About My Bride of 50 Years

Posted on April 20, 2018 by Jerrie Cate

When I was 16 my friend, Richard, took me to an archery club he had joined so we could improve our skills and have some fun doing it. The instructor, Mel DeLonais, was a no-nonsense kind of guy who everyone instinctively knew to obey for two reasons: 1) He was either carrying his bow or it was within his reach; 2) He was a dead-on shot; and, 3) He was always right. So, at 16, he was someone we listened to and obeyed. OK, that’s three reasons. There are probably more but those are the ones that rise to the top when I think about him.

Also in attendance at these lessons was his daughter, Diane. She was 13 at the time and I pretty much knew right away that she was going to be my life-long partner. She didn’t know that, of course, because that’s not something you tell a 13-year-old girl. I waited until she was 15 or 16 to that, and fully eligible in many countries to be married. At this stage of life the math is fuzzy but my intentions weren’t. She was a Freshman during my Senior year of High School and we were a couple most of that year and stayed in touch via letters and visits home after joining the Navy her Sophomore year.

Wise beyond her years, she turned me down the first time I proposed citing a very valid reason that she should probably finish High School first. That made perfect sense to me so I let her go to experience those tender years on her own. We stayed in contact over the intervening years as she grew up, went to college, and went to work.

When she was 21 I was home on leave after riding the newly commissioned USS Cleveland from Norfolk, VA to San Diego, CA where it was staged for a trip to Viet Nam. It would be my 2nd deployment to that area of the world. This leave period allowed me to attend my 5th Class reunion and I was poised to make the party on my own as I had no one to take with me. During those years all my High School friends had stayed connected, went to college, and some married each other as everyone knew they would. I was a loner because it’s difficult to find dates while living aboard a ship and being transferred all over the place on a regular basis. The loner part was me spending my time waiting for Diane to finally see the potential in me.

That moment came when I visited mutual friends, Junior (my golf partner today) and his wife Nancy. While I was there Diane showed up. I hadn’t seen her in three years. Once again I was stunned by her appearance into my life but managed myself quite nicely, I thought, visiting for a while then excusing myself to go home.

As I was backing out of the driveway Diane came running out of the house. I stopped to see what she wanted and we chatted a bit as she leaned on the passenger window. This was a Friday. She asked me if I was going to my class reunion and I said “yes, would you like to go?” She responded with an enthusiastic, “Yes!”

The rest, my friends, is history.

I don’t remember how much time we had left before the ship for deployed to Viet Nam, but we spent every possible moment together. The catalyst for our future was when she came running to my car like she did. It was THE moment in my life when everything came back together, making the world right again. Had that not happened, had I been allowed to drive away without that conversation with her, I’m confident there would have been another moment in time like that in the future. I’m forever glad she finally chose me that day so I no longer had to wait.

When I picked her up for our trip to the reunion, she slid next to me on the bench seat, like she’d always done on our dates years ago, but this was different. It was as if we silently, mutually agreed, that the final decision had been made. We were a couple again. It was a terrific day, and we made the remaining few we had just as great.

Then I was off to San Diego. There was no one on the pier for me as the ship pulled away but I knew Diane would be there in the future. Life was good.

The following April I transferred from that ship off the coast of Viet Nam and flew home to marry my one true love and embark on an incredible adventure that took us from one side of the world to the other more than once – Okinawa to Italy to Florida to Guam to California to Hawaii and more. Now we’ve been home in Oregon since 1989 and don’t plan to make any long trips. We will, however, be making trips around the Northwest to see what we missed during all those years away.

Now, here we are after 50 years. I’m still stunned every time I look at her because what I see is my High School Sweetheart when she was 14.

I always will.

Happy Anniversary, My Love.

Bayview State Park Washington, and Crabs

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Jerrie Cate

Yesterday we embarked on a journey to Bayview State Park in Washington. That’s about 60 miles north of Seattle in case you’re wondering. The plan was to leave about 9 am so we’d arrive early afternoon. Doing that would have been a modern-day record because we rarely leave on time. Yesterday was no exception. Even with Jeff’s help to load ‘stuff’ into the RV we didn’t actually get all the way to Highway 30 West until 11:00 am. That’s actually not bad from a historical perspective.

We made it through Longview and made it all the way to exit 49 on Interstate 5 when a brief discussion with my lovely bride revealed that I didn’t have my pills. Since there’s no way I could go an entire week without partaking of the finer ‘fruits’ of the pharmaceutical world, I turned around and headed back, automatically making our trip 2 hours longer than it should have been.

Once we got home I got my pills, first thing, then Diane got the Brita filter from the garage refrigerator because I didn’t get it before leaving the first time as she thought I had. We also gained some deli ham that somehow hadn’t made it’s way to the RV. And some raisins.

Then we headed north, once again, record intact for not leaving before noon on any given trip. This time we pulled out around 1:00 pm and it wasn’t nearly as exciting as getting away the first time at 11:00 am. Actually, it was a little depressing as we traversed the same ground 3 times to get to a place just once. When we finally got past Exit 49 the 2nd time, things looked brighter and the GPS reported we would arrive around 7:30 pm. Not quite what we had planned, but at least it gave us confidence we’d arrive. Sometime. With the Seattle traffic arrival time turned out to be 8:00 pm. Incredibly, it was still light enough to see what I was doing to get the car off the dolly, get the RV parked, and everything hooked up. Everything except the TV, the most critical appliance. Thankfully, I was allowed to defer the TV issue to today and can report that, after numerous attempts, I succeeded. Diane has HGTV for the duration.

We read for a while last night, then went to sleep at our normal time – that’s when we’re tired enough to sleep. I only had to get up one in the middle of the night and it was pretty chilly. No, not chilly, but just plain cold. After getting back to sleep I stayed there until almost 10:00 am.

I woke up to the smell of bacon frying. That’s a motivator to get vertical. So I did, and we had BLTs for breakfast. Well, breakfast for me, but lunch for Diane because she was up at 7:30. I asked her why she got up so early and she said, “because I woke up.” Couldn’t argue with that.

Once fed, and awake, I did the dishes, and we jumped in the car and drove around the immediate area and discovered the Padilla Bay National Refuge Area Learning Center, or something like that. Inside we met and talked with Dale and Annie. Both were women, in case you were wondering. Her mom and dad must have liked Roy Rogers and Dale Evans growing up. We had a great conversation and learned about the places we should see and places we should eat. Annie, the younger woman, said that pretty much any place in Edison was good. So, we headed north to Edison.

It’s a neat little town and pretty much every place to eat turned out to be a biker bar. Now, don’t get me wrong, taverns and bars typically have good food. The ones with motorcycles parked out front validate the high quality of the food. We will probably partake of one of those places before we leave here. The one we’ll probably go to has a sign out front – “Adult Day Care”. Looks like a great place. I have a photo of it, but my phone is dead and it must be living in order to get the photo. Maybe later I’ll give it a shot. Maybe tomorrow.

Since tomorrow is our 50th Wedding Anniversary, thank you, we thought finding a good place to eat a good steak would be good. The Biker Bar Day Care was a possibility, but we had other places to look. Like Anacortes. There’s a casino there and I thought maybe they would have tasty food worthy of a reservation. We went, we saw, and we inhaled lots of second-hand smoke walking from the front door of the casino to the 2nd floor restaurant. The restaurant was very nice looking, and looked to be hermetically sealed off from the casino proper, but getting all that tobacco odor on the way kinda takes the edge of our appetites. We checked it off our list of possibilities. We’d fiddled around looking for a decent place to eat to the detriment of our now empty stomachs and needed to make a call about whether we go in to Mount Vernon to check out more possibilities or return to the RV and eat the Dungeness crab Diane brought. Hmmm. Tough call.

We went back to eat the crab. I had the biggest crab louie I’ve ever had. Really. She had a 1 pound container of crab meat ($26) of which she put about 3 ounces. That means I got the rest of it. If I escape a raging bout of gout in spite of ingesting that much crab, it will be amazing. If I don’t escape, I’ll happily walk around with a severe limp until it goes away. Yes, I’ll do that for my bride.

While Diane was preparing parts of our afternoon dinner, boiled eggs to be specific, I returned my attention to obtaining a picture on our TV that might be fun to watch, as directed. Doing that required me to ascertain the reason I couldn’t get a satellite signal even though I knew the antenna was in the proper place. After many attempts of moving the antenna, and restarting the receiver via various methods, I finally hit the proper combination by putting the antenna on the RV roof and unplugging the receiver for the specified 30 seconds. That did the trick. We have TV service and no longer have to leave the confines of our motor home. Unless, of course, the holding tanks over flow because I failed to go empty them. I might have to do that because this Washington State Park, that charges $31 a night, doesn’t have sewer connections. Go figure. Don’t worry, I won’t allow them to overflow. I’ll tape down the toilet lid before that happens. It’s a short walk to the out-door toilet and showers.

Now it’s dark, Diane’s all snuggled down on the sofa watching ‘Station 19’, and I need to go potty, so I’m terminating.

Before doing that, however, I must report on some new arrivals who showed up while we were eating our crab. They showed up with a very long trailer and it took the husband more than a dozen attempts, back and forth, to get it inserted into his assigned space. Diane counted them so we know that’s true. I think watching him made her a little proud of me because I’ve never taken more than 3-7 attempts to get our trailers properly parked. Most of the time I just zipped it right in with minor jockeying to get the hoses and cords line up. Now we have an RV and parking is even easier because it’s got cameras.

Ok. Now the potty stop.

Jeran’s All Growed Up & Diane’s New Phone

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Jerrie Cate

I’m a couple of days behind reporting that Jeran has finally attained his 18th birthday and has ushered in the time when all of my Daughter’s children are grown up. His birthday was on the 11th in case you want to send him money, or something.

He evolved from this …… to this …… in the blink of an eye.

He will graduate from High School in June and somehow wrangled an acceptance letter from Corban University in Salem, Oregon. Since he’s currently still living at home the reality of that aspect of his life has yet to be realized so it’s business as usual for now. Too soon, however, he will embark on that journey and we’re all excited to find out where it takes him. His initial goal is to be ordained and work as a Youth Pastor. Somewhere.

In addition to Jeran’s remarkable feet of turning 18, so soon after Lydia turned 19, we’ve had some excitement here at home.

Most of it revolves around Diane’s washing machine. After 25 years it finally bit the dust. It entered a state of nirvana where it simultaneously pumped water from the tub and filled it with fresh water. We might not have noticed except the pumping was a bit slower than the filling resulting in a situation where the water level went halfway up the door. It’s a front-loader so that’s not a good thing. The pressure was too much for the water and the load of jeans it was washing. When I got to it to investigate the “little bit of water” Diane noticed coming from under the washer, the bottom of the door, which doesn’t lock, by the way, was sprung out and water was doing a Niagara thing onto the floor. Water was everywhere. I was able to push the door in and stem the tide, but figured that wasn’t a viable solution for the long-term. Eventually it occurred to me that I should turn the water off, which I did. This allowed the pump to empty the tub and spin the jeans to the point where the dryer would accept them for the finish.

We went to our local Sears store and purchased a new set which will be delivered tomorrow.

In preparation for the delivery, we’ve been carving a path from the lower patio door to the laundry room to make the delivery easier. I’m going to take the old W&D out, leaving the laundry room empty, so I can cover the bare studs that Diane’s been looking at for the past 11 years. She deemed it was time to “make them pretty.” So, I will do my best. Toward that end, I took a trip to the local lumber yard and purchased some bead board. I will also build a drop down folding table. Since there isn’t one there now (never has been) I need to work out the dynamics of how she’ll be able to use the toilet when the folding table is down. It’s going to be tricky because the table will cover it completely. I suppose it I had the table high enough, and she used it while folded in half, it would work, but doubt that she’d be happy about that. I’ll think of something and take a picture for your approval.

Just a little while ago a couple of young ladies from a company called “Enjoy“, a pretty nifty delivery service, visited to deliver Diane’s new iPhone 8 Plus. It’s a red one. I ordered it just before 2 pm this afternoon and it was delivered by 3:30 or so. Amazing.

Anyway, the ladies sat Diane down, had her unwrap her new phone, and proceeded to help her through the process of making her new phone look a lot like her old iPhone 5S. We all had a nice visit and it was really nice to have an expert on hand to take care of things correctly.

Now it’s time to stop and eat something.

Little Goats

Posted on April 6, 2018 by Jerrie Cate

Our neighbor, Jen, has started farming, her reason for moving to the country. It was handy that the neighbors before her and her family had chickens and left a nice chicken coop. For us it’s an unanticipated benefit because we get eggs once in a while. Nice fresh ones.

The other day she came home with baby goats and they’re adorable. Who can resist the allure of a baby goat? Really? It’s like they beg you to pick them up and cuddle. Everyone but me, that is. I can resist baby goats. They’re fun to watch, though.

Today Diane and Lydia got to meet them for the first time and fulfilled their dreams of holding a baby goat. These guys are brothers and just 10 days old. One of them looks suspiciously like our cat. See if you can figure out which one.