing at lunch on the trail. For 23 ? people, this seemed better than buying donuts for all as he did last week. After our work, John said, They’re pretty as a picture. So guess who ran for her camera !!
At the bottom center (blown up below) is a yellow pear tomato with the stem cap still on it (in the center of the green oval). It is the only one of the yellows to have this. With careful picking almost all of the red ones (Sweet 100) can be picked with the cap intact. Why not the yellow?
Fast jump forward to Saturday afternoon: The box of little tomatoes was a hit at lunch – a few people were inquisitive and envious. About 3:30, back in the parking lot, a couple of wilderness Forest Service rangers stopped by to visit. The WTA crew leader had called the FS to report what appeared to be a Zip Line (aerial ropeslide) over the trail and across the nearby stream. John was transferring tomatoes to empty small cookie bags so he could bring the box home. One of the bags with a dozen tomatoes went up the trail with one of the ladies.
Saturday, Sept 20
At 6:50 AM John needed to head off to Franklin Falls for a WTA trail work trip. Our electricity went off during the night, and I realized it at 5:20 AM as I was returning from the bathroom, so I set a manual kitchen timer for 50 minutes to awake John because I knew his alarm resets when the power flips. Somewhere we still have a wind-up one. So he did get up at about 6:10 as needed. We had him pretty much packed last night, and he heated a Carl’s JR sausage/cheese/egg biscuit from the freezer to eat in the car on his way to Franklin Falls. I finally decided to try to go back to sleep for an hour. Slept from about 7:30 to 9:30. Phew. Guess ’twas needed.
Our “new” microwave is not working correctly. It heated John’s breakfast sandwich, but didn’t do well heating water for my coffee. Odd sounds! I hope we sent in the warranty. It’s less than a year old. John whirled the tray around a few times and it is doing fine at the moment – we reheated pizza tonight with it.
I finished the printout on CPAP and sleep dentists, sleep apnea, and got it ready for my neighbor, who has no computer and wanted to see some information on an Idaho website. He drove up to save me the trip down, and I gave him some tomatoes too. He lives about 100 yards south of us but it is a mile or so by road. He is older and doesn’t walk far. Finally, I finished sending photos I took last week at White Heron to our friends. I managed to wash clothes and pack my suitcase, plus made a chicken salad for lunch.
Tonight, I drive myself to the Yakima Memorial Hospital Sleep Center for my second sleep apnea test, this time wearing the CPAP mask from the start of the test. I hope they will give me a printout of the results when I leave; imagine they will not, and make me wait to go in for an appointment to the sleep doctor.
John made it home at 5:00 p.m. and the dogs were eagerly awaiting his arrival to take them for their exercise.
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan