SATURDAY — Fifi La Fume or Pepé Le Pew ?

Here it is Sunday again.  Snowed last night and much of the morning, and we got about 2 inches.  John moved some of it off the drive, walkways, car, and back patio.  I spent time on house chores, music transposition, emails, and summarizing answers to questions in job interviews last week.  Tonight I participated in the Taize’ service playing my violin.  We had a nice meal afterward made by the Episcopal Priest.  It was a good bean dish with meat, homemade cornbread, salad and a super good cake, with a layer of filling such as found in good Éclairs, and topped with Chocolate.   Now I’m ready for a good night’s rest.  Neither one of us got enough sleep last night, and we took no naps today.   I have not been napping in many weeks.  There was a time where I had to, so I must be improving.

Monday – need to take care of following up on bills that insurance should have paid, and I will be going to town for my SAIL class.  We need to make some more progress on cleaning up the kitchen for a Sears repairman to come work on the stove/oven and the dishwasher.   We cancelled tomorrow’s horse shoe trimming because it is supposed to be 15 degrees early morning.  We will wait a week and hope for the polar air to go back north and quit descending into our valley.  Brrrrrr!

Sunny Kitty is growing and climbing more and more.  He still has his favorite toy and will play for many minutes during the day with it (simply a long shoe lace tied up and closed into the bottle cap of a medicine plastic container).  It moves a lot and he loves it.  He also is a “companion” kitty.  He follows John like a shadow.  When John goes outside to feed the horses, or clean snow off the car, or driveway, Sunny watches from a bedroom window, either the guest bedroom, or the computer bedroom.  We wonder as he grows bigger, if he will fit on the rather narrow window sill.  Time will tell.  He also either lies next to you on the table/desk or on the floor beneath the computer, or lies behind you in the computer chair as we use the computer.  He also follows me and John to the bathroom.  He has a very weak meow sound, but he uses it a lot and carries on long conversations.  He loves balls especially ones made from crushed paper that come apart as he bats them about, and his other favorite toy is the cardboard from the inside of a toilet paper roll.  He’s eating well, canned and dry food and drinking his water.  He has gotten use to running around the house, sleeping various places (usually on the bed during the night), and pottying in his litter box in the back “computer” bedroom.  We have to close the door using a thin box as a spacer and then hook it so he can get in and out and the dogs can’t.  Otherwise they search and scrounge for the “almond roca” treats kitty leaves behind, but covers nicely.  John keeps it cleaned regularly through the day, but during the night we have to “lock” them out.

Monday it is, and I slept in late, after not having a good night’s sleep.  Too many interruptions.  Have been making some progress on the computer.  Ready to eat lunch and spring for town.  It is getting much colder here today, and will be for the next several days.  Now the rest of the night, after dinner, we need to make a path to the kitchen and clean up around the oven/range so a Sears repairman can come in the morning to fix the door on our oven, which needs helped by a bungee cord to stay shut.

Well, we didn’t get any clean-up completed tonight because we were both feeling out of sorts.  We decided to wait till 7:00 in the morning.  Guess I had best go to sleep now.

Tuesday.  John started cleaning this a.m. at 7:15 and the guy from Sears called about 8:30.  We thought he was 20 minutes away, but really was over a 1/2 hour.  We cleaned up some more, but certainly it would not pass inspection in the real world.

First he fixed the dishwasher and found a mouse nest underneath in the insulation.   Then he found a constriction in the outflow pipe – that water has to pass through the under-sink disposal.  Now cleaned out we haven’t noticed any of the left-behind water in the bottom of the dishwasher.  Then he worked on the dryer (clothes) cleaning the lint and dust out.  It was the one that quit heating last week by throwing a breaker switch.  He looked at door hinges on the oven/range.  He didn’t have the hinges and pieces and Sears began researching it.  It will probably require a whole new frame to sit the door in with the hinges.  If they don’t have the parts, then they will replace the whole unit.  Wouldn’t that be nice !  It is a standard 40” range (but with double ovens and self-cleaning of the larger one).  If replaced, we get to have the same features.  The only one I can find on line is a gas model and we don’t have gas, only electricity.   The larger of the ovens is convective, and supposedly that feature gives less inside room in the oven.

The repairman didn’t leave till 10:25, and neither of us had eaten breakfast.  So, we ate just a little and then had a late lunch, and there was no reason to go to town today.  How very nice.

I then filled out a survey evaluation form on line for the serviceman and the service provided.  It was no cost because we have a service contract we pay which allows maintenance and repair for kitchen appliances.  This is a questionable purchase but we are over an hour (one way) from their service so for anything not still under warrantee there is a monster cost of a service call. The total charge for today for the 3 appliances would have been billed at $442.44 (that includes a service fee of $350 applied to the oven (not fixed) which was the provocation).  And we have a return visit for 2 weeks (depending on whether they have the parts, or whether we get a new oven/range).   If they replace the oven/range, the only comparable one costs $1,937, and we will not have to pay for installation or taxes.

Other things I had to worry with today in my “retirement” time, was checking with Group Health on two bills they supposedly did not pay.  Jeez, this is a full time job.

I forgot another thing that happened today.  We had a call from Critter Care (that’s what our vet calls her business).  Love it.  They were calling to schedule Sunny in for his neuter or her spay, whichever the case may be.  And, to get the next set of shots, probably to include rabies.  We take him in on Thursday morning, and if it is a neuter, we pick him up in the afternoon.  If it is a spay, we pick her up after an overnight stay.

My nightmares last night were connected with the house cleaning for the repairman to enter.  And, we still only had a path through the boxes, piles of papers, and clothes. My dreams were that two guys were sleeping over in our house in a messy room, and that I hadn’t even given them clean towels.  Also, a woman came to the door early in the morning to get a ride with me to the airport.  I had not packed and didn’t have an airline ticket, so I was happy when dog Annie awoke me to tell me she needed to go outside to potty.  I jumped up and ended the nightmare.

The other news tonight was very sad.  It was about the death of a dear friend from lung cancer.  The call came from his friend of 25 years.   I guess it is getting to be that time of life, but he was younger than me, was a Viet Nam vet, and a superb geographer.  I will miss his friendship.   He knew he was not long for this world and called in December to visit and wish us well.

Wednesday.  Today was supposed to be a light day but it turned into a crazy one.  I made the mistake of sleeping in and we were supposed to meet someone at the Kittitas Exit on I-90, after 10:00 a.m. to get from him a Farrier’s Kit he wanted to sell.  He was to call us from Vantage that would give us 30 minutes to get there.  Well, I was not dressed yet and the phone rang at 9:20 a.m.  He was coming across the bridge over the Columbia River calling me.  Phew.  We got ready and rushed out there, and yes, we got there in time.  He apologized for being early.  We visited awhile in the cold, and then came home.  There was another trip to town for me at 1:00 for SAIL exercise class, and afterward I dropped by the hospital for a blood draw to evaluate my INR (for adjusting my Coumadin dosage).  My physician’s nurse later reported that it was 2.9 (a little higher than usual), but okay, and not to change my dosage, but to have it checked again in a month.  Then we both worked on projects on our respective computers till it was time for dinner and another trip to town for a lecture on ice cores and their ability to measure climate change by the atmospheric chemicals deposited on high mountain glaciers.  We were late getting home to a crazy cat demanding his litter box be cleaned out and 4 dogs ready to go out to potty.  Then we had a great dessert.  John made a carrot/walnut cake with white cream frosting last night, and we had a piece with butter pecan ice cream on it.  Very good.  Now we are finishing emails and stuff and will be going to bed shortly.

Thursday was much quieter – but a music play day.  We swung by a flood-prone intersection to photograph the raising of a house that sits at an intersection where the culverts are not sufficient for the extra flow during heavy rain or for rain-on-snow. This place (once owned by friends) was flooded a few years ago and again in January. The current owners just stayed with friends last time while they cleaned and dried it out, but this time they are going to disconnect it from the ground, raise it up, and grace it with a new and higher foundation.  John’s family’s house was raised and moved (so a nearby soft drink bottler could expand) when he was young so he is familiar with the operation.  I talked to the contractor and asked if I could take some pictures of the process over the next several days.  He expects to have it finished in a week.

John took the dogs for their morning run to feed the horses, and they tip-toed through a herd of deer.  The oldest, Shay, returned carrying essence of Fifi La Fume or Pepé Le Pew.  We could have gone a long time without that.  It’s not a full-fledged smell requiring a bath, but it is definitely noticeable.  John thinks she might have brushed against a place / bush or something that had been sprayed.

Nothing much new for the rest of the day. Then off to play music at Royal Vista Nursing facility, and John went to the landfill to recycle glass (free), and then to shop at the grocery.  John says (being always politically correct) that he went to a “transfer station” and not a “land fill.”  When we got home, I’d received a letter from the Hospital saying they received my application for the Board of Commissioners vacant position, and they would be interviewing finalists on Feb 15 and 17.

Friday morning began with the kitty waking us to clean his litter box. Then I made a trip to the kitchen to load soaked dirty dishes into the dishwasher and filled with more.  At 9:00 a.m. had a call from the CEO’s secretary at the hospital to tell me I would be interviewed Tuesday Feb 15 at 4:45 for the Board of Commissioner’s position.  It will be about 25 minutes and they will send me a list of the questions in advance.  That’s really nicer than walking in cold, not knowing what they want to know.  I’m used to interviews in academia where the person isn’t given that courtesy.

Another nice surprise came in a phone call this afternoon.  I was off eating and playing music at the Adult Activity Center.  At the end, I went to the grocery and called John from the parking lot.  I told him I forgot to take the cooler and did he want me to get the ice cream and frozen Lasagna anyway to bring home, as I had only two stops – the post office and our utility district to pay our monthly electric bill.  He said I might rather wish to drive by the Sears store to pick out our new oven.  They were unable to find the parts to repair the 1982 model.  They will install the new one and remove the old one too.  It took me only a few minutes to give them my authorization code John had given me and we were approved for up to $1200 for a replacement.  There was only one electric model with the double oven feature, so I had only to choose the color.  I picked white, to match the refrigerator.  Come Feb 22nd we will have a new kitchen stove.  Cool.  Except for the in and out part.  There are two options, and both have problems.  Coming in from the front door means moving a lot of furniture and boxes to get through the front door entrance, into and around a corner into the den, or coming in the back sliding glass doors to the den and into the kitchen.  The problem with that route is that the access through the pasture and back yard might be muddy.  Guess we will have to figure out as time proceeds but meanwhile we will start working on the “den”  — the biggest obstacle at the moment.  It needs doing anyway.

Saturday is a light no-activity day except for John’s getting out the trail rider club’s newsletter before our mail pickup at the road.  Last night it rained and blew, up to 48 mph gusts and 39 mph sustained winds (at the airport 5 miles south of us).  It has slowed today to “only” 30 mph gusts and 22 mph sustained winds.

We wish you a good and healthy week, and we’ll be back late Sunday next week to report to you on the latest in our currently not very eventful lives.  I’m driving to Leavenworth for a birthday party (evening dinner), and will likely spend the Saturday night so I can drive back the 1.5 hours in the daylight.  It’s too far and too much time away from all the animals for us both to go.

Nancy & John and all the critters