Today’s the dreaded day—Nate left on deployment. We hope to see him sometime in August.
For Christmas, I gave him a bunch of (new) paperback series I’ve read and loved, and feel quite sure he will, too. (He likes paperbacks because they’re small and fit in his pockets while he’s on Watch). These are the series I got him, in case you might be interested! (So good!)
(The Bill Hodges Trilogy)
These are all so good, so exciting, so well-written, and many of them are also full of humor!
And then today I started ordering fun stuff to stick in a “Deployment Box” that I’ll send to him throughout these months.
I just ache for Sandra and Quinn. This will be hard on both of them. At least it’s not something Quinn (or Sandra) hasn’t endured before; Nate was gone all summer, and then for about 5 weeks in November into December. I wish we could have Quinn stay with us for a few days now and then, but I don’t think he’s quite ready for that.
It snowed another 2 inches last night, then the temperature rose to just above freezing this morning and things began to melt and drip. I started to feel hopeful when the temperature rose to 37° and the dripping continued in earnest. THEN, it decreased again and SNOWED. It didn’t last long, though, but now it’s freezing again so all the drips are now ice.
And…we are still stuck! Yesterday, John went with our neighbor in his Jeep to the mailboxes (up our hilly icy road to another private unplowed icy road all the way to the unplowed icy county road…) and he said it was godawful. Coming back, the neighbor had his Jeep in low 4WD, and as he was coming down around a corner where an abandoned car had gotten stuck, he started skidding and came within a hair of crashing into it.
Yesterday, I set out a tray of birdseed. The result were birds everywhere, and it provided much entertainment (and frustration) for the cats, Nikki in particular. (Twitching tail, chittering teeth).
I also grabbed a couple of photos taken from other Harstine Island residents. This one was at Jarrell’s Cove, on the opposite side of the island from us. Frozen saltwater!
And this one is also on the other side—they have the Mt. Rainier view! (I could be jealous of that, but we have the Olympics and (I think) a more pebbly beach which yields more agates). This would be sunrise yesterday; our side gets sunset!
Here’s the 4-year-old boogying to “Ghostbusters!” (It gets especially hilarious at about the 30 second mark).
“Not one Republican officeholder objecting to Biden’s victory have objected to their OWN wins, on the SAME day, on the SAME ballots, using the SAME election systems.”