Willow Weekend Getaway

By now you all know that we go on little mini vacations each month. This is kind of a requirement for our mental health, but also just a fun way to get out and see more of our home state. I try to pick places we’ve not been to yet for most of our summer getaways, sticking closer to home in the winter months.

It started out as a winter thing: he likes to go skiing but didn’t want to leave me behind for a weekend, so I went with him and just hung out at the hotel or wherever. Eventually, we started renting from AirB&B or VRBO so that we had our own kitchen. And that soon turned into a Once-A-Month thing.

We have gotten quite good at preparing for these mini vacations: I have a generic list of things to remember to bring with us, a generic proposed menu, and several totes filled with various items we may or may not need, depending on where we’re going. For example, one tote has our monitor, a portable DVD player, a set of speakers, and all the cords you could ever possibly need to hook everything up. I just pick out a handful of movies, grab that tote, and we’re good to go!

Meals are always a priority (of course) and we have several staple recipes to choose from: Brussel Sprout Hash or Baked Oatmeal for breakfast, Steak & Mushrooms or Spaghetti for dinner, that sort of thing. Once we decide on the menu, then we have to pack the ingredients together – one tote with dry goods, the other tote with items that need to be kept cold. On very rare occasions we have to make sure to bring that special pot or pan required to cook the meal: either that or just plan on making do with whatever we find at the place we’re renting that time.  

This weekend we ended up out in Willow, about 26 miles north of us and a good 15 degrees colder. Our hosts run a team of dogs, have a little café/coffee shop, and offer up this sweet spot for tourists (and locals) to hang their hat for a while. They were very accommodating, making sure we had everything we might need up to and including tons of firewood for the woodstove! We were very toasty warm – almost a little too warm sometimes!

They also let me bring the kittens with us, which made me very happy. I love having them around as I tend to worry too much about them if they have to be left behind. They travel quite well and seem to enjoy exploring the new places we go, and I always try to remember to bring some toys and a scratching post for them along with their blankets, their litter box, and some special treats for them to eat.

This was a holiday weekend, so we extended our stay an extra day – we arrived on Friday and didn’t have to leave until Monday! Plenty of time to work on the projects we brought with us: card making for me, computer work for him.

A Halloween to Remember (NOT)

One of the advantages of being a writer is that you get to choose which reality you write about, in effect changing history! I am claiming that right at this time, because I simply do not want to remember the horrible events that took place this year – and choose rather to focus on the tiny bit of happy events instead. Suffice to say that we may not ever have Halloween at our house again.

It started out quite well. He got full-size candy bars to hand out to the kids. We got pumpkins carved to put out on the front porch. Mother even helped sort out the seeds so that I could roast them (let's be honest: he roasted them for me).

And this is where I’m going to stop. It just went downhill from here on out, so I choose to edit that part out.

*Edit to Add: a person with Dementia/Alzheimer's needs an environment that is calm and routine. The excitement of having over 100 strangers ringing our doorbell that night was too much for Mother to handle. She had a very bad episode. We will not be putting her through that again, ever.

Soft Water

We have had issues with the water in this place since we moved in here back in 2018. We’re on City Water, which apparently is what you’d call “Hard Water,” meaning that it leaves a coating of calcium on everything it touches. Over time this builds up to the point where either it flakes off in big chunks or it clogs up the appliances so bad that you eventually have to buy a new one. We are currently on our third dishwasher and our second fridge.

We finally threw the towel in, however, after having both our Fridge and our dishwasher brake down on us at the same time. A quick call to Paragon Mechanical got us on their books to install a new Water Softener! This is not a cheap fix, by any means – but hopefully it will be money well spent if we never have to buy another dishwasher again! After replacing this broken one, of course.

You might recall that we had a new water heater installed a few years back (July of 2022 to be exact) which required that the two old ones be removed. One of those old hot water tanks was in our Laundry Room and the other one was down in the crawl space; both were replaced by one new one in the garage. The space left behind in the Laundry Room was supposed to be filled with shelving for my canning supplies, but it turns out that THAT is the optimal place to put a Water Softener system, so I no longer get to have new shelving.

Paragon Mechanical is very good at what they do: the two guys working on our little project were very professional and efficient, also both were very polite and considerate of Mother who “supervised” their every move. I have to admit, however, that what really endeared them to me was that they truly loved my Viktor – who absolutely LOVES to do “Guy Stuff” and helped out all day long.

So now we have this spiffy new water softener system and are finally going to replace our broken appliances, using the Black Friday sales event coming soon. Honestly, I just want the spending to stop for a while. Please! We’ve spent so much money on this place…

Zucchini Zoodles with Shrimp

Bryan made one of my favorite meals for me last night: Zucchini Zoodles with Shrimp and Capers! I love it, and if you follow the Weight Watchers plan, its only about 1 point per serving! Or at least it was about 6 years ago. Their plan changes periodically, so I really can’t keep up with them. Regardless, it’s a very tasty and healthy meal.

I splurged several years ago and got myself a spiralizer. One of the best purchases EVER! I highly recommend getting one – but I don’t recommend getting the one I got. It’s very weak and can pretty much only do zucchini and nothing else. I’d like to try potatoes and/or broccoli one day but will have to wait until we get a sturdier brand.

For the meal, we spiralized 3 medium zucchini and sautéed them in lemon juice with the capers until just done. You want them to be firm but cooked.

While that was cooking, we mixed a bit of olive oil with a generous helping of minced garlic, and then added the shrimp. There was a special at the store on shrimp, so he bought way more than we really needed – but now I have shrimp to nibble on for my lunch today! Pop it in the air fryer till it’s done (I like my shrimp cooked a bit more than he does).

Add the shrimp to the zucchini mixture and mix it all together. Serve in a bowl and eat it while it’s hot!

Sheep Mountain Lodge

We had a lovely weekend get-away this month, driving about an hour and a half up north to the Sheep Mountain Lodge. They offer four different accommodation types: Premier Cabins, Classic Cabins, Guesthouse Rooms, and their newly renovated Mountain House. For our weekend, I rented one of their Classic Cabins with a Queen bed, a private bathroom (with shower), and a small kitchenette.

When we got there, we discovered that they had given us a surprise upgrade, putting us in a Premier Cabin instead! We were totally okay with that, except that we had packed all our cooking stuff expecting to have to cook our meals out on the deck. The Premier Cabins offer a full kitchen with all the pots & pans we could use, so we just didn’t unpack the camp stove.

One of the reasons why I love the Sheep Mountain Lodge so much is because they let me bring my kittens with me when we stay there! Our upgraded cabin gave us a lot more room for them to romp and play, so they were quite happy too. I set up my table with all my crafting stuff, Bryan set up our portable DVD player with the monitor & speakers, and we were golden.

We checked in on Friday and got settled in. By the time Saturday rolled around a huge snowstorm had blown in! We’re talking horizontal snow, with visibility down to just a few feet in front of your face. Bryan bundled himself up to go out and see if he could find some bunnies but ended up back at the cabin just a few short hours later. The blizzard was so bad we thought we might not be able to get home on Sunday even and talked about the possibility of having to rent another night’s stay.

Thankfully, the state’s road maintenance crews were able to get the roads sanded and the downed trees removed in time for us to get home as planned. Never a dull moment up here, that’s for sure.

Photos After A Trip

One of the first things I do after I get home from a trip is to download all the photos I took, getting Bryan to download his as well. I then put them into a folder with the date and name of the destination and file it all into the Master Folder where I keep all my pictures.

For this most recent trip, we had arranged to create a Google Drive to be able to share our photos with everybody on the expedition, so my next task was to take a copy of all our photos and go through them to weed out the undesirable ones (out of focus, caught my thumb, multiple shots of the same thing, embarrassing facial expressions, etc…) and upload them onto the Google Drive to share with everyone. Once that was done, I went through the photos from all the other members of the expedition and downloaded the ones I wanted, saving them into their own folder inside the Master Folder holding my own pictures.

Then I created a copy of my own pictures and went through them all, picking out the ones that encapsulated the highlights of our trip – roughly 10 for our week in the rental car and another 10 or so on the Earthwatch Expedition. These were then posted on Facebook to give people a taste of what our trip was like.

Creating the posts for my blog required a bit more work. I created yet another copy of all my photos and then weeded through them all to come up with two or three photos from each event/place we’d been to. I then started in on the narrative, researching on the internet to find the specifics of each place. I ended up with one post on the week in our rental car, one post on the Expedition we were on, one post on all the food we ate while we were there (the food was so good I just had to highlight it all), one post with book recommendations that the Lead Scientist had made, and one post on the Foodie Tour we’d taken.

I decided to create two photo books this time, since it really was like two separate vacations: one for the Earthwatch Expedition and one for the week in our rental car. That required yet another copy of all the photos that needed to be weeded through yet again, to ensure that I got the best photos to create the narrative I was going for in each book. Thankfully I’d done most of the research already for the blog posts, but there were a couple items that required more information. I organized the photos by date and then put them into subfolders by event. Arranging them all into the program that creates the books for me took several weeks, to ensure that it was just right and that I had no grammatical or spelling errors. A click of the button had them both ordered, and they are now sitting proudly on my shelf ready for whomever wishes to look through them.

Once that was taken care of, I then had to create – you guessed it – ANOTHER copy of all our photos, this time going through them to find the perfect ones to update my Power-Point Presentation. I am scheduled to give a talk on our trip on the last Saturday of October to my sister’s church group. It’s a potluck as well, so I not only get to talk about my favorite subject, but I also get to eat lots of delicious food!

My final task pertaining to the photographs is to create a set of pictures to host a Family Movie Night so we can show our families all the (best) pictures of our Iceland trip. I probably work on that tomorrow, while he watches the football game.

Wait... What?!?

Way back on Saturday, June 8th, I took Mother to the Colony Days Parade in downtown Palmer. We set up at her favorite spot right in front of Noel’s Salon (which actually is no longer Noel’s Salon as she sold it a few months ago) with a couple chairs and a lap rug to keep her warm. People came over to chat with her while I went and got her a cup of coffee from the café nearby.

Once the parade started, she sat and enjoyed watching all the people go by. It was a good one this year, too, with lots of entrants ranging from horses and dogs to antique cars and marching bands.

One car in particular caught her eye as it was just covered in hundreds of bumper stickers of all kinds. One of which was a Bigfoot sticker that had the silhouette on it. 

She watched it drive past, then turned to me and said, “They really do walk like that, you know.”

I looked at her and said, “What?”

“With their hand turned backwards. They really do walk that way.”

“What??!!??”

“We had one when I was a kid. The men would leave food for it, and it would come take it. It must have had a family, but I never saw them.”

“WHAT???!!!???”

But then the horses came by, and she was off on another subject. I never did get anymore information out of her.

Strangest story yet…

A Walk in the Woods with Friends

I have known Heather and Tammy now for well over 10 years, but it’s been a while since we last all got together. Thanks to Heather for organizing this: we all met at the Eagle River Nature Center last weekend for a wonderful stroll through the woods!

The weather could not have been better – it was chilly, but with proper clothing we had no problem. Honestly, we all warmed up a bit along the way, so ended up peeling off layers. We had all planned for that, however, so it did not hinder us in the slightest.

Both Tammy and Heather had their dogs along with them, and both dogs did very well. Several other people were on the trails along with us, most of whom also had their own dogs with them. Thankfully all the meet-ups were congenial with no problems.

I have to admit this is my least favorite time of year. The trees have all dropped their leaves and everything looks so “dead” and dismal. I know, I know… it’s the natural progression of nature and winter will soon cover everything in a blanket of white.

But it’s always good to visit with friends!

New Lights in the Craft Room!

The lighting in my craft room has never been the best, by any means, and lately they have begun to fail. So, we did a little research and found some replacement fixtures to brighten up the place and make it easier for me to do my thing up here.

Bryan spent the entire day removing the old fixtures and installing the new ones. It never goes as easily as you think it will, so of course he had a few unexpected issues to deal with.

But overall, I think I like it! The fixtures are LED, so theoretically the bulbs will last longer. They certainly are sleek & slender and are about twice the size of the original ones. They are also dimmable. I will (I think) have a remote to operate that function and will keep it here on my desk at work.

All in all, I believe that was $300.00 well spent.

Our Purple Bed

After years of uncomfortable if not downright painful sleep on a very old mattress (the darned this was well over 25 years old, I’m thinking) we finally bit the bullet and got ourselves a new bed! Taking advantage of the Labor Day weekend sales, we headed on down to Mattress Firm in Wasilla and purchased a Purple mattress and frame.

We opted to pick it up ourselves rather than pay extra for delivery – so of course it arrived while Bryan was out of town. He got home 3 days later, however, so we didn’t wait too long to pick it up. Looking at the boxes in his truck, it’s hard to imagine that an entire queen size bed fits in there! The boxes were certainly heavy enough, though. And once we opened everything up & assembled all the parts – we have ourselves a new bed!

Purple technology is somewhat similar to the Memory Foam stuff in that it takes a good 48 hours to completely recover from being stuffed into a teeny-tiny (relatively speaking) box – so I can’t say for sure yet how much of an improvement it is on my sleep – but I can say I like the look of it. It’s very European, somehow.

Mother's Black Eye

Mother fell the other day and hit her head pretty hard. She also dinged up her wrist pretty good, but the bump to her head was much worse. It swelled up about the size of a hard-boiled egg at first and was quite painful. She spent most of the day laying down with an ice pack on her head.

She refused to go to the ER and would not let me call an Ambulance – but I did eventually get her to go to the Urgent Care with me. Of course, she wouldn’t let them take any x-rays or an MRI, so there was no real way to know for sure if she’d broken anything. They did a neurological exam to see if she had any injuries to her brain, then sent us home with some bandaging for her wrist.

I talked to the doctor while we were there, asking what signs I should look for (slurred speech, droopy and/or weak muscles, etc…) and stayed nearby for the first 24 hours or so. Kelly stopped by as well and chatted with mother for a while. Other than changing out her bandage each day, there’s really not much to do for her.

These pictures show the healing process on her eye: the first picture is 24 hours after the fall, the second picture is 48 hours after, and the third picture is just today, 8 days later. It looks horrible, but is actually doing quite well.

Our Metal Bears

I haven’t tortured Bryan enough lately, so thought I’d subject him to another artistic Date Night – this time at Paint Nights with Sarah in Wasilla. We got to work on a Metal Bear with Alcohol Paints: a first for both of us.

The place was nice enough – three long rows of tables, each with 3 place settings. Our event was, apparently, sold out – so we had quite the crowd. Bryan was, once again, the only male in the room.

This time it was an actual person stepping us through the process, rather than just watching a video. I do like that better – if anybody has questions, it’s a lot easier to get answers when you’re dealing with a human being and not a video. Plus, they work the crowd, so it is a much better, more personal experience.

I find it fascinating how two people can receive the same instructions and yet come up with two completely different results. We both did good, though… and had fun.