Finally posting

Well, goodness/gosh/and gee whizzzzz. My writing sure has been slacking. Its been rather busy around here. Dan has been to several VA appointments and Bella went to the vet for dental surgery. Oh my, she was not a happy cat at all. She had 5 teeth pulled. I can't remember the name of the gum disease she had but I sure could see how red and bleeding that her gums had become. She is just now getting off the anti-biotic. Seeing as she is a very high maintenance active cat, even when she was on pain meds, it was hard to try and keep her kind of quiet. She seems to be doing OK now. Good thing Tucker, our stray, seems to be low maintenance. He seems to be happy just lazing around, playing with Bella, and sitting in my lap for love and pets and more love and pets. I hope it works out that he can come travel with us. At least he has graduated from sleeping in the woods to sleeping on chairs in my mom's apple orchard. He still eats in my mom's garage but has been sitting on the back step of our rig at breakfast time. I'll open the door and he'll come into the garage, look around, get some pets, then wants to head back to my mom's garage for breakfast. Eventually we'll get him to sleep inside. We have to accomplish this before we leave here. He cannot stay outside in the desert and become coyote food. Him and Bella play good together. We haven't seen any meanness between them. Most of the time Tucker initiates the play.

Dan got his new hearing aids finally from the VA. WOOHOO for brand new hearing aids instead of reconditioned ones that always gave him trouble. I sure hope these work out for him. We rode the ferry to the Seattle VA for this appointment plus 2 others. Here are some of the pictures I took.

The ferry that goes from Seattle to Bainbridge Island at the dock.

 Century Link field, home of the Seattle Seahawks (haha) and the next stadium is Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners. I won't "haha" at the Mariners as I like baseball, whether they win or lose. I DO NOT like or enjoy football and never have.

 Heading back into Seattle from the Seattle VA. Not too many cars on the road as it was between rush hours.

 Heading to the ferry by driving under the famous Seattle viaduct which will not exist eventually. Seattle thinks they need to tear it down, not rebuild it, and put in a tunnel. A tunnel? Seattle is built on "fill".

 In line at the ferry docks. The Seattle/Bremerton ferry is on the left. The Seattle/Bainbridge ferry is on the right.

Hes been faithfully going to all the VA appointments and the appointment to get the nerves taken care of in his back has been moved up by a month. Cool. If everything goes well, we can leave here at the end of summer instead of sometime in October. Time will tell about this.

The weather has been half way decent and its been nice sitting outside after dinner in the orchard. Its been dry enough that we might even have to put the sprinkler on the blueberry bushes. I think they are a little thirsty. Need to get a couple more pickings of berries to freeze. Soon the blackberries will be ready to pick. Yum. Fresh blackberry cobbler.

My oldest son Michael celebrated his 46th birthday on 7/18. Too bad hes way back in Tallahassee, FL. I will be making him some fudge this weekend to mail to him. My sister Christine also celebrated her birthday. I think she had a good day. I made her some rice krispie treats, slow cooked ham and white bean soup, corn muffins, and bought her some fattigman.

I've never tried to make fattigman but I think I will. Heres the recipe.

Fattigman
5 egg yolks
5 T. sugar
5 T. cream
1 T. cognac
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cardamom
1 egg white
1 1/2 cups flour

Beat together egg yolks and sugar. Whisk in cream. Stir in cognac and spices. Beat egg white until it's stiff and carefully stir into other ingredients.
Mix in a little more than half of the flour. Let dough stand, covered and in a cool place, overnight. Use the remaining flour-as little as possible-for rolling out the dough; the less flour you use, the more tender the fattigman will be. Roll the dough out a little at a time and as thinly as possible. Use a fattigmann cutter to cut out diamond shapes. Make a small diagonal cut in the center of each diamond, and "thread" one point of the diamond through the cut. Heat lard to 350º F. Fry fattigman until golden brown.

 And, "Here Comes The Sun". Oh, that's a good song. The sun is peeking out between clouds. Its gonna be muggy today.