Another Birthday

Today was Steve's turn. We're still working to bring order to chaos, and hadn't really planned on a big celebration, unlike last year, one of those milestone years. There the family was gathered in a restaurant when one son swooped in with his wife from halfway across the country, just in time to BE the birthday present! They were moving back just that day, helping us decide to move back this spring.

A few days ago we heard that Steve's half brother and his new wife would be in the state for a visit, with the aim of making Steve's birthday. There hadn't been much opportunity for the two guys to get close, from different generations, different states, so it was to be a big treat to see him again. It didn't quite work out. His wife also had family to see while they were here and her family visiting was keeping them on the road around the state for a couple days, including this one. Another invited party guest wasn't feeling well and backed out. My son was coming over to adjust closet shelves for me and spent some time enjoying the company, which was we two and the son/wife pair which moved here in time for last year's birthday. He also was warned to prepare for having cake. No point arriving full, right?

Steve hadn't gotten around to planning to buy a cake, originally thinking he'd bake and frost his own. It's not like we've unpacked the mixer or cake pans yet, of course. (I do still have cake pans, don't I? Please tell me I do.) By midmorning I suggested if he were going to call a bakery, it had better be NOW! So he did. It was a half a sheet, all chocolate, with whipped chocolate frosting.  OMG YUM! No extra decorations on it, because who needs those? No candles either. We may have some in some box somewhere, but again, not needed. If we do have some, they'll likely show up in time for next year. If not, oh well.

It's just as well he ordered a cake since he had a visit from his main PT lady around lunchtime, her first look at the new place. By the time she finished he was too tired to cook even his own lunch, and went to bed until time to go pick up the cake. While waiting for her to show up, we were entertained by a backhoe next door. The home had been pulled out just after we moved in (pure coincidence we're sure) with a new one and new resident due late summer. It had been a single wide with a concrete patio along the side. The patio concrete was being chunked into manageable pieces and dropped into a large dump truck out on the street. We opened our blinds to watch for a while. Tonight the equipment still sits there. We think it likely a double-wide home will go in (with no patio) and we can watch the process. It looks like a trade-off between the entertainment now, and loss of our view of the lake once it's in place. I'm hoping for the bonus of seeing what actually goes in the ground to support the utilities of one of these homes. Today there was an upside down plastic 5 gallon bucket over one spot and a big tin garbage pail over another spot.

Of course I spent my "spare time" today clearing messes, compiling emptied boxes together for more floor space, hauling out bagfuls of recyclables until the huge bin was full to the top, but rediscovering floor space in exchange, washing dishes and counters, locating chairs for group seating, making bathrooms looking less lived in, or in short, arranging our chaos to look better for company. I even hung stuff on three picture hangers already on our walls from the previous family to aid the living-here look. (Steve liked all the choices I made while he slept... he says.)  

Meanwhile we had two huge boxes delivered to the front door which had the expected three shelf units inside to be assembled tomorrow so we can start organizing the pantry room. All the existing shelves in there had been packed full of boxes with no organizing principle aside from where they might fit, or how soon one could put them down because of how heavy they were. (Wait! this box can't go on end? But it fits right there if I do it that way! What do you mean, "break"?) So opened boxes had no place for their  insides to go if their contents were actually meant for that room. The three dozen extra boxes filled the middle of the room, starting at the full shelves and moving to the other side, stacking up in columns as they went.

Just try to find something in there! 

I'd managed to create a facsimile of a path that with care allowed access to a likely box here or another one there, ever mindful of space for a foot here and putting the next one there... except you needed to use the same foot as the last time because the opening was on the same side of the rug laying down sort of along the middle of the room. I'm sure lots of actual treasures inhabit those boxes, if only we can get to them.

The plan is to start in the far diagonal corner from the door with a shelf unit, carefully measured to fit from the corner to the window. Of course there's a box sitting in that spot right now, but that will be my son's problem, tomorrow. I haven't told him about that box. Yet. But once shelves appear by some unknown magic, they can start being filled, and the process will cascade. The process, mind you, not the stacks of boxes! Or that's the plan, anyway.

But we were celebrating a birthday tonight, and we were doing it in style. I refer to the kind of style your parents never let you indulge in when you were growing up. Nobody had supper. At least not then. At least two of them had plans to have something nutritious later before bed. But we had a half sheet cake, and only five mouths to feed. The first half of the cake got cut into 6 pieces, and each got one. There will be more here tomorrow, tucked under the tight plastic cover for freshness. As we each munched on our bounty, nobody complained. Nobody missed veggies. Nobody was unable to finish. And probably nobody will ever get the chance to repeat it, because nearly everybody goes back to someplace where tender impresssionable children have to have a good example set for them, or at least during the next celebration  which includes cake... AFTER  a "real" meal.

But OMG YUM! I'm going to sleep with dreams of breakfast!

Never Dark

We had an interesting night last night. For over two hours after sunset, it was never dark. I suppose for many it should have been frightening. For us it was fascinating.

It started with rumbling. Trucks? We weren't close enough to the highway for that much noise. And that many trucks? Unlikely. It wasn't time yet for the forecast severe weather possibility, and yet....

I decided to step outside to try to find out what was going on. The rumbling was still pretty steady, but now let's add flickering. Of course! Lightning! It was still to the west, over and beyond the lake.  

Let's be clear here: I'm very used to lightning, fascinated by storms in fact, just a different kind. As I watched for a while, I figured out what that difference was. What I'm used to are ground strikes, the kind that hit trees, buildings, ignite fires, kill people. Steve actually witnessed such an event decades ago, when a fisherman refused to leave a lake in the face of an impending storm. Everybody else knew to head for shore with the first sign of lightning. This idiot stayed out in the lake, casting. As he raised his pole for his last time, lightning followed it down into his body. You can bet nobody even considering heading out to rescue him, much less retrieve the body, until well after the storm had passed.

Last night's storm was, as far as I could tell, all cloud-to-cloud lightning. It stayed high, illuminating the clouds, never ceasing or being accented with the large boom from ground strikes which seem to discharge the energy, if only for a few seconds.  Now, no booms, no pauses in having the sky lit, just different pieces of sky illuminated higher, lower, in a different direction than an instant before. Instead of jumping glows, there were occasional zigging-zagging patterns of lightning under the clouds, sometimes a small 3/4 circle, sometimes a long line crossing the sky with side branches going everywhere. .. except down. I never stopped being fascinated.

I went for the camera, of course. Unfortunately its light meter wasn't up to the task. Bright flashes caught its attention but on time delay, so it just recorded the tail ends of it while on video. Then all went black again even though the sky didn't. Obviously I need more study on settings for the next storm.

I also went for the laptop, checking out the Real Time Lightning Map. I had thought our little corner of the world would be popping with all the lightning flashes. Think again. It barely showed one strike. Sometimes two. Sometimes none. This leads me to think that however they register lightning around the world, it must only register strikes which hit the ground. The other possibility I can surmise is that, because it wasn't discharging into the ground, it all registered as a single strike, the way it only takes one hockey puck to bounce all over the rink but it doesn't stop and score until it hits the net. I have no idea how to check either idea out.

Rain? Well, a few sprinkles landed while the system sailed over, enough eventually to wet the street, but it was still building. Morning news showed it didn't really get going until miles into Wisconsin. That's OK, we've been getting enough on the eastern edge of central Minnesota, keeping lawn mowers and their owners from getting bored. We're not truly flooded here though the St. Croix is still way too high for Steve to go fishing at his favorite spot yet. At least we're not on the Blue Earth River waiting for the Rapidan Dam to fail, nor in places like Watertown, thoroughly living up to its name with flooding right now. In fact our place is well up a gentle slope from its lake, and a couple feet up off the ground even if the lake should manage to flood. But after several years of drought here, it's still well under its normal banks despite our abundant rain.

Mosquitoes of course are totally loving this year. We victims, not so much.

Meanwhile lots more boxes to unpack. Before last night's light show, I drove over to my son's house to drop off a full bin's worth of recycling, mostly cardboard pieces. His recycling pickup was this morning. Ours is next week. Our can will be full too, and that's with saving the big packing boxes, flattened, for the next person who's moving and wants free boxes. (Buy your own tape!) We also have bags of excelsior and more of packing peanuts. The bubble wrap is reserved for the kids in the family, sorry. The smaller boxes, unless crumpled as they sometimes can get in moving, are cut back into flats for organizing the pantry room. It is in the process of being filled with shelving, which in turn is to be organized by content. So, one flat for mac & cheese, for example, another for cans of soup, or chili, or coffee, or peanut butter, or... well, you get the idea. If a shelf unit gets bumped the flats will keep their contents both organized and on the shelves. I had thought of getting half-high milk crates, but why buy (what's not even in the stores these days) when all those boxes are otherwise going to waste... er, recycling? Besides, I don't have to bother with pulling off all the packing tape from the lower half of those boxes!  Win-win!

Finding Stuff, Losing Stuff

There are consequences to moving. Most are expected, or if a surprise, a little thought can make them pretty logical. We're not even going to touch the financial consequences here. Or mail vanishing. Or pain, tiredness, frustration, etc., per se. This is the moving-of-possession's game of hide and seek.

Most memories are temporary, even short term. I recall the months of packing. I know for example, I packed a whole lot of books. Can I tell you now which ones?  With very few exceptions, nope. So, when I finally get around to opening boxes of them, and more boxes, and more.... Anyway, I expect surprises. And some disappointments. Why did I pack these books and leave those others behind? Was that a day I was just clearing off shelves? Or a day I was regretting doing such a find job of clearing off shelves that I felt like adding more books in that I really truly do not NEED after all? So far, though, I'm pretty sure we're going to wind up with more books than shelves, so the next decisions there will be a choice between a stricter purge, or the sacrifice of clean, bare wall space. One thing we both love about this house is how open it is and how much wall space it has... in places. They did put some doors and windows in odd locations. Over half the exterior walls in any given room have picture windows, low to the floor. Where would more furniture even go?

If we really want to talk short term memories, just three days ago, leaving my son's for here, where did we pack ....? There is an extensive list. I finally found my cardiac pacemaker monitor, just before sitting down to write this. It's plugged in and apparently working. I usually can't tell because it does its flashing lights thing when it's communicating at night when reasonable people are sleeping. Lest you think I'm calling any night owls out there "unreasonable", I married a beloved night owl and have been turning into one myself, or at least lost the habit of sleeping through the night in one segment. I'm frequently in the living room during the very wee hours, getting a break from sleep in favor of reading, being online, or watching TV for long enough to get the signal from my body it's time to sleep again. It's possible I'm not in my room when the monitor does its flashy-light thing, and that's why it isn't waking me up like it used to. Or maybe I just got used to it. Who knows? Another possibility is the bed at my son's house is just so uncomfortable - for me - that I simply can't stay in it for long. We'll see if that changes with the new mattress... which happens to be made up now, sheets and spread and all. Progress, eh?

We still have not located wherever Steve put his bag of pills. He hasn't had them to take at night for two days now, and his pain levels have been increasing accordingly. This afternoon will be a full deep search including places we gave a first look to and dismissed as simply unlikely. Apparently "unlikely" is where they wound up in the chaos. I was just back over at that house and checked through all his spaces, then mine, and no pills. No blood sugar meter. Plenty of clothes from both of us still on hangers in that closet, and dirt of course, so a cleaning is due in an upcoming visit. But he really, really needs his bag of meds. Like yesterday.

It's not just losing things, however temporarily. Finding things becomes an interesting process. All too often my first reaction is "where the hell are we going to put this?"  We have 483 more square feet in this house than the AZ one. It just isn't as useful, or not yet, anyway. This morning there was a box of linens. I knew there had to be my dish cloths and towels somewhere, and this was the box - Hallelujah! We have dirtied dishes in a couple short days here. Then a bit deeper were some rags, some tablecloths, then something hard. Digging it out carefully, I found a rare piece of pottery. It needed a full box of linens all around it because not only is it the only piece of Sandia Pueblo pottery I've ever seen, but it is a huge plate and has a crack in the back. I bought it despite the crack, and just make sure to give it extra TLC. But of course I'd forgotten where I'd packed it, so if I had just dumped the contents of that box on the floor to sort through thinking all was fabrics.... 

Shudder!

The funny thing is I'd been hunting for towels. In this case, bath towels. I have a bathroom rack needing to be reassembled which used to be full of towels, with a bit of extra room for a bottle of rubbing alcohol which hadn't gotten used during covid since I bought 6, and a box of tissues, of which I also bought six but that's another story. I have no idea which of the many packed boxes left hold those towels, since I recall I ran out of bubble wrap temporarily and decided to use towels as packing material. I wound up buying about 7 huge rolls of bubble wrap anyway, not to mention two huge bags of packing peanuts - the kind that decompose harmlessly, or so they claim. I'm already giving away large boxes of pieces of bubble wrap as they finish serving their purpose, and I claim if I manage to get rid of it all (to the kids in the family of course) it will mean we're never going to move again! Promise!!!

Hmmm,  maybe I better ration it slightly so the newer grand-babies and great-grand-babies can grow up a bit and get to use some? Or would I forget where I stored it in the meantime?

Of course, I haven't come up with those towels yet, with only 60 boxes still to go through. (No I haven't actually counted! It would be too much like work and I have plenty, thanks.) I can hardly wait to find out what those towels have been protecting for the last 8 months! I know it wasn't the books. I'm still missing pottery pieces. And haven't even touched the glass. I'm talking about the hobby glass, not the fancy display cabinet stuff. I think all of that which I still own is on display now. Those boxes got their early attention because they were in the way of a couple things I had to search through looking for my pacemaker monitor. Anybody tries to tell you different, they're fibbing! I don't care that the monitor wasn't even there after all, they'd be fibbing!

Of course any of those delicate things could also be hiding inside clothes. I found 6 blouses I'd only dimly remembered in one box this morning. I remember buying them, but never wearing them because the size marked is not how American manufacturers size clothes. A couple more years, maybe.... But they are pretty, have very unique designs in the fabric, and I'm working my way towards fitting them. They are too unique to be out of fashion then, even if I actually cared.

But once Steve wakes up from his nap we are really really going to need to go through boxes and totes and bags and crates and find his pills!!! I can't get distracted like this morning when I located the knobs and stopped to put them on the cabinet doors before they figured out a way to get misplaced again.  All are in place now. But I do have a question. Whoever pulled them off their doors and packed them, while I thank you for putting each screw back in it's knob's back, I have to wonder exactly why those screws were put in so tightly and deeply that I had to go hunt up a screwdriver (phillips) just to take them apart to be able to use them? You knew they were getting put in a ziploc bag to stay together, and that bag taped down so it wouldn't go astray, or at least not till it entered the house. A couple turns of each screw would have kept each two as a single unit inside that sealed, taped bag. So why did you have to make them so tight, like you were installing each screw in its knob for life?

Just wondering.

Oh, did you think I was going to ask why you even removed the knobs in the first place? No, I wouldn't do that. That's the part which makes perfect sense.

Once Moving Day Is Over…

Pain.
Pain.
Pain! 

And Frustration!  OMG the frustration!!!!

The day itself went swimmingly, if such an adverb can be applied to lightly cool, mostly sunny weather. Our crew was a tiny bit late, but made up for it in speed. I’d been afraid it would take hours longer. After all, it took two days  just to pack the PODS. We needed to have them unload it into a U Haul, then I’d drive to the house, and they’d unload everything and bring it inside. So, unload, reload, unload.We had one day, the only day several of the crew could get off work. As I type this, the PODS is now on its way to its new user. I know it’s not being stored because the driver of the rig which hauls those was on the phone to the next customer, both to tell them his ETA, and ask which way they wanted its door to face, the house or the street? Once it’s dropped off, it doesn’t move except to leave. The wheels stay with the truck.

I’m back home again… and still aching. It starts at the shoulders, not just the “bad” one, and runs down both arms past the elbows.

How much stuff did I carry in yesterday, you ask? Two pillows! Oh yeah, a comforter too. I let the crew do the heavy stuff. They were getting paid. But there was other stuff to do, and it occasionally included opening a box, or lifting it to a different location once inside. There was a bit of packing at my son’s house before we drove out, but most of that was carried by him to the cars. Yes, plural: jockeying vehicles all day meant two were needed. for everything. We both drove to the new house to drop off stuff plus Steve, leaving my car there. Then my son drove me to the U Haul rental. I drove the truck, followed by Paul, to the storage facility to meet the PODS, and once the crew showed up and got their instructions, my son drove me back to where Steve was and returned to his own house to do some cooking for us all.  Later I’d need to drive to the PODS when it had been unloaded, give my car keys to one of the crew to bring my car back while the crew’s other two vehicles left and I brought the truck over to the new house. One of the crew's cars then went to my son’s house to load a few pieces of furniture from there still needing to come over, while the rest of us went straight to the new place. There was quite a bit of jockeying vehicles there, given narrow streets and a huge truck. Later my son showed up with some dessert for everybody after pizza, then followed me taking the U-Haul back, and  bringing me back to the new place.

Are you dizzy yet? I had to organize all of that! Insurance dictated only I could drive the big truck. As huge as it was, my arms started aching with the first crank of the steering wheel. It was so tall I almost didn’t get in the first time. But after taking a good look at the thing from the other side once I'd climbed out, I noticed there were extra, lower steps up on the passenger side, so after that I just climbed up that way and scooted across the seats. Apparently whoever designed those things believes all the drivers are tall burly folks (men) and passengers are petite or even children.

Note to self: it’s good to be young and strong. At least it was back when I was younger anyway, but that was a bit ago.

Some stuff brought to the new house first thing had to be tended to right away. Things like medicines needing to be taken at bedtime had to be sorted from the chaos and set where they’d stay sorted from the chaos. Mostly that worked, sometimes it was an extended guessing game. Did I put those …..? Or…..? Even things that got packed at the very last minute got buried by the chaos since the boxes came into the house first and the furniture afterwards, so there weren’t always places to put stuff needing their very own places. Kitchen counters were just an invitation to put boxes, appropriate or not, and nevermind I'd have to cook lateo. Next to the fridge I found a scanner and printer… just because the original use of that box was an air fryer, something I’ve never owned nor wanted. But we needed a box that size back when certain area dumpsters in Arizona had their box overloads sorted through, not for anything in particular but because the size would hold a bunch of stuff and still be something that somebody, somewhere, could pick up at point A and place at point B. I think I even managed to do so last night, once everybody had been fed, paid, and thanked, and we were looking for those buried necessary things.

Thirty pounds didn’t use to be so heavy! Uff da!

Because boxes were coming in before the furniture, I kept trying to get people to leave open space plus paths to various locations for a cabinet, or a table, or a bed, or dresser, or.., or….  Nobody listened. We had designated the "pantry room" for all the no-place-to-go-yet boxes, which somehow kept getting piled up in the big living room where furniture soon should be arriving and they'd have to be moved again. Steve and I could watch somebody pore over whatever was written on a box and try to figure out for themselves which room to block up with it. No! No! Just take the (cuss unvoiced) box or rug or tote down the hall and stack with the others down there! We need this space for (fill in the blank.)

I mentioned pills as things not to lose rack of. Another case in point is a small zip-loc bag of wooden knobs. Unfortunately I saw the bag before the pieces they were needed for made their appearance, so I set them down. The theory was that I'd remember where later when they were needed. You're laying odds right now on how well that worked out, aren't you?

So I knew they were here somewhere. On top of something. I knew exactly what they belonged to. I’ve owned those cabinets for over 30 years. Of all the wood tones and wood grains of any pieces of furniture in this house, those cabinets are the only things which match those knobs.Those knobs are not merely decorative. They are what opens the lower level of doors, behind which are two shelves per cabinet, very handy for putting stuff away and out of sight. But one has to screw in the knobs before they can pull any of the six doors open. Without those knobs, a lucky or very skilled person might insert a very thin knife between any two doors, push it just so to the side, and pry the door pairs open. Or try. And try again. 

You don't see the problem? So... out and around, scattered all over in different parts of this house, are boxes containing stuff needing to get put away in those cabinets out of sight, but are still in everybody’s way (meaning Steve’s and mine) which could have gotten pulled out of this chaos and organized. Instead they get moved over here to get to something behind or under them, then wind up having to get moved again, or blocking our view of that next important thing we are looking for. Night lights haven’t shown up yet either, including the two I pulled from the bedroom our last morning. It gets surprisingly dark here.

There has also been some hunting for my pacemaker monitoring system. It’s supposed to be plugged in within ten feet of where I sleep. Everything is set up for it in the new bedroom. Except, of course, for the part where it has actually been located and plugged into an outlet. There aren’t too many places where it could be. There’s only so much that got removed from the house in the morning for our first trek over. Luckily, when I first got it I mentioned that we were snowbirds back then, and sometimes our trips had side trips and we’d play tourist. They weren’t concerned about “a few days”. The monitor would still download the information. Still, it could take us till August, the way we figure it, to totally unpack this mess and go through every place it could have wound up, which in turn got relocated or packed on top of or behind 8 other heavy things until I finally located it and plugged it in.

But I did manage to find the peanut butter for Steve! No, it wasn't in that crate either. Nor were those knobs.

Have I mentioned yet that I slept on my new mattress? It was exactly that, slept on the mattress. Not on top of the mattress protector, sitting in the bedroom window ledge. Nor on the sheets set aside next to the mattress protector. Nor under, or even over the bedspread for that bed, since it does get cool here most nights, apparently. This is not because I couldn’t find any of those things. All were in the bedroom, in plain view, exactly where they were supposed to be. EXCEPT… “supposed to be” was on the bed, layered in the usual order as one does when making a bed. Just… nobody had done that. Everybody had gone home. Steve’s bed was made. I’d been searching through boxes for pills. And knobs. And occasionally emptying out something which prevented me from getting close to one side of the bed and which, when emptied, no longer weighed weighed 50 pounds. So I could get to that window ledge holding stuff, and the bed which needed the stuff being held put on it. Except… by then I was dead tired. I don’t care it was only 7 PM and I had stopped for supper. I put half of my supper back in the fridge, dug out something that could pass for pajamas, located a pillow and a light afghan to cover myself with, took those finally located bedtime pills, and went and slept on my mattress.

I’d had three and a half hours sleep the night before, for one simple reason. Usually the night before something big happening, I get little sleep. Oddly, that wasn’t it this time. I had to wake up to use the bathroom. We were still in my son’s house, where that trip means walking around the bed, opening a door, going up three stairs, going through another door, crossing the living room, turning down the hall, into the bathroom, crossing the bathroom…. Well you get the idea. It wakes me up, and if that didn’t for some reason, by the time I do it all in reverse and crawl into bed and under the covers again, I find myself thoroughly awake and starting to go through whatever needs to be done that day. Or something. The brain... is... awake!

I expect yours would be too. In the new house, both beds are mere steps away from the necessary plumbing. We are already sleeping better, if one can extrapolate from one night. I put in ten hours on the mattress under an unruly afghan.

Unfortunately Steve is having to catch up on his sleep now. Turns out I went to bed so early that he expected me to wake up after a nap. I didn’t. He decided to worry about whether I was OK or not. So he’d go to bed, then get up to check on me - zonked - go back to bed, get up and check on me - yep, still zonked. He didn’t get much sleep.

Once up, I had to get dressed and out of there. We have no wi-fi in the house yet. It was supposed to be installed yesterday. A valiant effort was made. The little thing plugged in the wall which is supposed to give a steady light is still blinking all these hours later. Without wifi I had to head back to my son’s house. Not only did I have a pair of chairs for him for his screen house, packed way back when we didn’t know we wouldn’t have a porch or patio. (We’re keeping the table they went with, since there’s both place and use for it. But the chairs were in my car.) I also needed the wi-fi because the PODS people would be sending me an email with a window when I could expect to meet them to turn over the pods to them. I needed to run errands too, and couldn’t be 15 miles away in a store aisle loading a cart when the call came. Once there I did a couple other things as well, like cleaning up a mess left in yesterday's rush. After that bit of activity I totally spaced what errands I need to run. I returned home to await my call from the driver.

Did you read that? “HOME!”  This place is home now! I can’t post this until I’m in range of wi-fi again, but I can write it. Meanwhile there’s coffee, breakfast, a warmer shirt somewhere that I can verify as "clean enough," and stacks of more boxes in more places to start going through to find more necessary stuff, like 6 wooden knobs so I can get more  places to put more stuff so I can get to more boxes sitting there laughing at us because they’re still hiding their contents because I can’t, simply can not recall where I put that little bag of cotton picking wooden cabinet knobs!!!

And to think my shoulders ache now!

*     *     *     *     *

Internet!  Posting in 1... 2....

It Was A Fancy Rose Once

 Years ago I planted a fancy hybrid tea rose next to the house. I was looking for fragrance, and the two most reliable roses in my experience for fragrance were Mr. Lincoln, and just about anything in lavender... aka purple.

I planted both, of course. Who cared if the colors clashed? I wanted my version of nose candy -the kind of high I get from a deeply fragrant rose. For the first couple years they did so-so, but I did get some blossoms to inhale.  Being Minnesota, they had to get buried in winters for protection. We were still getting the occasional -30 night back then, and cars still automatically came with a cord dangling under the engine to plug in to an outlet by the garage door keep the engine warm overnight. Mostly those worked, but towing companies kept in business. 

If cars needed that, what kind of future did a fancy hybrid tea have when facing raw nature without good protection? You might expect that even with protection they struggled. You might also expect that some years went by where protection wound up a big OOPS from neglect. No more fancy fragrance for me of a summer morn. 

Weeds grew, thorny canes with scattered leaves popped up from their rootstock below where the fancy part had been grafted, and some years total neglect of that corner were inflicted on their remnants. Sow thistles and tall grass thrived, of course. Lily of the Valley invaded, as it does. In fact there's a list....

Recently, after my knees worked again (mostly), I started paying more attention to the yard when we came up for summers. My youngest son had bought my house and we stayed with him, so I had ample opportunity to see what neglect had done to take advantage of my gardening optimism. Some of you saw photos of the "before" parts, when young trees invaded everything. And tall grass, as in 5 feet high. And both sow and bull thistles. And cup flowers, something like a small blossomed, over tall sunflower. And sour cherry and choke cherry trees spread by the neighborhood birds with their unique fertilizer packages gift wrapping each for a healthy head start. And burdock, and raspberries, and elderberries, and Virginia creeper vines, and... and... and.  After two years of reparations, it was just a wee bit less of a nightmare. 

A couple years back there was a remnant of one rose left, basic rootstock only, no hybrid graft. The canes came up, budded, drooped, and... nothing. Last year, same thing. To be fair these were very dry years. I will even admit to, uhhh, accidentally cutting several canes way back when cutting out weeds. Aside from preventing more bleeding when I snagged them - or was it them snagging me? - it may have been a good thing. 

It pretty much hasn't stopped raining this last couple months here. That turns out also to be a very good thing, at least for the rose remnant. The sump pump dumps right past where the bush was planted, into a decorative catch basin hiding in the weeds, in the shape of a gargoyle, to keep the ground from getting washed away, another very good thing this year. It is finally earning its high price tag. In fact, we had so much rain by the time my son left for work this morning that he asked us to make sure the sum pump was still pumping during the day and hadn't died from overwork. (At mid afternoon, so far so good.) 

 He neglected to make an additional comment, though maybe he thought I'd noticed already. Possibly the new crop of tall weeds and weed trees hid it from his view. (NO? I didn't think so either.) The old rootstock rose had totally burst into bloom since the last time I'd looked at the side of the house while driving down the street or looking in the mailbox (hope springs eternal) for something for me. I went back inside, pulled out the camera and waded though tall wet grass to get some shots. If he forgot to mention the bloom, he did mention the wetness of the yard. I'll have to give him full credit for that. It was my own fault I stepped in front of the gargoyle mouth just as the sum pump kicked up again to soak my shoes.

Shooting finished, I picked a pair of blossoms from the bush, and despite total lack of fragrance, brought them into the house and plopped them in a small plastic dish with water for the kitchen table. Turns out that the dish has a teensy crack in the bottom, so the water was actually for, and on, the table.

Some days I remember to settle for what I can get!

What Is Teal?

 What is teal? Exactly, I mean. Does what you think it is match what I think it is?

I don’t mean “a teal”. That’s a duck, a very pretty duck, though others might find wood ducks or mandarin ducks much prettier. I have some preferences as to which ducks are tastier (avoid coot), but I have no reference for what the flavor of a teal is, even after growing up in a Minnesota hunting family. Above is a photo of one, a bit rumpled looking as I caught it in the process of bathing, lifting this feather, then the next. Lots of splashing was involved, along with individual feather preening, and an occasional dive.

            Oh yeah, you saw this one before. I guess I just like it.

It didn’t seem to mind how close I was to the very small pond alongside the road where I stopped the car to take some shots. I guess it knew these weren’t the kind of shots that made how it tasted relevant. Looks like its face still needs some work, unless that pale brown stripe isn’t supposed to be white.

When I ask whether your version of teal matches my version, I’m talking about the color that springs to mind when you hear the word. To me it’s a rich sort of green leaning blue, as opposed to leaning yellow.  Apparently to others it’s much more blue than it is to me, much like the difference of the two colors between the brown on this bird’s back. Toward its head is blue, below  and toward the tail is a small patch of darker green.

So why does it make a difference? I’ve been shopping. The new master bath is grey and grey-brown, plus some wood, white porcelain and plumbing metals. Color needed to be added. My last one had been revised from a very pale sea foam green with ugly yellow tiles, to more turquoise/green/grey, and dump the yellow. Here’s a sample of the shower make-over, pardon the flash reflection:

I didn’t get to enjoy it for long. But the colors haunted me, claiming me. Obviously a total shower re-do in a new and fully accessible bathroom would be ridiculous, but accent rugs or mats would work. I started my online search (after store searches had absolutely nothing appealing) with the first search word “teal”. I found a whole lot of offerings, including purples and fuchsias and royal blues. What’s with these people? It didn’t seem to matter whether I typed in bath mat or bath rugs, most offerings identified themselves with both words. Some, upon investigation, were definitely little area rugs, others were mats for the inside of a tub. A few were impossible to define, regardless of what the text claimed.

I wound up ordering three different designs. All claimed to be teal as their major color I must be searching for. In my definition, one can claim teal accurately. Another is a maybe.

The first to arrive was an abstract design, mostly a deep emerald green, combined with a paler green and some gold flecks, all in broad swirls. I did find a few small spots where a generous person could claim it to be teal. I’m still deciding just how generous a person I am. It is, after all, beautiful. I should quibble?

Both of the next two are floral designs, not tiny busy-busy flowers but huge, dramatic ones, and also beautiful. However the first one is best described as a powder or federal blue in tone, in varying intensities. The second is much more white, but the stripes of color through the petals actually fit my idea of teal… better anyway. Still, more blue than green.

Are you old enough to remember when there were always disclaimers that monitors were different and different ones captured colors differently? When I went through the options before ordering, I admit giving a bit of leeway to the color tones with that in mind. Except for the purples and fuchsias, of course. I have yet to find a camera which got purple the way I saw it without doing some color balancing in the software afterwards, and sometimes not even then. But I wasn’t shopping for purples.  What I saw on the screen was mighty close to what arrived. In other words, if I try this again in, say, 15 years when these wear out, I’ll try to remember to pay more attention to what shows in relation to what I’m looking for.

I’m not too displeased in the long run. Each one is a beauty in its own way, and all are miles above and beyond what the stores carry these days.

Just, maybe not so much actual teal in them, despite claims.  Sighhhhhhhh......

The Problem With A Floating Floor

There are several challenges with floating flooring. It takes a whole lot of work, time and energy to get it looking like a real wood floor. The surface it lies on has to be perfectly flat, to start.  No problem, right? But you check, and …uh-oh. You’ve just discovered your flat sub floor isn’t flat after all. This means stirring up and applying a filler which with more work dries level to support the pieces. That’s only if you’ve done it absolutely right. It’s not wet enough to find its own perfect level. Why would it? After all, you’v already chosen to go the cheaper route rather than use real wood planks, haven’t you? That already says a cheap imitation is good enough… for you.

Somewhere, some time, some wise person admonished the world to be careful what you asked for.

The “floating wood floor” sales staff tell you how to get your pieces almost to the edge of the floor but not too tight. They’ll tell you that your floor will  expand and contract with temperature and humidity, and you need to give it room. They never tell you that with your thermostat set at a fairly constant comfortable temperature, it’s not that big an issue. Listening to the salesmen will create one however. Maybe one strip in 20 strips of pieces cut to go across the full width of your floor wind up being the correct length, not too short so they slide all over the place, not so long something buckles. Whatever space you’re told to put between the end of the planks and the vertical walls on each end, use only half that much. They really don’t shrink and stretch like the sales people say. If you follow their directions you’ll be back in six months willing to lay down more big bucks for a better floor. Why not sell you two floors when you only need one? Not to mention the second one will often be the expensive one you tried to avoid getting in the first place.

How does that happen? Well, if you put 1/8” space between one end of your planks row and the wall on that end, and the same thing on the other, suddenly you have a quarter inch of moving shifting space. Murphy’s law demands that it always manages, with people walking on the floor, to accumulate somewhere in the middle of the floor, where it’s most conspicuous. Further, every speck of dirt, dust, animal fur, or food will collect in the spot, be impossible to remove because of how the planks interlock, and manage to somehow drive the gap wider as the ends worm their way apart even more than you would believe the rules of physics allow.

It can be so tempting to peel back the original linoleum, or carpeting, thanks to how ugly they look after all those years and how badly they turn you off of ever using such again, and vow to get something different. Beautiful. Just like they look in the store displays. Who knew fake woodgrain came in so many wonderful patterns and colors? If you really are in love with wooden floors, for Pete’s sake GET SOME DANG REAL WOODEN FLOORS! Lay it out, tamp it down, NAIL IT to the cotton-picking subfloor! Throw in some bottles of glue for good measure, but whatever you do, don’t let the thing float!!!

Your floating floor will move. Separate. Creep and crawl. As the fill makes it more uneven, corners stick up, corners dive down, crawl over other pieces’s edges, teetering till one more foot print splinters the corner and two of the three new pieces spread out to make more mischief. It’s become a competition to find out just which tiny bit sticking up now can be the first to poke through your unlucky bare foot, just because you have to, really really have to get up in the dark of night and go to the bathroom or get a snack or drink from the refrigerator, or rock the baby back to sleep …if you’re lucky and baby isn’t teething or something. In the daytime, when presumably you are alert, possibly well shod, and can avoid the troublesome spots in the floor, then you don’t have to worry so much. But night… oh my! When baby starts crawling… Yikes! Danger Will Robinson!

For a while they used a kind of particle board when all-wood got horribly expensive. After that they inserted a strip of metal through the middle to help keep things flat. Except it didn’t. The sales people somehow never managed to inform you of that fact, instead claiming it was so-o-o-o much better than the last incarnation of a floating floor. Any small heavy thing, like a portable dishwasher’s wheels for example, or a rolling chair inhabited by a human going across the floor, wreaked havoc on the surface. Corners chipped off. Metal strips curled up, sharp now, strewn in curls over the floor and into the floor and… into your bare feet. If you were lucky, perhaps they only tripped you as you allowed your feet to shuffle a bit. Of course, “lucky” depends on just how you landed.

At first, as things start breaking down, duct tape is very handy, helping coat the edges, slow movement, save skin on feet. But now you only think it’s safe to walk on because the duct tape camouflages the sharp edges. You go back to rolling wheels over the floor.  But the tape wears away even faster than the top of the planks, so now you have something extremely ugly, and sticky to boot. You pick up the tough loose pieces which were actually filling in sharp missing corners, making the next level of destruction even faster and deeper. As a bonus it’s become even more impossible to keep clean.

Months pass. Possibly you let years pass. Holes fill in and spread wider. More sharp curls peel off. One day it finally happens. You look at the floor in its actual state, and realize, “Hey, that ugly old fashioned linoleum floor was never this ugly or dangerous. Let’s go shopping for some, see what’s the latest thing now. Hey, maybe they even have some of that in a nice pretty woodgrain design!"

Congratulations! You’ve realized that the truly worst thing about this floating floor you’ve surrounded yourself with is its biggest flaw: it floats!

Did I Mention Mail Problems?

Oh yeah, I'm sure I have. They've been an issue for weeks... uh, months, now. We've tried a multiple of things, and still....

The latest one was absurd. I'd been shopping for Tide laundry detergent. I prefer the powder, always have. Liquids spill and make messes that can't be just brushed up. Pods just invite trouble, even without toddlers around, and I prefer to use less than the official recommended amount because it actually does just as good a job. Consumer Reports showed that years ago along with cold water being just as effective as hot, while better for your clothes. So I stick with what I like. It's one of the ways I earn my geezer-hood.

Unfortunately, the boxes have been harder to find recently. I did get one just after we relocated, and decided to look for another one, not because we needed it yet, but just as an "in case" purchase. The store no longer carried it!

WTF? (For friends and fans of Farscape, that "F" stands for "frell". Because of course it does... there. Great TV series.)

I decided to check their online ordering. Often those have what isn't on the store shelves, but can be either picked up outside later or even delivered to the door. It took a while, but I located some. Since it looked like they were phasing it out for whatever reason, I went ahead and ordered 3 boxes. To be delivered.

They didn't arrive. Now this store has been very reliable, over the last few years of our ordering that way, i.e., since covid. The house has a deeply recessed entryway, and with cars parked in the driveway obscuring the view of whatever may happen to sit in that space, things have always been safe there. No temptation, no porch pirates.

Right now I've been ordering lots of needed supplies for the new house, still to be delivered here since we haven't actually moved into the new-to-us one yet. They have lots more variety online, so I don't have to settle for most popular, everybody-buys-these, items. I had recently managed to find window blinds there to replace broken ones in a bedroom, which come in a kind of weird size, for example, and which arrived today. They'd been delayed a couple extra days, likely for being pretty rare. No biggie. But it got me thinking, I hadn't seen my Tide yet. Time to check my order.

Browsing through my order history, it claimed to have been delivered June 7. Really? Three boxes of powdered Tide, requested per our orders' standing delivery request to go in the deep entryway, got delivered and we hadn't noticed? It was time to call the company's customer service number.

Once I had a human, the order number was asked for and given. Yep, they showed it delivered, June 7. Had I checked with my neighbors? What did the photo showing where it was put say? Photo? What photo? He checked further, and it said... they were put in my mailbox.

Say what? I haven't actually tried it but I doubt one box would go in my mailbox. Since they're kinda heavy, I'm not about to try it either. He suggested maybe they were put on the ground next to it? Not a chance! We hear the mail truck. It has a noisy engine. Rrrrr, pause, rrrrr, pause, rrrrrr, pause, and after a while it's on the street behind us. Yes, it's that noisy. I've had so many problems getting mail delivered up here that I pay attention and head out as soon as my shoes go on. So no, I knew it hadn't gone into my mailbox or under it.

I didn't bother mentioning that a couple weeks ago we had gotten one delivery here for the house a street over with an identical number. I just took it over there and dropped it off myself. If somebody around town had something like that happen but with my box - and their own really huge mailbox! - they hadn't seen fit to do something similar. After all who can't use more laundry detergent? And a package of 3 boxes would have been quite hefty.

For my problem, I was given a code number for a $15 coupon off my next purchase. After being kicked "upstairs" to somebody with more responsibility and less accent, and giving my bona fides again, I was promised to have the cost of the order refunded back onto my credit card. It would take maybe 5 days. 

But these days it sure beats a check in the mail, right? 

And yes, I will order something again from the company and use the coupon. Just not sure for what yet. Right now plans are for emptying the PODS so we can move. We'll have to wait to see what there is both need and room for once that's done next week. Meanwhile I'll keep hunting for powdered Tide in whatever stores I'm in which might carry it.

BackTo Crex Meadows

 I haven't managed to make it a priority since we arrived up north. The stress was enough to spoil any enjoyment until I could finally relax and put it on my list. Of course, the real impetus was their newest photo contest starting yesterday. For those interested, you can find them online, including rules and last year's submissions. 

I didn't enter last year. But I decided to give it a go again this year. The photo I'm most emotionally invested in wasn't even shot until fall, long after the contest ended. And my most recent submission for this year was shot this morning.

   Canadian Honker family out for a swim, young already half grown
 

They give you 6 categories, limit of one per each, or a total of 6.  I wrangled up 4, and that was a process. Before the move north I got into my head that I needed to clear a whole sh**load of photos from my laptop. Mostly it was because I needed to update my software - virus protection and stuff - and I had no room to do so. Thus, off to the store for thumbdrives, and more thumbdrives. Tape on labels for the category of photos on each, so I know where to find stuff. One such category was Crex. Its photos went on two thumbdrives. (I bought bigger ones later.) Another was videos, another people, another miscellaneous travels. There are more, and I never did finish loading them up. But it was enough space to update my software, with the newly (yesterday) discovered bonus that it's suddenly very easy to format a photo file during cropping into a variety of shapes, like 8x10, what the contest requires. I'd tried it before and there was a series of steps with symbols I didn't understand and can't remember. No problem anymore.

                                     heron along the shore

 What was a very big problem is that the second Crex thumbdrive isn't in my zipper bag of them. I went through them yesterday and looked. And looked again. I had specific photos in mind to submit this year. Exactly one of them was in my laptop. I took extra special care to keep it and another copy formatted for size, partly because I had in mind a second project for it as well. Some time after I'm all unpacked and with more time on my hands......

After about two hours of searching, I had another idea. I dug through old SD cards. There might be at least one other special photo I'd had in mind to submit with a very special caption, still sitting on one of those. I keep SD cards in my camera case along with spare charged batteries. Sometimes I write over them, as in taking the "erase after download" option. Sometimes I keep them as is, once full. (What? You wanted logic and consistency?)

                                        heron in a stream

 I managed to find two more shots, the one I had the caption for, and one "good enough" in another category I seldom find things to shoot. So, three to submit then. 

This year it's all online. I started mid afternoon, making sure the files were in 8x10 format, and had names other than a big number-dot-jpg. That turned into a good choice.  I could find them later. The first part went quickly with autofill. Hmmm, they keep a file on me, do they? OK, good to know. I couldn't figure how exactly to add the photo file to their form. Good thing their office wasn't closed yet. After three phone calls and my trying to remember all the steps I'd been talked through, this second time around without their guidance (fail!), I finally got that figured out. 

                            trumpeter swan with 3 very new cygnets

Now to pay. I entered a card number. Their form informed me it wasn't a valid card number. Say what? I've been using it like gangbusters for the last three months, as well as paying it back down to keep it in good standing. A peek at the end of their scold was a four digit number which, as soon as I dug out the other card to try to use that one, looked very familiar.  Hmmmm, very interesting! It was that card's last 4 digits. OK, I entered that car info, and got the same scold to enter a valid card number. WTF? Steve offered my use of his card, so I started over, with his name and all new other information. 

SAME DANG SCOLD! 

Of course it was five minutes past their office hours, so I had to wait for morning to try again. And then, still no go. I'd left an early morning message about the issue, and offered to come up in person to pay if I had to. They'd gotten my message, put their IT person to work, and when I finally arrived in person, still didn't know if the system was working yet for online payments, but my card worked just fine at their register.

Now if you had to lay odds on whether, given an excuse to go to my favorite place to shoot pictures, I'd have thought to pop my camera in the car, how would you bet? Yep, Steve thought so too. And besides, there were categories I had no photo entries for.

Then.

One more has now been submitted. And I can assure you that their online submission process is currently flawless. They added a line for the zip code... so I just had to recall which one I'd changed the card over to, current or future.

                       teal giving himself a thorough morning bath

 While I won't show you any current submissions, I did dig into the newest selection of photos not going into the contest. These are Crex this morning, post rain, still cloudy so light conditions are pretty good, and mostly cropped smaller to give this blog smaller files to fight with. Hope you enjoyed.

Pulling The Ground From Under Your Feet

That's supposed to be a figure of speech... at least when you're lucky. When ground you have trod, or driven over recently, collapses, it's a whole different thing. Twice now I've had occasion to hear a news report and reflect I've been there. 

I just have good timing.

The first time was the collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis. I've mentioned it here a couple times. No repeat is necessary.

The second event I heard about on the morning national news today. I had to look it up on a map to be sure we're talking about the same piece of mountain road. We are.

It was in May of 2021, during a fairly extravagant trip - for us - that Steve and I had planned to celebrate our being released from over a year of covid lockdown, thanks to vaccinations being finally available, and making up for it with our annual snowbird trip north being longer, hitting more places, and spending more money. Most of the highlights of that trip happened in the Rockies, visiting parks in late spring, a time we hadn't experienced there before when they were still fairly deserted. We can drive from AZ to MN in three days. We took two weeks. New routes, new sights, let's make it an adventure! We're free!

We came down the west side of the Tetons, a view of them we'd never seen. The big park is on the east, a much lower altitude, and quite familiar to both of us. We still went through Jackson Hole, but took a new-to-us pass to get there. It was beautiful, spots of remaining snow scattered at the bases of pines, bends and turns revealing new versions demanding new photos (where possible - not safe to pull over mostly) and a bit of an exercise on the brakes. The road is known as Teton Pass.

Yes, that Teton Pass, the one in the news this morning, where part of the highway, just after repairs, slid down a deep slope it formerly clung to into a ravine, where a later camera shot caught the rest of it following, bringing the last of the pavement with it.

Yes, I'd driven it, never imagining the vulnerability. Mountains are all really really big rocks, right? You have to cut their surfaces smooth, right? What do you mean, talking about fill to smooth the little valleys? 

In our direction of travel, we'd have gone with the first drop, on the outside curve, had our timing been a few years worse. Luckily there were no casualties. The mountain has been shifting for a long time, and just after the repairs had been finished it was noted there was a new crack / gap in the pavement. But our timing was better, any personal disaster left to the imagination, or perhaps those dreams which wake one in the wee hours, trembling and sleepless for a while. I don't know yet, having just watched the video footage from the safety of a warm, non-moving home.

But hey, you know me: if it happens, you'll hear about it. But for now, breakfast, coffee, and a shower. More stuff to do... on level ground.

Baby Birds

It's been nice returning to Minnesota, if for no other reason than the birds. The drought of the past several years has broken, at least for now, and young birds are in evidence, even if indirectly in some cases. 

The first one - singular - I noticed this year was a sandhill crane colt with its parents in a field adjacent to Highway 8 between Forest Lake and Chisago City. Even if I tried to tell you which field, it wasn't in that one again for any of the subsequent times I drove by. Steve and I looked, of course. We'd see turkeys occasionally, but only adults, and other cranes, but again, only adults. At least we didn't see my worst nightmare, a family of four strewn along the highway as victims to some motorist, about 8 years ago. So far this year, none. A couple roadkill turtles of course, but no cranes.

The next sighting was right over our front door while staying with my youngest as we have every summer we've headed north from Sun City. We have a deeply recessed entry between the house and what used to be an attacked garage, now converted to a 4th bedroom. One of the first years after the house was built, barn swallows built a nest taking advantage of the tiny lip of the front door fame to anchor their nest onto. It was predictably messy. Still is, as over the years a few other nests were built in the same location. My son built a wooden ledge with dividers and mounted it up at the top side of the entryway, and occasionally another family of barn swallows took temporary residence. The issue with all of them is us, passing way too close as we enter and leave the house. Somehow they persevere however. 

This year it was a robin family, with what turned out to be 5 young, countable as they outgrew their nest. I cleaned the glass front door windows, braced the screen door open, and got a few pictures from inside the house, until they fledged one night during a thunderstorm.

Just a couple days prior their eyes were still closed, but with bills wide open in wait we could see a fringe along the side of the bill. Our best guess is that helps keep food, once latched onto, inside the mouth until swallowed. The entire family relocated after that storm, and sometime in the future the trailing nest will be removed so another one for whatever bird family can be built there.

We have a lot of coming and going these days, and it eases the conscience a bit knowing we're no longer disturbing the nest. However, there are new families at our new home. And we're doing a lot of coming and going there as well, in preparation for our final move in. I'm hoping to catch the younger new family before everything is disrupted with hours of hauling in furniture and boxes. But it took a few days to finally identify them.

There are a pair of old bird houses on a single pole lining the sidewalk from parking space to front stairs. Both are in need of paint, aesthetically. I'm not sure the parents agree, because they settled in for the duration despite the "property values" of the houses. Or was it because of them?

On the day in question, my first  sighting, we were having some pieces of furniture moved into our new home. We needed places to sit, and had thrift-shopped our way to possession of a nice sofa and a recliner. Family was helping us bring them in, since of course we two can't move anything much bigger than a multi-roll of TP in size, especially up the 5 steps to get in. But the exterior plantings had been neglected for a while and bushes were growing over most of the width of the sidewalk. It had just rained and brushing those bushes soaked whatever touched them. Out came the pruners, planned for ahead of time. First the tallest bush, spreading out almost over the hole in the tallest birdhouse. Snip snip snip. I noted a young tree coming up the middle of the growth, to be tackled later, but after stepping away for a respite, I noted 3 young house sparrows hopping into the newly revealed opening in their bush, waiting for their next treat. 

Too bad. I had more work to do. In the interim, that family moved out. The adjacent bush was not only wet as well, and draped across the sidewalk, it was a rose bush, full of thorns to snag at furniture and those carrying it. Especially me. I could not touch a branch, however carefully I tried, without getting snagged and/or stabbed. Not only did I have to clip them back, I had to finish that in time to remove the clippings off the pathway. I did note buds, yet another tree, and a low bush long since covered by bigger neighbors which was still trying to bloom (later identified as a bleeding heart). I decided to allow the rose to finish its blooming, but then it is going to go away, along with the weed tree and most of the largest bush. We needed a clear sidewalk, especially for later when Steve had access to his scooter again.

As I stood for a moment, I saw a different bird fly to the roof of the lower birdhouse, then up through the door of the taller. It was terribly skinny, no appreciable belly at that time, though it has apparently caught up on feeding itself along with its offspring by now. In that brief moment I saw black, with what appeared to be a white stripe heading back over the top of its bill and another under in the chin area. What little time I had left before it disappeared allowed me a good view of a bright yellow caterpiller in the bird's bill, kind of rough textured and much like a one inch long yellow wiggly toothpick with tiny legs. 

After that I finished my clearing and cleaning, got busy with the new furniture coming in, and saw no more of the bird. Still, it's weird shape and pattern baffled me. I tried googling by what I remembered of its description, asked a knowledgeable relative and checked her suggestions out, and was still stumped. The only way was to take the camera along for future visits, sit in the car, and wait for better sightings. Days later, along with many bad photos including many with the bird just gone into its door or flown away coming out, I finally got a sequence that worked.

Here, complete with dinner, is a chickadee! Duh! Of course it is! I grew up with these birds, put out suet feeders for them in winter - and will again in a few months. Now as I walk by their home on my way to or from ours, I can hear their familiar call scolding us for interrupting dinner for the young'uns. The parents will be on the neighbor's roof, waiting for us to go away so we don't "discover" where their nest is.

Too late! But we will be sure to either stay in the car a few minutes or hurry past on our own business. Welcome to our yard, guys! 

Chic-a dee, dee, dee, dee, dee.

You Know You've Been Packing Too Much...

We've been starting to put things into the new home to make it ours while we're waiting for our PODS to arrive from Arizona and we can really move in. Things we need but didn't pack, or didn't even know we'd need, are being ordered, and as they arrive at the "old" place  for continuity, meaning somebody will be around to receive them. Except for the freezer, of course, as it has to be installed as part of delivery.

The frequent rains give lots of reasons to head over to the new house, successful as they are at (over)-growing bushes, weeds, and invasive Johnson grass, already taller than most of the long established bushes. Steve can sit inside, since there is only one outside chair over there until the PODS arrivesn but a couch and recliner now fill their assigned spaces, and dream his dreams and make his plans for where furniture ends up and what vacancies still need to be filled, from furniture on down to small organizers to pictures on walls. Laundry now gets cycled there as well.

When we're back at the "old" house we do much the same, looking around our current space and deciding what can head over now and what we still need to live with here. It's also our only current source of wi-fi and TV, not to mention being able to cook and clean up the kitchen. Paul set his system up with Netflix, brand new to us, except for recognizing the name of course. Almost immediately we latched on to "Heartland" and have been going through it all in sequence. Beautiful horses, spectacular mountains, and characters we get some life lessons from along the way, both positive and negative.

This morning we were in season 16, an episode where Great Grandpa Jack had been unsuccessfully trying to repair a very old generator after a storm took out the power to the ranch. He'd struggle, get it going, and within a few hours it would fail... again. After stepping in a puddle from the freezer's lack of power, he was finally persuaded to purchase a new generator, something almost anathema to him since repair was always his go-to. It was gorgeous, shiny, in colors other than rust, and the scene showed the old man still with the strength needed to lift it out of its box.

My comment to Steve? "Great box!"

Yep, I've been packing too much.

When We Got the News

We had waited so long, so many obstacles, so much paperwork, so much stress tied to such high hopes, so much money spent. Sleep had been interrupted or prevented with worrying about every last little thing.  For each bit of progress there followed a new obstacle. We found ourselves inventing reasons it wasn't going to work. That last night I was obsessing about the fact that were we finally rejected, there was absolutely no second choice. We'd have to start over, or try, knowing the obstacles which had caused our first failure. Or maybe there'd just be more delays and we'd have to rethink our time schedule for organizing the move and all the people who would help. 

That last night we'd been called with one last obstacle in the paperwork and having to argue that it was just what it was, I couldn't prove how I'd changed my name back in '68 by selecting the three I preferred out of the four I now had after getting married, I just dropped the middle one I hated and everybody accepted it. Period. I actually had a pretty large identity footprint, it was all me, and there should be no problem for professional investigators to follow my trail for all my 75 years and discover how law abiding and responsible I was. Sure, a couple mild speeding tickets many years ago, but who among all their park tenants  didn't have one or two of them somewhere in their long past?

Steve was doing his own version of the same kind of inventing reasons to be rejected. He's actually never checked his credit history. He worried about qualifying for their required credit score. He's never held a mortgage, never bought a brand new car, hasn't bought any car recently since we now get along on one. He kept insisting he didn't even have a credit score! But long ago he straightened out his spending habits and began saving, has taken care of paying some household bills on a regular monthly basis, has bought several cell phones on payment plans and payed those monthly charges, and recently even has an ongoing account for a piece of medical equipment which alerts with GPS should he fall and be unable to move or reach his phone. 

He has a credit score! We just don't know what it is. We do know mine is certainly high enough, however.

Early that next morning I got my phone call with the good news. Steve was sitting right next to me, heard me address the caller by name so knew what it was about, saw my vigorous thumbs-up as I listened. As the fairly short call progressed his smile grew to match mine. As soon as I hung up I confirmed the good news: We were approved! We could buy our new home and move in, ASAP!

Steve was too excited to sit in his chair. He stood up, turned to face me, and yelled an extended "Hooray!" that was so loud that even as I was watching him it made me jump! He followed that with, "I'm sorry, but I just have to do that again!" and did so. While still standing, he thought for a minute, turned apologetically to face me more directly, said, "That was exhausting. I'm going to bed," and left.

Meanwhile I proceeded to do the first thing I could at this early hour. I started emailing friends and family our official new address. After breakfast I changed ones I could online, like financial accounts, arranged for our PODS to be sent north, worked more on the must-do pre-move shopping list, notified the owner of our new home she didn't have to pay the June lot rent after all, and when should we get together to pay her and do the title transfer? The ball was now rolling!