travel day

Today we are driving a couple hundred miles west to go camping with daughter 2 and her family. There are 6 of them, so it will be a good group.

We are taking the teardrop trailer, it sleeps well and it is warmer than sleeping in a tent, and it is getting towards fall, and the night temps in the mountains can get pretty nippy.

I will make my upside down cake, and maybe something else in my dutch oven, but there are plenty of good cooks! We will eat well.

Then early next week we will drive the 45 miles north to visit daughter 1 and her family. Her oldest is married and living out of state with his bride, but the remaining family will be there. It is always good to spend time with them.

So, we will be gone from home about a week. We haven’t done that much this year. The cost of travel somehow limits the number of trips! I had hoped to go for a week long camp trip, just Miriam and I but not this year.

We are planning a run to Death Valley in late winter. It should be warm there, when it is still cold in Idaho. That trip will be a tent trip. The hot springs where we go is at the end of a long rough road. We will meet an old friend there. There are no services available, so we could stay until we ran out of food!

So, I will hook up the teardrop trailer to Miriam’s Cavalier, which qualifies as a little car. Leo, the dog will go with us, and we will have a good time.

I want to enjoy these trips and visits with our kids and grandkids. I know that the time is coming when that will not be possible.

My neighbors across the street are a wonderful hispanic family, Juan feeds our fish while we are gone and brings in the mail. He tells me that his father in law has been diagnosed with AD. He is dropping very fast. He is just a few years older than us. That makes me sad.

And, we will take a lunch. Freeway food is bad and spendy both.

the piano

Yesterday we were working at the church -- again.

When some one asks if I am retired, I say yes, that is I work but I don’t get paid for what I do. In fact I figured that if I got paid as a contractor for the work I had done on various church projects, I could buy a new Caddy with the cash.

But I digress.

I was grouting tile yesterday on the stage of the church. Miriam was with me and she sat down at the grand piano and began picking out a song.

Miriam is not really a piano player, but she enjoys sitting and playing a few hymns. This time I encouraged her to play more. I liked to hear it.

It reminded me of the old days when she would do just that. Sit at the piano and play a hymn that was buzzing in her head.

We don’t have a piano in the house anymore. I bought her a decent keyboard some years back, and she will play it on a rare occasion.

So, as I spread grout, I listened to my sweetheart, and old memories flooded my mind.

Did I say that grouting is quite physical, but has very low intellectual demands, and that my mind wanders?

early hand made books

The top one holds my iPod shuffle!

journaling -- again

I have been a journal keeper for most of my adult life.

That started in my midlife. I think I was about 40 and my head was swimming. I had one of those midlife events and it brought me low.

So I started writing. Not just about that, though I surely did, but about the minutia of life.

It has been a good exercise. Helps organize thoughts. Keeps me from plowing the same ground over and over.

A while back I discovered Moleskines and I thought they were wonderful. I go through 4 or 5 a year.

On my retirement budget and with my art/craft back ground I decided to take up a hobby I that had been tempting me for a long long time: hand made books.

So far I have made a couple dozen. Most are fairly small, 3 ½ by 5 ½ or so. The advantage of making you own is that you ca make them any size you wish. The one I am writing in now is not too much wider, I think it is 4”, but is quite long I can carry it in my hip pocket, and yet each page holds a lot of words.

Making your own books is not necessary, but I encourage every one to write a journal. The advantages cannot be over stated I think.

And to be a total snob about it. I use a fountain pen to write in my hand made book.

What do I do with them? They make wonderful gifts!

i am confused

I was in the shop a couple days ago, working on wood work for the church.

It was time to get ready for dinner (we are really confused, we eat at 9 and 4). Miriam came out and asked me if she could start dinner.

Of course, get some potatoes on to boil and I gave her a few other instructions.

She came back in a few minutes with a note pad in her hand. “What did you ask me to do?” “I am confused.”

I told her I’d come in and help her.

Later she said that same thing: “I am confused.”

I know it is true. I don’t like it, but it is the first time I have heard her admit it.

The knife cuts a bit deeper.

peanut butter jars

For a number of years we have been buying the same brand of peanut butter that came and comes in the same size jar. It is a bit over a quart with a wide mouth lid and sealing rubber on the inside of the lid.

We have carefully saved them until we have a lot of them.

The peanut butter is the non hydrogenated kind will separate, but is good flavored and free of additional “stuff”, and I love those jars.

And they have become the basis of our food storage system. Miriam used to use Cocoa cans, the paper kind with the plastic lid, maybe with a quart and a half capacity. She would cover them with sticky paper and put fancy labels on them.

They worked pretty well, but you could never see what was really in the can, nor guess how much was there, and they seemed to be a lot more vulnerable to deterioration and infestation. At least I thought that.

So I have converted almost everything to these peanut butter jars. Sometimes when I come back from the bulk section of the super store, I have more than will fit into one jar. I either put the rest in another jar, or put the bag in the freezer for use later.

For table use Miriam stirs the big jar and then fills a pint jar, and keeps it pretty full most of the time. With just the two of us that works out fine.

Our peanut butter was a regional company, based in Portland Oregon. Alas they were bought out by one of the big companies from the midwest. So now they are a division of someone else.

So far the peanut butter has not changed, an equally important to me, the jars have not either.

Did I mention that we eat a fair amount of the stuff?