PATTY’S PHONE HAS BEEN DISCONNECTED

I am scared to death.

Patty’s phone has been disconnected.

I don’t know how to find out what has happened.

I FOUND MY BEAUTIFUL ARBOR ARCH ON PINTEREST…..

It is so interesting to post things to Pinterest.  Every time I find something pretty or practical or something that I want to use some day in my life—or dream about it I know it will never BE in my life--I can put it on Pinterest.

Yesterday I was repinning stuff to my Landscaping Board and I ran across a lovely archway that looked familiar to me.  It was in a small image, so I had to enlarge it to see the detail, but I found the bent rods coming down the sides and I saw the pieces on the top (don’t know what they are called) but they are little knob like features and they are the same as MY arch.  Mine is a good 2+ feet taller than the one in the image because it has been set deep in the soil, as I imagine this one was intended to be placed to withstand wind once it has a heavy plant climbing over it.  So I saved it and saved a copy to my computer so I could post it here.  It is harder to make out because of the dark color.  Mine is in PVC white and I would leave it white because I like it to show through the green leaves.  But I want Richard to let me take it to CA with me.  At present he is opposed, but I hope he will change his mind if we find a trailer or little house I can rent.

It is 5:51 in the morning, and I believe my computer is running some stupid scan or another because the keys are far behind my pressing before they show up on the screen.

I have about had it with the computer tonight.  I had bought some MP3 music at amazon.com and I was irked to discover that the only way they will let me download music is with their stupid Cloud Player.  When you buy something, it automatically goes to their Cloud.  If you want to put it on your computer—which, of course, I do—I have to download and install their Cloud Player.  I did not WANT that. I am happy with my Windows Media Player, but I installed the dwxyz thing and it downloaded 4 songs and then stopped.  I had paid for an album and wanted to get THOSE down, but NO way.  I spent half an hour or more looking at their help page and trying out all of their suggestions to no avail.  I finally quit, went to the kitchen and got myself an apple, and came back to post the picture of my archway.

I had wasted the same hours last night trying to download my Pinterest Boards to my own computer in case of a server problem with Pinterest.  No way.  I could not get it with the best program they have designed to do back-ups because they demand that you use Firefox and I hate that one.  It has such a stripped down look and is not very intuitive for a moderately savvy user.  I am very happy with Chrome, but the little Pin4Ever does not work with Chrome.  So I had tried saving the page as HTML by hitting the SAVE button for each page.  To my distress, I discovered that out of 65 pins, it would only save 24 or 25 of the pins and leave the rest of the pages empty.  Wrong!  So I started saving them one pic at a time.  TALK ABOUT TIME CONSUMING!  I was so frustrated, I didn’t get to sleep till almost 11 a.m. Monday.  So I slept till almost 6 p.m.  There went Tuesday.  It is now 6 a.m. on Wednesday and I am not going to sleep at all.  I am going to go as long as I can today and then if I fall asleep at 7 I will (hopefully) have my day/night rhythm back to normal.

Of course, I MUST be awake Thursday night.  That is the last pre-season game for the Hawks at home.

I have to get the rent check tomorrow.  Our rent goes up $25 a month. I think he may have had his taxes go up because of the new Safeway going in so close.  I notice several of the cute little Caldart Cottages are also for sale, so  the real estate taxes may have jumped on homes.  Ours have remained low, but they were a couple of years behind the drop In home prices before they cut our taxes.  It is time to shut this thing down and go back to work.

I hope everyone who reads this is well and happy!

It Has Been a Long Time Away…..Again……

 

So much has been going on in my life that I have not sat down at the computer to write for weeks on end.  With my sieve of a memory, most of what has happened is shaded in gray or completely gone.

I don’t remember exactly how long ago it was—on the one hand, it seems like yesterday, and OTOH it has been like forever ago—Richard called with the news that we had a marvelous opportunity to share a duplex.  A friend of his was buying a place and would be doing some updating and was wondering if he would be interested.

I thought it was so much better than me moving into a residence of my own because of his proximity should I need assisted care.  I would be able to pay someone to come in once in awhile in the daytime, and he would be near if I had a night time emergency.  In the meantime, while I am healthy, I can help take care of his dogs if he and JD are going to be late at work or want a weekend away.

He had the great idea of sharing a car which would have stopped one insurance for him and I told him I would insure the car I used and pay for the gas, so he would get a reduction in outgo.  I have not repaid any of the money he paid to fix my car in its recent emergency, so I am anxious to do something to repay him.

He had sent me the real estate ad so I was able to see the pictures the realtor had put online.  He had seen it in person and called with more details. It sounded like we could make a nice situation out of it.

The problem for ME is getting this house cleaned up and emptied out.  Either job will take a long time and to do BOTH as well as clean up the yard and empty two storage units, it is just more than I thought I could handle by the end of the year.

So it was almost an act of God that gave me some time, but destroyed my dream.  The sale of the duplex fell through.  So I will still plan to move to Ukiah and to rent somewhere, but the super security of having the kids next door is gone.  I am going to hope that something better will turn up.  I may not deserve it, but Richard does.  He has done so much for others in his life, it is about time for life to return the favor.

Money is tight for both of us right now, so we are going back to what we were doing before the RUSH flag went up the pole.  He is just finishing the remodel of his kitchen and I am working at getting flowers out of the yard and bushes pruned back to look good when the house goes on the market.  Part of it is just regular care of the yard as it is now because I don’t have a built in sprinkler and the watering during the hot dry summer has been rigorous.  We have had weeks of days in the 80s and this is VERY unusual for us here.

I also have plumbing to fix in the kitchen and a washer to repair, so I have my hands full.

I did see Dr. Gretch in this lapse of time.  I was thrilled that my cholesterol was only 188.  It had been over 200 last time, and I had stopped my supplements to see if they had really had any effect.  All I had done was increase greatly the number of avocados I was eating (Safeway had them on sale for 78 cents) and I have been compulsive about forcing myself to walk with Poquito.  I suspect it is the walking that helped the cholesterol.

I did find that my supplements were doing something important.  After I stopped taking them, my weight only went up 3 or 4 pounds over 6 months, but my pants got much snugger.  Pants that had had as much as two inches of fabric extra were now down to about half an inch of give.  So I have resumed some of the supplements and will add the others as soon as I can force myself to remember to take them.  There are so many and they are so big (in some cases) that with my throat/esophagus problems, it is hard to take more than one at a time, so it ends up being a constant trot to take this pill or that one.  But I do realize that they play an actual part in my overall condition.  Gotta figure a way to make it work.

Thank goodness Poco is well.  I have been buying drug free tenderized beef and fixing it in the George Foreman grill.  He has straight beef with some lo-fat cottage cheese and steamed broccoli off and on. He has started to ignore it if I don’t put a tiny bit of butter on it, but since he is now 11 pounds, I have stopped all cheese and butter.  I try to get him to eat popcorn because he used to love that, but he wanted the kind that had butter on it, and if the pieces I give him don’t have enough of that taste, he refuses even that.  He is spoiled, so I am going to have to go back to force-feeding him the way the vet said.  She said 1/4 cup of kibbles at breakfast time for 10 minutes, and if he has not eaten it, take it away.  Offer the same thing at dinner time and give him the same amount of time.  She says when he is hungry enough, he will eat.  Problem with that is that we have a crazy schedule.  He is never up much before noon and is not hungry when he first wakes up.  He also likes to eat just before he goes to sleep.  It won’t be easy and I hate to add that to the other problems on my “list.”

The one delightfully happy thing in my life is the Seattle Seahawks!  I have people I see every time I get groceries, or go to the post office, or go to the credit union. All of them either love the Hawks, or know how much *I* love the Hawks, so we talk about what is going on and how the city is so excited about this team.  They have won all 3 of their pre-season games, but these don’t count on their win-loss record for the year. Those games are a couple of weeks away.  We play one more that doesn’t count in the record this coming weekend, and we play a team that also has a black quarterback, but he is very tall and very athletic and was the Russell Wilson of a couple of years ago.  He has a very good team.  I hope they won’t beat our guys.

My poor Mariners have not been so lucky.  I swear, when they get good pitching, the guys can’t hit their way out of a paper bag with the end held open.  Then when they are banging out the home runs (they were 3rd in all of baseball for home runs last I heard), the PITCHING stinks.  OR, when they are hitting and the starting pitchers are great, they will get to the 9th inning and the closer will blow the save and all the good work goes down the drain and they lose.  But even with all the problems, it has been an exciting year.  They finally brought up some of the kids from AAA who have been so much fun to watch.  Not only can they hit, but they are good fielders and they can run, so we have stolen bases and great double plays, etc.  But fandom is all over their case because they aren’t WINNING!!  Seattle has a lot of front-runner fans.  I hate that.

The managers feel the pressure.  Our head coach suffered a minor stroke at the ball park a month ago.  He described it in an interview on the sports station.  I will recognize the symptoms if they happen to me.

It is 6:30 and it is light outside.  I need to get some sleep. I slept away most of yesterday so I need to get something done today.  I hope this posts without problem!