Saturday, Mar 31 Here the weather is lousy. It started out snowing, then rain, then snow, and overcast and now is dripping again–just in time for John to do livestock chores. The neighbor’s to-be-fed animals are in 3 different areas. In past weeks he used the newer truck to drive to town for gasoline for the older truck – thereby keeping both functional. Today he just drove the old one in and filled a 20 gallon tank and 5+ gal. in cans. Total = $92. Before he left, he brought two boxes and a huge old suitcase – dust covered — out of hiding for me to deal with. A few boxes don’t have tops and things get thrown in, then dust. One box was sorta amazing. It had no top so was quite dirty. I vacuumed everything. Contents were mostly clean (not now) socks, several don’t have a mate. Then I found a plastic (kid’s) carrier (over the shoulder and handle straps) that I must have gotten at a yard sale (I honestly do not remember), and inside are two long rolled up heavy duty extension cords with a double extender for connecting more than one item, and are brand new. There’s a $3 circle tag, and I don’t know if it was for the whole thing or not; probably. The box with a top had several really neat books, road maps from all over — Canada, Belgium, Hawaii, and Germany (nice ones with terrain on them). You don’t see printed state road maps anymore in WA, so the ones I have are classic. That box also had 3 packages of notes (discarded by a previous Prof.) on the Netherlands, Planning, and the Delta Project (which I took slides of in 1965) and used to talk about in some of my geography courses. I also found some neat USGS publications, a couple very historical, and some newer Satellite imagery comparisons over time, around the world. I have people at CWU I will entrust them too. Oh, the maps I’m giving to the Map Library. They have cabinets with them from all over the world, and people can check them out.
I have yet to look at the 30 boxes John packed out of my office when I was in the ICU. They are out in the shed, and there are stacks of boxes piled around inside our house I have to sort through first. This was a good start today, and I really should do this much every day. Easier said than done. I say that every time I do a couple and then I go for days before doing more. We have some rooms (living and back bedrooms), that are totally full, except for paths to walk around sideways.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_iAD82Dlk9GA/TONY6O4QwxI/AAAAAAAAB4k/hXXLuEX-bgU/s1600/CLUTTER.gif
The other thing I have yet to go through is a large American Tourister hard luggage I used to always check through to AAG and NCGE meetings and then bring home lots of heavy books and materials. There is a map tube (portable and extendable) inside. If I really had significant posters or maps not to fold, I would bring them back as an extra checked “bag”. Nowadays that wouldn’t be worth an extra fee. I cleaned all the dust off the outside, and John just lifted it onto our bed, for me to cull through. I did go through it and found a brand new carrier for my Dell laptop that the recently deceased Macbook replaced. The Mac was 4 and the Dell lasted about that long so the never used carrier is about 8 years and counting. With the new Toshiba, for an additional $50 we got a combination of accessories with the big-$ item being a carrier. Oh well..
John went out to see the kitties and handled them all. Big Sue growled at him, from above on the hay bales. She came over and looked down but he told her to stay up there. They don’t all have their eyes open yet. Big Sue is a feral cat and mother of at least 3 litters, including this set of 5. I hope we can catch her when she’s through raising these and get her spayed.
http://exquisitekitty.com/CAT-CHART.jpg
John left in the sprinkle of rain to feed, and then it poured, and now the sun is shining so brightly I might need to put on sunglasses to sit in my recliner and keep and eye on the birds coming to the feeder. And with food in mind, for dinner we are having lima beans, mashed potatoes, and gravy with pieces of pork from yesterday.
Sunday, Apr 1 Well, lots of cleaning and kitchen work today by both of us. I did the counters and loading the dishwasher (and unloaded it first), and then while I was working on that, John cleaned up the washroom. That is our initial recycle-garbage collection area and gets crowded with boxes and bags of bottles, cans, and junk, keeping us from accessing the clothes washer and dryer. So at least for a few days I can get some washing done. We also went out to check on the new kitties. The mom still runs from us, and growls a little while we handle the babies, but now that we are feeding her canned cat food she is much more willing to let us handle them while she watches (and eats) from a’top the baled hay. Mamma-Sue and the babies will be much better off with her having the canned food. She also has water and dry food available at all times. She’s getting canned food twice a day. Their little eyes are still not all open, but we hope they will be soon. They are about 3 weeks old.
http://www.kittenbaby.com/age.php
In the late afternoon, we went to work in the cleaned kitchen and John sliced and dipped several large Honeycrisp apples into lemon juice with cinnamon. I moved the cut and soaked pieces into the dehydrators. (These were neglected after their last use — not a good idea; got to make myself clean them this time before we pack them away.) I placed all the pieces nicely on the racks. We used and filled two dehydrators.
Here’s our story Nancy put out Saturday, April 07, 2012 before posting this.
http://elixant.com/~nancyh/HoneycrispApple.html
Monday, Apr 2 John left early for wine grape pruning. The weather was nice today. I spent most of the morning on the phone trying to find a new home for one of our pups from the 2010 litter, Rhu, who we raised till he was 4 months old. (more below) I also got our application for the WA Old Time Fiddlers Workshop at end of July in Kittitas in the mail for required postmark today. I’m taking my usual class (Intermediate and Advanced Fiddle) with Roberta Pearce, and John will be taking a week of half-day beginning guitar class. Sadly, his costs as much as mine ($100) for the shorter period.
Tuesday, Apr 3 John went for his last day of pruning, and I stayed home to work on things. I never went back to sleep in the morning after he left. Paid bills, did emails, tried talking to pharmaceutical company about my Lipitor costs. My health insurance has notified me it will no longer allow the brand name to be used, and I must switch to a generic as of June 1st. My cost will go up, but I cannot any longer use the plan I was on the past several months, getting Lipitor for $4.00/month co-pay. It is not possible to keep up with all the healthcare rigamarole. I’m fairly good at this sort of thing but some things happen that seem not to be explainable. How do some folks cope? Like the elderly lady that calls several times each month. She doesn’t recognize our voices and will say things, such as “Who are you?” – and then hang up. We try to be alert to her calls and are trying to keep her on the line long enough to identify her. Then maybe someone could contact her and help her. She called 3 times in 5 minutes this week. How would she handle health care hurdles?
Back to the puppy mentioned above: Folks moved from EBRG to the Reno area for work and now he is gone a lot doing fieldwork and she is ‘expecting’ and 2 dogs and 2 kids (sometimes either a dog or a kid is sick) add up to a full plate. I tried to find a home for the Brittany they have from our 2010 litter. No success yet. Good news about the pup. They have decided to keep him.
Got a note from a student on whose thesis committee I’m serving and need to review her latest rendition. I spent tons of time editing it over a month, a month ago. I didn’t keep track of my time. Because John and I have each been through this process we know she is under more stress about this than I am, but still, I do have other things to do. We have some research grant proposals to evaluate from a Canadian institute
http://silverhillinstitute.com/
Click on “Board” and scroll through the list and note the “Homenucks.” Last being Peter and a friend from our time at the University of Cincinnati. Click on “Advisors & Reviewers” and you can find our somewhat out-dated bios. We have been doing this for several years, but the time snuck up on us and the first set just arrived yesterday. There seems to be a disconnect between our countries’ postal services. They are due Apr 15, so we will send them back in digital form.
Wednesday, Apr 4 I awoke with a sore throat. Hmmmm. Had to get ready to go to town for two events and then come back and do more chores, before going to a talk on the Ice Age Ground Sloth . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalonyx_jeffersonii
. . . found within 30 miles of us on a sediment-covered bench near the Columbia River, in 2003. It was a nice talk and afterwards we grabbed some food from Jack in the Box.
Thursday, Apr 5 John read proposals in the morning, after feeding chores, and then went to town with me for me to play music. He went shopping and came back and picked me up and we took some of my found-materials to school to donate to my colleagues. We stopped by and visited with a fund raiser in the Dean’s office, and wrote our donation check for the student Distinguished Service Award Scholarship (currently in our name). Coughed a lot once coming home and on through the night and was miserable.
Friday, Apr 6 Awoke not feeling well at all, so I canceled all three events for the day. I have just been working on the computer, and evaluating my share of the research proposals. Doing a little tax input in between times, and paying bills. Well, the rest is helping, as my cold symptoms are decreasing from the morning mess. Delivered by UPS today between snow flurries: Asparagus (Jersey Supreme), Anne (Fall Yellow) Raspberries, Cavendish June strawberries, blueberry bushes (Bonus –supposedly the size of a quarter!, Bluecrop, Duke, Nelson, & Patriot) plus a booklet on growing blueberries. Total cost $105.97. All the way from Indiana! Delivery as scheduled for spring planting — and tonight the temp is expected to dip to 20. Go figure! Tonight after supper I’m trying to stay awake by working on this blog, but the smell of skunk is making me miserable. Shay was standing out on the window doggie door veranda, barking, till we both yelled at her, from different windows, to get in the house. She must have seen a skunk outside the fence, and he must have sprayed.
Saturday, Apr 7 After early chores we loaded a dehydrator with sliced Honeycrisps . John hopes to get this posted and then plant several baby pine trees. The baby kittens need some attention too. All eyes are open and they are starting to exhibit real catness. They will soon need their nest-home enlarged. The dilemma is that it is now small and cozy but nighttime temps have been low. Perhaps a straw-bale play area connected to the nest is the way to go. Otherwise, nothing special planned for the day. Easter will have us over at the neighbors for festivities. Easter is said to be a moveable feast — if you have some spare time and want to investigate this matter you can start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter
A 2008 posting “Blame it on the Moon” (dates are not appropriate for 2012) on the subject is here: (scroll down below the banner pictures, to the Moon)
http://www.hawaiicatholicherald.com/Home/tabid/256/newsid884/1227/Default.aspx
Hope your week was a good one.
Nancy and John
still on the Naneum Fan