This-n-that

DH spent most of the week with a stinking, howling, butt-kicking man-cold.  And still he got up at 5 every morning and went to work.  This is the stuff of which heroes are made and I am dead serious when I say this.  The person who goes ahead and does the daily stuff what needs to be done, in spite of personal discomfort, boredom, and the asshattedness of management, deserves medals and chocolate cake and anything else he desires.

  He still can't smell enough to have an appetite (oh, I should only be so lucky!) but none-the-less he took me out to Estacada for a 6 km volkswalk, and walked fast enough to keep me panting in his tracks. It was a splendid day for a walk, and a charming route, along the bank of a river (the Clackamas?) then through the small downtown of Estacada which is embellished with over a dozen murals painted on the sides of buildings.  The murals include crowd scenes featuring portraits of actual, real live people from the area.  The day started out cloudy and cool, but the clouds burned off before we were done, so we had sunshine for our finish. It was beautiful!  Did I get photos?  I tried, but they seem to be lost somewhere in the ether.

Today, we slept in, and got out rather late (9:30) for breakfast.  The place was crammed! We had to wait twenty minutes to get seated.  DH took a different route back toward our neighborhood which led us past a couple of estate sales.  Sunday is half-off day.  We had wayyy too much fun.  DH found a couple of books which appear to have been correspondence courses with assignments and homework and tests all bound into proper book form later.  Really kind of neat.  One was a geology course, and one was an astronomy course.  Wish I had known the person who took those classes and was organized enough to keep all the papers and have them neatly bound into books.  I found teacups from pre-WWII Japan - eggshell thin and hand painted, for $4 each!  And 10 eggplant-purple napkins for $2.    And 4 big cotton scarves for 25cents apiece.  I love estate sales where the object is to clear the house, rather than to wring every possible groat and farthing out of Aunt Mable's leftovers.

Then I come home, look around my house and think, "God have mercy on anyone who has to clear this place!"  I have this addiction for old china and linens, DH and I love books, he picks up stuff that appeals to a machinist (a hand-hammered copper kettle.  A solid brass turned candlestick holder.  A VietnamWar vintage reel-to reel tape recorder with an apple box full of meticulously labeled music tapes.)  We've lived here18 years, and the corners are stuffed solid with - stuff.  (and the yarn stash, and the fabric stash and who in the world needs this many photo frames?)  As far as I can see, the only solution is to refuse to die.  You'd think, though, that if this was a workable solution, someone would have tried it by now. Hmmpfh.  You can thin my teacup collection when you pry them from my cold dead hands!

Oh, on a completely different tack, if you want to see something bizarre and fascinating in the wildlife sort of way, check out Murr's blog about slugs.  murrbrewster.blogspot.com