Category: short story

The Jewel in the Crown

Mount Rainier, inspires awe every time I see her. On my walks or in the car I get a feeling of amazement at her beauty. She stands alone majestic and visible from miles away. Today we drove up to Paradise Visitors Center to get a closer look. Sunrise and Longmire Visitors Centers are still closed from the snow until mid to late July. There are still roads up there closed because of the huge snow falls we had this past winter.

Mount Rainier is one of three active volcanoes in Washington, Mt St Helens and Mt Adams are all still active. Maybe that lends something to the mystery of them. Sadly we had to leave Orso at home for this excursion, dogs are only allowed in the parking lot and not on the trails or on the snow. He had to spend the day in the air conditioning watching TV.

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Franklin Falls Snoqualmie Pass

Today we traveled to the Cascade Mountains up to Snoqualmie Pass to hike at Denny Creek. This morning was a more typical day in the Pacific Northwest, rainy and overcast with temperatures in the sixties. Up in the mountains, there is still snow at the higher elevations, even in June, go figure.

We first drove up to Snow Lake Trailhead and hiked up to see a couple of waterfalls higher up but there was still snow that high and fresh snow at 4,000 feet. So we wandered down to the Franklin Falls trailhead and hiked up to the waterfall. Orso wanted to get into the river and splash around, but the current was way too fast and hard, we would have had to chase him all the way to the ocean.

We found cabins in the woods right on the river, talk about isolated. All in all we are getting to see things we never had back in the Midwest.

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Today The Pacific Ocean

Today we drove out to the coast to let Orso play in the ocean. There were a few surfers out there trying to catch a few waves. Overall the day was beautiful, a mild breeze, partly cloudy and mild temperatures. I found some intact sand dollars and made Mitch put them in his pockets to carry for me.

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We took Orso to an inlet first to see how he would do in the ocean with the salt water.

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Then we moved to the ocean shore to explore.

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Day Trip – Mt. St. Helen’s

Today we took a day trip and drove down to Mt. St. Helen’s Visitor Centers. It was a beautiful sunny day, great for exploring and taking some photos.

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Mt. St. Helen’s western side from a distance

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A closer look at the crater

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The side of the mountains facing the blast when the volcano blew.

Welcome Home!

Another business trip in the books. More people watching, at the airport flying out and flying back, is a never ending source of entertainment. On the flight out the plane was booked to capacity and when I checked in for the flight I made sure I had an aisle seat. I don’t want to be stuck by some stranger who is in no hurry to get off the plane, I want to get out as quickly as I can. I sat in my aisle seat, first one to sit in our row, got settled in and a man stopped in front of me and said he had the middle seat so I stood up to let him in. A couple of minutes later another man stopped in front of me and said he had the window seat. As I was gathering my papers, he said that if it was easier, I could just scoot over and let him have my aisle seat. I looked at him and said, “No that’s not how it works.” The other guy moved over so he moved from the middle seat to the window seat, and the second man took the middle seat. Lucky me, he hadn’t bathed in a few days and he hogged the armrest.

The flight home provided much more entertainment. As the boarding process started, the gate agent made the announcement that people with small children and anyone needing assistance getting on board to come up and check in. I watched as a long line of people being pushed in wheelchairs, some walking with canes and some that I suspected were scamming the system just to get on the plane early queued up in front of the gate. Added to that group were parents with small children and babies, one woman came up pushing a double wide stroller and she plowed her way through the throng almost knocking one man wearing a walking cast over.

I sat there thinking, “Oh great a plane full of crying babies and people in wheelchairs, this is going to take forever to get boarded and with my luck I’ll get to sit next to an unhappy baby.” Then I remembered that I was in an exit row, no babies or small children in exit rows and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for mothers of small children and most of the ones I flown with have more patience than I ever had. I was just tired and ready to be home.

The biggest welcome home came from Orso. He barked at me as I walked in the house and let me know how displeased he was that I was gone for nine days and I left him alone with Mitch. He showed me just how rough it was to be sequestered for nine days with Mitch, because as I started to walk up the stairs to the bedroom, I saw that he had diarrhea. All over the floor. At least it was not on the carpet. So at nine o’clock at night, after spending three and a half hours in a plane with one hundred and sixty-eight people and being awake for seventeen hours (not counting the time change), I got to mop the floor.

Business travel is so glamorous.

Day Trip

I wouldn’t normally call a trip to a store a day trip, but then a trip to IKEA is not a normal stop by any figment of the imagination. I used to think that a trip to Sam’s Club after eleven in the morning was crazy enough, but that was before I went to IKEA. Oh my god, is that place a zoo or what? As we waited in line to turn into the parking lot, my first thought was to just keep going, that nothing is worth this madness, but no we waited patiently to turn into the parking lot so that we could drive very slowly about three miles an hour in a long line of cars hoping for the sight of taillights lighting up on a parked car before the guy in front of us did. We circled the building and quite by accident we ran across an empty parking spot next to a parked tractor trailer. Snagging it we then had to walk around the building to the other side to go in the entrance. There were even security guards acting as parking attendants directing the madness and keeping road rage to a minimum.

Once inside it was no better, worse I would say, because now there were all of the occupants in the parked cars running amok in the building. There is even a play center to dump your kids in while you wander around in the maze the store has designed to force you to go through departments you have no desire or need to go to. The playroom for kids was filled to capacity and there was a waiting line, which meant there were kids running around out of control just like their parents, adding to the melee. People would walk along the path through the departments sort of like the yellow brick road until they see something that catches their interest, then they would just stop in these big groups blocking the expanse of the yellow brick road, only it was gray I think. I kept looking for an escape route and Mitch kept pulling me back. He didn’t want to die alone.

I have to admit there were a lot of cool things in there. We found a couple of chairs that were very reasonably priced, I found a desk that raised to a standing position or was easily lowered to a seated position and since I work from home, this was a must. We also found some really cool window panels, but it was the chaos of the crush of people that made the biggest impression on me.

I learned that you never go to IKEA on the weekend, not unless you have already been drinking and then you will end up with a huge credit card bill. Of course that isn’t the worst of the whole ordeal. You pick out what you want, then you have to go to the warehouse where you have to wander through aisles and aisles for the items of choice, (god forbid if you wrote the numbers down incorrectly) figure out how to get the one thing you want off the top shelf then get it to the other end of the warehouse to pay for all of your finds.

After you pay for everything you have a couple of choices, you can either go get the car, drive through the traffic jam to pull into the designated loading area and load your car or you can push your cart out to the parking lot and dodge cars backing up to leave and cars that will run you down to get to the vacant parking spot. We chose the latter and after almost getting run down by another guy pushing his cart out to his car and a man who couldn’t get out of the parking lot fast enough, we made to our car. As we started unloading our cart a woman pulled up and asking if we were leaving, so she could wait for our spot.

What a day.

Photo Shot Sunday

These are some of the photos I took on my last hiking excursion. It was a beautiful Sunday.

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Definitely not on my Bucket List

I don’t really have a Bucket List, mainly because I haven’t done or been hardly anyplace and I want to see and do so much, a Bucket List isn’t necessary. I want to go hiking more, drink more wine, take more pictures and on and on and on. But there is one thing that is not something I want to experience ever again. Oh there are lots of things I don’t to experience, this is just one of them.

I had the distinct displeasure of getting to experience Salmonella Poisoning this week. Not only did I get to experience it one day, but I have gotten to experience for the last five days and after I finally figured out what this might be, I will get to live with this for probably another week or so. If I’m wrong in my self-diagnosis, I may be miserable for even longer. Yay. I’ve never had Salmonella so I’m not one hundred percent sure that this is Salmonella, I’m just guessing. Of course, if it’s not Salmonella, then I have a bigger problem, maybe. If I’m right I should recover within a week or so, if not then I guess it’s time to find a doctor. God knows I wouldn’t want to rush into anything.

I think I got Salmonella from eating bad eggs. Oh and I have been eating the eggs from the same carton of eggs for the last five days and so has Orso. I cook two egg whites every morning then cook the yolks and give them to Orso. So far he hasn’t experienced any discomfort, but then Mitch pointed out that he also eats dead things. It didn’t occur to me that eggs could be the problem until I went online and read up on Salmonella Poisoning. I kept going over everything I’ve eaten for the last five days, trying different things, like not taking a certain vitamin (even though I’ve been taking the same ones for years) or blaming not enough wine (can you get enough wine?) and the only common food I had eaten for the last five days is eggs.

Who knows, maybe it was just one of the eggs I ate or it could be the whole carton. I haven’t been playing with any lizards or snakes, so that’s out and I don’t hang out with chickens, making me think I’m pretty safe on my hypothesis. As far as food poisoning goes, from what I’ve read, Salmonella is not one of the worst and most people recover from it after about a week without any special treatment or medication. Lucky me, maybe only seven days to go.

Undo

I wish I had an undo option. If I had an indo button, I could fix my stupid mistakes with a simple push of the undo button. Wouldn’t that be something special, being able to hit the undo button? Think of the possibilities. Think back through your life and all the times you said to yourself, “I wish I hadn’t done that, said that or eaten that. With an undo button you could have a second chance at getting it right. I don’t think that every mistake or misspoken word should be undoable, just the really big ones.

You have the chance to undo the harsh words you spoke to your husband or wife or child just because you were tired or frustrated from work. You could undo the night at the bar where you drank too much and woke up with someone you’ve never seen before. Or you could undo eating the super large slice of cheesecake before it ended up on your hips. There are so many undo’s waiting out there.

For me I would have been able to undo some of my biggest blunders in life. Like the time I thought a perm would be a good thing. Yeah right, a perm on a woman with naturally curly hair. Not a really bright idea. I looked like a thirty something woman with a very tight afro. I had almost shoulder length hair that was curled so tight I looked like I stuck my finger in a light socket. It took almost six months for the permed hair to grow out enough to be all cut off.

Or maybe the time I got in a hurry driving out of the airport and instead of being patient and letting the rental car bus get in front of me I decided to hit the gas in my firebird. A really bad idea since my tires were well worn and the road was wet. I lost traction and started to fishtail. I overcorrected and spun out right in front of the rental car bus and slid across the road tearing up two tires and two wheels. To add to my embarrassment the first one to stop to check on us was a deputy director of the aviation department. Yes sir, definitely an undo.

As a teenager growing up I did lots of really dumb things. Some I needed to do to learn and grow from but some I would undo. I started smoking cigarettes when I thirteen and didn’t quit until I was in my thirties – definitely an undo. I didn’t apply myself in school like I should have or go to college. I would definitely undo that, slap myself upside the head and make me buckle down and get my degree. I was smart enough, just didn’t push myself like I should have. I should have listened to my parents better, but that goes with each generation. My parents didn’t listen to their parents and my children didn’t listen to me, just wait until their children get older, that is something I wouldn’t change even if I could. Everyone should have some regrets and insights from their flubs. But some would be awesome if we could wipe them out and start over.

Crash Kelly Strikes Again

I wanted to go hiking today and decided not to wake up Mitch, so I turned on the computer and searched around for some trails nearby. I found one that was only about fifteen minutes away from our house, so I loaded up Orso and headed out about seven thirty this morning. I left a note that said we went hiking, but I neglected to say where we went. I pulled into the parking lot and noticed a car already in the parking lot. I unloaded Orso and my backpack when I noticed that there was a man just sitting in the car with the engine running. A bit odd, but you know me, once I start on a path I usually just plow on through. As I passed his car he rolled the window down and said something I didn’t hear. I said good morning and kept on walking to the trailhead and into the woods. Yeah I know, not super bright, go into the woods and make it easier for a maniac.

The man didn’t follow us, just my overactive imagination, but I was more aware of any movement I came across. I was disappointed in what I found. The trail was okay, primitive, which was fine, just not much to see. There was a creek and a rickety wooden bridge, but not much else. Maybe because we were too close to civilization or maybe I was just spooked from the guy in the car, anyway I decided to turn around and head back to the car. When I reached the trailhead I saw that the white car was still in the parking lot and there was another car parked between his car and mine. As I got closer to the cars I saw a man in the second car just sitting there. Pretty creepy, so I quickly loaded up Orso, my backpack and jumped in the car and locked the doors. What a scaredy cat. I drove home and decided to wake Mitch up so he could take me hiking.

After he got up we headed out for a second hike, this time farther away. Our destination was Federation Forest State Park, about ninety minutes away. This one turned out to be a bust because the park was closed. Not to be denied, we turned around and found a trailhead along the side of the road, which was part of the park. We unloaded and headed off into the forest. We found huge trees toppled over, some that had pulled out of the ground by the roots. Huge trees that were six or seven feet in diameter laying between other trees or stacked on trees that were crushed under the impact. The trails were a tangled mess of branches and limbs and whole trees that we had to either climb over or crouch down and crawl under.

One such tree that was laying across the path proved to be my swan song. I stepped over it with one leg and as I was clearing it with my left leg, my boot got caught on a small branch still attached to the tree. I went down hard landing on my right side. I hit a root that jutted out of the ground with my ribs under my arm. I thought I was dead for a minute, then when the pain hit I realized I was still alive. I hit so hard I thought I popped an implant. But least I landed so that I saved the camera I was holding and the backpack with the other cameras were not hurt.

Mitch walked up to me and asked if I was impaled on anything before he helped me up. I guess he didn’t want to have any blood gushing out of me. I’m not sure what he would have done if I was impaled on something, leave me and go get help or just leave me. I slowly got back up on my feet and assessed the damage. I think I bruised my ribs on the right side, but none were broken I was pretty sure. There will be a nice bruise in a day or so on my right hip too and I cut the palm of my right hand on something.

I decided I had enough fun for one day so we headed back to the trailhead. As we neared the trailhead we saw a sign that was taped up that read, “Trail closed due to hazardous conditions.” Really I never would have known.

I think I need to do more pre-planning on our hikes.