Catching up...a little

Hi, Everybody! How are you doing? This is starting the busiest part of the year as far as holidays and seasons changing go! But I love that it is cooler finally.

Yesterday I volunteered to help get out the vote by distributing door hangers printed with candidates and polling places to addresses of folks who are not consistent voters but who tend to vote Republican when they do vote. I was told that a couple of people in a couple of hours could take care of a district. Your dad had hoped to “get some paint slopped on the sheds” but decided to help me with my project. After three hours of the morning and two more after a nap and lunch we were “worn away” and called it quits. Out of 172 addresses there were only 29 we did not find. Our maps were not accurate and we were frazzled with the wind and sun. We covered four neighborhoods the first being Camino Villa. The streets did not continue through and there was a lot of going around and around to find where they began again. As on many other occasions, I could not have figured it out without your dad’s help with directions and the “science of address assigning”. Needless to say there was no “paint slopping” done. I would much rather drop things off to every address than try to find particular ones. My hip was really uncomfortable by the end of the day. Of course the weather was the warmest it has been since I got back which did not help the work either.

I had a good visit with your grandparents. They are both having a hard time with getting older, but taking good care of each other. Mom is still the best cook I know and Dad the best gardener and between the two of them they eat well and get exercise around the place. I always like spending time there I think because I am not responsible for anything but being good company and helping do things which are difficult for them nowadays. They are both quite small now with age and different health problems which is especially difficult for my dad. He doesn’t like being reminded that he can no longer do what he did even a few months ago. He has to have extra oxygen and carries a small tank in a backpack whenever he goes outdoors. I did a perm for mom and a haircut for dad. We picked the last three large buckets of apples ---they had already picked five or six buckets of different kinds of the nicest I’ve seen. Dad and I dug the potatoes. The tomatoes were already “gathered in” and carefully sorted so that they will be used as they ripen. Mom had made several jars of salsa and spaghetti sauce and some applesauce and peach jam and canned peaches. We did several batches more of applesauce in addition to eating apples and tomatoes and potatoes at nearly every meal—delicious! They share their harvest with neighbors and friends from church. Other than that we watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, which they both enjoy and play rather well, and a few western TV shows, and talked about times and people and politics. They read the daily paper every morning around their breakfast and keep up with all the news. Mom still gets out to do visiting teaching at least once a month (often more) to each of the sisters on her list. Dad and I got things squared away outdoors for the winter so that pretty much all he has left to do is “put the rose bushes to bed” by surrounding each with a wire cage and filling it with leaves to protect them from the cold. They still had beautiful roses when I left. Holly and her kids came over to visit a couple times, and she spent much of Saturday afternoon/evening with us. It was a nice visit. Everyone else had been there just the week or two before I got there so did not see them this round.

When I got there, it was late fall and some of the color was fading in the canyon but not in their back yard which is a small condensed canvas of all the yellow/gold/red of the season caught in the trees and bushes they have chosen to plant. A day or two before I left it snowed on the mountains creating the perfect frame for the color in the yard. The day I left it had been snowing lightly early in the morning, but was sunny and pretty with dark purple clouds to the south over the canyon. As we drove through the canyon we hit the storm and for a few minutes we were in a blizzard. Coming down the other side though brought us back out into the sunshine and nice bright blue sky with clouds bouncing the light around. Very pretty.