Barbara J. Hamby

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A Little More About This n’That

This year my daughter and son-in-law celebrated the 21st anniversary of their marriage by renewing their vows with a number of other couples on a local radio show. Among the prizes they were awarded was a free night in a lovely room at the Elizabeth Inn in Newport. By a coincidence, they chose last Thursday to go down there. We had planned to go to South Beach, near Newport, on Thursday, also. So we met them there and had a swim in the cool indoor pool at the inn. We planned to meet them for lunch on Friday, but my daughter became ill and they drove back to Portland Friday morning. We came back today, Saturday.

We had two lovely sunny, but slightly cool, days in the beach cabin. We lazed around, drove around a bit, and read a lot. A laid-back getaway. We did get a couple of phone calls: one was a telemarketer and another a cheerful, chatty wrong number calling from Friday Harbor, where he claimed the weather was cloudy, rainy, and the earth was quaking. The cell phone communication was sporadic and not very successful, but, of course, the irrelevant calls were on the land line.

On my return, a phone message and an email from separate people, informed me of the death of a friend in Vancouver. She was my late husband’s second wife and we had been friends ever since he and I were married. After I moved to Tigard, and particularly since he died, I hadn’t connected with her very often. We always laughed a lot when we talked. Naturally, I’ll miss those conversations. She was a severely handicapped lady who lived a long and productive life. She made gorgeous mouth paintings that were used on greeting cards, note cards, etc.

Now that we’ve worn ourselves out moving furniture around, the management has requested that we move all the planters from around the front porch. It seems that their preference is for in-ground (very infertile ground) plants. I’m not ambitious enough to work the soil to fertility, so maybe we’ll just have brown beds. In response to this demonstration of the loss of control that accompanies the reduced responsibility of renting, tomorrow we move heavy planters to the deck with a borrowed hand truck. I do like the new room arrangements, however.