Friends

July is flying by.  I am still going to pulmonary rehab which is supervised gym exercises, three mornings a week.  There's a nurse to check your pulse, etc. and volunteers to make sure you do what you're supposed to and don't hurt yourself.  My volunteer coach is a woman my age with much the same breathing problems.  She's becoming a friend and I enjoying seeing her so often.  Most of the rest of the customers are cardiac rehab people who've had open heart surgery.  I met a couple, she brings her hubbie in and they live right across the parking lot from me in a second floor condo.  I've started meeting her in the pool some afternoons. She's cheery and outgoing and I like her a lot too.  I just pulled my head out of the sand and realized it was good to meet new friends and why.

Several of my friends have moved far away recently and I miss them but I've also had three friends die since last fall.  Two were mothers of my sons' friends from our old home town, and the third I met when I worked with her husband years ago.  They were all younger than I. Vickie and her husband spent hours with me and mine watching our tall sons at football games and wrestling matches. Our two youngest sons were like bookends. Blond, heavy weight wrestlers who also played football together.  The coach had to order helmets special for both of them because their heads were so big.  Those helmets are still just sitting there on the shelf since they graduated in 1992.  No one has shown up to fit them.  The stadium was right on the river and the wind blew into the visitors section with a vengeance. We'd pile all the blankets we'd brought up to our chins. Vickie and I cheered ourselves hoarse when the team won their homecoming game for the first time EVER when the boys were seniors. It was great!  She was a sweet, loving woman.

Bjorg's family lived around the corner from us.  She, like my son's father, was from Norway. They too had two sons the ages of ours.  She worked for the airlines and traveled all over the world. She was always up for fun and not surprisingly passed away having fun at a lunch with many of her friends.

I met Mary years and years ago when I worked with her husband.  Her kids were toddlers when mine were in high school. We used to go fishing in Canada with them and she and I would walk the beaches of Vancouver Island with her little boys. She had traveled east to be with family and have surgery on her shoulder I think.  She never came out of it. 

Life just rearranges itself without consulting us.  These stories are a lot like your stories I'd guess. This post rearranged itself.  I was thinking about how I needed to squeeze those 3-day weekends around rehab sometime, maybe skip a Friday and go visit people that I haven't seen in a very long time. Then it dawned on me why those people were on my mind so much.  People I haven't seen, maybe haven't called in awhile.  Vickie, Mary, and Bjorg, God keep you my friends, you meant a lot to us all.

Family

I've been thinking about my grandparents lately. Dreaming about them.  Dreaming their homes. I still remember their faces but I can't hear their voices anymore, just my maternal grandmother's Grace's laugh. I wish I had be able to have more talks with them when I was older but college intervened and marriage and before I had children they were all gone.

Both of my grandmother's, Grace and Laura, were short, barely 5', and had very curly hair, one dark brunette and the other auburn. Both were of Irish descent.  Both grandfather's were tall, over six feet. Or so I've been told, my maternal grandfather was never in the picture. Dad's poppa was home and retired as long as I could remember. He had been a logger and a mill worker, and was missing three fingers on his right hand. Gone in accidents at work. He's one of the reasons I just shake my head when there are calls for people to work until they are 70.  There are so many jobs that simply wear a body out, sometimes long before 65.

Grandpa Richard came to this country from England when he was about 12, with his brother Tom who was around 14. They were put into foster care in New York City.  Their family was from Scotland before London.  Their mother died when they were very young, about 4 and 6 and their father was absent and somehow they raised themselves on the streets of London's East End until Tom went into the British Navy and Grandpa became a cabin boy on another sailing ship. My Dad didn't think there would be much in the way of records of Grandpa's family as they lived near the docks and to quote my Dad "much of the neighborhood was bombed flat in WW2."

My maternal grandfather Fred is something of a mystery. A mystery four curious granddaughters unraveled somewhat over time. We were told he had died in WW1. He had been a soldier in the war but survived. By the time we discovered this he had died and it turned out he lived not 20 miles from me in King County, WA .  So close. But who knows if he would have wanted to see any of us.

So next week I am taking my little pile of gleaned data to the local LDS Church Genealogy Library here in town.  They are free, open to the public, and will assist me in my search.

Meanwhile I have been dreaming of the honeysuckle that completely covered my Dad's parents front porch in the summer.  I used to nap on a lounger in the shade and listen to the bees hum.  And the scent, that wonderful scent. 

 

Let me see. What can I say?  Been offline for awhile.  Desk top crashed and burned, got a new laptop with Windows 8 something, hate, hate, hate. Got my pictures on Dropbox before the crash and the files I wanted to keep. Supposed to get a free Windows 10 upgrade the end of July.  Meanwhile not much in the way of pictures here.

Today it will be in the low 100's again today.  And probably the next day, and the next to infinity and beyond.  I'm praying that some how we are spared a huge fire season.  Hooray for air conditioning. We've got some smoke in the air as there's a fire in progress about 30 miles away up in the Blue Mountains in one of those steeply cliffed , brushy, heavily treed places. Prayers for the fire fighters up there in this heat.

Baked chicken in the oven early today. Yum, chicken salad for dinner and maybe a nice sandwich or two with cranberry sauce in it. Then I'll make some muffins. Or not.

The unusual heat occurred just as the birdie fledglings are popping out of the nests. The protocol is to leave them to their parents to care for if they are stranded on the ground unless they are injured.  My eldest son, who walks to work, saw two fledgling crows on the ground flopping around when he was walking back to work after lunch. He let them some water.  On his way home he saw one had gone and the other was lying on it's side in the gutter.  It was still alive so he took it to a local veterinarian who receives wildlife for Blue Mountain Wildlife rescue about 60 miles from here.  They take the birdies to hopefully recover and be released into the wild. I know many people are not crazy about crows but they are interesting to me and they clean up carrion and are protected by the Migratory Bird act.  BMW will care for it and release it into the wild. The vet said the heat here really came at the wrong time and has had a big negative impact on the bird population here, all kinds of birds. The babies pop out of the nest and keel over from the heat.

Life has slowed down considerably in my world.  I pretty much stay inside in the afternoons or go somewhere cool. I like the library. Get a comfy chair and get lost in a book.  Then there is a pool here. I did take a class to make an Appalachian egg basket (yes, ha, ha, basket weaving).  It was fun and the basket is cute.  Meanwhile I read and watch lots of Netflix until it's late enough to wander outside again, although mostly I don't.

My sister and 13 year-old nephew are coming tomorrow.  Driving up the Columbia Gorge.  I hope they leave very early.  Gaggy hot tomorrow plus the 4th of July weekend is beginning.  We will go watch fireworks from afar and hope nothing more catches on fire. I am hopeful.  While they aren't banned here it been really quiet unlike previous years.  Nice small town festival in the biggest and very shady park here.  We'll go, water bottles in hand, hats on.  It 's supposed to top out at 100 which is an improvement.  Mad dogs etc. go out in the noon day sun.  My youngest son got married there nearly 20 years ago under the bandstand in August.  It was 113.  Bit much for a Scandinavian/Celtic girl from Seattle.  So far so good.