I've Been Off the Blog for Awhile But . . .

Check this out, Tengrain passed The World Famous Winlock Egg. while on the train. Don't you all wish you could see it in person too? We have a lovely guestroom waiting for you.

This is what I have been up to for the last few months:

• 1 trip to Utah for me
• 1 trip to Utah for Matt
• 2 visits from Nancy (Matt's Stepmom) to Winlock (2 road trips with a motor home filled with furniture for our new house - she did all our decorating and we are most grateful)
• 1 visit from my parents - their first to our new home and also their first time meeting Tom and Kathy. It was a really big deal for me to finally have my mom and dad meet my birthfather and his wife.
• 1 giant housewarming party
• a bunch of other stuff that a person needs to do when setting up a new home.
• reacquainting myself with the printed word. I haven't taken the time to read for pleasure in far too long! I was so thirsty that I am reading four at once: Corvus: A Life With Birds, Deerhunting with Jesus, Edgar Sawtelle and a collection of Irish Folktales. I just can't make up my mind so I am reading them all.
  

I would like to mention that everything feels right and happy and normal again now. Amazing what a little breathing room in a lovely house can do for a person.

We Met Some of Our Neighbors

Do you remember this video? I think we saw it way back in our Utah days. The man in the video is Lynn Chestnut. He and his wife stopped by yesterday to check the progress on the house. They saw it get moved and were curious how it turned out. I always love showing the house off. How shocked was I to discover that Lynn was the man in the infamous deer fighting video? His wife is the one filming and as I understand it, she was told to keep filming and not run to the rescue. The Chestnuts have a herd of elk and have "owned" bears in the past. They live in Toledo, not Winlock. Toledo is also the birthplace of Bigfoot. Not sure what is in the water over there.

Matt Buys Shotgun. Does Not Join NRA

Last weekend Matt went to a gunshow with Tom and Mick and came home with a 70 year old shotgun. He is in love. He took it over to Tom and Kathy's house to try it out. I am proud to report that he hit his targets on the first try. He even hit a stick that Tom threw in the air. Matt modestly claims beginner's luck but I think he is naturally a crack shot. BTW, I also shot the gun and didn't like it. I think it is too noisy. Shhh.

Winthrop, Twisp & Mazama, WA

A few weekends ago we took a little trip up north with Tom and Kathy. The idea was to visit the lumber yard from which we purchased all of our siding and interior wood. The area we went to is on the east side of the Cascades and is called the Methow Valley (FYI, it is pronounced met-how. I called it meth-ow and was corrected). This is a picture taken from our room at the Mazama Country Inn were we spent Friday night.

And this is our room. How cute is the sleeping loft? I admit this is the entire reason I picked this place after looking at a bunch on the internet.

This is NOT were we stayed although it was beautiful. It is the Sun Mountain Lodge.

A view from the SML grounds looking over the Methow Valley.

The next 2 shots were taken inside the SML wine cellar. For $150 a person can rent the room for private dinners. I'll take the seat under the polar bear.
If you don't want to add $150 to your dinner bill you can settle for eating in the dining room and this breathtaking view:
Along with the polar bear we encountered stuffed deer, javelinas, wild boar, and a bunch of other unfortunate creatures whose pictures did not make the cut.

And here is the reason for the trip:
You can get pretty much any wood you want from this place. We thought they milled the lumber on location but turns out they just source and house the lumber. When a customer calls to request something, they send it out to be milled in Tacoma. Those bays full of cedar smelled wonderful. People tell me my cedar house smells nice too but I truly can't smell it anymore!

Lord Have Mercy

File under: This is how we do things in the country.

People of the internet, you are going to need a backstory before viewing these pictures. Sigh. Here we go. A few weeks ago Tom and Kathy were having trouble with their chicks. Something was eating them in the night. It was determined that the culprit was a raccoon. The household was on guard and when Walker raised the alarm, Tom grabbed his shotgun and headed outside (3am with Kathy laughing hysterically from inside). The two of them treed the raccoon and it was dispatched forthwith, its tail blown clean off.

Tom delights in teasing me because I am a vegetarian and he is a blood thirsty hunter. Last night after dinner at their house Matt and I went to leave and what is tied to my antenna? That's right. The RACCOON tail. Matt referred to me as Davy Crockett's chauffer and laughed all the way home.

Let's Open the Mailbag, Shall We?

I have taken these pictures on the mail route over the last few months:

We have a goat farm in Winlock (The Blue Rose Dairy) that produces delicious goat cheese. The goats are not always in the field by the road so I don't get to see them every time I do this route.

In the spirit of past posts highlighting the homemade signs so prevalent around here, I present a warning against human waste. No, I have not visited the website. This sign is an upgrade. For months there was a small stenciled sign tacked to a fence. One day it was gone. The next week it was replaced by this giant sign. Well, giant might be taking it too far. It is maybe 6 or 7 feet wide.

Geese. Mean and Funny rolled into one.

Whatcha doin?

I shot this one rainy day a few weeks back. I was going to put it to music but I decided to leave the background noise. That way you can enjoy a little slice of rural mail route life. I am listening to "The Sound of Young America" on XM133. I know this world is different strokes for different folks but believe me when I tell you there are many moments in a rural mail carriers daily grind that are very nearly perfect.

Why Independant Book Sellers Sometimes Go Out of Business

I am really not trying to jinx our local bookstore (and by local I mean 20 miles north) with this title. But, c'mon people. With the likes of Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com and, in this neck of the woods at least, Costco's book section breathing down their neck you would think that our local purveyors of the written word would avoid section headings like this. If you can't read the section heading by clicking on the photo, it reads:

BOOKS THAT WOMEN READ WHEN THEY ARE MENOPAUSAL AND THINKING DEEP, SLIGHTLY CRAZY THOUGHTS

I get that it is meant to be funny. Maybe I must be menopausal to get the joke? I will return in 15-20 years and find out.

1000(ish) Words Because I Have No Pictures

I have a 3 gallon glass carbouy sitting in the garage that is just over half full of fresh apple cider. The other day I went over to Tom and Kathy's house. Kathy and I filled a bunch of bushels full of apples from their trees. There is a fellow in Toledo called Kendall and he recently acquired an antique cider press and was looking to put it to good use. So we washed up all the apples and got the machine rolling. First all the apples went into the crusher. The crushed pieces fell through to the tray on the bottom of the machine where they were caught in what looked like a bottomless bucket. Once the bucket was full we pushed it forward along the tray so it was positioned underneath the press. Fitting a round wooden disk into the bottomless bucket we pressed all the juice out of the apple bits. I figure that we had about 5 gallons by the time we were done. The whole business smelled good, tasted good and was so freaking quaint that I felt I was a subject in a Norman Rockwell painting. But you will just have to trust me on that because I didn't have my camera on my person and missed photo-documenting the experience.

First Visit from Family

Dar and Win were the first family from Utah to make the trip to Winlock. They arrived just after we got home from Los Angeles. It was fun to show them the progress on the house. We had dinner at Tom and Kathy's, lunch at the Pub with Drew, an exhaustive tour of Winlock and we also took a trip up to the Mountain. FYI, when someone says "the Mountain" around here you can bet that they are referring to Mt. St. Helen's.

Downtown Winlock

The Mountain in clouds. This was as clear as it got while we were up at the Johnston Ridge Observatory.

The Southwest Washington Fair - Food

I knew I wouldn't have room for "real" food and dessert so I skipped the "well-balanced" part of a fair food dinner and just went straight for the donut sundae (or as Kathy would say: dog nut sundae).

This is Matt's plate. For those of you who did not hear the sound of him gnawing on bones from two states away, he is no longer a vegetarian. He fell off that wagon hard. Peer pressure. That's what it is. I blame Tom and Kathy and their kitchen and barbecue magic.

The Southwest Washington Fair - Horses

There was a sort of theme in the horse barn. See if you can tell what it is:

I am Still Here

I want to go on record saying that I am painfully aware how off my nut, barking mad, crazy as a loon, mad as a hatter, etc. I went during the Great Una Disappearance of 2008 earlier this week. When I am feeling normal and well balanced I KNOW that pet psychics are malarkey but panic and desperation do messed up things to a mind. So that is what I have to say on the subject.

In other news, I have been delivering mail in another office to help out while they are shorthanded so I haven't had the time or brain power to post any of the non-Una events of the week. Here are a few subjects that I will flesh out in full upcoming posts:

• Norah is noisy when we try to sleep.
• Norah is stinky.
• Norah farts A LOT. Sometimes poo comes out with the fart.
• Norah worships Russell and has decided to follow his example of peeing on the bed.
• Saw a stray kitten in the yard this morning. Had a mixed reaction as I watched it run away: Aw, how cute plus PANIC. Where are they all coming from?
• The work on the house went forward while I was losing my mind.
  
• We went to the Southwestern WA Fair. Pics to come but you can look at last year's pics now if you want.
• What is the "Authentic Australian Experience"? (with the subcategory: Kangaroo or Wallaby: You decide).
• Why did some people in Castle Rock think Thursday was a federal holiday?
• It is REALLY hot.

I will explain all and provide photo documentation for some later this week.

Krazy Dayz in Chehalis

"Krazy" indeed.

FYI, I am no dance snob. I will bang my head when called upon. This band, "Splash", did not wake the dancing beast within.

A Sad Little Affair

In an attempt to cash in on Chehalis' Krazy Dayz, the shuttered bowling alley next to the laundromat hosted a garage/yard sale. I was pretty stoked to have something to entertain me while fluffing and folding

Drew was with me. The first thing we saw sitting outside in a box were used beauty products. In the photo below it is difficult to see but that bottle of Lubriderm is 1/4 gone and has a sticker price of $2. Ewwww!I was interested in this duck - for maybe $3 or so. It is marked at $20 - a pair. There were no other ducks to be seen.

Does anyone know what these felt covered pieces of wood are for? They are for sale for $2.

Flares: $2 each

Easter comes early this year!

These were a steal at only $3 but they are kind of short for me would probably make my butt look fat.

Everything in this pile is a quarter. I defy you to find something in there that you would cause you to part with $0.25

And finally, what would you pay for a state of art cassette player boom box complete with am/fm radio? $30? I thought so.

One Year Five Days

Monday marked our one year anniversary here in Winlock, WA. I began a post on Monday to mark the occasion but the more I wrote the more I slid into an emotional hole. We are moving along on the house but I thought we would be closer to completion if not all the way finished by now. It is hard living in our little hovel. We went into this "knowing" that this project would be difficult but it is hard in different ways than I thought it would be. I expected delays, contractor troubles, permitting issues, unexpected hurdles. I can deal with that stuff. Makes for good stories later anyhow. It is emotional drains from other sources that are dragging me down.

Tom (my birthfather for those of you who don't know) is building our house. We help when and where we can but the reality is that we are not as helpful as we would like to be. We feel like we are taking advantage of his generosity because we are not more capable builders. Not much we can do about that. We help where we can.

We borrowed money from family to get the property and thought we would be closer to paying it back by now.

Family dynamics in the new family are confusing to me. The first flush of newness and excitement is gone and now I feel at sea wondering how to fit in. I guess I should confront this directly instead of passively aggressively posting on my blog. Maybe that is one of the reasons Ben dropped out. Also, Kathy (Tom's wife) has repeatedly assured me that it took 10 years for her to acclimate to small town life. But all I see is an incredibly capable woman who wakes up at 5am, goes to bed at 1am and never stops for breath. She is always baking, cleaning, caring for the elderly, gardening, running her business, refinishing furniture and a million other projects. Sometimes I rise meet her inspiration but more often than not I get discouraged, eat some sugar and crawl into bed where I feel my belly inching out over my waistband.

On Tuesday I was really taking a nosedive. I cope by sleeping. It took everything I had to stay awake as I ran errands and did whatever else needed doing that day. I felt like a super rubberband was pulling me back to bed all day. I lasted until 5pm before I gave up the fight and went to sleep. I crawled out of bed on Wednesday around 8am and I am sure I had a nap later in the day but I can't remember.

I have been working on getting out for walks more (obviously - see previous posts) and that helps me stay awake all day and feel better about things. But when that downward spiral begins it is hard to stop and hard to find anything to hang onto and once I go down it is so very hard to get back out again.

I am out of my hole now. Feeling better about things. I helped a little on the house, very rudimentary stuff: pulling nails, sweeping, taking scraps to the burn pile. Tom has to spell everything out for me, but it helped to know that I was needed in some way.

Our progression: Then.
We lived upstairs. I loved our apartment in Los Angeles. It was big, light and airy and an oasis from the city.

Now.
Blech. The pink outline shows our living space. It is small but functional. It is a testament to our marriage that Matt and I have not been involved in some sort of gruesome murder suicide.

Someday.
Yes. Someday.

Hay Fever

I made it through 36 summers hay fever free. I felt bad for hay fever sufferers but I really didn't have a clue what they were dealing with. Summer 37 and it all went to hell for me. We are surrounded by hay here in our little slice of heaven. For about 3 weeks this summer I required restraint as I attempted to claw my eyeballs out of my skull, seeking relief from the ITCHING. Everything they say in the commercials for allergy medication is true. Of course I understood that in theory but now I understand it in practice and it sucks rocks.

Don't Worry. Be Happy

I would like to share 5 minutes of happiness with you. Click here.

The Pie Auction

Sunday was the Toledo Cheese Days Town Barbecue. For $7 a person could get a plate of roast beef (cooked in the park by the Lions Club who began the process at 5am), baked beans, coleslaw, watermelon, garlic bread and orange drink. If you are me, $7 will get you coleslaw, watermelon, garlic bread and orange drink plus shocked looks from the roast beef servers. Anyway, once the barbecue is over the leftover meat is auctioned off as depicted in the photo below. Most of the meat in the ziploc baggies sold for around $75. They did have meat in 25lb. boxes. One of those boxes went for a bid of $350!

Following the beef action was the pie auction. Silly me. I brought $20 thinking that would be enough to get me a pie. It wasn't. Drew pitched in $15 and we got this peach pie with a perfect crust for $35.

They also threw in a watermelon left over from the barbecue for good measure.

Becca bid on the Strawberry Rhubarb pie and snagged it for $50 (no watermelon though but that is probably a good thing as she flew home to San Francisco the next day and a watermelon would probably incur and extra baggage charge.

But $35 and $50 are small potatoes compared to the marionberry pie pictured above. That thing sold for $1200. No. I did not put an extra zero on that number. Twelve Hundred Dollars!!! The man sitting down and the man standing up are father and son. They were bidding against each other and got impatient when the auctioneer was only moving the bids up by $25 increments so they started shouting out their own numbers: $300, $500, $900. The crowd was freaking out. Collective gasps were heard round the park. This pie was the last thing up for auction and this family had already dropped at least $1000 on the meat and other pies. The son finally one-upped his dad and walked away with the expensive pie. Do you remember the floods in December? Rumor has it that this family owns Sunbirds, a sporting/outdoor outfitter store in Chehalis. They were under 12 feet of water and the Toledo Lions Club really helped them out, rescuing people trapped in the upstairs of the store and assisting with clean up. So the family came to Cheese Days to support the Lions by buy everything at really high prices.