Walking again

There are extensive 'Rails to Trails' projects in Washington - wonderful walking trails reclaimed from old railroad lines - and we have one in our little valley. Today was a perfect day to explore it, with fall leaves showing their color and rustling beneath our feet. The Snoqualmie River is just to the west of the trail, although there aren't too many points along this stretch where it is visible. Instead there are farms and woods and little streams. If we'd just walked a little further, we would have seen the big bridge over the river - but it is a bit far! Maybe next time. (I know - I always say that...)

And somehow we managed to come up off the trail right close to a great little sandwich shop. How does that always happen?

Painting and more painting

Where will it end? When will it end?

We're still painting. The baseboards and doors and trim all need several coats and the walls need at least two. Furniture has to be moved, rugs and walls taped off, outlet covers and window coverings need to be removed. I don't think I had any idea how big a job this would be.

So now I'm wondering, have I ever actually painted a house before? And I think the answer is a clear 'no.' That seems extraordinary, considering that I've lived in quite a few of them over the years, although not, evidently, long enough to need to repaint any of them. At this point, that seems like it was a good plan and I'm wondering why I didn't stick to it.

So just to update our progress: The dining room / living room is done - paint, light fixture, and furniture arrangement included - although the window coverings that we ordered aren't here yet. (And two of the area rugs are still rolled up against one wall in the dining room - waiting the day when wood floors are installed in the family room/breakfast nook... so, no, I guess that can't be declared 'done' either, huh?) The kitchen is done except for the cabinet and drawer pulls, which we have, but haven't put on yet. The family room has been painted, a new light fixture installed, and display shelves and pictures hung, but that's all that can be said for that room. It still has seemingly dozens of big holes in the ceiling left behind by what must have been the world record macrame-hanging display. And the furniture we ordered this week won't be in for 6 more weeks. The jury is still out on whether we will break down and replace the cheap flooring with hardwood, but if I had my guess, I think the hardwood will win out over the budget.

And the master bedroom is about 3/4 painted. I am SO anxious to get that done so I can clean up the mess.

It is, of course, the mess that is really bugging me, not all the actual painting itself. I'm trying to tell myself that this 'journey' is worth enjoying like all the rest of them, but I still find myself pretty focused on the end.

Onward!

Farmer's Market

Our little community has a Farmer's Market just off of Main Street during the summer, or so we are informed by a sign we drive by every day, on the highway just outside of town. It happens, evidently, every Wednesday evening during the warmer months and today was supposed to be the last event of the season - so we thought we ought to go.

A bit of a disappointment, I'm afraid.

It occupied about half of an alley and consisted of, maybe, 8 'booths' selling flowers and produce. There was also the predictable table for the county extension office touting Composting, as well as a vendor for hot dogs, of course. In all fairness, the 3 booths that offered produced seemed to have high quality stuff. And I got a beautiful bouquet of dahlias for $5, so that was good too...

Somehow though, it was pretty sad.

There are some big Farmer's Markets in the East Seattle area and we've enjoyed them immensely. Perhaps our expectations were a bit too high for this one.

Kind of a pathetic ending to summer though.

A picture for Sunday

We saw this little roadside chapel on our way out to Leavenworth yesterday and stopped in to see it. Inside there is a pulpit, four 1-seater pews on either side of a short isle and a cross on the back wall. There was a Bible inside and a request to leave prayers, not money.

And no lock on the door.

Fall Festival

It was a perfectly innocent plan. I thought we'd just drive over to Leavenworth (Washington's fake Bavarian Village) for the day, with the notion just in the back of my mind that there is a simply wonderful fudge shop there, and that any day that ends with fudge is a great day.

But we were surprised to find that the biggest festival of the year - celebrating Autumn Leaves - was happening today. There was a parade and food booths and a polka band in the gazebo and all the rest of 'festival' trappings. (Including, of course, problems finding a parking place - one of the side effects of our wanderings that seems to always baffle us.)

The parade was a hoot, as small town parades always are. We had a great lunch, including a great apple pie for dessert, and even found the fudge shop again.

So here is a glimpse of our day.







A good time was had by all?

Gee, I guess it's THAT sort of neighborhood

I went out yesterday afternoon to put out the garbage cans for today's pick-up. And was, er... surprised. And yes, it IS only mid-September.

My neighbor explained that he'd been able to get the LAST one of these and it was the demo model so he was particularly concerned that it 'worked' so he was just putting it up now to make sure. There were lights and flimsy stuff to sway in the breezes and you could walk all the way through it, and EVERYTHING! Pretty excited, he was.

And so was I.

Photos of real life

I was looking for a photo that I thought I had seen recently, in my unpacking and sorting and putting away of things. But either I can't find it now, or it wasn't really the photo I thought it was. And it strikes me as so typical of photos. They're so unreliable.

They always seem to catch you at your worst.

Or they really come out great and then promptly get themselves lost.

But that isn't really my topic for the day - just another sideline that I got caught up in when 'thinking.'

The photo I was looking for was of my father's 60th birthday. He had a 'timeline' cake with markers for significant events in his life - most of which were probably the births of various children and grandchildren and graduations and the like. I missed the event myself (living in Alaska and working in school systems usually means that you miss September birthdays in Tucson) but remember the photos that someone in the family had sent to me. Or thought I remembered them...

And so I am thinking about photos of my dad today, on this, another anniversary of his birth.

Somehow there is a 'tradition' in my family of taking birthday pictures of the Unfortunate Celebrant while he or she is actually in the act of blowing out candles on the cake. It is likely that I started that tradition my own self, but I hope not. Anyway, we all have years and years of likenesses of each other with blown out cheeks and pursed lips and hunched backs. Very becoming. This is probably why I was thinking that I saw a picture of my dad blowing out 60 birthday candles over his 'timeline' cake.

Oh well. Even though I wasn't actually there in the first place, I still have the picture, clearly in focus, of him and that cake and those wonderful sixty years.

So that's the thing about life. We live in each others' minds and hearts.

Always.

Ahoy!

Good grief.

In all the fuss I almost forgot it was International Talk Like a Pirate Day - every September 19th.

Very important holiday, and I almost missed it. Arghhh.

Have a good one, Matey!

Great progress and a letdown

The 'renovations' are done for now - Todd caught a plane this morning for home and Mark left on a business trip to Texas for the week. Now it's just me and the cats and the mess in the closets.

Life certainly goes in pulses.

This is going to be a low-key week for me. Some straightening, some painting, some reading, more painting. And did I mention painting? I'm really looking forward to the next issue of The Valley View local paper!

Murphy's Law

We seem to be able to paint without incident. We don't knock the paint bucket over, fall off the ladder, or even end up with drips. Sure, there are a few strokes of paint on the ceiling that I wish weren't there - but in the total scheme of things not many - and overall, painting has been successful for us. Yes. I can say that with confidence.

But we have had bigger, more complicated projects involving power tools and measuring tapes and levels and 'stud' finders that haven't been so simple. We pretty much found that if there was a box of decorative shelving in the store that was missing its hardware, we ended up with it. If there was a package of some closet-organizer stuff that has screws that are too long and end up going all the way through the wall of the closet and out the other side right into another room, well, we managed to buy it. (The screws that came with our kitchen cabinet door pulls are too short though, so maybe that all works out in some cosmic way that escapes our understanding at this moment.) "Budget Blinds" simply didn't suit MY budget, and I might be destined to live with (shudder) vertical blinds that simply don't suit MY taste.

Oh well. The place is looking a lot better, in spite of the travails. We got rid of the purple wall, and the orange one and the lavender ones... The wood trim looks quite smart now in its crisp white paint. (All three coats of it.) We have some pictures hung, the dreadful 'fruit' light fixture replaced, and the kitchen cabinet facings cleaned up and restored. The closets are well on their way to being reconfigured to maximize space, and I guess we can always make a 'feature' out of the tips of the screws that stick out the other side of the wall and into the other bedroom. Anyway, we've become experts at repairing walls - a necessary skill to develop when you move into a house where people thought repairs need only involve sticking a piece of tape over all holes, no matter the size, and painting over them.

We are greeted warmly by the employees of our local Home Depot by now - we are, after all, paying their salaries and probably see more of them than their own families.

All in all, we've really made good use of the time we've had with Todd being here. And we've been very glad to have his help and problem-solving skills and positive attitude.

We have one more day together, and I'm sure it will be trouble free. What else could go wrong, after all?

Bruises

I keep running into furniture. I have horrific bruises on my left arm and right leg that would make a social services worker run for the phone. It’s all because of boxes, of course, and a house with a zig-zag hallway and too much stuff. And because of being uncoordinated. It hasn’t helped that I can’t see the contents of the boxes I am trying to unpack without my reading glasses on, but then when I try to move the box without taking the glasses off… well, I keep running into furniture.

Damn. Aren't you tired of hearing about boxes?

Mark keeps saying “we’re winning!” the Battle of the Boxes. I have my doubts but he insists that I repeat his mantra over and over – and so I do. We can at least see the garage door from the house door now, and if it weren’t for the empty boxes there would actually be some floor space in the garage. The floor space in the bedrooms is a little sparse just now but that will improve as soon as we reconfigure the closets with new rods and shelves.

And all this will happen because Todd is coming tomorrow! We have tons of Home Improvement projects and will be very glad for his strong hands and positive attitude.

In other good news – we are supposed to ‘close’ on the sale of the Kentucky house tomorrow!

We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Sorting and Cleaning

We have an onerous task ahead of us today - sort out the mess in the garage to see what is left to unpack and find a place for it. All the boxes, basically, and even some of the furniture got stacked in the garage when we moved in and we've been trying to get at them ever since. They are stacked 4 and 5 high and certainly in nothing like organized rows and that hasn't helped. It also doesn't help that many are labeled Halloween Decorations and Christmas Decorations when they don't, in fact, seem to contain those things at all. Wardrobe boxes that one might expect to contain wardrobe items are packed with other stuff as well. All very confusing. Not to mention messy.

And it didn't help that both of us, over the past two weeks, have gone on frantic rampages through them to find specific treasures that we thought were missing and, for one reason or another, felt we needed to find NOW. This left the piles in disarray and packing paper all over the place - sort of feels like the aftermath of the Macy's parade.

So - today is the day! We are going to take everything out of the garage, sort the empty, flattened boxes, put up the storage shelves around the edges, unpack the remaining boxes, repack the stuff that we are just 'storing' for sentimental reasons, and decide what we simply don't have room for.

And we're not even getting an early start.

Todd is coming this week to help with "Home Improvement Projects" and we have to be ready!

Zoo News

I was reading an article in a magazine somewhere about the Orangutans at Seattle’s Zoo. It seems that some of them are very interested in art – will ‘help’ you draw or paint by pointing at preferred colors and taking a great deal of interest through the glass of their enclosure. They also like story books and will look over your shoulder at them and agitate for turning pages. Since they are our favorites, we were happy to know that they have interests beyond hiding under a blanket in their beautiful enclosure.

Another article (this one from The Valley View news again) reports the “Annual Fall Fecal Fest” that the Zoo puts on – I kid you not – to auction off “pungent piles of poop… the richest, highly aromatic, most exotic compost in the Pacific Northwest.” That’s interesting. Evidently highly sought after by local gardeners, this stuff, we are informed, traditionally "sells out." I bet. We are further informed that “Dr. Doo is accepting entry cards” and that there is a “poop” line to call for more information. Who says officials don’t have a sense of humor?

In praise of small town news

There was a real prize in our mailbox yesterday – ‘The Valley View’ local newspaper. (Setting aside the incredible coincidence regarding the family compound in Arizona…)

Having lived for many years in a small town in Alaska, I love local news reporting. The articles about art and farmer’s markets and new restaurants and city council arguments are great. Even the ads are entertaining and, well, ‘informative’ I guess. But the most priceless thing is the Police Report, and in this, The Valley View seems to be at its finest. For example:

“While a couple was moving from their rented residence, someone took the opportunity to help them in their absence by removing around $1000 worth of items from the home. So far they haven’t returned them.”

“Stolen vehicle. A car was parked behind the Old Bank around 5 am so the owner could catch a bus to work. However, when he returned to where his car was parked, it had been moved. There was no broken glass but the car window was down just a mite. No one had permission to use the car and the owner is eager to prosecute. The gas gauge indicated someone had enjoyed quite a ride.”

(Down ‘just a mite?’)

There was another rather convoluted story about police stopping a car and then smelling marijuana in it. “They were asked if there was any marijuana in the vehicle and both occupants seemed very confused with the question but the police weren’t confused.”

This story ended with the succinct comment, “They rewarded them with a ride to the station.” Another story ended with “The vehicle got towed and the suspect got booked.” And still another reported that “Radar picked up a vehicle going 39 mph in a 30 mph zone which is a no-no.” This suspect "had a terrible time getting his name straight.” There was a lot more to that story too, none of it good.

Can’t hardly wait for next week’s edition!

Cats under the bed

They seem well adjusted to the new house, our cats. They are sitting on windowsills, exploring half-empty boxes, jumping onto each and every shelf (as if there might be something different about the ‘next’ one.) True, they were a bit cowed by a large jay outside the window as he scolded them from the deck. But even though they cowed, at least they didn’t run away.

Then this afternoon the door bell rang and they lost their nerve. One under each bed, and I had to coax them out afterward at that. Good grief. Two steps forward, one step back I guess. Glad it isn’t worse.

We’ve arranged and rearranged and re-re-arranged furniture. We’ve also been trying to empty boxes out of the garage but have now reached the point where nothing else will fit in the house so things are going back out, not coming in.

And I keep bumping into things. Boxes or furniture or walls – I am full of bruises. I even have one spectacular lump on my arm.

My sister is also having ‘challenges.’ She’s trying to get new countertops installed; has had a saga of disconnecting appliances and emptying cupboards only to find out that the material isn’t in or is damaged or whatever and then has to put her kitchen back together again. And again. And again, evidently. Weeks worth of that. That might be more than one step back, actually.

All this is just to say that maybe ‘under the bed’ is a good idea.

Head Cow

There is pasture land along the road from our house to 'town' and there are a couple of herds of cows occupying them at various times. Today, one herd - all black and white cows and please don't expect me to know what kind of cow that is - had obviously been led by a single cow from one section to another. You could see that the herd was just starting to fan out from their single-file line into the new area even while the last of them were scrambling through the gate, running to keep up.

Totally uninformed as I am about farm animal behavior, I have nevertheless watched cows for years and know that there is a 'Head' cow in the herd that the others will follow to new pasture or back to the barn. And I've always wondered how that comes about.

Are there natural leaders that emerge in a herd of cows? Does one cow have to be trained to move first, and the rest just naturally follow any such initiative? Obviously, in all my spare time here, I had to research this burning question:

• How is leadership determined in grazing herbivores?

Turns out they don’t really know, and haven’t studied it much (though I can’t imagine why.) It isn’t really just one cow that is the leader after all – but one study showed that 48% of the time in a specific herd it WAS one specific cow who was the ‘head cow.’ Mostly. 'Nomination' doesn’t seem to be based on size, although age seems to be a factor, and it is the herd, not the farmer, who determines 'head cow' status. Bullying cows don’t necessarily rise to the top, so to speak, but smart ones do. The head cow has to know where the best food is – and be confident about it besides, evidently.

Sort of like how our own culture’s leaders emerge, right? Or not. Perhaps WE haven’t studied this enough either.

Moving right along...

There are boxes, and more boxes... but we've already mentioned that.

There is painting and more painting... Oh - did I mention that too?

Every day we paint, open boxes, fold paper - since the boxes mostly contain paper and if you just wad it up it will fill every available space and quickly start on the space that isn't really available at all.

And every day things get a little better, and a little worse. I am so glad to have the partner I have, because he makes things easier and doesn't complain and is just so good to be with. (We've spent a LOT of time together lately!)

There are problems, and eventually we come up with solutions - even the problem of the odd-size-that-doesn't-seem-to-be-available-in-stores pins for all our bookshelves has been solved with a smaller size and a little masking tape. The shelves I thought were missing weren't missing at all, just mixed in with the shelves for another bookcase. (I do seem to have a problem with shelves, don't I?) We found a dowel to replace the missing pin in the Adirondack chair and the chairs themselves found a wonderful shady spot beneath an enormous cedar tree in the backyard. Some of the china cabinet stuff has been located, to my great relief, inspiring hope that the rest of it will surface eventually. We managed to get the Weber grill out of the box-maze in the garage and are looking forward to a barbecue as soon as we find some time.

All in all, well... better get back to the painting.

Election Season

It is election season – the kind where the local elections dominate. Always interesting.

We have been seeing signs for a candidate that say, simply, “Vote for Edwin." I’m a left a little short on information. For what position is Edwin striving? In what district? What does he stand for and why should I vote for him?

Edwin declines to say. He just keeps putting up signs – seemingly adopting the Burma Shave approach, with multiple signs every 20 yards along the roadway. Only Edwin’s signs always say the same thing: Vote for Edwin. True to the current American thinking, Edwin seems to believe that ‘awareness’ is everything. Madison Ave says ‘name recognition’ and Edwin prints more signs. Bless his heart. I hope he gets elected to something.

Jack Short has a different approach. His signs inform us that he is a Democrat, running for Council in District 11 and that he is against corporate fraud. (Lot of good that is going to do him as a Councilman, in my opinion, but what do I know?) The only trouble is that Jack has so much information on HIS sign (just the 2’ square plastic-thingy-that-goes-on-a-light-stick-in-the-ground sort of sign - like Edwin's) that you have to park at the corner and walk back to read it – or hope that you are in line for a red light. Better concept, perhaps, but poor execution once again.

In Kentucky there was a guy running for ‘Jailer’ – his name was Hank and he purported to be “Firm, but Fair” on his sign. There you go – what more could you ask of a Jailer?

So, this is the kind of information on which we base our vote?

Is there hope for our Republic?