Trailer

We've been working on the new (to us) trailer almost every day for a couple of weeks now. I fixed the propane bottle hold down, the busted lid on the toilet, the stove light and fan, the bathroom light and fan, the front door, and I pulled the hot water heater and refrigerator out to try and repair them. Carol got a couple of cabinets and a new mattress along with a table lamp and some rugs.

The refrigerator and water heater were beyond help so we went to Sears and got a new fridge. We called an RV repair place in Newport and he came out and installed a new hot water heater.

We modified and installed the cabinets Carol found and put the new refrigerator in.

I framed and paneled a couch and we put some old cushions on it until we can find something better.

JC's daughter Brandy is going to be here in a few days to take care of her dad and we told her that she can stay in the trailer as long as she wants. We want the trailer to be livable and comfortable when she gets here. I think we'll just barely get it done in time!

The weather has been so cold that we haven't filled the water tank yet. I don't know for sure if everything in the water system works, and we've got our fingers crossed.

The weather is supposed to warm up tomorrow so we can troubleshoot that for any problems.

Domenic

Our great grandson Domenic standing at parade rest during his dad's deployment ceremony.

When the troops stood at attention or saluted, he did too. His father David is on his way to Afghanistan for a year. He gets to come home for a short time after 6 months and then he goes back again for another 6.

Dominick is staying with Brad and Donna, his grandpa and grandma until David gets back.

Christmas

(Click on Pic to enbiggen)

Carol and I had a very quiet, peaceful and rainy Christmas. Don, Dianna and family came over to exchange gifts on Christmas eve, so we spent Christmas morning together with Taz and Squeak, keeping warm and dry around the fireplace.

Carol cooked a pork loin roast with mashed potatoes and gravy and we had an early Christmas dinner. Later we drove over to Brad and Donna's where we found that the grand kids and great grand kids hadn't arrived yet so we visited for a while, left the gifts under the tree and came home to more peace and quiet.

The rain just keeps coming down and there's no end in sight.

Travel Trailer

For the last few years Carol and I have been setting aside a few bucks here and there so we could buy another travel trailer. We can't afford a new one but we had hoped to find a “fixer upper” in halfway decent shape.

We looked at some real beat up trailers with busted out windows, leaky roofs, rotten walls and rusted frames. We had a thousand dollars set aside but no matter how hard we looked all we could find were junkers.

Last spring while we were sitting out on the patio talking, I watched as a crow landed on the roof of our shop building and I noticed how bad the shingles were. It was then that I realized that we were going to have to get a new roof put on it, and soon! I had known that it was getting pretty bad, but it definitely wouldn't last through another winter without leaking.

There went our trailer money, (and then some!)

After the new roof was finished and paid for, we just knew that now that the trailer stash was gone we'd see great deals everywhere. We pretty much gave up on ever getting another RV and quit looking.

Our local cable TV company has a feature in the mornings on channel 13 called “The Wheel.” It's a herky jerky revolving gizmo with typewritten, misspelled ads for everything from puppies to pickups. It's a free service and almost all of the locals use it.

A couple of days ago Carol was watching and saw an ad for a 24 foot travel trailer - $950.00 OBO. “Too bad!” she said, “ That might be just what we were looking for.”

“Why don't you call them and find out more about it. We've got a few bucks in the bank, maybe we could swing it.”

Well, Carol called, we met the owners friend who was selling it for him, and we wrote a check for $900.00, which pretty well cleaned out our bank account.

It took us several days to get it ready to tow home and we had a heck of a time backing it in to our driveway, but we finally breathed a sigh of relief. We had another travel trailer!

Now the work begins!

Repair toilet. Fix hot water heater. Fix propane tank hold down. Find new mattress. Fix bathroom light. And the list goes on.

It's our Christmas present to each other and we're already enjoying it!

JC vs. The Big C - Round 2

Kelly and I drove JC to Corvallis Monday to see Dr. Lee, his Oncologist. She sent him to the lab for another blood test and prescribed two powerful injections, one of which costs $3,ooo.oo. He will get them every month.

The results of the blood test came in yesterday and he had to go to Newport for two more transfusions and the super shots, which have been approved by the insurance company.

The battle goes on.

Hell Phone

A long time ago I swore that I'd never have a cell phone. Every time I saw someone talking on one in the grocery store, or worse yet driving, I'd think That's rude, stupid, a pain in the ass and dangerous!

As I've mentioned before, I have a bad history with telephones anyway, and the last thing in the world I want is one of the damn things following me around all day, ringing some cutesy tootsie ring tone in my pocket.

I don't even like the built in answering machines that allow people to leave a message. Dammit! If there's no answer, I'm not home! Call me later!

I've always asked Carol to handle the phone calls, because unlike me, she enjoys talking on the phone. Now that my voice is getting weak, just answering can be embarrassing. If I haven't used whats left of my voice recently my “Hello” comes out like a garbled frog's croak.

A couple of weeks ago when our niece Brandy drove JC and I over to Samaritan Hospital in Corvallis I finally realized that I should give up, join the rest of the world and get a cell phone. I was there to see our son Brad and when I asked the information lady where his room was, someone put their arm around me and said,”Never mind, I'll show him!” I turned around to see Nikki, Brad's daughter, who was there to visit her dad. I looked back and waved at Brandy and JC, wondering how we were ever going to get hooked up again.

Nikki couldn't stay long and left after a short visit. I didn't know where in the hell JC and Brandy were, in fact, I didn't even know for sure where I was, so I figured the best thing was for me to stay put. That was a good thing, because Brad and I had time for a nice long visit.

I knew that Brandy and JC both had cell phones and I realized that if I'd had one it would have been easy to keep in touch. Brandy showed up after a couple of hours, and we said goodbye to Brad and went down to pick up JC. On the way home I told JC that as much as I hated it, I was going to get a cell phone.

Monday Carol and I went shopping at WalMart, and after filling a shopping cart with the usual dog food, toilet paper, eggs, bacon and other junk we wheeled into the electronics department. It was fairly early and in spite of the Christmas shopping season, the store wasn't very busy. The lady in electronics asked if she could help and I told her we wanted a low priced, easy to use, cell phone with prepaid minutes. We told her that we only planned to use it for emergencies.

She sold us a Tracfone with five months service and a 60 minute card. She wasn't busy, so she did the activation process for us. I watched while she punched in serial numbers and answered questions, all the while talking to a machine voice somewhere, (probably India). After about 5 minutes, (which would have taken me hours, if I could have done it at all,) she said that if we would come back in a little while the activation would be finished. We checked out, loaded our purchases in the car and went back in to get our new phone.

“I wrote your new phone number on the box,” she said. “Do you remember what I showed you about operating it?”

“Uh yeah,” I lied, not wanting to take up any more of her time. With a doubtful look on her face she handed me our new cell phone.

Later at home I opened the small instruction book. “Well this doesn't look too bad! I think the sales lady did the hardest part, which was activating it!”

First I decided to program the cell phone number into the speed dial on our home phone, so I asked Carol where the instruction book was. Amazingly, she found it in a drawer right under the phone. I read the section on speed dialing, punched in the new number and named it. I hit the speed dial button, listened to it dial, and heard an operator say”You must dial “1” before you can dial this number!”

I went through the process again, entering “1” in front of the area code, tried it again and listened to a new message from the operator. “You do not need to dial “1” for this number! After several more unsuccessful attempts at trying it both ways, I was getting pissed. My tremors were getting bad and I found myself cussing out the operator, who couldn't care less because she was a recording.

I decided to give up on that for a while and work on setting up the cell phone. The instructions said that I needed to create my voice mail account. I really didn't want one, but the booklet said that was the next step, so I followed the instructions: Press and hold”1” for five seconds. I was already tired of “1”, but I did it and found myself listening to another female voiced recording rattling off instructions faster than I could think. “If you want to blah blah blah, press star. If you want to blah blah blah, press 3. Every time I'd lower the phone from my ear to push a button I could hear her tiny voice giving more options. After giving “her” a pin number for the second time, (the first didn't contain enough characters) I listened to more machine babble and hung up.

I decided to give it a try, and dialed the new number, one digit at a time, (the speed dial still hadn't decided if it wanted a “1” or not,) and instantly got voice mail. “Isn't the phone supposed to ring at least a couple of times before it sends you to voice mail?” I asked Carol.

“Try it again.” she said.

After 3 or 4 more attempts, and cussing out the voice mail operator recording, I gave up in disgust and decided to try and enter our “contacts” and their phone numbers. My tremors were so bad by then that every time I pushed a button the character repeated a half a dozen times across the screen.

“They ought to call these things 'Hell phones' instead of Cell phones!” I said, and poured myself a glass of wine. Carol called Brad and asked if he would help me set up our new phone and he laughingly agreed to help the old man out.

The next day we went to Brad and Donna's house. Brad turned the phone on and looked at the contacts I had set up, which wasn't much, just our land line number. “Lets see if we can fix the voice mail problem first,” he said. He dialed our cell number and the phone rang, surprising me. “It works! You fixed it!” I said.

With his steady fingers he entered the list of contacts that I gave him and when he finished he tried the voice mail again. “Yeah, that's working OK.” he said.

How can you tell,” I said, “the phone's not even turned on!”

“That's when voice mail is supposed to come on, when the phones not turned on, or after so many rings!”

I could feel my face getting red. “You mean it's supposed to be turned on all the time?”

Always Look Behind You

The other morning while I was eating breakfast the dogs let me know in no uncertain terms that they wanted to go back out and play in the snow some more. I turned on the mercury light that illuminates at least part of the back yard, and let them out.

A short time later, Taz the Pomeranian, Lhasa Apso mix, scratched to come in.

“Where's your partner?” I asked, but he just wagged his furry tail and grinned his overbite grin at me.

I waited for a while, and then put on my head lamp and went out to look for her. A Papillon, she's a tiny little thing and we worry about her having a run-in with a Bear or a Coyote or even a Raccoon, all of which, at one time or another, have visited our back yard. Like most small dogs she's way too fearless for her own good.

“C'mon Squeak!” I called, and tried my best to whistle. ( Since I got my partial denture I can't whistle for shit.)

I walked back into the darkness toward the fence that separates our yard from the large forested area behind it, the headlamp making a dim circle on the trampled snow.

“Here Squeak!”

I searched under the big Fir tree at the far end of the yard and worked my way back along the fence, shining the head lamp back and forth in front of me. Now I was starting to get worried, and bad thoughts of what might have happened started running through my mind.

“Squeak!” I yelled as loud as I could with my weak Parkinson's voice.

I searched everywhere, and finally stopped at the last place I could think of, under an overhanging Spruce tree beside the house. There was still no sign of her, so discouraged and heart sick, I turned to go back. When I turned I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye behind me. I spun around and saw something dart in back of me again. Finally when I bent over, she came out from behind me to be petted, her head cocked as if to say,”This is fun! Can we play some more?”

“Squeak! Dammit, this isn't a game!” I said, laughing despite how worried I'd been.

I don't know how long she'd been following behind me, but I think Squeak and Taz, who'd been watching the whole thing, both enjoyed every minute of it.

Snow Day

Yesterday morning the dogs and I woke up to a winter wonderland. We couldn't wait to go out and write our names in the snow!

Since it was Squeaks first experience with the weird white stuff, she had a blast running, jumping and sliding, while Taz half heartedly gave chase. I even ran ( slowly, to be sure) with them for a little bit, huffing and puffing clouds of steamy breath. It was still dark but I took some flash pictures when I could get Squeak to hold still long enough to focus the camera.

The house was chilly, so I got a good fire going in the fireplace, but before we could even get warmed up, Squeak wanted out again. Taz laid down in front of the fireplace, but Squeak sat by the back door doing her “I want out!” squeak. She sounded so pathetic we went back out and played some more.

Taz and I pooped out, but Squeak couldn't get enough of it. When her tiny little paws would get too cold she'd come in for a warm up and then cry to go out again.

When it got light I took some more pictures, and some video of the dogs playing. Squeak drove us crazy, wanting out every 15 minutes all day long.

After leaving Colorado, I didn't think that I'd ever like snow again, but now when it only happens once in a while, it's kind of fun.

J.C. vs. The Big C

With typical macho Cleland stubbornness my brother J.C. put off going to see a doctor until his pain got unbearable. At first the doctor thought that he just had a kidney infection and an enlarged prostate, but when treatment for that didn't help, J.C. went in for more tests. They catheterized him and when he began bleeding into the catheter they sent him to our local hospital.

The doctor at the hospital couldn't stop the bleeding so they decided to send him to the Corvallis hospital, a much larger facility. Carol arranged for him to be transported by our local Waldport ambulance (which she drove for many years.) They hastily put together a crew to transport him but unfortunately none of them were very experienced and he didn't have a very good ride. The driver got lost in Corvallis and the EMT attending to him got car sick.

After countless ultra sounds, x rays, and blood tests they found cancer in his prostate that had spread to his ribs and shoulder. They put drainage tubes in both kidneys and started him on chemotherapy. In the meantime his daughter Brandy drove up from Elko Nevada and stayed overnight at the hospital with him. A few days later, much to everyone's surprise, they sent him home.

The next morning Brandy and I went to Newport and after leaving the prescriptions at Walmart to be filled, she drove me to the hospital parking lot to retrieve J.C.'s Honda. We were worried that it might not start after sitting so long, but it started right up and I drove it back to J.C.'s house with no problems. It turned out that when Brandy went back to get the medicine she left her lights on and had to get a jump start in the Walmart parking lot.

That afternoon J.C. And I had our first visit since he was transported to Corvallis and he seemed to be in pretty good spirits, despite the kidney tubes and the medicine he was on. When he began to tire I asked him for his fancy cell phone so I could call Carol to come and pick me up.

My history with phones of any kind is that if any thing can go wrong it will, and it's especially true of cell phones. I once tried to call Carol on J.C.'s fancy cell phone and somehow ended up having a pleasant conversation with Cheri, his ex wife in Elko, Nevada. This time proved to be no different .

I listened for a dial tone, didn't hear anything and handed it back to J.C. “It's not working!” I said.

He looked at it and said, “Well, you just took a nice picture of your ear!”

I let him dial it for me.

The next day, Sunday, I put on my rain coat and walked up to J.C.'s. I found him in the living room watching football on his big screen (3 inches bigger than mine) HD TV. He was having problems with one of his kidney tubes not draining right, and he had a lot of swelling in his legs and feet from water retention, but he was feeling pretty good because the Broncos were beating the crap out of Kansas City. We watched football for a couple of hours until Brandy returned and I walked back home.

Shelby

Forget the Barby Dolls! Forget the sugar and spice and everything nice!

Give our 7 year old granddaughter Shelby a tree to climb, a baseball bat to swing, or a “Transformer”to play with!

She dressed up in her Halloween costume, (“Optimus Prime” a transformer that turns into a semi truck) and made the rounds last night. If you didn't give her candy, she wreaked havoc and destruction!