early morning ramblings

Last night I was bone tired, so I went to bed at 10, and 5 hours later, just like I could predict, I was wide awake. I laid in bed for another half hour, and t hen got up. That is why I rarely go to bed “early.”

I’ll be up till about 6, then I’ll go back to bed and sleep another couple of hours. It will work out alright.


When I woke up I had just had a dream and it was all twisted and turned like dreams, but it kicked up my thinking. What will it be like in 15 years? I am healthy enough, and baring an accident or an opportunistic disease, I’ll be around and be in pretty good health too.

My grand kids will range from 26 to 40. Miriam will likely be gone, and I will be alone. I will be living some where near a daughter, some way. It could be here and it could be there, but it will all be different. I might be living in my RV or I might be living in a room at the back of the shop. That part is not predictable.

I go see my doctor Monday. Miriam has Alzheimer’s and sees the doctor once a year, I am the caregiver and for a while I saw my doctor every month. Routine stuff, but she wanted to make sure I was staying healthy as the caregiver. The last time I was there she said I was in “remarkably good health.” This visit is routine too. I hope it is boring!

So I will likely be around, but I cannot help wonder about my family and friends. One person suggested that you make young friends regularly along the way so when you are old you will still have a few friends left. Otherwise It could be pretty lonesome I fear.


This week we had some apples that were “short dated” meaning they going bad soon. Miriam asked what should we do with them: make a pie or apple crisp. I have always preferred the crisp, so I told her to get the apples pealed and I would make an apple crisp of them.

She pitched a fit about me and my bossiness and how she was capable but how I butted in, and so on. I backed off gracefully, and said she could go ahead, and she did.

It was not too good. For some reason apples baked in hunks without any liquid do not cook well, and she used too little toping, and to make up for that shortage, she put a layer of cocoanut on top. I ate some for breakfast ( with a bit of granola it was pretty good -- but it was a good sized dish).


We have a potluck tomorrow, so I looked at that ¾ dish of apple crisp, and I decided to "repurpose" it. I added some apples to make up for those I had eaten. I made a new batch of topping. I baked it until the apples were soft, but I wanted a bit more of a brown on the top so I put it under the broiler and browned it a bit.

Last night after I slowed down, Miriam decided that I had burned that top layer, so she painstakingly picked off each tiny fleck of what she thought was “burned.” I was hoping that it looked bad enough I could bring a good bit of it back to eat with a bit of ice cream! We will still see how this all works out.


It seems that life is pretty well what you make of it. Some of us are dealt more bad cards than others, but few are dealt a really hot hand. I would do anything to not have Miriam with this disease, but with a lot of humor and a bit of love and patience we are doing fairly well, but that could be a self perpetuating fantasy as well.

But in 15 years I will be in my mid 80’s What will be different? Maybe almost every thing.

Hmm.

nobody

I have been thinking a lot about our new president.

OK, our president elect. He has 12 days then the problems of the world settle on his head. We all wait to see how he acts or reacts to this or that.

But it was not long ago he was a guy from a rather confused family, who though very bright, was unheard of outside his circle. Even a member of the state government does not cause a big following.

I live near the capital of our state, Linda (daughter 4) used to live there and we would visit her often. For a while she owned a retail store down town. I have walked down the street and greeted the mayor of the city, and watched the Governor drive his Suburban away from the capital building.

They are known but not really adversely so. Shucks the guy who represents me in state government lives a block away from my house. He will probably hold that position for a long time, he just retired from his “regular” job a few years ago! In my state we do not pay our legislators a whole lot, nor do we expect too much of them. It is a wonderful retirement job!

So I watch the hubbub about our new president. He has gone from a regular guy who would ride his bicycle around his town, to the most guarded and protected guy on the planet.

More than even he could imagine his life will be forever changed. I am not talking about power and all of that stuff. I am talking about privacy, the ability to walk down the street and be ignored.

A lot of us would like to be famous and maybe even rich, but we have no idea of what that would involve.

So as I watch the ceremonies of the change of administration, read about the appointments and the decisions, I also see a little kid who had one grandpa who was white and one who was black. He did not grow up in wealth, luxury and power, but lived much of the time with his grandparents, sometimes in an apartment.

I wish him well, we need good leadership, the whole world does, but as I watch I am so glad I can walk down the street and no one cares. You can drive right up to my house, in fact you can walk up to my front door and ring the bell. Leo may bark, but at 13 pounds he is pretty harmless.

I like being nobody.

and more

It is winter after all.

More snow last night. December one of the snowiest winters here in this valley.

We need a convergence of cold weather and moisture to get snow, and we don’t always get both at the same time. More snow is predicted each day this week.

Some years back I bought a box trailer to use in my work. The trailer box is 12 feet long and 6’ wide and a bit over 6’ high inside, so it is not a tiny trailer, for sure. Right after I bought it, we had a snow storm, 5 or 6 inches of snow.

I hooked the trailer to my trusty Chevy pickup and went off to work.

The trailer did not have brakes and it was not easy to stop or start or to keep moving in a straight line. I brought it back to where I bought it and had them install brakes. What a difference that made.

I have pulled it through a good number of snow storms since then. But that was then, today is another day of retirement for me and I don’t expect to leave our acre. I’ll take the dog out, shovel a bit of snow, and spend the day in my cabinet shop working on a portable work desk for inside the house.

While I have a nice small studio, in the winter I hate to spend money to heat it. I figured I could do a lot of work here in the house, so I set up a card table in a corner behind the stove and set up shop.

It has worked out well enough to encourage me to build this desk. It is quite low, with doors that open on the lower section. The doors support the drop leaf from the top cabinet, giving me a good work space, AND the ability to put it away fairly easily.

Don’t push the put away too far. It is behind a door and I intend to work there, and not clean there.

In the long run I need to be working more toward systems where I can be with Miriam and enjoy her company as well as be her caretaker.

It is snowing hard right now, Leo thinks he wants to go out, but he will want to come back in very soon.

emily and brianna

This was a long time ago, the girls are 14 this year. I am the very proud grandpa.

friday

I did not listen carefully.

Emily has been with us for a few wonderful days. She has grown up so well, I am so proud of her, and treasure all of that special time.

I thought she was going to be with us nights until the first of next week, when she would fly back to portland. But just now her dad came to get her (we are on good terms with her dad, btw), and she is gone. Just like that.

While I did not understand the schedule, I took time to make us a breakfast of fresh fried potatoes and eggs with cheese, washed down with a glass of my famous (in the family at least) fruit smoothie.

Now she is gone.

Before she left she hugged me and told me that I had always been her father figure. That is a challenge I have taken very seriously for these short years. Her dad has not always been around.

I remember going to San Josen California to see Linda, Duane and Emily. Em was a couple of weeks old. I held her and looked at her tiny hands, each hand smaller than one of my thumbs, and I was in total, absolute awe. It was that grandpa kind of thing, where the old guy looks at the new generation and swoons. I never have gotten over seeing her for the first time.

Before her first birthday she moved with her mom to Idaho, living half an hour away. Most weekends she spent with us, and it was wonderful to have a little one around the house again. She went to church with us, and one week I was to play my trumpet for the service. Em and Miriam were on the back row (Em was still working on “church manners”). As I stood to play, with my trumpet in my hand, just before the accompaniment began, I heard this tiny voice. It was tiny, but in the silence of church it was loud: “PAPA!”

I smiled out loud, the congregation twittered approval and I played with energy.

That child has bored deep into my soul and I have loved her special. I have made a point in my life of never loving one child more than another, but the family has agreed that while I do not love Emily more than Jessica or Brianna or Amy, it is a special kind of love, nurtured by our being so close

Truthfully she has spent more time with us than she has with her father. I am not here to throw stones, that is just how it worked.

As I watch her grow (she is about 5’ 8” now) and get older and wiser (at 14, she is wise beyond her age) I am so proud of her.

But, lest you think I can only talk about Emily, I dare you to ask about Amy or Brianna or Jessica! They are all amazing women, these women and their mothers and aunts. I am honored to be the old guy.

two thousand nine?

Happy New Year every one.

May this year be a good one. May we once more remember that what we are is not what we have as possessions, but what we have as family and friends, and how we love and cherish them.

Even during tough times, good things happen.

Let’s look for the good around us.

proud papa

Christmas day I was watching dinner being prepared.

We were to have about 25 people for dinner, there was a lot of food that had to be prepared. The daughters had volunteered to cook (had they not volunteered the food would have been in short supply). While they worked, I was the designated watcher!

Our oldest daughter's house, where we were staying, has a good big kitchen, with a 3 ½ by 8 foot island in the center. In actuality it is the social center of the whole house.

My daughters were all working. There was not room for me, or I did not look for room maybe. Miriam was putting a puzzle together in another room. I watched in pleased amazement.

The four girls work together, they laughed, they teased about who was in charge of what, the cooked and had such a great time. Each of them are avery fine cooks in their own rights, but their styles vary quite a bit, but here they worked in wonderful harmony.

I was so proud to be their father. Later in the preparation, Mandy, who is our oldest grandson’s new wife (OK, they have been married a year and a half) joined in and the 5 of them worked as a wonderful crew.

Of course the dinner was wonderful, but what will always be in my mind and memory is the picture of the love and cooperation I was seeing.

snow

When we got to Walla Walla, there was abut 12 inches of snow. Christmas day it snowed another 4 inches.

Chains were required to go any place serious. We even dug out the paper delivery person, who got stuck with front wheel drive AND chains.

Then that wonderful NW thing called a Chinook arrived (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_winds), and most of the snow was gone in a day or two.

Snow is fun to a point, but Walla Walla does not get a lot of snow so there is little equipment for removal and a really low snow removal budget.

When we got back to Idaho there was snow on the ground, but not as much and it was going, though not because of a thawing wind.

sad christmas

Christmas is a happy time,

For some. It is a horribly depressing time for others.

I suppose those times of opposites are the most depressing for some of us. To be unhappy around happy people is a sentence of pain.

Those of us who feel reasonably peaceful often find it difficult to understand those who do not, I fear. And, those who are having trouble know the rest of us are clueless.

I just took my first nap today, and I feel a bit better, but it is cold, snowy and depressing.

We sleep in the living room, on the hide-a-bed. So, we are the last to get to bed and often the first to be awakened.

There are 22 or 25 of us, and even in a good sized house, that is a lot of people, and even if it is a happy time it can be noisy.

In my old age, I find noise particularly disturbing. I worked for years in noisy places without much of anything in hearing protectors, but now almost all noise bothers me. Still I am so glad to have my family all here, and to be able to hear them.

Some are skiing today (three grandkids and one friend), some are getting up late and I just did my first nap (hoping for 3 for the day).

In some ways I am ready to go home, but it will be a good day after all.

Christmas already?

Enough already.

Ok it is christmas, and you can be as merry as you like.

There was a foot of snow on the ground and it snowed another 4 or 5 inches lasts night.

If you don’t have tire chains on your rig you don’t go far, unless you use daughter’s Jeep. In fact, yesterday we helped the "paper boy" get out of a snow bank and he had chains on his front wheel drive import.

I don’t mind a bit of snow, but this is over the top. I always carry chains in the winter, but this time I forgot to put them in, so I am one of the unchained, which right now means don’t get off the plowed roads.

And, since it does not consistently snow here, there is little snow removal equipment in use and all of the side streets are treacherous.

But I bellyache here.

It was a good evening last night: 3 daughters; 2 sons in law, 5 grandsons, two granddaughters and one granddaughter in law! We had a simple meal and a whole evening of talking and play.

Some played in the snow until it was quite dark, others hunkered around computer screens. I lost count, but there was about 5 or 6 lap tops in use at different times, plus the house desktop.

We enjoyed each others company.

And, one of my daughters works for Willie Wanka in the chocolate factory (she is the creative one), so there was a good amount of chocolate, not just any chocolate, mind you, but really really good stuff.

The christmas tree has a LOT of presents under it, but Matt was reminded that there will be a LOT of people here when presents are opened. I think it is twenty two or twenty three.

Grandson David and his wife Mandy are here from northern California. They have suggested that they will likely add to the population some time fairly soon, so our family will be back in the new baby area again.

It is had been along time on that one.

Did I forget to say Merry Christmas to each and all? I am sorry.

I throughly like my family, but there are times when I wish I had my hearing protectors from the cabinet shop. All of this fun can produce a lot of decibels.

go?

i have an old farmer friend (he is in mid 80's and I have known him as long as I can remember, so yes, he is an old friend) who hung on to a few bucks along the way, and travels a fair bit, because his wife and daughters "force" him to.

He tells me that the best part of any trip is the drive from his mail box to his front door. He lives in a self planted forest, and has a long drive way, so he has a few seconds for reverie.

I am about to agree, and, like him, I adore my kids and grandkids

No new snow last night, but some is predicted today.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE everyone.

Oh well.

walla walla

We are at our daughters house in Walla Wallal, safe and sound.

The highway was dry almost all of the way, but a major winter storm is due yet tonight and the advisory lasts 2 days.

In terms of weather we made it right at the best time.

There is about a foot of snow here, which is some what unusual, to put it mildly.

more snow

Today is travel day.

It snowed 4” here last night, but the road cams show black road most of the way. One lane at least. That is good.

Dea has already left San Francisco heading north. When she gets to where the shorter road cuts across the center of Oregon and the freeway goes on north to Portland (a longer route), she will inquire about the best route.

Portland has a lot of snow and I would guess that the town is pretty well shut down. Grandson David came from north california (which is actually in the center of the state), drove to Portland where his wife’s parents family life, got within a hundred yards of their house and got stuck in the snow.

But when I check around a bit,there is a LOT of snow in a LOT of places this year. Since I am not a snow buff, I will not trudge on, and not complain.

I was listening to Bing Crosby yesterday sing; "There is no place like home for the holiday." Hmm. He might have been onto something

I’ll post again this evening.

snow and travel

We live in a pretty dedicated desert, so there is not a lot of moisture any time.

That is not all bad, we avoid a lot of rainy days, and even when it is cold, we often do not get much if any snow.

But that is not true down the road a bit.

Tomorrow we are driving 250 miles up through the corner of Oregon to Washington State. Our daughter lives about a mile and a half into Washington State, so we won’t drive there a whole lot.

And they have snow big time. She told me they had a foot a few days ago and it has been snowing almost every day since. Even Linda in Portland reports 6 to 12 inches of snow. Portland is a hilly town and snow brings the whole town to it’s knees.

A storm passed through our area over the weekend and another one is not due until Wednesday, giving us a one day window to travel.

I suggested calling the trip off, or at least offered that for thought, but Deanna who lives the furtherest away was not impressed with my idea! Grandson David drove from Sacramento to Portland yesterday and said it was ok, but a little slower. Deanna will drive from San Francisco to Portland on Tuesday.

Linda in portland has a Jeep jeep with nice new snow tires and she is getting around pretty well. We were there once when there was 5 or 6 inches of snow. It was fun to drive along with Linda and watch Mercedes and Jags and more, stuck in the snow.

We have traveled this road between here and Walla Walla literally hundreds of times, and know the road well. What I don’t know is which driver who has never on snow before gets between me and a safe trip.

Once we were traveling along on compact snow base. I bought half a cord of firewood to put in the pickup for ballast, it worked well. We were going along at a fair speed and a SUV passed me going a good bit faster than us. I told Miriam that they were out of control but did not know it.

We had not driven 5 miles and saw them on the side of the road having slapped the guard rail enough to put out a SUV light, but enough to cause serious injury.

Funny I did not see them again that day.

We are taking our ancient (1992) Chevy Cavalier, but it is in good mechanical condition, has new tires that have been sipped. You can look that one up!

To all of us that will be traveling this week: be careful and slow down.

my music

I have been moving music!
For the last long time, most of the music I listened to came over the radio, public radio in this case.

Some years ago my daughter and her computer programer husband put their music collection on their computer, so they could easily listen to music as they choose.

I put “some” of my favorite music on my MacBook, and listen to it via ear buds. OK I had almost 800 “songs” on my “book”.

Then I got an iPod and began putting more play lists together. It was fun and it was not to difficult. When I got a semi ancient Mac desktop computer (in computers a 2 year old machine is old and a 4 year old one is very ancient). It had a smallish HD, but all I wanted it to do was be a backup, and to allow me to organize my music.

We don’t have a large CD collection. But a hundred CD’s is hard to manage on any kind of a big CD player that I could afford. We have a player that has room for 50 CD’s, but the options are listening to everything in order, or jumping from cut to cut, and that has limitations.

Enter the computer. Right now I have about 6 GB of music on desktop and I can pick a tune at a time, or an album at a time and put it on a play list. I can create a bunch of them.

The downside is that it takes a while to transfer a lot of CD’s to the computer, and then back it all up. But with winter and time I am doing it this week. I have a thing about proper use of copyright material, so all of the CD’s I have are ones I have purchased. O, there are a few tunes that granddaughters have sent me, but that is not a significant portion (with luck my jail time should be minimal).

And at will I can copy from that collection to my iPod, allowing me listening wherever I might go.

Tomorrow we are gong to travel 250 miles. I will fill the iPod with music we will enjoy, and then hook up two sets of ear buds, so Miriam and I can both listen as we drive. (My iPod does not allow it to be tied in with the car music system, that one was over budget!)

Along with the books I download from the internet and listen to, this whole thing has added a lot of listening pleasure to my life.

It is cool, as my granddaughers might say.