Today I went to the Hillsboro VA clinic and donated 4 vials of blood and a small jar of fresh urine. All of that will be throughly analyzed in time for my VA doctor visit next Friday, February 6th. I’m curious to see if I’m going to a new doctor or Dr, Gilbert, your favorite doctor in the world. Yes, I’m being facetious. I’ve not received any notice from VA about a doctor change that they agreed to. I’ll let you know, of course.

After that visit, I returned home and sat in my chair watching movies and napping until Jennie picked me up for our Bunco Date at the Shriner’s headquarters. I got to see Jeannie, Brianna, Noydena, and 6 other people I’ve never met. That means we had 3 tables, 2 of which had ghost players. I find it hard to believe that after watching you play bunco for many, many years, I never played the game until this time. It was fun and, as I told more than one other person there, now I understand why you girls always drank wine while playing. It’s pretty chaotic. Jennie and I tied for last place with the most games lost. It was pretty pathetic.

But, we had fun.

I was returned home at a decent hour so I got busy watching more movies while I used up time waiting for Lydia to get home from work. I waited and waited but she never showed up. I finally checked to see where she was and discovered she was still hanging out at the Aloha Campus. I figured she was visiting with Jared a little bit, too. In the end, she said she got home around midnight.

I missed greeting her because I finally went to bed around 2230. She did not disturb my sleep even a tiny little bit when she got here. Max must not have made a sound, either. I was happy about that.

There were a couple of times that I took Max for a walk. No matter what I do during the day I always find room for Max. He’s very happy about that.

Oh, look. Max has found something new to chew on.

Hello,

I should have got to this sooner but when Lydia got home from work she got me involved with “League of Their Own”. It was good to see again, but it didn’t finish until 2330. My little eyeballs are very scratchy and tired.

This morning I went to coffee with the boys and I chose to also have breakfast. My normal sausage patty, one egg over easy, and one piece of non0nutritional white toast. It was really good.

After coffee I went home and got Max harnessed up for a walk along the river. It was raining when we got there but he didn’t care and there were no other dogs around. So, he got to run off leash for most of the time we were here. He’s not a flight risk like he used to be so it wasn’t stressful for me.

We got home about 1730, or so and I was getting ready to go to bunco with Jennie. Thankfully, she sent me a text to confirm that it was tomorrow, not today. That pleased me because I wasn’t ready for a group of loud women. I’m sure I would have had fun, no matter what. They are your girls, after all, and they all love you, just not quite as much as I do.

To fill the idle moments throughout the day I managed to finish every episode of Veronica Mars. I really liked that series, but it had a really crappy ending. Now I’ll have to find something else.

I’m not going to ramble on like I normally do because I’m tired. I just have to tell you, again, that I love you, and miss you. Be safe. For me

Just me.

I think I used this photo already, but it bears repeating.

Good morning. It’s currently 0722 and it’s still dark here. Lydia left over an hour ago and is safely at work at the Aloha Campus. That means I’ll be alone all day and will be able to get “stuff” done around here so you won’t have to reprimand me. I’ve kinda let things get out of hand and I know you wouldn’t be pleased. So, it’s clean up day for me.

The problem with that is I don’t know where to start

When I took

Ax to the river last night I encountered our old friend Georgie. Haven’t seen her in a while so I wa pleasantly surprised. She was out on the walking path and she was monitoring the progress of her patient as he did some sprints. Apparently she’s one of the physical therapists on the ground floor of the building that holds The Roof. I regret that we never had a chance to go up there for a sandwich before you had to leave. Perhaps I’ll go there this week.

I’ve been working on our taxes off and on but can’t seem to get my heart into it. There’s plenty to time so I’m not concerned. Yet.

I’m going to put this aside for now and get busy. See you later.

Later – I’m back. I took Max around the block and avoided getting wet. It was just a little misty out there. And cold.

Carolyn called for help getting her new shredder unboxed and operational. The old one bit the dust after 9 years of heavy shredding. I’ll be going over there shortly.

Around 1500 this afternoon i built myself a salad with stuff I found in the refrigerator and this is what it looked like:

There’re 30 shrimp on there as well as 1 avocado, and 1 tomato. It was very filling.

I took Max to the river around 1700 for his well-earned walk and we kept is short because it was raining a bit. Not hard, but enough that you could actually feel the drops hitting us. Neither of us complained.

On this outing I went to Walmart for laundry soap and cat food. Never thought I’d buy cat food again. Turns out cat food is pretty cheap. Only a little over $5. Way cheaper than dog food.

Once home, I continued my binge of Veronica Mars. She sure gets into some interesting situations. I did this until Larry showed up to take me to Bible study at church. I’d forgotten about that. Thankfully I was still dressed and I was able to walk right to the Bible you bought me. It was a fun gathering and I will continue to attend. Pastor is just great, as you well know.

Lydia got home at a decent time bearing chicken sandwich makings and frozen french fries. Looked pretty good, but I was still full from lunch. Max got up in her face, however, letting her know he’d eat whatever when didn’t want. As you know, he’s not bashful.

It’s 2222 not and time for me to call it a day. Tell everyone I said Hello.

Love you,

Jer

Good morning. It seems that I’m beginning to get more neglectful about my responsibilities. I have no excuse so please forgive me.

It is 0850. I got up about 20 minutes go but I woke up at 0254, 0412, and 0731. I have a busy bladder alarm clock and I can’t seem to reset it. This is a normal night for me any more. It’s just diabetes at work, I guess. Because of those multiple awakenings, my afternoon naps are justified. It’s not because I’m old. It’s a medical condition.

Or, maybe I should quit drinking water a few hours before lights out. I’ve thought about that many times in the past but my thirst overpowers my desire to sleep through the night so I’ll just work on a plan to live with it.

I’m not sure I did anything worth sharing these past few days but that’s not unusual. When scrunch my face up into thinking mode, the initial response usually gets me back to yesterday, not 3 days back. Let’s go backwards and see what happens.

Yesterday Lydia left me alone, unsupervised, to go to Portland for her appointment with her Eye Lash Lady. She does this every 3 weeks and calls it her 2-hour nap while getting new hairs glued to her eye lids. I bet she listens to music while that’s going on. Maybe next time she’ll let me go with her so I can watch the process. It actually kind of fascinates me in a way. The end result is Lydia has gorgeous eyes. Can’t deny that.

She’ll probably eat fussy because I put a photo of her out for everyone to see, so please don’t tell her I did it. This is an older photo, by the way, but it is definitely Lydia.

While she was gone, I planted myself in my rocking chair and settled in for another binge session with Veronica Mars. When she returned I quickly switched channels so she could continue her binge-ing of Gray’s Anatomy. I find it kind of comforting to sit and watch GA with her because I’ve seen many of those shows with you. It helps the illusion that you’re right next to me.

After watching it for a while Max convinced me that he needed a trip to the river so he could look around. When we got there darkness was falling … now there’s a mental visual for you … darkness falling. Thinking about that makes me wonder what kind of sound it makes when it hits something. Considering it’s a thing about nightfall (there’s another one) I can only imagine it’s a gentle “thud” that’s generally not noticed by the masses.

Anyway, I took his leash off and let Max run willy nilly because there weren’t other dogs to capture his attention. He loves to run, as you know. When he lags way back I’ll make a soft whistle and he’ll perk up. Then he accelerates to full throttle and comes at me with a big smile on his face. He used to stop by me after that, but now he goes by and I can feel the air move as he zooms past me. He’s full of joy in that moment and you can tell he‘s pleased with his position in this life. That makes me happy. I was so relaxed the rest of the evening that I forgot to take my evening pills. That seems to happen often any more. Guess I better set a daily pill alarm, huh?

Sunday morning I went to church and was surprised by the increased attendance. There weren’t other over 30 people there. Amazing. There is an increase in folks much younger than the rest of us and that’s a comfort. Perhaps we’ve completed some sort of cycle where old people get out numbered by the young instead of having just old people around. It’s encouraging.

After church I went to the Walters’ home for lunch. I think that’s becoming a tradition and I enjoy it. I’m not allowed to bring anything but myself because they are following a strict process about what they eat. We had a really good salad with sourdough bread. Jennie is becoming the sourdough queen of Matzen Street. Maybe of St. Helens. She says she has starters all over the place and she’s getting really good at it. She may convert me to sourdough yet.

I think that covers the gap in communication so I’m going to stop, now.

I love you still.

Me

PS — In case you’re forgetting, this is us. I confess, however, that I have a beard now because you haven’t told me shave it off.

Hi. Wow! I totally missed two whole days here. Now I have to search my memory and see if I can remember something significant.

The reason I’ve been lax, I believe is because of Veronica Mars. Yes, she’s been keeping me busy. I know that’s probably hard to comprehend, but it’s true. She’s on Netflix and I must watch all the old episodes before they take her down. I’ve learned that there are 20 episodes in a season and there are 3 old ones. So far I’ve watched 2 of them. Just finished S2-E20 tonight.

Yesterday I had a reprieve when I drove to Portland to have lunch with Nelda. She’s on my calendar with instructions to call her, so I do, and I decided to ask her out on a date for lunch,

When she quit laughing, she said “no, but we could have lunch or something.” I agreed that lunch would be great. I did not ask her what “something” might have been. Her kids suggested an ornamental restaurant in Hillsboro that has good food so we agreed to meet there at 1045. The info we had reported that people start lining up before 1100, when the doors open, so we got there at 1045.

The info was correct because folks started lining up early. We waited until the doors open actually opened then joined the crowd.

We entered as numbers 11 and 12, so we got a good seat by a window. That was nice because it was another beautiful, cloudless day. Really nice. Nelda ordered an egg plant dish and I got the shrimp imperial. It was imperial, I was told, because it came with vegetables. I asked for noodles, too.

We both got soup. Hers was hot and sour, mine was normal except there wasn’t a salt used in the process of making the soup. I fixed that with a few dashes of soy sauce.

Nelda liked her egg plant and I was glad because it looked a little scared to me. My shrimp were good, as were the vegetables, heavy on broccoli. I ate it all, but Nelda had enough left to have a good supper later.

We had a great visit, talking the entire time between bites. It was good. Things wound down and it was necessary for both of us to leave. She lives in Vancouver and needs to get across the river before everybody in Portland gets off of work. And I had to get out of town for the same reason so I could drive north to St Helens. Considering all the traffic created by Portland workers leaving work, half go to Vancouver, the other half to St. Helens. I don’t think anyone who works in Portland actually lives there.

We beat the rush and both made it home safely. When we parted ways at the restaurant, I made it clear that there would be no sex involved in future meetings. After she quit laughing, she drove away with a smile and a friendly wave so I guess she feels the same about our meetings.

Now it’s 2300 this Saturday night and I need to get up early enough to take my Saturday shower. I missed that today because between walking Max, there was Veronica Mars using up the rest of my time.

Mount St. Helens was shining in the sun when I walked Max recently and the river was smooth like glass. Very beautiful.

That last photo has Mt. Hood peeking over the trees. I’m sure I saw it looking that directing until right before I took the photo. That might be where he’s from and he was thinking about getting home for lunch.

Today all I did was watch Veronica. I probably already said that so I guess I better quit.

I love you tell everyone I said Hi and I’m always thinking of them.

Jerrie

Hi. It’s Wednesday. Max and I have been thinking about you just a little bit. Like all the time.

I just remember something about my meeting with Val and Barb yesterday. When I got to the bank, the girls were already there, waiting in their cars. I got to the door ahead of them and held it for them, like I do for all the ladies. Barb looked at me like she wondered what was going on since Val was talking to me but barb had no idea who I was until I said something out loud. I guess my beard and longer hair is working. She was really surprised.

We still haven’t got the bank access figured out, but I think I’m staying out of it for the moment. There will come a time, however, when I will need to unwrap my magic hands and figure it out.

Today I spent the majority of my time binge watching “Veronica Mars”. Since Lydia worked 7pm to 7am this morning, she slept all day and I needed to be quiet. So, I dug out my earphones and discovered that I can pair them to the TV. I left my hearing aids on under the headphones and heard everything just perfect. I even took a couple of phone calls for reasons I don’t remember.

Max’s first walk today was super long. I let him go whatever direction struck his fancy. I think he was a little skeptical at first because he kept looking over his shoulder at me, but he finally figured it out and walked along like a well trained dog. And I was the well trained dog walker with the leach. We got along great.

You may be happy to know that I folded all my clothes that were on the bed. It’s been in Max’s way for weeks. I kind of liked the pile because when my legs got restless, I just shoved my feet under the pile and the weight of all those clothes seemed to help. I might just have to start piling them on there again. Then again, maybe not. When I see things like that I can hear you telling me to clean it up. That means I need to vacuum way more often, too.

It was 24 degrees this morning. Very chilly out there, but it’s dry. The last few days the skies have been beautifully clear. Very pretty.

I have nothing more to share except I love you. Tell everyone I said “Hi”.

Me

Hi again. If you’re reading all of these you must be getting tired of the redundancy. All I have to say for that is, “too bad, I’m not stopping because I have things to say.“

Today I did another marathon stint with “Veronica Mars”. There were a couple of interruptions to deal with some computer stuff but I still got about 6-7 episodes in, You may find it interesting to learn that I totally forgot about the NCAA Football Championship game last night because I was watching Veronica. And, you know what? It was OK. I didn’t get upset because the game just wasn’t all that important to me. That, and it recorded. I watched a little of it tonight but didn’t find it interesting. So, I’m in bed now, waiting for the lights to go out.

Before getting in bed i offered Max a chance to go outside and he refused. He just laid down with his little nose sticking out the door while I went to the patio and called to him. He didn’t move a muscle. I can take a hint.

This morning I met up with Barb and Val at the US Bank to lend my masculine presence while so they could get some reports they needed for the annual meeting. I tried doing it from home but had issues. I’ve got info enough now that I should be able to get into the account.

I was supposed to do that today, but Veronica got in the way.

I’m still gathering documents I need to do the taxes. I suppose I should wait until the end of the month because that’s probably when they will show up in the mail. I guess I’m rushing it a little now that I’m on my own here. It was so easy when you were here. All I had to do was mention what I needed and you made it magically appear. You made doing taxes easy for me and I appreciate that.

I contacted Nelda and asked her for a date. After she laughed for a little while she said “sure”. We’re going to a Chinese place on Cornell next Friday/ Her son and daughter-in-law suggested it to her. Should be fun. We all got along so well and I don’t see that changing.

That’s about all there is in my little brain today. I’ll be alone all night because Lydia decided to work the night shift tonight for some reason. I think it might have something to do with Jared.

Now I must stop. But first, here’s a shot of the Winnebago crown at the Spaghetti Factory. I don’t remember sending it to you. If it’s a repeat, forgive me.

I will love you until the end of time.

Just Me.

Hi Today is the 3rd Sunday in January which means it’s family dinner day. That could be FDD, I suppose, right. I like acronyms. I made the main course as you may have suspected by my other post this day. In case you didn’t suspect, it was chicken and noodles.

After I got the noodles done, and cooked, I loaded the pot in your car and picked up Carolyn for all the festivities. We were a group of 14 and we had a good time. It would have been much better if you had been there, but that’s our new normal, “Have a good time without Diane” which is very hard to do. You are constantly on my mind so, in a manner of speaking, you are with me always. You always will be.

You will be happy to know that I cooked and deboned the chicken Saturday and hardly made a mess. Then, this morning, I made the noodles and managed to get flour in many places where it shouldn’t be. No problem. It will get cleaned up. Eventually.

We ate at Daniel and Jennie’s house. I made the noodles at home after church. Yes, I went to church. It was a lay service and there were 25 people there. That’s pretty good, don’t you think?

After lunch I returned home to take Max for his walk. He only got a short one this morning because I forgot to take a roll of bags to clean up after him. He was very accommodating about going home so soon, but I made it up to him after lunch.

When we got back home we sat like lumps and watched “Veronica Mars” until the bed called us.

Doesn’t sound busy, but it was a good day. Thank you for getting these 3rd Sunday gatherings going. They are important to all of us.

Love you.

I’m going off script here and decided to share my family’s favorite dish that I make, once in a while. I’m not incorporating this in my Letters to Diane because she’s seen me make it at least 100 times, so it’s nothing new. I think she liked it pretty much every time, too, or she said that so I’d keep on cooking. Either way, I’m OK with it.

So, Chicken & Noodles is a pretty basic dish made with raw eggs salt flour & water. Oh, and a well boiled chicken.

Let’s do the chicken first…

Unless you have them running around in the yard, go to your favorite grocery store and buy a whole chicken. Size doesn’t matter. Remove the chicken from its plastic bag and put it into a large pot of boiling water. Put a lid on the pot and forget about it for a couple of hours.

Then gather all the ingredients you’ll need for the noodles. While searching for mine I thought I might have to go to the store for flour. After digging around in the cupboards for a while a small container of flour revealed itself, saving me a trip.

I used to use a hard, roll up plastic Tupperware sheet to work the noodles into shape, but Diane got a silicon version which is way better.

Eggs – use as many as you want, depending on how large the crowd is that will eat the end product. I usually use 3, but this is for the extended family so I used 6. This doesn’t happen often because it makes a lot of noodles.

I used a medium bowl to get my eggs started.

What we’re going to do, if you’re making this for Sunday Dinner, is use a tool that allows you to beat the Hell out of the eggs. I use this device;

Sorry about the repeat egg photo. I showed up and I can’t make it go away, so just ignore it.

The first thing you must do is put a layer of salt open each egg so it looks a little like this:

Then you use the tool of choice to whip the eggs. After whipping them into a frenzy, start adding flour, if you have flour. If not, go get some. Starting this, when I couldn’t find my flour I was right on the edge of using pancake almond flour. I don’t know how that would have worked out, but feel free to experiment.

I don’t measure anything so have no idea how much flour I used. All I can tell you is that that container on the left was almost full when I started. I used that huge poon to add the flour.

I use a dinner fork to mix the flour into the beaten eggs and it works for me. You may wish to use something else.

Keep mixing in flour until you get tired then do it some more, until you can do this with it.

On your roll out sheet, put a bunch of flour into the center then put the mixture on top.

I never noticed the crack you can see here. Apparently we had an earth quack during this process and I missed it.

Then you get your handy roller and spread the mixture all over the sheet. When you see spots with no flour on it, add a spoonful and smear it around with your clean hand.

Now, when rolling out the noodle dough, look for this. It will pull back on itself about an inch which, in this case, I deemed to be appropriate for these noodles. It just looked and felt right.

Then I flip the sheet to put all that loose flour on top of the noodle dough. We’re going to use all of it.

Now that you have it rolled flat, it’s time to make it look like noodles. I generally use a pizza cutter to do that, but I’m going to show you a couple of ways that work.

Here’s the pizza cutter results:

Here’s what my Mom used to do … roll up the flat sheet of dough and slice each noodle at a time with a sharp knife.

Then you have to unravel the noodles. As you can see, using the roll and cut method, you can get some epic noodles to share.

After unraveling them, mix all of them with a generous dose of flour.

Then you take the noodles, one at a time, if you wish, and put them into the boiling pot of broth you made when you boiled the chicken. I’m not going to go through the process of removing all the skin, bones, and gristle from the broth because it’s pretty gross. And, you might like the extra challenge of separating the noodles from bones, etc, while you eat them. That’s not me. I take all that stuff out before the noodles are introduced to the pot.

After putting the noodles into the broth, go clean up your counter and add all the flour you can recover into the pot. You can see I missed with some of it, but that’s easily resolved by vacuuming the stove when I’m done.

Now you just let the pot boil for a couple of hours on Lo, or until the noodles are done to your satisfaction. When you’ve reached this point, get the chicken pieces you removed from the carcass and add it to the noodles. Since the chicken meat has already been cooked, all you need to do is warm it up in the broth, or you can let it simmer for a couple hours like I do.

At the dinner table we use a large gravy ladle to put the noodles over a pile of mashed potatoes. There is no green things in my broth but you can certainly add vegetables, if you wish. For me, I add a cube of butter to the potatoes on my plate, cover it with salt and pepper (you can skip the pepper, Terry), then smother the pile with noodles and gravy. If you used all your flour, the broth will be thick and you’ll understand why we use a gravy ladle.

That’s it.

I must end this with the caveat that we don’t eat this much starch often which makes it easy to pig out on it. Another good thing about this dinner treat, is that it lasts a while in the form of leftovers.

Enjoy. If any of you actually follow these instructions, I applaud your willingness to fill in the blanks with your imagination and ask that you share with us how things turned out.

Cheers

Hi. I’ve been fiddling with changing the title for these notes to you but had a hard time doing it. Until now. I like this title better. How about you?

Today I woke up again at 0530 so guess getting to bed around 2100 works for me. Although I had a short nap this afternoon I don’t think I’ll have trouble falling asleep. Even though I was awake, I didn’t hear Lydia leave for work. Usually I do when I’m awake but I’m hardly ever awake that early. She’s out of here before 0600. Max doesn’t even get up to say bye to her, she’s that quiet.

After breakfast, I got Max in the truck and took him downtown for his first walk. It was another beautiful day, but still chilly. We got parked close to the theater then I discovered that I forgot his leash. So, we retracted the landing gear and headed home. On the way I stopped at the theater and got a tub of popcorn for supper.

Since Max was primed for a walk, I took him around our block and he seemed to be OK with that, but I felt bad that we didn’t get to see the river. Well, I did and he could have. All he had to do was look out his window instead of pouting.

As we went out for the walk, Paula and Rocky were going by so we walked together and chatted. Mike had surgery on his back so hasn’t been mobile for a while, and isn’t up to talking much. That’s why Paula was out and about.

For lunch I developed a craving for chicken. I considered Popeye’s but chose the Safeway deli. I had to go there anyway to shop for something things that were missing in the fridge. Apparently we ate a bunch of stuff lately.

From the deli I got their 4-piece special. I also got some yogurt. I seem to have acquired a taste for it. Tillamook, of course. I ate one of Lydia’s Chiboni (sp) yogurts and really had to work to finish it. It’s pretty horrible. The consistency is kinda like latex paint, maybe a little thicker. Not a fan.

Carolyn called to ask for help with the new sound bar. She has various complaints about the sound changing, like we used to do, so all she needs is an education on how to adjust it. Before that, I need to learn how to adjust it. So, she’s on my list for tomorrow.

Also on the list for tomorrow is chicken and noodles for Sunday dinner. It’s the third Sunday. Don’t forget. We’re eating somewhere between 2 and 3. I have no idea who’s making potatoes for this event. Maybe no one. Lydia is the only one I’ve mentioned it to. I will take the box of fake taters we have just in case.

Jennie was at our old High School in Scappoose for some reason and found these photos hanging in the cafeteria.

What a crew, right?

One more thing. Grace Novak passed away on Christmas Eve. Keep an eye out for her and tell her Hi.

Love you. Stay safe.