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 there’s a bit of a mystery

I can’t remember if I reported a few months ago that someone from my husband’s gastroenterology doctor’s office called the day before his appointment and cancelled it, saying that the clinic no longer took our insurance. That call was disturbing to me, because the clinic is huge around here, Vancouver Clinic, and all our specialists belong to it. I had been procrastinating doing anything about this, but next week I have a long-existing appointment with a specialist, so I called them first to see if it was really true. I have been seeing this specialist for six or seven years, so I was going to be upset if I had to change.

Well, the person on the phone told me that they do take our insurance, and she actually spent some time researching the issue to make sure. She finally concluded that, since they now don’t take new accounts with that insurance, someone in the office had either gotten a little overzealous or misunderstood what they were supposed to do.

So, I guess that’s one mystery solved.

I haven’t been up to much this week because of my neck ache. However, it is a lot better, so I went to senior exercise class yesterday. I had to stop doing some of the exercises because they provoked my neck, and this morning I don’t feel as good as I did before, although yesterday after class I was okay.

In other news, my friend Ray and I booked a cruise for this summer. We’re taking Princess lines in a cruise that goes around the British Isles, hops over to France, and ends up back in England. This trip will be the end of July and beginning of August. It would be nice if Wayne would go, but he won’t.

Now we are to the point of looking at flights and shore excursions.

Some of my daffodils, plus my lawn scepter

The weather since the weekend has been gorgeous, sunny and yesterday warm enough for short sleeves in the afternoon. However, this morning it is raining. But here’s a photo from yesterday.

Speaking of yesterday, Luke went berserk that morning, and I got up to see what it was. Usually, he barks at nothing (well, maybe not nothing, but perhaps a squirrel or a bird), but he doesn’t go on and on unless someone is here. And someone was here. I saw two deer in our yard, an occasion that used to be frequent but now hardly ever happens. They have lost a lot of habitat in our neighborhood, but the kid across the street has also been killing them. So, there are a few routes that I used to see them taking that they seem to no longer take.

One of the deer was near our side yard, still in the woods, and it seemed to be a yearling. The other, the doe, was next to our garden by the garden shed. I watched them for a while and then sat down again to finish my computer work before my class. When it got near the time for class, Wayne was taking a nap, so I took Luke out before leaving. It wasn’t until he picked his spot that I realized the two deer were still there. The doe startled from the raised area above our landscaped bed and ran a little bit away, but Luke didn’t even notice her. That made me look for the yearling and see it further in the woods. I was able to let Luke do his business and get him back into the house without startling them further.

And that’s about all my fun for the week. We had a low-key Easter (oddly, I saw the neighbor kids having an Easter egg hunt in their yard yesterday; I suspect their religion doesn’t allow them to do anything on a Sunday, but I would have expected them to do something like this on Saturday or Monday). Wayne just picked up a couple chocolate bunnies and some Cadbury eggs for us (the caramel kind, of course) and I made lamb roast for dinner.

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 it snows again and book choice continues

Last week after art class I stopped by in Battle Ground to see my brother and sister-in-law. My brother wasn’t home, but my sister-in-law was happy to see me and showed me all their newest items of decor. I stayed about an hour chatting over tea and then came home.

On Wednesday afternoon and evening, we got another inch or so of snow. It was cold enough here that it stayed through Saturday, maybe. I noticed it was all gone on Sunday. It was pretty but didn’t affect our ability to go anywhere.

I finally had a quiet Thursday like I used to before starting exercise class. Our class is canceled all this month except the first week, but last week we made a Costco run on Thursday. This week, I didn’t do anything on Thursday except the laundry and the dishes. It was nice.

This last week was unmemorable except that my Literary Wives book club continued its book choice routine. We have two new members and are now more far flung geographically. The member from the U. K. asked about checking the books for availability, so we added that step after we got together a short list of 26 from asking each member to pick 8 books. If I’d known how the availability step was going to go, I would have asked members to pick more to start with. (I just make the numbers up as I go along, trying to end up with about 8 final choices.) For my own checking, I found that although about half of the books were not available at my library, only three of them were really expensive to buy. I am used to buying the books for the club, so it didn’t bother me except these three. However, I decided not to take them off the list, because it looks like I can get them to check out electronically through WorldCat. At least that’s what it seems like.

However, one member asked to move five books off the shortlist because of availability for her. I didn’t expect that big a number from one person. My worry is that I’ll get similar numbers from the other two members, and then we’ll have to start over at step one. We only read four books a year, so buying one occasionally isn’t that big a deal for me, but I know other people have different issues. Another worry I have is that one or two books I have already read that made it on the shortlist will be chosen. I am used to some of the books we choose being ones I already read, but in this case, I had to buy the books because of another project and didn’t like them enough to keep them. I would have to buy them again if they don’t happen to still be occupying a box on my closet floor.

In connection with books, I got a nice haul of review books from NYRB the other day. That’s my photo for the week. This looks like a pretty crazy batch. I have only been getting books from the British Library one at a time lately, and of course, I no longer receive them from Dean Street Press.

My latest haul from NYRB

I took Luke back to the vet last Saturday morning for his shot and at the time noticed he had bumps under his forelegs, and now he has a staph infection. It looks about like his last infection—he has bumps all over. At that time, they treated him with both antibiotics and antifungals because they hadn’t tested him. This time they tested him and just gave him antibiotics. So far, the bumps just seem to be appearing in more places. I am living for the day that I can take him in for his allergy shot and just pay for the shot.

This problem appears to be our fault, because we have gradually fallen back into the habit of occasionally giving him a tidbit from our plates. We have a hard time resisting his big brown eyes. Now the vet has informed me that the things we gave him that we thought were the safest, pieces of chicken and some scrambled eggs, are, along with beef, the foods that dogs are most likely to be allergic to. So, no more treats for him.

That reminds me of the trick I have for feeding him. Since he went on his prescription diet, he’s only supposed to have that, even for treats. Although in general he seems to like the food, sometimes he gets finicky and won’t eat right away (like this morning). I will go get a treat from his treat bowl, which now is just another piece of his kibble, and I’ll say, “Here’s a treat,” and put it in his bowl with the rest of his kibble. Then most of the time he gets up and eats it. That’s not working this morning, though. Maybe he’s on to me.

The birds have just been everywhere now that it’s starting to look like spring. The robins have come back, and unlike in Michigan, we only see them in the spring. When Lukey and I go for a walk, birdsong is everywhere. I have seen a pair of ducks on the pond almost every day, so I’m wondering if the nesting pair is back, although I did not see them yesterday.

In which we choose books

This week has been fairly uneventful except for my Literary Wives book club, which is going through its book-choosing process, during which we try to find enough books to get us through a couple of years. First, we have a gigantic spreadsheet, which I somehow ended up being the carer for. It has lots of tabs, but the first one lists all the books that anyone has ever put down as a potential for the club that we have not yet chosen. I spent a few hours last week adding books to that list that the other members suggested or that I found by searching for keywords like “wife” or “marriage,” as that is the theme of our club.

We are at the second step, which is to make a long list for the club members to look at. Each member is supposed to choose eight books from the list. So far, I have heard back from all but one member, and there is some overlap, but not too much. Anything that gets more than one vote at this stage ends up on the shortlist automatically. Otherwise, we’ll have a vote to see what else ends up on it.

Exercise class has been off all week, so I’ve only been going to art class. Luke and I went for a walk with Maja on Saturday, one of our few beautiful days, and she told me she has been going to strength training while our class is out. She tried to talk me into it, but I have enough trouble in the strength training small part of our class, and I didn’t want to drive even farther to do it. She said that she pushes herself and when she gets home, she just goes to bed. I suggested she maybe not push herself just yet. After all, she is new to strength training, and she has a history of pushing herself and then injuring herself and not being able to go to class at all. But she said no. She said it was good I chose not to go, that I would hate it.

Earlier on Saturday I took a few cards I had finally completed to the post office.

We’ve been seeing a lot of animal activity around the house lately. I’ve seen ducks in the pond for several days in a row. They seem to be the same pair, so maybe our nesting pair has returned. Maja says it is too early, but I remember that the two of us went to the Ridgefield Wildlife Preserve years ago in February, and thousands if not millions of water birds were there at the time with lots of little ones running around. So, if February is the right time for them, I would imagine it’s the right time for our nesting pair. One day, twice, though, I also caught sight of the head of our dear old beaver. I think it was the beaver as opposed to the female duck, although from up here it is hard to tell the difference between brown things in a brown pond.

Yesterday was a cold, beautiful day up here, and when Luke and I took our walk, I noticed that songbirds were everywhere! There was a flock of them in the branches along our driveway that we moved off it onto the bottom of the orchard, and I could hear singing and tweeting everywhere we went, much more than usual. I even recognized the song of a robin, and although I haven’t seen any hopping around on the ground yet, I could see they were up in the trees, probably building their nests. At the same time, I could see the pair of ducks swimming around the pond. In addition to that, for five nights in a row, when I took Luke out, we heard lots of owl action in the woods near the house. We heard it again one early morning about 7 AM. However, that seems to have stopped for now.

That’s about it for the week except that I went back to my old hair dresser yesterday. Almost two years ago, she upped stakes and moved to Oregon to get married. That, apparently, didn’t work out, and I had heard she returned but I didn’t have her phone number. In January, I got a little flier from her, so I called her last week and made an appointment. After that, I had the thought that I hadn’t bought a Valentine’s Day card for Wayne, so I drove to the new little store in Yacolt to see if they had any. They did, saving me a trip to Battle Ground.

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 we get unfrozen

We had our ice storm on Tuesday night and Wednesday, a minor one compared to that experienced farther south. I thought it was odd that Wayne cleared the driveway after the heavy, wet snow but didn’t do it after the light, dry snow that came on Sunday and Monday. I thought if the driveway was clear, it would melt faster after the ice, but Wayne seemed to think that it would be less slippery with the snow under it. Of course, that didn’t work out that way. We had a driveway full of slush once the temperatures warmed up that kept refreezing at night.

We saw lots of photos of streets in Portland, Vancouver, and Battle Ground with sheets of ice across them, but we really didn’t get that much icy rain up here. And of course it melted down there as soon as it got warm enough. I was supposed to go to a makeup art class on Friday afternoon. When I scheduled it, I had assumed that whatever more we got would be over by then. I figured the roads would be clear, but Wayne, who had been walking to the mailbox, convinced me that our road and driveway were too bad to drive on. So, I cancelled my class.

However, my brother invited me to come see their new townhouse later that afternoon because they were going to be in town to sign the lease. I was pretty stir-crazy by then, because I had only left the house to walk the dog since Monday, and I hadn’t walked him after the ice storm because it was too slippery. So, I decided to go for it, figuring there had been time to get the roads in shape. And sure enough, the only problem was our driveway and the steep part of our road where it joins the main road. Going down our driveway, I had to keep the speed really slow because I had virtually no control over the car as I was driving down that steep slope through slightly frozen slush. So much for Wayne’s idea about snow blowing. If he had blown that fresh, lightweight snow down to the pavement, our driveway would have been completely thawed by then.

The roads were perfectly clear, even the side roads in Battle Ground. Before going to the townhouse, I did a little bit of shopping because we had run out of a few things. Then I dropped off two books at the library, which is just around the corner from their house. Just as I was about to pull out of the library parking lot into a parking space in front of the townhouse, a truck came around the corner and took my spot right in front of me. I had to do a turn in the street and park in the last open spot on the other side. I saw that the truck driver was my sister, so I went up to the window and said, “Hey, lady, you took my spot!” I don’t think she heard me, though. The new townhouse is only a few blocks from her house, so I would imagine she will be dropping by.

The townhouse was really nice. The living room/dining area is small to fit both functions in, but upstairs between the two bedrooms there is an open space the size of a room, so they are going to have their living room up there and use the space downstairs in front of the galley kitchen as a dining area only. It’s quite a bit of space, it’s just that the two-car garage cuts into the downstairs area. They are going to put their bookcases into the spare bedroom.

My brother and sister-in-law had brought over their art work from Seaside as well as a dining table and chairs they had bought at Costco. When they moved from Madison, they sold their table and chairs to the person who bought their condo. I was a little alarmed at the thought of my brother putting the furniture together until I found out that my niece’s husband was going to help him.

I was waiting around for my sister to get her grandson so we could all go to dinner, but then I started thinking about what it was going to be like when I got home and decided I had better leave while there was still some daylight. There wasn’t very much, but I needed it, because first I had to stop at the mail box, and there was a thick frozen tire track from the mail delivery car right up against the boxes. I had to step on it to get the mail out, and I was afraid I was going to fall down. Then of course, I couldn’t get the car all the way up the driveway. When I get it to the point where it is almost to the top, it always loses traction. Wayne says that is because the shift of weight. So, I backed down to the bottom of the driveway and had to walk up the hill with a bag of groceries. It was very slippery, especially where the car had gone before. Luckily, I had my hiking poles in the car, so I took one out and got up to the house without incident.

The next day, Wayne went out and was finally clearing the driveway, which was the cause of a spat. He had the snow blower set so that he was throwing large chunks of ice directly at the living room windows! I went outside and yelled at him, but of course he couldn’t hear. He did look at me and I gestured toward the house and thought he understood, but then he did it again! When he took the snow blower into the garage, I went out and told him he was hitting the windows with large chunks of ice and I was afraid he was going to break one. And he said, “I wish I broke one of your windows.” My windows. I said, “What?” and he said, “Give you more to bitch about.” Now, aside from us not having had any kind of unkind words all morning, if there is anyone in this household that bitches about things, it is him, because he just won’t shut up about anything that I do that he doesn’t like, even while I am driving. He’ll go on and on while I get so I want to drive into a tree. If I am trying to get him to do something, I mention it one time and then shut up, because he usually doesn’t take any kind of suggestion well, even if expressed nicely. So, to have him accuse me of bitching just gets my goat. It is interesting to me that women are always considered to be bitching when they make a request or especially when they complain, while men are not.

We stayed home all weekend. I needed to go to the store and thought about going on Monday, but instead Wayne did some shopping on Tuesday morning. However, his execution of his shopping list was flawed, so when Maja and I went to exercise class on Tuesday, we stopped at Fred Meyer on the way home and I got the things that were forgotten or not found, plus a few others I thought of.

We still have some snow in the orchard and around in the yard, but a big rain storm on Monday night washed a lot of it away, and now the roads and the driveway are all clear. Temperatures are up in the 40s.

I didn’t see the ducks in the pond after I spotted two of them a week or so ago, but yesterday I saw one in the pond, I think a different duck. It seems to be getting time for our nesting pair to reappear.

And that’s about it for this week with no photos this time.

In which we lose power during the coldest days of the year and the birds seek shelter

Here’s how my peacock is coming along. He doesn’t have an eye yet

As usual since we have moved here, we are looking at two weeks of winter weather. Last week, we got two days of wet, heavy snow on Tuesday and Wednesday. That didn’t prevent me from driving in to art class on Wednesday, figuring that as usual the roads would be okay once I got down our driveway and out of our neighborhood, but it was not the case. The roads had not been plowed or salted as far as I could tell, and the driving was hairy until I got out to Highway 503, which was clear. As I drove farther south, I saw less and less snow until it was just a little frosting on lawns, but back at home, it kept snowing and we got about three inches. But I made it to art class, and my only photo this week is to show my progress on my baby peacock.

I thought about picking up our new, unnecessary cut key from the dealership on the way home, but I didn’t want to drive any further out of my way. I hadn’t seen Christine since I drove her and Duchess to the vet in Portland for surgery, so I stopped by on the way home. We had a nice visit, and Duchess seemed to be doing pretty good, although since then she has had to go to the emergency room for an infection. The roads back into the neighborhood weren’t much improved on the way home. Even though Wayne had shoveled most of the driveway, I was unable to get back up it. I had to leave the car at the bottom of the driveway, and Wayne had to shovel a bit more at the top before driving the car up. That was our only outing until Friday.

On Tuesday, our exercise instructor had told us she would be gone on Thursday, so class would be cancelled because the club can never find a substitute. I didn’t plan to go and didn’t even look at the class in the app because of that, but apparently we did have class. Maja told me that the instructor sent out an email about it, but I didn’t get it. So, on Thursday we just stayed home. We had canceled Luke’s Doggy Day Care, because it looked like we might be snowed in, but actually I could have gone to class and Luke to day care, because the weather wasn’t any worse.

On Friday, I think we were a little stir crazy, so we all drove into town to do errands. I picked up some library books I had on hold, and Wayne shopped for bird seed at the farm store, while Luke and I waited in the car. Then we picked up some take-out at Pita House before driving home. Most of the snow was gone once we got down from our higher altitude.

On Saturday and Sunday we got another snowfall, and this time the snow was light and dry, because the temperatures went down into the teens, record lows for our area. On Saturday afternoon when it was 15 degrees, our power went off. Our generator kicked in, but the two things it doesn’t provide for are the oven and the heat pump. I don’t know how the people who lived in our house before us did without a wood stove, which was one of the first things we installed in the house after we moved in, especially because the area used to have repeated power outages that lasted days, usually in the winter. As it was, we didn’t think of dripping our faucets or opening the cabinets for the plumbing that was on an outside wall (the kitchen sinks and the bathtub downstairs) until the evening, and our hot water lines froze. Wayne was up all night keeping the fire going so that the house wouldn’t get any colder and trying to unfreeze the hot water lines using electric heaters, but the water lines are pretty inaccessible, and he was afraid we would have to call a plumber because they would burst. He also found that the vents in the basement were closed from the summer, when it is already cold enough down there, so he opened them up.

It remained very cold for several days. On Sunday morning, I opened the door to let Luke out and see the new snow, and on our doorstep, our front steps, and all along the front of the house I saw hundreds of little bird feet tracks. Some of our weather stripping on our front door is missing, and they obviously had huddled against our door during the night, and the ones who didn’t have enough status to be up against the door, huddled up against the house. I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of it, but Luke immediately stomped on it on his way out of the house.

Wayne feeds the birds more than once a day, so all along there have been lots and lots of little (and not so little) birds out front eating. Our hummingbird feeder froze up, and sure enough I saw a little hummingbird trying to drink yesterday, so I brought it in to thaw out. It took all day, but I will put it out as soon as I get dressed this morning. The sliding screen doors to the back deck are frozen shut, so I had to go out through the back garage door and wade through some snow drifts to get it.

Anyway, the power came back on about 5:30 AM Sunday after being off for about 14 or 15 hours, and I think it was getting the heat going in the house that unthawed the water lines, because by about 9 AM, we were good. We keep hearing that folks over in Oregon still don’t have power, but I have to say that Clark County Utilities do a good job of keeping us in power. We have had one or two long power outages since we moved in, but nothing like the stories our relatives told us of outages in the past.

Wayne didn’t get back out with his snow blower after the weekend snow, but on Monday morning I had to take Luke to the vet. He already had an appointment to see the vet techs, but on Thursday night we noticed a bright red bump on the side of his ankle. I was unable to get an appointment for him Friday, so I changed my Monday appointment to be a drop-off appointment so he could see the vet. We started out at 7:15 AM for an appointment at 8:30, and there had been cars through the snow but basically I was driving in ruts all the way out to the highway. It was worse than Wednesday’s trip. I didn’t see a single other car until I got to Gabriel, which is the third road out on the way to the highway (not counting our little gravel road). I was surprised to find that no roads had been plowed except Highway 503, none in Battle Ground, none in Vancouver, not even Highway 502, which is the road out to I-5 from Battle Ground. That is not my usual route to the vet, which goes on country roads most of the way, but I figured it would be safer. The driving wasn’t dangerous, though, unless you went too fast, because the snow was still so dry that it wasn’t as slippery as it had been on Wednesday. (However, on Wednesday there was a lot less of it as I drove south.)

When I got to the vet, it was almost deserted, because people weren’t showing up for their appointments, so they offered for me to stay a while and Luke would be taken care of, they said not within a half hour but soon. However, the vet came out to talk to me after just a few minutes, and we decided to have his bump tested for bacteria, etc. It was only a few minutes after that when he was ready to go. So, that was nice, because otherwise I would have had to drive there twice. Although Luke gets stressed at the vet’s (he keeps trying to leave) and actually pooped in the car when we arrived there, the vet remarked at how good a dog he was.

The last couple days have been cold but nice, so Luke and I have had a couple of nice walks. Yesterday, as it was warming up a little, we walked over to Maja’s house to see how she was. She had her adopted family with her, and they were still in their jammies watching a movie except for Bili, who was out doing a plumbing job. The family of four has been snowed in with her the whole time. I think that was nice for her to have the company, as most folks in our neighborhood (including Maja) haven’t been getting out since the first snowfall.

Exercise class was cancelled Tuesday, and we were supposed to get freezing rain last night, so the weather people have been forecasting doom and gloom. Last night, I got a notification that my art class had been canceled, so I’m having a relaxing morning at home. It has warmed up to the 30’s, but we only got enough freezing rain up here to coat my little Japanese maple with some ice (it was bent almost double after the first snowfall of wet snow, which broke the top off my magnolia tree, but I shook the snow off the maple; it’s too bad I didn’t get out to the orchard, or I might have been able to save the magnolia). Otherwise, it doesn’t look that much worse than it did yesterday, except we have ice on our doorstep instead of snow.

Even after it started to warm up yesterday afternoon and evening well into temperatures where we normally wouldn’t worry about freezing in the pipes, Wayne wanted to leave the pipes dripping. I finally got to turn the faucets off this morning, now that the temperature is 36 degrees.

I actually saw a couple of ducks on our pond a few days ago, on one of the cold but sunny days. I don’t think they’re still there, though. The neighborhood has been quiet except for the snowmobilers.

And that’s it for this week.

In which we shop for furniture

I may have mentioned the difficulty with our sectional. When we moved here, we got rid of almost all our living room furniture, because it was so dilapidated. I think I’d had the same sofa for 20 years. So, one of my first priorities was to buy something to sit on in the living room besides the Amish gliding rocker and our kitchen chairs. My niece took me shopping at an upscale Scandinavian furniture store in Portland. I loved the look but realized even then that the low seat height of most of their sectionals was going to prove a challenge. However, I selected one of their sectionals with the highest seat height, an L-shaped almost black leather. (I would have picked a more interesting color, but we needed the color that would arrive the quickest from the factory. There were a few colors that were easier to get.)

At the time, we still had Hilary. Even though I usually am able to train my kittens not to scratch the furniture, when Hilary was a kitten, she had three brothers, and it was impossible to catch every kitten every time they scratched the furniture, so that went out the window. She did a really good job of scratching the sides and tops of the arm of this sectional and also the flat space behind the back cushions. So, the sectional was damaged almost immediately, but then so would a fabric sectional have been. Then when we got Luke, as a puppy, he scratched the front of the sectional, although I was able to get him to stop doing that fairly soon.

I always sat in the corner of the sectional, putting my knee in first. Well, one of the times I was getting into the corner carelessly, I heard a sproing, and the spring broke. So after that, there was a hole in the seat, and eventually I stopped sitting there.

But the worst problem was that Wayne couldn’t get off the sectional without sliding up onto its arm, and as the years have gone by and I’ve gotten older, I’ve had a harder and harder job getting up from it. And no wonder. I finally measured the seat height and it is only 13 or 14 inches. I looked into buying those risers that make the furniture higher, but the feet of our sectional are so big that they don’t come big enough.

To add insult to injury, there are two places on the leather that are just torn, for no apparent reason. One is in the position where I sit my arm and the edge of my book on the back of the sofa to read, and I can’t see any reason why that would cause the leather to tear. The other is on the front of the L, which makes even less sense. So, all in all, this sectional is pretty sad, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting it, even for free. It’s the most expensive piece of furniture I’ve ever bought and has lasted the least long.

So, I have been hinting around to Wayne that we need to furniture shop, and it occurred to me that leading up to Black Friday was a good time, because many stores are already having their sales. So, on Wednesday night, I told Wayne that we should go furniture shopping on Friday, and he said okay. I have been doing research online to look for furniture stores, and it looked like there wasn’t much in Vancouver. On Wednesday, I stopped by a place I pass on the way home, but its furniture looked too formal for me. Almost all the sofas were white, which may be the trend but I think is crazy, and most of them were priced from $4000-8000.

Looking at inventory online, I found a sofa I liked at a warehouse-style furniture store (which I usually avoid) in Portland and it was near another furniture store, so I was planning to go there. However, I started to read about this warehouse-style store, and it did not have good reviews for customer service or for delivery. The Better Business Bureau said it only had a 25% resolution rate on customer service complaints sent to them, and that’s pretty bad. However, I found the same sofa at a different warehouse store in Vancouver with a better reputation.

Of course, starting on Thursday night, Wayne tried to back out of going shopping, saying the prices would be better after Christmas. He just didn’t want to go, but I wasn’t going to buy a couch without having him test it first. On Friday morning, he went back to bed almost as soon as he got up, so I was prepared to get angry, but after a half hour he got up and got ready to go.

I usually avoid warehouse stores, but when we went into this one, I could see that they had good furniture. I explained to the sales person about the seat heights, and she looked confused and said they were all about the same, but I told her that no, they were actually separated into heights that were suitable for short, middle-sized, and tall people, that ours was about 13 inches and that they came as high as 20-22 inches. She first steered us toward a brand that offers a stiffer seat cushion, and Wayne was able to get out of those fairly easily, so I had my eye on the one I liked best, but I wasn’t that interested in it as far as style went, and it unfortunately was covered in a dark brown fabric, and I don’t do brown. Of course, if we picked it, I would have chosen another fabric.

I finally decided I liked a leather sofa that was white, but I knew it would come in at least one other color. Wayne tried it and could get out of it easily, so we went back and forth a few times between that sofa and the one with the stiffer seat cushion, and it turned out he could get out of the leather sofa more easily. We ended up buying a matching chair for him and a three-seat sofa, in steel, a bluish gray (the only other choice). It also came in an sectional, but Wayne said he didn’t want another sectional. Our discussion got the sales person into measure the seat heights, and the specs for the sofa we chose showed a seat height of 21 inches.

I misunderstood what the sales person said about delivery, so on Tuesday we were waiting all day for it to come. She said they only deliver in our area on Tuesdays, and she said that if it was in the warehouse, as it showed it being, and no one else ordered it first, we could get it as early as Tuesday. But I think she meant they would get it at their store by then. I finally called and was told she would call to schedule the delivery with me, which wasn’t at all clear from what she said when we bought it. In fact, I thought she said we were scheduling it then. So that’s why I was confused. We wasted a day when we thought that at least one of us had to be in the house at all times to receive the delivery phone call.

I have been cleaning the house to get ready for Thanksgiving. It’s just me and Wayne this year, because one brother and my sister are going to Seattle to spend it with another brother, and my niece and her family are spending it with friends. So, we’ll have just the basic Thanksgiving dinner by ourselves.

On another note, I looked out the window this weekend and saw some commotion in the pond. Usually from up here I spot animals by seeing movement in the water first, so I saw a trail of water that was clearly some animal moving across the pond, and it was the beaver! I haven’t seen the beaver in years. There was still commotion in the water where I originally saw it, and that turned out to be three ducks, which stayed at least for the weekend.

We have been having alternate days of rain and sun, but it’s been cold. I’ve been trying to get myself to go outside and do some yard work, but I so far haven’t succeeded in doing anything but walking the dog.

Maja and I still haven’t made it back to exercise class, although I would have gone yesterday if I hadn’t been waiting for the phantom couch!

Poor Lukey has been kept away from Doggy Day Care lately because of the local outbreak of a mysterious disease that’s been affecting dogs. The dog place has closed down for day care and is only accepting boarders. They have also asked that people not bring their dogs for day care unless they haven’t been around other dogs for at least two weeks. So, no dog parks, no vet appointments, and I assume no groomers. If they open back up after Thanksgiving, he’ll only be able to go twice before his next vet appointment, and then he’ll have to stay home for two weeks.

In which I fly to Illinois

You might remember that I mentioned I was going to travel to Illinois to visit my best friend from college. Although she visited us in the spring, she knows that I have always wanted to see an outdoor installation by Dale Chihuly. When she heard there was going to be one at the St. Louis Botanical Gardens, which is a couple hours away, she invited me to come while it was there.

So, yesterday I flew to Illinois, not to Springfield, where she and her husband live, but to Bloomington because a ticket to Springfield was outrageously expensive, more than $1000 for a round-trip ticket. Anyway, as usual, things did not go as planned. They started going a bit wrong over the weekend when one of our tires went a bit flat. If we’d thought it through, we would have taken the car straight to the tire place on Saturday afternoon, but we decided to wait until Monday. It’s not that we forgot the holiday weekend but more that we’ve lived places where most retailers wouldn’t be closed on Labor Day. But as it turned out, this one was.

So, Monday was a stressful day. First, we thought we would get up early enough on Tuesday to be packed and ready for the airport and get to the tire store when it opened. However, on Monday Wayne blew the tire back up and said it just had a slow leak and would be okay. Of course that was one more thing to worry about all night. Then the next morning it had lost one pound of pressure, so I was just slowly getting ready, because we didn’t need to leave for the airport until 10:30, when we suddenly decided to leave early in case we had problems on the road. So at 9:30 I threw the rest of my things in my bag, we shoved Luke into his crate, and we left.

After all the worry, we had no problems with the tire, so I was at the airport by 10:15, more than three hours before my flight, and through security within a half hour. I have to say that although I don’t like sitting around the airport, arriving that early took all the stress out of that part of the trip. I knew I was on a full flight because I’d had three offers to reschedule, but of the four options they gave me, three were to the wrong city and all of them were overnight, 13+ hour flights (compared to my six hours total including a 1.5-hour layover). This way, I had checked in so early that there was no question of being bumped. (I watched The Book Club on the flight. I don’t recommend it.)

But after that, everything went really well. My flights were on time, they weren’t too uncomfortable, and I was in Bloomington early. So, applause to American Airlines.

It’s in the 80s here, which isn’t too bad. If I had come last week, it would have been much hotter. But for comparison, yesterday morning at home it was 57 degrees.

This morning we have just been sitting around gabbing. Tomorrow, Chihuly!

Only one comment about last week. On the driveway in front of the bird feeder we have occasionally found a pile of feathers, so I thought some neighbor’s cat was killing birds. But Sunday Wayne said, “There’s a hawk killing a bird right in front of my eyes,” and sure enough, there was a small hawk, maybe a kestrel, killing a bird in the same spot as we’d previously found feathers. Oof. On a more positive side, I saw something moving in the pond the other day—brown on brown so very hard to see. It turned out to be a female duck with a juvenile duck next to her.