I haven't done much photography of late. Construction photographs are almost always best after the project is completed, along the way they can be pretty dull.
This is from a shoot earlier in Portland. It is the outside of an old theatre.

Em and Bri

Tuesday I got a hair cut, picked up my little car from the repair shop and drove to Walla Walla. When I arrived I went straight to the IOOF home where Miriam lives. We visited and then daughter came by and she and I went for a sandwich.

I slept in my tiny house but it was a fitfully sleep in the small bed. I was sure ants were crawling on my back(they were not I am sure). The next morning I had breakfast with my high school friend Charlie, then visited Miriam. About noon I left for Portland to see Daughter 4 and the middle two granddaughters, Emily and Brianna.

Emily has recently completed her CNA (Certified Nurses Assistant) training and is working in a nursing home, taking care of people much like her grandmother. She is not totally sure she wants to pursue a career as a nurse, but this will give her a chance to find out how it is at the bottom of the care giving work chain.

She says she is enjoying it. Emily has always been some thing of a prissy, so for her to become a CNA was amazing to me. I am proud of her carefully figured decision. 

Brianna is about three quarters of the way through the first year of a 2 year course in Culinary School and is doing fine.

I am proud of each of them.

Emily for being so level headed and Brianna for her tenacity! The list is longer than that, but that is a good start!

They are good girls and their grandfather is exceedingly proud of them. 

Daughter 3 sent me this picture of her first born Josh and Miriam, taken some years ago. Josh is now a Junior at USC.

Yes, it has been a while!

good bye

I saw Miriam last Wednesday morning.

It was a little after she laid down for her morning nap when I got there. I sat in the recliner and watched her sleep. It wasn’t long before I took a nap too.

When I woke it was time for me to go, but she was still sleeping. I knelt down beside her and kissed her awake. We visited a bit. She was sure I was the neighbor boy, but that is OK. I told her I loved her and she said she loved me too. 

Then I told her I had to go and she said that was OK and told me good bye.

Good bye’s are not always so easy. Usually she will beg me to take her with me, that she can help me, but this time she just agreed to let me to.

It is good to see her, but it is heart breaking at the same time.

That is just the way it is.

I haven't seen Miriam in almost 3 weeks. Tomorrow after a timely visit to my favorite barber, I am heading up her direction. More on that later.

a new word

I learned a new word this morning. It is hypergraphia. 

My MacBook dictionary does not even recognize it as a word. Wikipedia (or course) has an answer: “Hypergraphia is an overwhelming urge to write. It is not of itself a disorder.” The piece went on to say it could be associated with things that are a disorder.

I am a victim of this non-disorder. OK, I have been on a temporary vacation from this non-disorder, but not a happy vacation.

When we moved from Idaho to Washington most of the furniture in the house went away, then when the flood happened last year what was left was damaged or destroyed.

So I don’t really have a good place to write. That would not be a problem for a normal person, but I was never accused of being normal. To make it more complex, I like to do at least some of my writing with a fountain pen on good paper, and there the place and the posture make a lot of difference, not to mention those precious pens and papers.

The good news is that I am working on that. 

As a cabinet maker if I need a desk I design and build one for the spot. I found drawers in the shop that were unused and made boxes to hold the drawers so I could make a writing (etc!) desk.

I went so far as to make an offer on an ancient all wood desk just so I could take the top off and use it as a top on my desk. Then I looked at that desk again. Old and solid, half a big oak tree in that one piece of abusable furniture. I measured and it fit almost exactly in the space under the stairs. Hmm.

I could build a desk as nice as that. But there would be several hundred dollars worth of wood and hardware (or more), and on Craig’s List the price was $25. 

Somewhere I read that guys have a real aversion to painting anything that is made of wood. I guess I am not a real man, because that is not a problem to me. 

Two tone gray to fit in my “Artichoke” green bedroom!

Ruby Mountains, Nevada 2013

discovery

I have not posted for a while. 

That is what has happened, it is not an excuse or a reason, it is just fact. I have been very busy working on my house getting a portion of it ready for a cold winter, but that is just a fact too. 

I have been learning how to live alone, and that has been a journey. It has been a long time since I lived alone, a long time. It is not as easy as it might seem at first thought. After having Miriam around for over half a century it is empty without her. 

But it is more than that. I can choose the color for the bedroom (and I did). I can buy the furniture that I want, and I did that too. I am sort of like a kid without adult supervision. I may not make the best decisions, but I am going full blast any way.

What do I eat and when do I eat it? Cooking for one is harder than cooking for two. I had been told that, but I had no idea. It is so easy to make way too much food and it is hard to get the variety of fruits and veggies that I am told I should. 

Besides, when do I eat. Often it is when I am hungry, but if I have something going on that is pushing my head then eating is postponed. Sometimes in the middle of the afternoon it comes to me that I have not eaten yet.

So I continue to discover and learn. One too fast and the other too slow.