Getting Ready for Guests

The husband asked, “How goes the battle?” as he was getting ready to leave for work yesterday morning. He was referring to my attempts to get the dust and dirt under control. I’ve made quite a bit of headway. I cleaned the living room so that we could move the kitchen table in there and add the leaf. We do that when we have guests at Christmas and it makes feeding people much easier.

The fit is a bit tight, but less so than it would be in the kitchen. We’ll put up a long folding table in the kitchen to hold extra stuff that comes in with people. It’s a familiar system.

I’ve just got the other end of the kitchen to finish cleaning today and we should be mostly ready. The house hasn’t looked this good since we built it 24 years ago, LOL.

I’ve wrapped most of the presents that were shipped here to the house. I also found some time to sew yesterday—I made more masks for future son-in-law based on the prototype that I took him in August. And one of our college friends needed a new pillowcase. I had made him one with motorcycle fabric a few years ago. He mentioned to me that it had worn through in a couple of places, so when I was in town earlier this week, I picked up another yard of motorcycle fabric. (I am not sure it’s the same print, but there aren’t a lot of choices in motorcycle fabric.) That will be on its way to him today.

[Speaking of the US Postal System, I sent a Priority Mail envelope containing that hat for Susan’s grandson to Seattle. On September 26. As of yesterday, it still had not arrived. The tracking number from my mail program indicates it is sitting in a sorting facility there. So glad I paid extra so it could languish for two weeks instead of being delivered. The frequency with which these kinds of things happen is mind-boggling.]

I’m enjoying watching the last bit of wildlife before everyone goes into hibernation for the winter. A memo must have gone out to the mama turkeys, because we had several come through the other day with more than a dozen babies in tow:

I wonder, sometimes, if these mamas were the babies that came through here in seasons past and remembered that we had free scratch grains. Oh, well. I am happy to provide sanctuary for baby forest animals. I just wish they wouldn’t eat my grapes.

My friend Marcie has a couple of pet blue jays. She started feeding them peanuts. They know when she is outside and will come down for treats. She said they let her know that they prefer the peanuts with the shells on. These are not Stellar Jays; they look like the Eastern Blue Jays that we had in Ohio when I was growing up, but bigger. Apparently, their range has expanded in the last couple of decades. I wonder if that was in response to the West Nile virus. That virus decimated the blue jay population back east. My mother used to walk out in the morning to get the newspaper and find them dead on her driveway.

I can tell the difference between them and the Stellar Jays by listening. Both are loud, but have slightly different variations of yelling.

We’re just bashing the Prime Directive left and right out here. We don’t feed bears, however.

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This really is my favorite time of year. We’ve had some spectacular weather recently, but I love fall even when it’s blustery and unsettled—sometimes even more so. This time last year, I was on my way to Moses Lake, Washington, for an embroidery retreat with Charisma Horton. That was such a fun weekend. I stayed at a wonderful Airbnb (once I found it), enjoyed two solid days of learning and stitching, and got to take a road trip that included dinner with DD#2, who was in Spokane for homecoming at Gonzaga that weekend.

Long-range forecasts are still pointing to a La Nina winter with an 85% chance of it being “moderate to strong,” and the possibility for much colder and wetter weather than normal. Another winter like 1996-97 would clear a lot of people out of here. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. We’re prepared to hunker down.