Spring?

A grandgirl and her ladybug.

This week ends the latest set of freeze warnings for nights, and quite a bit of sun, maybe up to 76° today.  The ladybugs have returned.  I think I have several kinds of spring fever.  The house is getting cleaner by the day.  This morning I'll take the window cleaner in hand and get after some of those smudges.  Yesterday I got my hair trimmed up.  I've been letting it grow for nearly a year and pruning my bangs myself.  My hairdresser friend Tina took me in right away when I called and fixed my hair.  She did a great job.  She put in some kind of conditioner that smelled heavenly and even after a shower and shampoo at home my hair feels so smooth. 

Normally I wouldn't wash my hair so soon after having all that care lavished on it but I went home and attempted to garden, good for the yard not so good for me.  I got some weeds pulled, pots cleared and fertilized and planted petunias and pansies.  Then the hay fever hit, dust, mold, and plant bits.  Hopped out of my garden gear and into the shower.  Washing and antihistamines helped but I spent the evening red eyed and sneezing, but with lovely hair.  I think I will bribe my grandgirls to do the outside spring cleanup.

My second Tai Chi class was a good as the first.  I still find my feet lagging behind my arms but will practice at home today.  I leave class happy and filled with energy.  Could this stuff really work?  Our class is all over age 70 including our instructor who is in his 80's.  He warns us to be careful of our knees and stops for every now and then to do loosening up movements so no one gets in over their head so to speak.  As easy as it looks when he does his moves it is actually a bit of work but so graceful, like dancing.  I am looking forward to getting both halves of my body to dance together. 

April Beginings

Today I am off to my first Tai Chi class.  It's the restart of an exercise program for me.  I fell a couple of times in the last year and have been inactive ever since.  I used to go to the gym several times a week.  While I haven't gained any weight my muscles turned to mush during that recovery year.  My balance is still off and I think this class will help fix that.  I'm also looking forward to meeting new people. 

There has been just enough April sun here to give me itchy feet.  I love getting in the van and seeing new and very old things in the Oregon/Washington area.  This spring I'd like to start on Idaho.  For now I am touring old pictures from April of  2010, Sumpter, Oregon, a tiny remnant of a gold boom.  Gold was discovered in Sumpter in 1862.  In 1912 a dredge was built for placer mining. Three dredges were built between 1912 and 1934.  The hills of tailings are still intact after 100 years, so much so they appear on the maps to the west of Phillips Lake and on Google maps.  A reminder for Earth Day of the long lasting impact of mining and other industrial operations.  This area is between 6,500 to 7,000 feet in the beautiful Oregon Cascades.  I have COPD and could only move a few yards at a time at a snail's pace there.  If you have breathing problems be careful; I'd check with your doctor before going but it's more than worth the trip.

 

Sumpter, Oregon, old gold mining site.  This is all that remains of the Sumpter Bank.  Just the vault.

 

Phillips Lake on the Sumpter Stage Highway back to Baker City, Oregon.   It's behind Mason Dam and extends all the way back up to the mining tailings.  Lots of fishing and camping here.

 

Old log barn on the Sumpter Stage Highway

If anyone would like to contribute to help the survivors of the Boston bombings I found these two on the Boston Herald page today.

• The One Fund: Gov. 
Deval Patrick and Mayor Thomas M. Menino 
announced the formation of the fund to help the people most affected by Monday’s tragic events. John Hancock has committed $1 million to the fund, and many other Boston business leaders have also stepped up to help. The money, Menino said, will 
go to help the victims 
“physically and psychologically in the future.” 
To donate, go to  One Fund Boston.

• The Salvation Army has mobile kitchens to provide food and beverages to those in need and will provide counseling for first responders and victims. To donate, go to Salvation Army.  You can select Boston as the locale for your contribution.

Other bloggers have pointed out scam charities are popping up in the wake of the bombings and you should be wary in your giving.  You can check organizations out with a little research.  I like to stick with the known ones.  I searched for checking out charities and got many sites including the BBB and other sites that show which charities send what percentage of their collections to charity.

Outside town the fields are greening up but not all the trees have budded out yet.  The sycamores are some of the last to leaf.  The sun has left us today and the tops of the neighboring Blue Mountains have snow on them again.  I meant to get more pictures in the sun yesterday but got busy hauling stuff to the local St. Vinnies and cleaning the house, shoulda done earlier or later. 

I've been signing online petitions protesting the chained CPI, and started calling yesterday.  Ronni Bennett's blog http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/ has information today about who to call.  The amounts of money removed by from us by a chained CPI may not matter to legislators who have fine health bennies and a good salary but those amounts would make a quite difference for purchasing food, medications, and paying utility bills out of the slender budgets of many "Social Security beneficiaries, certain veterans, certain disabled people" to quote Ronni. 

My two sisters are now post breast cancer surgery and post radiation.  Both are struggling with having had a disease that they will now have to watch out for forever.  We are both blessed with such good outcomes (not perfect but good) and concerned for the future.  It's hard to live your life as usual when you need to be attentive to this forever.  It's the same if you have heart disease, or diabetes, or any other of those diseases which can kill or hurt you in some way.  For the most part we are a resilient group and a family of problem solvers.  Still by the end of this three of us were taking antidepressants.  I'm currently trying to get off mine, they don't agree with me.  They gave me bad dreams and me twitches in places I didn't know could twitch.  The medicine also left me constantly idling in neutral, helpful for a bit I suppose but not good in the long run. 

I was told they were not addictive but then why can't you just stop them without repercussions, what are brain zaps? Hmm?  So three months of them and I am done, done, done.  Maybe it's time to make a tin foil hat instead.  So I looked up tin foil hats on the images search on G00gle and wow!  Some were quite creative.  Quite a selection but truly I liked this tee shirt below best, not enough to buy it, be fun to magic marker up an old tee.  I think I will buy a roll of heavy duty foil and the next time my grandkids come over and have "nothing to do" I will set them to making their own tin foil hats.

 

 

My grandkids and two of their cousins on Easter 2013.

I think we hit a record number this year, at least for Easter.  Twenty-four of us aged one through 90 gathered for an midday egg hunt and Easter lunch, 10 children  in all.  The babies got little plastic eggs with colorful fruit flavored cereal in them. I knew that stuff was really candy and not really cereal.  We were blessed with a wonderful, warm sunny day and the special hostess talents of my DIL's mother, my co-grandmother.  She has this mob over to her lovely home on a regular basis.  After lunch several people sat down and went to sleep in their chairs.  Only one baby napped.

I had two more grandkids from Oregon during their spring break last week (ours is this week) and spent Saturday driving them back to meet-up with their folks at the Maryhill Museum.  That way no one has to drive all the way to Portland to here and back.  We picnicked there with a birthday cake for the just turned 12 year old, and turkey and Havarti cheese sandwiches with assorted kid chosen extras. The weather was with us there too, sunny with a little wind but the trees sheltered us and let the sun shine through.  I forgot my camera.  Again. But here I am with my sister Susan on the day I picked up the kids.  Her daughter took this.  I loved that wrought iron fence with the stained glass inserts in the background.  As it faces south the light comes through it most of the time. 

 

There is an assortment of large art pieces located around the grounds. The horse was the kid's favorite, mine too.

 

 

 

 

Got home Saturday evening post-child-return and did some food prep for the Sunday gathering. Stayed up too late, looked at the house and decided restoration could wait until Monday.  I had a very hard time getting myself out of bed in Sunday morning but did, creaking and grumping all the way.  After the Easter lunch I wandered home and fell into a deep sleep for a couple of hours.  Then I slept 10 hours that night.  It's nice to be good at something even if it's sleeping.  Good week even if I am sleeping through half of this one.