R.I.P. Gunner

Gunner, the 2001 Volvo S40 is dead. 

 

 At 194,000 miles, the timing belt broke rendering repairs too costly for the age of the car.  This is our second vehicle to die by timing belt.  The first one, the Focus, was due to our ignorance.  This time, I was anticipating a need for a new belt and I even had the shop look it over at the last oil change in July to determine if now was the time and they thought it still had lots of wear on it.  Well, they were wrong and now we are down to one vehicle.  And the NPR vehicle donation program just gained a car.   We are going to see if we can function with just the truck.  We are both retired, we both have bicycles, and the city bus runs on the street five houses north of us. Stay tuned.....

We got this news on Monday and week #1 with just the truck went fine.  Steve didn’t need to drive anywhere Wednesday morning so I was able to drive Sarah Everett, a woman I visit teach, down to Jefferson City to get a new military ID at the National Guard facilities.  She can’t drive and she lost her original card and she needed one to claim the benefits of her late husband.  We had a nice drive down and back and she took me to lunch afterward.  I found a restaurant called Oscars that had a gluten-free menu and I ordered a patty melt on toasted gluten-free bread!  Mmmmmm – greasy and good!

I visited the doctor Friday morning to follow up on the current high blood-pressure medicine I am on.  She suggested I bring in our home blood pressure machine and calibrate it with the one in the office just to make sure the higher-than-they-should-be numbers are legitimate.  I think we will bring our bathroom scales in at the same time.  You know how it is – you weigh yourself at home and think you are doing pretty well until you step on the scales at the doctor’s office and - oh my! - you aren’t as skinny as you thought you were.

We had the Fowlers over for dinner Saturday night.  Jan is the Fine Arts secretary at Rock Bridge High School and a very nice person.  She and her husband, Rodney, are devout Christians and we had a very good conversation over dinner about religious matters. 

I made grape jelly this week.  Nine half-pints. 

And, of course, I have been sewing and watching movies.  First, I watched “Hello Dolly”.  Then, of course, I had to watch “Wall-E”.  Steve’s August movie was “Up” so I watched that again.  And, my Netflix was “Philomena” which was not as warm-fuzzy as I thought it might be - but, it was still good.

On a final note, I have made a truce with the backyard squirrels.  No longer will they leap onto a hanging bird feeder full of seeds and scatter them all over the deck.  Now, I strew seeds along the deck rail and the birds and squirrels have to share.  Aside from millet sprouting in my flower pots, it works very nicely. 

Back-to-school? Not for me!

It has been a lovely, quiet week here on Parker Street.  Green beans are in full harvest.  I sprayed again for Japanese beetles.  I am loving the fact that I have NOT had to attend all the before-school teacher orientation meetings that have been going on since Wednesday.  I have been finishing up my quilts while watching movies with Elise - Wuthering Heights (boy, what a downer!) and Jane Eyre (channeling the Bronte sisters).  Here are my finished quilts! 
 
There are twenty in those two stacks!  They are all small or smaller, nothing to cover a twin bed - just lap-sized or baby receiving-blanket size.  Most will go to our stake humanitarian efforts.  See the brownish-blue blankets on the top right stack?  I still have enough brown/navy wool fabric squares to make about six or seven more so, I am really not done.  BUT, I am ready to take these over to Laura Jost's this week.

Steve and I went to the theater to see Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation on Monday.  And throughout the week, we watched  Unbroken and The Guardian (the one about the Coast Guard) on DVD. 

We are settling into having Elise back home.  She has joined me on several of my evening walks with the dogs.


 She joined Steve and me in a trip to the Amish on Friday.  We always buy too much stuff when we go there.  I, personally, got a huge bag of those circus peanuts. Mmmmmmmm!  I know you are all gagging but I love them.  She also went with us up to the Fayette Branch for church meetings today. I was assigned to speak.  They always have a potluck on their third Sundays - love it!

Both the Volvo and the truck are parked at their respective repair shops right now.  Thank goodness for Elise and her car!  The Volvo started acting up Thursday night and it died on Steve as he was driving back Friday evening from a funeral visitation in Mexico, MO.  The truck will, on occasion, not start on the first try and we fear that it will ultimately become a regular problem.

I picked out new music for the Mid-Missouri Community Orchestra.  Time to get rehearsals going for that group.

A Day In The Life of A Retired Couple

Now that Steve and I are both retired, I am sure you are just dying to know what we do with our days...

5:30   wake up, make bed, pray, read scriptures together
6:00   stretch for 15 minutes while listening to a conference talk
6:15   personal scripture study:  Steve in his sports room, me in the living room
7:00   I work in the yard, Steve continues scripture study
7:30   I eat breakfast and check e-mail
          Steve cleans up dog poop in the yard and picks berries, veggies, etc.
8:00   we take the dogs on a short walk
8:15   we ride bikes
8:45   I shower, Steve eats
9:00   I work on family history, Steve showers and not sure what else
10:00  this is "open" time for both of us

12:00  lunch and nap for both of us
1:00   I try to work on a Blurb book
1:30   more "open" time for me.  Steve works on family history during this time most days. 

Depending on the day, I will have music students in the afternoon but not before 3:00.  Currently, I have 17 students spread through out the week.  On Thursday afternoons, I drive to Jefferson City to teach four of them.

6:00 dinner

7:00  Monday is Family Home Evening, Tuesday Steve either has interviews at the stake center  or meetings and I will have Civic Orchestra starting in September, Wednesday Steve has more interviews at the stake center (he has been thinking of making himself available for interviews during the day for individuals who don't or can't drive at night - that hasn't happened yet) and that is a "free" night for me, Thursday evening Steve has stake meetings and I teach lessons until 8:00, Friday is "date night".  I am trying to take a second walk after dinner most nights. 

We try to start doing bed-time routine stuff around 9:00 (empty dishwasher, give dogs their treats, eat snack, take pills, brush teeth) and be in bed with lights out by 10:15.

Each week, I try to find some time to work on finances, clean, sew, visit teach, work on humanitarian projects at Laura Jost's (Thursday mornings), practice, and oil paint.  Steve's weekly "to-do" list includes mowing front and back lawns (on separate days), cleaning, indexing, laundry, church work at home. 

No boredom at 3305 Parker St.

A week apart

We drove to St. Louis last Sunday evening after dinner to stay with Emily and Joe that night and get Steve to the airport early Monday morning to catch a flight to Syracuse, NY via Philadelphia.  After a miserable night's sleep on both our part, I left Steve on the curb at Lambert International Airport at 5:00 am and returned to Columbia for a very quiet week.  Teaching lessons, puttering in the yard and around the house, feeding and walking the three dogs, finishing up tying all the quilts, watching Master and Commander - the Far Side of the World and Sherlock (second to last episode - Watson's wedding) and Woman in Gold (boy, what a marvelous movie).  Steve, on the other hand, was having a VERY ADVENTUROUS week which I will only relate the parts that I know......

He flew stand-by and made it on to his 7:10 flight to Philadelphia by the skin of his teeth.  Then, he languished in the Philly airport for almost twelve hours as he hoped for a seat on three flights throughout the day.  No idea what he did but I imagine he read the magazines he packed and slept.  He finally made it on the last flight to Syracuse and arrived around 10:00 that evening.  A wonderful family in Elise's ward offered a lovely room in their home for him to stay that night and Tuesday night.  Tuesday was packing the truck.  Elise lived on the third floor of a home and her belongings were stored in the basement so it was a day of hauling upstairs and down.  Thankfully, it wasn't just Steve and Elise.  Some men from the ward came to help. 
Wednesday was driving-to-Indianapolis-day.  Normally a 9.5 hour drive.  But, add into that number a later-than-hoped start time of noon and the need to drive only 45-50 mph (they were towing Elise's car) and Steve and Elise didn't pull into Indianapolis until about 5:00 am WEDNESDAY MORNING!  Ugh.  Poor souls.  After a 4-hour nap, Julina and Steve drove up to Carmel (where Elise and Tonks were staying) to tour the Indianapolis Temple open house and eat lunch.  Back to Greenwood to nap again at Julina's and then they left around 4:00 pm for Columbia.  They got to the house sometime after 10:30 Thursday night - which looks pretty good on paper but remember they lost an hour going from Eastern to Central standard time.  Since arriving home, we (Steve, me, Elise, Steven, and an Aaron Gibbons from our ward) unloaded as much of the truck into a storage unit Friday afternoon and what couldn't fit is now in a quarter of our garage. 
Here are Steve and Elise unhooking the trailer from the truck.

Tonks went into hiding until Saturday morning.  Now, she walks around teasing Bones and Sadie.  This is Sadie on "high cat alert"

Trissy is pretty "meh" about her.  But then, all Trissy does these days is sleep, clean her private parts,  and scratch to go outside - then scratch to come back in (often six times in a single hour - I think she forgets she's been out)

We have put Elise up in the quilt room and now she begins looking for a librarian job...

This week

Monday, Lizzy Crippen came over for dinner and we watched Meet The Mormons together.  Because she is hearing impaired, she doesn’t go to see movies in the theater and she had not seen this film.  I loved watching it all over again.  It is on Netflix streaming but we bought the DVD.

Tuesday, Trissy had her annual appointment with the vet for shots, etc.  She continues to be one very healthy dog – well, except her teeth are terrible.  The vet told me the record for the longest living dog – it was 30 years.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that news. 

Wednesday, Steve and I drove up to Nauvoo.  We had three purposes for this.  First, the Brockbank family that lived in Columbia over eight years ago was participating in the Nauvoo pageant and we wanted to see them.  Plus, we hadn’t been to the pageant in several years and figured we should go again and see what was different.  We actually got to see the British Pageant which was brand new starting last year.  But, even if we had gone on a night that had the “regular” pageant, there would have been changes from the one we saw way back when.   They put on a good show.  Maybe a bit too many dance numbers for our tastes (channeling Gene Kelly).  We had GREAT seats - second row from the front.  Nowadays, people are allowed to save seats, so we were informed at the visitors center, and we snagged our chairs before going to the temple.

 

Second, we wanted to go to the temple a second time in July.  Third, we wanted to check out the neighboring towns because I am back on the “I want to live in Nauvoo” mind-set.  Only, this time, I would consider just living in the Nauvoo area.  Mostly because I don’t want to be two hours away from the temple as we get older.  But I also don’t want to live in a big city where most temples are located.  So, between the temple session and the pageant, we drove up to Ft. Madison, Iowa and then down the river on the Iowa side through Keokuk.  We stopped for a picnic dinner along the way.   This was our view.....

 

 

 This picnic pavilion was next to two railroad tracks that follow the river.  As we ate, we were treated to a train and wished Quinn were with us. 

 

 (And remembering the time Elise, Noah, and we drove to Utah for Kirsti's wedding and stayed the night in Cheyenne right next to a train track.  Not so fun when a train came roaring by in the middle of the night but lots of fun when another one did as we were loading up the van the next morning.  Noah was still in his train-loving mode (and Iron Man) at that time) 

Weather up to Wednesday had been brutally hot and humid but we got a lovely break in the summer heat for our Nauvoo day and we enjoyed perfect temperatures!  And we also enjoyed the water lilies all along the river bank.

Thursday, we pulled into Columbia at about 2:00 am Thursday morning.  The dogs got us up at about 7:30 (more like their stomachs got us up!) and, surprisingly, I had enough energy to work on projects at the Jost’s, have lunch with Terri Anderson, and teach lessons in Jefferson City.  It was Friday when I had my “jet-lag”. 

Both vehicles had oil changes.  I have been tying several quilts throughout the week.  These are small lap quilts and mostly for church humanitarian donations.   I will take a photo once they are all tied and bound.   I finished my Toy Story trilogy – the third movie is so funny and so emotional.  I helped Steve watch Gettysburg, his July movie.   Boy, Steve and I have just got to visit there.  And, I watched a Netflix Bright Star.  This was kind of a snoozer movie.  Very “artsy”.   Oh, and I watched a documentary recommended to me by Kirsti called Girl Rising.  THAT was really good.  It is on Netflix streaming.  You should watch it.