Oregon Living 2019 – Blog #20 – A Return Visitor and Running Errands

Wednesday, February 27^th, 2019…...  Cherrelyn comes into town later today. She is coming up to spend a few days with my sister before heading up to see her son who lives in Beaverton. We are going to pick her up from the shuttle station in Albany. The weather here has been interesting and snow on the ground for days is a first for us up here. Last year we only got two snowfalls – one was only a dusting of 1 inch and the other was 4 inches which melted away in less than a day. This year we’ve had at least three snowfalls already. The first was about 4 inches and was gone in a day. This last week it has snowed several times and we still have probably 5 inches on the ground. This afternoon it stopped and the sun actually came out so are hoping we are done for a while. We went and picked up my sister and then drove to the shuttle place. We only waited a few minutes before the bus showed up. We headed back to Lebanon and stopped at Pizza Schmizza for dinner. Nobody had pizza – we ordered salads and wings – all really tasty. We dropped off the girls back home and headed back to rest and watch tv. We watched the 2-hour finale of The Masked Singer. I found I was really anxious when they revealed the final three. We have been doing really well in figuring out who was under the masks. Out of the 12 contestants, we only missed on 2 - the Hippo (Antonio Brown) and the Monster (T-Pain). The others we guessed - some from the clues and others from their voices. We both enjoyed the series very much and will watch next season.  

Thursday, February 28^th, 2019……  No snow last night. But this morning when we went out on our walk, we found the cold weather overnight had changed things. The slushy parts froze over so it was pretty slippery. The top layer of snow had a crunchy crust on it. I had forgotten to take the trash out last night so I found it was hard to roll the containers over thick crusty snow! Have to watch that! After we got back, we visited with Cherrelyn and my sister, who had brought Quincy over for her run. Turns out it was not a run - trudge was a better term. But Rylee hardly noticed and she played and ran through it like the puppy she is! 
Later, we headed off to the hospital lab, or as we are now calling it, the vampire lab, so they could draw more blood from Lydia. We decided to stop on the way home at Kevin’s and have breakfast. After that I was good to go for most of the day. We are headed over to my sister’s house for dinner. Janice will be joining us. Once we got back home, I let monster mutt out again for a while then read the newspaper. Lydia asked if I wanted to watch last night’s Survivor so we did that. She also had taped the Elvis special with celebrity singers doing a tribute and singing all Elvis songs. We both enjoyed watching that! I went in and worked on my bills for a few minutes and got next month’s payments in my register. I went out to check on the trash containers and found they were still full. My neighbor says it happens and to leave them for tomorrow. He said snowfall this late in February only rarely happens. He reminded me that since we are outside the city limits proper, we are considered country, so we do not get Oak Creek Way plowed in the event of bad weather. He said one time, several years ago, that they had 18 inches on the street. He made it to his driveway and another neighbor only made it part way down our street before bogging down. But that was rare indeed. We only get an average yearly snowfall of around 5 inches. We just got it all really close together this year. He doesn’t expect we’ll see any more snow this winter. We’ll see….

Later, we fed butthead and then loaded her up in the car and headed over to Penny’s for dinner. It was nice. She fixed chicken with pesto and zucchini and a cheese sauce and a nice salad. Janice brought over healthy donut holes for dessert. Everything was very good. Rylee always likes going over to visit with Quincy. She knows where her toys are kept and spent part of the time dragging them out one by one. After a nice visit, we came back home and settled in for the night. We did bring Quincy home with us for a sleepover. Cherrelyn and Penny are heading to an estate sale and will leave early tomorrow morning, so I get dog walking duties.

                 

Friday, March 1^st, 2019…... This morning the sun came out and everything was really pretty! I showered and got going early. I took both dogs out on the property and let them run. I found the snow deeper in the west forty, which has higher, thicker field grass. Rylee had no issues (must be her webbed feet!) but the Quince was sinking down with every step and almost tripped a few times. The snow in the back field was no problem and they soon got their footing and had a good run. Of course, butthead found her drag strip to run through again and again!  But I was able to bribe her with treats and made her lay down enough times in the snow to help rinse the dirt off of her belly. We plan on letting her run wild tomorrow and then put her in the tub for her bath. Later, once we got them dried off and back in the house, Lydia fed Quincy and I took off and got breakfast/coffee/tea and brought it home. The dogs crashed

and after that, I took off again. This time I drove to Corvallis to the neighborhood Walmart Market. We bought Sam’s bottled water from Walmart a few weeks ago but our local store was out of it the other day and I remembered the Walmart market in Corvallis and went there to check. Turns out they did have some so I bought four cases. I also stopped at the Kmart in town. They are down to their last three days and the store is almost empty. I went there to buy a queen heated mattress pad if they still had any left. They did. It was 50% off so not a bad deal. I headed home and the girls were back from the estate sale and came over to visit and to pick up Quincy. We all sat around for a bit. Later this afternoon, Cherrelyn is shuttling back up to PDX and her son, who works close by, will pick her up when he gets off of work. We took some pictures 

and then said our goodbyes and then spent the day just lounging around the house. As I said, the sun is out and the snow is slowly melting away. By tomorrow it probably will be all gone, except the spots that don’t get any sun. We both ate late lunches so we just snacked instead of having dinner. Of course, super pooper got her dinner right on time! Then it was watching tv (Nascar truck race for me and taped shows for Lydia) until bedtime.