Monday Monday

Well, today, I’m sitting at my desk – kind of working, kind of making lists and thinking about what I’m forgetting. Oh and I am sitting here with a coat on and my toes are freezing cause it’s barely 55 degrees outside at 11:30 a.m. (And I do have shoes on)

I cannot believe that a week from today, we’ll be in Arizona – the first half of this year has disappeared way too quickly and I am in no way, shape or form ready to head to the heat of AZ. Tonight, we have to get John ready to head to Sudbury, Canada on business. He’ll leave here at 4:00 tomorrow morning and won’t get back home until around midnight on Thursday. The good news is since he’ll be gone, I will have time to focus on getting ready to go. The bad news is he’ll be gone and I won’t get any sleep and won’t have his help trying to remember all the stuff we need for camping. Good thing I have my old pink book with my camping lists in.

I see on weatherchannel.com that there is a 60% chance of rain in Payson next Monday. Guess we’d better think about rain jackets. Or maybe if I don’t take one, it’ll be more likely to rain.

I look at the big pile of stuff in the garage ready to be packed and it totally amazes me. We used to pack up two kids, two dogs and all our stuff in our tiny little Toyota pickup and go camping for a week or 2. I’m trying to mend our old wood camp kitchen so we can use it 1 more time. – maybe by the end of next week, we’ll be ready to retire it to the wood heap – if it actually makes it through the trip. I pulled out the huge ammo box that we always used to carry food in. I have started packing it but am thinking I’ll also pick up a couple of cardboard boxes cause we can toss them at the end of the week and won’t have to bring them back home with us.

The tent we bought is twice as big as the old one we had. Not even sure what I ended up doing with that one when we started doing the backpack thing and camping in a small tent. Jules has plans to put her little tent inside my big one so we’ll see how that works out – definitely plenty of room for that.

We are taking the old fold out camping table – it’s 4 little fold out seats are getting kind of wobbly – I think we’ve had that since at least ‘76. Not sure if either of the kids want it so it might find it’s way into the garbage bin at the end of the week also. Guess it’s time to retire some of this old camping gear.

Got to get busy and get more lists made and tomorrow head into billings so I can start marking things off the list. One list for food, one list for stuff for the horses, one for camping things to take, one list for non-camping stuff, one list of where we are staying down and back, one list of things to do around here before I leave so we don’t come back to a mess, hmmm – maybe I need to make a list just so I can keep track of all the other lists.

Ready or not, Friday will be here before I turn around. I’ll see everyone in AZ pretty soon. I do have Yahtzee and a whole mess of extra score sheets.

May 3

Today's G'ma V's birthday. She would have been 75 years old. But she lived life with lots of energy and so her body was totally used up before she reached that 3/4 of a century mark.

I love this saying: "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and proclaiming, "Wow, what a ride!!!"

G'ma V didn't know the meaning of vegging. She was always wanting to make sure everyone else was taken care of. I remember the last time she was here, she practically drove me crazy because if I moved, she had to jump up and follow me - upstairs and downstairs.

The last time she was here was almost 3 years ago - we took her to Yellowstone one weekend and Glacier the next. She loved both places and really wanted to come back up. But she got busy getting her house ready for sale in 2004 and then last year was to sick to make the trip. Wish we would have spent more time at Glacier instead just a quick 3 day weekend. Above is a picture of JW & G'ma V at Glacier Lodge. We stopped by there to eat lunch, then drove the Going to the Sun Road to spend the night near West Glacier.

The other picture is the Weeping Wall. (We drove by it several times and G'ma V kept calling it the Wailing Wall).


So happy birthday G'ma V - we're thinking of you and thanks for being you.

Happy Mother's Day

Nope, I haven't lost it yet - just wanted to share a little experience I had this week. Let me first go back about 2 years when G'ma V was up visiting. At that time, she asked J if there was anything of hers that he wanted. He replied that he would like the "desk". The desk is an old one that she used for many years in her office and later bought from the county to put in her home. That day, it was decided that J's name would go on the desk.

In March when I drove to AZ, I stopped by his sister's to pick up the desk and bring it home. Then I moved my rolltop desk out of the way and replaced it with a nice flat top desk that the monitor would fit on so much nicer. The desk is wonderful and we are very happy to have it.

Back in 1983, I wanted a rolltop desk more than anything else I could think of so when I found this one, we bought it and brought it home. Over the past 23 years, we have moved it from house to house and state to state with J doing a lot of complaining about the desk. But that was "my desk" and I "loved" it. It's extremely heavy and with the new desk, I knew it was not something we needed any longer. We talked about what to do with it. I had asked my children and neither of them were interested in it - can't blame them for that as it is totally impractical to use with a computer.

For the past several months, we have been talking about what to do with this desk. Monday morning, when I sat down to my computer, a thought came to me (or was that a prompting) to put an ad in the Thrifty Nickel. Of course, you are thinking, why not sell the desk. But that's not what I decided to do. I decided that I would put it in the giveaway section. I typed up a quick little ad (which are free by the way) saying Free for pickup - rolltop desk, we'll help you load. Then I stressed for 3 days whether anyone would be willing to come way out here even for something free and if no one did, what was I going to do with this thing.

Yesterday morning, I got a call from a man who asked if his parents (who live 16 miles from us) could come and pick up the desk. He told me that his mother has always wanted one. I told him that would be fine - if they could come between 4:30 and 5:00 yesterday afternoon as that is the only time my husband would be at home.

At 4:00 a lady called and said, "My son told me to come to your house and pick up a desk so I wanted directions how to get there". I told her and she said they would be here on time.

J got home from work and we moved the desk out of the house so it would be easy to load up. Guess I should say easier because I still wasn't sure how we were going to get that desk in the back of a pickup and I had a feeling the people coming to pick it up were even older than us so probably wouldn't be much help.

At 4:35, a blue dodge pulled into the drive way and a gentleman about 75 or so got out. Followed by his wife - much the same age and very tiny. She glanced over, saw the desk and the look on her face was priceless. She kept saying things like "oh, it's so beautiful", "I've always wanted a rolltop desk", "it will be so treasured by our family", "you're just going to give it away". Since J has had to move the thing so often, it didn't take long for us to get it loaded up. The gentleman talked to John for a little while about growing up in this area. Then the lady gave me a big hug and said "God bless you". All I could think of to say was "He surely has." and then added "Happy Mother's day from your son".

The Dress

So in March when I was in CO working and trying to spend a little time with the granddaughters, J decided she was sleeping in "my bed" (which was fine with me). So the first night (before the son / father laid down the law and informed me that 7:00 bedtime meant 7:00 to sleep, not to play on the computer), I decided to show J some pictures of her when she was a little girl. So, I flashed through pictures of her when she was a tiny baby. I showed her pictures of days when her mama and I spent quite a bit of time trying different outfits on her. I showed her pictures of her 1st birthday. Then, I showed her some pictures I had taken of her in a dress that my Grandma DeCurtins had made for me - a crochetted pink and blue dress that really needs a slip underneath but I wanted a picture but was afraid she was growing so fast, I wouldn't get on.

When I showed her this picture, she put her nose right up against the computer screen. "The dress, the dress, I have to have that dress. I explained to her that it was too little and was at my house. We then played Nemo awhile and went to sleep.

The next day when I turned on the computer, she wanted to see the picture of the "the dress". So, I would show her. I then decided, I needed to make her a dress of her own. So, I have been spending a little time each day for the past several weeks working on a dress. It is too bad that they do not make a silky crochet thread like my Grandma used to make my dress but I think she'll be happy with this one when it gets finished. Or at least I hope so.

Geo Gee

Well, I went geocaching with my sisters and some of the kids and had a wonderful time. It was a bit warm but Gargantua was cool -- was there a snake or only a sneaky snake ;-)

And the 2 part cache with the little magnet was interesting. Everyone made it look so easy so I came home thinking - piece of cake, I can find a cache.

Saturday morning, I printed one out called Stillwater. During lunch, I asked J if he wanted to run out and help me find it so I could leave off my TB and be done with that. At first he was a little reluctant but then decided the dogs could go along. We knew we couldn't be out too long as we had to go into town to have dinner with a group of people from work.

Although the log said it was only 14.3 miles from my home coordinates, the mileage to get there was more like 35. So, at 12:05 we loaded up in the truck and headed out. I expected him to turn where he always turns for work so when he didn't, I said "the gps is pointing that way". He said, I think we'd better go to the lower Stillwater road.

Okay so we got there and drove and drove and I'm watching the gps and it gets down to one tenth of a mile and J says "there it is". "There" was an old cabin that was in shambles. Sure enough the gps went to 0 right by that pile of mess.

We searched for over an hour and a half but then cause we had to get back decided we needed to leave. We'll go back there again and see if we can find that one. Meanwhile, I'm checking out one that is about 20 miles from here on the highway and if I can't find that one, about 40 miles away is a TB house which is super easy so I can find it and get this TB on his way.

Darn - I really wanted to find that first cache on my own (well with J's help) because it has a tb pig in it that has traveled over 14000 miles.

Last night on NBC, there was a 3 minute blurb about geocaching. There are over 1/4 million caches in 200 countries. guess that can keep P & S busy for a very long time.

Oh well, if at firt you don't succeed, try try again so wish me luck.