Today Jerrie worked six hours straight, with Ron P, prepping and painting the front hallway in the church. While Ron cut in the corners, and around doors, banisters, stairs, and windows, Jerrie rolled the walls and ceiling which caused terminal pain in his right shoulder.

Actually, his shoulder already hurt, but rolling out a 10 foot ceiling, with the roller on a long floppy stick, didn’t help. He’s moaning and groaning more than usual as a result. Had he not been ordered to “finish it today,” he and Ron would have made it a shorter day, and finished it tomorrow.

Poor Jerrie.

Oh, and he shaved his beard off last night. What a surprise. After clipping it off, he gathered all the whiskers into a ball and carried to it to show the lovely Diane who literally jumped out of her skin because she knew not what it was. He said the main reason he did it was because Jennifer said she wanted his “Navy face back.”

Just a quick update to let you know we didn’t leave the building. But, we left the room and spent some time in our hosts’ hot tub. The tub is elevated on an exposed portion of the 7th floor of this 16 floor facility, and is surrounded by lounge chairs almost exacry like the ones we salvaged from the dumpster outside Warner Brothers Construction offices on a corner not far from our house. A room key is necessary to access the hot tub enclosure which is glass on 2.2 sides. The 1.8 solid sides worked perfectly to shade us from the sun while we shriveled in the hot water.

I contracted a terminal rash on my lower left stomach and upper right chest area from leaning those portions of my fragile body against the side of the tub in order to see my iPad, where I set it on the edge where there was no danger of it falling into the water. Like the last iPad I had.

OK – the rash isn’t terminal, and it pretty much cleared up with a shower. Now I’m squeaky clean.

I should wash more often, I guess.

Here we are in Foresthill, California which is a village way up in the woods of the Auburn Recreation Area. We’re with the ‘other’ Kathie & Mike who live in California. The ones we’re related to. This is the first time Diane has met Mike, and my second time. The first time for me was at a restaurant somewhere in Portland where Jack, Wy, and I met them just before they, M&K, had to fly back to California. That was when Kathie had the black eye that we don’t talk about. There’s a story there but it’s not related to domestic violence of any kind. It’s more about spatial awareness.

To get here on time we left Beale AFB shortly before 1000. First stop was Burger King for a breakfast sandwich for each of us, on the base the n out the Dolittle Gate to Highway 20. We rode that road all the way over to Williams, then on to Grass Valley, the Nevada City, Mike’s suggestion. We had a nice little visit walking around Nevada City looking at some very eclectic shops. It was a lot of fun and I found the perfect 45th anniversary present for Diane.  When it was time to head up to Mike & Kathie’s, the shopping ended, but we had enough time to stop at Burger King for a Whopper Jr. for each of us. Atogether it cost us about $6.50 for lunch so we had a reasonable meal for a reasonable price. This sustained us for the 20 mile trip up the mountain.

Our GPS led us right to their front door and we were very happy that the temperature went down with the gain in altitude. After living with 40 degree days at the coast for a week, we were happy for sun, but not 80 degrees.

Kathie communicated with us to say she would be home 2-2:30. Timing was perfect because we pulled into the driveway, parked the vehicle, and I had just retrieved the key from it’s special hidden spot when Kathie drove arrived.

First I have to tell you that Mike’s lawn more is five years old but look like it could go right back on the showroom floor. So does his rototiller. I was so happy that we got the car washed before getting to their driveway. Because of this discover, as soon as we get home, I’ll have to take my lawn mower out in the yard and power wash it before I use it again. I’m ashamed of my self after seeing Mike’s stuff. Just ashamed.

This will be short because I’m about to fall asleep and we’re getting up early in the morning for breakfast. This evening K&M invited neighbors, Lee and Julie, for a Mexican casserole dinner with Caesar Salad. Really nice folks. There’s talk of lunch tomorrow, and other events that make it necessary for us to call our next stop, in Reno, to see how late we can check in and not forfeit anything, like the upgrade we’re supposed to get.

We’ll se how that goes. At this moment I’ve already had my sleep meds so things aren’t working well. Pictures will be added and spelling corrected, ane bad language removed. So check back for the final version when the urge strikes.

OK – I made one pass through the above section and it’s good as far as my semi-lucid mind can tell. That may change once Diane reads it.

Now for pictures …

This is the overpriced hazelnut latte I got from a barrista in Nevada City. It’s a piece of art you can drink.

Typical street scene from Nevada City.

Love this sign … Breakfast . Lunch . Beer …

Gotta love Fred’s …

This lady was arranging things in her window so I stopped to watch and snap a picture. She stopped and started posing for me. Fun …

This is Bella, Kathie and Mike’s cat, sleeping on our suitcase.

Diane and Kathie toasting …

Mike waiting on the toasters ..

An example of Mike’s woodworking prowess. He has all the fun tools and makes incredible “things”.

That’s it for yesterday …

Today was a really good, busy day. To start it out, the dogs got me up about 0650, which was OK because I guess I was ready to get up. At least they thought so. They ran down the outside stairs, then right back up to the back door to wait for their soft food. When they try this routine, I go out and make them go back to the yard for a little while to ensure they at least make the effort to relieve themselves. They both hang their heads, knowing they’ve been legally busted, and trot back to the yard, looking back a couple of times to make sure I’m still watching.

Then I dish up their food and stand back.

After eating my banana and taking my first two pills of the day, I sit myself down on the couch, read a couple of paragraphs of my book, and fall asleep until Diane gets up around 1000. Maybe 0930. Somewhere in that zone.

We had to get up early because we were meeting the ‘Three Jerry’ group in Portland. We spent a couple of hours eating Chinese food, talking, telling stories, lying, laughing, then parted ways to do “other stuff”.

Jerry T is carrying a particularly heavy load this week. You may recall him from an older blog as the husband whose wife, Lynn, was killed at Portland Meadows when a horse got loose from its tether and kicked her. Very sad. Lynn’s Mom lived with them and Jerry was her official care taker. She’s developed severe dementia over the past year and quit eating last week. She’s still home, but Hospice is involved, and now it’s just a waiting game. He’s quite a fellow, is Jerry T. Not many people, let alone men, would assume responsibility for their Mothers-in-law like he did. Gotta love that guy.

On the upside of the lunch, Cindy A, an original PT Club member, found time to leave her business to have lunch with us. We haven’t seen Cindy in about 5-6 years, at least. It was good to see her. It was also wonderful to see our friend Vie. She always brightens the day for us.

We were also blessed with the presence of Brian C, son of Jerry and Nelda C. Never met him before today. He’s a nice young man who is currently attending PSU (Portland State University) where he was robbed today. Nice. Whoever did it just took the cash from his wallet while he was working out. That would be another reason why I’m not compelled to exercise. People rob you. Anyway, it was nice to meet him.

After the farewells, Diane and I headed for the airport to meet Deena S, from Provo, Utah. She’s a loan officer for a bank which is doing a no cost VA refinance for our home to lower the rate from 5.99 to 3.25%. Deena’s been working really hard to do this because we started talking about it last June. We pretended that she flew to PDX from Provo just to do this. That’s not true, of course. Things just worked out which was good for me because I just wasn’t comfortable giving so much personal knowledge, over the internet, to someone I’ve never met. Now, all’s good. Bottom line is, if the appraisal works, we’ll save a ton of money. Really! A ton of money. They weighed it.

After saving all that money, we stopped by IKEA to see what they had in the way of bed headboards. Nothing appealed so we went to COSTCO, stopping at various furniture shops along the way. Turns out we went to the only COSTCO in the world that doesn’t have furniture. It was a sign that we were not supposed to get headboards today, so we didn’t.

Now I only have three days to finish patching the holes in the church stairway, re-glaze the bedroom windows without breaking any more of them, mow the lawn, get the gas tanks out of the D22 Winnebago, get my truck started, put the two spare bedrooms back together for the house sitter who is coming, and two other things I can’t remember. Not all will get done, of course, and I’m bound to pick the wrong three to work on.

Wish me luck.

They’re here. All the pretty blossomy things that make most people sneeze, their nose drip, and their eyes leak. Just to get things going, just imagine being here …

Kinda gets you grasping for a kleenex box, doesn’t it? Or, how would you like to have this guy as your neighbor, and you live downwind?

I may have mentioned earlier that I have this neighbor. His yard doesn’t look like this, yet, but is will unless I keep mowing it. Right now it’s just full of pretty little yellow flowers that, given a chance, will blossom into these puff balls. You have to wonder what God was thinking when he added these to the mix. Mosquitoes, too.

Did I mention that Jeran, Jennifer and Daniel’s youngest, is taking piano lessons? He started a few weeks ago and is already ready for his first recital. Nothing complicated. It’s a duet with his teacher.

The lessons were Diane’s and my gift to him for his 13th birthday. In order to take advantage of the lessons the family needed a piano so he could practice. We have on in the basement, but it’s a big honker and would be horrible to move, so we started looking around. An electronic keyboard made sense, to save space, but an 88 key version isn’t cheap, which is what we are. Cheap.

As luck would have it, we decided to go garage saling a few weeks ago and guess what! They had a piano! We accepted the first price, $50, and got him to throw in the bench. Then I went home and tried to start my truck. It hasn’t been started since some time last summer and it rejected all my efforts to fire it up. So, I checked with George, our neighbor, to see if he would rent me his truck. He wouldn’t do that, but he let me borrow it, so I was good to go.

It was kind of scary because his truck, which is far newer than mine, has 360,000 miles on it. So, I was very careful when I drove it to get the piano.

While I was getting the transportation, Diane went in search of man power to help load it because there was no way I could do it. I can’t even help because every time I lift my right arm I re-injure whatever’s wrong with it between my shoulder and elbow. I’ll have to get that looked at one of these days. I don’t think about it when I go to the doctor. Besides, they’ll just want me to go to physical therapy.

When I arrived, the crew was waiting. The seller and his sons also pitched in to get the piano into the truck. They even let us keep most of the spiders that call the piano home. We draped a rope across it with the hopes a pacing policeman would think it was tied in, and away I went. Very slowly. Thankfully, it was a short trip – about 1/2 mile. All back streets. At the destination we had Daniel, Cedric, Lydia, Jeran, and two of Cedric’s friends to help unload it. I stood back and watched most of it, pitching in at the end just to say I helped.

Getting it into the house was fairly simple with all that manpower. Once done, Jeran sat right down and started picking out little tunes. It was a good thing for him because he’s not a sports type person – never was. This is something unique for him and we’re pretty sure he’s going to be pretty good at it.

I actually took piano lessons between the ages of 7 and 12 and still know how to read music. Once they hammer that stuff into your head, it never goes away. My piano teach used to pick me up at school and take me to her house on the hill above ours. She had an old Model A with a rumble seat. Like this one …

That would be me in the back, except I’d be smaller, and I’d have a shirt on. I don’t have any memory of ever riding inside, but lots of them riding in that rumble seat. Make the car maroon, too.

After my lesson Mom would be there to walk me home. It was only about half a mile from our house so it wasn’t a big deal for me because it was all downhill. Mom walked a long ways for me.

One of these days I’ll play a duet with Jeran. I’m going to like that.

This morning I had to get up early so I could have coffee with the guys at the Kozy Korner. We do that every Thursday morning. Well, everyone who remembers, or can get there, has coffee with each other. Today it was Larry, Larry, and Larry’s niece, Lisa. As we do every week, we solved all the problems in the world then went our merry ways.

On the way home I went by the church to patch up some of the holes in the plaster caused by the leak that I fixed a couple of months ago. The fix is lasting, and the holes are dry, so it was time to plug them. That, and I had fair warning that it had better “get done pretty damn soon or there would be hell to pay!” No one really told me that. I just put the parenthesis around that for fun. I did, however, receive less veiled suggestions designed to motivate me.

When I got home I worked on the windows for our bedroom. They got two coats of white paint on the outside a few days ago, so today I did some sanding and put clear polyurethane on the inside surfaces. I’ll do that again tomorrow, then Saturday I’ll see if I can get the glass in without breaking them.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

Good News! My VA doctor told me, and Diane, that she didn’t think I was losing my mind after all. Quite the contrary. She told us that I was probably one of the most sane people she’s talked with in the past 18 months and that I really don’t have anything to worry about. She offered to write a perscription for any narcotic based drug I wished just for being such a good patient. I declined, of course. And, that is absolutely not true. Instead, we, as a group, decided that I didn’t need to be taking two antidepressants. I hasten to add that both of these were for nerve pain, not depression. Honest, I’m not depressed. I’m like the opposite of depressed. I suppose that could be because I’m taking two different kinds of antidepressants. We’re going to find out because I’m weaning myself off of one of them over the next three weeks. Perhaps you will see the effects in what you read, if you read this.

I know you can’t tell, but I just switched from my desktop to my laptop so I can sit on the couch with Diane while she’s watching American Idol. I like Kree and Angie. And I admire Lazaro, the kid that stutters. Not my favorite, but it’s a pretty amazing transformation from talking to singing.

After returning from my doctor appointment, we went to the Beaverton Habit for Humanity Restore store. Nifty place. We always find lots of neat stuff that we didn’t know we needed, in addition to the things we went for. This time I found two long pieces of mahogany baseboard, just like I needed, for $1.00. I think I got about 20 feet of it. The only problem is that both pieces are painted white. I can fix that. Tomorrow.

Once we got home Diane took a nap and I got busy scraping paint off the woodwork in our bedroom. Then Diane can start slapping on the minwax finish.

Now, I have to start getting the baseboards done and finished. I only have a month to finish this before we go on vacation where we plan to spend all the money the IRS wants from us.

This evening we attended soup supper and another Lenten service at church. On the way home Diane stopped at Safeway so she and her Mom, Jean, could do some necessary shopping while I was allowed to remain in the car and read. Once home, I helped unload the groceries that  go into the house while Diane took ‘stuff’ to the garage fridge. Part of that was yogurt. When she was done, she brought one of them into the house to show me that the lid had been pierced by, she thought, a can. I opened it, and noticed that it smelled OK even though it was a little runny. Even though it seemed to be a little foamy, it tasted OK so I ate it. Now my stomach is a little upset so I need to stop now and go get myself to sleep before I throw up.