Kingfisher Cove

Wild

Just to add to this record-breaking summer here in Washington (most 90° days ever, most 80° days ever, driest ever, etc. etc.) today we had a very “rare” August wind storm and it was, well, wild! This would be pretty commonplace if it occurred in November, but it ended up being dangerous and deadly because the trees are still heavily laden with leaves. Lots of trees crashed down (killing two people), and lots of power outages up and down the I-5 corridor. Our power flickered continuously here at Harstine, but we lucked out! I don’t know why. The power used to go out all the time in the camping trailer.

All morning and into the afternoon, branches and fir cones pummeled the metal roof and it was LOUD. (I’ll bet the roof is a branch-strewn and needle-packed mess…) The deck is pretty messy, too, but no damage anywhere that I’m aware of. It could have been so much worse!

 

Here’s also a short video from the deck in the midst of it all. (For some reason, I get a javascript error when I try to embed from YouTube anymore. I know not why. Grrr.)

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So guess what?

My oven is NOT WORKING. AGAIN. After the second repair (and second replaced part) with weeks and weeks in between waiting on Frigidaire, it seemed to be working for a few days.

And then it wasn’t.

350° sinks to 315° and continues sinking unless I turn the oven off and back on and reset it to 350°. Then it sinks again. Rinse/repeat. It absolutely will not maintain temperature.

I. Am. Furious. They need to provide me with a NEW OVEN. And they need to do it NOW. I have company coming in the next two months AND MY OVEN NEEDS TO WORK. (This really is not an unreasonable expectation.)

I am white-hot, spitting, kick something, cuss-a-blue-streak pissed as HELL.

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While I’m hoping to be called from the waiting list for the only Olympia-based hair stylist who specializes in curly hair, I decided to color my hair (myself) yesterday. “Medium Natural Blonde.” Eeeeeeek! It turned out so dark! Ugh! I do know that my hair lightens pretty quickly after coloring it, though, so hopefully soon it’ll brighten up? I hope so!

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This past week I’ve been a bit on the down-low. Margaret came Monday and spent the night, while John left early Monday morning to meet up with Lee at Blewett Pass to camp and do some gold huntin’ and dredging. THAT ended up a bust as Lee had car trouble and John waited for him over 8 hours (without cell service) before bagging it and heading home. Margaret and I had a nice time and a great visit, although the plan was to do some kayaking and the wind kicked up so we opted not to (probably wise). So, it was mostly relaxing and laid back. Then John arrived home Monday night after 1:00 a.m. (that was a LOT of driving!)

Then, I’ve been buried in a book. It’s called “The Bone Clocks” by David Mitchell, and can I recommend it? I dunno! It was brilliantly written, it was a trip-and-a-half, it had fascinating characters, I liked the ending, so you would think yes? Some thoughts:

• It was kind of like 6 separate novellas that connected with each other but mostly stood on their own. I find this structure off-putting to the flow of a novel because you get so engrossed in the story of a particular character and then you’re jerked away into another story of another character. It eventually made sense, but it was kind of irritating. I guess I prefer a more linear structure.
• A couple of those stand-alone “stories” were too long, too verbose, even a little over-the-top. And yet, they did establish strong characterization, so there’s that.
• This book has a quirky element of fantasy (if not horror). I actually read a lot of fantasy (and horror!) books, so I found this fascinating. Many people might not.
• The second-to-last part was crazysauce. (But I loved it!)
• The last part was a very real, stark, frightening glimpse of what our world could well be heading toward and my stomach clenched with dismay and dread. We have way too many wrong-headed people leading the way toward this possible dystopian reality, including climate-change deniers, power-hungry UNintelligent looney tunes, and holier-than-thou hypocrites. It’s a toxic mix and the author knows this. But that said, in spite of the gloom and doom, the ending was a relief. Not necessarily uplifting, but a relief.

So yes, it was a good book. But it wouldn’t be for everyone.

I’m now up for a much lighter read!

Holy SMOKES!!!

The Des Moines house went on the market this past Monday and I really didn’t give it much thought because the condition of that house meant that it would need to appeal to a very limited buyer—one who could see potential, look beyond the [pretty horrific] flaws, AND have the means above and beyond the purchase price to make the improvements. Guys, it’s in bad shape. Water leakage damage from a poor contractor roofing job a few years ago resulting in numerous sheetrock issues. Tired and weathered siding. Huge windows with trapped foggy moisture between the panes, requiring replacement. Desperate need of paint, carpet replacement, vinyl replacement, and even hardwood floor restoration in areas. The bathrooms are circa 1985. All of the doors are lower-quality and need replacing. The driveway is very steep and has sunken mid-span over the years, plus it needs a solid retaining wall along one side to keep the bank from burying the driveway. The landscaping is, well, atrocious (although there are some nice ornamental trees and plants hidden in there. Somewhere among the blackberry brambles.)

I felt shame when the real estate lady was there last weekend, even though she was just great. I’ve had many sleepless nights about unburdening ourselves from that house and how in the hell it would ever be possible.

The upside of it is that it’s very unique with modern lines, a peek-a-boo view of Commencement Bay [more so in the winter with the leaves off the trees], a huge loft master bedroom, an indoor tiled planter in the dining area, a large sunken living room, and a huge garage/shop. Plus John had upgraded the kitchen a few years ago. I mean, it does have potential. But it’s also on a very busy road (with that godawful steep driveway…)

We listed it with the price reflecting the condition, although we were advised to start a little high in that range and see what happened with the idea of reducing the price a little every week or two.

By Thursday morning we had two offers! One was lame (less than what we still owe on the house), but the other one was what we expected to reduce the price to during the second week on the market! And we accepted it! In utter shock! Three days? THAT HOUSE??!! Holy crap! And we may actually make a little bit of a profit!

AND THEN, today we received a “back-up” offer from a flipper firm. If this pending sale doesn’t go through, the offer is the ASKING PRICE in CASH. (Crap, I sure wish they’d made the first offer!)

We are gobsmacked! Neither of us have yet scraped our jaws up off the floor.

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We finally have the recliner here at Harstine (that matches our sofa)! Heavy sucker, even though it does separate into two pieces. Our furniture is tired, but oh well. It is what it is.

For now, the Lazy Boy stays. It doesn’t go all that well, but it’s a comfy place to sit a butt.

It’s official now; the notice has been sent out to all the neighbors that the annual potluck/road committee meeting will be at our house. {{{GULP!!!}}} It’s not until Sept. 26th, but it’s definitely time to start thinking seriously about it. Such as, where will we seat everyone? And then two-three weeks later, Nate and Sandra’s reception party.

Alrighty, then! 

Gatherings

*Yawn*  I feel my body clock shifting. It’s darker a little earlier at night and later into the morning and I’ve been feeling a bit cobwebby. We also had one HECKUVA thunder/lightning storm on Friday and it was eerily dark throughout the whole day. Some impressive rain, too, and the first significant measureable rain since MARCH. It’s been a bizarre year.

On Friday I sent a text message to our neighbors a few houses down asking if they were going to be around over the weekend and if they’d like to come for dinner on Saturday. But they’d taken their sailboat out for a weekend spin (and were out and about in the midst of that storm! Yikes!) We also planned to invite our next-door neighbors so after John drilled and sawed in his shop for a while (wiring) and I hopped in the shower, John walked over to their house to invite them. It didn’t quite go as planned! She had just been over to OUR place and nobody answered the doorbell (shop drills/saws and shower) to invite US over for dinner! (Plus, the dogs are deaf and don’t hear the doorbell anymore). They also invited another couple (NEIGHBORS, of course!) How funny. So we went over there Saturday evening and it was fun and a wonderful dinner (that makes me realize I need to step up my game, although I’d planned to cook a beef roast which I suppose wouldn’t have been bupkis). We had stuffed mushroom appetizers that were incredible, grilled rib-eyes to die for, and then she made two refreshing dishes from Giada De Laurentiis’ cookbook that were so amazing that I’ve ordered myself the cookbook! (The stuffed mushroom appetizer comes from it, too). Look at this:

This is one of our neighbors, M, holding a plate of skewered fresh basil leaves, cherry tomatoes, and watermelon chunks! The combo of flavors was a dance party on the tongue, and I mean it! (Plus, how hard could that be?) And then a very flavorful and textured salad that I believe is this one but with added fresh beans and black olives:

It was delicious (and I suspect healthy).

It was kind of cool to peer over at our deck from our neighbors’ house!

As much as I like our neighbors along here—and they are nice people—several of them come from some pretty Big Money, and I’m often stunned at how out of touch they can be. One guy is cartoony gun-happy and they’re all unquestioning republican (except for the couple who were out on their sailboat). Some snippets:

“Caught that damned raccoon in my trap and blew his brains out.”

“I wonder why the Mexicans don’t like Rubio. He speaks their language.” [W.T.F.???!!!]

“Hillary is completely unelectable. She’ll go down for those emails or Benghazi.” [eyeroll]

“I accidently knocked off about five crows the other day.” [blows on his finger]

“I would like to see a woman president. Maybe Fiorina? She’s quite the businesswoman. Oh, she supports the anti-vaxxers? Well, never mind.” [also never mind she laid off 30,000 people, ran a huge  company into the ground, and still walked off with a $21 million golden parachute??]

“There’s way too much corporate money in politics.” [somebody is making sense!]

“I blame the unions.” [Oh, brother.]

I did a lot of blank staring.

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I’ve also been gathering together a few fun things for Nate and Sandra’s reception. (Peacocks! I love peacocks!)

 

Peacock feathers!

So many possibilities!

Progress!

Tiring day, and especially for poor John. I’m constantly amazed at how physically strong he is, and how he at least outwardly is able to compartmentalize dozens upon dozens of multiple stressful tasks to meet an eventual end-goal. There have been times when he’s admitted to me in a nearly breaking voice how overwhelmed he is with all of this house stuff. The balls in the air right now include the driveway retaining walls (concrete and block), storm drainage, paving (concrete or blacktop), and the terraced structure to reduce the height of the retaining walls and allow some landscaping someday; getting the Des Moines house on the market “as-is” and working with a real estate agent AND a real estate attorney to iron out our options because the house requires many thousands of dollars of improvements that we would never see a nickel of if we did it ourselves; and gazillions of little (but still daunting) details of completely finishing THIS house (the mantel, baseboard, thresholds, pictures hung, under-eve soffits, you-name-it, and then we’re already into maintenance!) He also still has his metal mill in the Des Moines garage/shop that is going to require a forklift to load it onto a heavy-duty trailer to haul down here and *somehow* get it down the hill into his shop. He’s also been working fervently to get his shop organized and his next big project will be WIRING it. Yesterday he brought home a truckload of wire and conduit from Home Depot. It’s just never-ending.

This morning we headed up to the Des Moines house, which for me will likely be the last time I’m ever there. (Maybe). He’s been up there several times in the past few weeks loading up furniture, emptying out his garage/shop, and hauling load after load after load to the dump and Value Village for donation. I swear that he has paid the King County dump in excess of $1,000. (They are the epitome of highway robbery…)

Today I did some cleaning and packed up ALL of the books. Probably 90% of them we’re donating, but I did pack up three bins to keep (that also include some of Nate’s childrens’ books!) John made another huge dump run. And we met up with our real estate agent and signed a bunch of forms—the house should be on the market come this Monday. We’ll see what happens. It’ll need to appeal to somebody who can see potential and has the means to get it there.

In the midst of our efforts, a violent thunder storm passed through and it had to be very nearby. LOTS of flash-bangs, including one CRASH that sent shock waves through my body. Then, POURING rain. What a deluge! But it was short-lived and isolated (no sign at Harstine that it had rained here at all).

It was strange to see the Des Moines house so empty.

And how it was at one time:

And the dining area:

 

And how it was:

And my postage-stamp kitchen!

And…

A Facebook friend asked if I felt sad. I don’t. I associate this house with constantly getting up and going to work (fighting awful traffic and awful people) and coming home exhausted. Even good times danced around that dread. And the best times were when we were at Harstine for the weekends, hanging out in our camping trailer. So no. I don’t feel sad. It’s a relief. (Or will be! Hopefully!)

(Plus our Harstine house is so awesome, so there’s that!)

So looky here! I love how fun the peacock theme is for a party and I just couldn’t help myself:

Napkins plus a guest book (and pen) with a couple of more fun things on the way! Woohoo! And speaking peacocks, my latest attempt at peacock glass. I guess you could say it’s “whimsical.”

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Yet ANOTHER amazing sunset. What a summer it’s been!

A “Growly” Week

This post might be all over the place. Normally I come up with a post title first then write the post, mostly because I have an idea of where it will be going. But today that title needs to steep a while to see where I end up!

Overall it’s been a bit of a growly week! There is one thing that went right and that is this: MY OVEN IS FINALLY FIXED! The latest replacement part did the trick and I am so relieved. I’m sure the repairman was relieved, too. He was seeing my eye-daggers when at first it appeared that the part might not be the solution. Eye-daggers retracted, no blood drawn. Yippee!

Apparently, the dogs have fleas. The scratching, the thumping, the chewing, the biting, the whining, night and day, day and night. At first I wasn’t convinced it was fleas because we hadn’t seen any. I bathed the dogs in flea/tick shampoo and saw no fleas swirling down the drain. No fleas on the bedding or anywhere else. I changed their food to the Good Stuff, thinking that it might be old-age skin ailments setting in. But the behavior is definitely all about fleas and  the scratching is RELENTLESS. I have been sleeping like crap because of it and feeling irritable as hell. We’ve applied Front Line and so far nada. I’m almost at my wit’s end. We still haven’t actually seen any fleas! (But the cats are now starting to scratch, too…)

And then…fruit flies. It seems like we contend with them every year (both here and at the Des Moines house) and it’s such a losing battle. I drown HUNDREDS of them by leaving out glasses with apple cider vinegar or wine (such a waste!) with a drop of Dawn dishwashing liquid, but they reproduce just as quickly. I swear they are mostly immortal. Ever try clapping your hands to try to smush one? Yeah, good luck. I hate ‘em! (And no, there is not any fruit sitting out!)

Then the other growly thing is Windows 10. I got my notification that I could upgrade and so did John. He had no problem at all and it works just fine. My computer Will. Not. Upgrade. It trots along just fine until it gets to 32% and then it stops. Completely hangs. Thankfully it’s pretty painless to revert back to Windows 7, and after four tries now, I guess I’ll be staying with Windows 7!

I’ve Googled this and it appears to be a fairly common issue, but I have yet to see a solution. Oh well. Windows 7 works great. (I never even gave 8.x a try after all the dreadful things I heard about it).

We finally had our neighbors down for an evening of wine and cheese out on the deck Tuesday night and that was so fun! They’ve been busy traveling all over the world (plus they have a bunch of grandkids) so it’s been tough to find a time that worked for all of us (without having to wade through dog hair/nose prints across the hardwood floor). We have a bunch of other neighbors to invite over, too (including for dinner!) Maybe we’ll see what some of them are up to next weekend.

I need to gear myself up for “entertainment mode!” We have our neighborhood potluck coming up in September, and then Nate and Sandra’s reception in October. I finally talked to Nate AFTER receiving the invitation! (Yikes! Noon? I wouldn’t have picked that time myself, as it implies lunch will be served—the idea is basically appetizers. I think). Nate and Sandra are having a wild month with her in San Antonio throughout August for Navy training, and Nate on multiple underways with his ship (he leaves Monday for three weeks!) So they hurried up and sent out invites but they haven’t really thought through anything else. Didn’t think to send directions with the invitations. I think it will be a pretty casual affair, though. I just MAY make that African Stew for BOTH shindigs. Nate said something about Sandra’s mother planning to prepare some foods native to Saipan so it could be international! (It would sure be cool if Nate’s Japanese grandmother still cooked her amazing Japanese dishes, but she just really doesn’t anymore).

Anyway, knowing that their “theme” is peacocks, I’ve been having some fun ordering some napkins and plates and feathers! (I also have another peacock thingy cooking in the glass kiln).

And finally…the Des Moines house is now completely empty of furniture. John had Lee help him move the bookcases and curio cabinet (which I’ve decided to keep) and the china cabinet (for Lee and his wife). The recliner is currently in the Des Moines garage that John will get on his next trip. Aside from a couple of daunting items in that garage, including John’s multi-ton metal mill and drum sander, the only thing left in the house are some clothes and books! Stacks of books. (I’ve gone through some of them, but there are many many more stacks yet to determine whether to donate or keep).

The house goes on the market “as is” very very soon! We’re just aiming to break even on the damned thing.

Reveal?

Well…I’m not in love. It’s OK. Just OK. (It looks better with light shining through it. I need a better display stand).

The main reason I made it is because Sandra and Nate’s decoration theme for their wedding reception is peacocks (and peacock colors, which suits me just fine!) So I thought I’d experiment with some peacock…things.

I was hoping it would look a little more ethereal. Artistic. Oh well. It’s all about practicing, and there were a number of elements (challenging glass cutting, bending stringer over a candle for curly cues, working with glass frit) that are new for me. Plus, I have to fight with my UNartistic-ness. (That’s a word, really it is).

Aspire! Right?

Teaser!

Will this be (yet another) kiln disaster? Big ol’ bubble rising from the center? Exploded glass shrapnel? Or, at the very least, cheesy as all get-out?

(I think “cheesy” has me the most concerned).

Inquiring minds (maybe?) want to know!

Stay tuned!