(Photo property of kezi.com)

(I should have taken my camera, but didn't to save space.

The photo above looks very much like the area where we have been hunting.

Lots of scrub growth in areas that have been logged.

Not to worry, there are a bazillion small trees

planted to replace those that are gone...

and we all are careful to avoid doing anything to harm them.)

I know very little of hunting.

Fortunately I have experienced hunters to teach me.

I've been out hunting three times now.

Here are things that I have learned.

Hunting is a strangely quiet experience.

You hunt alone, even in a group.

Always take toilet paper with you!

The deer are far smarter than I thought.

There are different ways to hunt.

You can stake out an area... we don't.

Hunting has far more walking than shooting... I haven't shot yet.

You can have shooters and "dogs".

Dogs are hunters who thrash in the brush and make noise...

so that you know where they are and shoot the deer who

run out in front of them in a safe for the dog way.

My personal favorite is to find a nice little spot...

with a rock or tree stump to set my rump on and wait and watch for a bit before moving on...

Gradually moving along the route that leads to meeting up with the others.

It is very peaceful and my mind enjoys the sounds and sights of the woods.

It is very relaxing.

There is also "raod" hunting...

driving down little dirt paths and looking for deer in the brush.

It makes you sleepy.

Kind of evens it out for the deer.

Did I say that deer are much smarter than I thought?

When it is sunny, they hunker down and hide in the brush.

They are the color of the brush and you can't see them.

They come out of hiding when it rains...

because they can't hear predators when the rain drips...

they want to keep moving into more open areas to stay safe.

They want to see what might be hunting them.

So three days of hunting down and about three more weeks of hunting left.

I've enjoyed my walks in the woods more than I thought I could.

Hunters are automatically in the club and greet each other with silent waves.

They don't want to alert the deer, so they leave each other alone...

in a friendly sort of way.

Hunters take a ton of food to snack on.

Most take their wrappers away...

and my hunters carry a garbage bag to pick up what messy hunters leave behind.

We take coolers with WATER and soda in them.

No booze.

I found the cooler very helpful...

as a step stool to get into Todd's truck.

Ford thinks that all people who drive standard sized trucks

are six feet tall and have legs that go on forever.

I do not.

I think the deer have very little to fear from me.

I try to walk silently, but still manage to make sounds.

I don't know if I will be able to move fast enough 

to actually figure out if it has enough horns

and sight on it to fire before one bounds past me.

Or if I will be so surprised that I just gape at it.

Next weekend we will go again.

Saturday evening we have seats in Autzen to watch the Ducks in person.

Woot!

Its a night game, so we will hunt only half day.

BTW...

"half day" in hunting begins at 4:00 AM

and ends at noon or whenever your feet stop having feeling

and the damp has chilled you to the point of craving home.

I'm looking forward to another quiet walking day in the woods.

If I manage to shoot a buck...

cool beans!

But I'll enjoy it even if I don't see a single one.

SSS SECRET

Welcome to another edition of 

Saturday Scavenger Shots!

Our word this week : secret.

Psssst...

Here is what I believe is the secret to living forever...

Our families!

We live on in the hearts and memories of those who love us.

Besides, who wants to actually live forever?
I don't want to know what I would look 
like in a thousand years.
Yikes!

Pssst...

See this snoozing, snoring middle aged man?

He is the secret to my happiness!

Pssst...

This blanket was crocheted for my X...

by a woman friend.

I liked it so much that I sort of stole it when 
I moved away.

hee hee

But that's a secret!

Don't you dare tell anyone.

Psst...
Here is a special thing...

Its my blog!
I say it is very special because this is where I can
tell all my secrets...
and not have to worry about anyone seeing what 
I say and blabbing to anyone I don't want to 
hear them.
It is a safe and secret place
full of good friends who can be trusted...
because they really don't know who I am or even where I really live.
'Cause those are secrets too!

I hope you enjoyed this week's 
game and will go to the other player's 
blogs to see what secrets they share
in pictures.
Just visit laura b.'s 
"What Fresh Hell Is This?"
on my side bar and tell her you are playing
and then get busy 
telling us your secret ideas. 

 

CRAP!

The monster lurks...

Okay, so I should have known I guess.

But I was sure that I had it under some form of control.

The idea was as soon as the washer

began to drain that I would check the bathrooms for sign of flooding.

The man needed clean socks.

I scurried to the bathroom when the washer did its thing...

and yep... it was backing up... fast!

I dashed to the washer to shut it off...

and found that I was now flooding the man's shop.

There were his cabinet projects (in progress)

quickly becoming islands in a sea of soapy wash water.

I am dead woman living in an "I love Lucy" episode.

Unfinished wood and water do not mix well.

I smashed in the button on the machine and the flood ebbed to a stop.

Not a single towel, shop rag or old sheet remained dry

by the time I'd dried the wood pieces, 

moved them and then mopped the shop floor.

Yep, I was dead.

At least I had the presence of mind in my utter panic to shut off the power strips that feed his precious machines.

Well, crap.

I texted the MIL to tell her about the issue.

They would bring the snake and a camp toilet the following day.

Meanwhile... it was time for a bucket.

Funny how much you need to relieve yourself when it is not convenient.

I had one day before my sisters came to visit.

Not a good thing.

The man slept through it all.

Fortunately for me, his wood was dry by the time he woke.

My execution was stayed for the time being.

Might I note here how unfair it is that men can just stand up to pee outside?

It is a form of penis envy that I admit to having...

since I lack that ability.

=:/

Next day MIL and FIL show up...

they did not have a snake or the camp toilet.

My mood went black.

They took me to lunch.

Then we bought a snake.

Yay!

But can we get on with fixing the clog?

Only no one knew where the clean out was...

just that it was buried somewhere in the middle of berry vines thicker 

than the Amazon.

My luck was still holding bad.

They departed for a funeral.

I was left to hack my way through the Amazon on the side of the house.

Alone.

The man slept through this too.

Near dark they returned.

Sigh.

Looking like something attacked by a big ugly cat,

I stood there and watched FIL dig.

As it turns out there was a map in the house file.

It was drawn 30+ years ago...

before the addition of the family room...

by the man's deceased father who could not be  consulted.

Like something out of a bad pirate film,

we paced things off and dug holes...

where MIL was sure it must be.

Several times.

It was not here, it was not there.

So, FIL decided to go under the house and see if there

was a clean out below the toilets.

Finally... a sane idea!

As soon as he opened the hatch to the under house

we saw a clean out.

MIL was sure that this was to the long ago buried septic tank.

Off he crawled to find a better one.

It didn't exist.

They gave up and went home.

Easy for them to do... they have working toilets and showers!

I felt very sorry for myself.

The man woke up and looked at my face.

"Baby, call Roto-Rooter before you go insane."

I did immediately.

The nice lady told me that a technician

would call me back.

There was about an hour of panic before he did

and a huge relief when he promised to come over...

now.

The truck drove past our driveway and on down the street.

I chased the Roto-Rooter truck.

He seemed amused by this... and I was okay with that.

He looked inside and outside.

We locked up Roxy who wanted to play and let the man go to work.

I doubt he was here more than half an hour.

I felt like blowing him kisses when he drove away.

"Wow" says the man "This place is a shit hole."

True words.

Guess who stayed up until the wee hours to clean it?

But I got to take a nice, long, hot shower when it was done.

I finished the wash...

and thank goodness I did not have to greet my sisters 

smelling like an outhouse.

It was worth the money  to have it fixed.

Every single cent.

The Roto- Rooter Man is a hero!

So is the man for spending the money.

I'd had all the shit I could deal with thank you.

Interesting note:

That clean out was the clean out... they built the family room on top of it.

And...

The issue as it turns out was our new low flow toilet.

R-R Man told us that low flow toilets can't push the "product"

through older pipes very well.

Older homes and remodeled homes tend to have a variety

of pipe sizes interconnected.

This was further compounded by the light flush and heavy flush button

on our particular toilet.

"Product" was going only a little way and getting hung up on 

these odd sized connections.

The solution was simple.

Only use the heavy flush button...

and run the shower with cold water for 5 minutes once a week

to make sure the pipes are kept flowing right.

Sort of defeats the whole idea of a low flow toilet don't you think?

So it goes.

SISTERS

Goodness what a horrible photo!

You can hardly see their faces... but these are my two eldest sisters.

The sane, not horrible ones.

Irony here... the one with the dark hair is the oldest.

The one with hair more silver than my own is second oldest in my family.

Ten and eight years my seniors.

Our father, who lives in DPH,

turns 87 on Saturday.

My sisters and their husbands stopped here to have 

breakfast with us on their way up to celebrate with Grump Pa.

Neither had been able to attend our wedding,

so this was their introduction to the man.

Cinderella, silver hair was supposed to go on an anniversary

trip paid for months prior to our invitation.

However life interjected a series of events that kept that from happening.

While I thought she was lounging on a beautiful beach...

their tree was blown down by a freak tornado

and her father-in-law died suddenly.

Our wedding day was his funeral day.

Meanwhile, Duffy, dark hair and husband Bull

were attending a reunion where no one showed up that they could recall knowing.

Isn't that how life goes?

Such was the conversation this morning as we chatted and ate.

Nothing much to talk about really.

A few funny old family stories and swapping pics of the grand kids.

But it was wonderful to see them.

I was glad to have "normal" family members to introduce to the man

vs the not so normal Grump Pa and Medusa.

The thing that stuck me immediately was how much my sisters

looked like other family women that I thought of as

elderly.

Ha!

Duffy looks like Auntie J and Cinderella looks like the grandmother

we called only "Gertrude".

It also confirmed my suspicion that Bear sounds

very much like Duffy when she speaks...

and proved to the man that both Cinderella and I snort when we laugh.

And that we both laugh a lot.

The Grump used to call us "the jolly girls".

Yeah... we didn't care for that much.

It was fun and strange and sweet

to see them all.

How much we have all changed over the years.

How different but essentially the same.

I wished that I had more time to visit,

but at the same time welcomed being home again.

A morning of contradiction.

When I hugged Cinderella...

she whispered in my ear...

"I am so glad to see you happy."

I came home and said good night to the man

and wandered out here to post.

I thought about her parting words

and the intensity with which they were said.

I guess I hadn't fooled anyone all those years

that I was not happy.

How wonderful that they can see now that I am.

One point of conversation came up...

the Duck game tonight against Cal Bears.

The man asked who they would be rooting for...

Cal Bears!

I had to laugh.

We were raised Californians

and it is where they all still live.

We'll be rooting against them of course.

=:]

Brother-in-laws paying their bills.

Sweet!

SNAKE!

A day ago I heard the man cursing in the rear bathroom

followed by the unmistakable slosh-swoosh of the plunger.

I didn't think much about it after that...

he's a fairly handy man.

A few hours passed and the man went to work.

I stood watching myself brush my hair in the front bathroom...

to my left came the sound of burbling.

Ut-oh.

Burbling is the sound that Mr. Glug-Glug

makes to announce that he has come calling.

I lifted the lid that we keep down to discourage Roxy from drinking there.

The water was churning.

Not a rolling boil, but a tumbling activity minus any flushing.

This cannot be good.

In the morning when the man arrived home from work,

I gave him the bad news that the toilets have gone crazy.

He sighed and went to check both toilets out.

At this point, both have dropped their water levels

to nearly nil.

He flushes one and it responds in a proper manor.

Cool beans!

Thank you lord I can pee at last!

The man gets ready to sleep and visits the rear toilet...

I can hear him cursing out in the shop.

When he pokes his head out and says

"You haven't been flushing tampons have you?"

I am indignant!

"You know for over ten years I was the one who had to fix toilets..."

He holds his hand up to stave off further lecture.

I was standing in my front bathroom with a hand towel wrapped around the toilet brush... jammed into the toilet's exit hole.

The man is in the rear bathroom squishing the plunger at an insane rate.

All he gets is wet with icky waste water.

By the sound of his vocabulary,

I have finally found the event that can cause him to utterly lose his cool.

Well now...

His last words as he was leaving for work were

"You know you're a homeowner when you're the guy who has to pay the Rooter-Rooter bill."

Meanwhile the folks at Albertsons think that I have a serious

problem.

 I do, but its not the kind they must think.

The next step was buying Liquid Plumber.

No... not to pour in the toilet.

I know better.

At this point, water was trying to back up into the front shower.

One dose and it's not moving much.

I'll give it another shot in about an hour.

Grumble.

If that doesn't work...

I'll be searching for the clean out on the side of the house.

It's under black berries.

Its under the ground... but there is a map.

Like I can follow a map!

It was supposed to have a nice tidy box around it,

but the man's dad died and his mom didn't know what to do with it.

So she buried it and put a flag on it.

The cable guy needed to connect to something out there and 

even though she asked him to be careful of the flag...

he removed it and forgot where it went.

I want to run the washing machine.

I want to take a shower.

I'd love to use my toilet.

I am really hoping that a second dose of drain cleaner

will the trick.

Oh boy.