Not-so-Quick Update

I started this post with the title “Quick Update,” because my intent was to show a couple of photos of things. When I realized my collection of a couple of photos was about 30 photos, the title had to change.

But oh, gosh, I echo what so many other bloggers have been saying: I’m so far behind! I’m backlogged on my own as well as others, but you know what? It’s great because it means I am living my life and there’s nothing wrong with that. I do not have to have the superhero qualities that some of you have of living a full life AND posting and reading regularly. I shine in different ways. 🙂

The finches are gone, but here are the last photos:

Atlanta was HOT! A security guard at one place told us they call it Hotlanta, which I had not heard, but that’s appropriate. Pedro had a conference to attend, and I explored and tried not to melt. I’ll do Atlanta posts later, but I’ll show you this spectacular Hurricane Debby sky.

Before that, we went to Walla Walla, Washington for a mini family reunion. That was pretty fun. And also hot.

That same weekend was Kellen’s birthday. My child is 27. TWENTY SEVEN YEARS OLD. Wait. If that’s true, that would make me old, and I’m not old. So I think that’s not really how old they are. Because, I could have sworn they just turned seven, not twenty seven for gosh sakes.

Speaking of hot. Our poor hen hussies have been dying! There were two terrible weeks of heat (For others, not for me. I love the heat.) and we worried about our girls. Pedro found a DIY swamp cooler plan on the interwebs, and we sacrificed a cooler for them. You install a fan pointing into the cooler, and a pipe pointing out, then fill the cooler with ice. The air blows in, cools as it goes across the ice, then comes out less hot. Half the hens are scared of it. The other half stand directly in front with their beaks open and feathers ruffling in the wind.

The main news about the garden is that it is producing, and we are eating as fast as we can and still not eating fast enough.

I am trying to clean out one of our storage sheds now that it’s cool again. When it is 100 degrees outside, I simply cannot bear to sit inside the shed and sort through junk in a box. But when it’s 79 degrees (26 C), things are quite pleasant.

I am trying to reduce drastically the amount of stuff in boxes. Some of it we simply haven’t unpacked since we moved. My rationale is: if we haven’t needed it for a year, then we probably don’t need it. I’m growing a rather nice pile destined for Goodwill.

There are boxes of things that are much harder to go through though, filled with things that I’ll never use, but are hard to part with. Boxes from my mom, with spools of thread and unused fabric and patterns, and curious antique things she collected. Boxes from my dad, who died in 2020, who had stuff from his dad. So all these old awesome documents like my Grandpa Trulove’s high school diploma, for example. The marriage certificate from my Cherokee Grandmother’s second marriage. My brother’s Air Force photos. And this hilarious one:

Along the Fanno Creek trail near our house is a cute idea with a rock snake that grows over time when random people decorate rocks and add them. We finally made the time to paint our own rocks and add them to the snake. I painted the squirrel and the plant thing. Andre made the symbol for Earth bending from Avatar. Pedro did the cat painting. Liam did a whole pile of rocks and liked them all so much he kept them, but finally agreed to part with the green and black creeper from Minecraft.

Yesterday I was in downtown Portland and I saw that a new art installation has finally gone up. I have been waiting for it. It’s a joint project with the Portland stop motion animation studio LAIKA, who put out the movie Coraline. They are getting ready for a re-release of Coraline, and partnered with some other organizations such as a local children’s hospital, to put up 31 differently decorated cats. This cat was in the movie Coraline, though in the movie it was just a black cat. I hope to get out there and find a bunch more if I can. Here is just one of them.

One last thing. My race is coming up. This is my last year as Captain of the Belle Brigade and that’s both sad and great. I was able to go pick up the team’s race packets. That includes our T-shirts, racing bibs, race handbooks, free gifts, and more. The race is August 23rd and 24th and I have been training almost every day to get ready for my legs in the 120-mile relay.

So, ok, wow. That was a lot of stuff. It was fun though. It has been fun sailing along, doing all this. After my race is a week of teaching in Annapolis with VFW once again. And then…. maybe I’ll get a chance to update my blog.

Who am I kidding? ha ha