Day 1

In the runup to this vacation, I haven’t been home for both a Friday and a Saturday night since July 24th, and before that, only 2 weekends since early June. I basically gave up on unpacking the toiletry bag. Also, we’ve been coming here every summer since Josh was 6 months old… and this year there is no Josh. So while it is always wonderful to be here, and I know we will have a good time, there’s part of me that just wanted to stay home. But the deposit is non-refundable, so here we are, and it is good.

Changes to the house: not many. New carpet, which looks exactly like the old carpet except that it is clean and not all bumpy around the edges. New solar shades on the front windows, not as good looking as the old ones, but in good working order and also they are supposed to keep things cooler in the afternoon when the sun comes in. Unfortunately that isn’t supposed to be a problem for several days. Also unfortunately, the house continues to get more and more run down – the fireplace is missing some bricks, the faucet on the sink still doesn’t work quite right, there’s just a feeling that things aren’t as well taken care of. But it is still beautiful and wonderful.

We packed all morning, but forgot several important items, mostly my bathrobe. We also didn’t bring the brio train stuff, which would have been fun to play with during the rainy days. On the other hand, this is the first time in several years that we have only brought one car, and space was a little tight, especially since we had to leave room for Tim in the back seat. And because we had to bring the fruit dryer.

Yes, the fruit dryer. Every year in August we get peaches to can and dry. Usually they come earlier in the summer, but because this year was so cold and rainy, they came on Monday. They are picked slighty underripe, so we couldn’t start canning until Thursday, and even then only 3/5 of them were ripe. Did I mention we got 100 pounds? So that left about 35 pounds (some were eaten) to dry, and they didn’t get ripe until Saturday afternoon. The fruit dryer, it turns out, only holds about 20 pounds, and it takes more than 24 hours to dry them. So we taped the trays together and brought the fruit dryer and 15 or so pounds of peaches along, and the first batch is happily finishing drying in the front bedroom. The front bedroom used to be Josh’s room and we have the door closed so the house doesn’t smell of drying peaches (which gets old after a very short time), so sometimes I think he’s in there sleeping. We’ll get the next batch drying tomorrow.

We got here, got unpacked, and headed out to Mo’s after Tim chopped the wood for tonight’s fire. You have to get to Mo’s pretty early to avoid the wait, and besides, we were all hungry. It wasn’t crowded at all and after a very short wait we got a window table. It’s quite chilly here and drizzling a little, but people were out on the beach anyway, all bundled up, huddled around their campfires. Only in Oregon. The food & service were both good. I had ribs, which is kind of unusual for Mo’s, but they were quite satisfactory. Dave had fish tacos, which were also fine, and Tim had clam strips. The French fries were unusually good, but the green beans that came with my ribs were really mediocre. This was especially noticeable because we’ve been getting fresh green beans in our CSA bag, and the difference was profound.

After dinner we went to Surfcrest market as we always do, but not for milk, which we brought from home. Last night Dave made apple pie, and it turns out Tim can’t eat pie without ice cream, unless it is pumpkin pie, in which case he needs frozen cool whip. Also he was having a huge chocolate milk craving, almost too much to bear. So we sent him into Surfcrest to get chocolate milk and vanilla ice cream. He came out with chocolate milk and chocolate ice cream, because they didn’t have vanilla ice cream and he didn’t like the other two flavors. We reminded him that the ice cream was for pie, and sent him back in to return it. He did get a quart of chocolate milk, which he drank right from the carton as soon as we got home. But before we went home, he drove us in to downtown (his first time on the S-curves) and got vanilla ice cream at the Mariner Market.

Once we got home and he’d finished his chocolate milk, it was time to light a fire. Since we discovered the sissy firestarters last year, this should have been a breeze. And it would have been, if either of the two lighters had worked. Or if there had been matches in the house. But there weren’t. Then Tim had a brilliant idea – use the toaster! Dave resisted as long as he could, but eventually gave in, which is how I got a picture of him kneeling on the hearth with a wad of newspaper stuck in the toaster. Yes, it worked, although Tim’s idea of using tongs to hold the paper would have been a good thing to do. The newspaper caught, Dave threw it in the fireplace, it lit the firestarter and now we are sitting facing a wonderful fire. Yes, facing it – it occurred to me that we could turn the chairs to face, not the blank window, but the fire. Quite an innovation.

And that’s all for tonight. We’ve all entered the 20 digit WEP key into our wireless devices, and can surf to our heart’s content.