Oregon Living 2024 – Blog #19 – A Busy Week!

 

Managing her Monitor, a Casino Run, Hosting Dinner, a Family Concert, Dancing, Mowing, & Missing the Aurora Borealis

Sunday, May 5^th., 2024…… Yet another rainy morning. The skies would clear up later. Like we always say up here – if you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes! I know - we complain about the rain a lot, but other folks will complain about it being too hot, or too cold! I still wouldn’t trade this place for anything! We were up late this morning, so we split up tasks after walking the dogs. I went for breakfast sandwiches and coffee/chai tea, while Cat fed the girls. She got ready to go off to church and when I got back, we just switched places in the car and she took her breakfast to go!  I spent some time watching my races. I forgot to mention yesterday that I spent a few hours watching the Kentucky Derby. 

It was the 150^th running of this great race. I have been to the facility and want to take Cat one of these days. The place is fascinating. Of course we would like to actually go to the race. But they already have all of the seats booked for next year’s derby (and maybe past that too!) so we would have to plan this one out. When she returned, I was watching one of my races when she got a call from Cheryl that they were taking an afternoon trip to the coast to Three Rivers Casino and did she want to go (yes, I was asked too but declined). They came and picked her up and they spent the afternoon and evening going to and from the coast and enjoying a few hours of happy gambling time with the machines. I heard the machines won!  Once we got settled in, we watched our own shows for the rest of the evening and then went out to the spa. She has figured out she can sit in one of the higher seats in the spa and keep her device dry!  

Monday, May 6^th., 2024…… Normal day for us – except we were monitoring Cat closely at the gym. I mentioned this before about her monitor and logbook - if she feels short of breath or anything else, she presses the button on the device and then logs it into her logbook/journal as an incident. She says once the device gets sent off for analysis, the logbook helps explain any jumps in the readings on the device. I think she said she pressed it once during her workout.

Later, when we got back home after breakfast, we got a 3 cubic yard scoop load of sawdust delivered and dropped off from Mike. It will go in the blueberry cage after we get in there and weed a bit. I already ran a soaker hose around each of the 6 blueberry plants and tested them to see if they are getting enough water. Like I said, the sawdust will go in later and keep the weeds out and the ground wet for the berries.

Tuesday, May 7^th., 2024…… The weather is now fantastic up here! Sunny and nice! Temps in the 70s and 80s for the next few weeks!  I think the rains are behind us for a while! We still have soggy grass in the lower sections of the lawn but it’s getting better. But we are now starting to use the irrigation system to water the flowerbeds and especially the raised bed, which is soaking up the water! Later, we went off to class. Cathye did better and only sat out the last portion. But she still will log in an incident. When we got back home, she called her doctor’s office because they said to if she didn’t get a call with a schedule date for her echocardiogram. It went back and forth for the afternoon but she did get a call. It will be in July! Wow, the wheels have come off the medical wagon here in Oregon! It seems like everything is booked out 6-8 weeks. We are figuring this timeline out – next step is a call from the doctor after he gets the results from the monitor (we mail it on Mon. the 13^th. to a lab in Calif for analysis so that will most likely take a week or more). He will most likely wait until the echo gets done and back to him. Then we think he’ll refer her to a cardiologist and if we get a call back to schedule that in a week or two, we’ll feel lucky. After the cardiologist calls, they will most likely be booked out 4-6 weeks!  And who knows what the timeframe is if they want to install a pacemaker. We are looking at October November !!!  She says her two friends each got fast-tracked after they both fainted and went to the ER! We hope it doesn’t come to that….

Wednesday, May 8^th., 2024…… Cathye slept in a bit while I walked the dogs. I went out and got us breakfast and then later went back to the store with a list of things she needs for her chicken pot pie for tonight. We are having three square dance couples over for dinner and games. After we had everything ready to put together, she worked a bit in her garden/flowerbeds. Don’t ask me what she has put in – there was a ton of stuff she has accumulated in the last few weeks! She took a picture of the roses that are doing nicely now

During her time out there, she pushed her monitor again and came in rested for a bit. I vacuumed the house and then I rested too. Later, Cat got the ingredients together and I helped her load it into the pie and she got that going in time for it to be ready when they got here. 

We had a very nice meal and then decided to play Mexican train. I had to explain my house rules since there are numerous ways to play this game. It took some time, but everyone got going. I think we played until 11:30 or something. A long but fun day!  

Thursday, May 9^th., 2024…… Today we had several things on our agenda. We walked and fed the girls then headed off to the gym (monitor again), then breakfast. We barely had time to get back before I left again for the first of our massage appointments today. Cat and I crossed as I was leaving and she was coming in. I fed the dogs their dinner and we had a few minutes before we headed off to Salem. We were invited to Brandyn’s and Baylee’s school chorus concert tonight. We stopped at Applebee’s for dinner and then drove to their school and got parked and met up with the kids. We got seats – behind this guy…..

and watched a great concert. They had a group of kids who played violins who started off the program. Then a small group of students played ukeleles and sang one song. The chorus was next. Both Baylee and Brandyn did great and knew their songs! It was short (about 35 minutes total) and we got back home in plenty of time to let the girls out. Then a few minutes of tv then spa and bed.   

Friday, May 10^th., 2024…… Nothing on the agenda today. Well, we did have…. Corey was going to come pull weeds with Mike’s friend. But last night Corey informed us that he would be waiting until the kids got out of school then all of them would be coming. Vikki would help share his time. Well, we read between the lines and figured that the kids would want in the spa, and Vikki would be wanting to help with dinner – which we didn’t plan. So, since Cat was not feeling well in the morning and was needing a ‘chill’ day, I texted him that his grandmother was feeling tired and we needed to reschedule. Also turns out Mike’s guy was a no-show. We would tell him that later at the dance. So, after she had her morning sleep-in (with Butthead joining her)...

we went across the street to Paul and Corie's yard sale. Yes, we found stuff! I worked some on the yard. We now hope to mow tomorrow. Later, we headed off to the senior center. They were having a meeting of the just-formed senior rv/camping group. We met some new folks and listened and learned that they are not as well organized as we thought at this time. But they had some great ideas for campouts and were just needing input from the group before they can get a schedule going for upcoming campouts.  We volunteered to give them feedback about the park we will be in when we go down to Grant Pass in our motorhome for our memorial Day square dance weekend. They also were interested in Crater Lake camping – which we told them would be extremely hard to get in with group camping. We shared that Diamond Lake is only about 5 miles from there and we would also check that out in July when we got there for another festival weekend.

After that, we dropped by the town’s Garden Club plant sale (Cat just got a couple). Once we got back home, we decided we were done for the day. Temps got up into the low 80s and we aren’t used to that so we came in the house. Our a/c even kicked on for the first time this year. Later, I got dressed for tonight’s alliance plus dance in Albany. We picked up Lynn and then went and got Mike and Cheryl from the senior center parking lot and went over. Cat doesn’t dance Plus but Lynn has just learned and we convinced her to go. She was nervous and made a few mistakes but overall did great. There wasn’t anyone there who was perfect! The IOOF hall there in town is really old and doesn’t have a/c, so we rested when we needed to to cool down and we got through the night. After the dance, some of us went over to Denny’s for an afterparty. It was midnight when we got home. That was planned because we wanted to see if we could catch the Northern Lights, which we were told could be seen from our area right now. We checked it out when we got home but didn’t see anything. The next day we would see Facebook posts from friends in town who saw it…

Awesome pics!  Maybe tomorrow…       

Saturday, May 11^th., 2024…… Even after our late night last night, we found ourselves up and going early. We walked and fed the dogs, then went over to Tallman Brewery to meet up with Penny and Cherrelyn. Penny goes to the local pool for exercise classes and found the swim team there is hosting a fundraiser breakfast at Tallman’s. Penny bought tickets for all of us. Thanks, Sis!  Cherrelyn got there early and got us a table. We had pancakes and sausage and coffee. 

Plus we bought mimosas from the bar. We finished up and came home and rested for a few minutes. We both went out and got to work on spreading the sawdust on the blueberries. I would haul wheelbarrow loads and Cat would spread it out. I think it took about 45 minutes for the entire project but we were both pooped. Another incident for Cat to report! 

After we rested for a while, it was time to get ready to mow! Yaay!  I left Cat and went and got the mowers out and gassed up. Penny came by and we started in. The grass was pretty thick but we managed to get it all cut in quick order. Temps got up in the 80s again but we all had our sunscreen on so we were good.  There was a Mainstream dance in Corvallis tonight (which Cat could do), but we were both ready for a night off. We watched tv until about 10:00pm then went out to check out the northern skies. Nope. I set the alarm for 2:00am and we went to bed. For some reason, Cathye woke up at 1:00am and checked. Nothing. I got up at 2:00am when the alarm went off. Still nothing. Oh well!