Belated Birthday Gift

View of Mt. Hood from Mt. Hood Train Excursion

Last October Lauren gave Verne a birthday gift that we all enjoyed this past weekend. It was a scenic train ride on the Mt. Hood Railroad. The 45 mile round trip took us through densely wooded forests, orchards, and vineyards to end up at the southern end of the line in Parkdale, Oregon where we spent an hour walking around the town and visiting the Hutson Museum before returning to the Hood River station. Lauren popped for the Diamond Class, which included tickets on the upper most level, the Sky Dome, with panoramic views of the landscape. We opted to bring our own tasty treats for the trip rather than purchasing box lunches. Good decision! We learned a couple of things on the trip: the Hood River Valley accounts for 30% of the winter pear production in the United States and the track between Hood River and Parkdale includes one of only five switchbacks still in use in the United States. A switchback, also called a zig-zag, is a method used by trains to climb steep grades.

Mt. Hood Train Excursion

Mt. Hood Train Excursion

Dinner Saturday night was at a Korean restaurant in East Portland. One of the perks that comes with Scott’s job as quality control head for American Seafoods includes travel (and fine dining) all over Europe and Asia. His exposure to different cultures and foods makes him an interesting eating companion as there seems to be little he hasn’t tasted. Thus, we left the ordering to him and just sat back and enjoyed our two hour eating extravaganza. Our dozen side dishes were followed by several meats (plain and marinated) and shrimp that he grilled at our table as we ate. Of all the delicious food that night, Verne and I found the steamed eggs to be a favorite. The eggs were silky smooth with a texture like a perfectly done soufflé. Drizzled with one of the several dipping sauces and they were magical! As for magic, the barley tea (boricha) was delicious. If you’ve been following my blog then you know the girls and I love tea and trips to Portland always include a visit to Smith Tea, a high-end tea shop we discovered after having their Jasmine green tea at Thai Peacock. Although boricha is technically not tea as it’s made from roasted barley grains and not from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, for purposes of my blog and drinking the beverage, I’ll be calling it barley tea!

The rest of the weekend was spent with Scott and his family food sourcing and included a trip to the Columbia Farms U-Pick on Sauvie Island, where we picked raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries. Since giving up the Master Food Preserver program, I have also given up much of our food preservation efforts. However, we still have a few favorite foods that we put by, including triple berry jam. Last year we made a few jars of raspberry jam and loved it, so we were pleased to find that raspberries were in full season in the Portland area. This was our first visit to Sauvie Island, north of Portland and a short drive from Lauren’s home. It’s accessed by the Sauvie Island Bridge, has a little over a thousand full-time residents (mostly families involved in agriculture) and touts over a million visitors each year, many I suspect who are there to visit one of the several U-Pick farms. We arrived when Columbia Farms opened on Sunday morning and by the time we left a couple of hours later the parking lot was full and fields active with pickers.

Picking raspberries

Lauren picking strawberries

Lauren and Scott at Columbia Farms

We stayed in Portland until mid-week to help Lauren with a couple of home improvements. This time it wasn’t a DIY, we just had to be there to let the workers in and supervise the job, which included wood flooring for the hallway and new carpet in the bedrooms. We left on Wednesday refreshed and ready to get back to our work at home, which included the wood splitting and stacking project we started with the Burkhard’s visit mid-June. In hindsight, I don’t think Raelin remembered her supportive offer in May to come up with the kids when school was out to help us during Verne’s recovery from heart surgery with some hard physical labor. I remembered! And, I was prepared to take full advantage of her offer. We spent most of one day splitting wood. Kendall operated the lever on the splitter (the highly technical part of the job), Verne held the rounds as they were split, Raelin and Sam loaded the pickup (dodging the flying wood as Verne threw the split pieces in a pile), and I supervised. It’s my specialty! My original plan was to work (them) the entire weekend, but I weakened Sunday morning and changed the plan to include an excursion to Black Chasm. It was the second trip this year for us, but a new experience for the Burkhard’s and one they seemed to enjoy…especially as it didn’t involve wood splitting or any other project from our long list. We’ve got the McKenzie boys coming for a visit later this summer. We may get through that huge pile of rounds yet!

Raelin and her precious kids, Sam and Kendall

Family fun splitting wood

Another Member of the Zipper Club

The past two months have been an emotional rollercoaster…the sadness of losing my best friend, the happiness of seeing Jana wed, the excitement of our Hawaii vacation, and most recently, the anxiety and fear that came with Verne’s heart surgery. As it happened, Verne had his semi-annual checkup with his cardiologist the day before we left for vacation. Having successfully medicated his heart problem for more than half his life, we expected one more routine appointment and report. We certainly didn’t expect words like “heart failure” and “surgery”. It came as a shock to say the least! It was agreed that delaying the surgery for one week wouldn’t make a difference and the doctor sent us on our way with wishes of a happy vacation. When I think back to our week in Hawaii, I have to say while the prospects of heart surgery were never far from our thoughts we did do a good job of living in the moment and enjoying our Hawaii experience.

Verne’s surgery took place at Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center in Carson City, NV. The decision to have a cardiologist in Nevada dates back a decade to when Verne spent his workweeks in Carson City and weekends in Volcano. As it turns out, the drive to Carson City is not much longer and much prettier than the alternative drive to Sacramento, Besides, we never really thought we’d be spending more than two mornings each year with his cardiologist. In hindsight, that was wishful thinking. Briefly, Verne’s six hour surgery included replacement of his mitral valve, aortic valve, and maze procedure to hopefully correct his a-fib (heart irregularities). As of now, it has not. He spent four days in the hospital and was then sent home to recover, which will take about six weeks. We are one month into his recovery and I’m pleased to say he’s largely back to normal, just with less energy and an 8” zipper-like scar down his chest (thus, membership in the zipper club).

Breakfast at Black Bear Diner in Carson City (minus Raelin, Jana and Andy)

Verne enjoying the See's chocolates Maria brought him

Surrounded by family during those few days in the hospital reminded me of the same outpouring of
love and support we experienced as a family during Jana’s cancer treatment and surgery. Once again we managed to focus on the positive and find opportunities to laugh (and eat). Scott was a great support as he’d had his own experience with heart surgery having a quadruple bypass in 2015. The day following Verne’s surgery we spent a memorable few hours at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City followed by lunch at a quirky little hole-in-the wall that Scott had found on Yelp, The Lady Tamales. Lauren and I liked the place so much we made a second trip on the day Verne was to be released to buy two dozen tamales for home. The owner greeted us with an enthusiastic, “Hola, Chicas, you came back!” and gave us each one of her street tacos to try (at no cost). I think that all future trips to Carson City will include lunch at The Lady Tamales.

Verne having lunch at The Lady Tamales after his one-month checkup

Lauren spent most of May with us. We don’t have a lot to say about her employer, Nike, except for our closet full of tennis shoes bought with her employee discount and now their employee benefit plan, which provided Lauren with up to eight weeks of paid family leave. So thanks to Nike, instead of one bossy nurse, Verne had two! I couldn’t have handled those first few weeks of recovery without her. Once Verne could be left alone for short periods of time we turned our attention to other pressing matters, one being the sorting, organizing, and clearing of the loft in the barn. In a word, it was Konmari time. Lauren doesn’t come home any more without some part of the house, cabin or barn receiving her attention and skill at organizing. We spent an entire week up in the loft going through the contents of boxes and either repacking for further storage or dumping or donating. We took two truckloads of stuff to the dump, another eight truckloads to thrift stores for donation, and a dozen boxes of books to Friends of the Library. We then reorganized what was left in the loft. All in preparation of selling The Property, as we used to call it, and moving to something more manageable. 

We did find a few treasures during our work in the loft, including a box of old photographs. Lauren went through them all labeling and sorting into piles to be sent to family and friends. One was a Polaroid I’d taken of my older brother with his son and namesake, Gary, when he was about 5 years old. My brother was killed in a plane crash when he was 30 years old, not long after the picture was taken. Photos of father and son together are few and I know this particular picture will be treasured by my nephew. I feel very old to say this, but times have certainly changed since back then when my Polaroid was the latest in technology. The number of photos I took with that camera fit in a shoe box, due in part to cost. I was a very thrifty young parent at the time. The photos currently on my phone dating back less than two years total just under 4,000 and I’m not sure that any of them would be considered a treasure.

Thanks to all of you for your calls, cards, and prayers. I know Verne has felt very loved and that’s a good thing!