Rain, Water, and Cherries

Monday, June 13

For June 12 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 5 hrs 6 min with AHI=2.94. Events: 1 CSR, 15 H, 4 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 19 L/min). Oximetry: okay for the night.

Another crazy day. We left early for Yakima to the Subaru dealer for my scheduled oil and lube, at 10:00 a.m. It was completed, and we went for lunch and to Costco for gasoline and shopping. I drove away in a beautiful washed car. As of Saturday morning, the end of the week, it became a muddy splashed mess.

At 4:30, I left again for town to go to a jam session planned by the retirement community at Briarwood Commons (apartments) where we are entertained for a late lunch, and we entertain with music on the 3rd Saturday of the month. I carried along some music for the audience in case they wanted to choose something. We had 2 guitars, 2 mandolins, and a fiddle there. It was fun, but my shoulder was sore, particularly after playing for almost two hrs. They treated us to finger food at the end.

Tuesday, June 14

For June 13 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 16 min with AHI=0.80. Events: 1 CSR, 5 H, 13 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 16 L/min). Oximetry: all right all night long.

I went to the Emeritus Geographers meeting by myself today, and did not take any cookies because Carla Kaatz called me and said she would bring packages of biscotti. I came home and had a bite to eat for lunch, returning to town for two appointments.

I went to Kittitas via No 81 road to pick up more girl baby clothes.

I got to Jazzercise in time and tried keeping up. Only two of us showed (one person her first time). Of the normal group, two folks were gone – because one had a hurt leg and the other was gone to Montana.

My PT manipulation by a new therapist (to me), named Deanna, gave me 45 minutes of manipulation, after a 10-minute moist heat application. I was hurting by the time I left the workout, because I also had to demonstrate some of my own exercises I do at home and to learn two new ones.

That evening I went back again to where I was this morning (Hearthstone), and played and sang religious music with 4 members of The Connections. I was truly out of it by the time I got home (tired and in pain).

Wednesday, June 15

For June 14 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 4 hrs 26 min with AHI=6.10. Events: 8 CSR, 26 H, 5 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 18 L/min). Oximetry: just fine all through the night, even though the AHI was very high.

I drove by Kittitas (again), this time to pick up a baby car seat, for an upcoming baby shower:
1-babyCarSeat From there I went to the Food Bank, then by the Courthouse to drop off egg cartons and a seed packet, then to SAIL exercise class, after which I went and Xeroxed this next month’s music — including 13 patriotic songs and on to 22 songs for the assisted living home visits starting tomorrow, and going through the end of July.

Thursday, June 16

For June 15 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 32 min with AHI=1.07. Events: 1 CSR, 7 H, 13 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 9 L/min). Oximetry: good all night long.

John took me to town and let me off to set up for music at Dry Creek, play and he went on to get gasoline in his car for the first of his 3 days at Icicle Creek for WTA trail maintenance this weekend.

Link: images from Icicle Creek, WA

We grabbed a large pizza special with three meats, brought it home, added cheese and mushrooms, and had a piece for dinner. John took a piece for each of the 3 days he was at Icicle Creek and froze it, so he could carry it up for his lunch. John picked and I sorted strawberries – needed for me to deliver on Friday.

Friday, June 17

For June 16 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 15 min with AHI=0.96. Events: 1 CSR, 6 H, 15 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 17 L/min). Oximetry: fine all night long.

John left at 6:35 a.m. for Jack Creek WTA work party.
Google Earth coordinates:
47.603766, -120.918719

Zoom in to see the trail and Creek (the bridge left and down from marker is built to carry horses/mules. A WTA volunteer took a photo of John on the bridge but we don’t have it yet).

I fed the two orange cats but did not see Woody. I ran Lemon out of the front yard after I saw him spray the cable table, and I fed him around back, where he normally eats (and we prefer).

I am leaving at 10:27 for Briarwood with strawberries for Lee Kiesel to add layers to her trifle, planned for Saturday afternoon there, where we play music, and they feed us a late lunch.

I got home and took photos of the creek behind our house, out of flood stage. 2-AfterFloodingEastNaneumCreekBehindHouse The left photo above is looking downstream from the end of our path, and is the place Annie stepped into the creek in flood stage back in April that we reported on in mid-April’s blog. I called her and she managed to grab onto the roots, behind the curved tree above (left), and John leaned over the fence and grabbed her collar. I was standing right behind that tree videoing the area flooded to the right. You’ll have to look back to April for that story and those pictures and videos. The right photo above is also to the right of the left picture, looking upstream, of the fallen dead tree. The top was carried downstream (on East Naneum), and a lot of debris was thrown up on the Bar 14 road over the bridge rails during the flooding runoff. Those photos and videos are also in the blog in April.

Downstream Up Path To Cat’s Mow Beside our House 6/17/16

East Naneum Creek 6-17-16 after flood

Naneum East behind our house where Annie climbed out April

I didn’t talk to Karen Barrows, 9 miles from Ellensburg until 4:00, and John called at 4:15, so we will just go in together and he can get gas before we come home. We’ll pick her up at Motel 6 and take her to Perkins for dinner. Ended up buying dinner, and the two gals paid the tip (generous). Meal was $54 for four of us, and the tip left was $15, by our friends, Karen & Sheri (from Redding, CA with her Brittanys). I had a $35 gift card I used for us, received from the Brooks as a thanks for providing cookies to the retired geographers meetings monthly, for the last two years.

Now we got home and will have our strawberries on ice cream for dessert.

Saturday, June 18

For June 17 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 56 min with AHI=0.14. Events: 0 CSR, 1 H, 20 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 15 L/min). Oximetry: Excellent all night.

What a day! Started out very early wishing John good-bye and marveling at the rain all night long and all morning, still raining when I left for town. I was concerned that my friends from Oregon had not brought their raingear. I loaded a large canvas bag with 3 rain jackets and 2 large bath towels. On my way to town, I stopped off 5 miles from home to drive through the rain on a bumpy road with big puddles for another a mile and a half. Luckily, I found their rig and my friend Karen was sitting in her truck. She had a good jacket on but jeans that were getting wet. She had not brought rain pants, and I do not even know where mine are packed away. We haven’t field trialed since the 1980s, so they have never made it out of the packing from Idaho to WA. John does use the rain jacket for trail work, but not the rain pants.

Much of the morning I worked on getting the notes, chords, and lyrics for 5 verses into the key of G for our group to have to play at Briarwood for a lady who gave it to us at the Jam last week. The name of the song is The Frozen Logger. She wanted Gerald to sing it because she remembers him and her family singing it at the Grange when she was younger. Only a few of us were there today – Amy (flute), me (fiddle), Charlie (12-string guitar), and Gerald (6-string guitar). Anne was late joining us from her trip back from Spokane, and just joined us for singing and for a late lunch.
The group had a great spread for us, and a good number of people there to sing along. They served chicken salad sandwiches, cheese and crackers, and two fruit salads. For dessert, we had Lee’s famous Trifle with John’s strawberries in 3 layers. She also made her white chocolate chip-pecan cookies and butter cookies. She packed cookies and fixed a bowl of the trifle for me to bring home to John.

From there I came home and finished packing the baby clothes for the baby shower we were invited to tonight. It was a potluck and cookout of skewered veggies, chicken, and one person brought Salmon as her offering. Numerous other dishes filled the table and counters. We were late getting there because I waited to go until John made it home. We got there just before 7:00 p.m. They were just finishing opening the gifts, and so she went through many of the three bags and large blue plastic container I had filled up. A collage below shows a few things – things out of sight are mostly clothes, blankets, and burping or changing pads.

Here is a photo of the stuff we carted into their house:
3-MeganGiveawayBabyGirlBNEE The invitation indicated receipt of gently-used baby clothing and “stuff” was welcomed. I asked on the Buy Nothing list and received all this (and more), which is going to another person for her boy expected in September.

I fed the cats twice tonight, because they missed being fed in the morning because of the rain.

I picked up a gift for me from Jen Lipton at the baby shower, from our student from Nepal, Utsab Bhattarai. We have been writing him letters of recommendation for a Ph.D. program in Australia, and he and his family just made the trip from Nepal to their new home for his graduate study.

Below is a collage of the gifts. It shows a nice jacket, The North Face Gore-Tex rain jacket with hood, a beautiful small purse-like canvas bag, and a neat key chain with a Kukri knife from Nepal. I will have to be careful to share the jacket with John on trail maintenance trips that require working all day in the rain. He needed this yesterday where it rained most of the day, and a couple weeks ago, when it rained on them at the White River Trail at Mt. Rainier. 4-CollageGiftsFromUtsabBhattarai2016

Sunday, June 19

For June 18 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 5 hrs 4 min with AHI=1.18. Events: 0 CSR, 6 H, 3 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 20 L/min). All hypopnea were in the period 1:57 a.m. to 2:18. The 3 RERA (restriction in breathing causing arousal) were in the hour between 3:15 and 4:15. Oximetry: its battery ran out, so it didn’t register pulse and SpO2 but for just over 3 hours.

Early morning sighting of twin fawns. Missed getting the two together, but they were very cute romping with mom across our backyard. John and I both got a nice view. I grabbed my camera, but only got single pictures of one of the little “guys.” Very cool. We had seen vultures flying and were concerned a coyote or cougar had killed the first little fawn we saw last week. You have seen one photo previously, and another more recent one from this week was in the placeholder to notify you this would be late arriving. Nice to see the “twins” today.

Heard from Karen Barrows that because of her bad experience yesterday at an overbooked (entries) hunt test in Ellensburg, that she was leaving this morning for home, with her three Brittanys. Her friend, Sheri Saul, from Redding, CA, stayed with her dogs, but was still running them until 7:00 last night. They had 55 dogs to run today, and it didn’t look promising. Perhaps the organizers need lessons in organizing.

Today, Jim and Kevan Ferrier with Kevan’s wife, Megan Walsh, and Kevan’s mom Jamie came over to fall a couple of trees, check out another, and load their truck with dried firewood. We had a couple of piles of larger pieces with twisted parts and knots that John cannot split easily – and doesn’t need to. Jim has a powered splitter so that works out well.

While here they “dropped” two dead cottonwoods. I only taped on one fall on video. 5-RoseEndOfDrivewayWithCottonwoods This collage has a rose that is blooming now, we got from our neighbor, and it is planted at the end of the driveway near the road and entrance to the cottonwood trees and stacks of wood. In the right photo, are several dead trees. They only fell two today.

Cottonwood Dead Tree 1 down 6-19-16
6-OurIrrigationDitchWaterfallNearEndOfDriveway
Our diversion ditch on our property, 6-19-16 We have a personal interest in the local stream because of the watering (garden, natural and introduced trees & shrubs, pasture) we do, likewise for neighbors for miles. We are in a much “greener” area because of irrigation.

A broader perspective is that the canyon to our north is disgorging tons of rock, sand, and silt. We remove a lot of sand and silt from the water that makes it to our ditches. The stream beds are filling with rocks – up to the size of a football. Where the water flows under a road and swells up and over the bridge (bringing woody debris), county road crews try to keep the flow going. Long term, the water wants to go elsewhere and eventually will. There is one instance of this near us that has not caused a problem. There may be others. Just a local reminder of how dynamic Earth is: … Volcano in the news

Monday , June 20

Monday morning, our day of publishing the blog late, June 20, 2016 started well.

We saw the two fawns. I’ve been calling them twins, but we are wondering now, as the original sighting last week or so in the blog was the doe with the black spot on her face, and we only saw one fawn then. However, the past two days we have seen two spotted fawns. This second video below appears to show one of the fawns being larger than the other, but the clarity of the video without adjacency in the “frame,” does not allow proper judgment. Bottom line – we do not know, but they are cute and traveling together now with only one doe.

Twin Fawns First Sighting 6-20-16

Returning Twin Fawns Opposite Direction 6-20-16

Mom Follows Looking for Two Fawns

John went out and brought me 4 cherries of two different kind and they are almost ready to harvest and eat. This video below I took earlier in the week, about 3 days ago. Rainier Cherries

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan