Category Archives: Daily Life

Day to day happenings, the usual stuff, about me and life

Playing Catch-up

I have spent most of this week in town and All day Tuesday in Eureka. It has rained most of the week, which is highly unusual for us this time of year.
This weekend, starting now actually, is the
Redwood Run – Harley event. The growl and roar of bikes is every where.

I was planning on going out the the house in the hills tonite, but I had the most fantastic massage this afternoon, and just couldn’t face the drive and the generator.

I have had many massages and body work sessions in my life, and this was a first for me. Cynthia Gutierrez is her name and she works here in Garberville. Hot rocks and deep tissue, but she went light on me as I asked for ‘feel good’ not ‘detox’. I was in heaven. I really still am. The best ever massage I have had..you know I will be going back for more.

May Aikido Retreat

Russel’s Aikido school, Mateel Aikido, had a retreat a few weeks ago. During that time several of his students tested for black belt ranks. I have several shots, most I am saving for their website (not quite ready for prime time yet, but soon).
This is one of my favorites:

Autumn Equinox is coming

It’s just around the corner. We have had a little rain, very little compared to what has been happening in the south and east. But just the same it is a sign of things to come… the winter rains.

I won’t be around here much at all, certainly not every day, ha! like I am now *lol* But much less, hopefully with more to say.

We’ve been working hard all summer to get the house in a much more livable space and I am going to spend a lot of time there this winter, perhaps the posts that get put here will actually have tales of homesteading and living off the grid. I hope that soon I will be able to bring my computer out there with me…then I may never come to town again!

This is a little something I took in the summer, never got around to uploading the rest of these or other photos I have to my gallery, which lays fallow until time presents itself, as does this blog redesign and the redesign of my other sites.
Hope you enjoy it!

Prezident Brown (google him!) is coming out on tour again, it looks like he may swing close enough to be able to go see him… that would be really cool. He’s playing in my old stomping grounds of Bolinas and Fairfax…that would just be too fun to go to, but there is no chance of getting to the bay area again any time soon ;(

I will try and get some good interior shots of the house with fresh paint with my Canon G3, it’s flash leaves much to be desired, and I don’t have the add on one yet.

Oh, and one other thing… a while back a certain blog woman posted a link to a word game, Weboggle. She did warn that is was addicting… I sent it to a friend. My darling husband found the link in the sent mails and now HE IS ADDICTED!

Geez, one more game to take his time away!!!

Another Birthday Past

Solfest – Bruce Cockburn

I finally had the time to put up a new front page at the Cockburn Project. I still have about a dozen or so good pictures that I will put up here and on my gallery.

Also had a birthday on the 11th.
Russel says I am finally playing with a full deck *lol*.

What other significance does ’52’ have..? Well, I was born in ’52 and there’s 52 weeks in a year, that’s about all I can think of.

We had a good day, rummage sales in Ferndale, movie (Cellular***) in Eureka and chinese dinner in Fortuna at the Hunan.

I also got a vhs tape of the Solfest show! It’s a bit shaky but the sound is good..and I used it to transcribe all the song comments for the piece I did for the Cockburn Project.

On the road

🙁

Ok, so Friday night we get home from 12 hours at Reggae, and there’s a message on the answering machine that.. Russel has an appointment with an ENT(ear-nose-throat) doctor at the VA in SF on WEDNESDAY (2 days after Reggae)..at 11AM!!

Well long story short, it’s a lot like this entry.. in that we had to go to Eureka on Tuesday for the new engine check up and a appointment at the Eureka VA. While we were there, I was thinking about how getting up at 4am on Wed to make the 11am appointment in SF..and it wasn’t making us happy.

So we decided to go home and pack and drive to Santa Rosa on Tuesday, go the SF VA on Wednesday and drive home that day…
geez we were both so fried from Reggae to have to do all that too.
And nothing was found a miss with the ENT, so we still have no answers to Russel’s pain and congestion…meanwhile his voice gets stranger and stranger every day.

We did stop on the way home in Healdsburg…lots bigger than I remembered it being, cute/upscale downtown center area.. we ate at a thai food place, Lotus Thai, that was excellent. Will have to stop there again.

We always stop at the Real Goods and Solar Living Institute for a road break in Hopland, and we will be going down there this weekend (August 21) to see Bruce Cockburn at the Solfest.

Whew!! busy busy on the road kind of month.

In between all this I am still painting at the house and we are doing lots of work to make the house more livable, cuz well, we would like to MOVE IN someday!

9th Anniversary

It’s been so long since I posted.. don’t know where to begin!
Guess I will go backwards, as it is freshest in my mind 🙂

We had our 9th wedding anniversary on July 27, we have been together 13+ years though. Nice dinner at local Mateel Cafe with Russel’s sister Carol who is visiting from South Carolina.

The day (Monday 26) before our anniversary, part of my front tooth broke off! Yikes.. it was easier to deal with (fill) than I thought it would be. Helps if you just don’t leave the dentist office until it’s fixed *lol*. The 28th I had a dental cleaning..oh joy..2 mornings spent in the dentist office.

Meanwhile, we are trying to entertain Carol, which mostly amounts to eating out, and it’s been 100 degrees here for a least a couple of weeks.

We are still working hard at the house, and believe it or not, I am still painting! Down to 1 room, the living area, I am working on the catherdral ceiling with a light yellow paint. Threw my back/hip/sciatic out on Saturday, was down with that for a few days.

Managed to finally have a visit with friend Pam too.

The week before this we went to Eureka to pick up out Toyota truck which had been in the shop for 1 week getting a new engine (we got to drive a new 2004 Jeep suv..pretty nice ride). We actually took it to the bay for yet again another VA appointment for Russel who finally got a broncostmy… which still shows nothing to point to all the pain/congestion and need for steroid inhalers to hold that at bay. I will talk more about that trip another time..just too much to say.

I have more but gotta go help Russel with the upcoming Reggae on the River Aikido Burrito booth scheduling fiasco…more about that later too.

The long road

We went to the VA hospital in SF (5 hours drive) on Wed, met with Russel’s new doctor, she looked to be about 23, but she was bright and appeared ready to look at ‘whatever is causing this pain/cough/congestion’ in a different way. We got home late Thursday afternoon as it is just too much for us to drive there and back in one day.

We were told we would be scheduled finally for a broncostomy, usually that means a month or 2 down the road… well they called Friday eve at 7pm to say we have an appointment for Tuesday morning at 8am.

Oh joy. That is also the day we are supposed to have our truck in Eureka (1 1/2 hours north) to leave it to get a new rebuilt engine in it. The toyota people usually give us a rental when we leave our truck there for more than a day because we live so far away.

So that day looks like a very long one, up at 5am drive to Eureka drop off truck at 8am and get the loaner, drive back to here (11am), pick up luggage, and drive to San Fransisco and hope to beat the worst of the traffic by arriving at the Golden Gate before 4pm. Find a motel over on the Great Highway, collapse, and then go to the hospital.

The procedure should only take a hour or so, but I believe we will be at the hospital for at least 4 hours…then I get to drive home, if I can make it, if not we will stop at the Sandman in Santa Rosa and do the last 3 hours in the morning.

I hope this tells us something.. the last diagnosis he got was totally false one, just so the doctor could say he did give a diganosis. Meanwhile, Russel is off the Flovent already, and the pain/ichy feeling is coming back in his chest. And he can’t use advils (which we both use daily) for 48hours before the procedure, so he will be one painful mess.

This is not how this next week was supposed to happen, I have to cancel a long over due lunch date, I have a bunch of cds to burn for trading and dvds for a trading tree I am on… once again, time is too short, so if I don’t post back here for awhile, those of you who wonder — well now you know where I’ll be.

98 degrees in the shade

98 degrees in the shade… A great reggae song…but a bit much to deal with. Spent a hour in the neighbors pool, that’s some relief.

I guess I am still on the way to being an old ‘crone’… false alarm I guess, ‘cept I still feel crampy and very irritable, Russel can attest to that fact, he say I am really hard to be around right now… well hey, I ain’t having much fun either!

Supposed to go to the land tomorrow and I was gonna paint some more, but this heat may make it a short day.

We’re going to SF to the VA hospital again on Wed. Russel gets to see a new doctor this time.. he is still using the inhaler and his voice is getting weird sounding. The pain is mostly gone, but the feeling of congestion still is.

This is turning into a bitch post so I will stop now..
life really is good.. it’s just hormones.

On My Beat

Living in the hills of southern Humboldt