Not Much to Me Anymore

With no job to do except the constant chores here, that take hours each day, there's not much to my life anymore.

I don't see anybody or talk to anybody.

I have quit Facebook, mostly, although I still use it for messaging people I know.  I got tired of it because I would label people "friends" who I barely know or don't know at all and who do not want anything to do with me, in real life.   Or who live so far away I will never meet them in real life.

I suppose this is attractive to many people, the "distant" friendships of the internet.

I enjoy brief interactions on blogs of distant people who live entirely different lives.  I like reading about other people's lives.  Today I spent an hour on google maps touring islands.  I'd heard on the news about somewhere I'd never heard of before.  A terrible cat 5 cyclone has struck Vanuatu.  Had you ever heard of those islands before?

So I toured them on google maps and was amazed and wish sometimes I had money and could go immerse myself in these distant and amazing places, far from anywhere.  I guess I wouldn't want to be on the Vanuatu Islands now, flattened as they were, by that cyclone.  After touring the Vanuatu islands,  I toured the Cook Islands.  I could barely contain myself at the beauty of Aitutaki, in the Cook Islands.

I toured French Polynesia and American Samoa and New Caledonia also.  Has anyone reading this been to any of these places?  

I love water.  I can barely stand to be away from it and here where I live there is nothing but the dirty shallow slow Willamette River near.  It's full of urban, industrial and farm run off and sometimes sewage, if there are overflows and fish in it are not to be eaten if caught.  It usually runs brown, sometimes with globs of dirty white foam, especially by August.  It's ok to boat on, however, but if you have a raft, you need two people each with a car, one at the put in point and one at the take out point.  So that puts rivers off my use list, unfortunately.

I love the Oregon coast but the water is too cold to be in unless you wear a wet suit and better yet, a dry suit.  Oregon has quite a few lakes, up in the mountains mostly.  Most years they do not warm up much until late June, but this year, that will be different since the winter was unbelievably warm.  I can't ever remember a warmer winter.

 There is virtually no snow in the Cascades.  So I would imagine the lakes and rivers in the Cascades or coming down out of the mountains will be warm early and the algae blooms that often come with warmth, early too.

The toxic algae blooms are also a product of human run off I read.

The outlook for reservoirs, like the one up above Sweet Home where I row my raft, is uncertain.  They could be fine if there is enough rain.  Typically later in the summer when there is little rain they remain full from snow melt in the mountains.  This year, I suppose we will hope for a rainy summer.  Summer is all we live for here in Oregon.

The local paper discussed this very issue a week or two ago, with a big headline that read "Pray for Rain".

I am not religious so I will not pray for rain.  But if I had that magic wand, which is about the same thing, I would be waving it at the sky and demanding rain.

The lack of winter this year is in stark contrast to last year when 15 inches of snow fell and stuck around a couple weeks here where I live and there is usually no snow in the mid valley of Oregon, only in the mountains.  I loved that snow!

 I don't look forward to a lot of things.   Rowing that little raft is one thing I look forward to.  I so hope there will be enough rain to fill the reservoir for the summer so I can use it.

The lack of rain, I saw debated in an Oregon newspaper as a factor in rising food prices that could go higher if Oregon agriculture too is highly affected.  Food prices are high enough now.  I no longer use butter, now that it is $3.50 or $4.00 per lb.  I don't buy cheese either at $7 or $8 for a 2 lb brick.  Hazelnuts, an Oregon product, cost over $10 a lb.  That irks me.  Almonds are over $6 a lb.

Gas has quickly risen back to almost $3 a gallon here.  How did it go back up so fast?

I'm fortunate to still call myself an affiliate of Poppa Inc. to raise money for the cats.  I'm trying to get those in who need dentals, to get it done, while I can afford to drive to the affordable vet.  Four will go in April.   I don't know how high gas prices are going this time, with the price zooming up every day it seems. Boy, had I ever hoped the low prices would last a long long time.  Like years!

I fear more cuts are coming to my life.  I suppose these things are inevitable. My car has got so many miles on it from helping cats.   I worry about that sometimes although I try not to think about it too much.  There will never be money for another. It terrifies me to think of having no car and being stranded here with no ability to go anywhere, or even get what I need. But, it's still running now so I'm good and every day it starts up I'm happy.

I tend to like to have Plan B's and Plan C's.  I've not had an easy life, so it makes me understand that yes, the worst often happens and to try to make contingency plans for everything.  Oh well.  I do the best I can.

Vision is doing great right now, despite her age.  Her right eye, injured last August, still has the inner eyelid across part of it much of the time but she does see out of it.  She got over her urinary problem.  Seems it was really a hairball clog pressure issue.  Resolved now with quite a lot of cat lax.   As I get older, I understand the clogging issue.