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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!

Saturday, January 1, 2022

Oregon Living 2021 – Blog #74 – More Relaxing & Ringing in the New Year!

 

Wednesday, December 29th., 2021…… Today was Jamie’s scheduled endoscopy. We were up early and Cathye went out to go get him. He’s in Albany and the endoscopy center is in Corvallis, so she left early. We did get lucky with the weather. The snow is gone and the roads are clean and dry. I stayed home and walked and fed the pups and then went out and got my breakfast. On the way home, I stopped by the trailer and picked up all of the contractor’s junk and loaded it in my truck to sort through and dispose of at home.  I cleaned up some more of the section of the garage and moved some items around in the rv garage.

Cathye got back around 1:30pm and rested for a while. She needed to stay and make sure Jamie was doing ok and cleaned up his really messy place while he nodded off. He is having some serious health issues and is challenged to be by himself much longer. He is receiving state aid and gets evaluated on a regular basis. House checks and such. He is supposed to be getting assistance with household chores and errands and such, but he is not too cooperative and shoos much of the workers away. His brother and aunt are in Arizona and Cathye is trying to explain the seriousness of the situation. We’re hoping they will help in facilitating getting him into a true assisted living place somewhere, if they don’t want to take him in there.      

Thursday, December 30th., 2021……  I didn’t look back in my posts to see if I had mentioned this before, but I think I did mention about Cathye’s ring that was in for repair. There are two sections (with the sapphires) on the rose gold part, that ‘float’. She had snagged one of them and was worried that she would break one eventually. We wanted it soldered to make it more secure. Well, they called and it is done, so we took a trip back up to Woodburn to get it. The weather cooperated and the drive was nice and we got the ring and it looks perfect!  You can’t even tell where it was altered.


We stopped at Costco and then came back to the house. Aimee called back with the appraisal and market assessment. She thinks we can get a little more than we have in it.
Since space rent/utilities/insurance/cable/etc. adds up, and she cannot sub-let it, and it stays empty these days, most important is selling it sooner than later. With the market still going strong up here, she thinks there will be a bidding war. We will sign the contract on Monday and they will take pics on Tuesday. Meanwhile, we are ready for the new year!  Cathye bought us tickets for the Champagne Train for New Year’s Eve. This is the local train that runs from here to Sweet Home. The train will be following ‘east coast time’ tomorrow night so we will leave the station here at 7:00pm and celebrate the new year at 9:00pm and be back and home and in bed way before midnight!  Should be fun! 

Friday, December 31st., 2021…… As mentioned, we have decided to put the trailer on the market and since we will be going to see Aimee on Monday, that means we need to go over and put away any items on the counters and such and straighten up the place. We have also decided to swap out the entertainment centers. We’re going to bring her new one with the fireplace over here for the living room. The current one in the living room will move to the bedroom and the one in there will be scrapped. We needed to wrap the one at her house because it’s very heavy and we don’t want anything to come apart, so we got that accomplished today. We also started moving out some of the personal items and got those boxed and out. Then it was time to stop and take a break and wait for the train trip tonight. Ok, it’s later now and we had changed and headed out to the train station here in town.  We made it to the line for boarding in back of a dozen folks but ahead of a bunch of others. We boarded and found seats in the bar car and settled in. I must say we were sorely disappointed with just about everything that went on that night. The bar car was one constant line as the younger partygoers that outnumbered the older folks made a constant line right above us in our seats. I had already gotten us drinks so we were there waiting for the crowds to disperse so we could breathe!  After a bit, the train was away from town and the line let up and we settled in. The food was a buffet (again, disappointing, especially since tickets were $50. ea.!). It was a few cars away so I held our seats and Cathye went down to get us a couple of plates. Again, it was disappointing! We got veggies, meatballs, little hot dogs, and a couple of cookies!  The champagne wasn’t ready but we decided not to mix drinks anyway so we decided we’d pass on that. The kids got rowdier as the night went on. We should have realized this would be the norm for the evening and we couldn’t wait until we got back to the station. At 9:00pm, they counted down to the New Year and we kissed 


and had a drink, and sat back and people-watched for the rest of the trip.  Once we got back to town, we quickly made our way to the exit platform and headed out and home. We were in bed at 10:30!  I guess we will chock it up to just a bad experience and learn from it for next time. It was just an ok evening for us but we hope everyone had a nice New Year’s Eve! 

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