Dentists

Do you dislike going to the dentist as much as I?  

Many years ago I had a wonderful dentist, but in the late 1990s he had back surgery and found it too painful to continue working so sold his practice.  I'd gone to him for probably 15 years or more.  I didn't care for the new dentist-owner, and wanted to find one closer to home so switched to one nearby that a friend referred me to.

She was alright but after a couple years I needed a root canal and she was a bit aggressive and managed to break the tip of one of the tools deep into the canal...after extensive efforts by her and another specialist she referred me to, neither were able to extract the tip of the tool so it is entombed in my tooth's canal forever.  This ordeal was very off-putting and little or no discounts/compensation were ever given for having to endure the consequences, pain, and time involved in the process.  I know things can happen, but this was very traumatic.

I think I went back to her just once after that and was just not feeling the love, so decided to change dentists.  I was referred by an old acquaintance (reconnected on Facebook) who would travel over an hour to get to her dentist in my area because she felt he was the best.  Ironically, his office is in the same building, diagonally one door away from the lady dentist.  I have been very happy with him.  He is patient, uses far more of the latest & greatest tools, etc.  He explains exactly what he's doing all during the process.  And he plays 1960s music over the speaker system.  I'm just afraid he'll retire and I'll have to find yet another dentist.  He's just a couple years younger than I am.

Today's visit was my bi-annual cleaning, x-rays and general check-up.  I had been in a couple months ago for a replacement filling that went very well.  This time, it seems that a very old crown should be replaced.  Not that the crown itself is failing, but given its age (it was put on by that first dentist back in the late 1970s or early 1980s and had popped off once since then needing to be reseated) there's a gap at the edge of the crown where it covers the remaining part of the tooth at the gum, and he thinks it would be best to replace it with one that sits much lower to the gum, so that will be done on Wednesday morning.  

What's bothering me at this point is less about replacing the crown - I know they don't last forever but why are they so blasted expensive??   I have insurance that covers just over half but the half out of my pocket is almost as much as what we pay for a year's worth of property insurance.  And property insurance is due in a couple weeks...and Christmas is coming...it's the costliest time of year.  

As I was driving home, I was thinking how nice it would be to just be able to go to the dentist and have my two cleanings per year and be told "all is well, see you in six months".  Maybe I'm just at the age where dentists, doctors and insurance companies get more of my money than anyone else :/

Veteran's Day - A Tribute to My Grandfather

Veterans Day marks the anniversary of the end of the first World War, but celebrates and honors all U.S. Soldiers' service.  Originally known as Armistice Day, in 1954 it was renamed as Veterans Day and is a federal holiday with no mail services and government and banks closed. 

My grandfather was in France before the end of the Great War, a name it was also known by.  He was the eldest son of Norwegian immigrants who were living in Wisconsin.  His younger brother remained on the farm to help their father.  He also had two sisters.  During the war, while serving as a machine gunner with the American Expeditionary Forces in France at St. Aignan and the Argonne Forest, he became one of many victims of mustard gas and was hospitalized for some time prior to his return home.  

Dressed in gas-mask and military garb.

I don't know where, nor when the above photo was taken.  It may have been taken while still in the States, or it may have been taken where stationed in France, but it is my grandfather during WWI.

904 Casual Co formed at St.Aignan, France - Camp Hill, VA Feb 23, 1919_closeup

The 904th photo was taken just after his return from France.  This is a cropped portion of the original photo.  My grandfather is the very short man in the back.  The other men are unidentified.  

I'm guessing the portrait photo was taken sometime after the war, but before he married in 1927.  I think I inherited his ears, and his cheeks...high-boned, and hollow - very evident when I was young and thin though not so much now. 

Grandpa and his catch.

This is how I remember Grandpa.  He and Grandma lived in a small, but quaint little cottage on the Oregon coast from the time I was young until his passing.  He loved to fish for salmon, and loved to eat it too!  He enjoyed his lapidary hobby and made, and gifted, a lot of jewelry items from agates and stones he found on the beach as well as those purchased raw which he tumbled or polished himself.  I have some of his jewelry and a bolo tie or two.

I remember he loved ice cream too, and gladiolas.  He loved my Grandmother, his sons, his grandchildren, and family and friends in general.  He loved the Lord too...even if he could be a bit legalistic at times-he did NOT like playing cards!  He was loving and affectionate.  He was kind and gentle, yet firm.  I know of no one who ever had a bad word to say about him.  

He had only an 8th-grade education yet worked in the county assessor's office.   Degrees weren't necessary back then.  He had beautiful penmanship.  He started me on my genealogical journey when I was but yet a teenager.  I inherited his genealogy work, but it took a couple decades before having time and resources to further the work on it. 

His life was, in my opinion, far too short.  I was only 17 when he passed on Christmas Eve.  I had seen him just a few weeks before that but I wasn't feeling well (in my young troubled life I had chosen to partake in things I should not have the night before) , so it wasn't the best of visits.  It haunted me for a long, long time.  I would dream, close to nightmares, at night that he was out under the oak trees near our house.  It's been 46 years and I still regret the choice I made back then.  But, I know I will see my grandparents again one day, and that brings me comfort.  Grandpa, I miss you!! 

Off A Roll

Had to say that...OFF a roll, as in I'm no longer 'on a roll'.  I had managed to get a number of posts up on consecutive days on Webs of Thread, but the last few days have been off-kilter.  Do you have days like that?  

I have been tired, as all get out.  And grumpy, but maintaining control of my mouth!  And just not feeling very 'connected'.  I'm not sick.  In fact, I've recently been to the doctor for a complete physical with the usual blood work tests, a carotid ultrasound, even an MRI for the vertigo.  All is normal, or close enough to it that there are no concerns.  Yesterday was so bad that I took two naps and could easily have spent the entire afternoon and evening in bed.

Yesterday was my daughter's birthday...and I didn't get her card in the mail until yesterday.  I couldn't call her because her phone bit the dust, and she doesn't have a land line.  I did send her a message on Facebook chat.

This little cutie entered this world in the wee hours of the morning on election day in 1981.  She was eager to get here, arriving five weeks early.  Thankfully, she was perfectly healthy aside from a wee bit of jaundice.  Her dad and I had to take her to the local hospital everyday for nearly a week to have a blood sample taken from her heel.  She was born at 5-lbs and was at 4-lb. 8-oz when we took her home.  Her length was only 17".  She didn't take long to catch up in all things and was walking before a year, and talking very well even earlier than many her age.  She's now half-way to 70 ;p  and she lives too far away (along with her husband and my two grandbabies).  I miss her, and them.

This week was also the Costco run (a monthly task) and a trip to WalMart and I visited with my friends Panda and Renee.  Renee is doing better from her health scare over a month ago.  

I'm looking forward to this election year being over.  I'm not happy with either candidate, and I'm not happy with how politicians in general have nothing to offer aside from scathing attacks on their opponents.  It's really shameful...and they have no shame.

September is Gone, and October is Well on its Way

Does that sound like a familiar theme?  My blogging lately has been very much on the back burner.  As has my quilting which is why there have been no posts on Webs of Threads either.  Just what have I been doing? 

Genealogy.  Have I mentioned that back around the early part of the year I purchased the Legacy 8 Deluxe genealogy software, and am re-entering everything manually as opposed to creating a Gedcom file and transferring the records?   There were reasons for my madness, but it would take too long to explain, but trust me, re-doing manually is far better.  It also gives me fresh eyes to review the content, and do further research in areas that need it, and there are many so it's going slowly.  I can also verify and annotate my sources better.

One side of my family hails from Norway; from a little fishing village known as Helgeroa.  Way back in the mid- to later 1800s, a few of them, independent of each other, left Norway.  Some came here to the States, and others went to Australia.  My grandfather wrote out a genealogy with short biographies of some of the older known ancestors, based on what he remembered his parents telling him, some very old photos he had, and by communication with descendant relatives in Norway and Australia of those earlier emigrants from Norway.  The difficulty is that Grandpa didn't have the very specific connections of just who was connected to whom - in other words, who the common ancestor was that we're all connected to, nor do the contacts I have in Norway and Australia.  

I feel strongly that I have the connecting family, but no solid sources to validate it.  In the early 1800s, there was a man named Ola Anderson Bua and his wife Maria Elizabeth or Anne Marie (not sure which is accurate if either).  They had children, obviously.  It would seem at least three sisters and a brother if I'm correct.  

My inherited records include photos of persons identified by name and as "cousin of Ole" or "... of C.N." No link to parent, so it wasn't known if they were cousins from their mothers' or fathers' sides.  In a search at Ancestry, I located a researcher who has the exact picture of one individual...aha, at last, a little bit more of a connection through that researcher's wife's mother who was the niece of one of the pictured 'cousin'.  I'm still not seeing "same names" in their tree though but the connection is there in the Ancestry DNA records - so we are related.

Norway used the patronymic naming system up until about 1923 when they were forced by law to choose a single family name, at which time they had the options of choosing a farm name instead.  This all complicates research, which I can only do via the internet...in English!  There are a few good sites with info, but compared to what I can access here in the states for state-side residents, it's minimal.  Many names also had variant spellings depending on who wrote them down.   In this one family the surnames went from Nilssen in Norway where he was the son of Nils, to Nilsen, then to Nelson, and his youngest brother opted to go with a farm name of Aske rather than Nilssen or its variants.  It seems far too many males were Ole/Ola, Nils/Nels, Anders/Andreas, Martha/Marthea/Marta, Anne/Anna, Kisten/Kistine/Kirstine.  Let's not forget the names with their special letters, Ærling, Øyvind, Åsmund.  Ahhhh, such fun.  Actually, it is, though often frustrating.

August is Gone

The past couple of weeks have rushed past me again.

Today I'm cleaning my freezer and taking inventory of the freezers and my pantry.  Marty (as well as myself) has gained weight and is pushing to trim down, so knowing what we have again will help me in menu planning.  I've gotten away from keeping up on this since my Mom passed and I was gone so much, but I really need to get back on the ball with it.

As I type, the garage freezer, a small chest type, has been emptied into ice chests, a large pan of hot water has been placed on a dry towel in the bottom, and the ice will be loosening up so that I can clean it.  Thankfully it doesn't build up a lot of ice, but some does develop near the top and that annoys me, so at least once a year (usually June) I try to empty and clean it and re-inventory - obviously I'm behind!  I'm sure I'll find things that need to be pitched.  

After that one is done, I'll move to the refrigerator and it's freezer (a side-by-side).  I know there's a lot in there that will need to be pitched.  Mostly produce that I've ignored, ewww.  It'll go straight to the compost bin.

In the past two weeks, I've been pulled out of my laziness (oh sluggard I can be!) to help a couple dear friends.  One (Panda) had an out-patient procedure and needed a driver and I was more than happy to help.  She treated me to lunch at a yummy little cafe where they served a huge portion of breakfast foods - she'd been talking about their biscuits and gravy all morning, so I had to have them.  They came with hashbrowns, three eggs, and two strips of bacon...I brought half home and enjoyed it the next day.

A couple of days later, I received a text from my quilting Padawan (student).  At 42, she was in the hospital having had a minor heart attack known as SCAD (you can click the acronym to find out about it).  She spent the better part of a week in the hospital before going home, then thought maybe there was further problem and a couple days later spent another night in the ER though that appeared to be more related to anxiety.  It's a very scary thing at such a young age (any age really) to experience this, and she has three young children.  She is now getting lots of rest and people are signed up to bring meals for the next couple weeks as well as coming over to help her through the days helping with housework and her homeschooling.  I will be going over next week for a couple days of 10-2 time blocks, so that has spurred me to get some of my own chores taken care of first.  Please keep my friend in prayer.  She is known as Renee here on my blog.  I love this young woman as if she were a daughter, and she is a sister in Christ as well and has a strong faith, but even in strength of faith and knowing Who is in control of all things, fear of the unknown (future health-related issues) can weigh us down.

Nick is rapidly approaching his 18th birthday.  Now that he has a part-time job and has received his first paycheck, along with tips, he has been pestering me to get to the bank so he can open a checking account.  After having to put off for over a week for various reasons, we accomplished the task yesterday.  He has had a savings account (of the CUGMA type) since he was very young.  I only learned yesterday that because it was that type, he could not access it even though it was in his name - I was the only one who could.  So we switched it to a joint savings account and opened a joint checking for him.  This gives him a debit card too - which I find frightening, I'm so old-school.  His checking account is online only, so no physical checks at this time.  He has no bills to pay, so it makes sense to not pay for check-printing.  I haven't used an ATM since before Nick was born, so we were both given a lesson on how to use it.  It's not that hard.  I did learn that you can deposit cash through the ATM. Nick had more than 21 $1 bills in his wallet (from the tips) so wanted to get rid of them.  Cool beans! and who knew? Not this old gal, lol.

Back to the freezer.  I'll be glad when our temps drop.  It was 107 on Tuesday and 101 still yesterday.  I'm so very much looking forward to winter.

Scanning Along

Over the weekend, I received a chat message from my brother Eugene.  He lives along the Texas gulf area.  He let me know my brother Dean's lung cancer had returned and he would not be seeking further treatment.  I don't know the current status after his doctor appointment on Tuesday where he planned to ask 'how long?'.

Sadly, our family is one that has always had a lot of issues and strife.  Dean "disowned" me after my Mom passed away due to a misunderstanding of a request I made on behalf of my Dad, and no attempts to rectify it have worked.  I pray for him and leave it at that.

Eugene asked about the photos that had been separated by sibling and when he was going to get "his" and also asked about Dean's.  I told him I had taken Dean's to my aunt last April and she gave them to him, but he was not happy with what he got.  I guess he had expectations of more, but at this time, the siblings are only getting the childhood photos in which they alone are in, and any photos of their offspring.  Before sending those, I am scanning them.  In fact, I scanned most of them after my trip north a year ago.  My plan was to send them their own pictures in addition to a thumb drive containing all the family photos - including any I've acquired from other family members over the years.

When I scanned them, I did so at 200 dpi.  As I prepared to package up Eugene's photos, I realized that maybe 200 dpi was not adequate, so I set to re-scanning all of his photos at 600 dpi, which is better should any larger reprints be made from the scans.  Now, to get them packaged up and sent to him.

Going forward, the question will be whether to re-scan ALL the family photos.  This small segment took me the better part of three days.  It could take weeks to re-do the entire family set, and I no longer have the originals of Dean to re-scan.

Shades of Summer

Today, I thought I'd share just a few shots of our summer.  I haven't carried my camera with me much, only my cell phone, so most pix are from that, and unedited.  "Summer" was short this year from a school standpoint; barely over two months.  Nick started back on the 11th, and today he started his very first, paying job.  He's a bus boy/cleaner at a local franchise of a nationally (?) known restaurant. 

Smoke & fire.

Shortly before leaving to head north, we had a fire not so far away.  Smoke could be seen from our back yard. There was another very bad fire a bit further away while we were gone. 

Lake near Shasta

From a bridge while Nick was driving; this being up in the Mt. Shasta area.  For late July/early August, despite being "in a drought", the lake level is much higher than in recent years.  My personal thoughts, but no proof to back it up, are that the pictures frequently shown via social media of this area with barely any water in it are somewhat staged.  The lake is, I believe, a man-made lake having been created by use of a dam.  There has been a major interstate bridge being built at this location for the last several years.  To work on / create the footings and base structure, water needs to be low or non-existent.  To me, that's a convenient opportunity for certain special interest groups to make their points on water shortages, global warming, what-have-you.  I'm leaning on the side that a great amount of water was drained from this lake to accommodate the construction of the new bridge and now that it's almost finished, and with a good snowfall this past winter, the water level is back to "normal".  It's even higher than levels of decades ago when I've traveled through here at this time of year.

Bright tanker trucks

This has fascinated me for the past several years with my trips to Oregon.  I love these shiny, brightly colored tanker trucks.  I've wanted to get a photo of them since I first saw them but there's no convenient place to pull over to get a shot.  On this day, Nick was driving and traffic for some reason was very slow.  This is around the Black Butte area of Shasta, just north I think. Please excuse the intrusive antenna running right through the middle of the pic - I was just happy to be able to get the picture!

  Nick in the aircraft.

We were in Tillamook one day, my aunt, Nick and I.  This is the inside of this 'guppy' Erickson crane aircraft that's sitting there at the Air Museum.  The building that currently houses the museum (which will be moved to Madras, OR within the next year) was built during WWII as a blimp hangar.  There were two such buildings, but one burned in 1992.

The exterior of that aircraft - 'guppy' face, lol.

The Tillamook Cheese Factory

When I was growing up, a field trip to the Tillamook Cheese Factory took place during my elementary years.  I'm not sure why I wasn't on that trip, but I wasn't and I was always curious about it.  In the past couple years, I've been there just for the ice cream, but this year with Nick along, I wanted to see what was there.  They now have a self-guided tour with huge windows that look down on the factory processes and kiosks that have photos and explanations.  This image shows giganto blocks of cheese rumbling in along a conveyor belt to where the woman is (just left of center).  She is manning a station where the cheese, as it moves left, passes through cutting "wires" and after that, she then pushes the block away from her which causes the block to go through another set of wires thus creating rectangular blocks of cheese, I'm guessing 2 - 4 pound blocks after cutting and she places those separately onto the curving conveyor belt that goes to the next step.  The trimmings go into the bin on the cart to her left, which when full is placed onto the conveyor shown towards the bottom of the image.  I didn't read the kiosk info so I don't know what happens to those trimmings.  Maybe pet food or dried and shredded/ground to powder?  Another window area looked down upon the smaller blocks going into the plastic wrappers.  This particular cheese wasn't being encased in the more well-known orange Tillamook Cheese wrapper though.

Classmates

My graduating class of 1971 had it's 45-year picnic reunion.  My sister is on the right in the hot pink, and the gent on the left in black, was my high school sweetheart.  His hair is longer than mine!  The lady barely visible behind him in white, is the home-town gal who keeps us all together and has for the last 45 years.  We have a picnic gathering on every 5-year anniversary, and a bigger event held over three days on our 10-year level anniversaries.  I've missed a few over the years.  One of the classmates and her husband, own the property the picnic is held on and it is a wonderful, park-like setting next to a creek with some well-planned features - it's their own private 'park' they've created and I'm thankful they welcome the whole class (or those who actually attend) for the reunions.  Being a small town, our graduating class only had around 70 students.  We've lost eight or nine of the guys already and that of course, is very sad.  Others, though they live within just 20 miles, have never shown up for a reunion.  That too is very sad.  We had a wonderful time.  One of the classmates, and the old boyfriend - his best friend, even during school years, would run Dory fishing boats out of Pacific City as commercial fishermen.  They had gone out on the two days prior to the reunion and caught crab and other fish, bringing both as their food contribution.  The crab was cooked and cleaned.  Towards the end of the day, he told us he didn't want to take any of it home with him, and had brought gallon-size zip-top bags for anyone to take home any amount of crab they wished.  My sister and I filled three bags, still leaving a LOT (we nearly the last to leave), to take back to my aunt's where we stayed.  My aunt, and Nick, were in 7th Heaven that night enjoying the crab.  In fact, we enjoyed it for several more days!

My dad.

 Nick and I visited my dad.  He'd had his back surgery in May.  I didn't think he looked as well this time as he had in April.  He's very unhappy.  As I knew beforehand and tried to tell him, his plans in moving to this location didn't go as he thought they would.  He is wanting to move back to the town where he and my Mom lived, but now has no place to go, and probably can't afford to move back if he could even find a rental apartment.  He should not live alone regardless of his thoughts that he can care for himself (he can't).  Medically, he's a non-compliant patient, so his back is not healing as well as it should...and he's 83.

Nick the mad painter.

OK, well Nick wasn't mad, but he does look a bit devious in this image.  When my uncle had deteriorated to the point he could no longer maneuver the stairs, my aunt had their bedroom moved down to the guest room.  Now that he's gone, she wants to be back upstairs, but wanted to clean, paint, and refloor beforehand.  The younger set were given the task (with some $$ incentives) to repaint.  They had a blast.  My aunt supervised, and I peaked in now and then.  The blue is now a very soft yellow.

Oops!

Even Bo got in on the act.  He had his own "brush".  Well, sort of, he likes to wag his tail - even against the freshly painted wall.  This black lab was trying to bring out his golden retriever genes.  He weighs 125 pounds.  His full sister is golden retriever in appearance and only weighs about 75 pounds.  They get to play together frequently as she lives right next door with my cousin and family, and the respective fenced back yards have a connecting gate.  

Stewy

My cousin's son has been in 4-H for several years.  He had a pretty mellow sheep this year.  Stewy was a market lamb destined for 'the table'.  This was at the Yamhill County Fair.  In this class, he placed last because he hadn't cleaned the shavings off his sheep's belly and legs.  It was a showmanship class.  He was in another class in which he received a blue ribbon.  While there, I wandered over to the horse barns and took in the familiar (and missed) smells of horses, leather and manure.  I got to pet many a soft equine muzzle and became quite melancholy.  I had horses in my childhood, and showed at this very fair while in 4-H.  When you go to the fair to view the animal shows, one goes early and only pays parking and leaves when the show is over.  The second day of showing, I chose to drive separately as I wanted to take in some of the horse shows and my aunt planned to leave right after the sheep show.  I sat in the bleachers of the arena and reminisced with great joy of my own years there.  Before that though, as we walked up to the sheep arena, there was a lady holding a beautiful saddled Arabian.  I walked up and conversed with her.  She allowed me to get more of my 'horse fix' by petting him and even hugging his neck.  Nothing like the feel and smell of a horse.  No, I didn't ask to ride - though it was tempting.  It's been 10 years or more since I've been on the back of a horse.

Is that an eruption?

We had a traffic construction stop at a good place for a shot of Mt. Shasta.  The clouds make it look like she's erupting.

Nick showing off his work cap.

Nick needs a hair cut.  That poufy hair looks cute under that cap.

Dressed for work.

About 40 minutes before he had to start work.  His 'uniform' as required.  Just one more step of realizing that my baby will eventually be out and on his own.  Makes me sad.  In the meantime, he has another year of school, and maybe he'll even stay here with us as he looks into his college years.  He wants to take a year off.  I'm recommending he doesn't for a number of reasons.  Even if he continues with only one or two classes a semester, it'll be easier than taking that year off entirely, for him to return when he decides his career direction.