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December 30, 2022

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Here we go! The final journal of 2022.

We had a wonderful Christmas at our daughter Leslie's place in West Salem. We drove in Christmas eve and it was still a little icy in spots on the road, but the traffic was light. All the granddaughters were there along with Ashtin's husband Austin, so it really made it special. Jason fixed this fabulous prime rib dinner. We did all this on Christmas eve as Lara and Kevin had to be at his home for Christmas with his family. We opened our gifts and Dave read "The Night Before Christmas" to the girls and grandgirls. It's a tradition that he has been doing since our girls were small. We spent the night and on Christmas morning after breakfast, we headed back home.

Our weather this week has been stormy with heavy rains (3" in a day) and wind gales (30-45 mph). We lost our power for a couple of hours on Monday evening, but it came back on. So, I had to reset all the clocks! That didn't last long however, because we lost it again Tuesday afternoon. This time, we went powerless for nearly 24 hours. More on that below. We have been having so much rain that we have been looking for an Ark! Because of all that rain, coupled with some high tides, we have a lot of high water and Nehalem's main street was flooded. After the storm, the sun came out and Dave took this photo of a rainbow which was so close you could almost touch it. I mean, if you could actually tough rainbows, you could have touched this one! On Tuesday, I had a hair appointment and so I decided to bundle my trip to Tillamook by picking up a few things that Dave wanted at Rosenburg's Lumber, spent some time at Fred's, grocery shopping and decided that I had enough time before my hair appointment to grab some lunch. When I left Freddie's, all the traffic lights were dark, and all the eating places were closed due to power outages because of the high winds, so I headed north to the Tillamook Creamery to try their food. They were open and really crowded but I managed to grab a sandwich. But while I was eating, the public address system came on to tell everyone to evacuate the building! What? I wasn't done eating! So, I finished my sandwich and started for the exit. The reason for the sudden closure was because of the windy and rainy conditions and their employees wanted to go home! So, I left and headed to my hair appointment, even though I was early. When I arrived, all the lights were out in the shop with a note on the door "Sorry, due to a power outage, we are closed". Boy, was I disappointed because I really, really need to get my hair cut! By the time I got home, we had no power again! Dave had set up the generator and lit some oil lamps. I found something I could cook in the electric frying pan (mac and cheese) and found some left-over cold chicken in the refrigerator, so that was our meal. We have the generator, so were were able to hook up the refrigerator to keep things cold. We hooked a couple of lights to it so we could see, although we relied on the oil lamps when we had to move from room to room. We had power for re-charging our phones although we had no cell service because the power was also out at Verizon. We have a propane fireplace which kept us warm. With no TV to watch, I still had power on the Kindle, so I read for a while, but we were in bed early that night and it was so dark without any lights. It was the next morning around 11 a.m. that we finally got our power back. We take electricity and hot water for granted but we sure miss it when it is gone!

We had a telephone conference with Dave's "Nuclear" doctor, who wanted to go over some things about his up-coming treatment. He will start his first radiation IV on January 9th. It is a three-hour procedure. When he is done, he will have to ride in the back seat on the way home and stay six feet away from people for 72 hours. He will live down in the guest room for three days, although I'm sure he will sneak out to the shop and keep busy there. His clothes will be washed separately, and his garbage will be stored for two-weeks in a bag before we can dispose of it. He has 6 treatments, three weeks apart. The radiology IV will go straight to the cancer cells and kill them. Keep your thoughts with us during this time.

Hopefully, things are back to normal. I want to wish all of you a very happy new year!