Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed
My life's a mess
But I'm having a good time

I've been loving and loving
And loving
I'm exhausted from loving so well
I should go to bed
But a voice in my head
Says "Ah, what the hell"

                Paul Simon

Yes, another year has gone by. When I blinked with my eyes it was gone, no idea what happened with it, it just wooshed by.

Thanks to all who have send warm, sweet, funny, annoying, lovable b-day wishes ;-) I so appreciate it and feel very blessed to have so many friends who take the time to send me a card or a wish.

Of course there were presents and W. baked, as is tradition, a pie for my day. This time I wanted the Dutch Apple pie, and I directed him to her who has a wonderful apple pie blog. Thanks to Petra in NC for mentioning the site when she was baking her Dudoc Apple Pie. Sorry, Apple pie blog is only in Dutch available.

The pie was a wonderful as usual, he is a exceptional baker. Funny he inherited that from his dad who was a pastry baker before his death. W. has never known his dad, he died a few months before he was born, so he couldn't have discussed any baking with him. But apparently you can inherent talents like that ;-)

Below a few pix of the lovely pie, I just took a last bite of my slice for the evening ;-)

Can you smell the sweet apples and cinnamon?

and wait for it..... yes, a hint of nutmeg and kardamon!

 

and the sweet and crisp crust, that falls apart when it enters your mouth!

Needless to say it was fabulous, there's still half left, which is a wonder ;-)

Got wonderful presents, a book I wanted to read after Randy raved about it in her blog. The book is a cookbook and it's called Ratio. It claims that if you know the ratio's of an item you can bake/cook anything. Wonderful book!

Another book that was high on my wish list was about pet photography. I have this beautiful digital Sony camera and it's still so difficult to photograph pets properly so that it turns out nice. They’re always on the move, and especially black dogs are difficult. it's something I want to specialize in and I hope that in the future I will be able to go out and offer my photographing services to shelters so that a pet can have a better chance to be adopted. A wonderful picture says more that thousands words, shelters often don't have to funds to pay a photographer and volunteering to do that is something I could do.

Another wish was a Jamie Oliver shaker ;-) a cool nifty gadget for all my fresh herbs!

Than this morning I got a belated present but oh so welcome, a secret wish I had fpr a couple of years. I wanted a immersion blender. Not just an immersion blender no, I wanted the Swiss sturdy, professional Bamix Blender. And that is just what I got this morning. I'm over the moon with it, I'm obvious a gadget person if you couldn't tell by now ;-) It chops, it blends, it grates, purees, it even chops raw or cooked meat! It's stainless steel and I wanted that because plastic discolors pretty quick when making pasta sauce!

I can finally make my own mayonnaise and wonderful vinaigrettes!

Had a wonderful easy day, W. took the day off and we went out for breakfast and after that shopping for bathroom tiles for the renovation. Found some wonderful tiles the minute we walked into the store. Will post some pix tomorrow.
Had an easy take-out dinner in the evening, I was pooped because of all unusual activities.

Now I have another year in front of my, my biggest wish is of course improving my health and being able to fly to my daughter in the Netherlands. I miss her more than anything.

Will work again very hard this year to make it happen, please send good vibes, karma and healing thoughts that this time I will succeed and beat the odds!

# # #

Today, 72F or 23C sunny, a nice fall day.



'See you all in a week' was my last entry. That was my intention and than life got in the way. We had a lovely vacation at the beach, I wrote it all down in my blog The PacificBeach 2009. Hop on over there if you haven't read it yet, photos are up too so there's proof we actually went. ;-)

Back at home I needed time to recover from the vacation, sounds weird I know but that's who we 'chronics' are. Other people come home rested and full of energy, we come home exhausted and drained because we did too much while on vacation.

And than we had a heat wave, not fun. I didn't move to Oregon to have yearly heat waves. If I wanted that I would have stayed in California. I wanted cool, nice mild summers with every now and than some nice showers. Did no happen. I'm going to ask my money back.

On that sunny Monday morning when mercury in our normal supposedly very mild temperature wise NorthWest Pacific town was rising to a ridiculous 102F and our heat pump decided to brake down.
I woke up that morning wondering if I had a bad dream because I was all sweaty, wet and nauseated, until I noticed the room was also very warm and humid. I jumped(*cough*, no really ;-)) out of bed and held my hand above one of the central air vents. Warm air was blowing out . This could have 2 causes,
1 - my husband had set the thermostat accidentally to 'heat' instead of cold or
2 - the pump just broke down and was blowing the warm hot air in.

After a check I decided it was number 2.

I panicked and mailed W. an upset email. 2 weeks before the maintenance company sent us a brochure claiming it would be a good idea before summer to have a air-conditioner tune up. I thought so too, after all I am home all day, the central air is on all day if it brakes down I'm not a happy puppy. It's like a car, you don't wait until you car brakes down but have regular check ups. But W. was sure it was a scam and just a brutal way to make some money over the backs of stupid consumers.
Well.... look who was stupid now hmm? It was me, who had to sit in the f*cking heat all day!
Funny how quickly a house heats up if you have no central air no matter how crappy it is. Within a couple of hours it was just as hot inside and it was out. Luckily after W.'s refusal to tune up the air I purchased a wind blower on Amazon thinking it somehow could be useful to have a powerful fan like unit on hand, just in case.

I turned on the fan, did a 'miss wet t-shirt contest' on my own and sat in front of the fan in my wet t-shirt. It really helped to cool down. Of course all companies I called to come out and have a look at the heat pump where busy for days. The first appointment I could get was Wednesday afternoon. That would mean 3 days in this scorching heat! And not just me but also my pets, Lotte our oldest dog is 14 really had problems breathing and staying cool. I hosed her of every hour to keep her cool. W. took mr. puppy-dog to doggy day care where is was cool and where they have a pool, lucky bastards! W. himself went to his employer in his air cooled building and I was left at home on my own. *boohoo*
I did pretty well the first 2 days but at the end of day 2 I was getting really ill feelings, my heart started beating irregular, I didn't sweat anymore, my skin felt cool but it was like I was burning up from the inside. I couldn't pee anymore no matter how much water with electrolytes I drank, my body decided to hold on to it. I couldn't sleep that night, the whole house was like an oven and we had clocked that day at 108F. My body was swollen like a pregnant whale and that's how I felt like too. I'm sure all you ladies know what I mean!

To make a long story short, after the guys came out and had one look at the heat pump he decided it was beyond repair and we needed a new one. That would take weeks. first we had to decide what we wanted, the heat pump needed to be replaced and also the furnace. Than it needed to be ordered and put into place.

Luckily we know not to make decisions when under stress or in emergency situations and we decided to move to a hotel where it would be cool and we could think things over. There were few hotels to be found as many other people had the same ide who were out of AC. I did find a nice hotel where the pups were welcome as well and we spend a few nice cool days there.

The estimate for a new heating/cooling system was about the price of a new car $16,000 - $20,000 That was a shocker. And that didn't even include the features I wanted like HEPA filtration and zone heating/cooling. To me it has always been ridiculous why I would need to cool/heat the whole house if I only use one room. So zone heating was high on my list. We thought about it over the weekend in the hotel, decided to hunt for a portable air conditioner so I could at least cool my office/room where I also have my hospital bed and I could sleep there.
And we decided to ask a second opinion from another company on fixing the heat pump. I didn't see the point in spending a 20,000 for a system that didn't include my features.

The company that came out took a peek and what happened? They repaired the heat pump for $400 within. All this stress, pain and waiting for nothing just because a company wanted to sell a new system over the back of people in stress. I should sue them! ;-)

All this stress and my body overheating had it's toll on my health and I now need a wheelchair indoors as well. We discovered that the doors are too small to let my chair through, the sink and counter tops too high, the bathroom too small and so we wil start a renovation. The doors will get wider, cooker will be lowered, and we will make from 2 small bathrooms 1 big one. It means going from a 3 bed/2 bathroom house to a 3 bed/1 bath house which will devalue the house probably but we see no other options.

It will be great shopping for tiles and fixtures and I'm looking forward being able to sit in the shower and shower on my own!

So that's my update for now. I'll try to keep up now that I'm a bit settled again and fall is around the corner. My favorite time of the year! Love the colors of the trees, the smell, the crisp air, burning fires and hot cocoa!

# # #