Sunday. Long hard day with trip home from Portland. Phew. I had left the motel right before 8:00 a.m. and found a free parking space just next to the Marriott’s east entrance. Our presentation went well, and I got out of Portland at 10:22 a.m., got right on I-5, and up and over to I-84. The next bunch of miles was miserable with incredible traffic. I finally stopped for a short relaxation at a rest stop near Rowena and about 10 miles from The Dalles. I called John from there to complain. He suggested I cross the Columbia River at The Dalles (right below the dam outflow) on 197 and go north to Hwy 14 and on back through Goldendale, WA. It was a great relief as the only traffic was an occasional car coming out from a winery. I took one photo for a geographer friend of the basalt and a picture of Mt. Hood, but I missed some awesome shots from up on the hill above the Columbia River with Mt. Hood in the background. All I was concentrating on was getting home.
Didn’t make it home until after 3:00 p.m. and I was totally exhausted. So I took 2 acetaminophen and got into my recliner. I went to sleep and slept hard for four hours.
Last night and the night’s before were not conducive to sleeping, and my sleep was disrupted almost every hour last night. To get up at 6:30 a.m. on little sleep was tough.
Kitty was in rare form tonight. He (we now know his gender after taking him to the vet for shots & worming) explored all around the den, and up into my recliner to say hello, purr, and knead his feet. (We have not named him yet, because we will let the name evolve to fit his/her personality). The M on his forehead causes the term, Mackerel tabby, but he also has a bull’s eye on his side and other uniform tabby markings. He is symmetrical and one of the prettiest grey tabbys with white, pale orange, and black. He is now able to walk around the dogs as they rest on the floor. That’s great! Or have them run by him without alarm on his part.
Oh, on the weather. When I left Portland this morning it was a pleasant cloudy 66 degrees. Got warmer into the 80s in the Columbia Gorge. Thankfully I had a/c in the car and traveled quite comfortably.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Gorge
The last photo on the Geology description has a slider – East is to the left. Note all the trees. This is the wet side. The cool/wet Pacific Ocean influence fades away along the stretch of the Gorge in which I traveled.
Now look here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/biggles1/2869934012/
This is the dry side – just south of Goldendale, WA. Now those hills are covered with wind towers.
Kitty has become part of the household and is wandering around the den, up beside my recliner, purring, climbing, investigating, and enjoying life. He loves (just this morning, Monday) sitting by my side on the recliner while I type on the laptop. He wanted to follow the on-screen mouse-pointer, but I wouldn’t let him. He wandered away and is back, just looked over the back of my recliner, and I took a picture of the “M” on his forehead. He’s expressive with meows and exploring. I will get the pix off my camera soon (after I get a cup of coffee & toast), but may have to wait till John returns from running the dogs. He still wants to be on the table beside me and I cannot have him there with all the stuff piled up. Just came back and settled down on the right of my chair backed into my pad on which the lap top sits. I reach across to the mouse, but now am typing and he is lying against my right arm that’s on the keypad. He is content. John put Kitty in his bedroom (the computer room) where there is a litter box and food and water, and fixed the door open so he can come and go, but the dogs cannot get in to the treats in the litter box. John put him back there while he got the 4 dogs out the door for their morning exercise and to feed the horses. John set this up just this morning, and Kitty already knows how to use the pass through and came back to be with me.
Ok now John is back. Kitty has run under the sofa while the dogs rushed in, but now John has gone for an hour to pick tart cherries and Kitty is back by my side watching the dogs eat. I will end this and go fix my breakfast. He is doing just fine, and so are we, and very happy to have him. The rest of the day was quiet, pretty much.
Tuesday. Slept in again. Still catching up from the sleepless nights in Portland. John finished up his trail riders newsletter and we both spent time assembling 50 of them, putting on stamps, folding, taping, and boxing. This is supposedly the last of hard copies, as they are going to try to put it on the website.
Back from the vet’s and Kitty has the first set of shots, worming for round and tape worms, and an appointment for future work. He needs us to determine a name different from “Kitty.”
We had to visit the vets twice today. Annie needed to have two pieces of cheat grass seeds removed (under Anesthesia). They were embedded in her ear drum, or very close. We brought kitty home and returned for Annie at 5:30 p.m..
Kitty is a male, so we are calling him Rascal for the moment. [ Later in the week we decided that is an appropriate name and I guess it will stick.]
Wednesday. Today John went with me to the Food Bank Soup Kitchen where I and two others play music, at noon, and are fed lunch as a thanks. John took along some of his yellow squash to donate to the food bank, and while there early, he helped set up tables and chairs. We had a nice lunch today of Chili (with cheese), salad, cornbread, and peaches. Then he dropped me off at the exercise class and went shopping, but he forgot to get Dream Whip for the Cherry Delight for this weekend’s potluck. There’s always tomorrow or Friday. We were gone 4 hours and the kitty, Rascal, slept the entire time. I don’t know where he is now. Just found him in the back computer room with John. I sat down and copied a few pictures John tidied up for me from Portland and of Rascal, and stayed long enough for Rascal to get out of his “box” by the computer and get up on the top of the filing cabinet, drink some water and eat some food. He’s got this all figured out. Smart little guy. While there I ate some sweet cherries mostly Bings and then came back to the den where my laptop is. He followed me and is now beside me resting.
John went out to take pictures of a plant he found by the irrigation ditch this morning. It is a Water Hemlock. That is deadly to horses, so he has now gone out to get rid of it. The horses right now are closed out of the place in the pasture where John found the plant. I believe he is going to check the rest of the ditch down through the pasture to be sure there is none. He dug it out as best he could, including the roots, which are even deadlier. Ours is Water Hemlock (Cicuta douglasii)
http://ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=9996
. . . where Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum) is mentioned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium#Socrates
A bit more of the story of Socrates is here:
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/greek/philosopher/phaedo.html
Regardless, ours is in a box in the back of the old Chevy pick-up and will go to the landfill at some future time.
Thursday. Put out a page of information about the Water Hemlock now blooming in our valley, and at our house (- (( (very sad face).
Check out the page at:
http://elixant.com/~nancyh/WaterHemlock2.html
Today John spent some time clearing more of the brush along the ditch. Hasn’t found anything else poisonous but has located two wasps (?) nests near the edge of the pasture. He’s taken the cut brush to a large pile of similar things – larger old logs and stumps on the bottom provide open space within – and thus quail cover. He’ll investigate the nests on some cold morning.
I went to town to play music (at the old Rehab center where I spent so much time last year), and on to the grocery store for eggs and Dream Whip® for our cherry delight
http://justapinchassets.com/images/photo/1/5/7/0/2/large.jpg
we are taking to the KVTR (horse trail riding club) potluck this Sunday afternoon. This picture is in a pie pan, but we will make it on a large cookie sheet. The crust is made from saltines and nuts, and baked.
I came home and rested some, played with Rascal, and now he is sleeping again, charging up to keep us awake during the night. Might close him in his room so we don’t have to deal with it when we should be sleeping.
Funny guy, and quite a kitty. He plays zoom, zoom, just like Sunshine, and wanted to get on my chest this afternoon in my recliner, but he doesn’t yet know how to control his claws completely, so that doesn’t work well. He is a purrer and very affectionate, however.
John is fixing baked chicken for dinner. It was good, with potatoes, and green lima beans, and John’s chunky naturally-pink apple sauce.
Friday. Started out with a good night’s sleep finally, by closing Rascal up in “his room.” Nice. Then I managed to succeed in getting our PowerPoint on the Portland Urban Heat Island compressed (the images), so instead of 36 megabytes it is now just over 12. Thanks to my friend Jennifer for this knowledge and the use of her Gigabyte mail site for me to use to distribute large files. After a small breakfast I played some with Rascal and then took off for a massage at the Adult Activity Center. My back and shoulder muscles were particularly tense today. Guess it’s been a long two weeks, since I last saw her. (This is a free service; she donates 20 minutes to a half hour to folks there twice a month). She said today she really would love to get me on a table for a full body massage, (rather than in the chair I’m in there), so that something could be done with heat and arm pressure to get the blood flowing through my tense muscles. She is not a preferred provider for Group Health, which I have, so she recommended someone else here in town who could help me. I will need to get a reference from my doctor, and when I know more about what to ask for, I will.
On the way home I stopped by a yard sale and loaded up on cool stuff for John, and for my music group. The lady had a ton (well, more than 10 large 3-ring binders which work well for storing music). She gave them all to me for 50 cents. Then she gave me some metal poles that fit together in a triangle or square to put around plants such as tall flowers to tie them up and give them strength. New, these were covered with green plastic but now much of the iron is exposed. Good for half-dead plants, I think. And then most of a container full of an Ortho chemical for insects in sensitive areas, which might work someplace. John will have to investigate the active ingredient and its proper use – in his spare time. The new strawberries are being attacked by something and maybe . . . or maybe not!
The yard-sale-lady had an old bushel basket which I got, and will offer to one of my colleagues. When I taught Economic Geography the kids had no clue what a bushel basket or a bushel of anything was. I would take a small one (a peck, a quarter of a bushel) to class to show them, and show them a picture of a bushel basket. Remember the old song, “I love you a bushel and a peck, a b & a p, and a hug around the neck” … You don’t!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3p7PKP9lBE&feature=player_embedded
http://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/guysanddolls/bushelandapeck.htm
This one is for crabbing but has the lid –
http://housmancrabbingsupplies.com/images/Wooden2.jpg
most web images don’t show the lid:
http://www.groworganic.com/1-bushel-basket-with-2-handles.html
We got interested in weights and measures while teaching the wine class because of the historical carry-overs and then the switch to the metric system. There is a little of that history here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel
Many of the agricultural statistics are still reported in bushels/acre. Also, measurements are appropriate such as the weight of a bushel of a product: Wheat (60 lbs.), Cotton (32 lbs.), Timothy Grass (45 lbs.), Sudan Grass (28 lbs.), Soybeans (60 lbs.), Apples (48 lbs.), Muscadines [grapes] (50 lbs.), Okra (26 lbs.), Tomatoes (53 lbs.), Onions (57 lbs.). My source on the grains is the Univ. of Missouri’s Agronomy Dept. and for the fruits and vegetables, the Georgia Farm Bureau. I put in the Timothy Grass and Sudan Grass, because those are baled here in our valley, and exported to Japan and other Pacific Rim countries. Back to the yard sale: There was also a container with miscellaneous stuff John will be able to use, including a couple of pieces of agate (one that seems to be an Ellensburg Blue). If so, maybe I will have a ring made from it. (We have been here since 1988 and never found one). Another 5-gallon bucket and metal strap:
http://www.hardwarestore.com/pop-print/larger-image.aspx?prodNo=40464
Everything totaled $6. Not bad, so I just drove home without attending any more yard sales or staying for exercise class, and I have been on the phone to set up a future full therapeutic massage through my insurance. The cost for an hour is $60, but hopefully Group Health will pay for most of that. I’m working through my primary care provider (family doctor) now for the referral. I’m excited because I was not ready to go to an orthopedic surgeon, but I have really had a loss of flexibility and range of motion in my arms, particularly the left after the device surgery June 2010. I was not allowed to move my arm above my shoulder for 8 weeks, and any movement I had gotten back from physical therapy, I lost.
Hot here; a/c has been cycling on for over an hour. It’s 85 here and 5 miles south at the airport is 90! Our potluck Sunday may be 88-90. At least we‘ll have shade.
John just brought me a taste of tapioca-thickened tart cherries he is fixing for our potluck item, Cherry Delight (his mom’s recipe with saltine crackers and chopped nuts in the crust). It’s pretty tart but also quite tasty. He’s making his own “pie” filling, or in this case, topping.
Well, it’s Saturday, and I have spent the morning on the computer, doing dishes, and playing with Rascal. John worked outside moving hay, more brush work, and watering six Blue Spruce – those planted near the edge of our property so as to block an ugly building put up by a neighbor. They have to grow a lot, though, and they don’t grow fast. They are one of a half-dozen species of needle-leaf trees he has around the place. Now he is in the kitchen working on berries and cherries. He was a pound of Pie Cherries short, so went back out and picked them.
Nothing else much happening here, so I will send this to John to put on this week’s blog.
Hope you all have a grand week.
Nancy and John
on the Naneum Fan