Kingfisher Cove

Typepad, the company who hosts my blog, has been in the throes of difficulty and hasn't stepped up to fix their problems. So I decided to start a "continuation" blog over at Wordpress.

You can find me here.

A Little Birdie Told Me Photos Were Working Better! (We Shall See...)

I HAVE to share this. It's possible that things are "devolving" a bit, but it cracks me up because THIS IS SO NATE. As a little kid, he was the class clown due to his "silliness." As he got older, he continued to be class clown with progressively more sophisticated humor, but silly was the name of the game for many many years.

Oh! I can't stop giggling! Snort! That said, I could never be a Kindergarten teacher...

The picture loaded (and not sideways), but it took two tries before I didn't get an error message. Sigh. (And still no connection to Live Writer). In that regard, I've been poking around in Wordpress (probably the most popular blog/website host) because I'm thinking the writing's on the wall (so to speak) for Typepad. They haven't taken on new clients for quite some time now, and I suspect they run on a skeleton crew. I've been nervous for a while that their days may be numbered. My understanding is that Wordpress works with Live Writer, so I'm hopeful about that, but wow! What a whole 'nother animal it is! So far, I feel completely lost. I can't figure out how to even begin to set up a blog there! I need to find a YouTube tutorial because it's definitely not intuitive. (I just noticed that here in Typepad, it won't save my default font! What the HELL!) 💩

A book appeared in my Kindle library and I'm so excited! (I'd pre-ordered it, but had forgotten about that, as usual...) It's the new Cormoran Strike book! I can't start reading it quite yet because I'm almost-but-not-quite finished with another book and then I must start the Book Club book. I have obligations! Whaaa! This book cover photo took five attempts to upload and I had given up with utter frustration. Then after several moments the image just appeared! Also, the "edit" button to word-wrap actually wasn't grayed out, which is nice. But this stuff shouldn't have to be so hard!

John and I finished the 7-part series on Amazon called “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart,” starring Sigourney Weaver. It was exquisitely acted and overall I found it intriguing and mysterious, but it took 3-4 episodes to get a clue as to what the hell was going on. That wasn't a huge beef, to be honest, but I swear that nobody ever turned a light on. I hated how dark the screen was the majority of the time. "Something" was happening, you could tell from sounds and the background music, but you couldn't see WHAT. In many ways, I would recommend watching it, but the constant dark about drove me batty.

Monday night, baby!! Colbert is BACK! And Seth Meyer! Man, it's been a l-o-n-g time since I've had some good laughs. (Including from my beloved class clowns).

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It's official:

Donald Trump is the:

1st man in the Oval Office to be impeached twice
1st man in the Oval Office to incite an insurrection
1st to lose the popular vote TWICE
1st to be found liable for rape
1st to be INDICTED [four times!]
And now…1st to be found a fraud in court. -Mary Trump

Do I Dare?

Why do I put myself through this? I have more of an inclination to blog during these frustrating, dysfunctional, Typepad's-doing-nothing-to-fix-this times, which is bonkers, I know. They even claimed on Twitter the other day that "All is fine!" What B.S.

One of the reasons I really love Open Live Writer (which is directly connected to my Typepad account, except not anymore🤬) is the easily accessible formatting tools that make everything so simple to compose a blog post. And I particularly love all of the image tools—while composing, I can resize them, lighten them, crop them, center or align, punch up the colors, and wrap text around them. Can't do hardly any of that here. I am missing that so much, it hurts.

The so-called "Bomb Cyclone" hasn't arrived yet, but is due some time today. Maybe? In fact, I haven't been hearing that term mentioned recently on local news, so perhaps we're just simply in for some Fall-ish heavy PNW rain. You know, typical. It was kind of pretty yesterday after a couple downpours.

I'm going to miss this summer. I can't count the number of delicious nectarines and berries I've eaten!

I had another photo to add, but it insists on being sideways and I do not do sideways.

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Narcissists could run head-first into a wall and then blame the wall. -Narcissist Facts 101

A Beautiful but Angsty Day

I got Quinn a Lite Brite for his birthday. (I always wanted one when I was a kid, and never got one!) I saw a short video of him opening it, and he had no idea what it was. I heard him ask his dad, "Is it messy?" Nate replied, "Well, not as messy as your clay and sand and tie-dye and bug collectors..." Lol. Sandra sent this and said Quinn just LOVES it.

This post is mostly an experiment, because suddenly I've (so far) been able to upload photos and today I have a number of them. Still no access from Live Writer, still no RSS feeds (I had to scramble to hunt down Margaret's blog URL and it took a while!) [Updated with THIS: I was over-confident with a couple of photos uploading OK and decided to “compose” in the composer. Then, photos stopped uploading (“Invalid”) and it completely locked up my browser. You guessed it. I lost everything I wrote. I’m about to throw something.] Back to Word.

I'm so weary of so many technological things not working! My remote to our road's gate works one direction but not the other; one of our security cameras is apparently dead; iCloud only intermittently uploads photos from my phone to my laptop and then locks up when I try to retrieve a photo for the blog or Facebook; Chrome kept "not responding" and so now I'm using Firefox which also freezes; and Windows has been doing some wacky crap lately, too. Oh, and my Kindle doesn't remember my bookmarks! What's up with that? 

This picture below was the status of the deck staining this morning before John got to work. The deck is now ALMOST completely stained except for a section along the middle railing where the flower pots and deck furniture are squished/stored, and that section still needs stripping in addition to staining. He was in a hurry to beat the Bomb Cyclone/Atmospheric River heading our way, so he concentrated on the rest and will finish once there's promise of a dry day. (Next July?) Heh.

Today was certainly spectacular! John was whupped after his marathon staining and was about to lay down for his nap, but I talked him into a quick beach walk. It was warm, calm, relaxing, and beautiful. We even encountered our new neighbors down there and taught them how to find agates. She soon found a dandy little gem! I found some, too! They glow!

And here is another pic from our beach walk. No snow on the Olympics yet! I'll bet that will be changing soon!

I will note that trying to get this post composed and the pics uploaded took hours and hours... 😡

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When a Democrat is indicted, Democrats call for them to resign.
When a Republican is indicted, they run them for President.

 

A No-Photo Post

After stewing for 24 hours, and doing a little research, I’ve decided to go ahead and have those two root canals taken care of (certainly with no joy). Apparently it’s not uncommon to have painless dental abscesses, although I wouldn’t have known that since I remember the horrific pain I endured leading up to that root canal I had 8 years ago. But the abscess is there, it won’t go away on its own, and it could spread or travel. Maybe it has? Who knows how long it’s been there. It occurred to me that some of John’s “issues” (gastro, joint pain, even his migraines) have greatly diminished since he had all of his teeth pulled and had implants, and he’d had periodontal disease for many years. I’ve always heard that dental issues can erode other parts of our bodies, and a constant (invisible) infection is not a good thing. I have a few “issues” myself that I’m hoping might improve after this ordeal. So, it’s a go. A month away to stew dread it. Oh, and a mammogram the same week!

So many things to look forward to!

The weather is back to cooperating for John’s deck job. He got a LOT done today and only has one relatively small section left to strip, although that will mean having to move all those flower pots. (They’re still looking colorful and pretty, even if the foliage is dulling and straggly). He plans to have the full deck stained by Friday because rain is forecast for the weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing how good it looks when it’s done. I sure wish it lasted longer than just a couple-three years, though. We would love to have Trex vinyl decking installed but it’s hella pricey. Sigh. Might be worth it, though. John’s not getting any younger. He is tired tonight!

I had to chuckle. One of our neighbors posted on Nextdoor that he saw some lost sheep roaming on the private road that connects to ours. I see stuff like that all the time on Nextdoor, but mostly it’s lost PIGS. (Really?) It’s rural here. At least there haven’t been any cougar sightings for a while. For the most part I ignore that site because it’s mostly unknown (to us) people bitching about anything and everything. Everyone wants to be an HOA enforcer, I guess. (I’m so glad we don’t have to deal with that!)

Well, I've attempted way too many times to upload a few photos and Typepad won't let me. "Image Not Valid."

W.T.F. 😡

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"It’s not Left versus Right, Democrat versus Republican. It’s about democracy versus authoritarianism." --Robert Reich

Expect the Unexpected

I’m trying an experiment—I’m composing this in Word and then I plan to copy and paste it into Typepad’s (ridiculous) composer where I’ll add any photos (hopefully). Word is similar to Open Live Writer, with much easier access to formatting functions and editing tools without having to scroll to the top of the page. I received a reply from Typepad after submitting a Help Ticket, where I complained about the RSS feeds not working. I’m encouraged that they may eventually fix this because they had a security threat a couple of weeks ago where they responded by shutting down some of the third party elements, like the feeds, connections to social media, and also to OPEN LIVE WRITER. So this crappy problem just may be temporary. (Hopefully!) C’mon, Tech Department!

I got home from the dentist a while ago and I’ve been sitting here stewing. I went in with the sole purpose of having a checkup and then arranging to have my teeth cleaned, which apparently is a freaking issue these days because so many dental hygienists never returned to work after Covid. Their appointments for cleaning are well into 2024!! I have decent teeth, only one cavity in my life, but they are in need of cleaning—again, my sole purpose. Well. After the full panoramic x-ray and then the individual x-rays, they determined that two of my front teeth are abscessed and require root canals. I could see the shadowing from the x-ray screen in front of me, that matched the shadowing prior to the root canal I had soon after we moved here. They were amazed that I wasn’t in pain from it. Honestly, I haven’t felt anything. So then they did a “cold” test, touching areas on and around different teeth with something very cold and I couldn’t feel anything on those two teeth, meaning that the nerves are DEAD. Well, shit. And get this: those two teeth are capped and there’s no guarantee that they won’t break from the root canal. So, I’m looking at thousands of dollars for something entirely unexpected. Oh! And I have a cavity in a molar! AND, my bottom front teeth are extremely worn and need a matching-color filling across the tops of them to prevent them from wearing further. AND WE HAVEN’T EVEN GOTTEN TO THE CLEANING PART. I guess the only good news is that my gums look great.  

John's been working on getting the deck ready for staining, which first requires stripping the old stain. What a job. He's been very lucky so far with the dry weather, and I hope it continues because this will take a while. Peering out the window right this minute, it looks like the clouds could unload pronto. (Update: it's raining)

That's not a shadow beneath the dormer roof—that's where the newly stripped wood meets up with the old stain.

We met our new next-door neighbors! They arrived this past weekend from southern California in their 35-foot fifth wheel (!) and camped until their moving trucks arrived yesterday. Sunday, John invited them to our place for a drink and snacks on the deck that evening (I was a bit in panic mode because the house was NOT clean, so guess what I did that day), and we had a really nice time. They are newly retired (she was an elementary school teacher and he was a mechanical engineer) and they were friendly and fun. She even wants to join our little neighborhood Book Club! It still shocks me that our long-time neighbor in that house moved away, but it was understandable since her husband had passed away a year and a half ago (also shocking), and she wanted to live closer to her daughter and grandkids. She said she may call in via FaceTime for our book clubs. I hope she does! But in the meantime, it is nice to have good new neighbors. I’ll bet John recruits him to the Hydroplane Museum…

Yesterday was Quinn’s 6^th birthday! The box of gifts we sent him arrived THAT DAY. I’d been gnashing my nails about it. Instead of just ordering stuff from Amazon or wherever and having them directly shipped (which would arrive piecemeal), I had them shipped here where I wrapped them and then put them all in a pretty good-sized box. Since there’s no UPS Store around here, we had to ship USPS, and it cost $100!! Gawd. There was nothing particularly heavy! And that was by Ground! The fact that they arrived on Quinn’s birthday was a pleasant surprise and relief, but I don’t think I’ll do that again.

Here he is opening one of his presents with his puppy plopped beside him:

And I'll leave you with this Blue Heron down on our beach!

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"Those who want us to work to age 70 and the ones who won’t hire us after age 50 are the same people."

Well, Crap!

I guess if I'm going to continue blogging, I am now forced to use the godawful Typepad composer instead of my beloved Open Live Writer that I have used for well over a decade. Typepad has apparently severed all connection and I can no longer upload from OLW. I loved it because it provided an interface that matches the layout of my blog, and everything was "what-you-see-is-what-you-get." Basically creating a blog post looked very much like the blog post! The photos aligned and wrapped nicely, and I could resize them to fit the blog space on the fly, something I CANNOT DO here on the composer. I'm going to "try" to have an open mind about it, but at the moment I am feeling majorly cranky. I could also "save as you go" so that I wouldn't lose anything I'd written after coming back to it later. If you can do that here on the Typepad composer, I have yet to figure that out. ARGH! I'm so mad!

And I may just be done for good...

Before I attempt a longer post with a bunch of photos, I'm just going to try to upload a picture of Nikki and call this one good.

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• Intelligence: You question everything you think you know.
• Stupidity: You think you know everything, without questioning.

 

 

 

Pleasant Weekend

Summer(ish) continues with clear dry days, but with the caveat that the temps are beginning to decrease and the breezes are kicking up. Pleasant and pretty! It’s amazing how early the sun goes down behind Squaxin Island now. Every day to the next, the difference is noticeable, and that distinctive tilt of the September sun seems to always be directed right at my eyes.

Yesterday was our annual neighborhood potluck (and road committee meeting—we are all responsible for maintaining our single-lane winding private road to all of our houses, so there are always issues to address each year). I’d mentioned in my previous post that many of us had some anxiety about how this event might go (with the host not providing any food and at the site of former bad godawful behavior from his Airbnb guests). Well, it turned out GREAT! I think it was a wonderful success! As I suspected, there were quite a few no-shows, and that probably contributed to how enjoyable it was. Otherwise, it might have been difficult to accommodate everyone. But his place is charming and it was nice to hang out on his deck, all casual and friendly. And the food was good, too. People brought chili and cornbread, chicken wings, and various snacks/appetizers. Wine flowed (of course).

I was a little concerned about how my chocolate chip cookies turned out. The batter was dry and crumbly, and that just didn’t seem right (even though I followed the recipe perfectly—eggs and butter aren’t shown in the picture below). They were difficult to spoon-drop onto the cookie sheets because they just wouldn’t hold together. BUT, I have to say, they ended up just fine and tasted really good!

  I did under-cook them a little, because my preference is “chewy” and they really were! And they held together after they were baked, which I was worried about.

Afterwards, we went a couple of lots down to our neighbors’ place where they had their camping trailer for the weekend. (He has been a valuable new crew member for the Miss Squire Shop with John at the Hydroplane Museum). We sat outside under their canopy of HUGE trees and drank a little more wine (and water) and listened to a bunch of old rock music on their astounding little Bose speaker. We kept coming up with tunes to play that we hadn’t heard for a long time, like Boston, Scorpions, The Cure, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Moody Blues, Steppenwolf, etc. It took us all back! So often, we could name a place where we were back when, either seeing the band(s) in concert, or hearing them at a party, or just dancing alone to them in our living room or bedroom. In fact, some dancing may have happened last night! What a ball! Yeah, kind of dragging a bit today…

Sitting out beneath the trees:

 

So here’s a sad (and infuriating) ditty. A friend’s grandson started high school this week and his mom posted on Facebook about it. On their first day of school, they were on lockdown because there were reports that someone had brought a gun to school. (Ultimately, nothing happened, but they were on lockdown for hours). One of the commenters on the mom’s FB post said this: “Sad, but it does prepare them for life.”

Bet you’re screaming as loud as I am.

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“Teaching kids about frogs isn’t grooming them to be amphibians.”

Kindergarten! Glasses! Books! Potluck!

Ugh. Taking a break from watching “The Beat with Ari Melber” because he’s interviewing Bill Mahr. No thanks. The mute button is golden.

I’m still smiling about Quinn’s first day of Kindergarten yesterday! Look at that excited little guy!

I thought about him all day long. (Kindergarten is all day long now. In the dark ages when I attended, it was just half day). He came home with a homework assignment! Sandra described his day like this:

The school bus picks up and drops off right in front of the military youth center [which I think is where he attends daycare]. It’s so convenient. He loves his teacher and a few kids from his class live in our neighborhood. They are all still getting to know one another. For homework, he has to bring 3-5 of his favorite items and tell his classmates about them. He wants to bring a picture of his puppy, Dogman book, his t-ball photo, and a fishing lure.

He’s got it all figured out! I think it’s great that some of his classmates live in his neighborhood. Now I’m wondering how his 2nd day went!

I picked up my new glasses yesterday and they are taking some getting used to. My distance vision is DEFINITELY improved, but as usual, the (invisible) bifocal makes me nuts. I’ll probably treat these like I’ve treated my last several glasses—take them off unless I need them for distance (driving, etc.) They just DO NOT work for looking at the computer, which is where I spend a lot of time. I read all of my Kindle books on my laptop. Without glasses. I see fine in the mid-distance, but the distance correction messes with that, as does the bifocal. So off they come. Also, the transition between distance and up-close (reading on my computer then peering up to see the television with the glasses on) makes me nuts. I sense that it’s the focus “muscle” we take for granted when we’re younger that is significantly slower now to lock in when we switch back and forth. Aging is death by 5,000 tiny cuts. Sigh.

I took Karen’s advice in her comment from my previous post and read “The Wife and the Widow” by Christian White and it was quite good! I’m currently immersed in Megan Goldin’s first Rachel Krall book “The Night Swim” that sillygirl recommended in her comment and I’m enjoying that, too! Thank you for your suggestions! I’ve had a couple of books that I’d pre-ordered last spring drop into my Kindle this week (I always forget about them until they’re delivered!), so I have a number of options right now. Our next Book Club isn’t until October, so I have time to play around for a while before I delve into The Island of Sea Women.

Our neighborhood’s annual potluck and road committee meeting is this Saturday (we hosted it at our house last year, and have hosted it several times which is a lot of work and rather stressful). Nobody was offering to host this year and I did NOT want to volunteer. Luckily, one of the neighbors finally did (whew!), but it could be…interesting. He’s the guy who owns the Airbnb that he rents out (I’ve never been inside). Early on when he was newly renting it out, we had a couple of years of HELL with huge loud parties, underage drinking, cops being called, and property damage/theft. A bunch of us had a big stern sit-down meeting with him and explained with many clenched, angry jaws that it was unacceptable. (He was pretty blasé about it, which was infuriating). But, things improved. Now and then we’re aware of renters, but it’s mostly families or ladies having a girls’ outing, and no problems at all. So, it’s going to be held at the scene of all that former hell! I have doubts that there will be enough seating, or plates/utensils, and he’s also not providing any food! The host always provides the main dish, and the rest of us fill in with appetizers, sides, and desserts. But it looks like this will be more of an uber-casual snackfest? (One of the neighbors told me, “I guess I’ll bring some savory finger foods?” I’m thinking that might be overkill…) My assignment is to provide a dessert, something that is NOT in my wheelhouse. So, I’ve decided to bake some chocolate chip cookies. I normally just make Tollhouse when I (rarely) make them, but I found a recipe that sounds nummy—you mix instant pudding in with the dry ingredients. I knew someone who made chocolate chip cookies that way and they were wonderful. Let’s see how wonderful these turn out! I also decided to throw together my garlic dip, just in case. (Both don’t require plates/utensils or even sitting down!) Heh. Casual is fine. Part of the stress of the past potlucks was that they tended to run rather fancy. I get the impression that attendance will be significantly down this year.

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“I'll take the guy who has done a great job and will be 86 over the guy who tried to end democracy and will be 83. But that's just me.” -Aaron Rupar

It’s September!

Well, that’s it. Summer’s done. (I’ve always considered summer as June-August). I’ve already seen a LOT of fallen orange/yellow leaves. So.

My deck flowers are still blooming and pretty, but the foliage is starting to get lanky and a bit tired. I will be so sad when they’re gone. What a joy they have been all season! (And hopefully for a few more weeks).

Luckily we’ve had some rain these past few days so they’ve been both hydrated naturally and by me. We even had thunder earlier this week that rattled the house! I didn’t see any lightning, though.

It’s been a busy week with a doctor’s appointment, eye exam, and Book Club. (I don’t think I’ve driven my car that many days in a row since we moved here!) My new glasses will be ready next week (nothing fancy, but a little bit different) and I was told I have the very beginnings of a cataract in my left eye. Oh joy. Apparently there’s nothing to be done about it yet, but they’ll keep an “eye” on it. I’m probably “looking” at increasingly blurry vision as time goes by.

For Book Club, we read Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney and I finished it about an hour before Book Club! Yikes! I wasn’t liking it much, so I kept putting it aside. I’m just not a fan of the “unreliable narrator” type of story. You can’t relate to or trust anyone, and you feel manipulated throughout. It had a giant twist that about knocked me out of my chair, but mostly because I was all, “WTF?” Manipulation on top of manipulation. (I remember especially feeling that way about Gillian Flynn’s  “Gone Girl.” Remember that one? If I’d actually read the book instead of my Kindle, I would have thrown it across the room). Our new book is “The Island of Sea Women” by Lisa See and it comes highly recommended. I’m excited to read it, but I’m in the mood for a good mystery or two before I dive in. Any good suggestions?

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“Now is the time for all Americans to speak up when history is being erased, books are being banned, and diversity is being attacked.” -President Biden