I hate alarm clocks, especially the mechanical or digital kinds. They are so invasive when they ignite, intruding into some really good dreams, dragging me back from the edge of a blissful event that I can never remember. It’s just terrible. A solution, of course, is to go to bed when the sun goes down, and get up when it does … like farmers. Those guys all have internal, biological alarm clocks developed from a life time of repetitive hard work and regular hours. Since I’m incapable of timing my sleep habits to the rotation of celestial bodies, I have to rely on something more reliable in order to meet my responsibilities for the coming day. Tapping in to a part of my brain that I don’t normally use, I found there a wee bit of creativity and forced myself to think about alarms clocks, and nothing else, for 5 minutes. The object was to determine which sound would result in someone immediately getting out of bed. I thought of all the sounds that annoy me and came up with the perfect idea … The Puking Cat Alarm … there’s just nothing quite like it. I don’t know about you, but personally, as soon as i hear that sound I’m up and running looking for the source.

Wouldn’t this wake you up?

Most days, as most of you know, the dogs function as my alarm, getting me up just before they have to pee, or whatever. They are creatures of habit, tied to the rotation of the sun and moon, and slaved to the level of food in their bowls. Lately we’ve been giving them soft food to augment the crunchy stuff they’ve been eating for years, and that’s a real motivator for them to nudge me from bed at the same time each morning. Ozzie is a half a pouch breakfast guy, saving the other half for an afternoon snack, while Panzee is a 2-3 cans kind of girl, if she had her way. It’s a quick breakfast for her and she always wants more, like most big dogs do. Bottom line, they have reasons to be up and moving at certain times of the day and, since they don’t have opposing thumbs, they need someone to open the can, or pouch, and open the door so they can frolick in the field.

Opposing thumbs will be the topic for a future entry here because I find them fascinating and just love those things!

Even though I dislike them, this morning I had to set an alarm. For 0530. My motivation was a promise  to Steffani that I would get up and make coffee before they embarked on another day of softball in Hillsboro. For these times, I use the Church Bell alarm on my iPad. It’s a gentle way to wake up, even if you don’t want to. When we’re on vacation, Diane uses her iPhone alarm, that sounds like a diving klaxon on a submarine, to get us up so the maid can make up the room. Sometimes she pretends we’re on vacation and sets it off just to see me jump from bed in a panic. It amuses her. That’s usually OK because I probably had to go to the bathroom anyway, and usually make it there with most of my bladder’s contents. I have no idea where the bit that’s missing goes. There must be magic involved there.

Yesterday

Yesterday is gone,

and tomorrow awaits, but

it’s now the present.

OK – I’m bummed. Guess what happens when you create a WordPress entry on an iPad and kill the screen before publishing it … it disappears. I did that twice today, then decided to wait until I got home. I was really in to it, too, making all kinds of sage comments about pretty much everything in the universe. It’s sad that all those words are just whispers in the wind because they’re gone, and I’ll never be able to recreate them, except for all the pronouns and adjectives. And a contraction or two.

Making it even worse, I have the iPad plugged in on my desk and it’s getting all of this direct from my computer. That just doesn’t seem fair. Now I have to remember all the things I did today.

Let’s see … I took Diane to the doctor this morning and a new diagnosis was rendered regarding her stomach pain that may Ruth may find interesting. The doc she saw thinks the trouble may be some exotic bacteria that she got from contanimated water. I call it exotic because I can’t spell it. Can’t pronounce it, either. Coupled with this is some newfound knowledge that Diane learned either on the news or in the funny papers, they are pretty much the same, that leaving a Britta container with the filter on the counter isn’t a good thing because it grows this nasty bacteria. Now, that must be in the really small print on the filter wrapper because that’s not something either of us knew. Actually, I didn’t really care until I found out it might be a bad thing.

Anyway, when we stayed at Moses Lake, guess what? We left that container on the counter for a week, refilling it whenever it got low. Seemed to work OK and Diane thought her innards were dissolving because of all the Mexican food we had to eat up there. But it wasn’t. It was the nasty bacteria from the Britta filter container. The simple cure for that is to put the water container in the refrigerator. That’s OK, if there was room.

Now, I didn’t get sick on this trip like Diane, so it was hard to track down the culprit. After one dose of Cipro she’s already better. That started killing the bacteria and the flagyl she’s going to take will flush it all out like one of those new pressure toilets … whooosh! It’s pretty dramatic, I’m told.

I’m getting way ahead of myself …

After the doctor we went directly to the Rite Aide pharmacy to get the meds. Since it was going to take 30 minutes, we thought we may as well get a breakfast sandwich from Burgerville which was just across the bowling alley parking lot. It was 10:10am. I remember. It was good. Then I got the meds and we went by Jennies to get her and Cedric. They only live across the street from Burgerville so it was a quick trip. Then we went to our house to let the dogs run for a bit before we abandoned them for our trip to Portland.

First up was a trip to Olive Garden for lunch. That was Cedric’s choice, and a good one. I ate spaghetti and didn’t get any on me. It. Was. Amazing. I normally wear a red shirt so no one can tell, but didn’t know I was eating spaghetti today and had on a light brown one. It was OK, though, because Diane sat next to me and watched me like a hawk, snatching splatters right out of the air before they hit me. It was quite impressive and drew moderate applause from customers at nearby tables. As a result, my shirt remained spot free until we got home and our at, Breezie, jumped on me with muddy feet. Really nice, but totally in character.

After lunch we went to Costco. Jennie wanted something but we didn’t really need to go but bought a camping lantern out of guilt because it’s illegal to go to a Costco, anywhere, and not buy something. It’s a rule. After the purchase we decided we hadn’t spent quite enough so went to the Costco gas station for a fillup. Rounding up, we met the $85 minimum and were able to leave the area with a clear conscience.

From Costco we went directly to the Target store that was the furthest away. The main reason we went there was so Jennie and Cedric could get slushies. Apparently Target makes the best ones. I declined to exit the vehicle, choosing instead to remain behind and capture the days events on my iPad, which I lost twice, as I previously mentioned.

Finally, we departed for home, arriving about 5:00pm. I was coming down from a sugar high from the lunch, and couldn’t stay awake so sat on the couch waiting for 6:00pm for Jeran’s fly up ceremony from sixth to seventh grade. It was also a pot luck so we got supper. A twofer. Jeran’s class put on a fun little skit and we had a good meal.

From there I took Diane home then met Jennie and Cedric at Campbell Park for Lydia’s softball game. Her team played a 16U tournement team and beat them 7-5. Lydia pitched the last two innings and the girls played awesome, blanking the other team. Then, I was allowed to go home. Cedric came with me and I loaned him a pair of jammies  and I did this. If you read this far, I’m sure you feel cheated unless you are really, really interested in what I do.

Tomorrow I’ll edit this and add pictures.

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that is normally composed of three lines. The version I’m most familiar with is where the first and last lines are 5 sylables, the center is 7. It’s kind of interesting how things come out when you do this. Since three lines are not enough for me, I use the Zen approach and just continue until the story is done. For example, here’s some I just made up, just now …

Animal Alarm Clock

Today I awoke

to a dog licking my hand.

His tongue is real soft.

The cat, however,

has a tongue made like a rasp.

It leaves marks on me.

They do this each day

because they are both hungry.

I feed the dog first.

I know … it’s not elegant, but it’s descriptive. Like this one.

 Monday

Today is Sunday

and it’s likely tomorow

is no doubt Monday.

I am retired,

so I no longer car pool

and get to sleep in.

OK … I’ll stop. It’s goofy, but doing this is a good exercise in making sense of pretty much any situation using small words. How convenient is that? Ooops, here’s another one …

Lyle

Lyle is my brother.

I went to his funeral,

But he is still here.

Dwelling in my mind,

he will be with me always

He is with me now.

OK – that’s it, no more, please!

Today I did nothing of consequence except take Diane’s Mom, Jean, shopping for food. Turns out she hasn’t eaten for the last 3 days because she ran out. That’s a lie, of course … she only ran out yesterday. And, she only ran out of milk. I also shopped for us, not something I do much of because Jean’s daughter, Diane, takes care of me quite nicely. It was interesting to roll the cart up and down the aisles at Safeway, trying to get only the things she had on the list, but I couldn’t help myself. I bought a piece of never frozen salmon, and macaroni & cheese because it looked good. Diane called while I was in the store and asked for tomatoes, where weren’t on the list so I was able to get permission to buy the salmon and macaroni.

We’re going to try a vegetarian diet for a while and see if it helps with Diane’s diverticulitis. Maybe it will do something good for me, too. Either way, I’m all in to help Diane shed this “stuff”. Ruth knows what we’re dealing with, here. It’s no fun.

I just talked with brother Jack who is working 86 hours a week at the old plant where he used to work. He’s done this a number of times to help with their annual scheduled shutdown for maintenance and upgrades. One of his responsibilities in the past was scaffolding and he got this really neat hat from the company that put them up. Their motto was “Erections are our business”. Cute. That should be Hooters motto. I am speaking out of turn here because I’ve never been to a Hooters so have no frame of reference for that comment. But, I’ve seen pictures. This time Jack is in charge of everything. He’s been promoted. That’s why he gets to work so many hours each week. He has four of those to go so pray he makes it.

Now I’m going to quit and watch TV with my first wife. She’s been here for a while.

Friday was one of those days I’m used to where attempting to get one simple little thing done requires completion of many other tasks first. You know, one where you go look for your car keys and on the way you find the glass of water you were looking for before you had to go to the bathroom but there wasn’t any toilet paper which required a trip to the basement where you discovered your drill wouldn’t work because the battery is dead and you left your Dremel tool outside dangerously near the wet part of the patio? Ultimately, all that got done was the Dremel tool was returned to the tool bench and you’re left standing there wondering why you’re there. Complicating all that, sometimes, is when Diane innocently asks for assistance on something, or gives me a task to do later but if I don’t do it right away I’ll forget and I’ll fail her.

Now, where was I?

Oh, ya. I got the truck keys so I could warm up the truck for a dump run, but the license plate expired last December, and the new one was sitting on the table by my computer. It’s been there for six months. Then the truck wouldn’t start because the battery was dead as a doornail and you just gotta wonder how a doornail can possibly be dead. C’mon! There isn’t one doornail in all of existence that was ever alive … oh, I see now … that’s pretty dead, isn’t it?

The truck … battery … the dead battery in the truck was one I retained from one of the old Winnebagos we used to have and it worked just fine clear up to the point where I moved the truck last December. It didn’t fit in the battery tray so it sat a little cattywampus next to the radiator, but the hood closed so it was good. I hunted around in the garage for a while, looking for the original truck battery, which had died at some point before last December and had been recharged and placed in a prominent location where I was sure to find it. And I did … it was behind a spare piece of sheetrock I had propper up against Jeff’s drafting table in the garage. I knew that but was distracted by all the other nifty stuff in the garage … like the organ and the player piano. Probably not the best place for those things, but that’s where they are, and that’s where they’ll stay until I can gather up enough people to help me carry them downstairs.

To get the old battery out I had to find my wrenches, which were in the basement where they belonged. I only needed a 1/2 inch wrench but I took all of them with me. It seemed like the right thing to do because if I took just the one, it would never make it back to the holder. They have to stay together, always! Well, most of the time, anyway.

The truck has a BBC engine – that’s Big Block Chevy. It started out as a 454 but wound up a 462 after the engine was rebuilt but a guy that builds race car engines. Plenty beefy to pull pretty much anything, which was our intention. To start it requires a great deal of pumping the accelerator, like 30-40 times, before attempting to engage the starter then keep pumping as you do that. You keep pumping, but let the starter rest a bit, then to it again. Usually it starts on the third try. Once it’s warmed up, however, it starts just fine without turning a full revolution. Amazing.

Once started, I pulled it into the driveway in order to load up more junk for the dump, bur still had to replace the license plate. Then it turned out to be a good thing that I brought all the wrenches because now I needed a 3/8 to get the nuts off the screws holding the license plates in place. They were so rusted, however, that didn’t work so I got my Dremel,  because I knew exactly where it was, and cut the nuts off the screws.

I put the new license plate in the back window of the truck, but one of these day’s I’ll bolt it in place. Just not now.

In the back of the truck were all the windows I removed from the 1968 Winnebago I salvaged, as well as all the residue from that evolution … like little bits of wood, some walls, and parts of the floor. It took me a while to extract all the glass from the window frames, and only one broke. So now I have 7 nice panes of glass for which I have absolutely no use. The thought of dropping them in the clear glass bin at the dump doesn’t set well with me so I’ll find a place to hide them in the basement. All of the wood bit were removed to the burn pile so all that’s left is about six pounds of real trash that will fit in the garbage can.

By the time all of that was done, it was time for me to shower up for the trip to Portland and our TVCC meeting. We had to go because the guest speaker was there at my request. It was the right thing to do. On the way we stopped at Red Robin to have dinner with five other TVCC members and Diane and I split a bacon cheeseburger. We split so I could have a chocolate malt. I LOVE those things! the meeting was good, the speaker spake very well, as I knew he would, and I was kinda offered a job writing database reports. Go figure. I’m going to have to think about that for a while because it would involve having to learn something new and I don’t know if my brain could handle that. The new stuff might overwrite something important that I’ll need, like forgetting what toilet paper is for. Something like that.

Today I fell victim to an old routine by taking an after breakfast nap that last three hours. As a result, I didn’t get started doing anything of consequence until 10am, or so. But, I did something important … wire brushed all the rust off, and painted primer on the laundry tub that I dismantled earlier in the week. The painting was simple, but the wire brushing part proved to be hazardous because I used a wire brush wheel attached to a plug in power drill. Those things spin faster, and last longer than a battery drill. And, when the wire brush gets tangled up in a T-shirt, painful things happen. Like, it could give you a terminal left nipple injury … well, not terminal, and not even bandaid worthy, but it hurts a lot … so I’m told. OK .. Yes, it was me … and it’s going to leave a mark. Now that I’ve admitted to that I may as well add that I nearly took out my right testicle, too. I still have a stomach ache from that one.

On that, I believe I’m done here, for now, except for this picture … it’s of Diane, her Mom Jean, and Jennie at Cedric’s graduation. Jeran took it and it’s evident that he’s centered on his Mom. But, I like it …

… and one of Alicia on her trampoline in Connecticut, from last week …

It’s quiet in the house, again, since I finished putting away the clean dishes and reloading the dishwasher with dirty ones. We always leave the sink full of dirty dishes at night in case one of the animals needs a snack in the middle of the night. Sometimes, we get up to find the plates spic and span, ready to go back on the shelf. I suppose we could simplify it for them if we just scattered the dishes around on the floor, but that’s just too much bending over for me. Last night they, however, they didn’t do a very good job because Breezie decided to spend the night outside and didn’t do her part. Oh, well. The dishwasher will get what they didn’t.

Yesterday afternoon Cedric graduated from the 8th grade, and has been given permission to move on to High School in the fall. A couple of months ago he was pretty concerned about this big change in his life, but his voice finally changed so it’s no longer the fear it was. We’re really proud of him because he’s the first person in the family to make it all the way to High School … except for his Mom … and Dad. And Diane … there may be others, but I can’t think of who they might be right now. Anyway, we’re proud of him.

Since he expressed interest in joining the golf team once he starts, Diane, I and Diane’s Mom, Jean, gave Cedric a set of golf clubs that came from his Great Grandpa, Mel, Diane’s Dad. Being the empath that he is, it was a meaningful event for him, and he was briefly overwhelmed. Now we’re making plans to go golfing together which will be fun. Perhaps he’ll help me figure out what I’m doing wrong.

Cedric has been attending the Arthur Academy in Yankton for years. It’s a charter school who’s students are chosen to attend by lottery. The number of students in the lottery are diminished by the fact that not everyone wishes to drive their kids 10 miles out into the country for school. Their loss. The school has excellent teachers and a great curriculum. Cedric’s done very well. Right behind him are Lydia, and Jeran, who also attend Arthur and will be entering 8th, and 7th grades respectively.

Before the ceremony began, I gave Jeran my camera so he could take some pictures. He’s got an avid interest in photography which I want to encourage. Here’s one he took …

In case you are new to the family, or have just forgetten who they are, this is Diane, Diane’s Mom, Jean, and Cedric’s Mom, Jennifer. Jennifer is my First Wife’s daughter.

After graduation, which was held upstairs in the Yankton Grange building, we retired to the first floor to partake of a potluck of goodies provided by the parents of those graduating and, I’m sure, anyone else who might have had a notion of baking cookies or cake. There was a lot of stuff to eat. I had one cookie, a piece of Jennie’s cake, and a tiny little root beer float. Just enough to spike my blood surgar, but not good enough for supper since there wasn’t much protein in there. I looked.

We all came to our house to continue the graduation party which is where Cedric got his golf clubs. Lydia wanted to take some pictures so borrowed the camera and headed outside. It was still pretty light outside, but we still saw the flash going off once in a while as she made her way around the house. We are now the proud owner of pictures of pretty much every flower in and around the house. And the cat, Breezie, who followed her. Her’s are the flowers, the rest are mine. The kid pics are Jeran, Lydia, and Cedric.

Next time I would add so many pictures. Gets boring looking at flowers, don’t you think?

It’s 8:45 and Diane is still sleeping or I would be off to the basement to reassemble and paint the vintage 1957 laundry tray I dismantled yesterday. I was working on that when Diane redirected my efforts to help her spruce up the basement which evolved into a discussion with DirecTV about why that receiver didn’t work. They couldn’t fix it over the phone so scheduled a service call for Saturday. Then we moved the TV container across the room, reconnected it, and it worked fine. So, I cancelled the service call. Now it looks like an entertainment room when you sit on the couch. Today we’ve vowed to throw things away that have been accumulating down there for the past 35 years. That’s mostly hollow bugs left by spiders because we’ve only lived here for 5 years.

There was good news from the East Coast Cate Family (ECCF) – Ruth got her lawn mowed! I applaud her for tackling it because it’s not a task to take lightly. She has a rider to use, but the last time she rode it she got a speeding ticket from one of her neighbors, who is a detective, so sticks to the walk behind John Deere. I suspect she has a John Deere mower because Lauralaura made her get one. Lauralaura, mother of Jeffrey David and Arianna, is a John Deere enthusiast. I was going to say “fanatic” but thought that might be a little harsh. I do, however, think she would agree.

As for Ruth’s other grandchildren … Heather and Justin are off on their honeymoon in The Dominican Republic, Nurse Sarah is back at Hartford Hospital running point in the emergency room to keep the doctors on task, Susan is busy shipping ‘things’ all over the country (AR Express, Inc. … use them), Alicia is wishing she lived on the west coast because she has school til July (I think), and all their parents are doing what parents do … making everything better for their kidlets. God Bless Them All.

Howdy All – It’s been pointed out to me, by an unbiased relative, that three days have passed since my last entry, and I suspect everyone is just chomping at the bit to know if we made it home without something breaking on the old RV. Or, maybe most of you are secretly enjoying a respite from my assault on your eyes and imagination. Maybe a little of both.

In case you’re in the first group, we did make it home with only one minor issue. When we stopped for a rest in Hood River our brakes made a horrible noise. It sounded just like a power steering pump that’s low on fluid. So, I added some to the power steering pump and it stopped. Ya, I know. How does that work? All I can tell you is that the power steering unit has hoses going back to something that looks like it might have something to do with something other than steering, so it must be a hydraulic-type secondary for the brakes. Terry knew what it was but I as baffled that there was an association between steering and brakes. Who knew?

Now that we’re home, and I’ve downloaded all my photos to the computer, I can share some of them. Once I did that I actually paid attention to what was going on and discovered that I’ve got almost 72,000 pictures on my hard drive. I’m thinking it’s about time to burn some of those to a DVD, or something, before the computer crashes and I lose them.

For the trip, you already know we did some work on the RV so we wouldn’t be embarrassed at our destination. Turns out that wasn’t an issue because all the owners of the huge rigs, with all those slide outs, were happy to see us and we even had to host a visitation period for them. It was surprising how many of them came over.

So, here’s how it went …

We departed from the Troutdale Outlet Mall and hour and a half late, which is right on time for us, and mosied east on I-84. About 60 miles down the road, in Hood River, we pulled in the really, really windy spot I mentioned in a previous entry. It looked like this …

After a scrumptious PB&J sandwich, made by my favorite cook, we continued our trip east, finally turning north somewhere east of Boardman. The goal was Kennewick. It was a brutal trip, 91+ in the shade, and there wasn’t any shade. We lost numerous pounds even though we had our windows open. It was hot, and I didn’t think we’d ever stop, but we did.

We got there right about supper time, parking in the Kennewick Elks Club parking lot. No hookups. Just a parking lot. But, it didn’t cost anything. We were allowed to sit in the shade in the little patch of grass next to the lodge, and sniff the one rose that was blooming there.

After a long hot night, we continued our trip north to Moses Lake, arriving in the town about noon. Seems like we always managed to stop just about the time to eat a meal. The first stop was the Moses Lake Dollar Tree where we parked in the shade while some people went shopping. Truth is, we were waiting until 1pm when Jeff was supposed to arrive at the fair grounds.

As we drove to the fairgrounds, we found ourselves in a long line of really huge Winnebagos. I may have mention this before. I would have taken a picture, but I’m the only one allowed to drive the RV so couldn’t. It was pretty impressive. When we finally arrived, we were directed to the first 6 spaces just inside the gate. I think we were put there so everyone else driving in could see what they were missing in their big fancy rigs.

There’s only five in the picture because Sue and John didn’t arrive until the next day. Every day we were there it was sunny and warm. When the sun went down it was cold. Every move of the day was planned, from sun up to sun down, so it was busy, busy, busy, all the time. Wore us old folks out. One day they even made us guys serve dinner. I don’t know who’s idea that was, but it was fun. Here’s what we looked like in our Mexican theme getups …

That’s me, Cliff, Terry, John, Les, and Jeff, who grew an especially flashy mustache for the occasion. Quite impressive. The guy on the right, in the white shirt, was practicing his moon walk.

Everything went along quit nicely until Terry found something under his hood the got Les’s interest. I don’t know that anyone ever found out what it was.

I rigged up a TV antenna for Diane using my camera tripod. It went nicely with the rest of the decor.

Here are a couple of pics of what a real Winnebago looks like today …

Soon it was time to leave, but we waited until almost all the big guns were gone because we wanted to give them all a nice send off …

The only stop I was allowed to make on the entire trip home was at this fruit stand for something refreshing to drink and eat. Thankfully, we had some of that in our refrigerator …

We made it home without mishap and all is well.