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Lebanon, Oregon, United States
We are Terry & Cathye Kinkelaar. If you've followed my blog in the past, you know that Lydia, my beautiful wife of 52 years, and I made the lifestyle choice to move to Oregon in 2017. You've seen my posts about losing her in May 2020 to cancer. Although I was left alone, I am pleased to say that I have found happiness again. In April 2021, I met Cathye, who also lost her longtime husband in 2020. Well, we fell in love and were married in April 2022. So, if folks are still interested, I will continue to post here as we move forward with our lives and adventures!

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Oregon Living 2018 – Blog #138 – Taking Care of the Girls, Halloween, and Running Errands



Tuesday, October 30th, 2018…...  We’re doing ok. Lydia is still in a lot of pain from her diverticulitis. She was up and down all night. The meds she’s on cause diarrhea and when she goes, it hurts more and more. Before we got out of bed this morning, we talked a bit. I am concerned that the two-month trip to SoCal we have planned will not be what we want it to be. She has to have a colonoscopy which she’s called ahead to her Dr. to get scheduled. They want to take a good look at her colon. Possibilities include peritonitis and colon cancer. We can’t, in good faith, try to take off for two months only to end up in a hospital away from home. Plus, we started adding up the cost of the SoCal campgrounds and discovered that the numbers total more than we would pay if we headed off to Florida for a 3-month trip. SoCal campgrounds are very expensive. We could stay at a Passport America park (these are member parks that are half the regular price), but the allowable days are minimum plus they are mostly out in Palm Springs/Banning areas and not in the areas we want to visit. So, I was tasked today with calling all of those parks that I just booked with yesterday. With apologies and the truth, I only incurred one park with a $25.00 non-refundable cancellation fee. Pretty good, considering there was one park that took a $150.00 non-refundable deposit but they agreed to waive that and are crediting my account for the full amount! We are surely disappointed not to be going down to see family and friends and spend the holidays. But we gotta take care of this first!
The rest of the day was spent relaxing and playing with the dogs. I went out and worked on my firewood pile to get it ready for the Thursday’s trash pickup and that was about it for me. It has been raining off and on, but not heavy. We can hear it at night but the days have been just sprinkles and mist. Lydia had stew meat that needed to be cooked so she put that together and simmered it for a few hours. With flaky biscuits, it was a tasty meal! We then settled in for the night and watched tv. Lydia and Penny turned in pretty early but I stayed up past 11:00pm. Just wasn’t sleepy!        
                             
Wednesday, October 31st, 2018…...   H A P P Y   H A L L O W E E N !  We both had a great night’s sleep last night! Lydia has been taking Imodium and it helped a lot. She showered this morning and she said that felt wonderful! I had my yearly physical this morning. It was an early appointment (8:30am) and I was out of there a little after 9:15am. I stopped and got breakfast and tea for Lydia. Then I headed out to take my sister to Salem for her follow-up appointment after her surgery. She is doing well and will go back next week again and hopes to have 2 or all of her 3 drains removed then. We got back and rested until around 3:00pm. We decided to go to Pizza Schmizza for an early dinner to get back in time for our one trick-or-treater. Dylan is the only one of the three young kids on the block who comes by. It was nice that they stopped again this year. My sister, on the other hand, gets over 400 kids on her cul-de-sac. Her neighborhood is perfect for parents to drive their kids to and let them hit the many houses in the tract. Since she is with us, her place is dark this year. I will go by tomorrow to see if there were any ‘tricks’ played on her.       

Thursday, November 1st, 2018…...  Lydia said she felt better today. I had a few items to go to Walmart for but she said she felt ok and wanted to go to Costco. Penny wanted to go too. So, we packed up a few things to take back to her house and headed out. We dropped those off and loaded up on Quincy’s dog food and then drove over to Albany and to Costco. I renewed our membership while they shopped. I found a jump pack charger (on sale for $49.99) for the Honda and I still had the $50.00 birthday gift card from Randy and Maryanne so it worked out perfectly! Thanks, kids!


We got a lot of other things on our lists and then got lunch there on the way out. We stopped by the Lebanon Hospital image center so I could sign a release form so they could get my 2016 bone scan test records from my image center in Long Beach. Part of my physical called for another scan to compare to see how I am progressing. We next stopped at Walmart and finished our day’s shopping. We went home and had the crockpot meal Lydia had started this morning. Very good. Both girls were tired from the outing but both are doing well. I did have to get after one of my other ‘girls’ though. I let Rylee out to play and she ran off across the street again to go visit her boyfriend Ollie (who wasn’t even outside!). I went and got her, leashed her up, and brought her home. She got scolded and is still looking at me to get back in favor again.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the fall colors here! These were taken a couple of weeks ago. Most everything has turned and since we’re getting rain (and sometimes wind), most of the leaves are down by now. But they were pretty while they lasted!




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