Green

I have always been a re-user, haunter of yardsales and thrift shops. My grandmother Carter recycled and reused before it was fashionable, breadbags were turned inside out to be reused, plastic ware was washed. I remember hauling the scrap bucket down to the edge of the marsh when I came to visit so the wild animals could eat leftovers rather than let it go to waste. When my first was born he got a ton of new clothes but all of his furniture was used - my mother in law had the changing table I'd found repainted, Setsu and I did the yardsales on the weekends. When Adam out grew the furniture it got handed off and reused. When Jackson was born it was back to the yardsales and he wore cloth diapers due to a skin allergy - had I known it was that easy I would have done cloth the first time around too! 

This is not to say that we've never had new furniture or used throwaway stuff - we have. Jackson got brand new furniture when we moved to Maidsville WV - and when we left we left it behind for the family that moved in. We got brand new living room furniture when we lived in Mapletown - and kept it for a whole year. We gave it to the lovely young woman that bought one of our flips because we found something we liked better on Craigslist and she couldn't afford furniture after closing. We've found anything we buy new - is not worth it in the end, it's simply no fun. I love when we need something, it's days and sometimes weeks of sifting through estate sales and FB Marketplace - finding that perfect piece. Sometimes we just yardsale on the weekend for a fun thing to do, you get to see a lot of small towns and back roads that you never would have , places you would have never known where there. And of course the years of house flipping has made us very cheap - did you know you can buy someone's old high end kitchen for a fraction of the cost? A refurbished claw foot tub for next to nothing? Left over construction  windows? It's the same with furniture - I was looking around the house yesterday and realized that 95% of our house is furnished with used furniture. 95%. And if you don't like something you don't feel bad when you get rid of it, not like there was a lot invested in it to start with. 

This also translates to everyday things - we have not bought papertowels, napkins, mopheads, sponges, paperplates, plastic cups, bottled water, brillo pads, in 3 years. Everything just gets thrown in the washing machine over and over again.  Things we use a lot of  is bought bulk and stored, I used laundry sheets instead of liquid, I bring my lunch to work in the same containers every day. Part of it is to save money - that's one of the reasons for the interest in gardening and hydroponics, but the other is the challenge of it and to reduce waste. If I can manage to grow my own that will be some much less plastic I'll be responsible for. Because I dont know about you, but I'm finding it harder and harder to ignore those pictures of floating islands of trash  -it's so easy to say that's everyone else's garbage, but it's mine too. It's not just about sneering at the hippy tree hugging liberals anymore, things are so far beyond that.  I no longer pat myself on the back for having a  recyclable container - we fill that up every two weeks but according to statistics 85% is going to end up in the ocean. I may not be able to stop it, but at least I can feel like I'm not adding to it. And all the money I save - that's just a nice bonus. 

 

Forty Down.

The other morning David turned to me and said Do you realize we've been married for 2/3rds of our lives? Wow. Had to sit and ponder that for awhile. We are the Unicorns of Married People, there are no ex spouses, no steps or significant others lurking about the background - just us two. Both of our kids have told us when they tell their friends that they have the same parents they started out with it's often met with disbelief. When the kids were in school because there's a gap between them I was occasionally asked if they had the same father which I thought was a bit nervy, but you'd be surprised.  And I do know a surprising amount of couples that have only been married once - two of my cousins, my sister, my best friend, a few people from high school but overall we are far and few between, aren't we? 

David and I were introduced when I was 19 and he was 22 - I had a boyfriend that I had been dating for almost two years and the relationship had gone well past it's expiration date, my best friend Richard did not like him and  kept insisting I meet his uncle who was only 3 years older than me.  We went over to his grandmother's house and there he was - and that was that. I broke up with my boyfriend and never looked back-  and yes, I married my best friend's uncle which Richard has never let me forget. We were married in a little over a year from the day I met him. I find it interesting sometimes that I know people that dated for years and were divorced in months so I guess it doesn't depend on how long you know someone. 

I think one of the most frequent  things I hear when people find out how long we've been married is "I don't think I could stay with someone that long!" - I'm not sure where people think the Bored With You Cutoff should be. But looking back - you don't stay with the same person that long, do you? The two we started out as are not the same people we grew up to be. We went broke several times when we were younger, if we had a dollar we spent three and learned the very hard way when the money ran out and the creditors wanted their money back and then some. We had our kids pretty young by today's standards and occasionally mucked that up, but they DID survive and we managed not to off anyone, so I've always considered that a job well done. Weve been through multiple careers, houses, pets, moves, move again, we have had screaming,blow out arguments in which the opposing party was invited to pack their bags and GO - but to our credit we have never hit each other or sworn at each other - never say anything you cannot take back. That's very important you know, not to do  anything unforgiveable. And we've always been there for each other, sometimes I was the stay at home, sometimes David was - we both cleaned the house, raised the kids and worked - our marriage has always been equal. So forty years has been pretty interesting, forty down the rest of our lives to go!

 

Happy Birthdays

So. Jackson and Amy were supposed to be arriving the Wednesday before, David and I were driving up Friday morning.  I got a text from Jackson Thursday evening asking if we were going to be driving by Seattle  and could we pick him up??- I was a bit confused but no. We had planned on dropping the dogs off near Astoria in the morning, toodling across the Big Ass Bridge and then driving up the coast. We have looked at places on the internet and this was our chance to physically see them - but Seattle would be a 5 hour drive from where we were dropping the dogs off and he would be sitting for hours. Turned out Jackson's military flight out of GITMO had been pushed back so he was still in Norfolk and  stressing. As I was texting with him I was calling on David's phone and got his reservation for the shuttle to Whidbey. If you ever need to do this Sea-Tac shuttle is wonderful and so helpful - and yes I remembered the rep's name and gave her a glowing review. I got him all set up and emailed his reservation so he was good to go.  I asked where Amy was and she was stranded in Italy til Monday. When she hit the airport she tested positive for COVID of all things! No symptoms but had to cool her heels for 5 days so she was delayed til Tuesday. We were disappointed, I would have loved to have seen her and met her mom, but I guess that will be later down the road.

We dropped the dogs off at the dog resort (seriously, it IS the dog resort!) where they get hugged and petted - and off we went. We drove through all the small towns keeping off the highway and hugging the coast line. We saw Raymond, Aberdeen, Grays Harbor, it was so much fun! We had an early dinner at Port Townsend and got to do a bit of walking around .I went to the yarn shop but I didn't buy anything. I have stopped buying yarn, once in a blue moon but at this point I have what I need and just don't have the desire to add to it. We caught the ferry and were at Brandi's by 5:30 - it was so great to see Jackson! The girls were beside themselves of course and we spent the evening catching up. After the girls went to bed the presents came out, Brandi and Jackson decorated - the girls are at the age that they are very big into celebrating and they did not disappoint! This was the year of My Little Pony and Sailor Moon - as they get bigger their toys get smaller. In couple of years it will be electronics and gift certificates so we are enjoying it while we can. Candle were blown out and wishes made. They're six now. 

We ordered pizza for dinner and spent the evening just enjoying family, these are the times I'm most grateful for moving out here - we no longer miss holidays or birthdays. No more peering into a screen - we're here! We spent the morning and then left around noon, we had planned on leaving a little later but Jackson and Brandi were taking the girls out to do stuff and we didn't want to hold that up. As much as we love seeing Jackson we also know that his time with Chloe and Delilah is limited and he needs to be able to spend time with them. I also had work the next day so we went to Coupeville and believe it or not - made the earlier ferry by 10 minutes - we got in the standby line and they squeezed us and two more cars on - so we got home a little after 5 instead of a little after 8 - made getting up for work easier. David picked the dogs up the next day  and Amy made it on Tuesday - I wish we could have seen her but I'm glad she made it. 

We will be taking the girls for spring vacation the first week of April. I work from home two days a week but David will have them solo the rest of the week. They're more than old enough and I cannot keep using all my vacation every time they come as we're planning on taking them a few times during the summer. I wish the vacation was the same time as Easter but Brandi will be coming down here - we'll do Easter dinner on Saturday and then egg hunt and brunch on Easter so they can get back home in time work and school. Jackson and Amy are here for another week before they fly back and Jackson will be stopping at Grandma Connie's before heading back to GITMO. I'll be so glad when everyone is done with their overseas deployments and we are all back in the US. 

 

It's The Way To Grow

Our house has a real, live used to be illegal grow room under the house - it's in the middle and you enter it through a closet floor. There's a built in ladder and it's a pretty good size - maybe 12 x 16 with a low ceiling. There are drainage trenches and ventilation, lots of outlets. We didn't do too much with it for the past couple of years, it was really just storage for the overflow of stuff we hadn't gotten to. But the past year as the house has progressed we've sorted and put things away, donated - David did a bit clean out about 2 months ago and it's back to being pretty empty. We have of course through out millions of  moves scaled down, then scaled down again - moving across country we really shed a ton of stuff. We sent Adam most of the stuff that was near and dear to him (he said to me at one point he didn't even know what he had) and Jackson took most of his stuff last year so there is little danger of us using it for actual storage. 

One of the things i've become interested in is hydroponics, I had seen a commercial unit but yiked at the price - $800 for a small basic unit. So I started watching YouTube and then sorting through  Amazon of course - I realized I could pretty much do the same thing with twice the amount of plants for about a third of the price. People will yap at you "it's nothing but PVC pipe - you can DIY it for pennies. Nope. No you can't. If you happen to have a bunch of PVC pipe laying around your yard, you have access to lots of tools and have oodles of time you could probably save save 50 bucks. Or 10. I bought the unit from Amazon and it came with the pump and tubing too for $114. I also needed a way to sprout the seeds, the liquid fertilizer, the lights......But I found it on Amazon. I did go to a hydroponic store and the guy was super nice but the light set up to start was between 500 and $1,000 dollars! I'm growing zucchini here bud, not a cocaine farm - do I look like Scarface? Back to Amazon - $64 for the standing light and $21 for the little one.The growing unit came in a box full of PVC pipes and a single sheet of instructions with 4 steps. Sigh. Back to YouTube. FYI - I have learned how to do everything from a long tail cast on for socks to building Ikea furniture with Handyman Hank. It turned out to be super easy and took about 30 minutes to get it up and running. 

I have the unit upstairs in the sunroom off the den - according to everything I've seen when I truly get it up and running I should only have to change out the water once a week and then check on it a couple times. But for now since I'm experimenting I check on it a couple times a day. The first set of seeds only a few sprouted- it was too wet and I didn't keep them warm enough. The second go around I ended up with over 30 sprouts! I've only got it half full - I figured if it didn't do well I wouldn't have to replace too much. And there is the figuring out stuff - like HOW to change the water. The second time went much better, I swing the discharge pipe to an empty bucket and turn on the pump so it pumps out the water. You have to dissolve the fertilizer powder or it clogs the pump. I have figured out the timers so the lights are on for 12 hours and the pump circulates every hour. 

And weirdly - so far not bad! Out of the 36 plants so far 32 have survived the first 3 weeks. I've been asked what they are - I don't know. I  bought a whole bunch of seeds and whatever sprouted got planted. And they are planted in sponge cubes which are reusable. I started now because if the plants start to fail I can transfer them into regular soil and then into my summer garden. This is really for the winter because what I hope is to eventually use the grown room year round and we can have fresh vegetables year round. It has been really fun though so far and very interesting. I'll let you know what happens!

 

It's Been A Year

Seriously, It's been a full year and a day since I blogged last. I write in my head all the time but getting from my head to the blog, just has not happened. One of the reasons I stopped writing was the Astoria house we flipped -  in the end not only did we win but we did way beyond what we expected. But as to whether we would ever repeat that experience?  don't know, the stress was insane, it just seemed to never end. You know those horrible stories you read and you can't believe people get away with that and how can that be legal- well, they do get away with it and yes we had a lawyer. We are done with house flipping - and I will leave it there for now. David has been working on our house for the past few months and taking a well earned break. For the past few years he has been flipping one house after the other without a break - he finished the house in Gerard's fort, flipped Mapletown, moved us to Jefferson and flipped that one. sold it and moved us to Oregon, got this liveable and flipped Astoria - he needs a break! Plus the insane housing prices - we do poke around once in awhile and it's just crazy. we looked at one that was 6 inches from another house, across from storage buildings, failed septic, falling apart - $164,000 - and it sold for that price! Eek!

So I work full time as the consult nurse for the Area Agency of Aging and Disability which I love - 5 days a week, no weekends, no nights, no oncall, no holidays...... it's a great job. David is in charge of the house and dogs and renovations. It's so funny that people think we just bulldoze in and rip everything out - sheetrock, white paint, cold, sterile, call it a day.  We don't - the houses we buy tend to be older, unusual - sometimes quirky. I  help with demo and my flashlight and I will often be peeking behind and under things. There's nothing more exciting than pulling up the tan carpeting and exposing the hardwood - the Mapletown house I must've scrubbed the floor 50 times before I found the original wood color. We preserve what we can - not only do we save money but an older home will have things that you can't buy anymore. This home the entire downstairs is real knotty pine - it's no longer produced. The bathroom is clear, varnished cedar. I scrubbed the living room and polished it - it's gorgeous! The bathroom David had to replace part of the wall - we were lucky the hot tub room he took down had one wall of protected clear cedar. 

Some of it we could not save - most of the cabinets and walls in the kitchen were destroyed, one wall was covered in black mold, some of the cabinets were warped with water damage and the cat feces and hair - you learn to ALWAYS wear gloves. But as of the other day, the kitchen is done with the exception of a few shelves that need to be added to the cabinets - it's done. David found an antique baking table with possum belly drawers as a gift for our 40th anniversary and it was the last piece. The original floor wood insets still need to be stained but they're stripped and look lovely. The original fixtures are cleaned and look perfect. I would say the house is about 85% done, it's set up how we like it. The guest room is upstairs, there's a small alcove behind the stairs that we use as a playroom for the girls and the loft is a den/home office on the opposite side. We have the girls for anywhere from a week to two weeks at a time which is why they have their own room and spaces in the house. We also have two saucer swings on the giant walnut swings and a fenced yard, I love living so close to them and Brandi - it's so much fun seeing them all the time now instead once or twice a year. And that's it for the day. I'm hoping to start blogging again regularly - I've had this blog since 2004 and it would be a shame to stop now, wouldn't it?

 

The Current Situation

My 2015 Subaru was running alright, got the recalls fixed and I always keep up on my oild changes. But the odometer had flipped over to 195,000 and it was starting to need stuff- a repair here, replace part there. I put a lot of hard miles on that car and it was starting to show. We had discussed it off and on for the past few months, a lot of people will tell you they believe in driving a car into the ground.. but you know what? The trade in value of a car that has been driven to death is not that great. But what to buy? Back in PA and WV 4 wheel drive is a must, especially if you work on the road, my absolute favorite memory as a visit nurse was a woman giving me directions to her house. She asked if I had 4 wheel drive, paused and then said, Well, you'll probably make it up the drive but you might want to take a running start at it. Here its very different, land is levelocated and weather is fairly mild, we had what's considered a bad snowstorm for this area - 5 inches of snow that lasted 2 days. Four wheel drive is nice, but not necessary. 

David found a 2017 Volt for a very reasonable price - with the trade in, the stimulus check, our money back from taxes this year and an Oregon rebate for going green I got a 4 year old car with 40,000 miles and warrenty on it for less than $6,000. Not bad.  It took a little getting used to it, I've been driving SUVs forever, this is pretty low to the ground but I think I've perfected hoisting myself out in a dignified manner pretty well. David ordered a spare - did you know something like 40% of all new cars don't have a spare? They give you a can of Fix a Flat and a small prayer book. (just kidding, about the prayer book - the FixAFlat is true). It apparently can park itself but I haven't braved that yet. The steering wheel reminds me a bit of the Enterprise and I have not braved it yet. The Blue tooth works great and that I'm enjoying. I have audiobooks from Overdrive so I can listen while I'm driving.  

The plugging it in thing - the Volt is a hybrid which took me a few minutes to get comfortable with. It's gets 43 miles to the charge. I envisioned myself tooling along and running out of juice slowly coasting into a ditch like a stranded turtle. And crying. It charges overnight and when you use the 42 miles it switches by itself (there is not giant red button or anything you need to do) to the gas engine. It gets about 40 or 50 miles to the gallon -after 2 weeks I still have more than half a tank left, most days I don't use any gas at all. Our electric is very low out here so I'm curious what the bill will be next month. David talked to the solar panel people yesterday but the cost of it is prohibative as opposed to what we pay now - our bill would more than double. We put it on the If We Win The Lottery List. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with my new car - smaller than I'm used to but as I've only spent about $10 in two weeks on gas (I topped off the tank when I got it) that more than makes up for the lack of room.

 

A Kaiser Permenente Story - DIY Healthcare

One of the greatest disappointments of moving to the west coast is the health care - say what you want about WV - the one thing I appreciated were my doctors and how great they were. If there was any problem they called me immediately, followed by an appointment and anything else I needed - they were firm believers in preventative healthcare.  My first appointment out here was for a routine check up and to establish care - it took a couple of weeks to get an appointment, but that's everywhere, isn't it? I arrived on time, the nurse came out to get me and said we've been trying to call you - I had not gotten any calls. I asked if they were going to ask for any medical history but got blown off. They had a wrong number that I hadn't given them and that was somehow my fault. Then the PCP came in and told me he didn't take patients. Ok.......We discussed my ongoing issues with my weight - until I hit my mid-50's I was fine, an occasional weight gain but nothing like this. I gained about 60 pounds and nothing I did took it off.  The MD proceeded to order an A1C and told me some wierd meandering story about a chef that liked her own cooking(???) . The A1C came back in the pre-diabetic range - after I read the result myself (no, they don't call you for out of range results)I spoke to a nurse who told me they didn't do anything until I was in the diabetic range. When I told her how worried I was because my family has a history - she told me she didn't believe in that stuff.  Yup.

I joined NOOM, started exercising again, stopped eating bread, high carb, sugar, I did lose 30 pounds - and then stalled. I increased my calories, decreased, stopped exercising, exercised more, intermittent fasting.....nothing. I finally dropped my NOOM coach as her solution was to try and convince me I should focus on NSV (non-scale victories) which I responed that my new victory was high blood pressure and it was NOT ok for me to be overweight given my new health issues . The problem with the NOOM coaches are if you don't fit into thier scripted responses they don't know what to do with you. But in the meantime I was attacked by a raccoon sustaining over a dozen punctures and a lot of soft tissue damage. The ER at Peacehealth Hospital was great -  the follow up at the Kaiser clinic - jesus fucking christ is all I have to say. For the follow up (you have to have a series of injections) the scheduler tried to give me a video visit. At the end of the month. For an injection. Tried to schedule me to discuss it with my provider - the day I needed the injection. Then called me difficult. I had to contact the MD at the ER who got it straightened out .At the first appointment I was there for over two hours - for a shot. The second one I showed up at the correct time- and sat for an hour before going up to the desk to be told that I did have an appointment but they forgot to schedule it with someone. REALLY??

I am still not losing weight so I made a video appointment with my (3rd) new PCP, the turnover is so high I never even met PCP #2 - she started asking questions  but I pointed out so far no one has ever taken my medical history - I've never been asked about past surgeries, diagnosis, my family history - anything in my records are things I've mentioned during visits. So she asked a few questions about my family history and that was that. I told her I had never heard of any medical practice that did no preventative healthcare and I thought it was poor practice to wait until someone became a diabetic before acting on it. She ordered another A1C and it is back down in the normal range - she also signed me up with a health coach. I called and basically was told they can't do anything for me, but make an appointment to speak to another one- who by the way cannot talk to you for another 3 weeks. The PCP reminded me I needed a mammogram which I REALLY had to bite my lip not to ask if I would have to do my own surgery.  And once again I was never called about my lab results, there is no follow up at all, the whole thing is discouraging. But I did email her and will be following up next week - welcome to DIY Healthcare!