Celebrate Early, Celebrate Often, Celebrate Long

We celebrated at breakfast this morning.

Our friend Dede had a birthday on Monday. During the week she told me on the phone that she had a lovely weekend with several get togethers and now she was done.

Today I informed her that she was wrong. There was more. She was quite surprised. Then I told her that she had to share it with me, since my birthday was the next day, Saturday,. Yes, I brought the cake. I have recently been reminded that celebrating birthdays is important.  

Dede said that in her previous celebrations, she had not had birthday cake yet. She was thrilled. 

Dede was 94 on Monday. I will be 77 tomorrow, Saturday. In this celebration I get to be the youngster! Dede is a very young 94 however. She is amazing. Dede celebrated often and long. I celebrated early, with more to come. 

Then we had another reason to celebrate. Our friend Jeanne, who is in very fragile health, was able to join us for breakfast for the first time in a very long time, thanks to her wonderful son, Brad. As our friend Colleen said, it was also nice to have a handsome young man at our table. 

This evening Tom and I will go out so I can collect my free birthday burger at Red Robin. Tomorrow, my actual birthday, we'll visit gardens and then spend time with our son Jake. There will be more eating.

On Monday Jill and the kids will come over for a BBQ and a chance to catch up. There will be more eating.

I'll get back to my attempt to lose weight next week. Right now we are celebrating. Celebrating is a good thing. 

Done!

 The house painters were back yesterday to work on the trim, and finished up today. The painting is done!

It's the same color as it was before, so if you didn't know you couldn't tell from a distance, but it sure looks better up close.

Tom is in a hurry to get everything back where it belongs. The plants are all back on the front porch and entry steps. 

The painters carefully tilted the tomato trellis out from the wall to paint. They survived. 

The potting bench is out of the shed and back in place. I suspect if I go check I'll find that he has already put a lot of stuff back that was hanging on the wall. 

Patio furniture is back in place. We have some cleaning up to do.

We are very satisfied with the painting job and will give recommendations. And we are very glad that it's DONE!

While Tom was moving stuff, I spent some time edging the lawn and crawling along to clean the edges up. Today is the one year anniversary of my second spinal fusion surgery. That surgery fixed the nerve pain and nerve compression, but with two fusions, my back will never be the same. I am resigning myself to much less mobility. I will always walk a little bent over now, I think.  But I can still crawl around in the garden.

We have some guests coming several days next week, so it's time to get everything all spiffy. I can't fix the scorched lawn, but everything else will get the once over.

The weather has been and continues to be wonderful! Happy summer!

Not Yet

 While we went garden touring Saturday morning the house painting crew was supposed to be finishing the painting. Now we realize there was a miscommunication. They finished the main part but all of the trim is yet to be painted. They were gone when we arrived home at 2:00 Saturday and we have not seen or heard from them since. I think the problem is paint supply. Then may be having trouble getting the trim paint. That is what has happened to the house next door. 

We know that it will eventually get finished, but we don't know when, and we do not have contact information. I know. Dumb. But I'm letting the men handle it. Sigh.

I finally heard from my Sounders ticket agent. It's a new one, but no one bothered to tell me or give me his contact info. Anyway, it sounds like it is not going to be easy to get those ADA seats. They are apparently sold, but no one is using them, so we will until someone comes to claim them. We'll just take care of our needs before the match starts, then take the elevator up to the next level to get to our own seats or those we are "squatting" in. The agent offered me different seats, but they are in full sun/rain/whatever, and we are done with that. That's how we started out and it took us some years to get to the great seats we had. 

Life goes on here. We did some light house work this morning and cleaned up some windows that needed cleaning, ones that we look at every day. The rest - out of sight, out of mind for now. Cleaning the patio slider tracks was one of my jobs. Not fun, but now it looks good.

We have ripe raspberries and a few Marion berries. We are enjoying summer fruits. Some went in the freezer, but lots are just to eat, on cereal, on yogurt, on ice cream. Yum.

As I mentioned, we went garden touring Saturday. As I arrived at the first garden I discovered my phone had failed to charge over night, so I didn't take photos of the private gardens. The car charger got me enough charge to take photos of the Bellevue Botanic Garden, our final stop. I'll leave you with pretty pictures. 

Progress Report

 Today, Friday, we are finally getting some paint!

It has been a long week of prepping: pressure washing, lots and lots of caulking, scraping old flaking paint, replacing facia boards, searching for paint, and finally masking the windows. 

This afternoon paint is being applied. It's hard to tell where because the color is the same. The easiest way to tell is where you see all of the caulking polka dots covered up.

I went to breakfast without Tom this morning so he could be home to oversee the paint crew and the repairman from Washington Energy Services, who arrived this morning to fix the furnace/air conditioning.  When I arrived home from breakfast and running a few errands, he was already finished. The repair was easier than expected and cost less than half of what we expected. Good news! And now, with the house sealed up, we can cool the house down if we need to. 

So far though we have been very comfortable with high's in the mid 70's. It's going to reach 80 today though, but so far the house is cool even up stairs.

Me on the light rail. Masks are still required on public transportation, but not in the stadium. 

Wednesday we went to the first Sounders match at the stadium in a long time. We found our new season ticket seats, now that the stadium is fully opened. We hate our new seats. 

We were forced to give up our great seats last year when they closed off the third tier. We had to scramble to find open seats. We got seats on the east side instead of the west side, which means we are in the sun, and even at 70 degrees we were cooking. We bailed and found empty seats up in a shady corner that were not occupied. 

The other issue is that the seats are at the top of the section, and while I can take the elevator to get up there, it is next to the Club section that we are not allowed to use. Restrooms and food service are down a whole long flight of steps. I can do steps if I am not crowded and have time to navigate the gaps in the hand rails, but that isn't usually the case.

There are ADA Accessible seats up at the top, in the shade and I am told that from those I would have use of the Club facilities. I have a call in to my ticket agent, but so far he is not returning my calls. I will persist. And when it's hot, I'll just move there anyway. Those seats are empty. 

Other than that we have mostly been hanging out at home, doing a bit of gardening in the mornings. Tom has to keep up with the watering of all of the plants that have been moved away from the house and their drip system hook up. We will be happy when everything is put back together, but we are working on being patient. 

House Cleaning Day

Yes, our house is getting cleaned.

While we are doing the usual Monday house keeping chores inside, outside our house is getting washed.  

This is Day 1 of getting the exterior of our house painted and today is pressure washing day.

They are very thorough. They have washed the moss off the garage roof, washed all of the walls, of course, and the windows, and the sidewalks too.  

They are just finishing up for today and I went downstairs to take a peek and I see that they have even pressure washed the patio!

All of these things needed to be done, but they were not things we were going to do. We have contemplated hiring a window washer. Now we might not need to for a while.

Tomorrow a crew will be back to start the painting process, which means my windows will be covered for a while. I will try to survive without open windows this week. Did I tell you that the part we need to fix the furnace/air conditioner will take at least two weeks to be delivered. I sure hope it doesn't get too hot. The forecast is mid 70's to mid 80's.

I am not fond of disruption. Wish me luck. 

Happy 4th of July!

 

People are happy today. The sun is shining gently on this lovely morning. 

We had a parade! It was a car parade in Normandy Park. There were lots of happy people in fun new and old, fancy and funky automobiles.

Gus the Bus made his appearance.

Irene and cousin Ali, Friend Conner, Isaac and Jill.

Lots of people came out to enjoy the parade and the visiting and the freedom to gather and have fun. 

Later we will go to SIL Jan's place on Henderson Bay for food and our own little fireworks show, staged safely over the bay.

There will be pie, American Pie. And hot dogs and hamburgers and fun Fourth food. 

Meanwhile we have some time at home. Tom is finishing up a few projects. We will finish moving furniture away from the house. Outside house painting starts tomorrow. At least that's the plan.

The garden is celebrating July with the next wave of flowers. There is a bit if the red, white and blue. 

I hope everyone is having a fun Fourth!