Kingfisher Cove

Musings

I didn’t even know him, not really. I’d never met him, and even as online acquaintances, I wouldn’t say that we were especially close. We had wiener dogs in common. And politics. And a friendly east coast/west coast sports rivalry (although he was not a Patriots fan). I was always excited to see when he posted on Facebook because I knew that what he had to say would be witty, intelligent, and thought-provoking. Often accompanied by a picture of his long-haired wiener dogs, Harry and Kami; or his beloved folk musician wife, Perry; or a sandwich. The man loved his sandwiches. (And BACON).

David Greene lived in Massachusetts and had a huge following of online friends and acquaintances from all over the country. I also enjoyed the interaction with them—again, wicked smart and witty people. One of the remarkable things about him was how very much he loved his wife, P. Without gushing, he expressed this adoration in simple, tender words. He was very proud of her and would frequently post video clips of her musical performances. He often said, “I am such a lucky guy.” And you felt it; they were lucky to have each other.

He’d complained of back pain this past fall, and then I noticed he hadn’t been posting much. I felt some alarm bells set off because the political silly season was heating up and there weren’t many snarky comments from him. Then just this past Monday, out of the blue, he posted this:

Cancer. Yes, hearing your doctor say that word to you is every bit as fucking awful as you imagined it to be, and now I am one of those people who knows this first-hand. And while many people survive a long time or are cured forever, I have been told by many more doctors (including some of the best in Boston’s world-renowned hospitals) that I will not be one of those people.

P and I have come to as good a terms as two people possibly can that the best I can hope for is not much time at all, and a lot of good pain medications before time runs out. We’ve been running through all the stages of grief one learns about, and doing the best we can.

I’m 51, so this isn’t something either of us were planning on at this stage in our lives. And yeah, we’re devastated and angry, but we’re trying very hard not to let that take up too much of the time I have left.

Much love to you all, and thank you for your friendship. Above all, don’t take tomorrow for granted. Live today as if it counts, because it truly does.

Enjoy every sandwich.

And then today, we learned that he passed away last night. I feel gut-kicked. No, I didn’t really know him. But I sure did like him. And I will miss him. There have been literally hundreds of people posting on his timeline with touching memories, witticisms, pictures of luscious sandwiches, and expressions of utter shock—but I nodded knowingly that not a single person posted the trite “sending thoughts and prayers.” 

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Our power blinked off last night about 8:00 (oddly, right around the time that I later learned David Greene died, but I won’t go there…) and it stayed off until after midnight. We follow the local PUD on Twitter and they announced there were power lines down on the south end of the island. Possibly from a vehicle hitting a pole? Or a fallen tree? It wasn’t windy or anything, so who knows. It was our first power outage in the house and it was DARK! Dug out candles and flashlights, and then John made a deck fire and we spent quite a bit of time out there enjoying ourselves! Thankfully it was rather warmish for January. The dogs chewed on steak bones (in the dark) and now and then we’d see a white blur of kitty paws dashing by. Our cell phones still had a decent charge, so we perused Facebook and other sites until we blew out the candles and stumbled to bed. (We sure do take a lot for granted, don’t we?!)

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I texted with Nate for a bit Monday evening. He is now teaching on his own after completing his training for it; first in his group to be given the go-ahead. He’s teaching “A” School for Navy sonar techs, so many of his students are pretty ripe out of boot camp. He is loving it. I think he’s found his calling! He has this assignment through 2018, and it’s possible he can continue with it throughout the rest of his re-enlistment time (which is 2019). He sounded so content! He’d be perfectly happy to never have to step foot on a ship again!

Sunday!

Full disclosure: I often have to think hard about what day it is! (Don’t hate me).

We have had a lot of rain. I mean a lot of rain. Day after day of gray and drenching and no color whatsoever (except for gray). My concern for all of those gazillion thirsty Douglas fir trees over our hot dry summer has long been appeased. And with all the snow in the mountains while we’ve been rained upon, we shouldn’t be facing any kind of a drought this upcoming summer, that’s for sure. Jeesh. I swear we’ve developed webs between our toes over these past few months.

There were days in a row where we could barely see out beyond the deck. Many nights we fell asleep to the rain pounding on the metal roof. Did I mention that it has been WET?

Well, today the sun came out! At least for a while; it did cloud over again as the day progressed, but it remained dry. And so we decided to take a drive!

(That’s the Harstine Island bridge, by the way).

John is much more familiar with the South Sound area than I am, as he spent formative growing-up years in Olympia, so he decided on a route that included familiar (to him) locale, as well as unfamiliar (to both of us) territory. We made a loop around Capital Forest on windy country roads and non-mainstream highways, and it was a lot of fun! Within minutes we’d be among farming land with cows and silos, then suddenly a rainforest with tree limbs heavily laden with moss. We passed through tiny little burgs (if you could even call them that) that were mostly depressing; very rural and poor. Lots of broken-down double-wides, junk in yards and old cars on blocks. But much of it was also very pretty with rivers and creeks and wetlands. We stopped at a park on a fork of the Satsop River and let the dogs run around and walked down to the river. Such glacial green!

We also drove through the Mima Mounds, which is a bizarre geological area.

For years, there was no real consensus to explain the phenomenon and theories abounded, such as gopher pockets or seismic activity. But it’s now widely believed it was created by melting glaciers scouring the area. It’s still mysterious though, because why there and no place else? And how? There are areas where people have built houses in the midst of them and mounds are part of their landscaping. They make me think of hives. (You know, skin hives!)

It felt good to get out and about! And it was such a relief to have a dry day.

I’ll leave you with a not-very-happy picture of me and Mojo, but you can sure see one of his “Mickey Mouse” glove paws!

Ups and Downs

OK, that was painful. I’m speaking of our beloved Seahawks’ loss to the Carolina Panthers today, which means that’s it for the season. “Win or go home.” We’re going home, playoffs done. I shut the game off early in the first quarter because we were playing so horribly (behind 14-0 in mere seconds) and then I later heard we were behind 31-0 at the half. BUT, we ended up only losing by one touchdown, so they definitely lit a fire under their asses in the 2nd half. They’d just dug too deep of a hole.

It’s painful! We’ve been so good for so long (two Super Bowls in a row) and it hurts.

But it was a good weekend in other ways. Yesterday was our annual high school ladies’ get-together and I drove to my hometown (Puyallup) to meet up with everyone for lunch. It was a great turnout, and I think there was a special feeling among us since this is the year that we all turn 60. (*shudder*) It’s been one (or two?) years since I’ve attended; I really didn’t feel like it last year so soon after our class reunion, and there have been times I haven’t been enamored of how “perfect” everyone’s lives are proclaimed to be, even when I know differently. But this year there was honesty and humbleness that I haven’t seen before. People spoke of parents with Alzheimer's, of parents who died, of seriously ill spouses, of adult children with mental health issues, and three of the women have been fighting breast cancer. It was sobering, but it was also uplifting, as there is a solid bond among us—even if we weren’t all close friends in school, we have become close over all these years from our annual gatherings. Some of us have known each other since early elementary school! One gal and I actually went to nursery school together, when we were both 4 years old. And we remember it!

Not too terrible for pushing 60, right? (Right?)

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I’ve continued to gradually move documents and some of my photos over to my new laptop (I’m keeping MOST of the photos on my portable hard drive instead of loading up the new computer with so much crap!) I’ve had a few glitches here and there—after a Windows update several things went haywire and I had to Google fixes and pull my hair out in the process. Right now, things seem to be working pretty well. Fingers crossed.

But my Ancestry.com project is pretty much in the weeds. I find myself going off on rabbit trails and I need to get my brain in gear and follow ONE LEAD ONLY instead of careening off into all these different directions. I’m making myself nuts. I’m not accomplishing anything!

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In other news, John has a cold and there is some kind of critter scratching under the kitchen floor (we think it must be in the enclosed utility chaseway beneath the house) and the dogs are too deaf to hear it (even though it’s LOUD) and the cats apparently don’t give a shit. (However, there’s no access into the house from there. But I’ll bet said critter has made a mess of all the insulation in that space). 

Also? I just knew changing the annoying-as-hell chirping smoke alarm batteries would be a pain in the ass.

Aha!

Here I am on my brand-spanking new laptop via my beloved Windows Live Writer app, finally blogging! What an ordeal it is to get a new laptop and transfer everything over and set it up the way I want it to be. (And get accustomed to Windows 10, to boot!) So far, I’ve been quite lucky (kind of like the Seahawks were in Sunday’s game when the Vikings shanked their game-winning field goal and handed the win to us!) My Adobe software loaded up just fine so I have my trusty Photoshop and InDesign, etc. I also purchased Windows Office 2016 and loaded that up, too. I’ve been ever-so-slowly transferring photos and documents over from my old machine, and that part is a slog.

It’s nothing uber-fancy, but it’s fairly robust and it has a 17.3” screen (a must for me). It’s an HP Envy and so far I’m very happy with it!

(My old ‘puter still works, but it is beyond slow and fussy).

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It’s been a few days now since I’ve worked on my genealogy project, but I’ve made pretty good headway. I decided to veer away from Ireland (I don’t think I’m going to get anywhere there) and focused on my maternal great-grandmother and I’ve actually found my 3rd-greats on that side! I can tell that some of my ancestors on that branch originated in Scotland, but they emigrated a long time ago (late 1700s – early 1800s). I haven’t poked around there yet. I wonder if it’ll be as much of a brick wall as Ireland.

My cousin, Sheri, will enjoy hearing about this: when she came for Nate and Sandra’s reception, she brought me an old autograph book from the 1870s that she had ended up with somehow, that belonged to my great-grandfather on Mom’s side (and Sheri is from Dad’s side, so I’m not quite sure how that occurred). Mostly the autograph book has bizarre quotations from friends addressed to “Friend Frank” (my great-grandfather), but there was one entry from his sister, Ender (“Dearest Brother”). Because of that unusual (and unfamiliar to me) name, I was able to successfully find census documents on Ancestry.com that included her, along with my great-grandfather and their other siblings. It substantiated my research and I was thrilled!

It’s THIS kind of thing that I love so much, and wish there was more of (and that people had written more interesting things, but oh well). Another thing I’ve noticed in my pursuits is how generally beautiful handwriting was. The census lists are PDF scans of the handwritten originals by census-takers, and for the most part their penmanship is lovely. (Sometimes the scan quality isn’t great, though). It makes my hand itch to grab some college-ruled notebook paper (always my favorite) and write! I remember when I used to have a big ol’ honkin’ callus on my middle finger from grasping a pen so much. There is still evidence of it, but it’s greatly diminished with all the typewriting these days. There will likely be very little of it in the future. I don’t even think they teach penmanship in school anymore! (I loved penmanship!)

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For Christmas, I got John a customized 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of one of the gazillion Harstine photos I’ve taken over the years. Choosing which photo was a challenge because I wanted it to be a pretty one, but also keeping in mind a variety in elements and color (not too much sky or too much water or too much greenery). He was really pleased with it and spent the last few days working on it. And, ta-da!

(click to embiggen.. See Mojo in the puzzle box? He and Wylie fight over those boxes).

It actually did have quite a lot of green, but several different shades of it! It made a fun gift!

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So…riding on the coattails of the Seahawks’ incredibly lucky win, I bought two (count ‘em, two!) Powerball tickets for tonight’s $1.5 BILLION lottery! Heh heh. I figure luck is luck, and buying 10 or even 100 tickets aren’t going to increase my chances any more than two will, so I’ll gladly part with four bucks to at least be in the running.

One can dream.

Up For Air

The house was falling apart around me with all these HOURS buried in the genealogy quagmire, so I attacked the floors today (first time since before Christmas, yes I just admitted that…). It’s not that I really hate the job (although it’s certainly not a fun chore), but it’s so disheartening how quickly it begins to go to hell again. And you Would. Not. Believe. the volume of pet hair/dust bunnies/fir needles/etc. that I empty from the Dyson’s bin. It’s gobsmacking. In fact, it’s downright disturbing.

So before I allowed the dogs out of their doggy prison, I snapped a picture to remind me how nice the clean gleaming floors actually look for a few minutes:

 

I did discover something that makes me absolutely sick—one of the animals (I don’t know if it was a dog or a cat) dug a HOLE in one of the new area rugs, all the way down to the base netting. And it’s not in a spot that I can cover up with furniture and it really SHOWS. I’m just so mad.

It’s probably a good thing I didn’t catch whoever did this in the act because there would likely be a dead animal on our hands. What’s also strange about this is that there weren’t a bunch of tufts of shredded carpet around it. WTF?

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My genealogy quagmire continues to be a quagmire. I’ve kept trying to crack the Ireland nut, but I guess I need to leave it alone. I don’t know what else to do! It’s time to change direction and see what I can learn about my Grandma Cummings’ (Mom’s mom) side of the family, and I’m hoping it’ll be a little more forthcoming. So far, everyone was born in the states, so I have to wonder if I can discover where in the world they originated. It’s definitely addicting, and I can’t get over how fast time passes while I’m trying to crack all of those nuts. I would even like to find some evidence that there WERE nuts! So far, there’s no evidence of much of anything. I keep being distracted by the fact that even though my great-grandfather’s name was James Cummings, there was a fellow in the generation of HIS parents by the same name that was a cohort of Jesse James. History is fascinating, but man is it hard to connect the dots.

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I’m pretty sure this will be the year I get a new laptop. The one I have is So. Very. Slow. and every time I turn around something is “Not Responding.” It just hangs, stalls, spins its hateful spinner thingy. And I dread the idea! Not only the cost (because it’ll need to be a pretty robust laptop with a 17” screen), but because of transferring all my $hit over to it. Part of the problem with THIS one, is that the migration from several previous computers has completely hosed any organization or logic of where all my stuff lives. It’s completely in the weeds.

Quagmire Galore

I’ve embarked on a journey! It’s something I’ve been thinking about for some time—a good friend of mine on Facebook has immersed herself into Ancestry.com during the winter months for the past several years and she’s unearthed a wealth of genealogy on her family tree, which has tickled my curiosity bone. My dad’s side of our family (German) is well-covered because a couple of Dad’s cousins have done exhaustive research into both of my paternal grandparents’ trees (and I have copies of all the documentation). But I haven’t known much about my ancestors on my mom’s side.

I’ve taken the plunge! John and I have even submitted saliva for the Ancestry.com DNA test (we’ll get results in a few weeks).

I’d always heard that Grandpa Cummings’ family came from Ireland, but I didn’t know how far back or from where or even if it was true! So I decided to start there.

I’m here to tell you that after hours and hours and hours and hours of researching, I haven’t gotten very far.

Yeah, I have some super tools! Methods to search the Ellis Island immigration ship manifests; access to census records; newspapers from all over the country at my disposal that I can electronically search for names; you name it! But, I haven’t had much luck with birth, death, or marriage records because jurisdictions tend to keep control of them and apparently don’t consistently allow their use through Ancestry. Ancestry is not cheap, and those jurisdictions want to charge fees to access, and I don’t even know if what I want to search for is correct. OR, they require that YOU COME IN PERSON TO THEIR LIBRARY OR ARCHIVE DEPARTMENT. Right. I’m going to Minnesota to do that. Or Ireland. Not.

Speaking of Ireland. Yes, I found my great-great (and possibly 3rd great) grandparents on those ships, but it’s like they didn’t exist beforehand in Ireland and then lived under a rock after they arrived (and settled for several years) in New York before moving to Minnesota (to live under another rock). And there were a lot of them! The 2-greats and the 3-greats all had around 10 kids! But Ireland didn’t require documentation of births and deaths and marriages until 1864, and these folks were born in the late 1700s and the 1820s-30s. Nada.

I know I’ve only just begun (even with all those hours), so I need to just keep chipping away. Although I haven’t found anything of note in all the newspapers I’ve perused, that part has been quite entertaining. Oh, the way they wrote and the things they wrote about!

“He was incarcerated for inflicting suffering upon stuff.”

“Another toy pistol injury! The third in two weeks! It’s time to do away with toy pistols! We may be better off allowing them to play with real ones.” [WTF?]

“The magistrate deemed that Mrs. C., the female jail matron, not be paid her salary of $50 per month because Mr. J., the janitor, has the same compensation. It was noted that Mrs. C. is a widow with nine children.”

Part of the problem is that the newspaper articles and reports didn’t often include full names; often just initials before the last name, or they would refer to people as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” Cummings. So it was impossible to know if you were reading about the right Cummings!

And it’s a bummer, because there were a number of “Mr. Cummings” who committed murder “under the effects of drunkenness” and one whose “shoes were laced and shirt was tucked in order to jump from the building window with the result of a cracked head and died.”

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As a side note about this, we need to WRITE, people. Leave a bread crumb trail for people to learn about us decades (or centuries) from now! Here I am desperate for just some mundane stories that would give me such wonderful insight into who these people were. They lived long, full lives!

As are we. Right?

Hello, 2016!

We were wild and crazy for New Year’s Eve, and I mean it.

Yep. Watched “Fireworks at the Needle” on TV, pretty much like we always do. (At least we stayed up for it!) We did have a nummy dinner, though. Big cold shrimp with cocktail sauce as an appetizer, then Steak Oscar (grilled filets with crab, steamed asparagus, and béarnaise sauce) with the Pioneer Woman’s crashed hot potatoes. Mmm.

Today I’ve had a corned beef brisket simmering in my pot for hours:

Soon I’ll add baby reds and then cabbage wedges. Mmm.

Also, Christmas  is now kaput. John and I took down the tree and decorations today, and I was thankful that I hadn’t set out a whole truckload of them a month ago! I have to say, it’s dimmer in here now that we don’t have the lighted tree and garlands. We may need to get a floor lamp or something. I’m also now serious about finding a few cool items to set on the fireplace mantel. I’m thinking slightly nautical, but also on the artsy side. Yeah…

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After so much rain and gray, it’s been uplifting to have bright sunshine and COLOR these last few days, even if it’s freezing cold. Brrrr! We did venture down on the beach Wednesday for a nice walk, all bundled up. It was marvelous and so amazing to see snow on the Olympics! It’s the most we’ve seen up there in quite some time, and they were basically bare from early spring  up until recently.

The sun was uber-bright on our walk, which made finding agates a piece of cake! We each found a good handful, including some real gems.

I'll leave you with a very quick video of Peanut acting like a puppy on the beach (at 15-1/2 years old!)