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Sunday.  Going to the Bluegrass jam session in Upper County (Kittitas) from 2:00 to 4:00.  John is going to help a friend move at 2:00 p.m. in Ellensburg.

Meanwhile, an early morning phone call put us on a different track.  We had found last night two misspellings in the blog sent and were going to correct them, but this morning our 88 year old neighbor called to ask for John’s help today to load hay from his upper field.  He called at 8:00 a.m.  I was still drinking coffee and reading an article on Jim Skinner, 66, from the Midwest, who is the interesting, successful and laid-back CEO of McDonald’s, the burger and Golden Arches corporation.

I asked the farmer when he needed the help, and he said, “Today”.  I told him John was not available in the afternoon because he was helping a friend move.  So, he said, “Well how about now.”  I told him it would take him about 10 minutes, and so he said he would meet him there.  He will not be able to help but just observe.  Don’t even know why he is going.  Well, a son showed up and the farmer drove the “little” truck (holds a lot less than John’s) and so they took out about 10 bales per trip and John can carry more than twice that amount.  They had to drive .5 mile down to load it into the barn.  John just got back home at 10:00 a.m.  Our nicely cleaned out pickup (yesterday – for moving stuff this afternoon) needed to be cleaned out again.  There was a light rain for most of the morning.  You have heard the phrase “Wait for rain to make hay.”  No, I guess not.

Rascal is STILL in bed. He must have had a hard day yesterday.  The temp is 53 out and the heater is running in the house, keeping it at 69.

Went and checked on Rascal and told him I was going to feed Woody.  I did and he joined me.  Woody’s food bowl was totally empty, but now is filled and he was eating when I left.  I didn’t see the yellow cats – now being called Little Sue and Big Sue.

Fixed some breakfast and took meds.

Now John’s out feeding our hungry horses.  They whinnied at me when I went out to feed Woody.

Yummy, John made us a basic grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, and I ate yellow and red cherry tomatoes with mine.  We just got off the phone with his older brother in San Jose’, CA, whose birthday is today.  He’s 11 years older than John.  Now John’s in the backyard taking out the roots of an old Nanking cherry tree and talking with Woody.  They visit a lot that way, and it helps in the taming-of-the-wild-one process.  We hope.

In the afternoon, John’s help with moving apartment furnishing things went all right (with a few glitches), such as being stopped by a cop for driving with the back end loaded and the tailgate down, so the license plate was not visible.  A co-mover stopped somewhat out in front to wait as John didn’t know where they were going.  Her back right taillight was out.  John talked him out of even talking to her by telling the officer what they were doing and that “we have enough trouble” with the move; we don’t need more.

My bluegrass jam session was a lot of fun, and ran later than planned.

We will go back next month, and in fact, we have been invited to participate in the Hunter’s Breakfast, a fundraiser for the local field & stream club.  We get a free breakfast from our participation jamming for 3 hours.  Breakfast will be pancakes with ham and eggs, homemade apple butter, piping hot coffee and fresh orange juice.  It’s being held at the Swauk Teanaway Grange east of Cle Elum, and about a half hour from our house.  Did you see the story of the Department of Justice holding meetings and paying $16 for each muffin.  Must be a damn fine muffin.  This whole Hunter’s breakfast is offered for $7 – no muffins, though.  It does include coffee while the DOJ paid $8.24 per cup for their guests.

http://news.yahoo.com/16-muffins-8-coffee-served-justice-audit-023623142.html

On the way home, I called John and he said to go by Bi-Mart to pick up a dehydrator they had for us.  He tried earlier in the day and none was on the shelf.  It is a $29.99 cost for a much higher valued product, a Nesco dehydrator with a Jerky Gun included.  John found that on the web, he could order the same without the Jerky gun, for a total of over $40.  This seems to be a good year for fruit – apples, plums, pears (more below) – so rather than rely on friends for the service. we will try it ourselves.

Monday.  Nancy got Montezuma’s revenge again.  ?? from what? maybe bacteria on tomatoes ?  I had some little yellow ones that John did not have.  However, I washed them, but had them last night, and for yesterday’s lunch.

This is getting to be a pain.  I don’t feel like eating lunch, nor going to exercise class.  John has been really busy all morning mowing the backyard, moving the root-clump of the Nanking cherry tree from the backyard, carting off logs from the back woods beyond the backyard fence, moving a 20-30 pound rock – practicing for another WTA trip, I guess.

I took care of a lot of emails, planning for the upcoming scholarship luncheon at the University and our contribution (will be a salad and 2 desserts, for 12 people), and getting the information for a CWU sticker for my car that allows me to park closer to the building because I’m still limited in my walking distance while carrying things.  I did get some envelopes for sorting tax receipts so I suppose I should get to work on that.  Also washed a load of clothes this morning, so all was not lost.  I did spend the couple hours while John napped, putting tax receipts into large 9 x 12″ envelopes for further sorting before I can enter them into my computer EXCEL sheet.  I just bought 25 in a package Saturday.  Very strange today, when I took out 12 for the months of the year, and counted the remaining envelopes in the package, there had only been a total of 22.  I called Bi-Mart to ask if I should complain to the company (Mead), and they said no, they would just open a package, and give me 3, and would leave them at the pickup desk for me to get tomorrow afternoon.  Now is that good business practice or what ! ??  This is the same place that sells a complete Corona hand saw and, nearby, a replacement blade that is meant for a different handle.  Uff da.

Tuesday.  Been cleaning dishes this morning, and John did outside chores, moving around trees, rock, manure, filled the hole in the backyard where the cherry tree was removed, visited with the cats, and then loaded the pickup with gravel and took it to our friend to repair holes in driveway.  I’m now getting ready to go for my afternoon massage and to pick up meds.

I’m going back to town to play music at a nursing home, with The Connections.

One other fiddler and I were the only musical instruments there tonight.  There were 3 singers.  Really a small group, but we did our best.  The other fiddler played base chords, and I played the melody on the old church anthem favorites.  I remember a few we played:  Fairest Lord Jesus, The Old Rugged Cross, Just As I Am, Amazing Grace, and In the Garden.  I just got out and found a bunch more gospels on the web.  I copied the words, so we can try them one of these days.  We have requests for gospel songs from the residents of the nursing and retirement homes we attend.

John fixed chicken and squash (our own home grown), fried onions, and I added tomatoes.

Wednesday.  Started with things around the house, and then I went to town to play music at the food bank, and eat.  We had a nice turn-out with 4 of us musicians.  The food was probably the healthiest lunch any of us have had in awhile.  Was zucchini fritters (squash, onions, garlic, cheese, egg), cooked on a grill.  With it was a cucumber (I don’t like, so they pulled them out), onion, tomato salad, and watermelon for dessert (I still cannot stomach that).  I came home and had an apple fritter (shared with John).  Because of my morning Vascular Ultrasound in Yakima tomorrow, I was unable to eat anything for supper but liquids, and Jell-0 did not seem appealing, nor was it made.

Thursday.  Medical day for me and for Brittany. Annie.  We had to be in Yakima this morning at 8:45 for me to have a Vascular Ultrasound.  My cardiologist requested it because my blood tests recently have shown kidney dysfunction. (I don’t know yet what that means.).  So this is to test to be sure I don’t have any disease in my kidneys and also to be sure my veins are working properly from my heart to my organs.

Came home and had to turn around and get our Annie dog to the vet at 1:15..  She’s the one who had puppies last year, and this year had mammary tumors and had to be spayed.  She was doing fine, but we noticed a swelling around her mammary gland where they took out the tumor, and last night it turned red.  Before we left for town, I gave her 500 mg of Amoxicillin from our stash.  She is scheduled for surgery on this coming Monday.  They need to open it back up to see what’s going on in the soft tissue.

As soon as we were done there, John dropped me off at Hearthstone to play music with “my group”.  Then he took Annie home and came back to pick me up.  Off to the grocery and bank and finally back home very late.  He has been making a tart cherry pie for me to take to the Scholarship Luncheon tomorrow.  And, he has made a peach cobbler to take too.  He needs to get packed and his lunch made so he can get out of here at 5:45 a.m. to get to a WTA work site near Index, west of Stephen’s Pass. WTA lists this work party on the Lake Serene trail.  It is 3.6 miles to the Lake with a 3,000 foot rise – explained by the “towering and formidable Mount Index.

http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/lake-serene

On the small Google map you can hit the minus sign and zoom out.  A wide view will show the nearby cities of Puget Sound and Ellensburg too – at the right scale. Click on a few of the thumbnail photos in the first few trip reports provided at the bottom of this WTA page.  On the 2^nd page of reports the one for Aug. 13, by Kelbell is worth a click.

Friday.  John left at 5:55 and I got up to work on the chilled salad I have planned.

As I was working in the kitchen I saw Annie licking vigorously at her incision.  I checked and found Annie’s swelled tissue broke and released much fluid, mostly pus.  I put towels beneath her and she cleaned and cleaned for 1. 5 hrs.  It looks pretty good, considering.  Perhaps it was a reaction to a suture, and they won’t have to search for more tumor they missed.  I can always hope.

I returned to making my salad: (Lettuce, peas, red onions, sour cream/mayo, topped with Parmesan cheese.  A friend brought a hot  casserole with stuff from her garden, and I carried about 60 yellow bite-size tomatoes I got from my friend in Thorp.    It was a great meal for 10 people, but we had enough leftovers to bring home for John. Only a tiny amount of pie and also peach cobbler remained.

On John’s return trip, he stopped east of Leavenworth at a roadside stand. He brought home several LARGE specimens of different varieties  of apples — Honeycrisp is new and large and pretty: http://www.groworganic.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/f/t/ft043-d.jpg

Another great find was a scarlet hued pear – see the info here, especially the 4^th paragraph about trying to tell if they are ripe.

http://www.oregonlive.com/foodday/index.ssf/2009/09/select_starkrimson_pears_by_th.html

The lady at the fruit stand explained this “bright red is mush” thing to John, found one to show him and then tossed it.

He also brought a few Bartlett pears, yellow plums, red plums as equally colorful on the inside as out, and a box of nice looking peaches.  He often stopped at a different (nearby) grower’s stand but they have been disrupted by this:

Use Google Earth, and go to 47.558932, -120.592671

[Cut, paste, and zoom in just a little.]  The current image is dated 6/30/2006, but note the yellow lines!  In 2006 this was planned highway relocation to remove the dangerous intersection in the lower right.  That has now been completed and all the fruit trees south of the new interchange have been reconstituted as a rock and gravel surface.  This orchard produced many types of apples, including Romes.  No Romes now.  Progress!

http://www.nyapplecountry.com/images/photosvarieties/redrome04.jpg

Saturday.  I guess when he comes in from morning chores around the place (moving gravel), we will be busy putting the fruit up, freezing some, and trying our new dehydrator (turns out we never got to that, so maybe tomorrow).

This morning started with a surprise.  We had left food and water for the outside cats, and decided all were doing fine, except Woody was missing (till later).  So we sat down for toast and coffee.  A large strange noise came form the living room where the doggie door is set in a window.  Rascal brought in a Stellar’s Jay (big as him almost), through the doggie door window.  John went and picked up a dazed, but alive bird, took it outside to the backyard, and when he went to throw it over the fence, it flew to a nearby tree (without its one feather that was dislodged).

http://sdakotabirds.com/species_photos/photos/stellers_jay_1.jpg

Cat report:  “Woody”, and his sibling (Little Sue, a yellow cat) has joined him plus Big Sue (another yellow cat), who we figure is Sunshine’s mother, and the mom of these two kitties born under a quail brush pile next to our barn.  John had seen them when they were VERY young.

Neither of the 3 outside cats are tame yet, but they are eating out of a dog house (protects the food from the rain), and drinking water from a Pyrex dish.  They live in the wood pile.  Rascal is very good about trying to tame them.  He can play and eat and walk beside them, but we cannot yet.  He still comes and goes out the doggie door.

That’s about it from here, this week.  We have a light weekend, so hopefully this will get put out tonight (Saturday).  This week, had I not been retired, I would have had to begin teaching my three classes.  Thank goodness, I didn’t have to work that into my schedule this week.  I don’t know how I would have had the time.  I still don’t know how I taught full-time all those years and still had a life.

Nancy and John

on the Naneum Fan

Well, here it is Monday night, and I have my computer laptop back all cleaned up of the virus that blasted the .ini file to keep me from doing anything at all.  We didn’t pick it up until almost 5:30 p.m.  Charge to reconstruct it to run was $178.  They had to reload the operating system, and back up and clean up the hard drive.

Sunday was pretty interesting, but I stayed home, and John went again to work on the Gold Creek Trail.  He had to walk in 2 miles to the site, and then had to work in the sun all day, and then walk out the 2 miles.  He did that two days in a row, and finally today he is feeling the sore muscles.  The reason they were working in bright sun and not under the shade of trees, was that there was an avalanche (2007) that took out all the trees and the trail, while downstream damage (high water flow) restricted access to the slide area.

See this but imagine much larger trees and ½ mile wide:

http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1990/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1990-33179.jpg

This is in a wilderness area so the work, even on the large trees, has to be done with crosscut saws.  Here is what it looks like:

http://www.crystallake.name/twork/25jun07/cs7.jpg

On the lower part of the trail two bridges were needed.  One was like this, but smaller:

http://www.sahale.com/Baker%20Timber-single%20log%20with%20rail.jpg

Another was made with three side-by-side flat-topped logs about 12 feet long – like this:

http://images.travelpod.co.uk/users/foothills_bears/2.1250064640.celine-crossing-a-log-bridge.jpg

Other parts of the trail were repaired over several summers. Meanwhile, with the area freshly cleared of vegetation and open to the sun, pioneer species (colonizers) of small shrubs, along with Salmonberry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmonberry

and Devil’s Club (note photos 3 and 4):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_club

. . . filled the area and the “less than a trail”- foot path hikers were using to get across the slide.  This year, with the big issues taken care of, the WTA volunteers concentrated on cleaning out the brush with loppers, small saws, weed whips, grub hoes, and McLeods (last 2 shown here):

http://www.americantrails.org/resources/info/tools5.html

[End of trail part]

Monday.  We decided to go ahead of time to Cle Elum for my 3:00 appointment for Acupuncture, at the office there because no times were available this week in EBRG, and I needed to get in this week.

We had some coupons from Burger King and decided to use them. We ended up getting a Jr. Whopper and a Whopper, fries and drink.  Sat out in the car in the shade of the building to eat.  With the windows down and a breeze blowing through, it was not unbearable.

Went to the Cle Elum office for my first Acupuncture.  In the Ellensburg office, I had previously met the person who would give me the treatment, when I was in for my first massage therapy.  We had to climb up many steep stairs with good railings to get to the office.  I made it, thank goodness.  Absolutely, could not have last year.  They had an elevator in the back of the building, but when we decided to use it to leave, it would not go down.  It would close the door, I’d press 1 (we were on 2), and it would open the door again.  After 3 times, we walked down the stairs.

John sat outside the office and read a book.  My appt. lasted for 1.5 hrs.  We didn’t know how I would be, so he was my driver.  Cle Elum is 30 miles from Ellensburg.  They started with reviewing my medical history, meds I’m on, procedures I have had done, and what artificial things are in my body.  For example, because my ICD has an integrated pacemaker, they cannot use electrical stimulation.  Then the first assessment was done by feeling my pulse in both wrists.  Finally I got up on the table, and was on my stomach, with a head rest, and two protective cushions under my chest and left arm.  The middle one was to protect me from leaning on my ICD, which sort of sticks out.  Needles were inserted (I don’t know the total and have to ask next time, and request a picture with my camera).  They use a straw to guide them in, (I’m sure that I’m not using the correct terminology).  It is a very small needle and it doesn’t go in very far.  There was no blood.  I think I only felt 3 of them.  There was also a lot of massage involved, and there was a heat lamp.  Except for one maneuver under my left arm pit, to access the rotator cuff muscles that are troubling me most of all, there was no pain.  He warned me that it would be painful and I would hate him.  And, that it might bruise.  It did hurt, I did bruise, but I didn’t hate him.  I figured it is something that had to be done to reach the tense/tight/scar-tissue damaged muscles.

Came home all right, and I took off for my neighbor’s house 1.5 miles around the corner.  She is the one who cuts my hair and has since 1988.  She no longer has a shop in town, having closed it when she got breast cancer, but now cuts hair of some old clients, in her home.  I was delivering a small box of the last of the plums off our tree.  Well, on my way there, about a mile into the trip, a doe deer jumped from the bushes into my car (our newer white 2009 Subaru).  It hit along the front fender and front part of the light assembly.  It did not deploy my air bag, and it didn’t veer me off the road.  I slowed down to be sure the deer got up and walked off.   Then I continued on to my friend’s house and got out to look at the damage.  There was nothing bent into the tire, and the light was not broken.

Tuesday.  Getting ready and showering, etc., to go to the doctor’s in Yakima.  We did feed the kitties before leaving.  Only two were there this morning but tonight all 3 are.  They ate all the food and drank all the water, so John replaced it again tonight.  Yellow kitty (Sue/Sioux) is more skittish than Woody (new name for Bronco).  Now Woody is coming into the backyard and playing with Rascal, and Rascal also joins the two of them outside the fence and in the wood pile.

Today was my trip to my cardiologist in Yakima.  He was late getting to my 11:00 appt, but his assistant took care of giving me a chest X-ray, and an EKG.  At first I was worried that something had shown up on my Echocardiogram to prompt him to request them.  I mentioned that to the assistant, Jolene (made me think of the song), who said–oh no, this is normal.  We do this once a year for all patients.

He came in about an hour late, but spent an hour plus with us. He is so thorough and explains everything about all the tests, and about what my heart and other organs are showing.  My heart showed improvement on many counts.  He was happy.  My kidneys show a questionable condition, but he has ordered some tests to check that out.  My liver is in good shape and not being compromised by the meds I’m taking.

I asked him about switching off the Coumadin for a newer drug, which didn’t require blood tests every few weeks.  He said I was not a candidate, and talked about the “agent” in the med, and that he has used it on some of his patients, but he wouldn’t want to try me on it.  Information here:

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=127184342076&topic=18562

My source about this has A-fib but not the internal hardware and other issues I have.  He switched last spring and is happy with the new drug.

My hemoglobin was really high (above 14) and that is good.  Last August, when I collapsed, it was way down to 7.5 and they had to give me several units of blood.

Also, my Doctor is an EKG guru and one look at the charts suggested to him that my heart might do better (producing a normal rhythm) . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinus_rhythm

. . . if my pacer base was set lower so my heart could function more naturally.   He had the device check lady re-program my device, not to start pacing till I drop to 50 beats / minute.  It was set for kicking in at 60, but he noticed my heart had some sinus rhythm in the mid-50 range but was being interrupted by the pacer.  He says I will be better off with my heart doing its own thing – all else being within bounds.  We’ll see if this works.

So, it was a long day at the doctor’s but pretty much with good results.  We followed the exam with lunch (meeting local friends) at the near-by hospital’s cafeteria.  I was the only one with a certain salad and the only one that got an intestinal upset.  Oops! Took until Thursday to shake that.  More below.

Wednesday.  We went to EBRG for Nancy to play music and we both ate at the food bank.  On arrival we were greeted with the aroma of a covered barrel grill (real wood) smoking away outside cooking pork.  With the well blackened ribs they had corn-on-the-cob, beans (a couple of different types in a bbq sauce), a squash casserole and watermelon.  Wow! This was the best meal I have had there.  John and I had taken some yellow delicious apples and yellow summer squash to one of the people playing with me.  Afterwards, we took the Subaru to the repair shop for an estimate on the front end/side damage.  He looked at it, took pictures, and we left to come back later for the details because he had to write the estimate, send it to Safeco (Insurance company), to get it approved.  Meanwhile, John took me and my fiddle and himself and a book to the Sr. Center.  I exercised.  He read.  It was cool inside.

We  went back and got the news on the estimate.  They will have to replace the right-front headlight assembly, and the right fender, but because of the “pearl” of the “tricoat” paint job (it’s only white!), there are three coats to cover the fender and, also, to blend in the “look” with all adjacent parts.

http://www.tomorrowstechnician.com/Article/48555/bodyworks_the_dos_and_donts_of_refinishing_pearl_tricoats.aspx

Yikes.  The total time to do this is 20 hrs, and so we have to leave it all week.  The parts cost is $550. And the total cost will be $2135.21, of which we pay $100.

Thursday.  Craziness continues.  John left at 6:05 for Pancake Inn at Snoqualmie Summit and breakfast with the old trail crew leaders and assistants, and I went back to bed.  I had been sick with Montezuma’s revenge since late yesterday afternoon, and all through the night, every 1.5 hours.  Finally, I’m better this morning, and will go for my music venue this afternoon.

Have no idea where I picked up the bug, but it might have been bacteria on a lettuce, walnut, with grated pepper jack cheese salad I had after my cardiologist’s Tuesday’s appt.  We ate in the Memorial Hospital Cafeteria, which one would think would be more cleanly than other places.  I didn’t have anything different from John for other meals, so it almost had to be that.

Helicopters are flying again, so there must be a fire in the nearby hills or canyons. We are 5.5 miles NE of their base.

Other news last night–another kitty (older yellow one) has appeared at the feeding station out back.  We think it is probably the mother of the two kittens and also of our lost Sunshine.  So now we go from zero to 4.  Yikes.  We need to get the older one tamed so we can keep her from having yet another litter, with yet another vet expense.  And there are the younger two who also will need “fixed” and their shots.  Amazing the cost of veterinary care– just the basics.

Musically, today was a small participant day, as there were only two fiddles (and only me when the other played his mandolin).  We had one guitar, one banjo, one clarinet, and a singer, but we had a VERY appreciative group and that really helps.  Two got up and danced.  Cool.  The one out in front of us, leading the pack, was the gal who was the Geography Dept. Secretary for 27 years and much of my time there at CWU.  She is a delightful friend, and now resides in the assisted living home.

I have an appt. for a Renal Vascular Ultrasound to check my kidney functions.  Of all the recent tests, this is the only thing to show up questionable and requiring further research.  It is not a test I can have in the hospital in EBRG.  I can have two others I have to have every year, as a precaution (Pulmonary test in a chamber and a Holter Heart Monitor put on for 24 hours).  While I was there they did that adjustment on my ICD to change the pacemaker’s takeover and also ran the check normally done every 3 months.  I would have been due in Oct., but now not till 3 months out.  Sadly, I have to travel to Yakima for those readings and appts.

John has been gone working on wilderness trails for 2 days each of the past weekends, and today (Thurs.) he went up for a day, leaving at 6:05 and had breakfast with other “old timers” at the Pancake House at Snoqualmie Pass.  He had a waffle.  On the trip home, he got slowed to 2mph about 4:00 on the Interstate for construction, and called me from his cell phone, saying he didn’t know when he would arrive home.  He finally arrived home at 5:40 after being detained for 45 minutes.  The crew leader already made it home to Seattle, and sent out an email report on today’s work, which arrived while John was still on the road home.

Guess we both are tired and ready to go to bed earlier than usual, after dessert.

Friday.  This is an easy day for me.  I decided against going to town till tonight for our jam session potluck.  I will get plenty of exercise and a lot of good food.  We took Chicken Alfredo with cashews added; the person hosting the event cooked one of his large Rainbow trout (with salmon-colored meat) that his wife caught on a fishing trip they made on the Columbia River this summer.

I’ve been doing chores, just finished dishes, and have been working on emails, and notes to sick people (my cousin in Atlanta), and a friend in Illinois.  There is always something.

John is staying home today, as this weekend’s weather is predicted to be rainy, and he does not wish to work in the rain.  Yesterday, they got rained on and his shirts got wet.  He had a rain jacket along but spread it out over his backpack, to protect it.  The coat did its job and he rolled it inside-out and stuffed it into the backpack for the return hike. [They get wet from the work –perspiration- so a little sprinkle is of no consequence.]

I really had trouble yesterday and this morning, not being able to get speed on the Internet through any portal.  It finally cleared up and I could access things on line (after several hours).

John currently is outside fixing up the “wood pile” vicinity for the cats.  He is taking over a dog house with a nice roof, to put their food and water in to protect them form the elements.  He will have to figure out something to put over the wood pile to keep it dry beneath, where they are living.  He also is nailing together the “cable table” (previously used for telephone wire) as it is deteriorating.  It’s part of the stuff next to the fence and little shed (inside the backyard), on which the cats go back and forth to the fenced yard.

I need to go out and see how he is doing.  Just did.  Wow—he cut out brush and grass near the fence, so now we can see the kitties and their feeding and play area near the wood pile.  John also moved the cable table over further, and cut out a Nanking Cherry tree that was interrupting the backyard area.  He has various wooden pathways for the kittens with boards and pallets propped up so they can move across the fence where he’s been feeding them, behind the hay shed and near the wood pile.  The dog house was the one we used for the last litter of Brittany puppies.

When I went out to admire John’s work, Woody came out from under the wood pile and over to the new water bowl and feed bowl in front of the dog house.  He even explored the dog house with the straw inside.  Rascal was chasing bugs on this side of the fence in the backyard while all this was going on.  I stayed there watching and John went into the house.  Woody continued and so did Rascal.  Rascal was investigating the new set up with the table and the access to his “ladder” up to the top of the hay shed (where he sleeps in the day, when not in the house).  Meanwhile, Woody went up the pallet that is slanted on end, to the top of the fence post nest to the ladder, and then he stepped up on the ladder!  I have never seen him there, but Rascal goes there a lot.

Shortly, Rascal found his way to the fence post and went down the pallet to check out the new dog house and new feeding bowls.  Then Woody joined him.  They both had a drink and both explored the dog house, so, we think this will be successful.  Now with the brush down, we can look out the doggie door window and see most everything.

Wind is howling again at 10:00 p.m.   We are back and ready to hit the hay.  Attended the jam session potluck tonight and filled up with a lot of good food.  We had the huge trout, alfredo, plus beans, garlic bread, congealed fruit salad with whipped cream, watermelon (none for me), and strawberry cream cheese Bundt cake.  It was all very yummy.  Came home and found Rascal had put himself to bed on our bed.  John went out and added food and water for the outside kitties.  Woody was up on the top of a leaning wood ramp John built for them.  He let John walk right by him, stop and talk, and refill the water and food.  This time a few days ago he would have run and hidden beneath the wood pile.  So, we have progress.  Woody is a mackerel tabby just as Rascal, but with long hair, and no white bib or white feet as Rascal has.  Rascal is a short-haired cat.

Saturday.  We slept in, including Rascal.  It was cold outside, below 50.  So much for ripening tomatoes.  John has been out taking care of cleaning out the old pickup and fixing the back shattered window (broken by a vagrant piece of firewood), and getting the old truck ready to load some recyclable paper and magazines in to take to the shop near the airport tomorrow that is near where he is going to help a friend move stuff from his storage locker to his new rental house.  Today, John is staying home to do various chores, and I’m going to town to play music at a retirement community, where individuals have their own apartments in a complex.  This is the place that feeds us when we are done.  Today’s meal was a winner.  We had make-your-own tacos, with cooked hamburger seasoned with taco seasoning, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, & guacamole.  There was cut cantaloupe and blackberries, raspberries, and blue berries, and several types of desserts:  chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and nuts, carrot cake, cookies, and brownies (the latter two homemade).

We played and the group sang along with us for slightly over an hour.  It was really nice.  I stopped at two yard sales (in the rain) on the way to play, and got a huge metal bowl for using to mix bread dough or put salad in for a large group.  Paid 50 cents.  Also at another one, I got a very nice hand knitted colorful hat with a brim for another 50 cents.  Went to the grocery store for kitten food and chocolate milk for my meds, to Bi-Mart for some large envelopes to store tax receipts (by month) in.

So, it was a productive trip to town.

Now, I’m giving this to John to put on the blog this week.

Oh, first I have to make a web page you can get to, to see a photograph of  the dragonfly John took a couple of days ago — evening, on an apple tree, using flash:

http://www.elixant.com/~nancyh/BlueDragonfly.html

Nancy and John

still on the Naneum Fan

Posted last week’s blog early so we could attend a great birthday party with friends in Maple Valley, WA, a 50^th party for the daughter of friends we have known through the Brittany connection (shows and field trials) since 1974.  We first met Chris (birthday gal) at field trials when she was just a teenager.  Now we have watched her children grow up.

John picked as many blackberries as he could, but the thorns were bad and it was hard to get to, even though he had a ladder to put over the plants.  He picked for over an hour and only managed to get one flat box full.  We weighed them this morning, and have 6 lbs, 10 ounces.  He had hoped for 3 times as much.

We did enjoy the party and seeing people we knew from the past, and meeting some new ones (friends of theirs); all their grandkids were there with their boyfriends, so that was nice, and some of the siblings of the gal celebrating her 50th, whom we also knew as they grew up.

We stopped for lunch in North Bend (Burger King) because the invitation said only snacks and cake for the party.  WRONG–there was enough food for 100 people and only about 35 there.  They had BBQ (pulled pork and pulled chicken), nice rolls, a couple of salads (Potato and Chinese Cole Slaw), fruit, and then a table with a chocolate fountain on it. (I have never seen one before).  Like this:

http://www.leileiscuisine.com/images/MontezumaFount-MC-purple202.jpg

Lots of pieces of things to put in the chocolate, including:  Bananas, pears, apples, blueberries, large strawberries, blackberries, cookies of small shapes, rice crispie squares, and probably more that I have forgotten.  I should have had John take a picture of the tables of food.  Wow.

We visited till after 5:00 and drove home getting here before it was dark, so John could feed the horses in the light. Good driving across the pass; no construction to deal with!! And 10 degree cooler temps with a nice breeze at their place.  Very cool.  On the home trip, I had a cell phone conversation with a former colleague who moved to Maryland, and she was in the rain of hurricane Irene.  We had a nice visit and I never lost reception on the pass as John drove.

Sunday.  We got up early (John did) and played with Rascal and let me sleep another hour.  Then we went to pick up Annie. When we pulled in their “yard” parking lot, there was a gal walking a Brittany, and John said, “Look there’s a Brittany.”  I said, “That’s Annie!”  So we called to the handler and she brought Annie over.  Wow, was she happy to see us.  The gal said every time she took her out to potty, she thought she was getting to go home.  It’s been a long time since we took her in Wed. morning, so I’m sure she was convinced we had abandoned her.  She didn’t know I was calling in every day to see how she was doing.

We got her home, and she went potty a lot.  I wonder if she had gone the whole time?  Also, she wanted to be petted and comforted (from my recliner).  Rascal realized something was different and came over and sniffed her but did not bat her as he had been doing.  Then he crawled up into my right hand and purred, while I kept petting her with my left hand.

John took the others for a run (and he fed the horses).  She laid down once on the sofa, but decided to go to her secure spot under the guest bed.  She slept there for a long time.  I imagine she did not sleep well during her time at the vet.  She is used to her comfy “love seat” sofa, or under the bed.

We left her about 2:00 after John put up blackberries (we ended up with 6 pounds, 10 ounces), and he picked plums (from our tree).  We went to Yakima to visit our friend (with Annie’s puppy), who was in Yakima Memorial Hospital, having had a bad kidney removed Friday.  He and his wife had come a couple times to visit me while I was in two different hospitals there, and I certainly wanted to return the favor.  It meant so much to me.  He even came up to Ellensburg, with the older Brittany he had from us to see me in the Rehab center, the beginning of 2010.  He brought her right into the room, and she jumped up to the chair beside my bed, laid down and let me pet her.  What a sweetie.  That was when I couldn’t get in and out of bed yet.  That Brittany was born in 1998, and she died a few months after Milly came into their house.  So, the timing was good that they had Milly, and now that Annie cannot have any more puppies, I’m so glad they have her.  We had a nice long visit and also we first went to Costco for 1/2 tank of gasoline, and bought some sale stuff too, that we missed last time there.

John just left to do the horse feeding without taking any of the dogs.  We do not want Annie getting her underside dirty in the irrigation ditch.

Kitty Rascal ventured out the doggie door window, tonight.  Previously, he had been out the back patio door only briefly.  He is an affectionate kitty.  He slept the whole time we were gone to Yakima, and when John sat down to have a Pepsi, he walked over (John called him) and he got in his lap.  However, now he is in the backyard and wants nothing to do with coming to John.  I went out and couldn’t find him anywhere.

John found a board that had been propped against the fence, and tilted, which apparently knocked kitty over the fence into the wood pile.  John found him outside the fence in the wood pile.  He ran from John into the hay barn and climbed to the top, but then John turned around and there was a scruffy brown kitty also coming out from the wood pile.  John didn’t see the orange kitty that had been with the other a few days ago.

When Rascal returned he missed seeing the other cat leave and rush to the woods.  Then John had to capture Rascal who didn’t want to be caught.  He knew there was that other cat around.

Well.. We’ll see what happens in the future.  Not a good sign.  We are scheduled to take him to the vet for a neutering (costly) and the rest of his shots, plus rabies on Tuesday.  Actually the shots cost as much as the neuter.  Whole bill: $99.  Oh well, it’s just money, right ?

Monday.  Never left home today, but did lots of house and yard chores, with lower temps and higher winds.

Tuesday.  Started early with taking Rascal for his vet work (Neuter & shots), and Annie for a checkup of her incision.  On to the grocery store afterwards and home.  I’m going for a haircut at my neighbor’s this morning.  Was going to go to town afterwards to get my driver’s license renewed and a picture of the “new me,” but I called and the agent said, “Don’t come today.  This is the worst day of the week.”  Wonder why that is; and she said, “Come tomorrow.”  I found out they are not open Mondays, so that’s why Tuesday is a bad day.  Later this afternoon we pick up Rascal.  Wind is howling still.  We successfully got Rascal, and he was lethargic until bedtime, when he decided to romp and play and demand attention.  Prior to that he was sleeping in my lap wanting cuddled.  I couldn’t even enter my tax receipts because he was in the way of where I prop them to enter, and then move to my envelope on the “right.”

Wednesday.  Morning came early and Rascal wanted fed again and to harass us both.  He jumped on piles of clothes in the guest bedroom, dumping them to the floor, and in our bedroom, doing the same.  Guess he’s back to his old “Rascal” self.  Today it is much cooler again, so that is very nice.  I played music at the Food Bank Soup Kitchen, but at the end of the month, there were over 50 people there and not enough food to go around.  Wasn’t all offerings left for us when we got through playing music.  From our garden, I took yellow squash to four families.  Went to my exercise class, and then for the Driver’s License renewal.  It went very smoothly.  I was in and out in less than 10 minutes; rather amazing.

 

Thursday, September 1, 2011, Happy Birthday to Nancy!  Thanks for all the cards and wishes I’ve received.  This afternoon I went off to play music at a nursing home.  My group started with an instrumental Happy Birthday song, and then ended singing it with some of the residents.  Pretty cool.  The nursing home had a plate of special cookies for all of us, in honor of my birthday.  Rest of the day/night was quiet.

Friday.  Up early for John to take off for the hills.  He joined a WTA work party (trails) at Old Wagon Road Trail for the day.

http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/franklin-falls

He hasn’t been able to participate since I got sick the summer of 2009.  I know he has missed it, so I’m very happy he could participate today.

I went in for my first therapeutic massage.  It went well.  My shoulder and back and neck muscles were very tight.  He worked on me an hour.  His suggestion / recommendation at the end was to consider alternating with acupuncture, which would help free up the muscles.  My insurance will cover 8 sessions, and so I decided to go with it.  Next week, however, I will go again to him for a massage.  They couldn’t work me in till the following week for the acupuncture.  I called my family physician to be sure with my Coumadin and situation that I can expose myself to acupuncture.  He said, “No problem, but be aware you may have some bruises.”  I also found some positive comments on the Internet from M.D.s that were not advertisements from natural health individuals.

On my way home, I stopped off at one yard sale.  There I bought some towels for a dime each, a fold-up small umbrella for a quarter, some washcloths for a nickel each, and a ladder (6 ft, wooden) for $5.  Then they gave me a loveseat-sized sofa that has two recliners side by side.  When John got home, we went back to town in the truck to get the sofa and ladder.  These folks were getting rid of their parents’ stuff, because they had moved into Hearthstone Cottages.  They wanted to clear out the house, and they thanked us for carting off the sofa.  Now we have to clean up the den, especially the table that is loaded again with stuff, so we can remove the current (worn out) loveseat and replace with this, using the back patio door as access.  That will be a lot easier than moving in through the front door and having to make a sharp corner.

When I left the house about 9:15 a.m., Rascal was nowhere in sight.  When I got home, he was sleeping in my chair.  I took my chair away from him, and he ended up on the loveseat.  He stayed there most of the time till John got home.  Then while John was standing near the living room, he saw Rascal come in through the doggie door window.  That was the first we knew of him coming back and not just going out.  He brought a moth in with him, and then left again, to sit on the “veranda” while we went to pick up the ladder and loveseat.

John had such a good time working trail today, he plans to return tomorrow and work another day.  Two volunteer days earns a full year’s Northwest Forest Pass.

Today is Saturday, and I’m a little sore from yesterday’s massage on my back, arms, shoulder, & neck.  Also I’m not used to reclining on a table (even though padded), on my stomach. They did put cushions under my legs, and beneath my shoulders, but it still was awkward from what I’m used to.  My head was face-down on a cushion, but I had to leave my eyes closed, and I didn’t like that.  Later, I turned over, (under a sheet the whole time), and he worked on my head/neck.  I would have liked to have had a pillow under my head, but that was not possible until later.  He moved my left shoulder back and around and put pressure against it, with my having to return the same move toward the resistance.  While on my back, there was a cushion roll under my knees.  Maybe some of you understand this, but it was my first ever professional massage, and the whole thing was a brand new experience I’ve managed 68 years without.

This morning at 7:00 a.m. John took off again for working on trails in the hills.  He enjoys that.  I was left to sort plums he picked last night, but I just picked out six good ones for us to eat, and arranged with my neighbor to come pick up the bucket (plastic from ice cream), full, to use for plum jelly, and also to put some in his mom’s dehydrator for us.  They had borrowed our aluminum one for a granddaughter to use, and we do not believe we ever got it back.  John thinks it was in poor shape when we loaned it, so maybe it died.

I need to pick up some receipts from the unsorted pile on the table and get them into an envelope.  Also, do some dishes, and wash some clothes.  Have to make some headway while John is off working.  The animals are resting, but Shay just went out the doggie door window, and started barking in the backyard.  That awoke Rascal, and I think he went outside too.  He’s probably chasing moths or bugs.  He is back inside on the loveseat, sharing it with Meghan.  He’s been out already this morning, but had come back in for a couple-hour nap.

John will be back in the afternoon, leaving there after 3:00 p.m. and will be back home before 5:00, hopefully.  Yesterday had VERY bad traffic on the I-90 corridor with people leaving the Puget Sound region for mountains, rivers, EBRG Rodeo and other places-east for the long weekend.  He was not happy.  What normally takes a little over an hour took 2, and he came to a stop several times, on a 2 to 3 lane Interstate.  No fun.

Our neighbor has come and gone; took the plums we had and brought a long handled picker and picked more.  He left it for John to use.  There are still a bushel of plums at least, on the tree, but all are not yet ripe.  This was a good year.  If we pick more, the family will dry some plums for us and for them in their dehydrator.  That’s nice.  John took 2 plums and 3 cookies for his lunch today, but dried ones will be nice through the winter.

New addition, Saturday at just before 3:00 p.m.  Good thing I was here.  Got a phone call that our Harobed load of hay was being picked up from the field and would be on its way to us shortly. The second method here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nwPlE1_SLc

I got out and took down the two gates (pole and cloth rope), to let the driver in.  Put two dogs out front to warn me when he was coming down the driveway, and so I went out and met him and told him where to stack it.  It was in a different place from last year.  Now when John arrives home, he will have yet another chore, to move it by truck to the barn – because our barn is not large enough for the loader.

John just called from the pass Franklin Falls parking lot, at 4:00 or a little after, saying it was loaded with people trying to get in and many (like him there early) blocked from getting out.  I hope he makes it before midnight.  Actually he got home about 5:35, and surprised me.  He’s been out the past hour plus, unloading some of the hay from the stack, into the shed.  He moved 13 of 56 bales (100+ pounds each).  He’ll finish in the morning.  The kitty came back in from under the wood pile outside the fence, so he has access (known only to him) to and from the backyard (6’ chain link fence).

Expect this blog will get finished and posted tonight, because we plan to drive to the lower Yakima Valley tomorrow to visit friends in Zillah.  From yard sales we have several “sun faces”

http://kathysceramickreations.com/images/albums/NewAlbum_c8d38/tn_sun_bird_feeder.jpg

to deliver to the folks that run Paradisos del Sol Winery:

http://www.paradisosdelsol.com/

Now for dessert – bye!

Nancy and John

on the Naneum Fan

Saturday night after we posted the blog, we had another patriotic dessert:  Red Raspberries, Blueberries and White Vanilla ice cream.  Yum yum.

Sunday.  Will be a very light day, we hope.  Nothing planned at all in town.  John did get some gasoline in the Subaru, however, so we won’t run out if we do decide to go somewhere.  I’m sure it will start out with John feeding the horses, and exercising the dogs.  Kitty and I will stay inside.  Good thing we did.  It is getting to be a scorcher today.  Imagine — it’s nice we don’t have any outside activities planned.  Just stay in the cool house and do chores inside.  Many need to be done.  High temp of 89 predicted today, and it is well on its way there at noon being 83.

Monday.  Was supposed to not be as hot today, but it got to 86, and then clouded over, and now is 76.  So, John went outside in the back to cut brush.   This morning we had to take our Annie (5 yr old Brittany) to the vet for a second opinion from my regular vet.  Annie has a mammary tumor.  The vet said it was best for her to spay her and remove the tumor, because the hormones from the ovaries would keep it going and she would likely have incurable cancer and die sooner than otherwise.  I’m so sad that this “ends” our breeding program started in the 1970s.  I’m in a pretty saddened, funky mood.  She’s the one who had puppies last year that we raised when I was so sick.  I’m glad we went ahead with having those puppies (from the accidental breeding).  The extra sad thing is that her brother, Cork, the one we just lost to heat stroke, was the only other place we could carry on our bloodlines.  Well, maybe not quite.  My friend in S. Lake Tahoe has Cork’s full brother, and so we might consider someone breeding their Brittany with him.  I think John is ready to be out of breeding, but I’m really not quite there yet.  Yes, we are getting older, but, when you have been in this as long as we have, it’s hard to give up easily.  At least that’s my story for now.  We take Annie in for her surgery this Wednesday.

Tuesday.  Morning during cool temps, John has been cutting brush.  Now he’s running the dogs and feeding the horses, plus giving the strawberry plants a dose of chemical to kill the little bugs that come out at night and punch holes in the berries.  Then we will be taking off for a trip to Costco.  We did and have returned now.  It was a good trip and we loaded up on a lot of things we will use for several months.  We had a nice lunch, and then bought out the store (spent over $300), but with rarely purchased items such as color cartridges for the printer, and a container of 100 CDs, and a Verizon long distance card with 700 minutes on it, and we just spent an hour of it talking to John’s sister in Cleveland.  They didn’t feel the earthquake.  I need to get on Fox News and read about it.  John was on looking but I haven’t yet.

Lunch was interesting, inexpensive and good.  We shared a Polish Sausage (I had about 4 bites), and we shared a Chicken Bake.  It was very interesting.  A wrap that must have been deep fried with chicken breast (lots of big pieces), and the roll was 12 inches long.  The chicken was in some cheese sauce, I guess, and there was cheese on the outside of the closed “roll wrap”.  I thought there were little pieces of ham, but John said that wasn’t listed on the menu.  I don’t know how to describe it.  But now I do, because I just found the recipe on line:

http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/512/Costco_Chicken_Bake42333.shtml

You can see there — these INGREDIENTS:

6 ounces pizza dough
4 ounces grilled, sliced and seasoned white chicken breast
1 ounce mozzarella-provolone blended shredded cheese
1/2 ounce cooked and chopped bacon
1/2 ounce chopped green onion
1 ounce Caesar dressing (per bake)
1/2 ounce Parmesan cheese
and the instructions for preparation are on that site.  They are BAKED truly as said and not deep-fried.  They have a LOT of calories, however.

We also got a 20 ounce refillable Pepsi with the Polish.  Also shared something called a Very Berry Sundae.  It is a large cup (I don’t know ounces), full of vanilla frozen yogurt and an incredible number of strawberries (in a sauce).  It only costs 1.65.  In fact that whole meal was under $7.00, and yesterday we had for the same price from Jack In The Box, a much LESS quality and quantity meal.  We had fries (small), a small coke, we split a spicy chicken sandwich (no bigger than a small hamburger roll), and John had two greasy Tacos (I cannot even stand to taste them).

Today, we brought home a pan of Chicken Alfredo that will last four meals for the two of us, and was marked down $3.00.  It was $14.74, I think, so $11.74 divided by 8 is not too bad, $1.47/ meal.  Surely couldn’t go out to eat for that!  And all we have to do is heat it.  John added cashews to the part he fixed tonight.

Wednesday.  Last night John encountered two kitties by the back woods where he was cleaning brush.  He took them food and water, and the food was gone this morning, so he replenished it.  It’s just in a cleaned out path behind our large shed.  He retrieved empty dishes and replaced with a bowl of food, but they haven’t yet found it. Perhaps they are out hunting and will return tonight to sleep and check out the food bowl.

Plans changed again, but John started the day by taking Annie to the Vets.  My noon meeting was canceled and so I decided I would skip today’s blood draw and exercise class, and do the blood draw tomorrow when I’m in town.  Meanwhile, I have worked on taxes.  Got a couple more months done and am starting on another.

We heard from the Vet at noon that Annie went through her operation fine, and it was good we did it, as she had a large, nasty tumor.  My vet and her assistant were pleased we made the choice we did.  Me too.  As several of our friends (many of you included) said, she will have several years more of quality time making us happy.

We are awaiting a phone call from a former student moving back to EBRG and needing help unloading his moving van into a storage locker.  The later the better.  It’s damned hot here.

Thursday.  We missed them last night, and this morning, but they got unloaded and we might join them tonight with pizza, beverages, and tomatoes.  We did run back to town tonight, buy a pizza add tomatoes (washed them) from my friend (just put them on a plate).  They are tiny Romas, and very very tasty.  Also threw in a box of Costco cookies (there were three different types: choc chip, snicker doodles, and white choc/nut chip cookies (my favorite).  We took beer, lemon lime, Pepsi, and my old standby, Crystal Light (lemonade).  It was a nice visit.

It started out cool this morning but got terribly hot by afternoon.   John put fly spray on all six horses, including the 3 new horses (we’ve now had for a year), and rasped all four feet of Jazz.  Jazz has two issues.  He won’t allow our regular farrier anywhere near him – must be the full Santa Claus beard.  Next, he “forges.”  When he walks there is a clicking sound as the same-side front and back feet touch.  Here is an explanation:

http://bwfa.net/93forging94_referred_to_as_clicking.html

With all the other things we’ve been doing John has neglected Jazz’s forging and other horse issues.  Once he starts working with a horse it is poor practice to stop until something positive is accomplished and the horse is “comfortable or happy” with the outcome.  Thus, one doesn’t start with a time deadline.  After everyone got some fly spray, John used a new (and very sharp rasp) to remove material from the front of the front feet of Jazz.  This web-photo illustrates the idea.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/horse%20rasp%20front%20feet/Parellihorses/feet/fredrf.jpg

and this – see the last picture — shows the activity:

http://knowyourhorse.org/2011/01/trimming-hooves/

Once you can get the horse to hold the position with a foot on a stand, then you can rasp off quite a bit, with the front a little flattened or “squared-off” (as in the first link) and than that foot will “break-over” more easily as the horse moves forward.  Try this, put your own hand flat on a table with palm down and fingers forward. Now tip your hand forward (pivot over the straight out fingers) until your knuckles (top) are laying on the table top. Now tuck your finger tips under your palm (make a fist) and again rock your hand forward.  It’s a lot easier to do without your fingers sticking out in front. It is much easier for the horse too, without the hoof sticking out in front.  John’s not doing anything extreme here – just helping the horse a little.  Jazz will stand “ground tied”

http://www.equisearch.com/uncategorized/tied-nothing/

for John while this work goes on.  Soon we’ll try a trained farrier without a beard, actually a female, and get the correct angles and shoes on this guy.  Now, back to our regular programming . . .

We won’t pick up Annie till Sunday morning.  I called today and she is doing well, and everyone likes her and is “loving up” on her.

John’s back at his computer, in the other end of the house.  I’m getting tired, no nap today, and it was a fairly busy day.  We played music and it was TOO DAMNED hot in the nursing home.  Even the residents were complaining, but they sang along and enjoyed themselves.

Went for a blood draw (my INR was a little low, so my dosage has been upped).

My friend in the music group went to a surplus sale at CWU (my old school) and bought a Dulcimer case for $5.  Incredibly it fits mine PERFECTLY.  And the case is hard, which is nice. I have been storing mine in a folding-chair holder (nylon), and I did buy a keyboard padded case for at a yard sale, but it still is soft.  This will protect it a lot better.  Also got a cute little doll for my fiddle teacher from Nampa, ID who collects dolls.  This is a pretty little girl with ‘Monday’ written across her shirt, big blue eyes, a nice white straw hat with purple flowers, and dressed nicely (total size about 8 inches).  I hope she likes it.

Friday.  Not much going on other than maybe checking out a garage sale on my way to or from the exercise class.  Just talked in person (phone) to my vet.  She said it was a hairy operation and she had another tumor on her ovary, so our decision was definitely the right one.   She said it might have been iffy if we had bred her.  Now she is doing all right, but still healing, and she has a hematoma that our Vet’s decided to check out next Tuesday, but not to do anything to for now.  She said it was messy in there and they had to “tie” off a bleeder.  Annie is doing fine and eating.

I just called to see how she was, and the receptionist said she thought she was fine but would check.  Dr. Thea came back on the phone to talk to me in person.

Other thing done this morning was taking a few photos of things around the house that I needed to send to various people.  I took a picture of the case that looks custom made for my Dulcimer.  Also took a picture of a painting John’s dad did of a slide I made in 1965 looking toward Helsingborg, Sweden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsingborg

I have a friend (Osa) who was born in Sweden and whom I met and had dinner with in Portland, and want to include it with a picture taken of her and me at the NCGE banquet. Also took pictures of 2 other paintings of Brittanys in our past:  FC Simons Ruff-Shod O’Dee, given to us by Ethel Moore (artist – Huston), and another of Lovely Wistful Lady (Wisty), our first Brittany we got in Iowa.  She had beautiful brown, wistful eyes.  John’s dad painted Wisty in front of a cascading stream from a picture he had taken in Cook Forest State Park near where the family lived.  Dad’s picture looked about like #13406 on this page:  http://www.kaltenbaughphoto.com/cookforest/page5.cfm

This isn’t a typical birddog portrait but from a person that really didn’t like dogs, it is special reminder of both father and dog – both now long gone.

On another topic:  Our friends’ cross-country tandem bicycle trip is nearing the end.  Their blog can be found at the following link:

http://web.me.com/kpcc2011/CCat140/Cross_Continent_2011.html

if you are interested.  The past week included Niagara Falls and the Erie Canal.  They will end their journey in Maine.  Hopefully, they are not impacted by the hurricane.  They are concerned about a son in Virginia Beach close to the water.  They will be visiting him before returning to Marysville, WA, and then to New Mexico.  We have enjoyed sharing the trip through their blog.

John’s going with me today to shop at the grocery, while I go to my exercise class.  He will pick up apple fritters for me.  This morning about 7:45 a.m. I got a call from the bakery that the fritters were of the quality I prefer and did I want a dozen.  Of course, please.  John was amazed and said I was probably the only person in the world to receive such custom service from a grocery store bakery.  I don’t mind being spoiled.  I’m sorta used to it, with all John has done for me.

We are headed to the “Wet Side” on Saturday for a birthday party and to pick blackberries on the property of our friends.  Actually, it is expected to be a nice day and the berries are “ready.”  Blackberries are classed as invasive weeds in the Puget Sound region and the patches are considered enter-at-your-own-risk entanglements – take flares, cell phones, and first aid kit.  It will be a long day with a 1.5-hour drive each way.  Sunday we have to be at the Vets at 10 AM to pick up Anne.

Therefore, we are posting on Friday evening – thinking it might be Monday before we get back to this wordsmithing thing.

So, that’s it.

Nancy and John

on the Naneum Fan

Sunday.  Today holds the treat of a potluck with our Trail Riding club, and while we haven’t ridden this year we will join them to eat and for fellowship, however.  The temps predicted have been revised downward.  Some wind is expected and if not too much will make for a nice day and also keep the bees away from the food.

Last night, we decided (after the blog was posted), to make the crust for our cherry delight dessert. That starts as a big cookie sheet of a runny mixture.  Well, it came out thinner on one side and corner than the opposite side.  John thinks he pushed it into the oven and the pan road up on the back of the rack.  It will have to be.  This morning brought great news from a friend in Atlanta that she and her beau will be getting married next July 2012.  Unfortunately, if I go to my mom’s family reunion in south GA next year, it will be on the weekend two weeks ahead, (June 22), and that is too long for me to be away or so I think right now.  John’s already picked raspberries this morning and now has just returned from running the dogs and feeding the horses but returned to the yard to move more of the brush he’s cut.

Well, just before leaving for the afternoon KVTR potluck, we finished putting together the dessert.  We took the lop-sided crust and divided it into three parts.  The really thin part John ate.  The rest ended up taking two pans (one rectangular and a small pie pan).  Yummy–everyone enjoyed it but there were a dozen pies and cobblers and so on, so there was some left.  We shared with another couple and so had some for later.

There were lots of wonderful fresh fruit desserts there, and grilled hotdogs, many salads, beans, and more salads, and quiche.  We didn’t eat as much as we could have, but surely enjoyed what we did.

The temperatures were lower than expected and the wind was blowing.  It was actually very pleasant underneath the shade of a shed on the property of one of the members, out northwest of Ellensburg.  While there, we bought 18 pounds of blueberries from a club member who raises them south of EBRG in the Yakima Canyon, and brought a few boxes along, in case anyone was interested.  Last year John drove to Naches (50 miles) and picked – started at 8 and quit at 11 when the heat became a bit much.  He had 24 pounds.  Got a pretty good price, but that place has changed hands, and no longer provides the same service for the good price.  Well, you can pick for $2.50 – 3.00/pound elsewhere.  The folks there had plastic buckets and the cost was $1/lb. up to heaping full which was charged as 10 pounds.  About 12 for the price of 10 pounds.  Not counting travel time and gas – just berries – cost us $0.84 per pound.  This purchase yesterday of beautiful already picked boxes of 6 pounds, at $3.00/ pound was a great savings on John’s time, efforts, and gasoline.  Except for 2 pounds, John has frozen the blueberries in 8 oz. packages.  Kitty is playing zoom zoom.  We were very tired and full from the potluck, so went to bed without supper, and earlier than usual.

Monday:  John worked some on brush cleanup in the yard and pasture.  He found another water hemlock plant near where he found the other, and so he dispensed with it.  I went to town for exercise class and to buy canned food for Rascal (Tuna & Egg is his favorite).  We were down to the last can today.  Came home to a bunch of emails, predominantly associated with the jobs list serve I maintain.  And we heard from a few others about safe travel home from their summer vacations.  Others are still at the beach having fun.  We are here in Ellensburg, in the wind, having fun.  The temps got to 75 today and tomorrow they are calling for 80.  The winds yesterday topped out at 41 mph gusts.  Today they are “only” 29 mph.  The house is still cool, so we won’t have to use the a/c. this afternoon and evening.  John, kitty, and dogs are napping.  I slept in this morning.

The other thing I forgot to write above is that I received a CD in the mail from a local radio station, and it came postage due for forty cents.  I’m taking it back to the p.o. tomorrow to complain.  It weighs 4 ounces and had 1.48 on it.  Guy at the p.o. tried to tell me it couldn’t be thicker than 1/4 inch.  Now I ask you, how could a CD holder envelope with bubble wrap hold a CD case and be only 1/4 inch.  Makes NO sense.

Tuesday was full of surprises.  John mowed on the other side of our back fence, and it looks nice. The idea is to have a no-brush fire-break – it is not yet as wide as he would like it to be.  I took off for a foot care appt, stopping first at the post office to question the charge on the CD envelope mailing.  I had to pay the 40 cents because it was mailed as a large envelope, first class, and it was really a Parcel, because of its thickness. I should have asked what Media Mail would have cost.  So, I called and asked the p.o., and they told me I could check on line.  (Pissy, not to give me information I requested.)  Then on to an Echocardiogram.  It was scheduled for 1:45 and I was there ahead of time, but wasn’t taken in until after 2:00 p.m., and it took the better part of an hour for the Echo, but I’m glad for the test.  My cardiologist will be back in Sept and hopefully will interpret the results.  That was my request anyhow.  Then I set up an appt with him for Sept 13 in Yakima.

While I was gone, John took Annie to the vet to check on her mammary “tumor”.  Their recommendation was to have all removed, but, I’m going to get a second opinion from my regular vet.  I was planning to breed her at least one more time, because she is the only one who can carry on our lines, now that her brother, Cork, is gone at an early age.

Wednesday.  Morning starting slowly, but have just about handled all the incoming emails.  Just about; not quite.  John is back out after running the dogs and feeding the horses, picking a few pie cherries for putting with blueberries on a dessert to take to friends tomorrow.  Wow.  That tree has really produced a lot of cherries this year.  I must go to the Food Bank Soup Kitchen at noon for music and after to exercise class.  We only had 3 people provide music for about 25 folks at lunch.  They fed us taco casserole and salad.  There was watermelon for dessert, but I cannot eat it. (A childhood event of too much sun and too much watermelon and I’m averted.)

Thursday.  John’s just picked the LAST of the raspberries and now is making 3 pie-cherry/blueberry treats for taking to dinner at others’ houses, tonight and tomorrow, and one for the freezer for the future.  I went off to play music at Dry Creek and we had a really good turnout with 8 of our group there.  It was a nice fun time, and we even had one lady up dancing to Five Foot Two followed by Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.

The dinner tonight was interesting.  We had a couple of curries and brown rice, and a really yummy shish kabob, with marinated beef, peppers and onions.  Along with the dessert we took a Cabernet Sauvignon from Texas (gift from a Texas friend).  I had a sip but the others said it went well with the grilled beef.  John wondered where shish kabob came from so here is the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kebab

Friday.  Long morning, getting the kitchen cleaned up for the Culligan repairman to check out the unit’s leak and replace filters.  Now John is out cutting brush (a wild (Autumn) clematis, choke cherries, wild roses, cottonwoods and a few other unidentified things) under the large Cottonwood tree.  It’s good the wind is not blowing and making it dangerous for him to be there. If you search the web for Autumn Clematis you mostly get pictures of pretty white mounds of flowers.  Ours is not so nice.  I’ll just say that it grows on fences and with our wind and its weight, the plant can destroy a fence in a few years.  Try this site:

http://www.arthurleej.com/a-wildclematis.html

. . . where the next-to-last paragraph claims our (east of the Cascades) vine in not exactly the same.  It is still a pain.

I have mostly been working on the computer on email, but I need to switch to other organizing chores.

We are invited to dinner again tonight.  We again are taking along a yummy blueberry / tart cherry cobbler that we made (John mostly, who has started calling it 4^th of July crumble) yesterday morning.  Rascal and the dogs coexisted tonight in the house from 5:45 to 9:45.  Long and nice dinner, of roast beef (excellently cooked), vegetables with about 8 different things in it (very, very good), watermelon that I don’t like, but the lady of the house pulled out some purple grapes just for me.  How nice!  Their daughter and husband were there and we had a lot in common (horses and non-horse medical things) and great conversations.  Pretty cool.

Saturday.  John’s been working in the yard this morning, watering and sawing a broken top from a pine that was hurt in the wind.  Now he is napping, but we have to leave shortly for my playing music at a retirement center, where they feed us when we are done.  John will go grocery shopping and drop me off and pick me up.  He did, and joined us for the last song, “She’ll be coming round the Mountain,” and for dessert.  The rest of us went ahead and chowed down with a choice of half sandwiches (tuna salad or egg salad), two types of pastas (I passed), a great potato salad I loved, yummy, Mandarin/orange Jell-O salad, and a card table full of desserts (several types of cookies, cakes and strawberry fixings with Cool Whip on top).  Guess who doesn’t need to eat supper tonight.

Missed getting a great picture yesterday of Rascal sharing the chair with Meghan.  He cuddled up beside her as he does with John and me.  This afternoon we didn’t get home till after 4:00 and I was really tired, so I slept until 6:30.  It finally cooled down from 93 to 91 (at the airport), and just before 7:00 p.m. it got to 89.  Now later tonight it’s down to 67.  John was out.  He claims he was ‘reding-up’ things.  I always thought the term should be spelled, read, because to me it is Making “Ready” the room.  “Red up” is the sixth line in the table here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch_English

. . . where line 2 is “outen the lights” – another phrase used in non-Dutch western Pennsylvania, although his mother’s folks claimed German ancestry.  Still the folks in Clarion County (PA) have over 200 words and phrases often confusing to outsiders and they sound funny, too!

Nancy and John

still on the Naneum Fan

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

Sunday — the 24^th:  Pretty much a light day with no trips to town.  Getting ready for my start of the fiddling/mandolin week in Kittitas, WA that starts Monday at 9:00 and goes till 3:30 with some evening events I will attend.  John bought sandwich making materials for the week, to save my paying $5.00 for lunch each day.  To that we will add low salt chips, cookies, and home ripened cherries.

Monday.  Great reunions with people I haven’t seen in a year or more, and last year, while I was there, I was in no condition to be exerting myself.  The next week I collapsed from anemia, ended up for another week of ICU, and had to endure the second bout with Endocarditis and 30 days of IVs containing two antibiotics.  I only managed through last year because a was given a small room with a big soft chair to rest in, and so, I participated only enough to say that I was there, but I did play in the ending recital of classes.

This 2011 year, my morning class (Beginning Mandolin) went fine, and I had a nice 1.5 hr lunch break and found a comfortable chair in the janitor’s lounge they let me use (all week).  I have been using a pillow to subdue the classrooms chairs – they of the hard and strangely shaped mold.  My afternoon advanced fiddling class went well.  It was with my teacher of 19 years there at the workshop.  She is from Nampa, ID, and this year her daughter, Katrina, is also a teacher at the WOTFA workshop in Kittitas, WA.  From 2007:

http://www.idahopress.com/community/article_51a2d468-20f9-5417-b371-d9d7f36847a8.html

This video shows Katrina (a left handed fiddler), in 2008 as “Pearce” but she continues winning now as “Nicolayeff” and won the Championship for this year’s Weiser, ID celebration – again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gcOhO8PWfs

This one is fun and Roberta (mother) had our class learn this and we did it for the show on Friday (and Katrina played piano).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXS_sfUuUro

Tuesday.  Learned lots in both classes and then went back over to Kittitas for a performance in the cold wind outside at the Gazebo.  It was great, and a couple of my friends joined me there.  Way too cold though.

Wednesday.  What a way to start this day, sadly, with driving out the driveway to go to Fiddling Camp and finding Sunshine, our pretty kitty (only 10 months old) dead at the end of the driveway, apparently bumped on her head from being rolled by a car.  She had not been run over, just hit.  But she was dead, and not for very long.  We get so little traffic that it is amazing.  She also has not been going up to the road to our knowledge but stayed in the back or front yard. If a car came in the driveway she would run for the house and dive through the window-flap.  She loved to climb the trees with John when he was picking cherries or lay on a horizontal limb of a black walnut tree. This is definitely not our year for animals.  To lose 2 of our buddies tragically from accidents, in the last week, has us in an emotional pit.

I got home and told John it was crazy because it hit me so hard.  He said he kept thinking of her all day as well.  I’m glad if she had to go this soon, that at least we know what happened to her.  If she had been carried off by a coyote or a very large owl (but, she was probably too big and heavy), and just disappeared, we wouldn’t have known.  I had to pick her up and put her on my car hood to take her back to John to bury.  She wasn’t stiff so it hadn’t happened long before I found her.  She does leave a big hole.  Just last night she crawled up into John’s lap in his chair.  She often crawled up beside him on the sofa or the bed, but not usually in the chair, instead next to him in a little box with a towel in another chair.  She always met me in the middle of the night when I went to the bathroom to be my companion and get petted.  She also always ended up in bed for the last hour before time to get up.  This morning not.  All outside cats we have had lived to be 18 or 20 and died of old age (or in the case of Midnight, a stroke that paralyzed him and we had to euthanize him.)  Thought I would share our sad news.

Fiddle and mandolin classes went all right today, but my mind wouldn’t allow me to be completely there.  Tomorrow is another day.

Thursday.  Classes were fine, and I went back at 7:00 p.m. for playing in the Kittitas Gazebo, one last time this week.  We had a tremendous turnout, of entertainers and a big audience.

Friday.  Today was the final morning of classes, and then we practiced  for the afternoon performance.  John was able to come out and view the recital.  My fiddling class was 6th to play, and we did 3 songs.  The first one always highlights the instructor, but she included us in her choice.  We did Dueling Fiddles, a takeoff on Dueling Banjos.

Tune from the movie Deliverance, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tqxzWdKKu8

She led us off, and we returned as the “duel” echo.  Katrina composed this version, and accompanied us on the piano, after the “dueling” beginning.

Then we switched to “hokum” bowing, which really got the audience’s attention and appreciation.

This is an ad, but explains the idea http://www.onlinelessonvideos.com/product.php?productid=16351&cat=0&page=0&featured=Y

And this one will exhaust you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xunOH7haPK4&feature=related

[John says if you can’t perform Orange Blossom Special you aren’t a fiddle player, you are just playing – Roy Clark and crew can do both.]

We merged into Foggy Mountain Breakdown, also with hokum bowing, and then went back to Dueling Fiddles again for the ending.  After that, the class did a medley of a very beautiful song, Bygone Days, followed directly, by There’s an Old Spinning Wheel in the Parlor. Then I had to wait around for my Beginning Mandolin class to play.  We were 2nd from the end.  Oh well, it allow us to enjoy the entire show.  In that class we played Rubber Dolly, and were assisted by an advanced guitar class. I had given John my camera and set for a movie, but I forgot to empty the memory card, so it was full and couldn’t record.  Luckily, he watched a woman recording some of the show, and thought she got most of ours.  He pointed her out to me and I went up afterward to see if she was willing to put on a CD and send to me if I paid the cost of the CD and the postage.  She said she would.

Saturday.  I was beat from this busy week.  I slept in this morning and have done little else except pick cherries with our neighbors.

It brought back sad memories of losing Sunshine:   My friend wanted to come pick cherries for jelly, and his mom from across the street came too.  Things around keep reminding both John and me of Sunshine.  Today our most recent reminder was out in our front yard, in the shade of the trees, sitting in lawn chairs with the 2 neighbors, picking from limbs John cut down from the trees.  It was so sad, because Sunshine was such a part of our picking cherries this year, climbing up the trees, resting, watching John, and even climbed the ladder and went out on opposite branches from where he was standing cutting.  Then she’d come down with him, and lay on the ground with us, getting up every so often to chase a butterfly or grasshopper.  I suppose these memories will fade, but right now they are very vivid.

Nothing else is planned for this Saturday, but tomorrow morning we will meet friends in Kittitas, probably, for breakfast on their way back from Seattle, via Mt. Rainier for Spokane, and then they fly back to Michigan in their own plane.

Wishing you the best,

Nancy and John

 

Beginning Sunday the 17^th – another quiet day on the ranch, we hope.  No trips planned away.  Today is the day our accordion player returns home from the nursing home where she has been recuperating 3 months from hip replacement surgery.  This will be a lot better for her husband, not having to go to visit her every day, a 24-mile roundtrip.  And, he still had to do all his farm chores.

It is morning and John is doing stuff outside.  He returned about lunch time, and our neighbor delivered strawberries.  I read a book on Beginning Mandolin, and went to sleep (for about 3 hrs.).  I guess I needed it.  He slept for maybe 1.5 hrs and then worked on his computer awhile.  He left for cutting brush on the west side of our pasture. Vegetation is creeping into the pasture from the fringes.  Some things have pretty blossoms, some edible fruit, some come with thorns, and some with all of the above.  Currently Syringa and Elderberry are flowering and Currents and Serviceberry have ripe fruit.  All are easy to recognize.  See:

Western Serviceberry;

http://fieldguide.cdlandtrust.org/fieldguide/shrub/western-serviceberry

Golden current;

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_202/1193924136430tyI.jpg

Mock Orange (Syringa);

http://c33532.r32.cf0.rackcdn.com/a8753ab9-6b45-4bf9-bffd-823a525a04df.jpg

Western Blue Elderberry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambucus_cerulea

With late afternoon shade, he is working to remove some of the less desirable plants and thus open spaces around those shown in the links above.  I went to have a look and we just returned from a walk around the 7 acre pasture (not quite down the whole way and back, but most), with John, the dogs, and the cat.  It was a little hot for the clothes I had on, and the cat was very winded and hot, as was I, when we returned.  The dogs got to go in the irrigation ditch but the cat and I did not.  While down there John went over and fed the horses.  He has driven the horse trailer with hay inside, down to the middle of the 7 acres, so he doesn’t have to carry by wheelbarrow so far from the barn (up at the north end of the pasture).

Finished dinner and am feeling better, finally.  We will go to bed after ice cream with strawberries for me and blackberries for John.  Amazingly, I went to sleep after having had the long afternoon nap.

Monday. Was going to go to exercise class, but slept in, and was quite congested this morning.  Will just stay and eat lunch with John and work on cleaning up the den for our Sears repairman to come tomorrow a.m. to fix the frig freezer compressor fan unit.  It went off 3 times this morning and once last night before bed.  It will be nice to get it fixed.  (Note–he cancelled out because he had to order the part.) Then we take off tomorrow afternoon to Yakima for a checkup for Nancy, an upgrade to the engine’s software for the 2009 Subaru, and a trip to Costco.  The rest of the day was slow for Nancy, taking a 2 hr nap and doing very little else.  Supper is over, and we will likely be in bed earlier than usual tonight.  John got a lot of rocks moved, brush cut, raspberries lifted and propped off the ground, horses fed, and a few other things.

Tuesday started with a rain storm.  We expected the Sears repairman early, but he called from Yakima and said he would have to order the part from the factory.  It won’t get here till 2 weeks; actually it came in Saturday’s mail but he won’t be back till Aug 2 to fix it.  We also had to leave for Yakima ourselves at noon to take me for my Heart device (ICD) checkup (every 3 months), for John to take his Subaru for the replacement talked about above, and then he had to come retrieve me from the Heart Center waiting room.  I had my computer along so I could kill time.  I couldn’t get onto a wireless connection, however, so couldn’t access the Internet.  My checkup was fine.  Next appointment with my cardiologist is sometime in August.  Then we went to Costco.  Got a bunch of stuff, but also forgot a few things.  Didn’t get home till 4:30, put up the groceries, and I took off again for town to play religious music at one of the nursing homes.  Then home for home-amended spaghetti sauce on thin spaghetti.  It cooled off some today from previous days, making the trip really fine.

Wednesday.  This morning we started out early with John running the dogs and feeding the horses.  I joined him in the front yard (where we have a few fruit trees, but still call it our orchard.)  The cherry trees are full of birds so we realized if we were to have any, we needed to start picking.  John’s method of picking (because the trees are so tall, and we do not have tall ladders), is to go up a ladder and/or climb on the larger limbs and then saw the branches.  After 4 years with no cherries (cold and wet weather) and, thus, no trimming – there has been lots of growth.  This is our way of pruning every so often.  Today we “picked” from the branches.  After John downloads the branches, he comes down and cuts the big branches into smaller pieces.  He has a nice hand saw he got from service to the WA Trails Association (WTA) for 50+ days of volunteering:

http://www.coronatools.com/item/rs-7130?referer=hand-saws

WTA engraved his name on the handle.  These cut on the pull stroke and are quite effective – and dangerous.

I picked cherries for an hour and then called our 85 yr old neighbor to see if she wanted to come sit in a comfy lawn chair and pick some cherries off branches for their family.  She probably got about 15 pounds.  John and I picked and probably got 15 pounds to take to friends in town and then another two boxes (8 pounds each, maybe) and put in the outside refrigerator in our shed.  We will pick more in the morning when it is cooler.  I left this morning at 11:30 to go play music at the Food Bank, but missed my afternoon exercise class because I was not up to par.  Came back and John and I picked more cherries from branches he cut while I was in town.

Then we visited two people and dropped off the cherries, visiting at one, and then going by the Univ. for me to sign paperwork for a thesis committee I was on last spring.  On to another home, where they traded us some Walla Walla sweet onions for the box of cherries.  On home to relax.

Thursday.  Started the morning slowly, sleeping in after losing a lot of sleep in the middle of the night.  We picked more cherries and then John picked red raspberries because of all the thorns and the fear I would start myself bleeding.  Then off to play music at Dry Creek where they gave the 7 of us there, nice orange or chocolate ice cream bars.  Then afterward I dropped off some cherries to a friend, visited the grocery store for pop for John and chocolate milk for me.  Then I took off for home but stopped at some other friends’ house to give them some cherries we picked this morning (all Rainiers), and mixed with some Bings from yesterday’s picking.  We are having a hard time keeping up with the pilfering by the birds.  The folks (in their 80s from my exercise class) had me in to share a nice visit with coffee and cookies.  On home and I’m resting again in my recliner.  John’s out doing chores in a windy environment.  The temp is down to the low sixties, which is very nice.  I know the rest of the country is burning up.  It started at 58 here this morning and only got to 73 at the hottest.  Fine with us.  The winds have been regular in the twenties and topping at 37 mph gusts.

Sad news tonight late (9:30 p.m. our time).  CH Cedaridge Vintage Cork died at just 6 years old. He had his show championship and was on his way to being a Dual Champion (field and show).  He is Annie’s brother (different litter), Kip’s brother and a sweet boy.  His coloring was white and orange just like his great grandma, Dual Ch/AFC/Can Ch Sirius Sashay, and he had her big run, personality, and birdiness.  He also took a lot of characteristics from his mom, Cedaridge Legacy of Shay, who is still with us.

The bad news came in a phone call from his field trainer in PA that Cork died from the heat.  Another dog (theirs, named Soldier) was at the vets and not doing well.  They may lose him too.  (Actually good news is that he got to the vet having seizures, was put on IVs and has survived.) Cork was dead when they found him upon returning home.  Ten dogs were in their own crates with water and fans blowing, in their garage.  Doors were open to keep air circulating.   We checked the weather for Pittsburgh after I got off the phone with Brian, and it was 94 with a dew point of 73 for several hours this afternoon.  That reflects a pretty high heat index – we were told later it was 124. The heat wave back in the East has been horrible, but is now easing some.

Cork had become part of Brian and Helen’s family.  He was with them twice as long as with us.  We have trained and campaigned winning Britts and know the time and work involved, and the human/dog relationship that develops.  Brian is going to miss him a lot.  I know how hard it was for him to make that phone call.  We have pictures of Cork lying in his lap in a recliner.  His wife, was driving as he called me on their way back from leaving Soldier at the vet.  She took Cork through his show championship, with help for his last major from another Brittany breeder in the NE.

We are feeling the loss and sadness, but have great memories of his time with us and the reports over the past few years of how well he was doing. He only needed a major win and a few points to be the Dual, and carry on our lines.  Now that is not possible.   At least we can rest in knowing he has happy hunting grounds across the rainbow bridge and that he will meet up with others behind him in our Brittany family (and cat and horses), or those kin to him at our house while he was here; plus he will be there awaiting us, when it is our turn to cross the rainbow bridge.

Happy hunting, Cork.  We will miss your cute antics.

Friday.  Didn’t sleep well last night so today was not a normal Friday.  Did go to town for a free shoulder/neck massage, much needed and enjoyed.   While in town I picked up Thyroid pills for one of our older dogs.  She needs a half pill twice a day, hit two garage sales on the way home, but one was totally overpriced so I didn’t stay or buy anything.  I went to the other on the way home, and normally I won’t do anything advertised as an “estate sale” because they are usually totally over priced too, but it was on the way.  I’m so glad I stopped.  I got several nice blouses for a quarter each, a dog and cat comb and brush for 5 cents each, 4 paperback books for a quarter each, bottom of a nice music stand (which I need), sunglasses case, 5 pairs of socks, a leather wallet for replacing John’s that has disintegrated (purchased in Iowa in the 1970s – we think), a plastic container with top, another leather/zippered holder, a set of blinds, and a can with large 5” nails and roofing nails, a Phillips head screwdriver, all for a dime each.  It was definitely worth the stop.

After I got home, we picked some more cherries, and then took some to friends.  They reciprocated with a 19” Rainbow trout they had caught.  We had 1/3 of it for dinner last night, baked by John in a lemon sauce, mashed potatoes and some fried onions.  We froze the rest for another day.  The meat was salmon colored because of the natural origin of the fish, caught downstream from the Grand Coulee Dam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20ZffI6by3A

We wonder the age of the fish.  This was the smallest fish they caught.  They fished for 2 days and got the limit of two per person both days.

Saturday, a long and warm day.  Started with 3 hours put in by me and 4 hours by John with cherry picking.  He first picked from the lower branches.  Then when I came out (with the cat), he climbed the ladder and cut some mid-height branches, and went on up a Bing cherry tree to take off higher limbs.  I sat below in a lawn chair and picked into a box.  John would come down long enough to cut up the larger branches into more manageably sized ones for me to pick.  We always pick with the stems on because that increases their life and freshness.  Some of these were messy and sticky today because of aphids and birds eating parts of berries and messing up those around them.  Finally late afternoon I had decided to go to town to check out the sale I was at yesterday, and a couple of others in “Grasslands”, a subdivision of pretty nice houses.  John was ready for a break and decided to go along with me.  My final destination was Kittitas, WA to pick up my registration materials, my name tag, and buy a tee shirt for the WA Old Time Fiddler’s Workshop this coming week (starts at 9:00 a.m. Monday).  I didn’t want to have to be doing all that on Monday morning, when I have to be loading my music stands and instruments into the air-conditioned building for the day.  Certainly, I cannot leave my instruments in the hot car.  I’m taking a morning mandolin class (beginning) and an Advanced Intermediate Fiddling class in the afternoons.  The latter is a full day class, but it is with my teacher of 19 years, and she was happy for me to get the morning mandolin class and miss hers in the morning.

Before we got to Kittitas, we stopped at 3 garage sales, first, the good one where I was yesterday.  Everything was half price and it was already very low prices.  I wanted to ask if they had the top part of the blinds I bought yesterday, (they didn’t) but they gave us the double wide blinds because they were just going to throw them away.  We will have to buy the connectors to put in the wall to hold them.  I also wanted to see if a can of nails for a quarter was still there, it was, and John was happy with the 12.5 cent price.  The neatest thing that happened was that the daughter and granddaughter of the family were there.  The granddaughter was my student in 2005 and when we saw each other it was old home week and hugs time.  She knew I had been very sick, and was so happy to see me doing so well.  She now lives on the west side of the state and had just come back to help with the yard sale.  I talked to her for awhile about her jobs since graduation and then took a spin around to see if there was something else we wanted.  I picked up more blouses for a nickel or a dime–some are probably too small for me, (mediums), which I will give to my neighbor who has lost down to that size and given me all her L and XL ones.   Also found a nice colorful ceramic fish dish to give to our fishing buddy,  a couple of leather belts for a nickel, a pair of tennis shoes almost new, size 11, but they are too tight for John.  We’ll give them to the farmer across the road, who is married to the lady I’m giving the blouses to.  Only .75 paid for the shoes.  John found a nice glass Pyrex top that will fit our bowls and be nice for warming things.  At the other sales we hit (only 2) we got 2 nice pillows in a nice case for a buck.  One is big like John likes, and one is smaller like I like.  John’s is replacing his of the same make and style that “his” dog chewed a hole in (to the foam stuffing).  You’d think at 11 years she’d quit doing that.  I also got a couple of nice long sleeved blouses (polyester) for cooler weather (a quarter each), and a nice sun hanging made from a ceramic dish with an edge for the smiling sun’s face.  We will give to our friends down in the Yakima valley near Zillah, who hosted our Wine Geography class, and whose Winery’s name is “Paradisos del Sol.”  They also had one of our Brittany puppies.  Also John picked up a new-like towel and 2 washcloths for 50 cents total.  I found 5 pair of socks for a dime each, and an almost “new” bra for a quarter.  Think that’s about it.  Being right before closing time had the people lowering their prices nicely.

On to Kittitas, where I bought my tee shirt for 2011 WOTFA Workshop, a nice blue with white lettering and “snow covered” edge on the trees on the front.  I picked up my name tag, and materials for the week, plus visited some with folks I only see once a year, and it was good to get it done today when few people were around, so that I don’t have to go in really early for the starting assembly at 9:00 a.m.  It was fine to drive the 10 miles out there and to have John’s company.  He will only go out one time next week, when we have our end of week, Friday, class recital.

Hope your week is nice and that I have the stamina to get through mine.

Nancy and John

in cool and windy WA.