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.