A Good Visit

It was another miserably hot day today. It was up to 98 degrees before noon. There were lots of thunderheads off to the east which gradually moved this way, but there was no moisture with them. Our tenant has started harvesting wheat, so that's probably a good thing.

I had wanted to go into Moses Lake this morning to visit Phyl, but we decided to wait until late afternoon and see if we could get Vic to go out to dinner with us. Phyl was restless when we got there, but after she had her meds she seemed calmer. She did not ever open her eyes while we were there.

We went with Vic over to Denny's. Forry had their shrimp skewers, but Vic and I settled for breakfast. It seemed a bit strange not to have Phyl there with us. After dinner we visited a bit with Pam, Curt and Sarah and heard a great story about Vic teaching Phyl to drive before they were married.

Time in the Pool

It was a bit cooler today with STRANGE weather. It was sort of overcast, then clear skies, then lots of thunderheads around, then a short shower, then clear skies. Now it's sort of hazy and still overcast looking.

I spent most of the day reading, then went over to Diane's this afternoon to swim. My back is feeling much better (I can walk without the cane...), but I still took it easy. We just jogged in the water and treaded water, nothing very engergetic or aerobic.

A Lazy Day...

Today was a very lazy day. It was really too hot outside to want to do much of anything. I'm certainly enjoying having the Kindle. Today I was reading another of the Sheriff Brady books. I like the way JA Jance lays out her plots -- she's hard to out guess!

Tonight it's very smokey and hazy outside. We drove to the top of the hill and drove a ways to see if the fires were anywhere close. It's pretty smokey all the way towards Moses Lake, but we didn't see anything close.

Another Hot Day...

We came up to Spokane this morning so that Forry could see his orthopaedist about his knee. We had a few errands to do, but Forry's main intention was to be sure and get his Costco polish dog for lunch!

We had been invited to dinner this evening at the home of one friends who worked with me at the AHEC. Helen and Jerry had also invited Ginger, another of our former co-workers, who we haven't seen for a couple of years.

It was a very pleasant evening. We started out with a glass of wine and a veggie and shrimp plate while we listened to the last of President Obama's press conference. Jerry had made a Hot Chili Bean Salad that was really great (I had to ask for the recipe -- it will be a good one for potluck dinners!).

I'm not sure how warm it go today -- I saw a couple of thermometers that read 97 and 96 as we were driving around.

HOT!

It was 102 degrees Fahrenheit when we left the ranch this noon to head for dentist appointments in Moses Lake. The really nice thing about getting our teeth cleaned is that my niece Becky is the dental hygienist! She's such a sweetheart! (not that I'm at all prejudiced...)

It's not been a real good week. I had gotten a steroid shot in my back before I left to go to camp knowing that it would be sore for a day or two, but then it should be great and I could walk without pain again. (I've been getting the shots every six-eight months for a couple of years.) NOT this time! I had to resort to finding some heavy duty pain meds left from my knee surgeries almost four years ago... When I finally got a hold of my doctor (we had played telephone tag last week as there is no cell phone reception at Camp Camrec), he said he had reviewed both the recent C Arm X-rays and the original MRI and is beginning to think that there has been enough change that he'd like to have one of the surgeons look at them and get a second opinion re possible surgery...

Not what I wanted to hear! Sister Sherry had given me a purple cane when we were visiting her earlier (to wade through the dogs when they all crowd around) and I've been putting it to use.

Naturally I am cranky 'cause it hurts and my crankiness is greatly increased by my inability to access the internet at the ranch! I miss keeping track of people's blogs and Facebook comments.

Back From Camp

We finished up with Junior Camp about 10 AM yesterday. I took one of the boys with me as far as Moses Lake where we met up with Pastor Terry at Vic and Phyl's, then he rode the rest of the way home with Pastor as he lives not too far from the church. I stayed at Phyls for a while, visited with Pam and Vic and just held Phyls hand for a bit. Pam says she hasnt been very responsive the last few days...



I stopped at the grocery store for milk and juice, headed home and shelled! I had gotten a steroid shot on the Monday before I left for camp. Usually I am sore for a day or two, but not this time. It's been pretty miserable.

At Leavenworth City Park

We're at the city park in Leavenworth just long enough to read email and upload a note. We'll be done at camp tomorrow morning at ten and will head back to the ranch after that.

Lake Wenatchee

It's a hot summer afternoon and what better place to spend it but at a lake? The Camp Director hired a local school bus, complete with driver, and brought all of the campers and counselors to the State Park at Lake Wenatchee. I'm sitting at a table in the shade under a pine tree overlooking the beach.

We've got a nice group of kids -- there were eight boys (one was so homesick his mother came and got him this noon) and seven girls with three counselors and two counselors in training. The campers are all fourth and fifth and six graders.

What happens when you have four boys in a cabin when their counselor steps out to go to a meeting? And if said boys have a can of bear (pepper) spray -- brought in case they run into a bear while hiking? The boys do need to check it out, of course! One inhaled a good mouthful while the other three mainly escaped without ill effects. So my first crisis was a frantic boy coming to the lodge with his mouth burning. I put him to work rinsing his mouth out with water over and over -- while warning him NOT to swallow. When the can of bear spray was confiscated it turned out thankfully that rinsing was the recommended -- and only remedy...

Later that evening, Grandson Varick came in complaining that he'd gotten in to some stinging nettles on the palm of his hand. While he's rinsing the hand off and I'm looking for StingEze, he started saying the back of his hand was now burning. We found a 1 1/4 inch black and yellow caterpillar stuck to the side of his shirt that he had brushed his hand against. He had some nasty welts from it that were fortunately gone this morning. After I got the caterpillar unstuck from his shirt with a paper towel, I flicked it into the toilet. I wish now that I had saved it so that we could figure out what kind it was!

Since then I've had one girl with a couple of small slivers -- I hope that is the extent of it, or it could be a L-O-N-G week!

Off to CAMP CAMREC

I getting ready to leave to be the "first aid person" for the Junior age camp at Camp Camrec, which is the camp that Washington Mennonite Fellowship owns between Leavensworth and Plain, Washington.

I don't know what the wi-fi situation is up there, but I may not be able to post my blog every day. I will try to write something every day and post it when I get an opportunity and will be back at the ranch on Saturday, the 18th.

My oldest grandson Varick (who will be ten in a couple weeks) will be one of the campers. It will be great to be able to spend a little time with him!

Storm Damage!

Yesterday evening's wind and the blowing dust finally slacked off a bit and we could occasionally hear rain drops. As we were getting ready for bed, (Forry was already undressed...) I thought I heard someone yelling. After I put my shoes on and went outside, I could hear voices from over by the lane (Auntie Violet is parked by the windbreak about 200 feet from the lane) and lots of high bright lights. I hollered at Forry to come out and see what was going on. He quickly realized that linemen were over working on one of the electric poles. They had three lit-up trucks over there, one with a big bucket. As we watched, they brought down the bucket, turned their rigs around and left. When we went back inside, Forry checked and sure enough, we were running on battery power, Power flowed from the batteries through the inverter as the power from the lines was off. But it wasn't too much later when the power came back on.

Auntie Violet's setup is such that she switched over to motorhome power without us even noticing it -- there wasn't enough of a glitch to mess up the clock on the microwave oven! And the refrigerator automatically switches over to run on propane instead of electricity.

We had a rain then off and on through the night. The ground was actually wet this morning! Later when we left for Spokane, we could see that there were ropes attached to the pole in the lane (which was sagging), being used as guy wires to hold it upright. Then when we got to the top of the hill and headed east on Rosenoff Road, this is what we saw:

The one pole was completely snapped off. The one behind that you can see in the distance, just had the top part of the pole hanging from the wires -- with no sign of the bottom portion of the pole! There were two more poles like this within the next mile.

This evening when we returned, there were new poles lying on the ground beside the four snapped poles on Rosenoff and another lying beside the leaning pole here in the lane.