Wow! Where do I begin. I’ve got 9 days worth of mostly worthless information crammed in my tiny little brain to the point where that stuff from July 5th has been crushed to the point of near unrecognizability. I know, that’s not a real word, but it should be.

Thankfully I have this calendar that Diane and I share and she keeps it current. Every once in a while I’ll take a shot at adding something and it doesn’t always work out for me. That’s code for “Diane gets cranky that I screwed it up.” Still, I try. Perhaps one of these days I’ll figure it out but the best bet for now is to just let Diane make those entries.

Using that calendar here’s what I discovered about recent activities. Seems I did way more than I thought. I’ve been a busy critter.

1. I bought a fuel filter for Lydia’s car and tried to put it on, but there wasn’t one in the location that guy on YouTube told me it would be. He had pictures and everything, but it just wasn’t there. I checked more references on the internet and was assured by all of them that it should be located right next to this thing located under the vehicle on the driver’s side. I do lots of research like this on the internet and it’s never wrong. Really, it isn’t. Everything’s been just fine. Until now. Not finding the fuel filter where it is supposed to be led me to believe that the filter must be inside the tank with the fuel pump. Since I didn’t the ability to see if that was true, I took the car to Don’s house. See item 10 below for more information on that.
2. I golfed with Doug and Junior on Thursday last week. I specify because I reference Thursday this week about a topic that has nothing to do with Thursday last week. I find it’s important to be specific about shared information like this. The golf game was great fun, as it always is. None of us died, an event we’re all prepared for, and no one even fell down. That was a plus.
3. My Daughter-in-law, Heather, had a birthday on Thursday last week, too. See why it’s important to specify? Had I not clarified that you may have thought she had a birthday yesterday since that was also a Thursday. Anyway, now she’s firmly entrenched in her 40’s. I’m not allowed to specify how entrenched which is difficult for me because I’m really serious about being specific, as I mentioned. I’ve been sitting here in a quandary, thinking about how to resolve this to everyone’s satisfaction and realized that I don’t think she reads this stuff so it’s probably OK to tell you she’s now 43.
4. I had an ultra sound on my carotid arteries at the VA hospital yesterday, which was a Thursday. I never received any results of that test which is good, I suppose. I guess they just didn’t find anything and didn’t feel it was necessary to let me know. We’ll see what happens with this most current one.
5. I visited my VA Doctor on Tuesday of this week, just three days ago since this if Friday. I haven’t mentioned that yet. Today is Friday. She’s the one who ordered the carotid ultrasound as well as the echocardiogram (see item 11), which I had yesterday, which was Thursday. Lots of stuff seems to be happening on Thursdays lately. After the echocardiogram we sent shopping for a motor home (item 6).
6. Diane and I went out and looked at all the Class A motorhomes we could find and wound up buying one. It’s a 2007 Holiday Rambler Neptune diesel pusher. Never had one of those before.
7. Ozzie got a haircut. It cost $40! Ozzie only weighs about 10 lbs so his haircut costs $4 a pound. Amazing. I’ve thought about campaigning to just let him grow wild for a few months to see what happens but I know Diane wouldn’t like that. So, I probably won’t, even though I did agree to trade in our travel trailer on a Class A motor home (See item 6).
8. We picked up the SCRIP cards for our church. The office is in the Tigard School District complex which is, to the uninitiated, very complex. We found it however, and I went in, hands in the air, to find out where the cards were that I was going to liberate. “Why did you put your hands, up?”, I was asked. “To show you I was unarmed,” I said. “Oh, that’s OK,” the receptionist said, “we don’t check for guns.”
9. I had coffee with some friends at the Kozy. I got there early so I could eat breakfast – one enormous pancake, two eggs, two links, and coffee. All for under $8. You should go there for breakfast sometime.
10. I drove Lydia’s car to Cousin Don’s house on Thursday, yesterday. Diane followed me with our pickup, into which I had placed our tow strap that was purchased a long time ago to simplify towing various cars, and my old truck, home for repair when they crapped out somewhere. It’s been a handy tool. This time, we didn’t need it. I got the vehicle to Don’s just fine. Al was there. He’s one of Don’s old racing buddies who lives in a motor home and visits during racing season in this area. He’s a great guy and invited me to join him, Don, and John today for a round of golf at our favorite golf course. It was great fun and made me realize that keeping score is a total waste of time. Who really cares. You just hit the ball from the tee to the green, then you putt it in the hole. How many times you hit the ball isn’t relevant when the object is to just visit and have a little man-fun. Don and I rode together in one cart he told me that Lydia’s car needed more help than he could offer so he was going to take it to a friend who has a garage. For more information on this evolution, see item 1 above.
11. I had an echocardiogram (see item 5) during which I fell asleep and woke myself up snoring more than once. The tech said it was OK, I could snore all I wanted. This was different from the echo I had many years ago, that was done in conjunction with a treadmill stress test. That one was brutal and produced the excruciating pain in my throat that I tried to describe. It’s one of those pains where you have to stop whatever you’re doing, no matter where you are, until it goes away. Nasty. Apparently they never found anything wrong because I have no memory of rule changes regarding my conduct, or the continued care and feeding of my heart. It’s still ticking along pretty good, but that pain is the main reason I don’t feel compelled to exercise. At all. Sitting in a chair all day works for me. I don’t do that, of course, because I have to get up and go to the bathroom once in a while.
12. We sold our ‘new’ Chevy truck to Jack and Wynette. They were working with the local dealer to get a used 2014 truck similar to ours but it didn’t have a backup camera, no navigation, and no Sirius radio. Everyone knows that, if you’re married, you must have all that stuff in any vehicle you purchase, or borrow. Before they completed the deal Diane and I were neck-deep in item 6 (the motor home) and found that by trading in our travel trailer we probably wouldn’t need a pickup. Without the pickup, Diane would need a vehicle to drive that her Mom could enter and leave without fanfare (she will be 90 next month). Diane’s Mom, not Diane. So we offered it to them and they accepted. In return we will purchase their Toyota Camry (item 13). Perfect.
13. We bought their ‘new’ Camry from Jack and Wynette. Well, we haven’t bought it yet, but we will. The plan is in motion. Funny how things work out.
14. I mowed all of the lawn. That’s about 3/4 of an acre. Doesn’t sound like much but, unlike some other mower people I’ve seen, I go real slow so it can vacuum up all the cut grass. In this instance, however, the cut part only consists of the tops of about a zillion dandelions that inhabit the yard. With all the hot weather, our grass has barely grown at all. It looks pretty good with al the little yellow flowers gone but, you know, I kinda liked the flowers. They go well with all the moss that makes up most of the front yard.
15. I got a heart monitor from the VA. This is conjunction with all the other cardiac stuff that’s going on. Perhaps some of you know what it’s all about and what they look like. For those who don’t, it’s a device worn on the belt like a cell phone that has two leads which are attached to my chest. The wires to the connection points by necessity go down inside my pants then travel up beneath my shirt. When I get tired of explaining that it’s a heart monitor, I tell people who it’s a two-purpose device that sends Diane a text if I get an erection, and me a text if it detects that I’ve had an erection longer than 4 hours. Neither one of us has received a text so things are pretty normal.
16. Diane visited her hand therapist multiple times to work the kinks out of her broken wrist bones. She’s making great progress, using her left arm all the time with rarely a whimper. Makes me proud. The big test, though, was the vacuum cleaner which she can use with no problem. I was concerned about that.

OK – when I list it that way, it looks like a lot of stuff. Looking at the calendar it doesn’t seem like much but I fear delving into each one of those items will result in a long dissertation. I’ll do it but you don’t have to read all of it at once. Actually, you don’t have to read it at all. Frankly, I’m surprised you got this far. It’s like one of those movies that is so bad but you keep watching, thinking it has to get better. Right? I watch movies like that all the time. Why do we do that?

It’s now Sunday, two days after I started this so all the day references are incorrect. But, I’m not fixing them.

Yesterday we visited with Jeff & Family to have a small celebration for Jerrie’s 6th birthday. Yes, she’s already 6. She’s so excited about being in First Grade. It’s going to be a fun year for her teacher.

Baylee, Jerrie, and Gilligan

After visiting with Jerrie, we delivered our trade in travel trailer and picked up our ‘new’ motor home from Camping World in Portland. It was an exciting trip since I’ve never driven anything that big (35 feet long, 8 feet wide, 12.5 feet tall). It was easy peasy even though I drove it through St. Johns, and over the St. Johns bridge. Pretty tricky stuff for a Rookie. Now it’s safely parked in our driveway, waiting for its maiden voyage.

This afternoon, Lydia and Ceiarra showed up with Max (Maximum Prime) so they could relieve him of most of his hair. They did it in the front yard so the big dogs wouldn’t interfere. Max was in heaven with all the attention from two pretty girls. He’s no dummy.

To ensure the tense is correct, I must admit that I wrote all of this yesterday.

Today was supposed to be a quick trip because it was only about 180 miles. Less than 4 hours, right? Well, that plan was derailed by two of our GPS systems when they routed us across Highway 37 which runs through the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge. It wasn’t the Wildlife Refuge that was the problem because it’s actually not a bad road. The road is only one lane each direction but once you’re on it, the only way out is to keep moving forward. On this Sunday, moving forward meant going very slow most of the time, stopping completely some of the time, with short bursts of speed all the way up to 30-40 mph. What we didn’t know, and apparently our GPS didn’t either, was that Highway 37 is one of the main ways to reach the Sonoma Raceway which is located about 2/3 of the way across.  Once we reached that exit we could see the stands for the racetrack and they were full. This was about 1100 this morning so our arrival in Fort Bragg, which isn’t really a fort at all, just another town on Highway 1, was pushed out to after 4 pm. We wanted to be there nice and early, like 1 pm, so we could visit some of the sites in this city. Specifically, Diane wanted to visit Glass Beach.

For this stop, Diane obtained two rooms at the city’s Motel 6, an establishment she previously vowed to “never” use during our travels. But, the price of two rooms there was cheaper than one room at any of the other establishments and the girls won’t have to sleep on a sofa bed.

Once we got checked in and hauled our luggage upstairs to our rooms (no elevator), we went searching for Glass Beach. We found it about a mile north of Motel 6 and it was easily accessible for most, even those with broken arms. once we reached the beach, the girls were fascinated with the glass on the beach then Lydia went looking for hermit crabs which were abundant. Ceiarra chose seek pieces of rock and agate mixed, leaving the glass alone.

There were people all over the place checking out the beach. An Indian family saw Lydia with one of the hermit crabs and had to have photos of her messing with them. She’s always gone down that road less travelled by girls, opting for the bugs, snakes, and such, so crabs were right in her wheel house. She had a ball discovering, and harassing them. She was not allowed to bring any with her back to the truck. So, she found a really nasty looking shell that had once been stuck to a rock, and was partially covered with debris that had once been growing, and you just knew it was going to smell to High Heaven once it dried out, and insisted that we take it home. We folded on that request because we knew there were plastic bags in the truck she could use to wrap it up. The bag remained in the truck bed. By the time we get home whatever is in that bag is going to be nasty, I’m sure.

Ceiarra, thankfully, kept it clean and was allowed to get her rock collection back to the motel in the truck proper.

After the beach we discussed dinner options and chose Denny’s which was next to the road leading to the beach. We don’t normally patronize Denny’s during our trips because we’ve bad experiences in the past. It’s been a while, though, and thought we’d give it another try. Glad we did because the food was great and the people greater. It was a pleasant visit.

Our waitress, Lisa, came and took our orders and when she left Ceiarra said that Lisa smelled like her Mom did. When she came back, Diane asked her what fragrance she was using and she said, “Just my hand sanitizer.” That was unexpected. Diane explained the reason for her request, that C had lost her Mom no long ago, and that Lisa’s fragrance reminded her of her Mom.

Lisa teared up and walked away from the table and went back to work but she was truly mulling a proper response for Ceiarra because she returned after a bit, tears streaming, and explained that she truly believed that C’s Mom had been there at that moment because our loved ones are always close, even when they’re ‘gone’. Then she placed a bottle of strawberry scented hand sanitizer on the table as a gift for Ceiarra. A little later she dropped off a piece of chocolate cake of some sort and said “hope you aren’t allergic to peanuts.”

Needless to say, Lisa got a good tip and a hug from Ceiarra before we left. It was a good stop. One of those times when you know that you were led to a place for a reason. It was good for both Lisa and Ceiarra.

Now we’re back in our respective rooms settling down for the night. We plan to revisit the beach on our way out of town tomorrow on the next leg of this trip that will find us in Crescent City. Should be an interesting arrival there because even though Diane received an email confirmation of her reservation, she received another email reporting that it had been cancelled for some obscure reason. Interesting. There will be more on that tomorrow.

Now some photos, some of which relate to other days.

Here’s a tribute to one of Diane’s high school class mates that we found on the Walk of Fame …

The girls, in the elevator, on the way back to the room after retrieving them from Universal Studios. I have no idea what they’re looking at.

End of a Rough day.

A puppy treat at one of the rest stops we chose to use.

This breakfast would have been really good if the biscuits would have been waaaaaay smaller.

We got an education at this cafe. It’s located in Boonville, CA, out in the middle of about a zillion wineries. This is the place where inhabitants developed an entire language called Boontling which they used to confuse non-natives to the area. It is currently spoken by only about 100 residents. This restaurant is the location of choice for those folks to gather and share news. Interesting.

On our way to Glass Beach the girls found a squirrel that wasn’t afraid of them.

Lydia spent most of her time catching and harassing hermit crabs while the rest of us checked out the beach.

This is what Glass Beach looks like. Pretty awesome.

Even while standing on an awesome beach, folks gathered to watch Lydia catch crabs. This particular one was making it’s way toward Diane who was semi-sitting on the rock in about the place Lydia is working.

She finally captured it but we wouldn’t let her keep it.

Girls just having fun.

That’s Diane’s hand holding a handful of beach that I provided for her to display.

C found a small cave

That’s it.