Saturday, Dec 24 This was a relatively quiet day because my laptop computer was compromised, and I had none to use in the morning while John was using his (our home computer). I spent the time well, however, going through months of receipts, organizing them, and filing. I’m still very behind, but made an amazing dent. Then after John’s running the dogs and feeding the horses and outside cats, we got a call from his sister in Ohio and talked for an hour. An hour later, we called his brother in CA and talked to him and his wife for almost 3/4 hour. Both were really nice visits. The rest of the afternoon I spent on John’s computer creating the web greeting for 2011 from us, but cannot do anything with it till I get my computer back, which has all the software I need to create necessary files and then to get them on the web.
Sunday, Dec 25 Today is a day with our neighbors. John is making a dish of Yams to share. They are making a Turkey. It is a smaller group than usual (only 5), as we had a huge Thanksgiving there with 19 people. It is not a white Christmas, is beautiful, sunny, and around freezing temps. Now at noonish, however, it is clouding over. Actually we got to our neighbors at 12:45 and it started spitting snow and then snowing BIG flakes. When we left at 4:45 the car was covered with a couple inches of snow. Guess we ended up with a white Christmas after all. We had a nice turkey dinner and a good visit. They presented us with several jars of jam, and containers of frozen strawberry jam, and canned pears (I think the latter was because John helped pick them). Their son gave us a boxed Amaryllis bulb. Add water. Wait.
Monday Dec 26 Cleaning kitchen counters, working on greetings newsletter, continuing to clean off disk of virus-infected laptop –all filled up my day. Today was a day for lunch and dinner of leftovers, but all were quite good. John went to bed early because of needing to get started early in the morning. No reason to go to town, so we didn’t. The Adult Activity Center is still closed for Christmas weekend, so no exercise.
Tuesday, Dec 27 The farrier is coming this morning. John fed the birds, cats, and horses, and set them up for getting their feet trimmed. I spent time on the phone with computer guys and have been doing more repairs on my computer laptop, trying to get it back to “normal”, whatever that is. Later today, I must take off for acupuncture. — I’m back and I’m sort of beat from the acupuncture. Today I got it on both sides. Started on my back lying face down (hate the pressure with the weight of my head on my face); then turned over on my back with a pillow under my head. My left top arm was still hurting at the end and I complained, so he rubbed on a very smelly oil (Woodlock). I looked it up on the web, it has turpentine (hence the smell) in it. It’s supposed to be an external analgesic (for pain). Well, it did minimize the pain, but not the pain of pungent smells I hate. It rained a lot while I was in the office but not on me getting back to my car or driving home. Late night success freeing space on my laptop. However, still have two pop-up windows, apparently harmless. At least the speed is dramatically increased and my software applications are all working again.
Wednesday, Dec 28 early to rise, but not enough time. Cleaned up more on my computer, and got ready to roll for town for playing music at the EBRG Food Bank, where lunch was nicely baked BBQ chicken, a great cold slaw*, beans (several kinds), and apricots with cottage cheese. Went around town doing errands, and then to exercise class. Been doing computer stuff and we had a small dinner of leftovers tonight.
[*The term “coleslaw” arose in the 18th century as an Anglicisation of the Dutch term “koolsla”, a shortening of “koolsalade”, which means “cabbage salad”. It is originally from Ireland and was made from leftovers. So says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleslaw ]
Thursday, Dec 29 Today began early because of needing to take Nancy to Yakima for a device check (routine every 3 months). John let me off and a favorite tech took a wireless readout of my ICD, printed lots of charts for my file, and pronounced me most copacetic. Meanwhile, John went down the hill to Costco to shop. It was good we did it this way, because we wouldn’t have had enough time to eat lunch in Yakima and get back in time for me to play fiddle with the group at 2:00 p.m. We made it but only because I had driven my car to town and left it at a friend’s, so John could drop me off and continue home to unpack, run the dogs, and feed the horses. I stayed in town after music, going to the post office and then to my massage therapist. It was dark and raining hard as I exited. Better than snow at this point.
Friday, Dec 30 We received a 7:30 a.m. phone call from our neighbor Kenny that 3 of our horses were out along the road. John got them to come back. They followed him down the 300’ driveway and through a gate he had opened. A bit later he went to warm up the car for me – then came back to get keys for a different car. The one I intended to take had a broken side window. (more below)
This morning is the follow-up mammogram to check out the micro-thingies mentioned last week. Foggy and cool. Icy roads going to town and in town and in the parking lot at the hospital. My nine X-rays went all right. I had a different person who is much more considerate, careful, slow, and with a gentle touch. I complimented her at the end and told her it was much better than I had anticipated, based on my experience last week. She thanked me for telling her, and also said, “I feel it is important to take time with each patient.”
Back to the horse story–Sometime overnight, they were running around our front yard and down/up the driveway. There was a bit of low fence and my big Frosty will sometimes lean into such things and then carefully step over. Others, if they are watching, may follow – less carefully, and in seconds the fence gets flattened. Three were out. In the dark and fog one horse turned in the narrow space between our recently repaired white car and the front fence. Something, a knee, head, or rump, bumped into the back door passenger side and bent it in, and broke the window.
One of our friends, when he heard about the car injury, and that I hadn’t tried to reach my agent in Spokane, WA suggested I call the 24/7 number for the company. I looked up and called the claim’s number for Safeco and told what happened. He said “no problem” (even asked if the horses were okay), and gave me a claim number, and I will go by to get an estimate next Tuesday. It will cost us $100 (the deductible for our comprehensive policy). This follows the encounter with the deer back on September 12 – same car, same side.
On a brighter note, I am sitting here enjoying watching birds feeding on top of a garbage can turned upside down about 25 feet from where I sit. John spreads seeds there. There are Purple Finches (Cassini, I think), sparrows, black capped Chickadees and Oregon juncos. The occasional Blue Jay will come.
Okay.. We are doing apples. I just sat down for John to catch up. He washes and slices, cleans out the seeds, dips in lemon juice, and then I take them and put them on the shelves of the dehydrator. Two of the bottom ones are filled with “banana” apples, which are good “keepers”. We will try to get more of them next year… because our time is limited getting to these chores.
Snowed tonight and now we have had very high winds for the past couple of hours. The highest gust at the airport 5 miles southwest of us measured at 47 mph, and in the last hour it has gone down to 38 mph.
Saturday, December 31 Happy New Year’s Eve!
After a bunch of work over the past several weeks, and recently this week giving a lot of attention to putting it on a web page for inclusion as a link in our 2011 newsletter (still under construction), here is a story for you to check out at the end of the year about our construction of a Cat House. What a run on sentence that last was!
http://www.elixant.com/~nancyh/2011cathouse.html
I spent most of the day writing letters and filling out forms for 3 of my prior students, and I’m only done with one of them. I need to print out a letter for another, get it in an envelope and mail it next week, and the other I have an hour or so of work left on, but I talked to her on the phone today, and she is gone until tomorrow afternoon, so I have more time.
John went out to feed the horses. I was working on the computer and got a phone call from Atlanta, GA from the 52-year old daughter of my 3rd cousin (77) who is dying of cancer. Really very sad. What a wicked disease. Happily I visited her while in Atlanta in May. A newly made friend in my exercise class since 2010 just died from the same disease.
Now John is working on slicing apples again (all Red Romes), and I will join him in a minute to place them on the shelves of the dehydrator. Now I’m finishing this blog for this week, and then I will have to work on our news and holiday (digital) newsletter. It will not be done tomorrow, so I might as well just wish people a Happy New Year and leave out the Christmas stuff, or change it (from what I intended), to say instead, hope you HAD a Merry Christmas or Happy Chanukah.
Happy New Year’s from us on the eve thereof.
Nancy & John
On the Naneum Fan