Going through mom's belongings...

Going through mom's belongings ... and I found this letter, never sent.  It was one of the things I found in an envelope tucked into a corner of her purse.  The envelope is practically worn out, and many of the documents have obviously been folded and unfolded many times.  Several of the items in this envelope are either complete mysteries to me – mementos of some aspect of my mom's life that I don't know about – or they're big surprises.  Some of those surprises I don't think I'll be sharing publicly :)  Some I will probably do so at some point.  This particular letter was so worn out that I had to tape together before I could scan it. 

A letter to my children and grandchildren

April 27,1998

Tomorrow is the big "O" day [TD: "O" presumably means "Operation"], I go in to have surgery to give me two new knees and hopefully a new lease on a better life.

This letter is just in case something goes wrong and I do not live through this procedure. I fully expect to, but just in case I wanted to say a few things to you.

The most precious moments have been with family - husband, children and grandchildren. The joyful times we had camping stand out in my memory. Some of the candlelight dinners with Dad stand out in my memory.  The first summer I took all four granddaughters up to camp is one of my most favorite memories. They are so beautiful and they got along so wonderful. Seeing the enjoyment Tami, Amber and Marci gave to the old folks at the nursing home in Lincoln has got to be on the list.  Watching the little girls grow into young adulthood is almost frightening. It seemed to happen a lot faster than it did with our own children and that happened fast enough.

Watching all four of our children grow and flourish and each give to this world something wonderful. We don't have to look too far to know how special you all are and how lucky we are to have had you.

You all share what I feel is the best of both of us parents. Passing that on to friends and children will maybe do a little bit to make this earth a mite more wonderful.

You are all precious to me - you have all given wonderful meaning to my life. I love you all. I will always be with you in little ways. Hug each other - much better than fighting. Hold on to the things that are 'right' to hold onto. Don't give in or up when life seems to turn the wrong way. Always do to others the things you would like to have done to you. Always love and look out for family and friends.

When you are in Maine, play a game of cards with me in mind. Enjoy the camp as much as you are able. Enjoy your siblings and your children each and everyday.  Hug each other every chance you get - hard.

Remember the good times we have had and forgive me the bad times - please. I love you all so much.

I don't know why she signed it with an “86”.  I had no idea this letter existed.  Finding it pretty much stopped me in my tracks for today...

Update 8/3/2016: my brother Scott knew what the “86” was all about.  It seems my mom's friend (Joyce) liked to call herself “Agent 99” after a character in an old television show, and my mom called herself “Agent 86”, or just “86” for short.

Giving her stuff away...

Giving her stuff away...  Before my mom left Virginia, she gave away many of her belongings (or arranged for them to be given away when she was gone).  One of the things she gave away was her painting supplies.  For quite a few years, mom took lessons and painted (in oil or acrylic, not water paints to my knowledge).  Many of these paintings were gifts; others hung in her home. 

She still had all the supplies until early this year, when she discovered that Hannah D., the young daughter of her neighbor in Virginia, was taking up painting.  Mom gave her a big pile of supplies, including brushes, palettes, and a great collection of paint.  Mom got to see the first painting that Hannah did, but not the second (above).  She'd have loved this one: hummingbirds, penstemon, and lots of bright colors.  And she'd especially have loved the fact that Hannah was making good use of her gift.

Thinking of you, mom.  Every day...

On her recent visit with us...

On her recent visit with us, our Polish friend Jo B. left a sizeable bag of “sweets” with us as a gift: chocolate confections of various kinds, plus some wrapped caramels that were hard and crumbly, rather than soft as we're used to having caramel.  The photo at right shows a couple of examples.  We've really been enjoying these, but now our supply is dwindling.

So I got to wondering whether I could find these delectables on Amazon.  Yes, of course!  I noticed that the word “Wawel” appeared on each piece of candy, and it had the little ® after it (for registered trademark).  I guessed that Wawel was a brand or maker, and searched for it in food.  Voila!  Lots of Wawel products available on Amazon.

Not so very many years ago, a product like this would only have been available through a specialty store (likely in a big city), or through a specialty mail-order catalog (likely one catering to Polish immigrants).  It would have been a real challenge to locate a source, and the price would have been high, too (specialty stores generally have lower turnovers, and therefore must have higher profit margins – and higher prices).  Today all it took was about 30 seconds of brand identification and a few keystrokes on my web browser – and now I know I can order these any time I want them, and at quite a reasonable price, too!

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Yesterday I finished assembling the table and chairs that will go on our deck.  These were sold through Amazon by a company called Oakland Living (a furniture wholesaler), but were manufactured in China by some company I can't identify.

You may remember that I nominated the table's assembly instructions as “worst assembly instructions evah!”  Well, the assembly instructions for the chairs were possibly even worse.  In particular, the chair's instructions don't tell you the proper placement of some very important parts – and if you got them wrong, you could easily damage the chair.  I've seen how these “spring rocker” chairs are assembled before, so I figured it out pretty easily.  I can imagine, though, that quite a few people get it wrong and end up either damaging the chair, or even hurting themselves.

I'm guessing that Oakland Living buys from many different manufacturers, so probably the instructions for all their stuff aren't quite so bad.  But if they are ... watch out!

Earlier this morning, while it was still relatively cool out, I geared up to work with my steel-bladed weed whacker.  I then wandered about the west side of our property, taking out teasels wherever I found them.  The timing on these matter – if I were to wait too long, they'd go to seed and I'd have a bazillion more next year.  If I do it too quickly, then the late-sprouting teasels escape my marauding.  Today was just about right: the smallest teasels I found were about 2' high, and easy to spot.  None of them were in seed yet.  They're all on the ground now...

Yesterday I started going through my mom's belongings, doing a first pass on sorting it for trash, stuff to give away, stuff to send to relatives, and stuff to scan or save.  It's a bigger job than I had imagined, mainly because there are so many questions to get answered.  The questions range from “What the heck is this?” to “Did any of our relatives want this?”  I'm leaning on my sister a lot for help with these things. 

Yesterday I came across the jewelry at right.  My sister tells me that these are some of my mom's favorite pieces.  I'm about as far from a connoisseur of jewelry as it's possible to get (remember, I like my women naked, unpainted, and unadorned :), so I have no useful opinion about them.  The women in my life are uninterested in them; they are not the style that appeals to them.  And yet ... they are my mom's favorites.  I'm really torn about what to do with them.  I may just give them away to some of the residents at Williamsburg, where mom stayed happily, but briefly.  Or maybe I'll find a way to display them, as a memento.  My only plan right now is to ponder...

Stollen...

Stollen ... is a German bread made with candied or dried fruit, traditionally around Christmas-time.  My mom often made Stollen for the Christmas season, and I could never get enough of the stuff.  I asked her once why she made a traditional German bread, and she said “In my Scotch family, this was our tradition!  The Germans must have stolen it from us!”  My mother would never have stooped to a pun, so I'm sure that one was unintentional.  The name “stollen” is itself German, so I'm not sure how my mom could believe it was actually of Scotch origin :)  In any case, here's her recipe for her delicious stollen:

Stollen

1/4 c warm water
2 pkg yeast
pinch ground ginger
1 3/4 c milk
1 1/2 c sugar
3 eggs
1 c butter
1 box raisins
1 c walnuts chopped
grated rind 1 lemon
candied orange rind
candied lemon rind
candied pineapple
candied cherries chopped
1 1/2 t salt
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1 t lemon zest
about 7 - 8 c flour

Mix yeast with warm water and tiny amount ginger and tiny amount sugar let stand until dissolved.

Scald milk and pour over butter into a large mixing bowl. Add sugar, salt and cool until just warm. Mix in dissolved yeast, add eggs and beat well. Add other ingredients and enough flour (at slow speed on mixer) to make a medium firm dough.

Cover and let rise until doubled. Punch down and let rise again. Form into 3 long loaves - press rolling pin length wise and fold over narrow side to middle, making a kind of pocket.

Set on greased cookie sheets. Cover and let rise until doubled.

Bake at 350% oven for 45 min to 1 hour. Remove and put on racks to cool. While still warm, put lemon juice and confectioner sugar icing on top and garnish with whole candied cherries.

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Yesterday morning was busy as heck with various and sundry things. 

A shipping company truck arrived to pick up the dinged desktop originally intended for Debbie's office.  It's headed back to North Carolina to be planed off, refinished, and shipped back.  It will ship along with Debbie's new, shorter desk – and I'll reassemble the repaired desktop with the rest of it's parts, and install it in my office. 

Abby S. came over for a computer programming lesson.  She's running into the first stuff that comes hard for her: the details of loops.  I've got her writing a function to determine whether a number is a prime, and then optimizing it.  We'll extend that over the next couple of weeks to list all the primes between 1 and n, and then to do it recursively.  It will be interesting to see how her young brain absorbs recursion :)

In the afternoon Debbie and I decided to go out for dinner.  We went to the Black Pearl in North Logan.  I'd picked up takeout food there before, but we'd never been in to eat a sit down meal.  We loved the takeout food, and yet we were surprised by how good the food there was.  They have an avocado egg roll that sounded good, so we ordered one as an experiment – it was awesomely good.  I had a California roll and sweet-and-sour pork, both excellent.  I particularly appreciated the fact that the sweet-and-sour sauce was served on the side (without my asking!), which allowed me to use it sparingly (my preference).  Debbie got Singapore rice noodles with shrimp, and she ate an impressive amount of it – so it must have been good :)  We'll be adding this place to our list of good places to eat in the area, for sure!

This morning Debbie and I took our usual wildlife drive, up Blacksmith Fork Canyon and partway to Ant Flats, turning around at Miller's Ranch.  We left this time well before sunrise; we didn't see any direct sun until nearly our turnaround point.  We saw plenty of wildlife, but the highlight was spotting three moose (at right) just east of the dammed pond, about 1/3 of the way toward Hardware Ranch from Hyrum.  The moose appeared to be a family group: an older bull, a cow, and a young bull.  We saw several deer, including a doe with twin fawns (just barely still spotted).  Debbie spotted a rabbit, to our memory only the second one we've ever seen in Cache Valley.  Near Miller's Ranch we saw lots of birds.  As we drove up, there were approximately 12 bazillion swallows perched in bushes and on fence strands right near the road.  When the sun finally popped up, they joyously took off, wheeling and swooping for bugs.  In the distance to our west, we spotted a pair of Sandhill Cranes, presumably the same pair we've been seeing nearly every time we come out here.  This time, though, their chick was nowhere in sight.  We're afraid something may have killed it.  Debbie spotted a blue heron hunting alongside a holding pond, and in the same pond I spotted a large duck.  A little while later, Debbie spotted six ducklings huddled between two uprights on a dock in that pond.  Nice!  We caught a glimpse of a kingfisher, but no cedar waxwings or dippers today...

For the past couple of days...

For the past couple of days ... the air quality in Cache Valley has been terrible.  There's also been a smoky smell in the air.  We're too far from the big California fires for them to be the source, but this morning I read that the source of our bad air was wildfires in Idaho, and possibly some other nearby states.

The current fire map (hi res) shows several candidates, one NE of Boise and two in the NW corner of Wyoming...

If you know me at all...

If you know me at all ... you've probably heard me say something like “I’m not religious at all.”  I don't believe in the existence of a god (or gods), but I don't like to describe myself as an atheist – there's way too much baggage that comes along with that term, especially the Dawkins-style belligerence, arrogance, and evangelism.  This fellow sounds a lot like me, but he explains it mo' better...

Trimming and cooking...

Trimming and cooking...  Irreproducible scientific study results are becoming more and more of a problem, especially when combined with a largely credulous population supplying the funds for these studies (through their taxes)...

Morning conjunction...

Morning conjunction...  I was up before dawn this morning, and outside with the dogs.  The moon was fairly high in the sky to the southeast, and very close to it (0.3° according to an astronomical events page) was a bright star: Aldebaran. It's startling to see the two bright objects in such close proximity.

The dogs didn't notice :)

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  There's some progress on our construction to report.  The excavated soil has been removed from around our new foundations, and some good topsoil has been brought in to fill in some low spots.  This morning, a truck drove in and dropped off the lumber for the sub-floors, I think enough for both the sun room and the mud room.  Some photos below.

The joists are interesting for how they're made (see ends in the first photo below).  In the bad old days, we'd have used solid fir 2x10s or maybe 2x12s (for a long enough span).  Not any more.  The joist of choice these days is 100% engineered wood.  The web (the long vertically-oriented bit of each joist in the first photo) is OSB (Oriented Strand Board) with the chips deliberately randomly oriented.  This provides a nearly ideal web, with equal strength in either tension or compression in all directions.  A solid board, with its grain oriented along the length of the board, must be thicker to achieve the same strength.  The flanges are made of 10-ply plywood, roughly an inch and a quarter thick.  These plies are all oriented linearly, and they are all clear (free of knots).  Taken together, they have the strength of a piece of perfectly clear solid wood, even though they're much longer than one would normally be able to buy clear wood.  They're perfectly straight, and not prone to warping.  They're also much cheaper than clear wood, as they can be made from short sections butt-jointed together (with only one layer jointed at any particular location).  It's really quite ingenious how these engineered wood joists simultaneously improve quality and strength while lowering cost.

Healthcare insurance, part 75,992...

Healthcare insurance, part 75,992...  Just finished processing a small pile of EOBs (explanations of benefits), medical bills, and statements, and I feel the need to vent.

The document tally at the moment for Debbie's injury in May stands at 57.  All of these arrived in the mail; not one provider can do it electronically.  Once again I found the three things (EOBs, bills, and invoices) utterly impossible to reconcile with each other.  That means, of course, that I have no idea which ones are right.  I have absolutely no way of telling what I should be paying.  Everyone I've asked at the hospital commiserates – but can't really help either.

On the two occasions when I thought there might actually be an error (these were both with previous incidents, not Debbie's most recent injury), upon digging into them with the help of the hospital business staff we discovered items that weren't disclosed on any of the documents I received.  No matter how skilled I was at dissecting EOBs, bills, and statements, I'd never have been able to figure those out on my own.  What a mess!  It's as though you go to the grocery store and nothing is marked with a price, plus the store just added on random charges that they didn't bother telling you about – but expected you to pay nonetheless.

This situation isn't entirely Obamacare's fault, though the reporting requirements it added certainly contributed.  This all started, I think, with the standardization of insurance billing process – something that sounds good in theory, but in the end created an entire industry of “coding” (see ICD-10 codes), a nightmare mess of separate billing, and absolutely zero ability for the consumer (the patient) to select a provider based, even in part, on price.  The separate billing is like something out of a bad Hollywood script – except it's reality!  The last time Debbie visited her surgeon for a post-surgery followup, we received the following bills (and an allegedly matching EOB for each): the surgeon, the surgeon's office, the X-ray technician, the radiologist, the lab (for blood work), and a charge I have yet to figure out.  That's twelve bills and EOBs, for a 30 minute followup visit.  I have to believe there was more effort expended on the billing than on the actual visit!

What really rankles at the moment is this: because of Obamacare, I have no way to opt out of this craziness.  We must participate, or be penalized (and it's  a big damned penalty, too!).  That doesn't feel like America to me.  The government is dictating how we get our healthcare, and if I don't like it (and I don't!), I can't do anything about it.  That's a system that belongs in some place like China or North Korea, not here...

A young friend of ours...

A young friend of ours ... just got back from a trip with his wife that included a swing through Croatia (specifically, Zagreb and Zadar).  As we talked about it, I discovered that he had no idea that there had been a recent war in the area, and that not far from the cities he visited, NATO (primarily American) forces bombed Serb forces.  He and his wife found the people there friendly and welcoming, which I was very glad to hear.

But it got me to pondering...

I wonder if my perception is accurate – that on average, younger Americans today have much less historical context than I did at their age.  It surely seems that way to me, but I have little way to gauge that.  My friend's joking excuse is that he wasn't really sentient at the time, which is really a way of saying that he never saw it on the news, so for him it didn't actually happen.  That is so different than my own historical context, which was acquired nearly entirely by reading. 

Makes me wonder if it's just that I'm weird (something that I'm well aware of :), or has something in our culture changed – to make it even harder for us to learn from history.  After all, if you never even heard about events like the Bosnian War, how can you learn from them?

And then inevitably my pondering leads down a path that leads to me despairing about low information American voters...

I'm so glad we escaped California...

I'm so glad we escaped California ... before this blew up!  I have to admit, though, that part of me is very curious what magic the progressives will attempt to invoke to make this problem go away ... and I'm a bit afraid that they'll succeed in making it a national problem, thereby opening up the opportunity to pick my pocket to help pay for their fecklessness...

A formula for instant tears...

A formula for instant tears...  For me, at least.  Chris Muir's dad died yesterday, and he posted this strip:

This just may be...

This just may be ... the single worst set of assembly instructions I've ever encountered.  For a couple of hours this morning, I assembled a 48" diameter round table that we recently purchased to go on the new deck we're building.  This one-page instructions were the only help packed in the box.  There were 10 metal castings (only 4 of which are on the diagram), 16 bolts, 16 flat washers, 16 lock washers, and 16 nuts – and this one sheet.

It wasn't all that hard to figure out where each part went, but the fact that they needed to be assembled in a particular order wasn't so obvious.  I made several false starts before I finally figured it out.  I've been spoiled these last few years with “kits” that were easy to assemble and came with assembly excellent instructions.  This kit was neither.  I had to modify several of the parts before they'd assemble correctly: one needed to be slightly bent, and two needed holes drilled out slightly before the bolts would fit in them.

On the other hand, the finished table is very nice.  The castings are all of solid aluminum, strong and relatively lightweight.  The entire thing is beautifully finished.  I'm happy with the end result, but not so thrilled with how I got there :)

Sunrise in Paradise...

Sunrise in Paradise...  It was beautiful this morning...

Puppy update...

Puppy update...  A couple of milestones in the past few days.

First, while Mako and Cabo still largely behave like puppies, they look like little dogs.  So we're changing their category to "doglet".

Second, Cabo - that fierce little doglet - tracked, attacked, killed, and tried to eat her first vole.  We got it away from her before she swallowed it, and fulsomely rewarded her.  Good doglet!

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Yesterday morning Debbie and I made an early morning trip out to Hardware Ranch, looking for wildlife.  In order to leave early, I went out before sunrise, when it was just light enough to see (and I have great night vision), to move hand lines (irrigation pipes).  These three strings of hand lines belong to my friend and neighbor Tim D., who asked me to move them for him while he was on a trip to Montana with his son.  The three strings have a total of 18 pipes in them, mostly 40' long with a few shorter ones.  In all three strings, the job was the same: one at a time unhook and pick up the pipes, move them 30' to the next location, put them down and hook them up.  There are always a bunch of small challenges – pipes that are jammed such that they're hard to unhook, pipes that are bent and hard to hook up, getting the pipes in exactly the right place, and so on.  There's nothing really hard about the job, either physically or mentally, but still it requires one's full attention – you can't do that work well while daydreaming about something else.  You can, however, take a few moments here and there to look around you at the beautiful early morning scenery, which I did.  I particularly love the play of the early morning light on the mountaintops to our west, which occurs long before the sun rises from behind the mountains to light the valley floor.

After I finished moving the hand lines, around 7 am, Debbie and I took off.  It was a lovely morning, clear and crisp, and we were nearly the only ones on the road.  That meant we could easily dawdle wherever we felt like dawdling, to gawk at whatever was gawkable.  We made generous use of this opportunity :)

We saw several deer, but mainly we saw birds.  Lots of birds!  The ones I recall include a male Bullock's Oriole feeding a juvenile, lots of Cedar Waxwings (especially up at Hardware Ranch itself), four juvenile Robins taking a bath in the stream, a single Lazuli Bunting (photo at right, not mine), a juvenile swallow sitting on a fence post just a few feet from us, a Sandhill Crane pair with a juvenile, and a warbler that was a bright yellow-green.  That's quite a lot of sightings for one little trip where we never even left the car!

Yesterday was Pioneer Day, a Utah state holiday, though today is when it's generally observed.  The Boy Scouts came early this morning to plant a flag by our driveway, and all the local roads are now festooned with flags just like it in nearly every driveway.  The Boy Scouts charge a nominal fee for this service, but if you multiply that by how many households participate, you'll see that they're raising a substantial fund.  This patriotic spirit is so different than what we saw in San Diego, and I'm sure it's the same in every big city in the land.  You'd feel odd there if you were to put up a flag on the patriotic holidays.  It's basically the complete opposite here, where you'd feel odd if you didn't.

Today the Federal Express man delivered a big box with a pair of chairs destined for our sun room.  Debbie's been busy collecting furnishings while we wait for the room to be built :)   They're made of cast aluminum, so they're strong and lightweight (and also weatherproof, though that doesn't really matter in the sun room).  Naturally they were a kit :)  I spent an hour or so barking my knuckles while wielding a pair of open end wrenches to bolt it all together.  The chairs look nicely made, and strong.  The swivel and rocker mechanisms work great.  The seats are nice and wide, and the cushions are comfortable.  About my only complaint is that the chairs are an inch or so lower to the ground than I'd prefer (and I have short, stubby little legs!).  Right now the chairs are on our second floor, awaiting completion of their new home...

BLTs, again...

BLTs, again...  Those BLTs we had the other day were so good that we decided on a repeat performance.  Everything was the same except for how I cooked the bacon – I tried a technique I'd heard about: baking the bacon in the oven.  Bottom line: I don't think we'll ever cook bacon any other way again!  I used a aluminum cookie sheet, lined it with aluminum foil, and baked the bacon in a 400° oven.  The bacon was thick-cut, and I cooked it for 14 minutes until my eyeballs said it was done.  All the strips were identically cooked, which was already much better than stove-top.  I didn't have to turn over the bacon, and the cleanup was a breeze.  No more stove-top bacon for us!