Through the Windows 1-8

Through the kitchen window

Yesterday it was sunny here and about 51.  Our truck was finished so we headed down to Sacramento to pick it up.  We hit fog just outside of Auburn and it was 43 in the valley...odd when the valley is colder than the hills...at least to me.  The truck runs like new now and no more smoking and running rough. 

Today was cold and foggy all day.  We could have been on the coast this morning with the heavy mist and the moisture dripping off the trees, it sounded like rain.  The fog drifted in and out all day and if we ever hit 40 it was for only a minute.  The fog would get up above tree top level and then it would drift back down around the ground. 

Through the family room windows

All the deer were hanging out together today...bucks, does and young'uns.  Larry continued working on his shop today, but in his heavy coat and knit cap to stay warm.  I puttered around in the studio and did a lot of nothing...I call it percolating or processing for the next burst of creativity.  I did make really yummy chicken fajitas for dinner.

I love gazing out windows and our natural view is always changing

A good beginning

Sweet 1-6

Last night I pried myself out of my recliner to do a blog entry and the site wasn't working....all that prying for naught!

Yesterday I had an hour and a half massage, trying out another new therapist.  I have found someone who is pretty close to my style of massage and she uses hot stones.  She started me off with a quick foot soak, which was nice...got my feet toasty warm to begin with.  Then it was an hour and a half of lovely massage, HOT rocks and deep pressure enough to cause a teeny bit of pain and then after she finished she helped me sit up on the table then draped my back with a hot damp towel.....lovely finish!!!  Loved it and I have already booked next months appointment.  Today I am a bit sore in spots but not as bad as I was expecting and I have no burns on my back from the rocks...ha ha (they were really hot).  I came home, took a shower and then was a carrot the rest of the evening....lovely.

The day before we took the truck to Sacramento and left it for a few days to get its injectors replaced.  Of course it is out of warranty now...when they were fixed by the dealership while under warranty they replaced with used parts....rat bastards.

This morning this sweet scene was outside our sliding door...the deer were laying down resting and the quail were doing their scratching foraging and then a squirrel joined in...it looked like a Disney movie out there.

Larry has been making progress on his closet shop...he has it insulated and rocked.  I planted some flower bulbs today that were Christmas gifts and worked on getting photo files moved around.  It was sunny today, but now just before dark the place has been swallowed up by fog...weird.  It has gotten really cold too.

My Moment 1-3

This is the way it normally looks.

This morning, like most mornings, Larry and I sat in the living room and had our breakfast.  When the sun is out it is a lovely sun room and we basked in the sun today.  There had been a heavy mist outside this morning so everything was wet. 

It wasn't until I was about to get up and get going on my day that I really noticed what was happening outside.  Our already beautiful country setting had been transformed.  From the morning mist there were drops of water hanging on the wire of the fencing, from branches and leaves.  The air was moving just enough for all the drops to dance and shimmer in the sunlight.  As far as I could see, through the window from my seat on the couch, was a shimmering dance.  The sun had transformed all the drops of water into twinkling, flashing rainbows of light.  The dark branches of the oaks, the bushes and the fences all became a mystical fairyland.



So you can see how wet everything was



It was one of those moments to just sit and enjoy the show.  As always I thought of getting my camera, but I knew I would miss precious moments of the fleeting show.  I would have focused on getting the shot and lost the magic I was experiencing.  If I was a brilliant photographer I might have gotten the settings all perfect on the fly, but I knew from experience that the shot wouldn't turn out as great as what I was seeing with my eyes.

I learned a few years ago that in seeing the shot through the lens of a camera you miss experiencing the moment.  It is great to freeze a moment in time, a teeny tiny piece of a greater scene, but sometimes it is better to just absorb the beauty.



Every drop was a little mirror...millions of them.



I sat relaxed in the sunshine...my tummy full, invigorated from our brisk morning walk....just looking on in awe, being dazzled by nature's twinkling fleeting spectacle of light.  I found myself in a zone I had never experienced for I was thinking that if I were to die right this moment I would die happy and with no regrets.  Wow, this is heaven.

And then a big ass cloud blocked the sun and the show was over....it was back to being just a wet landscape.  Off I went to wash my hair and get busy with my day.  Love the moments!

Yesterday's masterpiece, a watercolor

Today's unusually still birds, even their topknots were still.

The quail are always moving, it was strange to see them still.   Look how this guy is fluffed and he's sunk into his feathers, cute.

Rainy Day 1-2

Yesterday we woke up to snow on the ground, but it didn't hang around long...yay!  I spent the day working on the 2010 retrospective...it took two days to get it all together and posted.

Today it rained most all day...even on gloomy days I love it here.  We aren't looking at a house or a trailer or a fence.  We never know what animals we'll find moving through and it is peaceful.  Larry was out in the shed all day and I had fun playing in my studio with my paints.



Watching the rain...

This white breasted nuthatch sat still on the tree while I was eating my breakfast...they never seem to be still.  I hadn't jumped up to get the camera because I figured it would move or my eyes were deceiving me and it was just a bump on the side of the tree.  These birds run down the trees headfirst.

A Look Back at 2010

I should have started this a week ago. How hard could it be?


I just sat at this computer for 2 hours…never got up and pulled 80 pictures out of about 5,000 that I have archived from 2010 alone. Boggles the mind how many I actually took and deleted! Now because I have left this until the last day of the year I am realizing how much more time this may take…I still have to compose the text and then resize the pictures (hopefully I can resist editing them) after getting that 80 pictures down to a more realistic number and then get it all uploaded to the blog site. Then it takes a fair amount of rearranging to try to make it all come together in a sensible manner. My plan is to get it all done before I throw my hands up in the air and you get one picture of my feet walking into the New Year!!!

Larry and I always go WOW when we look back at one of our years. We always forget so much of what we have accomplished in a year’s time…maybe forget is the wrong word, we just don’t spend much time looking back so when we do it is a surprise..

So here we go……

This time last year we were in Tularosa, New Mexico in the middle of a feverish hunt for our new home. We love it there and figured that would be our next home…New Mexico. We looked high, we looked low but nothing said this is IT…IT being the perfect home and property.

We were feeling unsettled, Larry had a sore hoof, our medical insurance (like so many other peoples) was undergoing a shake-up and we were seriously doubting that New Mexico was going to be home.

Finding IT there would have compensated us for the long, long distance from family and friends…at least that is what we were thinking. In our many discussions of what we didn’t want and where we didn’t want to be, we found the circle of possibilities was getting smaller and smaller. One might think that fewer possibilities would make the decision easier, unless one had never considered the last improbable possibility and we had thrown that one out long ago!

I had come to the conclusion that all places had paled against California. I realized that you can take the girl out of California but you can’t take California out of the girl. Now, when said girl’s partner is a boy who couldn’t wait to get California in his rearview mirror and never wanted to see it on his driver’s license ever again it was an unthinkable conclusion! But when we looked at what we liked…California was IT. Bugs and dangers that we were already familiar with, mountains, ocean, rivers, desert, forests, shopping and all within a day’s drive…oh and no dripping humidity.

Poor Larry was physically ill for three days adjusting to the California idea…really. Then we needed to decide where in California to look…and we decided to focus on the Auburn area. Northern California, our favorite part and the foothills would put us above the fog, heat and smog and below the snow. We would be an hour from the airport and just off a major highway.



Auburn, CA

So as we have done before…decision made, pack it in and head out, so by the end of January we were back in California at an RV park in Auburn searching for IT.

3-13 Lindsay & Jesse Blackburn

We don’t let the grass grow under our feet once we make a decision so we searched two counties and burned up the highways looking, looking, looking. By doing all that we were able to start eliminating areas and found about the only possibility that felt right. It didn’t look or feel like IT at the time, but we were tired of looking, it had most everything we were looking for and so in February we started negotiations on a property in Cool. I will just say it was a short sale and there is nothing short about it. It took months of wondering and waiting. Fortunately we had the time and had learned to have some patience in the last few years…thank goodness.

In March we explored the area and we flew to Ohio for our niece Lindsay’s wedding. We had a lovely time there visiting Lori and seeing the girls and hanging with Lori’s friends. We spent the rest of March enjoying the bursting of spring in the Auburn area.

Ian & Connor

In April we pulled up stakes and hit the road. We figured we would take the time to go see the girls while waiting for things to move along on the purchase of the house knowing that WHEN it finally closed we would be working our butts off.

At the Mendocino Headlands

We first went to Ukiah…had to snoogle that baby Connor, they grow up so very fast and hang with Ian. Okay…seeing Andrea was nice too…tee hee. The girls feel left out sometimes when we home in on those boys. We visited Mendocino while there and hit on a stunning day, it was warm and wind free.

4-17 beach south of Crescent City

We took the coast route up to Michelle’s. We love the north coast and the redwoods. We stayed in Albany and spring was busting out all over there in Oregon. We lucked out and saw the Woodburn tulip fields…stunning. We had a badly leaking window, so Larry pulled that out while in Oregon and fixed it

4-17  Redwoods

By the first of May we still had heard nothing from the bank on the house in Cool and it had been seven weeks, so back on the road. (We were still looking on the internet for other home possibilities, but nothing new cropped up)

4-23  Woodburn, Oregon

We stopped in Sutherlin, Oregon, we love that Escapees RV Park there and we wanted to visit Aunt Millie and Uncle Marty. We ended up staying almost a week there…longer than we had planned but Larry had to go to the hospital one day…he wasn’t liking how his chest was feeling. After great care and a huge battery of tests they were certain he had pericarditis…the very painful inflammation of the sac that encases the heart. Nothing to do for it except wait for it to heal.

4-25  Seth & Larry

5-11  California Coast south of Crescent City

5-14  Larry & Carol (Mom)

I had an art class coming up in Chester the end of May so we decided to hang in Ukiah until it was time to head up there. While in Ukiah Larry and his Mom worked on Larry’s genealogy project and we took a tour of the Napa area cemeteries where they have many relatives interred. It was fun hearing Mom’s stories and seeing where she grew up in Napa.

When it was time we headed up to Chester. We stayed at a small RV park right there on the highway through town, but it wasn’t bad. Sadly it snowed while we were there…May can be so nice up there, but being the mountains you just never know…we had been looking forward to being up there during good weather…oh well.

I had a grand time at my art class and had a break through…it was okay to have a messy palette and in cleaning my brush all the time so I didn’t mix the colors in the paint wells I was not getting the heavy pigments I was wanting…woo hoo! I’m friends with the instructor and my best friend Mary took the class with me so we had a great time.

5-29  Me presenting award at Scottish Games

Then it was on the road again to the southlands of Orange County for the year’s big event…presenting the Ian J Campbell Memorial award at the Scottish Games. We stayed at a surprisingly nice RV park that was right below a very busy freeway but it felt like we were out in the wilds instead of in the hub of things. We had a great time and we were given the VIP treatment by the LAPD. It all wouldn’t have happened if not for Cliff, so another thanks to him. I took a ton of pictures during the week we were there.

5-29  Me & Cliff Armas

5-29  Me at my Dad's marker

6-2  Me getting ready for take-off!

June was a fun vacation month…we started with the LA tour and on our way north from there we stopped in Chatsworth where I lived the first years of my life. The timing was perfect for we were able to hook up with one of our neighbors that still live there today. It was wonderful talking with someone from way back then that gave me a different perspective on my parents.

6-2  downtown L.A. taken during my flight

From southern California we went to Coarsegold…between Fresno and Oakhurst and the south end of Yosemite. All my life in California and I had never been to Yosemite, neither had Larry, so we went up to see it on one of the free entrance days. It wasn’t as crazy as we thought and we are very glad we went. It is stunningly beautiful and the waterfalls were raging with the late spring run-offs. My Dad had worked in the park one summer so it was another piece in my family history.

6-5 Yosemite

After the whirlwind couple of weeks traveling from one end of the state to the other we enjoyed just sitting around doing a lot of nothing in Coarsegold. The weather was beautiful. We were going to stay until the house closed in Cool, but we were still hanging in the breeze waiting to hear anything much so we headed back up to Ukiah. We made it to Martinez the end of June for Brandon’s graduation party from college.

6-27 Nephews:  Brandon, Michael & Steven Narasaki

7-3  Ian & Andrea having a discussion

During the first week in July Larry’s Mom had surgery so we were glad to be in Ukiah for that. Then while staying in Ukiah we drove down to Concord for cousin Darcy’s wedding to Paul. We were honored to be present for that…most of you will remember that Darcy was in the near fatal car accident in Texas four years ago…my Miracle Cousin!

7-11  Darcy & Paul and their kids

7-28  We lived in the trailer while working on the house

From Ukiah we went to Quincy to wait for the house to close. Then the house in Cool closed finally! It was officially ours on July 23rd. Oh, I forgot, a couple times while we were in Ukiah we jetted up to Cool for the day for inspections.

7-29  Larry at work in house

So the end of July and August were crazy busy for us and we worked our butts off on the house. It was hot, filthy, full of spiders and webs and every single surface needed redoing from floor to ceiling. We took up flooring, fixed hundreds of holes in walls, had a wall drywalled, primed and painted every surface, new light fixtures, flooring, cabinet refacing and on and on. We made a trip back up to Quincy and then a couple of trips to storage in Fallon.

We emptied our storage in Fallon on Aug. 19th, a few days later our friend Daryl cut out a bunch of oak limbs and on the 31st we actually moved ourselves into the house from the trailer.

9-3  Happy 33rd Anniversary to us!

9-4  Andrea, Ian, Larry & Connor

It is amazing to look back at all that we accomplished in a little over a month’s time. Andrea and her boys were our first guests on Labor Day weekend. Ian liked our new place in the “forest” a lot! Connor liked all the space he could run around in.

10-11  Larry finally relaxing

10-14  Finished, new furniture

In October we made a trip up to Michelle and Darel’s new place in Salem, Oregon. We had fun playing with Seth as always and I bought my new camera up there. The rest of the month I played with my camera, taking pictures of everything I could find…the hummingbirds and a praying mantis were my best subjects of the month. We furniture shopped and just kept taking care of the little things that the house still needed doing. Larry kept busy outside moving the gardens deer fence and building planter boxes. The end of October we had our first torrential downpour and everything was snug and tight.

10-19  Seth & Michelle at their place in Salem

10-20  Female Anna's hummingbird

11-5  Connor turns One year old!

In November we added a porch roof and had both girls’ families here for Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful time and the house was thoroughly broken in and approved of. We had our first freeze in November.

11-12 Ian helping Grampa Larry

11-21  One of our local deer visitors

11-25  Thanksgiving, Seth & Ian

December we made a trip to the bay area for a family Christmas party and that was about it. I’ve been working on various art projects and Larry is turning half of the shed into a workshop as I type.

These were the highlights of our year…lots of things left out, but then this would have been a book.

12-18  Christmas Family Gathering

It was an often frustrating road but we are really happy here in our new home. We had to make several mental shifts to get here, and as in all journeys not being able to see the final outcome was the scariest, but as I have always said, everything happens for a reason and it always works out for the best.

12-29  Robin bathing