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August 5, 2005

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Thank God it's Friday, because I certainly don't want to live through another week like this one!

It all began on Sunday when I tried to burn the house down. I put some sugar water for the Hummingbirds on the stove to boil and then got distracted down in the office. I smelled something strange and thought to myself, "Oh my God, the sugar water!" and ran upstairs to investigate. The whole upstairs was engulfed in smoke and the pan of sugar water had boiled away to a pan of black crust and fire! I immediately poured baking soda on it and rushed it outside. After opening all the doors and windows and turning on every fan I could find, the smoke finally cleared in a couple of hours. Through this whole thing, the smoke alarm didn't even go off!! After Dave got home from Portland, we tested it and it said it was working, but it sure failed the reality test! Boy, was that a close call. I felt so stupid and not only that, I ruined a pan from my cookware that I have had since way before I was married.

It also took me a few hours to clean my kitchen, as I had to take all the exposed antique kitchenware off the upper part of the kitchen cabinets and clean them and then wash down the cabinet doors. I guess I will have to be more careful in the future or they are going to ban me from the kitchen! Now, that's a nice thought.

That was Sunday; on Monday we were getting the Captain Bell ready for a sea trial before the steam meet in Port Angeles, Washington next week. Dave had to bail the bilge of the boat of about 9 five-gallon buckets of oily water (he forgot to turn off a valve to the boiler when he had fired it up last and all the boiler water had drained into the bilge). Anyway, the boat had also run out of fuel, so he was going take it up to the gas station to get some diesel before we launched it - when it happened. I was in the house and all of a sudden I heard this KABOOM! I thought, "What was that?" and I looked down on the highway to see if there was an accident. I immediately saw our Suburban with the boat trailer, but with no boat on it! Oh! Oh! (I can't remember the exact words I was thinking at the time and probably couldn't repeat them here if I could remember.)
When Dave left with the boat, he had to drive down our (rather steep) street to get to the main highway and while doing so, the boat evidently slid forward just enough for the hook to release itself from the fastening on the trailer. When he accelerated on the highway, the boat just slipped backward right off the trailer. That wasn't exactly where he had planned to launch the boat! There she sat, blocking the main highway along the coast. I immediately ran into the house and called the tow company and then directed traffic until the tow truck arrived. Mind you, this is at 5:00 PM during "rush" hour in peak tourist season and traffic was backed up for miles! It took the tow truck about 2 hours to get the boat back onto the trailer and we still don't know how much damage was done to the bottom of the boat. Dave thinks there's quite a bit, but hasn't had the heart to go out and look at it since he parked it on Monday. The tow company was really nice and we had a lot of people stopping to help us, even some Coast Guardsmen who just were returning to their base stopped to help.

After we got the boat back into the boat barn, we came in the house and opened a bottle of Scotch! Now, I usually don't drink alcohol, much less drink it straight, but now and again there comes a time and at this point I needed something strong! A few of our friends showed up to help console us and it was really late before all the wine, scotch and whiskey had been consumed. What an experience!! I think this picture his sister took of Dave sort of sums up our reaction to the entire incident.

Needless to say, the rest of this week was comparatively normal.

Later in the week, Dave took the Kubota down to Kahrs' and dug a trench to anchor a new section of dock they will build this month. It would have taken them several days to dig it by hand, so we're glad we got the tractor fixed last month. While we were down there, I helped Donna with the wedding invitations to their son's wedding in September.

The weather has been gorgeous all week. It's close to 100 in Portland, and that means we get up to 80 or so down here. But there's been a light sea breeze and that's made it very nice. Yesterday, I took advantage of the weather to get a little more of the deck painted. It's one story up at the top of a big ladder, so I only spent an hour or so up there. Did I mention that I get vertigo looking down and I am really am not fond of heights? I kept telling myself, "Don't look down, whatever you do, DO NOT look down!" It's been unpainted for years, so I figure I can take my time to work up some more courage before I climb back up on that ladder to get a coat of paint on the rest of it!

The only reason I still have any sanity left after this week is because we had some great support from our friends. I can always look out the window and see the beautiful scenery and sunsets and know there is a God out there somewhere and He won't let us down. I also get some satisfaction out of watching nature all around me. If it isn't a mother bird teaching her babies how to eat at my bird feeders, it is the two deer that visited us this week to feed on the blackberries. Life goes on and somehow we manage to get through it all.