Still Winter With a Glimmer of Spring

Here it is February already and I don’t feel any closer to resolution on anything! Of course, weather plays a big part in how I feel and as it is still very much winter here, it doesn’t help much. This morning is frosty but it looks like it might be clear later, much as it was yesterday when I actually spent some time outside, clearing out some of the dead stuff, waiting for spring.

Some of the tulips are pushing their way out of the soil! They must be as anxious for spring as I am.

Some of the tulips are pushing their way out of the soil! They must be as anxious for spring as I am.

There are signs that spring is on its way – days getting longer, the irises are showing their heads, my pot of tulips is growing nicely so these are all signs that the world is turning as its supposed to.

My life is in a stall at the moment. With money so tight, and my eye still not really healed, I don’t go anywhere unless I absolutely have to, which means staying at home here at the end of the world with my kitties for company. This weekend I will go to Port Angeles to check the tenants out of the house there. I have an ad running for new renters and have had a couple of bites but nothing definite as I can’t show the place until the current tenants are gone. I have seen inside and they did a good job of painting and cleaning the place up, but this summer the exterior will need to be painted – cha ching!

In October, I gave myself six months to get the modifications etc. completed and here it is – basically, six weeks from the end of March, my deadline. Doesn’t look like I’m going to make that deadline after all.

Betsy suggested I test the waters with an ad to rent this house out for the summer. It’s around this time people are looking for their summer getaways. I don’t know where the kitties and I would go but right now, I am just looking at options. If someone wants to rent the place for 4-5 months, that would handle my mortgage for the year; I could just lock this place up and leave for the nasty months.

I don’t know…

My eye is slowly getting better. Once I stopped using the antibiotic cream, which it turns out I was allergic to, and just use the Kangen acid water and a moisturizer, it is so much better and it is finally healing. It’s been a month now – I normally heal so fast! So this is very frustrating.

I’ve been updating ColbyCommunications and that has been entertaining, reading all my old articles. Country Life was a lot of fun and so many of the other sailing and boating articles were good too! I’m going to be doing an interesting story in March. Some of the pilots at Kenmore Air, the seaplane company that the magazine is for, do water testing in the Puget Sound and I am going to go out with them. And another I am doing is on the Dragon Boats in Seattle. Both will be fun and although I get paid about zilch, it will be good to get my hand back into the writing game again. I am also going to track down Sandy and Andrew Butt and do an article about their olive orchard up on Pender Island. I will fly up there on one of the seaplanes, spend the night at an inn there, do a an article about the Inn and then go to the orchard. That’s my plan, I just need to contact Sandy and Andrew! This won’t be until May or so as the planes don’t fly up there until then – shut down for the winter.

Busy Few Days

Jefferson County Fair and the roving portable milking machine

This has been, and continues to be a busy few days for me.

This weekend is the Jefferson County Fair and I am helping with the Kangen Water booth. It is absolutely gorgeous weather so really fun to be outside. This is a real country fair, with what as kids, we called Women’s Institute type exhibits – flower arranging, kids cooking competitions, jams, plants, art – all the stuff we did as children. And then there are all the 4-H competitions, so I have been watching little girls wrestle huge bulls into the competition arenas, watched them wipe up dirty poops, watched young boys leading their prize cows around. The little boys all decked out with enormous silver cowboy buckles and boots. And across from our booth is the llama and goat judging area. Just off to the side I get to watch rubber ducky races, where the kids have straws to blow the little bobbers along the shoot. Fifty cents a turn and everyone wins! I think it is the most popular stand at the fair. Quite entertaining, so no time to get bored during the lulls in water interest.

Today I am meeting Susan there, we will explore the exhibits and Dan will watch the mud racing which is always fun! Then mid-afternoon I will man the booth again and we break it down at six.

Mardelle came to the house with me one day and she got right into it, scrubbing the floor, cleaning the kitchen…Thank you! You were such a help and wonderful moral support.

The house in Port Angeles is coming together nicely and I have a possible tenant already, but waiting for the application to come in so we can proceed. It’s a woman and her son who is stationed in the Coast Guard here. The best thing about this, besides them being nice people, is they want to do the all the remaining work! Paint, mow the back yard, etc. And I am very happy to accommodate, as you can imagine. But if that doesn’t work out, another application is being submitted too and hopefully one of the two will work out.

What this means, if the fixit people take, is that I won’t have to drive back and forth every day, an hour each way and almost six gallons of gas!

So here’s holding thumbs and crossing fingers that the applications come in and by next weekend, it will be off my hands and into those of the tenants.