In which I fail to see the aurora, sort of, or any lilacs either

This week has been one of failures, pretty much. It started out okay, though. My instructor, Oksana, came back to art class, and although we didn’t work on the things that got messed up while she was gone because the paint was still wet, I had a nice time painting snow globs on the branches of the big tree in my painting. We got to hear all about the birth of her first grandbaby.

On Thursday, my brother, sister-in-law, and I were supposed to pick up our date to see the lilac gardens that got cancelled because of rain on Monday, pouring rain on Monday. Starting on Wednesday, we have had a stretch of really fine weather. It got hot on Friday and Saturday, up to the high 80s, but our house still stayed cool without having to use the air conditioning. Then it cooled back down.

On Thursday morning, I was busy posting my blog when I got a message from my sister-in-law. My brother was having painful dental problems. He had to go in to the dentist the day before, and he had to return that morning. She asked if I wanted to wait to see how he felt when he came out, but she didn’t think it would be good, and she offered to just go the two of us to the lilac gardens. I felt that she was probably trying not to cancel but would prefer to stay home with my brother, so I asked, and we decided to try to go another year, on the theory that it was already getting to be a bit late for the lilacs.

On Friday night, it was the big night for the aurora borealis. Our view to the north is blocked by trees, so we got in the car around 11 PM and began driving around looking for a place with a view. We ended up north of Amboy where we saw a bunch of cars drawn off the road into a field. We were on the wrong side of the road, just on a narrow shoulder, and when we got out of the car, we could just see white streaks in the sky, which Wayne said was the northern lights. (He has seen them before, I haven’t.) He didn’t like where we were parked, so he suggested we drive up, turn around, and come back on the right side of the road. But Wayne is Wayne, so he drove for miles up the road looking for the perfect turn-around spot. When we approached the viewing area from the correct side, it was at a place where a little road branches off the highway for a couple hundred feet and then rejoins. Instead of turning in there, he drove right past and drove home, paying no attention to my objections! Wayne the butthead strikes again! When we got to our road, I persuaded him to drive down to the next little road and park in front of my niece’s neighbor’s house, because when there is no foliage, they have a clear view of Mt. St. Helens to the north. He sat there for about one minute, and then turned around and went home.

The beautiful sight that I did not see, taken from my niece’s driveway. That’s their greenhouse below, the one they built themselves.

The thing is, no one explained to us that you can’t see the colors unless you look through your phone with night view turned on. We only heard about the phone on a weather forecast for the next night, and then they didn’t mention the night view. So, I spent an hour on my deck the next night trying to see something, and saw nothing but black. I was really disappointed and felt like I was the only person in the United States that didn’t see the colors of the aurora borealis. And just as an indication of how close I was to seeing it, I include a photo my nephew took, from just down the road at their house. If we’d known, we could have gone over there and they would have known what to do. But I can’t help thinking that if Wayne had just pulled into that field (at the same time and place where The Columbian took some beautiful pictures, by the way), someone would have told us what to do.

Wayne didn’t care. He has seen the aurora borealis many times, coming home from work in the morning in Michigan. I grew up in Michigan, but I never saw it.

On Saturday, I had to take Luke for his monthly injection to the vet. As usual, he just wanted to go home.

I thought it was funny, though, when on Monday I received a text from my niece asking me to bring Luke by on Tuesday for a doggy play date. Here we have been keeping Luke away from there for years because she is allergic to him, and now they have found a hypoallergenic puppy, so he is invited to visit (not in the house, of course). So, I had a busy day on Tuesday. I went to my exercise class, then came home and had a short period of time to drink my coffee, which I forgot to drink in the morning, and read my book. Then I changed my clothes and took Luke over to see Henry. We had a nice time sitting in the shade in the yard and talking while Luke ignored Henry. This was what she wanted, though, because Henry is a little scared of large dogs, so Henry got so he wasn’t afraid of Luke, although he didn’t try to get him to play. (Henry is a Havanese, so he is going to weigh about 10-12 pounds when he grows up, and Luke weighs 61 pounds.)

My brother was there working in their garden with my niece’s husband, and after a while, they all took a break and we had a nice half hour of talking. Then my brother’s wife showed up, because we had plans to go to a movie. She popped in the car with me and Luke, and we took Luke home and went to the movies. I didn’t know anything about what had been chosen (originally my brother chose it, but he wanted to make up for missing time working the garden when his teeth were bothering him, so he didn’t come with us), Civil War. Silly me, I thought it was going to be historical, but it was of course about an American civil war in our time, and it was a rough movie to watch. Too close to what could be. There were a few times when I had to shut my eyes.

After that, we went out to eat at Pita House, and my sister-in-law again entertained the staff. I have been going there for years, and although they know me, they really know who she is. She’s funny and much more outgoing than I am.

I have been extremely frustrated lately by WordPress. They changed their notifications from a pull-down like Facebook has to a page. For me, anyway, about half the time I click the little dot icon to open the page, I get an “Oh, Snap” message that it didn’t work. Then, when the page is trying to open, it just churns and churns until I do a refresh. Sometimes I have to refresh it five times before it actually opens. And lots of times, I get a text notification message (for them to send me a code to my phone) because instead of opening the notifications page, it has tried to open the notifications settings for some reason. And it will do that several times in a row. For several days this week, though, it wouldn’t open up the comments so I could read them and respond to them. And if they were responses from other people’s blogs instead of my own, suddenly, it’s not showing them on my Comments page at all. So I couldn’t look at them there, either, and finally I had to go to the person’s blog to look at my original comment and read their response. Super annoying. This went on for several days but seems to be fixed this week.

And now for my duck report. Yes, I’ve been seeing the ducks in the pond this week, but one evening, I had several sightings of the beaver! That is unusual, but it was swimming back and forth across the front of the pond, nearest to our windows, and the ducks were there, too, so that was a nice sighting.

In which it rains and rains

Yesterday was the first clear day in what seemed like a week of rain. We got out briefly on Monday to deal with the dirt in my tomato pots. After trying to grow tomatoes in my vegetable garden, I gave up about five years ago because they didn’t seem to get enough sunshine. I bought a large garden wagon and eventually accumulated three pots about the size that you get small trees in, and I have the tomato wagon located on the place on our back deck that gets the most sunshine (but I can move it if I want to).

My plants arrived on Friday, and I knew I couldn’t plant them until the weekend, so I left them in the package for a day. Then on Saturday I unpacked them, and I’m glad I didn’t leave them any longer, because the tomatoes looked pretty droopy. I also got three blue petunias I didn’t remember ordering. I don’t know what possessed me. I don’t even like petunias very much, but I can see myself ordering blue ones just because they are blue. I still didn’t have time to plant the plants, so I sat them in the left kitchen sink with an inch of water, and in no time they looked much better.

On Saturday we did go into town and buy some potting soil, because I dump my pots into the big garden every year and replace the soil. Not that it did much good last year. One of the plants I received last year was so small that it was just starting to get big enough to bear a tomato when it got too cold. Anyway, then the trick was to get enough of a break in the rain to dump the pots, since my pots are so big I have to get Wayne to do it.

Finally, we got some sun on Monday, and Wayne dumped the pots. However, it turned out we didn’t have enough soil to fill them. We had to drive to the Amboy hardware store and buy some more soil. Of course, it started raining again on the way home, but I was determined to get my tomatoes planted, so I mixed the soils, added the tomato food, and then planted the tomatoes.

My petunias are still in the sink while I try to figure out where to put them. I remember that I didn’t plan to plant any vegetables this year, my garden last year having been a failure (and now the walls are breaking because Wayne ran the soaker hoses along them two years ago instead of along the middle, and they rotted, so the dirt is falling out). However, the problem with that plan is that my chard, which didn’t grow well last year, survived the winter, and is now sitting there almost big enough to pick. My plan for this year was to thin out my raised flower beds and turn my vegetable garden into a flower garden, but my sage is taking over one corner, my chard another, the artichoke a third, and a lot of space is dedicated to asparagus, which continues to come up every year.

I was supposed to go to some lilac gardens in Woodland with my brother and sister-in-law on Monday, but it was raining too much. We postponed our trip to tomorrow, when it’s supposed to be sunny. It’s supposed to be sunny today, too. It isn’t so far, but at least it’s not raining. We even heard thunder on Monday.

Otherwise, this week on Friday Luke and I went to visit Christine. She usually feeds me breakfast, but this time, I made two broccoli quiches the day before and took one over for breakfast. It was about time I made breakfast. We had a nice time as usual.

In my art class, I messed up my painting again. A few weeks ago, the substitute instructor wanted me to paint over some grass with the paint I have been using for snow. (It’s actually a light blue, very blue, but it looks white on the canvas.) However, the grass was still slightly wet from the week before, so I ended up with two blotches of light green paint. That looks pretty bad, and I haven’t been able to correct it yet, because the paint hasn’t been totally dry. I expected Oksana, my usual instructor, back last week, but she was still gone. The sub showed me a technique for making snow by putting very oily paint on a paint brush, the kind for painting walls, and flicking it onto the canvas. Well, I got too carried away with it trying to cover some bushes, so later, we had to remove some of it. The technique for doing that is to use a clean paintbrush to spread oil on the paint and then blot it with a tissue. However, the sub tried to help and smeared the paint. I think I got all the smears off, but I am kind of dreading to see my painting this morning when I go to class. I took a photo of it as usual, but I won’t share it, because it doesn’t look good.

Wayne in his new sunglasses

Otherwise, yesterday was Wayne’s birthday. I gave him a pair of sunglasses that he wanted me to order a few months ago until he saw the price. They have some technology called Eagle Eyes. I figured, if he wants them, I’ll get them for his birthday. Usually, he uses those ugly brown glasses that people wear over their glasses even though since last year he hasn’t needed to wear glasses underneath. Those glasses are really cheap, but they also break easily, and he has broken most of them.

Anyway, he was pleased with his gift. We also planned to go out to eat, but he said he didn’t feel like it, so we stayed home.

That was our exciting week.

In which my great niece wins the talent show

This last week was an active one socially, including my great niece’s school talent show. I have attended two previous ones, although I have not gone since Covid (actually, I attended a talent showcase last year), and they were excruciating events. The show is run by the kids and it has been generally long and very disorganized, with long gaps between the acts, with acts deciding not to go on and other children suddenly deciding to do something. Also, it is now structured like “America’s Got Talent,” so they have child emcees trying to tell jokes between the acts, and we have to hear from the judges between each act, and then there are various trophies awarded at the end. I understand that my great niece has been taking second place for years.

When my middle brother and his wife moved here, I said, “Whatever you do, don’t go to the talent show.” However, my niece and her husband had tickets to a show in Portland for that night, so they asked them to go. When I heard that she was performing one of her own songs, I decided to go, too. However, we made a plan to go in shortly before her performance, with our sister there to tell us when to come, and leave afterward.

First, they told me the talent show started at 7 when it actually started at 6 and then no one corrected the time. Luckily, I already planned to go over to my brother’s around 6, so by the time my brother sent me a text telling me to come, I was already almost there. Then, there were fewer acts and it was a lot more organized. When we got there, the small children were still performing (it’s a K-12 school), and we saw three of them. First a little boy singing “Do, a Deer,” and we were at the back, so all we could see was his head, as he was apparently sitting on the stage. He was cute. Then there was a boy on a unicycle, and finally a small little girl who didn’t know the words to her song so was reading them off a piece of paper, and poor thing, she got lost in the middle.

Winning the talent show

After the intermission, we saw one act by the older kids, a guy doing some funny Disney song, and then my great niece. She is getting a strong voice, although she still gets a little too quiet in places. Her song was good. I could actually understand most of the words, and it was a moody Roy Orbison-like ballad. We watched one more act after that, a girl belting out a song off-key, and then my brother got up as arranged and we left, although by then we were feeling awkward about it. Sure enough, we only missed three or four acts before it was over, and we heard that she had won. So, we all felt bad about not having stayed to watch her get her trophy.

My sister brought the kids over to my brother’s house so I could take them back home, as they live just down the road from me. I would have brought them in, but I didn’t get asked or even know it was needed. We were playing 13, so they had to wait for a couple of hands (I came in second this time—I usually lose), but we all got to congratulate her. Then I took the kids home and saw that their new puppy was already twice as big as last time I saw him.

The other social event this week was a Oregon Symphony concert on Sunday. I went over to my brother’s house around noon and we drove in for a 2 PM concert. We got there early enough to attend the pre-show talk. It was structured like an interview instead of just a talk, like I am more familiar with, and we thought the interviewer asked questions that weren’t very good. My brother had chosen the concert because he wanted to see the advertised soloist, Simone Lamsma, but she had canceled. Instead, we saw Kerson Leong, who was good. The guest conductor was Kristina Poska, whom we thought lacked fire.

After the concert we went to Szechuan Brothers for dinner. They liked it very much, and I burned my mouth out with my favorite wontons in hot chili sauce. They used to be called spicy wontons, but they are very spicy, although only rated a 2 at the restaurant.

Here, it has turned cold and wet. Yesterday we had a fire in our stove for the first time in several weeks to a month, and it never got out of the 40’s. It’s supposed to dry out today and maybe even get sunny for a day or two.

I attended all my classes last week, although I thought I made a mess of part of my painting in art class. I had painted some grass green, and the substitute instructor told me to cover it with the gray-white color I’d been using for some bushes, because the green would show through too much. Unfortunately, the paint was still slightly wet from the week before, so it came out a light green and looked terrible. But with oils, you can always correct things by painting over them. I’m glad my regular instructor will be back today.

My friend Ray and I have been working on our cruise. The latest thing we tried to do was put my frequent flier number on my ticket, which he bought. At the time, either I didn’t have one or didn’t know it. Anyway, I signed up or got back in. I can’t remember which. I think I may have been a member from way back 20 years ago when I used to travel a lot for work. Anyway, he tried to put in my number, and it said the name didn’t match the one on my ticket, or vice versa, I guess. So, I went into the United app and found the place to change my name, and it was missing my middle name, which I usually don’t use, but we used on the ticket because it was an international flight and the names usually have to match. So, I typed in my middle name and thought it took it. He tried again, and asked me if I was using my maiden name or something. So, I went back in again, and I was not, but my middle name wasn’t there. I tried again, and this time I got a stupid message that said that if I was trying to change my name, I had to provide proof, such as a copy of my marriage certificate, a scan of my driver’s license or of my passport. I instead put in an insulting message, because I was so ticked off. It’s a mileage program for heaven’s sake, not Fort Knox!

Ray suggested that since I had to scan my passport in to prepare for my flight, they would figure it out, but of course they won’t even put those two things together. However, I can use that scan if I can remember where I put it and what it’s called. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The mallard couple have been swimming around in the pond these days. I haven’t seen any baby ducks yet. Judging by when there were lots of baby ducks at the wildlife refuge years ago, they should already bopping around down there.

A little side note added later: I forgot to mention that yesterday while I was washing the dishes, a little hummingbird sat on the deck railing and watched me. He flew off to sip at the feeder a few times, but he returned to see what I was doing. He had a bright orange breast, not red or purple, so he was clearly a type of hummingbird I hadn’t seen here before. His back feathers also had an orange sheen to them in certain lights. I looked him up and he appears to be an Allen’s hummingbird, the summer territory of which is in California. The winter territory must be somewhere much farther south, because it’s not shown in my bird book of the western U. S. It’s no wonder I’ve never seen one before. Then this morning when I was driving to art class, I heard an interview with Amy Tan about her new book, which is a journal about watching birds in her backyard. She told a story about a hummingbird that would actually feed off a feeder in her hand. I liked to think that maybe her little friend took a big detour up here to visit me.

In which we have a family dinner

Most of this week’s activities were based around a family dinner on Saturday evening. My youngest brother and his wife were going to be in the area for the first time in years, because on Sunday he was photographing a race in Longview. They arrived on Saturday and were staying at my middle brother’s new townhouse, and my middle brother and wife were hosting a family potluck that night.

On Wednesday after art class, I stopped by to visit my middle brother and his wife and watched him hang their kayaks in the garage. My brother told me that my niece was sick and probably wasn’t going to be able to come, and he asked me if I could make pies in addition to the corn pudding they requested as my contribution. I said yes.

So, on Friday afternoon, I baked two peach pies, as I have a lot of peaches still left in my freezer. Then on Saturday afternoon I made the corn pudding and Wayne and I drove to Battle Ground. We had a very nice time. It was great to see my youngest brother and his wife. The last time I saw them was two years ago when she won several days at a large cottage on the seaside and they invited members of the family to stay with them. And although they used to come to Yacolt for the holidays each year, usually for New Years, they haven’t made it in a long time, because they always get sick. We were all there except my poor niece’s sick family. Actually, only my niece was sick, but the flu had gone through the entire family, so they were worried about passing it on to us older folks.

Everyone made it into this photo except my great nephew, who is somewhere on the floor. The hosts for this shindig are the two in the front left.

On Sunday afternoon, I went back over to hang out with them. We just sat around and chatted in different combinations until dinner time, when we went over to the pub to eat. I didn’t get home until around 9 PM. It was great to see everyone. My youngest brother tried to set up a photo of all the siblings, but he didn’t get to take it on Saturday because my oldest brother’s wife wanted to leave, and he wasn’t able to arrange it on Monday because of appointments. He and his wife stopped by their house on their way out of town.

On Tuesday, I finally returned to exercise class and it doesn’t seem to have done me any harm.

I learned that the new tai chi class in Battle Ground is not starting until June. We have a difference of opinion about whether to go to the Thursday class at 5:30 PM or the Friday class at 9 AM. It will be the three of us, me and my middle brother and his wife. The women want to go on Friday, but my brother doesn’t want to get up that early. We’ll see how it turns out. Maja may go to the Thursday class, but she has Zumba on Fridays now.

Our weather has been cool and sunny except for the last two days, when it warmed up enough enough for me to go to exercise class yesterday in only a t-shirt and my sweatpants. However, today it is supposed to get colder and rain for a few days. It is definitely cloudy this morning.

Off and on, I have seen sightings of our mallard and his partner in the pond, usually the male at this point. However, a few days ago I saw three ducks in the pond, and they were all brown ones. I don’t know if they were just stopping by or what. The mallard didn’t seem to be around.

Some of my tulips

Blooming is going on all around us. Our cherry trees are in blossom. I have tried to photograph them in years before, but they just don’t come out looking that good. However, there are lots of pretty fruit trees all around the area. Just not at our place. My oldest brother’s cherry trees look really good, I understand. My tulips are out, so here’s a picture of that. I notice that my tulip photos from previous years were taken in May, so we are apparently more forward this year. Those pansies that you can see faintly in the background are ones that I planted years ago that never went away. So much for them being annuals! One has even planted itself below this box in the lawn.

I paid the rest of the money for my cruise this week, so we are all ready to go except for various tasks like getting the newest Covid vaccine, making sure my phone is going to work in Europe and so on. Also, we may decide to get tickets for a show in London.

Time to get ready for art class.

In which I have a stiff neck

I’m going to try to keep this short, because I have a stiff neck and it doesn’t like my position when using the computer.

This week was an unusually active one for me. On Wednesday, I stopped by my brother’s place after art class and we all played 13 and had tea. I was there for several hours in the afternoon and we had lots of fun.

We had originally been supposed to go to my great-niece’s play on Friday night, but they decided to change it to Saturday afternoon. So, we went to that. The musical the drama teacher chose, High School Musical, was pretty bad, not the kids so much as the actual musical itself, and my great-niece did not have a big part. She was in the chorus, but unlike most musicals I’ve seen, they used a subset of the chorus most of the time, the kids playing the cheerleaders, basketball team, and smart kids, so since she was not in any of those groups, she was on the stage less than 50% of the time. The audience was enthusiastic as usual, but whereas at first I thought that was nice, now it bothers me, especially three women who kept standing up in front of us trying to get people to clap or dance along.

One of the problems with the musical selection is that her school is not just a high school, it’s K-12, so they feel they have to have material that is not at all adult in nature. The kneejerk response seems to have been to pick Disney material. The last good one we saw was the first, Annie.

On Sunday, my niece invited the family over for dinner as her mother-in-law was visiting to see the play. I made corn pudding for my dish to bring. Lots of corn pudding. It was nice, as usual, but I was already getting my neck problem, and turning back and forth to talk to people made it much worse.

On Monday I felt pretty bad. It started out just being a tightness in the neck, with the cords of my left side of my neck standing out and it being a little difficult to look to the left. In fact, the cords of my neck had been like that for weeks without pain. However, after a while my neck and then my shoulders began to hurt. It was worse because I couldn’t find a comfortable position to sleep in at night. Finally yesterday, I managed to make myself a little nest on the couch that put no pressure on my neck and I slept all afternoon. I felt a lot better after that, and I feel better today, although my neck is still really tight and doesn’t want to go forward or to either side readily.

It hasn’t helped that the cruise my friend Ray and I have been working on has come up to the point where we have to read papers and send messages to the travel agent. However, at least we have picked the cruise. I’m hoping Ray will cool down long enough for me to feel better at the computer and not want to immediately start looking at shore excursions and so on.

My friend Maja isn’t going to exercise classes this week because it is her granddaughter’s spring break. I’m not going because I’m afraid of the strain on my neck. I was planning to try art class today, but as I’ve sat here, my neck has become worse, so I just texted my teacher that I would miss. It’s too bad, because she will be gone the next month for her daughter’s childbirth in Texas.

Our weather lately has been rainy and cool but not cold. Today I saw the ducks swimming on the pond as I usually do about every other day. The other day when I was out walking Luke I saw the female sitting beside the pond. The only way I could even see her was that she moved her head.

In which spring is definitely sprung (at least temporarily)

For the last five or six days, we’ve had increasingly warmer days with sun. The first two were quite cold, but Monday and Tuesday a jacket was unnecessary. Today is a little cooler. I have been doing some work on my raised beds to clear them out for planting, if I decide to plant, and to make the flower beds look nicer and trim back plants I should have trimmed last fall if it hadn’t been raining every day. I have been unable to trim back one rosebush because it has been blooming the whole time. If I had done it in late fall/early winter, it may have been all right, but then we had some warm temperatures and the rose came back out. I don’t think I should cut it back when it has blossoms on it, even though they are pink instead of purple, which is what they’re supposed to be.

Some of my crocuses

My crocuses are all out, and most of my daffodils are out in the orchard, although I think I have one or two up here by the house that haven’t come out yet. My tulips have their leaves but not their flowers, yet. Down in the valley, trees are starting to have blossoms. It’s funny that all this blooming is going on, because we still had a little bit of snow on the ground a week ago Monday.

This week, I’ve mostly been doing the usual things, although Tuesday I skipped exercise class. Maja decided not to go because her cat died, poor kitty, so I decided to take a holiday from class. I have been so enjoying these lazy days when I have nothing in particular to do except some housework and taking care of Lukey.

On Saturday morning I had a vet appointment for Luke. His skin is all cleared up. We have been very careful to not feed him anything but his kibble. I’m hoping we have learned our lesson after his second outbreak. I spent the last two weeks cleaning the skin under his front legs and putting ointment on what appeared to be nonexistent runny bumps. I know they were there the day before his last appointment, but they certainly didn’t seem to be there as soon as I had to put the ointment on. I managed to find one bump, but it didn’t seem to be runny or open at all, maybe it was just a normal bump instead of an allergic one. But anyway, that is over. I noticed that when he started to have skin problems, his little pink tummy turned gray as did the insides of his ears. I thought it was just part of getting older, but now that his skin is cleared up, his tummy is pink again as are his ears.

He has been so lazy lately, so on Sunday since it was so nice, I took him to Moulton Falls Park for a walk. We didn’t go for a long one, because if I have no one to talk to, I get really bored, but it was about twice as long as his walk in the neighborhood, which is limited by the two short roads we have to walk on and our boredom with them. We were gone about an hour and a half, so I’m guessing we walked for an hour.

Then on Monday, we all decided to go for a ride. Originally, we were discussing driving to Half Price Books, a project of Wayne’s. I think it is nuts, because the nearest one is almost two hours drive away in Olympia, but he misses it. We have Powell’s books 45 minutes away, which is much better, but he doesn’t want to go to Portland. I think the local news gave the troubles downtown too much air, because when I’ve been there lately, it’s looked perfectly safe. Parking used to be problem, though. I haven’t had to try to park in that area lately. Anyway, when he saw how long it would take to get to Half Price Books (I’d been telling him, but he never listens to anything I say; he even insisted on putting it into our GPS to see how long the drive was, even though I had already done that with Google Maps), he decided not to go there.

We loaded ourselves in the car with no set destination, and he decided to drive out toward Sunset Falls. The way he talked about it (“There’s a road I’d like to go down”) was like he thought he’d never been there before, whereas he has actually been to Sunset Falls, one possible destination of that road, and all the way out to Camas, which is where you eventually can end up if you turn off Sunset Falls Road onto Dole Valley Road and just keep going when you get into the state and federal lands out that way. However, we have only ever stopped at Sunset Falls going the other way, so we decided to keep driving farther into the forest. I have driven on some really bad roads in the Mount St. Helens area, but I have never driven on roads as bad as these. They were covered with deep potholes that you could not avoid. The road follows the Lewis River to the northeast, and we saw some nice views of the river and were in beautiful country, but it wasn’t pleasant driving on the roads. There may be some nice hikes out there, though. However, after we’d been bumping up and down relentlessly for about 20 minutes, Wayne found a wide space in the road and turned around. I think we were gone about 1 1/2-2 hours. It was nice to be out in the sun, though.

My sister and brother told me that one day when she was taking him and his wife around to look at trailheads, they tried to find the way from Sunset Falls to the Tarbell Trailhead through Gifford Pinchot, but so much logging had been done that the roads didn’t match the map anymore and you couldn’t tell where you were. I actually am not sure how you could drive from one to another through the forest without going over a bridge near Sunset Falls that was clearly marked “no cars.” You used to be able to drive over that bridge, but you can’t now. The only other way would be to go back down Sunset Falls Road and drive out Dole Valley Road. I wondered if it could be possible that I wouldn’t be able to find my way around in there now, although Maja and I used to hike out there all the time. I was curious to see what it was like now, but we didn’t go that way.

And that’s about it for this week.

In which I get caught up in several projects and social engagements

It has been cold enough since it snowed last week that there is still a small amount of snow on the ground on our property. Farther down in the valley, it’s been gone for days. You’d think since it has been raining every day that all of it would be gone. This morning it is super foggy.

Aside from my regular classes, which I have attended this week, I had two social engagements. On Thursday, I went to the movies with my sister, brother, and his wife to see Dune. I am so out of it that I didn’t realize when they asked me that it was Dune Two. I found that out on Sunday of last week, so I started looking around on my TV to see if the first part was available. Thank goodness, I found it and spent Sunday afternoon watching it, because otherwise I’m not sure I would know what was going on. I read it way back in the 70s when it was popular, and all I remembered were the desert planet and the sand worms.

This was a celebration of my brother’s birthday, so we all went to dinner afterwards at Pita House. I have been going there for years and know the owner somewhat, but my outgoing relatives were best pals with everyone in the restaurant in no time. When we were checking out, the owner found out it was my brother’s birthday and said we should have told him, because he would have belly-danced. We thought he was joking until he pulled out a belly-dancing belt thing. Instead, he gave each of us a piece of baklava. After that, we went back to their house and called Wayne to come eat birthday cake that my brother had made (red velvet) and my sister-in-law frosted.

Only two days later was Crab Feast at our local pub. We knew we were going with my sister-in-law, but whether my brother could come went back and forth, as he had a prior engagement at my niece’s to work on the garden. Since on Saturday the garden was still under a couple of inches of snow, he was going to go over there and work on some photos with my niece, but my great nephew was sick, so he went with us to Crab Feast. I haven’t eaten a whole crab since I went on Ozempic, and I think it might have been a good idea to only have a half. I had a little trouble with my digestion later.

Of course, the time change was Saturday night. That is always bad enough, but our lovely smoke detector, the one that is 20-some feet up on the ceiling, decided to set itself off at 4 AM on Sunday. It went off briefly as an alarm but then changed to the beeping that means its battery needs to be changed. I can hear that beeping in the bedroom with the door shut and the HEPA filter running, so I spent the rest of the night with my pillow over my head and eventually fell back asleep. However, when I awakened on Sunday morning, my eyes were blurry for about five minutes. What a nice start to the time change period!

The next day, Wayne got out a humungous (16- or 18-foot) ladder that he can only move by taking apart and brought it into the living room then put it back together. I called my niece’s husband and asked if he could help with it. He came over within an hour or two and managed to put it up by himself. (Wayne and I couldn’t do it together.) Then he ran right up it and changed the battery. It was much safer than when he used to do it on the 12-foot ladder, when he stood on the very top and used our grabber to change it. I was always terrified he was going to fall off. The ladder, too, is much steadier.

I have been thinking about the issue of translators for my book blog. More attention is going to them, and some other book bloggers I know have said they are going to list translators as well as authors. I thought about adding them to my Authors page, but because some authors change translators, it seemed that could get complicated. I finally decided to make a Translators page, and on Sunday I started working on it spur of the moment. I intended to only work on it a short period of time, but I was scrolling through my blog page by page identifying books that had translators, and I realized that if I stopped, there wasn’t a good way to get back to where I left off besides scrolling to it. I didn’t think that finishing the first list, organized by book title, would take that long because I didn’t realize how many books I’d read in translation. It actually took me 7 1/2 hours to find the books, research who translated them and from which language, and enter in the information, complete with special foreign characters (most often for the author names).

On Monday I ended up working on another project, but this one goes back to December. I have been working up to two related objects: having a travel account at my credit union and setting up my 401K to take out the minimum amount that the IRS requires for the first time, the money to go into the travel account. In December I opened the account, but it has no money in it yet. In December or January, I called the people who manage my 401K to ask them about beginning to take out the money. At that time, I, for the first time ever, got a guy who didn’t seem too interested in helping me. Usually, their employees are extremely helpful and knowledgeable. He told me it was too soon to know how much I had to take out each month, but he guessed that $1000 would do it. He also sent me a form, but as soon as I started to fill out the form, I had questions about a comment that the account had to be one they knew about. I realized they didn’t know about any of our accounts.

I procrastinated calling them back and in February, I got an invitation to make an appointment with someone to talk about it. I made an appointment for Monday, which allowed me to procrastinate some more. I realized I was contacted by a third party and it sounded like I was going to get some financial advice and maybe a sales pitch that I didn’t want, but I also figured I could get my issues sorted out.

However, on Saturday I got an email listing the things I needed to have available for my appointment, and one of them was the login information for my account, so I started looking at the emails I’d gotten from them, and the only proof I had that they were legit was they were using the company logo, which anyone could do, and they knew I had an account and that it was my year to start my RMD (or whatever the abbreviation is). So, I canceled my appointment. (It turns out it was legit.)

So, on Monday instead of my appointment, I called the management company again, and their helpful, knowledgeable employee helped me set up the connection between my account and them, sent me the correct form, as it turned out the other guy had sent me the wrong one, sent me another form that I might need for withholding, told me the amount that would be taken from my account (a lot more than $1000, although their process figures it automatically once I fill out the papers, and I think I understand that therefore there is no need for me to manually change it each year), and just was generally knowledgeable and helpful.

I was about to fill out the paperwork when my friend Ray called me to talk about a cruise for this year that we’re trying to plan. We want to go around the British Isles, and we were able to narrow down a list of eight possible cruises to five.

After that conversation, I finally got to my forms and filled them out. My husband mailed them yesterday morning.

In contrast to the rest of the week, yesterday was normal. I went to exercise class, took my dog for a walk, and then decided to put together my second translators list, ordered by translator name. This one was much easier as I had already done all the work. I just had to copy and paste information into a different order.

Harking back to our problem last week with getting the PBS app on our TV, I heard twice from their support staff telling me what to do, each time ignoring the main piece of information from my complaint, that we couldn’t find the PBS app anywhere on our Firestick, despite having used it on the Firestick before. (They kept telling me to select the app.) Wayne took care of the problem by adding our Roku stick onto our TV, so that now we just have to switch back and forth. I don’t know why PBS disappeared from Firestick, but it is really inconvenient. At some point, we may just switch back to Roku and put the Firestick on the TV downstairs.

So, the only other significant event this week is that I sat down this morning to write this blog post and my reading glasses fell apart completely without warning, one side falling right off. I tried to work by balancing them on my nose, but that was too annoying. I ended up getting out an old pair. Here’s a picture of them on my messy desk.

My poor broken glasses

In which my social life is looking up and book choice finishes

Again, the end of the last week was still occupied with the book choice for my Literary Wives book club. I remember that last week I expressed concern that members would move too many books off the shortlist because of availability issues, but as it turned out, only one person did this. We went through two rounds of voting to try to end up with nine or ten books, and the last round we tried ranked voting, in which we each picked five of the remaining books and also ranked them. Normally, I would pick the winners based on how many people picked the same books, but with ranking involved, the results were a bit different. For example, one book that was on everyone’s list wasn’t picked because its score wasn’t as high as a book that was only on two people’s lists but ranked high.

As ranked voting keeps being discussed in Washington for use in political voting, I’m not sure how I like it, based on those results. It reminded me of when President Obama was trying to get elected to the Democratic ticket. In Austin, where we lived at the time, they had a ballot vote, which Hillary Clinton won. However, the Democratic party decided at the last minute to have a caucus, too, and I’m not sure everyone knew about it. I actually thought it was redundant since we had voted, and since I didn’t know about it until the last minute, I didn’t go. However, the caucus chose Obama, and the party went with that. I felt it was totally unfair to have both and to go with the results of the smaller group’s decision, even though they apparently were trying to see who would be more active in their candidate’s support. I guess I wouldn’t have felt that way if they had only had one or the other. I felt that the whole thing was very poorly planned and unfair.

I’m making a roundabout point that the results were different for ranked voting and regular voting in our little sample, and I’m not sure which is fairer. In one case, two people wanted to read the book and ranked it first or second choice. In the other case, four people wanted to read the book, but only ranked it four or fifth choice. The book that two people wanted to read got a higher score than the other one. Hmm. It gives us something to think about for next time.

While we were still voting on books, one member asked if we didn’t want to change from reading four books a year to six. Admittedly, she had brought this up before but just to me. I suppose I should have forwarded her question to everyone, but I didn’t. I don’t feel like I’m in charge of the club, although by default I took on some responsibilities, and normally anyone bringing up something like that would ask the entire group. Originally, we read six books a year, but we got to the point where we were having sporadic participation, and we thought that reading fewer books a year might bring that back up.

Anyway, if we made that change, it would have meant changing the number of books we were shooting for on our final list, so that threw me off for a while. However, another member expressed concern about her time, so we shelved that issue.

We finally got our list, and then the only thing that remained was to create a schedule. Normally, I just do that arbitrarily (in this case, I was trying to separate the older books from each other, as we picked several), but I always ask if anyone has any preferences. As it turned out, one member asked that two books be put toward the end of the schedule, hoping for better availability later, and one book be put at the beginning because she was behind in reviewing it. Anyway, we were finally done! I think we have a good list, and if anyone is interested, you can see it on my Literary Wives page. Anyone who wants to read along with us and comment on the book is welcome to join in.

On Sunday I had a fun time. I went to the Vancouver Symphony with my sister, my brother, and his wife. They were playing two 5th Symphonies, one by William Alwyn (very short) and one by Gustav Mahler (very long). My brother, who has worked in classical music all his life, said the Mahler would either shred the orchestra or they would sound great. They sounded great. The conductor was a firecracker. I have seen a lot of bad small city orchestras, but this was a good one.

After the concert, we went to eat at Planet Thai, very good. Then we went to my brother’s house and all of us except his wife played a game of 13, a card game that his wife taught us. My sister won. I was the miserable worst loser. After that, my sister went home and my brother, sister-in-law, and I worked on plans for attending the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this summer. We made room reservations that night, and the next morning, I bought our tickets. We’re going to see Much Ado about Nothing, Macbeth, and Jane Eyre.

I also bought a ticket next to them for the Oregon Symphony in April. Yay! Stuff to do!

It was nice enough over Friday and Saturday to actually go out and do some yardwork, almost warm enough to do it without a jacket. However, the temperatures went way down on Sunday.

Sunday night and afternoon, we got snow up here. It did not extend down to Battle Ground. We only got a dusting, which mostly melted off, and then we got some again Monday night. When I got up very early yesterday morning, there was snow sticking to the branches, but by the time I got done with my blog in the morning, it was all melted, and it’s been raining ever since. The temperatures went down quite a bit, though, although they are up today.

On Monday, Luke and I went to visit Christine and Duchess. Although I have been there, Luke hasn’t been allowed to go for about two months, since Duchess’s hip went out of joint. He is so much bigger than her that Christine was afraid he would knock her over or something. Anyway, she got the all clear last week, so we went for a visit.

Some of my crocuses

Even though it is still snowing here and there, we have started to get flowers around the place. Some of my crocuses came up last week, and I noticed today that some of my daffodils are actually flowering. Their stems came up long ago, but now the flowers have actually started to come out. I hope the weather won’t end up killing them.

I have seen a pair of ducks in the pond every day now for a week or so, so I’m guessing that is our nesting pair. Yesterday, however, I counted at least five ducks in the pond. We’re back to two today.

In which my car makes me nervous

I won’t say that it’s been a very active week, just an irritating one at times.

I attended my last exercise class for a month, because my instructor is going to Australia on vacation and the gym can never get substitutes because of a stupid policy. I went to art class on Wednesday and did a make-up on Friday, so I had lots of art. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was finished with my baby peacock soon.

My Sunday was enlivened by receiving an email from Goodreads that told me they had removed one of my reviews because it violated their review policy. The violation was that I simply wrote “See my review here” with a link to the review. I was totally unaware that they had a review policy or that anything I had done violated it, but it seems all of my reviews violate the policy, despite my having asked, when I started doing that, if it was okay. Anyway, if you’re interested in all the gory details, you can check out my post about why I quit using Goodreads.

So, that was fun. I was hopping mad all of Sunday.

Sunday was a nice, spring-like day, and I told myself I should go out and trim all the bushes that I should have trimmed back in the late fall only it was pouring rain every day. However, I feel like I have been behind on my reading ever since January, so I didn’t.

Monday, of course, it started raining again.

Tuesday was the most action-packed day of my week. On Tuesdays, Wayne always goes early to the store, mostly to buy things we already have. When he came back, he said he had a flat tire. He put the little bitty spare on the car and called the tire shop in Battle Ground to see if I could drop the tire for repair on my way to take Luke to his grooming appointment and then pick it up on the way back. I decided that the idea of driving all the way to Brush Prairie and back on that little tire made me very nervous, so I got ready really early (Luke’s appointment was at 12:30) and just took Luke to the tire store.

On the way there, I kept the speed down to about 40, because I’ve had one of those little spare tires go flat on me before, and put my flashers on for the highway. Even so, one jerk, once we came to a passing zone, almost side-swiped me on purpose and blared his horn at me.

As soon as I got on our main road, the car flashed me a litany of things that weren’t working and the Check Engine and Alt Oil Temp lights came on as well. I didn’t know what the last one meant, but it didn’t sound good. However, this has happened before when we had a problem with the car. I drove in to the tire store and once we were there and I had Luke settled with some water, I looked up the blinky lights I didn’t understand and saw that for the Alt Oil Temp light I was supposed to pull over and wait for it to turn off. Oops!

While we were there, people came over to admire Luke.

Luke and I got out of the tire store just in time for his appointment. All the lights were still on in the car all the way out to his grooming appointment and all the way back home except that the Alt Oil Temp light went off almost immediately. I was starting to think I would have to make an early appointment for service because the Check Engine light was still on. I had run off that morning as soon as I got dressed, so I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. I had just enough time to do that and sit down for a few minutes afterward when Luke’s groomer pinged me to let me know he was almost ready.

The warning lights on my car finally turned off on my way back from picking up Luke, and we are back to normal.

In the evening I had invited my brother and his wife for a welcome dinner out. We planned to go for Szechuan food, but my sister-in-law looked up the menu to decide what she wanted to eat and discovered they aren’t open on Tuesdays, so we went for sushi instead. I had miso soup and two fancy rolls. My brother had a sushi and sashimi combo, and I was teasing him about how much more interesting my food was. My sister-in-law had a delicious-looking big bowl of noodle soup. By the end of the meal, I had converted my brother to rolls by letting him have a section of each of mine.

We had a really nice dinner. They invited me to join them in some concerts they are attending this spring, although I would have to sit by myself because they have already bought their tickets. I guess I could do that. I haven’t been doing anything much culturally since I moved here because I feel reluctant to drive into Portland by myself. I also brought along a Oregon Shakespeare Festival brochure, and we went as far as selecting some dates we’d all like to go, based on what we want to see.

My supposedly purple rose

We have had our two weeks of snow and ice, and then the temperatures went up to the 50’s for a while, much warmer than usual, and now we are back to the 40’s with nights sometimes being frosty. And what do you suppose has happened? One of my rose bushes has had one flower come out. The flowers on this bush are supposed to be purple (they are actually more of a maroon), and this one is pink, but I suppose if you’re going to have roses blooming at completely inappropriate times of the year, you can’t complain.

I have also noticed that lots of my bulbs have leaves sticking up out of the ground. Since it’s quite likely that we could have more bad weather, including snow, I don’t know if it will hurt them at all. I counted nine of my newest daffodils already coming up in the orchard, plus a bunch of tulip leaves sticking up in my raised beds.

And speaking of life, we had a pair of ducks on the pond on Monday. I don’t know if they have stayed or not.

In which I have a few social engagements

Last Wednesday during art class I finally got to start painting my little peacock’s eye. I did only the white of his eye and painted the rest black. This week I’ll be doing the highlights to the pupil.

After class, I stopped by to visit Christine while Duchess was at the groomers. I attempted to get the grooming appointment worked out by sending a message to my groomer to try to get an appointment for Luke on the same day as Duchess’s next one and also to get one soon, but she never answered me. Luke had an ear infection for the last month, so he couldn’t go to the groomer.

I attended exercise class on Thursday and yesterday, but yesterday our instructor told us that after Thursday she would be in Australia for the next month and that they had not gotten us a substitute. The gym has some weird policy that they can’t hire new people to work as substitutes, apparently, and by new, they even count the nice lady that used to substitute for us a lot. She had to stop because her husband got sick, but now she is willing to come in and take the class. I suppose I had better get busy and try out that online tai chi class.

On Saturday night my sister and I went to see Poor Things. I thought it was interesting that the Battle Ground theater even had it there, because most of their movies are for kids or teenagers. It turned out that my sister didn’t know anything about the movie, so I was laughing as we went in, since I had at least seen the previews and some of the stars on Graham Norton. The movie was visually stunning but really bizarre and very funny. There were only three of us in the theater on a Saturday night at 6:30. That’s Battle Ground for you!

The weather is oddly warm right now. At 7 AM here it is 50 degrees already. It’s time to hang up my winter coat, at least for now. Yesterday, though, it was very warm when Maja and I went to class, but by the time we came out, it was quite cold. And then later in the day, warm again.

And that’s about it for this week.