74
I’ve seen a couple of comments lately from people saying they are 74 and waaah waaah waaah. I just got here, but I am telling you the only difference is that life is a lot more fun, and I have so much to do.
I always piss money away around my birthday, especially since the cakes have gotten so bad there is no festivity in them. This year i have bought some pastel board, hoping, planning, to delve, if not dive, back into a messy new medium. It occurs to me I should try OIL pastels, OMG, another hole of the rabbit. Well, I have some . .
I love the sale shelf at Blick to see what has been damaged and discarded and discontinued. I bought three Talens Pantone pens, a brush end and a wedge–later looked them up to see what the plan was. They are leaky, dark, not anything near the lovely pale colors on the caps, except for the yellow. Oddly, I also bought a jar of the yellow in what turns out to be a refill source for the yellow pen. It’s the lovely delicious sunflower color I am drawn to lately. The journal I am using this spring and summer, the volunteer Wachendorfia that was rose up defiantly out of my strawberry pot, the huge yellow Epyphyllum that was one of three I gleaned from LB’s back yard cleanup, etc.
We had a nice party back there, I made my own cake this year! Gluten free white cake, for my friends who can’t eat the wheat, strawberries, whipped cream, and grass-fed buttercream frosting, it was a hit, but a poor substitute for real cake leftovers out of the freezer–grainy and not satisfying, and too sweet. I actually got sick from a buttercream OD. Not a good idea to make your own cake . . . and eat it too.
I sprang for a $225 professional repair job on a 1933 Remington Rand Model 1 typewriter Art was disposing of. The cover on the case had deteriorated completely, so I painted it with Carbon Black acrylic. I did some typing on that, now it is in the corner under the table.
I had already had some bodywork done on the van, and while visiting V. in Santa Rosa I had the Westy detailed in and out. I still need some paint touched up, but the rust and dents that were haunting me are gone, and the rustoleum colored underpaint matches pretty well. To get it smogged I had the muffler and exhaust pipe replaced, and a clunking noise resulted in an almost-free fix to the upgraded sway bar.
So yeah, it’s a good yeat, and hella better than some others.
Another Oregon
November, 2024
I left home not very early on Monday, November 4, because AGAIN with the bad battery, AAA, and a replacement, under warranty. In fact, the same guy, Don, came to switch it out. I hosed the van off, stopped for gas, didn’t waste time at the carwash because I was going to stop at Varmint’s for coffee and to see the new foster kitten. I made it to Van Damme by 3:30 PM. I was heading for Jughandle, but the Ranger said there was no camping there. Just lucky I pulled in. $38 + $1 for a 5 minute shower.
In the morning I had wifi but no phone signal, so I emailed my safe arrival, and regrets that I would not be in town for dinner. There was a beach, a forest, a hike, and my little sanctuary. In Eureka I stopped at a thrift store and found a perfect shirt, and texted my cousin a song about it I made up on the spot. Up the coast at 5 PM I had a guy riding my bumper, so I turned in at Humbug Mountain campground, where the nice camp host brought me a bowl of chicken and pasta in homemade tomato sauce, and I gave him one of the large pink tomatoes I had bought at a farm stand. Camp site $18, free showers, plus a snack. Only drawback, I had to sleep with an eye mask to block out the light shining through the curtain.
By Wednesday afternoon I hadn’t dawdled long enough, my cousin was not yet home. I had driven all the way to Pacific City and could not find camping, so I turned around and headed south, past Lincoln City to Beverly Beach. I hiked all around and took the first photographs of the trip. What a beautiful campground, with a big marsh in the middle, $21. More than half of it was closed for the winter, and it took some backtracking to locate the open (free?) showers.
Up the coast again, I stopped at a little antique store in Bay City where two little chairs sat on the sidewalk, $19 each and I considered I would (not) be able to put them in the van and still camp at my cousins’. I decided to risk it, and they were still there when I drove back five days later. I also bought a little graniteware pitcher for heating coffee, as well as the cashmere scarf in a thrift store in Lincoln City.
My cousin texted that they were home, so I headed up to Hammond. I spent five days there, and hiked through nearby Fort Stevens almost every day. The herd of Elk were sometimes tricky to navigate around. My cousin has vast quantities of family memorabilia, old photos and documents, and I found some surprising information and filled a memory card with files to sort through and try to remember who was who. On Veteran’s Day I drove to Astoria and wandered through thrift and antique stores, found some gift items, and brought home dinner from Mo’s for everybody.
Then I was off to my Sister’s for a few days, which turned into an extra week when a huge storm, a “bomb cyclone” came through. I spent days doing five 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles, fixing my sister’s gate, and navigating around the electrical installation that had delayed my trip since before October. One day we drove to Depoe Bay to see the king tide splashing over the sea wall, and to eat chowder.
There was still a bit of storm on my return trip down the coast, but I made good time, camping at Floras Lake, and Standish-Hickey, which was empty except for the camp host and me, and some deer. I was home Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and enjoyed the holiday curled up in bed with a nice steak.
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