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 spend the week entertaining

My friend Claire arrived on Tuesday afternoon, and we went home and got Wayne to go out to dinner. We went to Wayne’s favorite, Fuel Bistro, but they were out of the chocolate chip cookie that they serve warm in its own little cast iron pan with ice cream on top. I swear, despite the food being good, Wayne only wants to go there for the cookie.

On Wednesday, Claire went with me to my art class, where she did some of the beginning exercises (although I remember her as very creative) and then she began drawing an old house. I worked on the second dog in my painting. Then we went to lunch at Northwoods Pub, where I had a steak salad. (I forget what she had.) After lunch, we stopped by my sister’s house for a surprise visit and met her dog. I believe we stayed up very late talking that night.

On Thursday, we took Luke for a walk in Moulton Falls Park. Later, we had tickets to Lelooska Foundation with my niece and her family and my sister and her other grandson. Lelooska Foundation is a Native American cultural museum that has programs no more than twice a year (and less often of late) in which they show the masks they have carved and tell the stories associated with those masks along with dancing and singing. It is always interesting and they also make it funny, but it was also very cold, despite us having dressed for the cold. It takes place in their longhouse. I gave my warmest (Ugg) boots to Claire to wear and then found my toes and body getting a little cold, despite my down jacket. I almost brought a blanket, and I saw that a few people had done that. Also, the benches get a little hard after a while for old rear ends. I know that Claire enjoyed it very much.

Friday afternoon we spent at the Good Feet Store. I had thought it might be a good idea to get orthotics for my shoes, and I was prepared to spend around $300, but I did not expect to be presented with a “system” of three orthotic sets that cost more than $1200. Plus they would have liked to sell me some shoes. I was put off by their approach, the kind where they subject you to an entire long presentation and fitting before they show you the price for anything (like the Sleep Number people). And even though the girl spent some time in the back “preparing” our orthotics, it was hard for me to see what she did, exactly, to fit them for me. One of them was extremely uncomfortable, and anyway, I wasn’t going to spend that much. I had orthotics that were molded to my feet years ago, and they worked great. That was more like I was expecting.

On Friday night, we had reservations at Kachka, the Russian/Ukrainian restaurant in Portland. Yum! I got the time wrong, however, and even though they sent me three different reminders, I never looked at the time until exactly an hour before we had to be there, and that’s about how long it took to get there, so I didn’t have the opportunity to change my clothes like I planned.

We spent Saturday driving to and from Seaside. We had lunch in Astoria and poked around for a while in the stores. Then we drove to my brother’s house in Seaside and visited for a few hours. We tried to walk down to the beach, but it started hailing so hard on the way that we turned back. Then as soon as we were inside, the sun came out. After our visit, Claire wanted to go to the alpaca store downtown to buy socks. I bought a couple of pairs, too, because some of mine are getting holes in the heels. We got home around 8 PM.

Claire at the grist mill

On Sunday we had snow for a while, and then it was rainy. We drove out to the Grist Mill that is northwest of where we live. It is an old mill and covered bridge. We took Luke so he could get a little exercise. On Sunday night we went out for Mexican food.

On Monday we went to the store so that Claire could buy some food for her flight and train trip home. Then we took Lukey for a walk. In the late afternoon, we went out to eat dinner, and we planned to go to Goldie’s Barbecue, which is about an hour from our house, but we found it was closed for spring break. So, we had to drive back to Battle Ground, since I didn’t know what was out there, and we ate at Pita House. She had a gyro meal and I had my standby, baba ganoush and lentil soup. After that, we drove to the airport and I dropped her off. I like entertaining, but I was happy to go home and veg. In fact, I skipped exercise class on Tuesday so that I could do nothing but read and do the laundry.

All week we only had one nice day. The rest of the week it was either raining or snowing, which it did a little bit on both Sunday and Monday. Usually we can see Mt. St. Helens often but the whole week, it was either overcast, or when it was sunny, clouds were massing on the horizon, so Claire never once was able to see it. I drove her to several locations where we can usually see the mountain but to no avail, although we did catch a glimpse of Mt. Adams. Likewise, because of the hail, she never saw the ocean except from the restaurant in Astoria, and that may have been the Columbia.

Although I remembered my anniversary last week, I figured I could do something about it this week. Instead, I forgot all about it until this morning when Wayne said, “Happy Nannyversary,” as he always does. Neither of us got a card for each other, although he said he looked and couldn’t find anything good. I guess we’re going out to dinner tonight.

And that’s about it for the week!

In which I attend a cultural event

Wednesday this week started out with Christmas. After I went to art class (during which I painted grass), my niece and her son came over to help decorate my tree. This event, which usually involves my great niece, not my great nephew, always calls for treats, so I whipped up a pan of brownies and put it in the oven before they arrived. As I had expected, my great nephew was only of moderate assistance, but then his sister was that way when she came over to help at his age. He hung some ornaments, but as soon as the brownie odor emerged from the oven, he spent a lot of time going into the kitchen to smell it. My niece was particular about what went on the tree, and my tree was smaller than usual, so we didn’t put up some of the larger ornaments, and an entire box of what I consider my lesser ornaments went back into the closet. That was okay with me. My tree looks much more restrained than it usually does. We finished when my great nephew proudly installed the treetop star, and then we all took a brownie and ice cream break. His dad arrived to pick them up just in time for brownie.

Holding the Christmas star before putting it on the tree; as you can see, our snow is gone for now.

On Thursday our senior exercise class was cancelled again, so I meant to put out the rest of the Christmas decorations but actually ended up doing nothing but the laundry and dishes.

I finished with the inside Christmas decorations on Friday but still have not started putting up the outside lights. I instead worked on my Christmas cards. I finished them by Monday and mailed them on Tuesday.

Saturday was an unusual day. I attended tai chi class, where I’m still trying to decide whether to take Introductory again or Continued when the new session starts in January. They announced a party for December 31 for which you had to sign up. It was hard to know what to do, because my brother and sister-in-law will be in town and no one plans much of anything ahead of time. I finally signed up, figuring that they wouldn’t be likely to get going on anything before noon or so.

Then Friday evening, my brother and sister-in-law picked me up to go to my great niece’s school play, a shortened version of Annie. It was surprisingly entertaining, especially compared to the things she was in with a different drama school last year. My great niece played one of the orphans. It was her first real play, and she was very excited.

My great niece in her orphan costume after the play with some members of the family

After the play, I went out for dinner with my brother and sister-in-law at the pub.

Sunday and Monday I was working on Christmas cards, and Tuesday our class was cancelled yet again. So, Maja and I decided to take a walk in Moulton Falls park with Luke. I have been having trouble with my right leg recently. After sitting or lying down, it is stiff and hurts when I move it until it loosens up. I thought the walk would do it good, but it’s hard to say. It actually hurt more when I got back to the car. In fact, I had trouble raising it up enough to get into the car. However, so far this morning it feels better.

When I got home, I was hungry for Chinese food, but Wayne wouldn’t consent to going further away than Battle Ground. So, we had lunch in one of Battle Ground’s very mediocre Chinese restaurants.

We have had a rainy and dismal week, but starting today, we’re supposed to have a week of sunny, dry weather, although colder at night. Actually, it’s quite cold this morning. I hope it dries up enough to make me want to go out and clean up my flower and vegetable beds, because I haven’t done that yet this year.

Every day for about a week, I’ve seen a little black duck fishing in our pond. I don’t know if it’s the same duck or not. However, he seems to like it here if he is. I hope he isn’t losing his chance to migrate. Although our pond seldom freezes completely over, it still does freeze.

And that’s about it.

Yikes! The number of Covid cases in the county went up 461 for a total of 108,548. There were 9 new deaths, for a total of 974. The rate of new cases per 100K population went up 13 to 87.5. We’re getting back up to the higher rates we had months ago.

Already a bit fall

This last week the county reported a total number of cases up 1175 to 30,853. That’s confirmed cases up 1016 to 28,482 and probable cases up 159 to 2371. Number of active cases is up 67 to 1351. Deaths are up 4 to 305. I haven’t been reporting our rates, but the rate of new cases per 100K population has gone above 100 for the first time in many weeks, to 108.7.

The past few days have been like autumn, as contrasted with the weekend, which was quite hot. For example, today the high was 64, I think, while it was in the mid-80’s on Saturday and Sunday. My brother and his wife came here so my brother could help my niece and her husband finish the outside of their geodesic dome greenhouse. It’s quite the structure. I have been told I should go over after dark, because it is solar, and the lights that come on at night make it look otherworldly.

The guys finishing up the outside of the geodesic greenhouse

Just as a side note, I’m sitting here waiting for the photo to come across. About a month ago, even though my phone had used one of my email addresses (let’s call them 1 and 2, with 2 being a gmail address) for email ever since I got it, the phone suddenly began informing me that it didn’t have a password for address #1. I would retype the password over and over with the same result, so I was forced to change to address #2 on my phone. This is inconvenient, because I use address #2 for all my orders and things, so it is where I get my junk mail. I use address #1 for real people and important correspondence. I’m only talking about this because of the way I move my photos from my phone to my computer. I don’t really use the Cloud (I probably should start). Instead, I email them from my phone to my computer. When I used address #1 to do that, it was almost instantaneous. I have noticed that when using address #2, whether it be to address #1 or #2, it takes hours for a photo to come across. One time when I had several photos in the email (they’re not at full size, either), it took more than 24 hours. Very frustrating, as I don’t start working on this post with enough time to wait. Last week, although I wrote my post the day before, it barely came across before I was ready to post. They don’t even show up in the Sent box until they go across, so I can’t copy down the photo from there. I have tried everything Apple suggests to take care of this problem, including removing the mail address and adding it back in, although now I can’t add it back in because it says it has no password. Address #1 is not a web address, so this means that I can’t check my mail when I am away, not my real mail, anyway.

Update: Since I wrote that little diatribe, I figured out I could change my email on my phone by going into my account #1 through Yahoo, even though it’s not a Yahoo address. Success!

On Friday, Maja and I decided to try to begin getting back in shape by taking a walk at Moulton Falls. We resolved not to go too far for fear my foot would act up, so we only went two miles. That night, also, I was very energetic with my foot exercises that I do while alternately submerging my foot in ice water and then in room temperature water. I don’t know whether it was the extra walking or the energetic exercises, but something made me feel pretty lame the next day, which is unfortunate, because I was feeling as if my foot was much better.

Basically, it’s been an ordinary week with not much to tell. On Saturday my oldest brother said he’d like to come over and bring me something. It turned out to be a long shoehorn, because he had seen how I slide my shoe on and then put my knee on top of the back of the couch so I can slide my finger in and straighten out the heel. That was very thoughtful.

On the gardening side, we have already eaten three tomatoes, and there are several that are orangish and should be ready in a few days. They have been delicious.

Better weather

This week the county reports 18,843 total cases of the virus, 259 of which are active. The number of deaths so far is 232. Our rate has gone way down to 88.8, which is good, although I’m not sure why, as it seems there are more cases this week than last. I’m sure the vaccines have a lot to do with it, though.

Speaking of which, everyone over 65 in my family who hadn’t got it already is scheduled for or has had their first vaccine this week. My middle brother and his wife, who live in Oregon, were the last ones to go, and when they heard that Walmart would be scheduling vaccines in Oregon, my sister-in-law got right online and got herself an appointment. Then she told him about it, and he got right online, and there were no appointments left. He gave up, but she kept trying and was able to get a canceled appointment for him. And, if you remember, I signed up both myself and Wayne on the county website for a vaccine months ago. Well, today Wayne got an automated call from Peace Health about getting a vaccine, but since he has already had his first shot and has an appointment for the second, he won’t be calling them back. I think that is interesting, because I was first on their list of the two of us, since I registered us both. Maybe they are doing it by age.

On Wednesday, I went out to see a gastroenterologist. I guess I get to have my first upper G. I. in a couple of weeks. Just to make it more fun, I am due for my colonoscopy, so we’re doing both. For some reason, my doctor’s office referred me to a gastroenterologist all the way in Gresham, Oregon, about an hour’s drive away. I made a feeble attempt to get it changed, but realized I wasn’t explicit enough. When the girl called to give me the appointment, I said, “Where did you say this was?” and she said “Legacy Mount Hood.” I said, “Is that in Oregon?” and she said, “Yes.” I said I lived in Yacolt, and she told me she didn’t know where that was. I said, “Don’t they have something at Salmon Creek?” (a half hour away) and she said, “We have something in White Salmon” (two hours away). I realize now that I should have asked her if they had something in Vancouver, as she obviously didn’t know that Salmon Creek is in Vancouver. Later, I called my doctor’s P. A. and left a message about it, but he never called back, so I just went.

I remembered later that I went to a gastroenterologist at Vancouver Clinic a couple of years ago, but I also remember thinking that he was the least interested doctor I had ever met. He seemed incredibly bored. My doctor had referred me to him because of some blood count numbers, and both he and my nephrologist were worried about them, but the bored gastroenterologist said he didn’t think they were a problem (without running any tests or doing anything else) and that was that. So, I obviously didn’t want to return to him.

Anyway, that’s the sum of the exciting adventures for this week, except I actually got Wayne to go for a walk on Tuesday. It has been alternating days of rain with really beautiful but cold days (the meteorologist says we have been having temperatures that are more normal for February than March), and Tuesday was one of the beautiful ones. We had spoken about going for a walk the day before, but I fully expected Wayne to cop out. He started to tell me his knees were bothering him (his usual excuse, but the exact reason why he needs to walk more), and then he suddenly said, “I guess we should go.” So, the three of us went to Moulton Falls, the Hantwick entrance, which is an easy one, with a path that is mostly flat and paved some way out. We didn’t go far, perhaps 0.6 to 0.8 miles, but that was 0.6 to 0.8 miles more than I’ve gotten him to go in years. I hope to be able to coax him out regularly enough so that he becomes able to go further. He complained to me, though, that the path was not flat. I guess maybe he would have preferred to drive in to Battle Ground and walk on the city streets.

When we were returned to the car, I forgot I didn’t wear any special footwear and didn’t have my hiking poles, and I tried to go up the grass slope, which is a little steep, to the car. I slipped and fell flat on my face. I didn’t hurt myself, I don’t think, but the trouble was getting back up. Even with Wayne’s cane and Wayne to help, it was difficult. My sister has been telling me that I should practice getting up and down from the floor. I know I should, but it involves getting on my knees to get back up (I can’t do it any other way), and that hurts. I have to do it occasionally, most usually when Roomba gets stuck under the bed, but I don’t look forward to it and I certainly don’t want to do it for no reason.

It doesn’t look like I’ll be doing my regular hike anytime soon. Maja has been too busy helping the little girl who lives in her barn apartment with her schoolwork, since her mother is a teacher. I am not sure why she’s having to put in as much time now that the girl is back in school, as she has been for months, but Maja now also has a friend who injured herself and Maja has been helping her. She said she doesn’t know when she will be able to go, and my niece reports that she and my sister are spending all their nice days in the garden.

We have continued to see a lot of the deer lately. On Friday, I think, I was walking Luke and a car approached, so I spoke to Luke to sit down next to me. That spooked a deer that was apparently right next to us (but invisible) in the woods next to our pond. She ran off across our pasture and into Maja’s yard, where she stood behind the barn for quite some time. I kept my eye on her for the part of the walk where she was visible, and she stayed there the entire time. On the way back from that walk, as I passed between our pond on one side of the road and a much smaller pond on the other, a couple of mallards flew off from the smaller pond. I hadn’t realized they were there, and I apparently spooked them.

Tuesday morning, I saw two brown ducks on the far side of the pond, but they were underneath some foliage, so it was hard to see them. Then Wayne came up from working outside and told me that he had scared off a couple of Canadian geese from the pond when he turned on the weed whacker. His record for that on Tuesday was poor, because when I was washing the dishes, I spotted first one, then two, then all three deer over by the pond. I watched them for a long time, and at one point they were all three together, so I went to get my phone to take a picture. I was only gone about 30 seconds, but in that time, Wayne started the lawnmower, and by the time I got back, they had vanished.

Still, it’s been quite nice to see so much of the wildlife, especially the deer, lately.

An eye-opener

Our coronavirus statistics continue to go up at a dismal rate. We have now had 1053 cases, up more than 200 from last week. The number of deaths remains steady at 29, and 16,642 people have been tested. The rate of new cases per 100,000 population is up to a whopping 48.9. Last week, if you’ll remember, it was 15.4, but that number seemed suspicious, because it went down from the week before and the number of cases was up. Our zip code map continues to have the same mistake of showing us in the 80-120 color but having no data in the table, which indicates less than 10, so I don’t know how many cases we have up here.

Last week, we ventured out for our yearly eye exams. Well, Wayne actually hadn’t been examined for two years. The appointment part of that was interesting, because when I made the exam back in April, I assumed we would have to go to the Main Street branch instead of our usual Salmon Creek, which was closed. Salmon Creek is about 10 or 15 minutes closer to us. However, the person making the appointment told me that the Salmon Creek branch would be open with one doctor in July, which was the soonest she could get us in, anyway.

Last week when I got my appointment reminder, I just happened to notice it said Main Street. Usually, I don’t look at those that closely. I called them up to verify, and they said that the Salmon Creek branch was still closed. So, I chided them for moving our appointment without calling us. I said we might not have noticed the change and gone to the wrong place. As it turned out, they had to cram us both into one appointment, apparently because they didn’t have room for both of us. They explained to us that the Salmon Creek office is their smallest and they haven’t been able to figure out how to adjust it for distancing. In my opinion, having seen both, I thought that Main Street, which is an old office, has more problems, because it has lots of long, narrow hallways, and several times we had to walk past people. Of course, everyone was wearing masks. Salmon Creek seems to be laid out better.

My sight has changed slightly, but Wayne is showing signs of possible early glaucoma, so he has to go back in November to have his optic nerves checked. It’s interesting to me that our ophthalmologist in Austin did that as a routine part of our exams, every year, but here he has to have a special appointment for it. In fact, they gave us a lot more tests in Austin as a regular part of our exams.

Here’s my Day of the Dead kitty clock, showing 2:00 by the bones.

When we came back from our eye appointments, we ended up taking I-5 back and got the idea to stop at Pacific Northwest Best Fish Company to pick up some lunch. This is an interesting place out in the middle of nowhere that has a fresh fish market on one side, and a little walk-up window on the other where you can order fish meals. Very good fish and chips and my favorite, fried scallops, as well as some other dishes. Fish tacos, that kind of thing. They have some picnic tables to eat at, which of course you can’t do right now, or maybe you can, since restaurants are opening up. Unfortunately, they were closed for remodeling. So, Wayne said we were close to one of our favorite restaurants, Fuel Bistro, and we could go there for some take-out. We did that, and the wait person suggested we go around the corner to a gift shop while we were waiting, and she would come get us. There Wayne purchased my newest acquisition for an early birthday present. A Day of the Dead cat clock. And here it is. I love it.

On Monday, we went in to Costco during the geezer hours to get our glasses, and Wayne was amazed because our three pairs cost about $200. We were used to paying about $500 apiece for glasses in Austin. Of course, I always picked out fancy dan frames, which I don’t feel like I should do now that we’re retired. We were the first people in Optical, which was nice.

On Friday, Maja and I went hiking in Moulton Falls Park. I was wearing a bandana so that I could put it back down when people weren’t around, but there were too many people, so it got aggravating to be putting it up and down and up and down. I think the next time I hike in a park with a lot of people, I’m just going to wear a regular mask and keep it on. We only saw two other people with masks in the park, and there were a couple of people who persisted in walking in the middle of the path. I guess we should have known better than to pick Moulton on the official July 4th day off.

On Sunday, we were supposed to go to Christine’s so she could cut Wayne’s hair, which is looking awful. He had suggested this outing, and she turned it into a lunch date. Then Sunday morning, Wayne pulled his usual, “I don’t feel good,” routine that he uses to get out of anything he doesn’t want to do. Luke and I went alone. I think Christine was a bit offended. She said, “Wasn’t this his idea?” and I told her yes and said this was what he said to get out of things. She said her husband was the same way and congratulated me for being truthful. She said that for years she just made excuses for Peter. However, she also said she wouldn’t now cut Wayne’s hair. She had made a nice lunch for us, and I had made pineapple upside down cake, and we had a good time, as always.

On Monday, Wayne and I ran errands, including picking up my new iPad from Walmart. My old one is so old that it can hardly do anything anymore. It stopped remembering passwords some time ago, but now its on/off button doesn’t work anymore, so I can’t back it up. It also has started asking me for my Apple ID, several times per session. I don’t really use it much anymore except for reading ebooks, but I have seven collected works that I bought from Delphi Classics that I still want to be able to read. Luckily, I was able to get them over with no problem, although I did get a message telling me it was unable to move over some items that were bought using another ID, the one for my old workplace that I’ve long forgotten the password for. I don’t understand, though, what the password I bought them with has to do with it. If I purchased them, and they are on my iPad, they should move over. In fact, I didn’t notice anything not moving over that I wanted.

And that brings up another confusing topic, my email. I had long kept my gmail email account on the iPad, but when it began doing everything very slowly, I logged into the gmail account from my computer. I kept that account, which is my junk account that I register for everything with, up on the computer, but I had noticed that it wasn’t syncing with the iPad, so that the iPad showed I had thousands of unread messages. All those messages came over to the new iPad, and I had a fun several hours deleting them all. I finally did a Select All and thought I had managed to unselect all the messages I wanted to keep, particularly a whole bunch of messages I had forwarded over from my work computer four years ago and hadn’t dealt with yet, but I see they are gone. I think, though, that I also have them on my sbcglobal.net mail account. What I don’t understand is that just over the weekend, I got probably twenty or thirty messages that never showed up in the same account on my computer. I know the computer interface has a spam filter, but when I look at what’s in the spam folder, it’s not those messages. In fact, what’s in the spam folder is mostly not spam. So most of the almost 2000 messages that I had to delete were ones that I never saw on my computer. I don’t understand why I wouldn’t have been seeing the same things both places.

My pink dahlia with one white blossom. I swear this is only one plant.

On the gardening front, aside from picking and eating a teeny tiny tomato that was ripe at about 1/4 of the size it was supposed to be and also picking a whopping snow pea crop, I have a very odd thing. My pink dahlia, which was all pink flowers, has sprouted a white one! I never heard of anything like that before, but here’s the proof!

 

 

 

 

 

Locking down

On the way to art class last Thursday, my sister Sue, who is a nurse, told me there were 21 cases of Covid-19 in Clark County. When I asked her why I hadn’t heard of any more than the one, she said the authorities were lying so we wouldn’t panic. However, she didn’t seem to have any kind of special knowledge, because she said she saw it on the news. What she said didn’t make sense to me, because they are being pretty forthright about the numbers of cases in Seattle, but one disadvantage of living so near to the Oregon border is that our news all comes from Portland, where they naturally talk mostly about Oregon. So, the next day I researched this, and I found that just that day, they had announced two more cases, for a total of three. Where Sue got confused was that I counted 21 cases that had been out for testing, 10 of which came back negative, 9 of which were still out for testing, and the 2 cases they had just announced that day.

Since then, one more confirmed case has been announced, and the two cases they announced last week, a married couple, have died. That, of course, doesn’t mean that there aren’t more cases, just that not many people have been tested.

In any case, things have started to lock down around here. School is cancelled and restaurants are only allowed to serve take-out. Almost all my regular activities have been cancelled, except the dog school. However, since the federal government has asked that people not be in groups larger than 10, I think dog classes will have to stop, although perhaps not puppy play. Puppy play was scheduled to shut down for two weeks starting next week anyway. I kept Luke home this week, and my only outside activities since last week’s art class were dropping him off at the groomer’s and going to visit Christine on Friday and hiking with my niece Katrina and her kids yesterday. I also dropped by the Battle Ground Produce Market to buy some meat, veggies, and fruit.

I was in that market on Friday, by the way, and after I picked up some broccoli, I started to go to the check-out stand but stopped when I thought the guy standing right next to me looked familiar. And by golly, it was my brother, Mark, husband of SIL Nancy, with whom I had a run-in earlier that week. He was pleased to see me and spent some time trying to justify his wife. I thought he was talking about the virus kerfuffle, but he was actually talking about the usual thing, his childhood problems, and the nasty things she said about my brother John. It’s always the same old same old with him. Then she came in the store, probably wondering about what was keeping him, and although she was pleasant, she hustled him out. Although they left quite a few minutes before me, I had to follow them almost all the way home, because she insists on driving, and she drives like a little old lady.

Oddly enough, after throwing a fit when she heard I was dropping my dog off at the dog trainer’s, she asked the family what they thought about her going skiing on Monday. What? I’m going to meet two people I know at the dog place and just hand over my dog, and she’s going to go to the slopes among a bunch of strangers? In any case, the slopes closed down.

She still continues to send article after article about the virus all around to the family. It’s one thing to stay informed, but I think she is scaring herself by being over-informed.

Wayne thinks he might be sick, but if he is, it’s a very slight case and more likely of flu. To confuse everyone, the regular flu is going around right now, too. I hope I don’t get it from him. I have had a drippy nose since September, which means it is more confusing for me to know whether I am sick. I made the mistake a month ago when I thought my nose was just doing its normal thing and then got back from art class and realized I had a cold, which I would not have taken to art class if I had known.

He tends to scare himself about illness, which resulted in a little confusion on Friday. That day, he spent several hours trying to find out how to get tested, even though he didn’t have a temperature that we could tell (our thermometer measured both of us at below normal temps) and had only coughed about three times. As a result, he sent me to the drug store on my way to pick up Luke from the groomer’s to get a new thermometer. Walgreen’s was fairly normal, but the entire thermometer rack was empty. The druggist suggested I try Safeway, next door, but when I walked in, that usually empty store had a line all the way out to the produce section. I walked out and ordered a thermometer online.

When I got home, Wayne had listened to online recordings of people with the virus breathing and decided he didn’t have it after all. And that’s how it goes. One day, he thinks he has it, the next he decides he has the flu. It’s a little stressful, both for him and for me. I tried to make him feel better by saying that if he had the virus it seemed really mild, and that just made him angry. He said I was trivializing his illness. You can’t win around here.

Here are my poor daffodils peeping through the snow.

Our weather has been pretty crazy. On Saturday, we woke up to quite a bit of snow that stayed most of the day. I went down to the orchard and attempted to take a picture of my poor daffodils, peeping through the snow. I’m not sure if you can tell that’s what they are. I also took a nice photo of Luke under the apple tree.

Luke in the snow Saturday morning. He just loves snow and spent some time running in circles that morning.

Then the very next day it turned warm and sunny. We’ve had a slew of really nice days. Yesterday I went hiking at Moulton Falls Park with Katrina, Mischa, and Søren. It was a beautiful day, starting out a little chilly and ending up warm. Luke went along with us.

And that’s about it. We’ve battened down the hatches, pretty much. I hope you all are safe wherever you live.

 

 

Let there be light

First, a miracle occurred! About a year and a half ago, the second fluorescent light in my closet started to go out. (The other one was out already.) When I mentioned that I needed new bulbs, Wayne suggested that we change out the fixture for LEDs, as they are more energy efficient and he has done that throughout the house. We soon bought a fixture for the closet, which we put under the dresser in the guest room. Time passed. My other bulb went from flickering a lot to being completely out, and since then I have been going into my closet with a  flashlight or just feeling around for things. I complained about it several months ago, and Wayne installed a camping lantern in my closet that was almost as bad as no light at all. My friend Christine suggested I go out and buy fluorescent bulbs and install them myself, but I kept forgetting to measure the fixture.

And lo and behold, yesterday Wayne brought a ladder in from the garage. I could hardly bear to hope, but yes, I now have a new light fixture in my closet! I only had to go a year without any light! For some reason he didn’t install it straight in the closet. It is at an angle to the wall. But beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll take it! It is very bright!

Lukey enjoying the new snow. He just loves playing in the snow. I shot a video of him playing but was unable to transfer it from my phone to my computer. I’m not sure my template supports video anyway, as it didn’t last time I tried to upload a video.

I have to admit to not having done very much the last week. We had a week where it snowed just about every day, and it was so nice to sit in front of the fire with a book that that’s about what I did. Of course, I continued to take Luke to class, and in my art class, I began painting my pigs. I went to tai chi again, this time with Maja, but we did not go for a hike.

And speaking of Luke, he is going through a stretch of naughtiness after being relatively well behaved for some time. The first thing he did was steal my bookmark off the coffee table and rip it to shreds. He hasn’t been taking things off the table, so I let my guard down. Next, he stole one of my socks out of the dirty laundry, but this time, at least, he didn’t tear it up. He just took it into his crate, and it missed its turn in the laundry, since I didn’t discover that he’d taken it until I finished the washing.

On Sunday morning, my only day to sleep in during the week, I tried to sleep a little later than Wayne and Luke. However, he stayed outside my bedroom door growling and scratching on the door, so I finally gave up and got up. I know I’m forgetting at least one more minor misbehavior, but now I’m at the big ones. On Saturday night, he vomited copiously into his bed. After I cleaned it up, I discovered why. He had gotten up on his hind legs and stolen the butter off the kitchen counter. Then he ate it, all the butter we had in the house, about a stick and a half. At least, I found the half stick on the floor, but it was covered in teeth marks, so I threw it out.

Finally, I took him out to the orchard Monday morning without his e-collar, and he ran straight into the road and across the street and did not come back when called. That’s a serious misbehavior, as he gets to go out without a leash around our property because he can be relied upon to come when called. Then he started down the road as if to call on his friend Rosie, but he came back and got dragged ignominiously home. He doesn’t really have it in him to actually run off as he prefers being around me. Nevertheless, I put his e-collar on him first thing in the morning ever since then.

This is just one bunch of the many mushrooms we saw along the path. I don’t think they are edible, more’s the pity, but they are certainly pretty.

Yesterday we went for the first regular hike since the holidays began, perhaps the first one since November, although I went out a couple of times with John and once with Lucie. It was me, Maja, and Nancy. We just went to Moulton Falls Park because it was supposed to rain, and it was raining by the time we turned back. We saw an area where they’d been cutting trees that was just loaded with mushrooms. As always, it was a beautiful walk.

 

 

A busy weekend

I had a busy weekend this week, but I’ll tell about everything in order.

On Wednesday, I had been hoping for a nice hiking day like we had the week before, but it was in fact raining very hard. Maja and I went to Moulton Falls Park, which is our hiking default, and we took Luke along. We got very, very wet. I was wearing my rain jacket, which hits a few inches above he knee, and by the time we got home, my jeans were soaked all the way from the hem down. In addition, my sleeves wicked rain up my arm about three inches. A few times, Luke turned around and ran back towards the car, and it wasn’t until I put my hood up and down a couple of times (I hate hoods and would almost rather have a wet head, but my glasses had so much rain on them that I could barely see) that I realized he was turning around and running away when I had the hood up. So, my hair got very wet. I was happy when I got home to find that Wayne had a fire going.

In fact, it has rained most of the week. Yesterday was the first day with sun, and the forecast is for sun for the next week, so maybe two nice hiking days in a row coming up.

The bedroom end of our house showing some fall colors behind it

Fall is completely here, and we have quite a few yellow trees around here. Almost all the trees around our house turn yellows, whether alder or maple. I haven’t noticed that my red maple has turned red. Last time I checked it was still green. I planted it last year, though, so it is very young and not too noticeable. There is a beautiful street in Battle Ground called Rasmussen that has red and yellow and orange trees lining it all the way down now. Since we have a good few fir and other coniferous trees around our house, our colors aren’t as vibrant because of lots of green.

On Thursday I thought I’d do a little baking, because I was supposed to visit my friend Christine on Friday morning and thought I’d take along a treat. I tried a Weight Watcher recipe for apple ginger mini pies, but it was not a success. Because, as happens every fall, all of the apples disappeared from our apple tree right around the time they got ripe, I just used the eating apples we had at home and they never juiced up. Also, making a lattice for a couple of pies is no problem, but making a lattice for 10 little tiny pies is ridiculously tedious. The recipe, in addition, said to cut the pieces of dough 1/4 inch thick. Well, at that width they looked ridiculous. They didn’t match the picture on the recipe card at all. The pieces of dough in the picture were at least 1/2 inch thick. Anyway, I didn’t bother to take any to Christine, so my husband has been eating them all week. He thinks they’re not bad with ice cream.

From the side of the house my flowering dogwood tree provides about the only glimpse of reddish fall color we have.

My weekend was rather packed. On Saturday morning, we did our usual puppy class and drop-off of my great niece to taekwondo. She is now a red belt. After we got back from taking her home, we quickly had lunch because I had a theatre date. I picked my sister Sue up, and we met my friend Deb for a matinee at Magenta Theater. This play, called Death in High Heels, was, obviously, a mystery play but not a particularly good one. The fault seemed to lie with the play itself, in which any of the suspects could have done it, and there was nothing to rule anyone out. You just had to guess the correct person, which I didn’t even bother to do. And since I am a mystery fan, it almost never happens that I am so uninterested that I don’t bother to guess.

My sister liked the play a lot more than I did, and Deb thought it was okay. It was at least mildly entertaining. After the play when we were eating at a restaurant, we discussed how we would rank the four plays we saw at Magenta and decided this one was second best, which tells you how good the other two were. We have one more play included in our season tickets, and we hope they can’t wreck Miracle on 34th Street too badly. The best play was the Jeeves and Wooster, which was fun. The third best play was an unbelievably depressing psychological drama, and we walked out of the worst one because it seemed pointless, another bad play. Every play so far was British. I wonder what’s up with that. Obviously, the last play will not be, but it will give them the occasion to do bad Brooklyn and Bronx accents instead of bad British ones.

Saturday evening, I had to come home and bake a couple of pie shells in preparation for Sunday brunch at my niece’s house. Unfortunately, I neglected to check how long they were supposed to bake and burnt them. My husband had to go out and buy more rolled dough (because I don’t make pie crust), so I finished the second pair at about 9 PM.

Søren modeling his bathrobe.

Sunday morning is usually one of two days in the week I get to sleep in a little later. The other is Friday, but this week I stupidly scheduled a 9:30 AM doctor’s appointment. Since our doctor’s office is an hour away, I had to get up at 7. I had to get up at 8 on Sunday because I still had stuff to cut up for quiches and baking to do. The occasion was my great nephew Søren’s sixth birthday. He opened up one of my presents for him right away. My sister had told me he really wanted a fluffy bathrobe. I was surprised by this, because I remember full well how disappointing a gift of clothing was for us when we were kids. However, I bought him a nice red bathrobe and watched him open it with a bit of dread. Surprisingly, he was delighted.

I have a hard time getting over last year, when I bought him the thing he wanted most, tipped off by his mother. This for some reason gave him the idea that I could read his mind. So, for Christmas, he told me he knew I had gotten him what he wanted. I had no idea what that was, and he was very disappointed when he didn’t get whatever-it-is. Oh well, better to let him down sooner rather than later. Hence, my feelings about getting him a bathrobe. Of course, he was also thrilled with the shield his grandmother got him and some kind of complicated game that he got from his other grandmother.

We had a delicious birthday brunch with all my family members plus Søren’s other grandparents. Everyone brought great things to eat. And despite eating a bit of everything and even having eaten a piece of  cake, when I weighed in at Weight Watchers on Monday I had lost 2.2 pounds. This is  the first substantial loss I have had in over a year, so I must have been a lot better than I thought I was the rest of the week. A couple weeks ago when I had been sick during the first part of the week, I expected to lose weight, but I actually gained some. I hope I can continue with the loss now that I have lost more than a few tenths of a pound, which is what I usually lose if I don’t gain or stay the same.

Yesterday afternoon was nice enough to do some work outside. I hadn’t been down to our lower level in quite some time, and last week I noticed that the blackberry had grown up the side of the slope below and was going over the sidewalk toward the house and under the sauna. I went down there this afternoon and lopped off the blackberry that was across the sidewalk, cutting it up into small pieces and putting it in a lawn bag. In a couple of cases, I found that the blackberry had worked its way under the wooden walkway that goes to the sauna and had actually created roots there, on top of the concrete. It was creepy! It was also a lot harder work than I expected, so I didn’t get to trimming the dead flowers off my hydrangea bushes. The next nice day that I have time I’ll have to do that and prepare my garden for winter.

I’m guessing Spring is official

When I bought the bulbs for these daffodils, I didn’t even know they came this small. I planted them from this tree over to the lilac bush, which I’m hoping will bloom for the first time this spring. I planted it bare roots last spring.

We went from snow last week to days when we finally have our windows open! We opened up our window Monday afternoon for the first time, and then again yesterday morning. And so we will continue. Down in the orchard, I have about four or five purple crocuses and one orange one, and at the edge of the slope down to the wolf pen, a bunch of tiny daffodils are out, my first ones. I had forgotten I planted them there. I need to plant more. Maybe some bigger ones this time.

The artichoke is off to the left. Next to it is the cage where my beans are planted and next to that onion starts. At the end of the garden, you might be able to see some sugar snap pea plants (and to the left you cannot see my English peas, which I planted as seeds), and in the right foreground are the lettuces. That blue thing in the back of the garden is my lawn scepter.

This weekend, the weather was gorgeous, so I got out and filled my raised garden beds with dirt. Then I planted some early seeds and starts. A few herbs and an artichoke plant didn’t die from last year, and I planted peas, lettuce, onions, and beans.

We were supposed to have really strong wind gusts Monday and Tuesday. I did notice some loud wind yesterday morning and saw Wayne come in from sitting outside during the worst, but it dies down and returns. Yesterday afternoon I went out to sweep the back deck. I remember that last fall, I went out one day and suddenly thousands of seeds, the helicopter kind, flew over the trees into our yard. The other day, I noticed that between the boards of our deck and also the table there were hundreds of those little whirligigs sticking up. I had to sweep parallel to the boards to get them out and then sweep crossways to send them off the side of the deck.

Last Wednesday for our hike we just returned to Lewisville Park. The original plan was to follow that up with a trip to World Market, since Maja had never been there, but she didn’t want to continue to drive out there, even though we stopped on the way there. She wants to find a place to hike out in that direction this week. I think we are going to hike at Lacamas Lake.

Monday, it was so nice again that I tried to lure Wayne out to Moulton Falls Park, but he only consented to sit in the parking lot. Luke kept turning around and trying to go back instead of walking in the park, so I finally gave up. I guess it was more distracting for Luke to have left Wayne in the car than it would have been if we hadn’t taken him in the first place.

I had planned this spring to at least get Wayne to do the driving tour of Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, through which thousands of water birds migrate each spring. However, this week when I looked at their web site, they said they were closing down the driving tour during the week for the next month or so, to work on the single-lane bridge that goes into the park. That means if we want to look at the birds, we’ll have to go on the weekend with everyone else. I wonder how crowded it will be. Too bad. I am less likely to convince him to go on the weekend. On the other hand, he might go for a promise of lunch at Fuel Bistro with their famous chocolate chip cookie at the end. His enthusiasm for Fuel, which he always liked but didn’t want to make the drive to most of the time, has increased remarkably since we had the chocolate chip cookie.

I hear that my oldest brother and his wife, who now live in Berkeley, are looking at property in North Clark County (where we live) via the internet. In fact, it is my understanding that they have authorized my niece’s husband to make an offer for some neighbor’s property. We’re not sure if they want to sell or not. It would be nice to have them here, right in the neighborhood. I’m sure they will find something to interest them. It’s funny, because my brother has remarked that he doesn’t understand why people make their houses so fancy to sell them. He says they make him feel uncomfortable. I think he’s been living on his boat too long.

On the other hand, he’s been recommending that I build this super-complicated catwalk structure all over the house for Hillary to use to keep her away from Luke. So, I guess his taste runs to the weird rather than the nice.

Some readers have written to me about the Newfoundland puppy next door. I was alarmed, when we went for our hike last Wednesday, to actually see him out on our main road. It is a two-lane road that has lots of twists and turns and that many people speed down in excess of 50 MPH. I hope he doesn’t get hit. Usually, I see him on our road, which is just a one-lane gravel road, but his owners live nearer to that busy corner than we do, and he seems to be left alone most of the day, unless someone is in the house that I’m unaware of.

The ducks are out this morning, swimming around in our pond. This year we have a mallard pair. We have seen them several times, generally in early morning.