The house I grew up in from second grade on. No we didn’t have a blue garage! What were these people thinking!
I grabbed the front of the house photo from Redfin.
After my aunt and I left Robe Valley and my mother’s ashes, we drove to my hometown, Snohomish, Wash. During our journey we detoured up Lord’s Hill to my old house that I lived in from second grade until I left for college. My mom sold it after “the divorce.” It was too expensive for her to keep up on alimony payments.
First Street, the touristy part of my hometown.Another view of First Street Snohomish.
We stopped for lunch at Andy’s Fish House. The Pacific Northwest has the best seafood. I had chowder, salad and a piece of cod. My aunt had fish and chips. It was delish!
While I’m posting about food, I had sushi with my BFF from college at Oto Sushi near my brother’s house. This was called “Skinny Girl Roll” because it didn’t have rice. It was so fresh and yummy.View from my brother’s patio overlooking a small lake. It’s a gorgeous home and location. Notice they have one of my flamingos in the backyard!
My nephew played Moonlight Sonata and Für Elise as a tribute to my mom. He used his Covid shutdown days to learn piano!
The counter at 13 Coins, one of my mom and dad’s favorite restaurants when I was growing up.
My aunt and I spent the night at SeaTac airport after our adventure in Robe Valley and Snohomish. Next door to our hotel was 13 Coins which was a favorite memory of mine with my mom. My aunt said it was a place she and her husband frequented in the 1970s. Sitting at the counter is more exciting than in the booths, because it’s where all the cooking takes place.
The line action at 13 Coins by the Seattle airport.Mom, her older brother and my aunt who is 11 years younger than Mom.
My aunt shared a small scrapbook she made for my mom’s 70th birthday. This was a photo in it that I loved.
Olive immediately attacked my suitcase when I came home. She made the suitcase her perch for hours.
Thanks for taking a look at my week in the Pacific Northwest.
Olive blocked me from packing on my way out of town.
Whenever I get my suitcase out, Olive jumps in. She does’t like it when I’m gone. Usually it means she gets boarded. When we left for a week at Christmas, we took her to a new boarding place. The one she had been to before and was kind of used to went out of business. The last place was brand new and had three-story cat condos with holes to climb through to the different levels. The top floor had a TV.
Olive freaked out. I got calls that she wasn’t eating, drinking water which meant her other bodily functions weren’t happening.
Eventually they moved her into a storage closet, away from the other cats. That settled her down.
In Olive’s mind, when the suitcase comes out, something bad will happen.
Olive wasn’t taking any chances. She slept in the suitcase for hours.
Today I’m headed home to my husband and Olive. Thank you for helping me through my week!
Olive has discovered a fun game to play while I make the bed. She jumps on the bed and hides under the covers. Her crazy polydactyl claws get stuck .
Last Thursday, I had a dental appointment to get my teeth cleaned. An hour before my appointment the power went out.
I checked my iphone and the power company predicted power would be restored in four hours. They didn’t give the cause.
I called the dental office to let them know I couldn’t get my car out of the garage because the power was out.
The receptionist told me to pull the red cord and then I could manually lift the garage door. I hung up, pulled the red cord, but couldn’t lift the garage door. So I asked my husband to try.
“No. I’m not going to mess with the garage door,” he said. He wanted to leave well enough alone and wait for the power to go on. “Just call them and reschedule,” he said.
The dentist was able to swap my appointment with somebody on Monday morning. It was all good.
A neighbor called us and said she was at the hair dresser and would we please go to her house and invite her husband over. He had been walking their dog when the power went out. He was sitting freezing in the back yard with their dog. He had exited the locked house through the garage and without power, the buttons to open the garage door were worthless.
The wife said she asked him to come over to our house, but he didn’t want to be a bother. My husband returned with our neighbor and Rascal, a poodle bichon, a few minutes later.
The power was restored a few hours earlier than predicted and life was good.
But then Friday morning came. We had an electrician over to see why a few outlets inside and lights outside don’t work. My husband clicked to open the garage door for the electrician. The motor went on but the door didn’t open!
I saw a sticker with the garage door company name and number. I quickly called them in a panic. After all our dishwasher AND garbage disposal already quit working earlier. I was worried everything was going wrong in our “new” house all at once.
The garage door repair man came a few hours later. I told him we had had a power outage the day before and I didn’t know if that had anything to do with the double-sized garage door not opening.
“Did anyone pull on the red cord and manually open and close the garage door?” he asked.
“No, absolutely not,” my husband said. “We didn’t want to do that for the exact reason that we could hurt something.”
I was standing slightly behind my husband and sheepishly raised my hand. “I did,” I said.
The garage door man climbed a ladder under the garage motor, pressed a lever and presto! The garage door worked. The price tag: $230.
“Why didn’t you tell me you pulled the red cord?” my husband asked.
“You didn’t ask and the dentist told me to,” I explained. My husband shook his head and walked away.
The garage door man said he’d service our garage door and he also fixed the buttons outside which have never worked. So, now we can also get locked out of our house if the power goes out while we’re on a walk.
What embarrassing things have you done that compare with me pulling the red cord?
I tried to write my morning pages, but Olive had other ideas.
Olive has structure to her life. She has a routine that she closely follows.
5 a.m. She munches a bit of dry food.
5:10 a.m. Olive jumps on the bed to snuggle in and sleeps with us and stays on the bed after we get up.
9 a.m. She goes to her grassy patch and watches birds through the sliding glass door.
10 a.m. She sleeps on the rug in the sun.
11 a.m. Olive enters my husband’s office to jump on his lap.
2 p.m. Olive walks into the casita and wants me to stop writing. She wants me to read or watch TV on the sofa so she can lay down on my stomach.
4 p.m. It’s time for Friskies ‘Lil Soup. It’s a treat I give her after I call “Kitty Soup” and she answers “Meow-oup.”
And on it goes.
Yesterday there was no kitty on our bed. She didn’t snuggle us. She didn’t try to get on my lap while I wrote my morning pages. She wasn’t on her grassy patch or in my husband’s office.
She walked nonchalantly into the Casita a few hours later and stood under the end table by the sofa. From there she stared at me. Then she walked away and we haven’t seen her since.
I feel like I’m getting the cold shoulder from our cat. I wonder what did I do wrong to be treated with indifference? Or, perhaps she is reminding me that she’s a cat.
What are your pets’ routines? Do you think something is wrong when they vary from routines?
Olive hanging out on top of magazines with my stories inside. She doesn’t want anyone to read them.
I literally dusted off two picture book manuscripts that I wrote 20 years ago — thanks to my blogging community.
I was motivated again by blogger LA for her leap entering a writing competition. In her comments section, I lamented that I had not fulfilled my dream of having a book published. Another blogger along with LA encouraged me to keep going.
Although I’ve won contests, been published by magazines, websites and newspapers — that elusive book deal hasn’t happened.
I realized that it won’t happen — because I quit submitting to agents and publishers two years ago.
When I said I dusted off two picture book manuscripts, it’s because I discovered they aren’t on my laptop, nor are they on icloud. They’re on backup devices that no longer work with my current system. It has been 20 years since they were on my computer or backed up. That’s a lifetime in nano years.
I wondered if I had thrown out all my manuscripts when we moved? If so, my work would be lost. After searching the house and garage, I found two notebooks that I used to keep copies of my manuscripts, a spread sheet of submissions and a bevy of rejection letters. It wasn’t sad to look at the rejection letters, some had personal handwritten notes and were encouraging.
Long gone are the days of the snail mail submission with an SASE (self addressed stamped envelope). I won’t receive hand written notes or form letters in the mail. Everything is done online and many publishers and agents don’t send rejections. If they aren’t interested, they don’t respond. Fortunately, some do reject via email, so I’ll know from those agents and publishers if my submission got lost in the ethers — or not.
I quickly typed the two manuscripts into my laptop and I’ll be off pursing my dream once again.
What are your goals or dreams? Have you stuck with it or did it go by the wayside?
I saw this nicely decorated lion on a morning walk around the corner from the Christmas VRBO.
We’ve left the VRBO and we’re headed home slowly. It took a ton of energy and hard work to pack 12 people and to get the house in shape for the housekeepers. I’m waiting to hear that my son’s car has arrived safely to the Bay Area. They were the last car to leave along with us at noon.
We decided to spend the night with our dear friends who live in the Santa Barbara area and get up at dawn to make the nine-hour trek home. The packing and cleaning left us too tired and too late to make the drive. Plus, I’m hoping for better weather tomorrow. Another storm is currently walloping the coast.
I miss Olive the cat and hope she’s not too angry with me for boarding her. In our new home and her new career as an indoor cat, she’s become very affectionate. I have bonded with this lovable kitty more than ever. The goal is to stop on our way home to pick her up from cat jail before they close.
The view from the master bedroom deck in our Christmas VRBO.The master bedroom French doors to the patio with spectacular views.Sunset
Happy New Year! I’m ready for 2022. How about you? Are you looking forward to saying goodbye to 2021?
