Miracles Still Happen

Country singers entertain in the lobby. Annie's leg is in the foreground.

I 'm trying to think of an interesting topic to write about and not coming up with much. This morning a friend of mine that I first met online reminded me of how we met in person.  We arranged to meet at a mall and we hit it off immediately.  We shopped all day and decided our middle names were "shopping".  I guess I could write of my memories of shopping with my mom, Pug, but not now.

Carlotta Wheeler sings as her husband Bob works the music.

Another topic could be the story of Annie's roommate at the hospital.  It is kind of scary.  In the first place, Annie was supposed to be in a private room on the third floor that is devoted to orthopedics but ended up on the fifth floor which is an overflow for everything, I guess.  Anyway, it was very small and crowded with very little privacy.  The curtains that wrap around the beds didn't even work right.

They wheeled the lady into the room about early afternoon and she looked in bad shape. She had a big cut on her forehead, a big neck brace and a very swollen left arm. She was in a lot of pain for sure!  We ended up hearing her story a lot because she had a lot of company plus a lot of doctors who wanted to know what happened.

Her 26 year old son was driving her to work in his pickup. They were on I-17 just after getting on from the 101.  She unhooked her seat belt to reach in her purse on the floor.  She saw her son look back to his right and as he turned back she saw his eyes rolled up in his head!  He was having a seizure.  The car crossed two lanes of traffic and she was yelling at him.  At the last minute he jerked the wheel so it hit the cement median at a glancing blow instead of head on.  They did not roll and they were not hit by any cars.  A miracle on the interstate during rush hour on a Friday morning!  They were lucky to be alive. 

She ended up with a shattered L-1 disc in her spine with pieces floating around, a broken ball part of her shoulder, broken arm bones, broken wrist and broken fingers.  She has a long "Frankenstein" (her word) cut on her forehead that took 10 stitches.  She was bruised and whip lashed all over and her chest was very sore from the airbag.  She had spine surgery yesterday and was supposed to have shoulder and hand surgery today. Ohhhhh, when they moved her to take her down for the MRI my shoulder ached for her.  She was in great pain.

Meanwhile, her son was across the hall with a shattered eye socket, broken cheekbone, and some other bones in the face. I guess his face was hugely swollen according to the friends that stopped in to visit.  He also had some spine injuries. Many of his friends came to visit him and then dropped in to see his mother.

Remember this room was crowded to begin with and then the parade of doctors, nurses, and visitors was never ending.  We had been up since 4 AM and Annie had been through a 2 hour surgery so she needed rest.  I'm sure the poor woman did too.  She was in extreme pain and the medication was not touching it so they were trying ice packs and whatever.  She counted the minutes until her next pills!  It wasn't until 10:30 that night that the last 4 visitors left!  By then Annie was exhausted and knew the whole story word for word.

Needless to say, Annie begged her doctor to let her come back to the rehab center the next day and he finally relented so we made it back to the relatively peaceful quiet of the weekend here at the rehab center.

I hope that Tracie has a quick and uneventful recovery and they can relieve her pain.  I also hope her son,Travis, has a quick recovery and a good plastic surgeon working on his face.  They are so lucky to be alive and to be receiving great care at the hospital.

This event got me to thinking about how quickly our lives can change and makes me feel grateful for how my life is going!

Bob and Carlotta Wheeler

Meemo Is Back In The Mountains!

Looking over the ranch from the old airport hill.

And POOF! Powdered diet hot chocolate all over my face, down my front all over the counter and my shiny waxed kitchen floor.  Yep, I know we are back at our "cabin" in the mountains!  We have been here a week and I am beginning to get re-programed to our "high life" (as in 8500 ft. above sea level , all my 60's era friends).  I'm still puffing as I haul my laundry upstairs to the Blue Room to get washed.  My lips are getting over their dry air chappedness and I have caught my first fish from the pond so we know they didn't winter kill.

One of my favorite spring flowers, the Dog Tooth Violet

Here are some more fun adventures we have had this first week back home after 6 months on the road.  As usual the humming birds greeted us within 15 minutes of our arrival to let me know they needed their feeders put out.  The Canadian Geese are our alarm clock for a month or so before they head up to Canada.  We have spotted about 20 head of deer, mostly Does up on the ridge road and of course the antelope greeting committee was here as we came off the county road.  There are at least 2 Woodpeckers that have been pecking away on the house every morning and I have to go out and shoo them away.  Since the family spent Christmas up here without us and Thomas has been here several times over the fall and winter, I have to take stock of what is in the larder and what changes have taken place due to family members making repairs and leaving food up here.

An elk print in the mud.

My buddies, the humming birds are back!

As we come home from our winter wanderings, we have always made a stop in town at the local grocery store to pick up the basics before heading out the 25 miles to our home.  Imagine our surprise when we walked into the store and the shelves were bare!!!  Nobody managed to mention that to us over the winter.  They did have some basics but we were saddened to hear that they were in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and only could buy some basics for the last couple of months.  It does not look good for this community having a grocery store any more.  People are having to go to Laramie, Steamboat, or Granby at least 60 miles away to get their groceries.

The elk passed by here....

Signs of spring--some bear scat.

We spent a week using the staples left here and the meat brought up from Danny's and the shrimp and oysters from Rockport that we had brought up from Texas.  I made bread and we had fresh trout.  Someone had left some delicious cheesecake bites in the freezer and Mudslide and Pina Colada mixes in the fridge.  By the end of the week we were running out of fresh veggies, milk, cheese and peanut butter so we definitely needed to make a grocery run. We decided Steamboat was our closest store so we headed for City Market yesterday and picked up a couple weeks worth of food and wine, hopefully.  Bob got some shotgun shells and we picked up prescriptions at Walgreen's.

AAAh!  The buttercup up close.

 I love the drive over this time of year.  The leaves are actually out over there.  Still no sign of them here but give them a week or so.  I love the Yuppie grocery store over there, too. They have some great cheeses and lots of gourmet choices.  All come at high prices, of course.  One thing missing was the little peppers that I have written about in a previous post.  I also miss visiting with neighbors and friends while doing the weekly shopping.  But wait, we ran into two friends I used to teach with who happened to be visiting a teacher friend in Steamboat!  I hadn't seen them in many years!  I think we will be running into more North Parkers there too, as the checkout lady said they are seeing many people from over here.  They even furnished me with dry ice for the frozen stuff at no extra cost.

Spring flowers up in the trees

Back here, we had a few adventures as well.  We got the 4-wheeler out and took a ride up to the Little Jessie headgate to open it and get some water out on the meadow.  The Harvat's had beat us to it, but Bob was determined to set it right.  Since his Parkinson's Disease he has lost some of his balance(although his "miracle pills" are helping him tremendously).  I got him a walking stick and he made it to the dam but as he was climbing up on it he went over backwards.  I caught him and broke his fall a bit but he ended up in a pool of water so he was soaked but not hurt.  Nothing would do but he needed to see how far we could get up to the St. Joe headgate.  The ride was great. The buttercups and Dogtooth violets were forming a carpet  and we saw lots of sign of wildlife.  We made it to the "thinking rock" hill before we saw any snow.  About halfway up the steep hill was a huge snow bank.  It was time to turn around.
 

I love walking in spring!

A carpet of buttercups

I got off the 4 wheeler and decided to walk back so I could take pictures and Bob headed home to get out of his wet clothes. I had a great walk home, my first of the summer and got some nice artsy pictures along the way.

Crossing the Little Jessie weir so I don't get my feet wet.

There are lots more things to get done, like getting all my embroidery stuff set up, but we are pretty well set for another great summer.

I love my Dog Tooth violets!

Our Visit to Washington Part 1

Sunset Nevada style as we drove along I-80 near Elko.

Well, after a 2 month hiatus I am back in business!  We went to Burlington, Washington to spend time with Marianne and her family in mid-November.    Here's what happened to keep me from my posts here at Meemo In the Mountains!

We left here in beautiful weather hoping to make it to JJ's house in Elko before winter weather hit.  We made it and immediately drove to Reno the next day with Ozzie, JJ and Brent to visit Erin who is going to University of Nevada there.  Erin had purchased tickets to the UNR vs Hawaii football game for all of us except Bob (who chose to stay at Circus, Circus where he could watch the game in the comfort of our room.).  We bundled up and drove to the game thinking we could park in the huge parking lot adjacent to the stadium.  Forget that!  No parking anywhere!  Ozzie finally said he'd join Bob and we could call him when the game was over unless he found a spot miraculously.  He dropped us off at a filling station across the street from the campus and we were off to the game.  Much to our surprise, Ozzie showed up at our seats almost the same time we did!  He had decided to fill up while he was at the station and happened to ask the proprietor if he could park next to the owner's pickup.  The guy said sure, nobody ever asks to park there and for $10 Ozzie could.  The game was fun and the home team won.

We spent the weekend visiting with Erin and the family she is living with and doing a little shopping, too.

Shopping in Reno.  This is a "Pine- Beetle Brown" Christmas Tree!  Yes they are actually selling these things!

I just HAD to take some pictures of these camouflage suits!  I think they are hilarious!

Child size one.  Halloween anyone?

Pretty pricey but I guess you would blend in....

  We got home Sunday night and planned to spend a little time in Elko visiting friends and family.  Marianne called as soon as we got back and let us know a big storm was coming and we better be on our way so we could get across the pass before it closed.

We left the next day and had lovely weather the whole way except for a little rain and snow on top of Snoqualmie Pass.  The next day it was closed due to heavy snow and low visibility as advertised!  Western Washington in November is not  what I consider a weather paradise.  It rains almost daily and although it is usually in the 40's and 50's, I freeze the whole time I am there due to the high humidity.  As it turned out, it did not rain every day and we even saw the sun in the afternoon several days, but I was still cold.  I wore 3 layers of clothes and even JJ's long johns that I forgot to return after the football game.  Even so, we had some fun adventures while we were there.


We had a lovely Thanksgiving Dinner with the whole family.  I got to hear Graham Kerr (The Galloping Gourmet , An early TV celebrity pre-Food Channel) speak at Marianne's church on his faith, visited a newly opened church in the Mall, and visited the Christmas tree farm that Darcy and Pat work at every year.  I took some pictures up there which I will share along with pictures of the  other major projects we worked on while I was there.  In between I worked on embroidery I was donating to the silent auction Marianne was in charge of.

This is the first year we did the early, early morning Black Friday.  It was kind of rainy and we decided to stand in line to try for a TV at Best Buy.  They opened at midnight so we decided to get in line about 10PM to get the certificates for what we wanted.  We knew some people had been in line since Wednesday night!  But we wanted some things that we figured weren't as popular.  Brendin and Darcy volunteered to stand while we went back to the house until they got the tickets, if they got any.  The line was very long.

Meanwhile we looked up other TV sales, knowing we weren't going to get one at Best Buy and found one at Walmart, too.  It went on sale at midnight.  We should have gone right then but waited for a call from the boys.  They got some certificates and we picked them up and headed for Walmart. (the Best Buy tickets were good until 4 AM).  It wasn't quite 11 PM when we got to the parking lot, and it was a zoo!  Toys had gone on sale at 10 and people were coming out with carts heaped up like the Grinch's sleigh!  We could not find the line for the TVs right away and as we elbowed our way through the crowds it was beginning to look like we might not get a TV there either.  We finally saw the TVs and they were piled high to the ceiling so there was hope.  Then we found the line and discovered it went up and down the grocery aisles forever! (the TVs were in the produce department!) We finally found the end of the line in the pasta aisle and settled in.

  The people around us were a fun crowd and we joked around and had a good time.  Eventually an employee came around and said we were about 8 people from where they could guarantee us a TV.  We asked if they gave only one TV per person and they said yes.  What we didn't think of was that whole families were in line and each one could take a TV if they wanted it. 

I should have taken pictures in Walmart because it was an amazing sight, but I didn't .  We did not see any fights or grumpiness but there were lots of children out and about at midnight for sure.  Anyway the bell rang at midnight and slowly the line started to move.  We were in aisles so could not even see the TVs or how they were distributing them for about 1/2 hour but we could see people going to the checkout lines in the aisle behind us, some with 4 TVs on their cart.  Someone said that people sometimes get up to the cash register and can't pay for all of them and just leave them in the aisles. So Darcy went on a recon mission to see if he could find some abandoned ones but the check out lines were so long no TVs had made it to the front yet!  Well, obviously we didn't make it for this particular TV (we missed by about 15 people) but then they said they had lots more just a couple inches smaller one and a lower definition and they were knocking 30% more off of them for anyone who was still in line!  We should have gotten at least one for Bob and I but we didn't because we would have been in line for another couple hours in order to get out of there!

One of the lines at Best Buy at 2 AM Black Thursday.

  We went back to Best Buy and had to still stand in line outside to get in at 1 AM because they were monitoring the number of people who could be in the store at 1 time.  When we got in it was jam packed.  It was funny because it was like old home week with friends meeting up in the aisles and visiting at 2 AM.  The lines were long in this store too so we had Brendin and Shayla stand in line while we got our stuff and then joined them. We got home around 3 am!  It was a fun experience but I'm thinking once in a lifetime might just be enough!  We had to be up and over to Fred Meyers before 11 AM for the annual sock sale and then over to JoAnn's before noon for their annual sale.  No rest for the weary for sure!  At least we had leftovers from Thanksgiving so no cooking needed to be done!

I will continue my Washington adventures in my next post.