Great Friends Great Memories

We had a wonderful time on Delintment Lake, a beautiful high mountain lake about 50 miles from Burns, Oregon:

Our dear friends: Dana, Cindy and Matt from Portland met us there on Sunday, August 2nd. We were all looking forward to a great week of fishing and catching up. The day they got there their refrigerator quit working. Not a problem, we just packed the coolers and filled our fridge. The weather was hot and perfect for swimming. Even Sage learned to swim out and get on top of the inner tubes!! Spectacular feat considering she refused to go in water that reached her knees!

We caught beautiful 12-16” trout, It was VERY hard work reeling in those monsters. Just ask Ron!

Total bring home was about 16 trout. Nice. (I out fished Ron…. For once!)

Tuesday, August 4^th we drove into Burns to get more ice for the coolers. On the way back from Burns we turned on the air conditioner and heard the fan making the most awful grinding rattling thumpa thumpa thumpa noise. It was so loud that you couldn’t hear each other talk in the pickup cab. We just knew a bearing or something important had gone out. It was triple digits outside so we figured if we ran the air conditioner on low we could tolerate the thumpa thumpa thumpa as long as we were getting a wee bit of cool air from the vents. And a very wee bit of air we did get. It was a toss up whether to take apart the fan or leave it alone in hopes we would still have the wee bit of air for the drive home on Sunday.

Thursday, August 6^th the mystery thumpa thumpa thumpa got the best of Ron and he took apart the fan motor and found…….

Six teenaged chipmunks. SIX. In a rather neatly arranged nest inside the fan. They’d been around the block (uh.....fan) quite a few times. I felt sorry for the critters. (yes, they had all passed on to that great nut house in the sky)

Friday we woke up to 40 degrees and pouring rain --- buckets of rain. Late Friday afternoon our friends headed back for Portland. We braved it out and Saturday was sunny, warm and perfect for fishing fishing fishing!!

We left Sunday, August 9th. I made sure to leave a whole bag of peanuts scattered around the rocks and in the holes with a note pinned on the rock extending our deepest sympathy at the loss of the Chipmunk family.

We stopped in John Day and got a sandwich. It was getting a tad bit warm so we turned on the air conditioner….

THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA

Took it apart in Prairie City and dug another nest out of the fan. No bodies this time but LOTS of chewed up black foam rubber and material that looks suspiciously like firewall material. I no longer feel as sorry for the nasty things as I used to and I wanted to go back and retrieve the peanuts. There is still something in there that we just can’t quite reach and rattles when we turn on the fan. I’m sure we’ll get it --- sooner…..or later. I just hope they didn’t stash away in the camper somewhere and hitch a ride back home with us. This could get ugly.

When we got home, the city had our road all tore up. Water main broke. After that was fixed we still had no water. We had a water break under the house. Actually we had a lake under the house, minus any trout. Called the sprinkler man (it was his pipe that broke) he responded as quickly as one could on a Sunday evening and all was well in the water world about 10 pm. Boy! Did that hot shower feel good.

Missing our friends but glad to be home with wonderful memories. Until the next adventure......

NO CHIPMUNKS ALLOWED!!!

Fast Cure for Empty Nest Syndrome!

Take a two week vacation across the USA to your adult child's home.




We had a wonderful time visiting Virginia and Washington DC this past October. The day we left home we had the first snowfall of the season. Almost 2 inches of fluffy powder--- YIPPEE!!! After 14 hours traveling on airplanes we got off the plane to 78 HUMID degrees in Virginia. Ewwww! Sticky and wet. On the way home from the airport, we stopped for a wonderful dinner of fresh SEAFOOD -- Glorious SEAFOOD. I made my decision that I could contend with and adapt to the humidity and the 80 degree + temperatures in October as long as there was a never ending supply of fresh seafood.











We played on the beach. We saw museums and went shopping shopping shopping. Amazing grocery stores there. I had Sweet Tea! Oh heavens, that stuff is almost as glorious as the seafood was. It just doesn't taste the same at home. I brought home some Luizzane brand tea bags. Maybe that will be the ticket? We spent two days in Washington DC. I have a new quest for our American history that I never had before. We visited Jamestown and Williamsburg and were dismayed to find how commercialized it was. I picked up rocks at Jamestown and feel like I have a part of the history there.


It was wonderful to see how great they are doing. Beautiful, warm and inviting home. I have no idea where Dan learned to be such a neat freak. A place for everything and everything in it's place. Gotta give his beautiful wife a bunch of the credit. She has made him a beautiful home and he appreciates it so much. They are such wonderful people. If we didn't already love them, we sure would after we met them now. They are active in their community, friendly and concerned about their neighbors and neighborhood. Socially responsible. Loving parents to three amazing dogs. Dedicated to their jobs and classes. Fun loving and friendly.

No parent could ask for more. I don't feel a sense of empty nest loneliness anymore. I am so proud and content.

What an amazing and wonderful life I have.

I am so thankful and blessed.

Passages & Bridges

Time passes. Life altering moments come at you from behind and steal your breath and your sense of purpose and re-route your life trip so fast it's hard to keep your feet on the ground. The mundane and sometimes foolish things you do today may impact significantly in the blink of an eye.

I am growing up. I do not like it. I don't have a choice about this anymore. In the deepest recesses of my mind I can no longer retreat as a child or define myself as a daughter. I am officially, legally and hesitantly........ an orphan. I am no longer any one's daughter.

Feels empty. Hope this isn't what it feels like to be a real adult. Sucks.

My Mom was 87 when she left our living world on April 30, 2008. She wasn't always my Mom. At some point a very long time ago, I suppose she was Mommy. Then she was, at her request, Mother. For a very long time she was only my brother's mother because I bowed out. For another very long time I allowed her to torment my soul. She got older. I remained stuck in the place of years past and expected her to be the force of the world. I seldom thought of her as elderly and never frail. When she was in pain I wanted to tell her to buck up and deal with it. When she was fearful of falling I thought she was a ninny. Then one day, she really needed me to be there for her in 2001. It was much more comfortable when I didn't like her and she didn't need me. I grew through it and she grew to become my Mom.

For the last six years we have been living closer to one another than we have since I was 12 years old. We grew to know, love and cherish each other more in six years than we did for the previous 40. Seldom a day went by we didn't talk or see each other. Our lives were blended.

Twenty-eight days. Twenty-eight too short days from the date our lives were turned upside down with diagnosis of metastasized breast cancer into her bones to the day she died. She had a very small stage 0-1 breast cancer in 1997. She had a lumpectomy, removed and cleared several lymph nodes and had prophylactic radiation. She faithfully took her Tamoxfen for seven years. She had yearly mammograms and check-ups. She remained cancer free. When she started having compression fractures of her vertebrae it was confirmed with x-ray severe osteoporosis and she took medication for that. The fractures kept happening and we never thought to look further. March, 2008 she was staying with us as the pain medication for her continuing fractures made her too unstable to be at home alone. I found out about a procedure to repair her current fracture called vertabroplasty. A CT scan was required. Since we live in rural paradise, we have to travel quite a distance for involved medical procedures. We had the scan done and left the next day for Lewiston, Idaho with high hopes of having a pain free time soon.

We had grown to love our road trips. Usually we would make a point to bring along a bottle of wine and partake before turning in for the night in our hotel room. We had books on tape and listened to mysteries. We got to have dinner out -- at a restaurant! Something she missed since moving from the big city of Denver to our rural paradise. We had borrowed a folding wheelchair for this trip so we could do some shopping! Something else she missed. Once again she would be healed and life would continue as normal forever and ever.

I feel so sorry for the doctor who had to tell us that they could not do the procedure. I understood his words. I even understood the words he didn't say. Mom was remembering the last time she had cancer and how it wasn't any big deal. I understood I didn't want to know what I knew. What had started out as a road trip quickly turned into a meeting with an oncologist. Over the years I've met many doctors in my life. I never wanted to meet an oncologist up close and personal. I'm sure they are very nice people and probably enjoy BBQs and a game of cards as much as us regular folks. I never wanted to tempt chance by adding one to my circle of acquaintance. I must say the Cancer Treatment Center at St. Mary's in Walla Walla, Washington is a very caring, beautiful and peaceful place. Mom was chilly while we were in the waiting area and the volunteer brought her warm blankets. A small gesture of comfort. I was still in the mode of trying not to be a bother. If I'd known what I know today I would have been grateful for the volunteer's gesture instead of apologizing for being such a bother.

Treat or don't treat – now THAT is the question. New drugs. Breast cancer. Metastatic. What the hell are you talking about BREAST CANCER? She's had mammograms every year. She had x-rays and CT scans and nothing NOTHING N O T H I N G was there eight months ago. WHAT??? what what what what what.

how?

why?

Dammit.

Damn it all to hell.

I love you Mom. Thank you for needing me. Thank you for getting to know me. Thank you for letting me get to know you.

I'm sorry Mom.

Two Stupid (?) Turkeys

There are two turkeys in my front yard. Wild turkeys. We have wild turkeys every year in our front yard. Not as many as we used to. But there will be more than two very soon.

The first year --- no, the first WEEK of the first year we were here, they were cute, novel, interesting. They were the largest bird I had ever seen in the wild. We had a herd of them numbering about 50 or so. I confess, I fed them. Don't bother! - I already paid my penance. They stayed. They never left. They tore up all the grass, nested under my bushes, crapped EVERYWHERE. Landmines overtook the grass and sidewalks. Stink. Big stink. Mud, lots of mud from scratching turkey feet. We have a small front yard with a small crab apple tree in it. They REALLY like the crab apples. They REALLY make a mess of things and they also eat all the birdseed so the quail don't hang around as much. The big mean german shepherds are scared to death of the turkeys. So much for big and mean. Actually the shepherds like what the turkeys leave (ewwww!). If you get the shepherds riled up before you open the door and promise several cookies in return for scaring the turkeys out of the front yard--- they will almost make it off the front porch. Wild turkeys are not so stupid I think. They don't even run now.

Can't shoot 'em. I won't eat 'em. Must get better cookies for the big meanies - better than the cookies the turkeys leave for them. Or I have to get a better aim with the slingshot. Turkeys do not like to be shot broadside with crab apples.

Baby Steps

I'm new to the blogging world. I have been faithfully reading for several months. I have several favorites that I check every day with hope of a new adventure, a new story, a new look at a very old world. Something very strange began to happen. I wanted to share. I caught the bug. Not that I think I have anything necessarily inspiring or earth shattering to share.... I just wanted to have a place to go and write. Write about today and yesterday and what I am hoping for tomorrow. What I learned yesterday, and how I'm trying to learn today. I'll have a place for my opinions and my dissident attitudes --- my loved ones will be so happy!

My Joy and My World