Oregon Living 2024 – Blog #12 – Planning for our Cruise and Finally Mowing!

                                      

Sunday, March 17^th., 2024…… Today was our usual Sunday. Cathye went to church and I spent some time working on the blog and watched tv. In the afternoon we headed over to Shaun’s beginners class to help out. The Sweet Home  Squarenaders don’t have too many new dancers and those that are there are likely (in my honest observations) to drop out. That’s too bad because Shaun is doing an excellent job in his first class. Plus the Sweet Home Club is hurting for members and this will be a make or break year for them and they will probably have to make a decision if they want to keep on going as a Club or not. Anyway, Cathye is enjoying being an ’angel’ to the new dancers. After class, we came home and rested before I had to head off to help angel the plus level class at the senior center here in town. Judy is under the weather but I go to help out and fill in as needed. Tonight, Cathye came to sit and talk with Marianne at the desk, while the class was going on. Later, we all went out to the Pizza Hut. Unfortunately, we sat across from the one person we try to avoid so Cat did not enjoy the evening very much.    

Monday, March 18^th., 2024…… The weather is turning again. They expect showers to hit again toward the end of the week, but it could come in as early as Wednesday. That’s too bad because we just need a few more days of sun to dry out the lawn enough to mow!  But today was sunny and we enjoyed our morning walk with the dogs. We then headed out for the gym and then to breakfast. When we got home, I went out and worked on my shelves in the shop. I cut them in half and rearranged them against one wall. That will give me more wall space for when I move the tv out of the house whenever we replace it with a bigger one. Yeah, I know – we don’t need a bigger tv, but since we moved the furniture back to the walls, it will be ok. Plus, Cat is all for it!  We will check Costco next time we are there.

Tuesday, March 19^th., 2024…… Light day for us. Only the square dance workshop in the afternoon. So, we spent the morning working outside. Cat tended to her garden and the potting shed plants, while I worked on adding the top to the now 10 ft long shelves on the south wall. I will need to go get one more 10-footer to finish but that can wait until tomorrow. I also finished sorting through all of the items and getting them back on the shelves. I lost two shelves but gained the 10 ft. long shelf top, which I like! After class, we came back home and rested for the afternoon and later had dinner and settled in to watch tv before the spa and then bed.      

Wednesday, March 20^th., 2024…… Still no rain so we are watching the lawn. Maybe tomorrow? After our morning walk and then breakfast, I went out and finished the shop project and cleaned up. Here is an early picture that I found that shows the old shelves in the background….

And here is what it looks like now…

 

After the cleanup, I moved both tractors out and fueled them up in prep for mowing. I walked the grass again and decided to go ahead and put the bagger on the zero turn and try it out on the area closest to the guest room. When Cathye heard me, she came out to get on her mower -  but I said we should wait. Rain is forecast for later today and it looked sketchy and we were starting to get some drizzle. Not a good time to get stuck in the rain! So, after all of the morning’s labors, we came in and rested for the day.

We are anxiously waiting for tonight! We have a zoom call this evening. This is for our after-cruise land trip in Australia. Caller David Mee and his wife Dawn, are putting together the cruise and we are signed up and have our room booked already for that - 

but they were thinking that not much time would be spent at the end of the cruise when we dock in Sydney. So, they are working with a tour group and they made the presentation for an additional 6-day land tour after the cruise. We learned about the total itinerary as well as all of the meals and such, including pricing and airfare as we will need to fly as we tour around Australia. After seeing and hearing the one-hour presentation, we said it sounds like fun and we gave them a thumbs up that we were definitely interested. The cruise isn’t until Feb-Mar. 2025 but we need to get prepared as we customize and finalize all of the cruise excursions around New Zealand as well as Australia. Taking this extended tour will be perfect. We said we will probably only go there once, so let’s do it!  It will be a ton of fun. Plus, we have several months to save up for the adventure.  The zoom call was primarily for the land tour, but David did share a little update on the cruise beforehand. He said that they are already at the maximum of 120 folks allotted to them for the cruise. He didn’t go into the specifics of the square and round dancing or anything like that because it’s still being finalized as to schedule.  There were 51 of us on the zoom call so that will be a nice group for the tour afterwards.  We are getting excited!  We watched tv and spent some time out in the spa talking about everything from tonight, before calling it a night.   

Thursday, March 21^st., 2024…… Happy 50^th Anniversary to Mike and Cheryl Berkey! The plan this morning was to go work out, then meet them for breakfast at Kristi’s. We timed it so we would be there a few minutes early. That meant we had a longer workout today. Turns out both of us would be sore tomorrow!  All went according to plan and we were a few minutes early and drove up in front of Kristi’s. They had a sign up that they were closed this morning, so we called and diverted Mike and Cheryl to Kevin’s. We had a nice meal and found they will be heading off to the coast tomorrow and have a beach house reserved for family for this special weekend celebration. When we got back home, we walked the lawn again and decided it would be a go. Without doing the field this time, we were done in 45 minutes. I set the blades higher because the grass was really high, so we will have to do it again real soon. But that’s ok – it looks a lot better now than it did! We washed off both mowers and came in to clean up and kick back for the day. Later, after the mowers were dry, I got them put away and we were done! TV and spa and bed.      

Friday, March 22^nd., 2024…… Today was Cat’s cortisone shot (for her thumb). She had an 8:45am appointment so, we would go first then have breakfast afterward. When we got there, the parking lot was pretty empty. Turns out we missed the date! It wasn’t until the 22^nd. of April. What a bummer!  She will now have to wait a full month before getting some relief.  I wanted so much to express my thoughts about the lack of concern for the patients, but the girl was just at the front desk and didn’t make the rules…. So, we left and went to Kristi’s for breakfast. While we waited for our meal, I suggested that we go over to Urgent Care to see if they could do it. She said she was ok and could wait. We got home and cleaned the house and then rested for the day.        

Saturday, March 23^rd., 2024…… No dances tonight. I looked on the website and went to each of the local club’s pages, but didn’t see anything. So, we decided to have a pizza night out. We hung around the house and both of us caught up on our taped shows, and then later, we went in to town to James Gang Pizza and ordered our pizza and beer and enjoyed our time out. Later, tv and spa and bed early.

Oregon Living 2024 – Blog #11 – Gloomy to Nice, A Dancing Treat & Saying Goodbye

 

                             

Sunday, March 10^th., 2024…… We wanted to sleep since we lost an hour, so we got up at the new 9:00am. We went down to the restaurant for another breakfast before saying goodbye to Mike and Cheryl. They said they would go to the casino for a while, then head over to the campground and visit with Frank and Marianne before they broke camp for home. The weather was on our side for the trip back home and we made it with no problems. We got unpacked, took the sheets that Kennedy had washed out of the dryer and threw our dirty clothes in and relaxed for a few hours. Later, we drove over to the new dancer class in Sweet Home. Once that was done and we were home and had time to rest and snack, I headed off to the Plus class. Lynn wasn’t feeling well and didn’t come tonight. Turns out I wasn’t needed in the two squares but helped out by walking around and turning a couple of guys in the right direction every now and then. No afterparty and I got home and we relaxed before calling it a night. We were so tired we skipped the spa and went straight to bed.

Monday, March 11^th., 2024…… The weather is still pretty awful. Rain and wind for the next few days. They all say it will turn in the middle of the week and be sunny and warmer. We’ll see! I think Cat is having a harder time than I am with the time change. She slept in and I headed off with the dogs then to the gym. I brought us breakfast and coffee back and we enjoyed that. Nothing else on the calendar today except a few things for my list. I needed to go online to get a couple of my prescriptions reordered. I also needed to sit down and work on last week’s blog and get that posted. That ended up taking most of the morning. Then it was time to relax and get caught up on my taped races. I thought I taped the Mecum auctions from Glendale AZ but turns out I missed all three days! No reruns until April. Bummer!

Later, I checked on the status of some eBay orders. I have a lot of 10 Nascar diecast cars coming. I ordered them in Feb. and they haven’t arrived yet. I had previously contacted the seller (from Jonesboro AR) who said he was down with the flu but would get them out last week. He updated me when he shipped them. But the status of the shipment went unchanged so I contacted him again. That was right before I received word from eBay that the order had shipped! I don’t expect them for a week so we’ll see. I had also ordered a total lot of 6 cars from another vendor and that was shipped and is in transit.  On top of that, I have also ordered a pair of vintage coveralls for our upcoming Farmer’s Dance. Cathye found a pair when we were in the goodwill store in Lincoln City last weekend. Later, we settled in for our taped tv shows. Spa and bed.   

Tuesday, March 12^th., 2024…… Forecast for today is rain most of the day but letting up and then clear skies for the next week. They expect temps will go up as well. Nothing on our agenda for today except our 1:00pm square dance workshop. So, we decided to make a Costco run. We did that and got back and got everything put away and rested for a few minutes before heading to our workshop. Judy was busy with another matter but Lynn came. But she wasn’t feeling well so she went home early.  We workshopped the Grand Colonel Spin! Our square dance friends will know this call. It’s off the lists these days so it’s rarely called but one of our local callers workshopped it at a recent dance and a member asked for it again. Cathye was sitting out that particular tip so she missed out. It’s my favorite call!    

Wednesday, March 13^th., 2024…… A beautiful morning!  Blue skies and sunshine! We walked the girls and enjoyed the morning. I took these pics of the new red white and blue flowers just blooming nicely!

 

Today is the memorial service for Alice Baldwin. I’ve known Paul and Alice for many years. They were members of my old square dance club down in SoCal. They had moved up here to Dallas OR in 2020 to be close to Paul’s son. They were members of the Independence Wagon Wheelers in Salem and danced when Alice was up to it. Services were at 11:00am. Dallas is about 47 miles from us so we decided to leave our house a little early and stop by Tator’s, our favorite place up there for breakfast. The meal was great and very filling. We loaded up leftovers for tomorrow. We drove the short distance to the church and gave our condolences to Paul and Judy and Rob.  The service was very nice. They have made many friends in the IWWs since coming up here, and many were in attendance. Afterwards, we headed back home and changed out of our nice clothes. Cathye went over to visit with Lona and then, later Judy. They called me over with my afib tester because they thought Lynn was in afib. They saw the right symptoms and knew to call me to come see if we could verify it with the test. I ran it and - no afib - she’s in normal sinus rhythm. But she will be staying home for the next few days to see how she does and we will be closely watching. Later, when we were back home, the postal truck dropped off two boxes and the rest of our mail inside our garage! Both of my car orders came today! I unboxed everything and checked them out. No issues.  I think I will wait until tomorrow to have Cathye help and hand them up to me for display on my shelves.      

Thursday, March 14^th., 2024…… Again, magnificent weather! Temps today are supposed to get to the 70s!  This morning we both had morning appointments, so we had to skip the gym and also breakfast out today. I walked and fed the dogs and Cathye drove down to Brownsville with enough time to make her 8:00am follow-up appointment with her doctor. As for me, I had to be at the hospital here in town to check in by 9:45am for my DEXA bone scan. She got through her visit quickly and called me on her way back. We decided that we would have just enough time to meet at Kristi’s to eat and then I could just go to the test from there. I headed over with time to spare. I think I was in and out of there in less than 10 minutes! Cathye went to Walmart on her way home and also stopped by and gave Jamie some of his mail, so I got back home before she did!  Today was spent with both of us catching up on our own taped shows. We spent some time talking about our cruise. David and Dawn, the organizers, are contemplating adding on an optional 6-day land tour around Australia after the cruise. They will be having a zoom meeting later in the month to answer questions and get feedback of those interested. Well, we are interested and plan to join in! We figure we are only going to be there once in our lives…!       

Friday, March 15^th., 2024…… The great weather continues… I figure we need 10 straight days with no rain before I could even consider mowing. It looks good so far so we may get it and that would be terrific!  We also made plans for our night out tonight. We are going down to Eugene to the Hult Center to see the Dancing With the Stars production tour.  We’ve had these tickets for months now and tonight’s the night. Lydia and I went with friends back in SoCal years ago and we enjoyed it. Cathye is enjoying the tv show so now it will be her chance to see some of the pros live. We had talked with Lynn and she says she is feeling good enough to go. Judy’s brother and his wife are in town for the show so we will meet up with the four of them for dinner on the way down. We left the house well before the DWTS show so we would have time to eat a leisurely meal and not be rushed to get there and get parked. We chose Junkyard Dog, which is a Guy Fieri featured place on his Diners Drive ins and Dives tv show. It was crowded but we got in and got seating. We enjoyed a nice meal and then took a few pics

before heading the rest of the way into Eugene and got to the theater with time to spare. We had booked our seats way before Judy did so we wouldn’t be sitting with them. I got lucky when I ordered and got tickets in the front row on the mini mezzanine, which turned out were great seats! I had received a call earlier in the afternoon telling me the DWTS staff had set up their sound and lighting board in the house mix station. She said the board might be a distraction and would we like to be in new seats? I said I booked those on purpose for the legroom and we would take our chances.  When we got seated,

this is what we saw...

When the show started, we hardly noticed it unless I was watching the guy operating the lights and such. It was really a good choice.

Theri, Lynn, Judy and Kristi had seats just up and over from us...

 Of course the show was terrific. They had Harry Jowsey,

who competed on this last season’s show. He still can’t dance but was entertaining anyway. The eight pros were Emma,

Gleb, Daniella, Riley, Pascha, Brandon, Alan, and Brit. We all enjoyed the individual performances and group dancing was amazing. 

Such talent! When it was over, we made our way out quickly and made it home by 11:00pm.    

Saturday, March 16^th., 2024…… Temps in the 70s again today! We slept in this morning but when we walked the girls, it was already starting to warm up. Still too soggy to mow though. We spent a few minutes working on loading up the cars on my shelves. 

Pretty tightly arranged but I still have room for more! Shortly after that, Cathye went with Lona to take Lona’s dog over to the groomer in Sweet Home. While they were there, they went to lunch and then to a couple of yard sales before going back to get the dog and coming back. While she was gone, I went out to the shop to work. I wanted to take down two of the vertical shelving units out there and cut them down to make 4. Then I will have wall space for another tv! But first I needed to unload them. The shop hadn’t warmed up yet, so I started a fire in the stove out there and pretty soon had the room nice and toasty as I worked. Cat got home while I was still taking things down and sorting through them. But I soon finished up and came in to see her new treasures and to make myself some quesadillas and rest for the day. Later, we got cleaned up and changed, and then drove over to visit with Mike and Cheryl and got a tour of their home. We then all drove over to Frank and Marianne’s to pick them up. I was carpool driver for a dance tonight in McMinnville. The plan was to stop in Newberg for a dinner at one of Frank and Marianne’s favorite places, and then drive on to the dance. This was a memorial dance for a local caller (Leonard Snodgrass), who recently passed away. They expected a large crowd and had to have a Club member out in the parking lot to get everyone shoehorned in. The dance was really fun. I think they had 7 callers and 6 cuers there. After the dance, we all went downstairs to the dining room where they had a ton of food. to enjoy. We all snacked a little. They passed around a microphone and some shared stories and remembrances of their friend. I heard later that the final count was 120.  That's huge for this area!  Afterward, we headed home and dropped folks off before getting back by midnight. Long couple of days!

Oregon Living 2024 – Blog #10 – A Dancing and Gambling Weekend!

 

Sunday, March 3^rd., 2024…… Another chilly day. Temps will only get up to 40° today. Rains are coming and going but nothing too bad. Just cold! We walked the dogs and then I went to get us coffee and breakfast. We went to our beginner’s class to angel then I headed over to the senior center to help angel that class. Cathye passed on joining us at the pizza parlor afterward and stayed home and kept warm and snuggly on the couch. She is catching up on episodes of The Voice. I brought her home a pizza though. Spa and then bed.  

Monday, March 4^th., 2024…… We had a glorious morning of sunshine and blue skies! It was still pretty chilly (and yes, I am still in shorts – duh!) but we sure enjoyed walking the girls this morning! Today was another gym day so we did that and went to Kevin's for breakfast. We got home and did some laundry. We will need it for this weekend. We are leaving on Thursday for a weekend retreat on the coast. The Corvallis Square Dance Club does this event every year. This will be our first. They have a dance on both Fri. and Sat. nights. They also arrange for a dinner together at a local place they like. We are going a day earlier and we’re staying about 20 minutes up the coast at Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City. Again, our friends Mike and Cheryl are frequent flyers and have comp rooms. If they book our rooms we get their discount.  After the laundry, Cat worked a little in her potting shed while I worked in my shop. We also received an order from Amazon. Jamie needed a new top mattress and we ordered one yesterday and it came today. We needed to unpack it and it needs 72 hours to expand. We are afraid that Jamie won’t wait to use it so we opened it and let it expand here at the house. We’ll take it over before we leave on Thursday.   Dinner, tv and spa before bed. 

Tuesday, March 5^th., 2024…… Really cold this morning! Temps in the low 30s. We got some light rain. There is snow in the foothills and some of the folks in Sweet Home told us they had a little. Ginger, who lives up the hill from Sweet Home said she got 7 inches of snow!  But we walked the dogs and got through it ok. Breakfast and a little cleanup around the house.  Later, we headed off to our workshop. Cathye is sure getting better!  This class has some folks who don’t get out to dance much so they are pretty rusty and Charlotte really has to work when she teaches! But we all improve with the floor time so it’s fun to go. After that, we came back home and she worked again in the potting shed and the shop. No rain but since it was still pretty cold, we both came in to warm up and relax for the rest of the day. We hit the spa again after tv. Did I mention it was cold! 

Wednesday, March 6^th., 2024…… After walking and feeding the girls, we ate breakfast, we spent some time this morning cleaning up. Cathye went over to help Lona with some phone issues while I worked on vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms. When she got back, we both got out clothes for our trip.  I think we are ready to leave tomorrow! We checked out the mattress we bought for Jamie and found it was pretty much expanded now so I loaded it in the truck and Cathye took it over for Jamie to unload and put on his bed. He’s really hard on mattresses and this is the second one we’ve bought him in two years! We’ll find out next week if he likes this one.  

Thursday, March 7^th., 2024…… After walking and feeding the fur babies, and eating breakfast, we had a little work to do. The plan this morning was to make sure we had everything ready for Kennedy. We wrote her out a note and had that on the counter. We finished our packing and left around noon. The drive through the Coastal Mountains was easy and very pretty. The weather was terrific. Blue skies and dry roads! We met up with Mike and Cheryl at the Chinook Winds Casino 

and gambled for a while. Of course I lost and Cathye was up a bit!  When it was time for check-in, we headed across the street to the hotel and got our rooms. They were very nice and looked out onto the ocean. We unpacked and then all of us took a walk on the beach. 

The tide was out and it exposed the rocks offshore. We were able to walk on and around the rocks and saw the sea life. Star fish and sea anemones were plentiful!

The temperature out there was a very nice 67°.  That is so nice this time of year!  Later, we went to the hotel’s restaurant for a nice meal. They had a ½ price special on steak and crab ($30.) and I chose that. The others had coconut prawns. 

Everything was delicious. Since we are staying in the hotel, we enjoyed our 10% discount on those dinners (mine was already discounted).  Plus, we got to see a terrific sunset and hang gliders!

Afterwards, we all shuttled back over to the casino. I am not the gambler that Cathye is, so after a bit, I walked back to the room and watched tv while she stayed and enjoyed her time with her machines!   

Friday, March 8^th., 2024…… We slept in this morning and then got showered and dressed. We decided to go out to breakfast and went into town for that. They still have a Lil Sambos here in Lincoln City and we wanted to go there.

 

Turns out it was closed permanently!  So we chose Pig and Pancake, which turned out to be an excellent choice!  After breakfast, we drove around and stopped at Goodwill and at another antique store in town and looked around (and bought a few things!) before returning to our hotel. We went out and enjoyed another walk on the beach. The weather was even better than yesterday!  The tide was in so we couldn’t go out to the rocks again but we still had a nice walk up the coast.

Turns out this would be the last nice day for a while so we were glad we went when we did!  More casino time for Mike, Cheryl and Cathye before we had to leave for dinner. The Corvallis club had chosen a place and made reservations there for a large group for an early dinner. But when they called to confirm, they were told that they didn’t have adequate staff and couldn’t accommodate us. So we all split up. Our club chose Dory Cove as an alternative. We had 11 for dinner. Not fancy in any way,

but they had a large room in the back and we all got seated together. I can’t speak for everyone else, but my crab stuffed ravioli was delicious!  After that, we all headed over to the Gleneden Beach Community Club for the dance. It was casual dress tonight. It was a lot of fun!

We stayed until the end and then drove over to the group’s campground and raided Shaun and Lila’s rv and visited with everyone for a bit.

 

When we got home, we turned in after a long day!

Saturday, March 9^th., 2024…… This morning we went down to the hotel’s restaurant and had breakfast. 

The weather had definitely turned for the worse! It was super windy. They said later on the morning news that gusts on the coast reached 50 mph! But we walked there anyway and had a nice breakfast, looking out to the choppy seas.  The plan today was to go back to the Community Club for a potluck. Cheryl had made blueberry cookies, but we needed to stop and pick up something. Cathye got chips and dip and we headed over. I was still stuffed from breakfast so I passed on the meal.  Next up was fun and games. They did a trivia game where they set up four 8-person teams to complete against each other in 50s, 60s, and 70s music trivia. They would play a snippet from a song and you would have a writer (me) write down the song title, the artist, and the year. Then your runner took it up to the front. First one back got points for each right answer. It was pretty tough with only 3-4 seconds of music but we did ok compared to everyone else. We got song and singer for the most part, but missed out more on the years. When I wrote down 1956, it would be 1957!  The winning team had 21 right answers, we were second with 16, followed by 12 and 11. Not too shabby!  After that, we went back to the hotel and the three gamblers went back to the casino for a while before we all got ready for the evening dance. Last night, Bruce, the Corvallis Squares Club caller, called and tonight it would be our Club caller, Charotte’s, turn. It was fun but we were beat from the weekend so we were glad when they quit a few minutes early. We helped clean up the hall and then left for the drive through the rains and winds and got back safely to our rooms and turned in. Time change tonight so we would be losing an hour.  We plan on having breakfast and then hitting the road to get home and allow Kennedy to leave early. Hopefully, the weather will be better tomorrow. Mike and Cheryl are staying one more day.       

Oregon Living 2024 – Blog #9 – Dealing with the Weather & Time to Reflect

 

Sunday, February 25^th., 2024…… Cathye and I talked on the phone early this morning. Reminded both of us when we were first dating and she was back in Missouri and Wisconsin and we would talk for hours! Anyway, she said they would be going out for breakfast and then she would leave after that for her drive back down here. They walked to a local bagel place and had a quick meal and chai tea.

I got a call from my friend, Paul. He had sad news. Alice passed last night. They had her on hospice at her son’s house and she was surrounded by family and went peacefully. Services pending.

Cathye texted shortly after that that she was heading back home. With little traffic, she got back with no problems and relaxed the rest of the morning. Later in the afternoon we left to head to Sweet Home to angel the class there. When we got back from that, we ate a quick bite then I left to go to angel Lynn at the Plus class. Cat came by later in the evening and after class we all went over to Pizza Hut for a bite, then home to the spa and then to bed. It was a long day for Cat and she was beat! 

Monday, February 26^th., 2024…… The rains we heard were going to hit last night came a bit late. It was clear and nice when we went to bed and ok when I got up to go to the bathroom.  But it was sure wet this morning! By the time we were up and dressed, the rains stopped and we were able to take the girls out for their walk. We left after feeding them and went to the gym. We have our routines down so we can get out of there in less than an hour now! We went to Kevin’s then back home. Cathye left to go to Walmart and I put the second coat of paint over all of the puttied and sanded screw holes. That would be the end of phase one. Next step is to cut and fit the actual shelving. I didn’t get to that today though.

Tuesday, February 27^th., 2024…… Another rainy day. The rains up here are for the most part just mists or we might get some sprinkles. That was today’s weather. Cat had a major headache so she stayed in and rested while I took the girls out on their walk. I fed them and the Tylenol kicked in and Cat felt better and fixed breakfast. She goes in later today to see her doctor. She has some pain in her thumb and shoulder (arthritis?) and wants to also go over her meds and get updated. But first up was our workshop. We have a couple of old biddies who are large and in charge and one of them went too far with Cathye today. She held it for a bit then responded with a remark to her. After that the woman looked at me and made another comment. Then it was my turn to tell her off.  Our caller later told me, “attaboy Terry”!  Of course it’s not the best feeling to argue in such a fun atmosphere but the woman was going on and on and it is hard on everyone to take for us all because, speaking truthfully, she doesn’t dance much better than the newbies. After class, we left and had to get home in time for her to drop me off to feed the girls and to get dinner fixed while she went to her doctor’s appointment. She stopped by Judy’s on the way home so I ate by myself. When she returned, she said it went well. She got her meds adjusted, plus she will get scheduled for a shot for her arthritic thumb. Tomorrow will be my turn when I go in for my physical. Later, we caught up on some of our taped shows. I am glad to see the Fall shows getting started again! Spa then bed.       

Wednesday, February 28^th., 2024…… Rain again today. They say it will rain for the next 2 weeks. Oh phooey! But I was still up super early this morning. The appointment for my physical was at 7:30am and I needed to be there early, so I was up and out before Cat even got out of bed! My appointment went well. She saw I hadn’t been scheduled in a while for a DEXA (bone density) scan for my osteoporosis so that will happen soon. I also needed a re-take for my thyroid levels and had blood drawn for that. But other than that and getting my new insurance and mail-in pharmacy updated, I was good to go!  On the way back, I got us breakfast and coffee and took it home. She had fed and let the dogs out. We were good to go for the morning so I headed off to Home Depot to get more paint for my shelves. Maybe I will go out later today and set up everything and maybe get a first coat on everything. Ok, it’s later now. I went out and set everything up on my worktable. I did sand down the edges and got them smooth for the paint. I think I’ll wait until tomorrow and make a fire in the stove so the room will be warm enough for the paint to dry. The rains continue to slow everything down for us. Not that we can’t get around in it. That’s no problem. But we so much want to go out and work in the yard and that’s not possible with everything so wet. So, we lounged in the house and caught up on some of our taped shows. I did get a call from Paul later. He told me they had arrangements made for Alice’s service, which we will definitely attend.   Dinner and tv and then it was time to go out to the spa. Did I mention it is cold as hell! Temps in the 30s late at night and with the winds blowing on the deck, it is pretty hard to leave the house and open the spa lid and turn on the jets before we can hit the satisfying hot water! Of course we also have to get out and endure the weather until we can get everything stowed away and get back inside!        

Thursday, February 29^th., 2024…… Today was gym day. We slept in and woke up to a major rainstorm. It was still going strong when we were thinking about walking the girls, so they only got to venture out to the backyard to do their business before coming in to eat. As for us, we have a 10:00am appointment this morning to get our hair cut, so since we slept in, we had a decision to make. We chose to go have a relaxing breakfast at Kristi’s, then go for our haircuts. That worked. When we got back, I went out and make a fire in the stove in the shop and got to painting. I got the first coat on

and cleaned up and came in the house and rested for a few hours. Then it was time to go back out and add more wood to the fire and check the first coat. It had dried nicely so I got the second coat going. It would dry nicely, but I won’t put anything up until tomorrow.  

Friday, March 1^st., 2024…… I mentioned we slept in yesterday, but that was nothing like today. We woke up at 8:45am! That’s super late for us. And yes, it was still raining. I have never seen anything like this since we moved here over 6 years ago. Rylee’s drag strip is really full of water

and there are many places around the yard that are holding puddles of water where there was nothing like that there before.  I will have to wait for a bit before I can go out to bring the shelves in to the house. So, we are holed up at home. We have plans tonight to go up to a dance in Salem. My friend Robbie, is filling in for the Club’s caller and I told him we would go. We will watch the weather before we make the final decision to go or not.

I managed to get out to the shop and got the shelves in the house and got them installed. This last section makes a complete wrap - on two levels – around the entire room. I think it turned out great! 

I have three boxes of cars waiting in the wings, so I will plan to get those up later today.

We saw that the weather was better and we decided to go dance. So, after a light dinner, we took off for and made the 50 mile drive up to Salem. We would be surprised to find that they had a big dance!  8 squares is big for this area! Rob and wife Judy were there and Paul came too. Judy said he needed to get out of the house and square dancers were friends he needed as well. Rob called a great dance and we all had a good time. I danced the Plus tip with Judy and the Mainstream tips with Cat. We sat out a couple with Paul and talked with him a bit. He is having a tough time right now. Cat danced with him before we left. We want him (and Rob and Judy if they are in town) to come over and visit so we’ll try to make that happen. I peeked outside and saw a break in the weather, so we left the dance a little early and got back home before any more storms showed up.   

Saturday, March 2^nd., 2024…… Another cold rainy day. We saw on tv and heard from our friends that there was snow all over the area surrounding us. But since we are in the lowest part of the valley, we didn’t get much more than some heavy rain and some hail. We managed to get the dogs out and walked and then came back in for the rest of the morning and afternoon. We went into our bathroom and pretty much stripped all of the items off the wall. Our bathroom is decorated with beachy stuff and the theme for our dance tonight is Under the Sea. So we had previously volunteered to bring everything. We got them loaded up in the car for later.  We left and met up with Cherrelyn and Penny at Gametime for a light meal and a toast to Jeff. It was three years ago today that we lost him. Sweet Cathye asked us each to share a memory of Jeff and we all did! Thank you! Cathye and I split a light beer so we could still dance later. We came home and had an hour or so before we had to head off to meet the rest of the decorating crew. The room looked great and the dance turned out nice. I think we had 4 squares on the floor most of the night. Afterward, we cleaned up and headed back home to let the girls out and then go to bed.