Oregon Living 2022 – Blog #30 – Staying Cool and Getting Ready For Our Trip

 

Sunday, July 24^th., 2022…… Boy, it is hot here now!  But we don’t plan on being outside for too long, so we’re good! Cathye continues to improve. Her major complaint now is the stitches that are irritating her eyes, both inside and out. They decided to put in all-dissolving stiches so she doesn’t have to go back to the doctor’s office. But that means the dissolve process has to happen by itself, which is going way slower than she wants! She says it feels like there is sand in her eyes, which is, of course, the inside stitches dissolving. But she has used her eyedrops and that has really helped.  Judy will be staying here and watching the house and taking care of the dogs when we leave for Hawaii next month, so she came by to visit and get comfortable with everything. Later, we fixed some yakisoba noodles (Costco) and added shrimp. Yummy! Later, we were able to watch tv together and she had no problem.  

Monday, July 25^th., 2022…… Most of the irritation is gone now and Cathye feels almost back to normal. There is barely noticeable redness and the unknowing would never know she had surgery. We went to Kevin’s for breakfast and no one noticed.  We had Brandon for a few hours today while Corey ran some errands. I have been on the phone for three days now calling Exxon Mobil about my gas card. This is the only card that I have that Lydia was the primary on. Long story short, they could not transfer the account to me, even after 38 years with us both on the account and me paying the account! I have to apply for a brand new card! Talk about indifferent! The weather is still hot today. Temps in the 90s!  Cathye is able to water her garden and went out and picked blueberries while I spent some time working on the second sprinkler system. This is on the west side of the driveway and has been giving me fits for the past few years. I made some changes and it is functional but I think eventually I will need to rip out the system and start over. But for now, we can at least get some water on the grass and most of the plants until I decide to tear it up. Cathye looked up movie theaters where Elvis was playing. We fed the dogs early and then headed over to Corvallis for the show. We both loved it!  All of the primary characters were spot on!  And Austin Butler did an excellent job as Elvis! 

Tuesday, July 26^th., 2022…… Today we started our prep for Hawaii. We will be hiking up to Diamond Head so we wanted to get ready for that. We headed over to the high school track/football stadium to walk the track and take a couple or three trips up and down the grandstand stairs. It was going to be a hot day so we went early and did our walk and the stairs and came right back home. Now these are not the large stadium bleachers in the larger schools, but they are in the shade in the mornings and will do perfectly for this purpose!

We will be doing this every day until Aug. 9^th when we leave for our trip. 

We have Corey coming this week to work off a loan for his new tires. We have him string trimming and cleaning up the area out back by the tree line. As I said, it’s super hot so he will only be working a few hours a day. Today, he has Brandon so I got Rylee’s pool cleaned up and filled for them to cool off. Rylee loves the cold water. Brandon not so much. But he is a kid so he got used to it and had a blast!  Cathye sat out there with them (without a hat) and got sunburned on her face. But she had on her sunglasses!

She has been going to the local tanning booth every day (again, in prep for the Hawaii trip!) but I guess the rays today got the better of her! Later, we went out and did some more work on the sprinklers on the west side of the driveway. I have most of those lines open and clear, but there are a few that I still need to work on. Once it got too hot (97° today), and Corey and Brandon had left, we came in to the ac for the rest of the day. Cathye fixed stuffed salmon and also made some grilled zucchini and we had a nice meal before settling in and watching tv until bedtime.    

Wednesday, July 27^th., 2022……  Cathye headed off to SHEM early this morning so we will probably do our bleacher run later when it’s cooler. Temps are not expected to go down any time soon. Expected high today is 95°!  I hung around the house this morning. I was waiting for Brittany to come and get the title for the Jeep. She is going today to the DMV to compete the registration process.  Corey came by and started in with more weeding. He is doing a great job and actually began pulling out the deadwood from the trees out back. They were ‘widowmakers’ and we both agreed they needed to go asap. Sure looks good now! After Cathye got home, I left to go get some more parts and pieces for the sprinklers. But it’s too darn hot out there today to work on, so I stayed in and got caught up on some of my taped programs.  After everyone left, we fed the dogs then went out for a drive. We went down to Eugene to Tractor Supply.  I wanted to go look at tiedowns for the truck and I remember seeing what I wanted there. We got what we needed and then decided to go to The Roadhouse in Springfield for dinner there. Hey, we had a gift card!  Turns out the gift card was for The Texas Roadhouse, which is similar, but not the same place!  No worries, we still had a nice meal. We got back and fed the girls, then headed off to the school for our walk.

We finished up watching tv until bedtime. Our new show right now is The Challenge: USA. This is a competition with 18 teams from four reality series shows – Survivor, The Amazing Race, Big Brother, and Love Island. I’m not a fan of the last two so I have my favorites to win the $500k. We’ve seen the first show and neither of us are fans of all of the clubhouse drama. They spend a lot of time on relationships and love/hate within the groups. We would rather watch the competition but will probably finish the series to see how it goes.           

Thursday, July 28^th., 2022……  Another hot day!  They say it will be 100° in Portland today!  We’re supposed to get to 97 today!  We left for our track/bleacher walk 

then I drove us over to Albany for breakfast. We chose Elmer’s and split the German Pancake. We also had to drop off some paperwork for Jamie to fill out and we wanted to hit GNC for some supplements we were low on. After that, we came back home and I worked on re-installing the timers I previously had in the island flowerbed (now Cathye’s playground) and the blueberry/grape areas. When Judy comes to dog/house sit, she won’t have to worry about going out there for that. I got that done and came in to rest. Cathye hit the tanning store again. She is up to 10 minutes a day working on her Hawaiian tan for next month. I’m too claustrophobic to get into one of those ‘cocoons’, so I’ll be doing my tanning around the house for now.       

Friday, July 29^th., 2022…… We have changed our plans for our housesitter!  Judy is not really comfortable with being here and having to take care of this place as opposed to her little trailer and her little dog. So, we have asked Corey if he can stay here for that period. He is good for that but we still need to fill in a couple of days when Corey will be working a different shift and won’t be here to feed the dogs. But we are working on that….

We also have made our reservations for three more things. 1) We are going to the Polynesian Cultural Center and have that completed. 2) We booked the night before the Hawaii trip at a hotel in Portland because we have an early flight and don’t want to make the drive up there at O-dark hundred! 3) We want to take the grandkids to Enchanted Forest (an old time amusement park just below Salem) before we leave, so we have that booked for next Monday. They say the weather is supposed to be cooler by then and we have our fingers crossed! 

Today is again a hot one! We decided to fire up the pressure washers, lather on the sunscreen, and hit the driveways!  I just recently bought this new attachment for my gas pressure washer after hearing how Penny’s neighbor used one and it cleaned up his place pretty quickly. This thing is built like a tank and has 4 wheels and a spinning arm under that cleans an 8 inch path at once. I got the connections made and fired it up. I found it works well!  

I did the newer area where we poured for the rv garage. It made quick work of that. Problem is that it doesn’t push away the dirt. I found I still had to use a power wash nozzle and go over it again to get all of the debris. While I was doing this, Cathye used her electric model and worked on the walkways around the side of the house. Once we discovered that she needed a different nozzle, it went quickly too. 

We only were out there an hour or so and called it because it was just too hot! We’ll do this task in stages and spread out the days. Once we got back into the air-conditioned house, we were done for the day! It was a light dinner, then tv until bedtime.  

Saturday, July 30^th., 2022……   We wanted to get an early start on the pressure washing today. But first we needed to go do our walk/stairs at the high school. We decided to stop at Kristi’s for breakfast before coming back home.  It was just starting to get hot when we headed out to work on the washing job. I managed to get all of the debris pushed off the concrete pad and Cathye got all of the walkway completed. But there is still more to do. We only have one 15° nozzle that works the best for our task, so we will need to get another one before we continue any further. Cathye came in and cleaned up and headed off to her tanning place and I kicked back with my races and enjoyed the cool air in the house!