Thursday May 29 2008

A Freeway Runs Through It - Echo Canyon

New "Refineries" ? Near Opal

Bear River Lunch Stop

Cricket Eater Looking for a Handout

Buffalo at Bear River

Wind Generators and Snow Fences

Sheep Wagons - Wyoming Sky

"Strawberry and Vanilla Buttes"

Moose Ran Across the Road at Daniel

And Right Past People Visiting at their Trucks on the Street

Gravel Truck near Home

Muddy Creek High Water Looking Downstream

at the Culvert - Ranch House upper right.

If you click and look close you can see a yellow

gravel truck in the upper left out on the road.

.

Muddy Creek Looking Upstream at Culvert

The morning I left. Saw phalaropes there.

Panoramas.

.

Finished packing the vehicle and was on my way about 8 a.m. or so. Decided not to cross the cutoff with all the gravel trucks and the oilfield traffic. Besides I forgot to drop off the recycling in Pinedale yesterday, so went through Pinedale and did that. It only takes 10 or 15 more minutes to go that way. Since I was going right by her place I stopped at Kay's to say "Hi" because I hadn't seen her for quite a while. If course it was more than hi. We talked fast and I got to see her new pastel paintings and others she had done at the Lorenzo Chavez workshop in Idaho Falls. I thought they were beautiful. Kay gave me a special prayer for the trip and sent angels along to take care of me.

On down the road. At Daniel I saw a moose cross the road and then stopped next at the vanilla and strawberry buttes - my name for a favorite scene - they called for me to photograph them. Between LaBarge and Big Piney along the Green River the leaves had come out - we don't have leaves at our house yet, but they will pop out any day. I always hate to be gone when its time for the leaves to turn green. Kind of my favorite time of year, along with when they turn yellow in the fall.

Fontanelle Reservoir is nearly empty. I've never seen it so low. I took the alternate road to Kemmerer through Opal, because I've seldom gone that way. There were several of some kind of "refinery plants" that looked brand new out there, so that was interesting to see. Closer to Evanston there were herds of sheep with their just born tiny lambs. Stopped at the Bear River State Park to eat my turkey sandwich and watched the buffalo there. Then through Echo Canyon and gassed up at Silver Summit, first I've paid over $4 a gallon.

I always love the drive through there past Deer Creek and down through Provo Canyon. The only bad traffic was for about 40 miles just coming on to I-15 at Provo. After that the freeway was amazingly empty. I saw where one of last year's terrible fires had burned miles and miles of cedar and pinon trees plus another smaller one further south. They were knocking down the trees and in places had shredded the dead trees and left the mulch on the ground. I've never seen that and wondered about the reasons for what they were doing.

It was late afternoon and I got junk food at Wendy's for dinner. I got to Beaver before I decided to quit driving for the night. Got a fairly nice motel for $68 + $3 for the wireless Internet. (I.E. clean roomy, nice furniture linens, etc.) Sign for senior rate, when I asked, she said it was figured in, I said is that yes or no? She said, no. I said hmmmm maybe you should take that sign down. She said she had been going to do that. Sign for HBO, But those channels are temporarily unavailable and they will have them back ASAP. etc I think I wouldn't have had to pay the $3 since when I plugged laptop in and got going, it never asked for the password. I was glad to get an economical room which helped balance out the gas prices.

The motel phones wouldn't let me call long distance, but I finally got the motel person to say I could dial 9 and use my phone card that's the way I got Joe. Then it wouldn't go through anymore and I got sick of trying to dial menny menny times - this was more Centurytel than the motel. I was not going out around town trying to find a phone to call Betty and Bev so emailed them to say I got here!

Did fine today - felt o.k. My eyes were really bothering me (ongoing) and very runny nose, allergies? Guess the pill Dr. Meno gave me so I didn't have the chemo sedation while driving worked fine. When I got going, I was so glad I'd decided to drive instead of fly. It was such a joyous feeling to be taking a trip again, even one going down I-15. The flying would have been an awful experience. This is likely the last time I drive down here by myself though.

Photos Going to Jackson 5-28-08

Photos going to and from Jackson on Wednesday

Wednesday May 28 2008

Joe Dragging - He said it was cold.

Was up by 5:30. Charm and I met at the Boulder Store at 7:30. Charm brought us a big bag of her wonderful chocolate chip cookies. I was going to just leave them in the car for the trip, but I took them in to share with Joe. Charm drove so I could drink the berrylicious contrast. When I got it on my upper lip I asked, "Got barium?" We had a nice visit and got caught up on all the happenings lately. The meetings yesterday went well, she reported. It was a really pretty day all the way there and back. You could see while we got rain, the mountains got lots of new snow.

We went back to Sue's art show at the Fine Arts Center again so Charm could see it. Then over to the hospital. Got my arm punctured, and was sent right on in to the CT Scan. It never takes more than about 15 minutes. We got out by 10:30 and although we could have done some nice things today I said let's just go home. That way I had time to finish getting ready to go to Nevada. We ate lunch at the Chinese place in Pinedale.

After getting home I got the car loaded, and some dinner made - Cornish Pasties with mushroom gravy. Joe has plenty of food left to last him a while. I had made tacos and enchiladas, and a casserole he likes with hot Italian sausage and rice. I'm sure it will be the same as always that a lot of the stuff that's in the fridge will still be there when I get back. I had spent some time and ingenuity on trying to use up the food that was in the house. Made a cheesecake out of the dairy stuff that was needing to be used. It wasn't the most successful thing I've ever done though.

Judy B. from Oncology called after I got home and said the initial reading of today's CT scan is that it is that my liver is between "stable" and "shows some improvement since the last one". That means not worse and looks like the liver tumors are smaller. No mention of the pancreatic tumor. That is probably all I will hear until I go to the next doctor appointment after I get back and by then I will have had another scan.

Well, then I don't know what went wrong, but when Judy the head of oncology tried to make the arrangements and fax my records etc. to Nevada Cancer Institute which Debbie had said would take me, they said they don't do that. So Judy got other phone numbers and has made my appointment at the Nevada Cancer Center. She is setting up two treatments there. I figured I could cancel the second one if I want to come back home and have it at Jackson. I am supposed to call Judy on Friday and call the Nevada Cancer Center on Monday. http://www.nevadacancercenter.com/ It's took about 6 phone calls back and forth so far so hope its all going to work right. A good thing is that it is very close to Debbie's house.

Betty called so we're all up to date for me probably arriving at her place tomorrow night. If I get tired I've promised everyone I will stop at a motel and get there the next day. Remember Dr. Meno prescribed a pill in the morning to keep me awake, and hope it works o.k.

I'm about exhausted tonight. Have a few small things left to do, and then will be in bed.

I'll keep blogging and let you know each day's adventures. And will get my email on my laptop. If you write to me I can click "reply", since I don't have "address book" when I go to the hughes.net email page.

"The world," said Robert Louis Stevenson, "is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." - This was one of the first verses I ever learned. Whatever we were doing I always said, the Queen couldn't be any happier than this.

This poem SO struck my mind as I purge and clean THINGS I THOUGHT I NEEDED-WANTED. But now they own me, take time for maintenance, take space in my life, OVERWHELM. Let me become simple and uncluttered. Kind of scary those forgotten dreams remember us.

What We Want
by Linda Pastan

What we want

is never simple.


We move among the things


we thought we wanted:


a face, a room, an open book


and these things bear our names


—now they want us.


But what we want appears


in dreams, wearing disguises.


We fall past,


holding out our arms


and in the morning


our arms ache.


We don't remember the dream,


but the dream remembers us.


It is there all day


as an animal is there


under the table,


as the stars are there.

Tuesday May 27 2008

Old Store Building at Boulder

8x16 (or so) pastel

by Lynn Thomas

Road to Big Sandy Openings - Fall

16x20 pastel

by Lynn Thomas

.

These are the pastels that I finished and took to the framer. I showed them before in the beginning stages. Although I've had compliments on them, I'm not that happy with either one, as they seem to have lost their freshness to me. But I will just keep trying to get better with the pastels.

Yesterday we drove in to Pinedale. Picked up the flowers from Ridley's Florist Shop. Then up to the cemetery. Joe found Jim's grave while I went to look at the map for directions. We've always had trouble finding the grave, because when Jim was buried it was beside two big pine trees. Those died and they took them out. We lost our landmarks. Joe will be able to find it from now on.

I got some groceries then we went to the The Patio were we had some lunch. Brought the leftovers for the dogs and took them for a walk - lots of mud. There sure was a crowd of vehicles at the Irish Canyon road when we came home- atvs. Saw 8 machines going up the hill. Hate to see this "end" get popular.

I won't go to the Mixed Media and Artist Guild (writer's group business) meetings today. It's just too many days to be gone. Charm is hostessing the Mixed Media and baking cookies. Although I almost would go just to have one of her cookies. They will be talking about the new art center which is really making progress now. The plans and property are all going ahead full speed. They will try to get a vote for 1/10 of a cent sales tax ? for a bond ? to finance an endowment fund next. They can get about 18 million dollars ? in 2 years from that, then the tax will go away. Just the interest on the investment of that money will pay for expenses and maintenance after the building is done.

Muddy Creek has finally gotten some high water in the last week. It looks good spreading out after so much drought. The ducks, geese and birds all seem to love it. Most people wouldn't believe it seeing the small stream in summer, but it can flood and take out road crossings and culverts along its whole length gouging washouts so we haven't been able to get out. Through our area Muddy is essentially a marsh. In the last several years even the cattails have been struggling to live. We got more good rain last evening, nothing to speak of during the day until then. Then it snowed a slushy blizzard. It shut the TV dish down twice and also the Internet connection. We each went out in the blustery darkness at different times to sweep the snow off the dishes.

Joe is out early today dragging. He told me he wasn't going to do it, but there he is. I'll get a picture.

This is This is the first time I've seen quite this kind of presentation and then the 4 or 5 you tube videos embedded in it. You need a little time to read it all. Now I wonder what the commercial looks like. (Charm passed it on to me. Her sis-in-law Buffy writes: ) "Check out this site- My friend Ginger has been involved in shooting commercials for a Honda campaign. She is a world class skydiver. She's in one of the clips at the bottom of the page. Ginger talks about a typical day."

http://www.difficultisworthdoing.com/ .

Monday May 26 2008

Frosted Hills in Front of the Ranch Yesterday.

.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Raven with a Flock of Birds.

.

Heavy rain and overcast this morning. Still cool. Surely the snow is still piling up in the mountains. Today we go to Pinedale to the cemetery.

We've sure had a lot of birds in the yard lately. Many kinds of finches, yellowheaded blackbirds and goldfinches, juncos, white crowned sparrows among others. I've been throwing them some seeds since it snowed so much. The mourning doves show up every day. They just ignore Raven. Well she is a bird dog. The only trouble with a lot of birds is that they run into the windows at a bigger rate. Yesterday one was stunned and sitting on the front porch step. Sparky totally ignored it. In a while the dogs came in and Raven was kind of hacking, like maybe she had feathers in her throat. I said "Raven!! Did you eat that bird??" . She got a rather astonished panicky look, and very guiltily snuck out of the room.

Last night I heard the first frogs singing. I'm always thankful to hear the frogs again. I'm afraid some spring I won't hear them any more.

http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

This is about windmills for electricity.

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2705973/7888907

http://medialab.semissourian.com/story/1190960.html

Sunday May 25 2008

Killdeer at the Kramer Place

Betty's photo.

Shed at the Kramer Place

Taken about a week and a half ago.

The low spot in the mountains is Washakie Pass,

The high spires are the Cirque of the Towers.

.

This morning was glorious. Sunny brilliant blue heavens. Greening hills and fields. All the hilltops are still coated with a layer of snow that gives a striking contrast to the rugged landscape. Finally a true spring day. However just so you know its still Wyoming, all the puddles and ponds had a thick layer of ice. There still a chance of showers for several days and it has clouded up in the afternoon.

I'm finally coming out of the chemo funk where I just want to sit and sleep. That has always taken three or four days with almost nothing accomplished except meals and basic existence. Yesterday I did get the recycling ready to go tomorrow, and my survival gear tote organized and back into the SUV. So this afternoon I've cleaned the kitchen and utility room floors with the hoover steam vac bare floor (also carpet) cleaner - wonderful machine, and wiping down baseboards and where ever there's dirt and cobwebs. Joe was asking if I wanted him to do it, but I was pretty sure it would be more difficult to show him how than to do it myself. So I asked if he would really clean the table and chairs with pledge and he did. So that was a great help. I don't think he realized that it's a muscle job, thinking you just wipe the cloth over as you would dust the coffee table, but anything is better than it was. The floor will be tracked back up with mud and gunk, sand and little rocks, but the stuck on stuff is cleaned off for now until it builds back up. I made an applesauce spice cake with pecans this afternoon.

Also I've almost gotten my clothes packed for the trip and other things I will take are organized. Still have too much more than I want to haul around. Such difficulty making decisions on what I want, leave this and that home when maybe those are the things I'll really want. As I have for several years now I really want to pack light, though it may be an exercise in futility. As well as a challenge to see if it's possible.

Betty called yesterday and this morning. It's always fun to visit with her. Nancy from Nebraska also recently called and she has been a faithful part in the web of support. Beverly called too this afternoon and they are staying as hectic as ever.

Tomorrow we will take flowers to Joe's brother Jim's grave in Pinedale. It is good to know that Susan in Green River will take care of his other family graves this year. Thank you Susan.