New Template

So what do you think of my new layout? Any suggestions? Do you love it or hate it? Just don't care? LOL

I'm trying out the newest version of Blogger. So far it is easier to use than the older version, I think it will be better especially for people new to this kind of stuff.

Not much is happening here. Trying to get things taken care of so that I can move down to Grand Ronde as soon as possible. We still don't know about that mobile home, I guess it will be this week-end or something like that before Howard can see it. I really really hope that it's a nice place, and that we can move into it over the week-end. I know that it might be a few days more than that before we can move, I have to get the travel permit for the truck and such, plus gas. So I'll need something like $100 to get it all taken care of, but then ... there will be nothing stopping me.

So far none of the jobs I've applied for have come through. I'm sort of glad though, because I'd rather look closer to where we are going to live than Salem, if there is anything that is. Besides I'd have to move right now in order to be there for the first day of school. I think school starts on September 5th this year. So this gives me some time to relax.

Hood River again

Well, I'm back in Hood River for a little while. I didn't find an apartment yet, but Howard has a good lead on a double wide mobile home for $550 a month, it's on 5 acres and we might be able to buy a car from the guy. I'm not 100% sure that this is all for real, Howard hasn't seen the place or the car, the guy gave him a ride part of the way back to Salem last night. But if it is for real it would be wonderful, because it's supposed to be within walking distance for Howard to go to work.

I'm a bit upset with Howard right now anyway, he's mad because I had to bring Dad's car back and so I can't take him to work any more. Which means that he either has to find a car pool, or walk on the days that Snowanna can't take him. So, according to him, I'm not doing everything I can to get the car for a while longer. But it's the only car that is reliable around here, Mom's car will just decide not to start for no reason, and his little truck is getting old. They don't want this car to get worn out driving all that way all the time. I can't blame them, but I wish things were different. I know that I'm not the one walking 46 miles one way everyday, but there isn't much I can do right now.

Anyway, I don't know how long I'll be here. I need gas money to get down there with the truck, and if this house thing is real and comes through next week-end we will be moving anyway so ... I just don't know. Oh well, eventually everything will work out, it's just hard waiting for it.

Spirit Mountain.

Some of you already know that Howard found a job out at Spirit Mountain Casino. That's about 3 hours from here. So starting Tuesday he will be in training and I will be driving him to and picking him up from there. We plan to stay with Snowanna this week. I'm hoping that I'll find us a place to live that will be closer than Snowanna's place. I'll be looking all week. I'll also be applying for jobs that I can do. There are 4 with the Salem/Keizer school district that I'm going to apply for. So I'm thinking that Dalles would be best, it's a little closer to Salem than to Grand Ronde, 11 to Salem and 15 to Grand Ronde, but I think that will be fine. Once we have a place my next task is going to be looking for a car, something cheap, small and good on gas would be great. I would have liked to have found jobs in a place where I didn't have to have a car. Mass transit is a wonderful thing. But our situation isn't going to work without a car. I do have the truck, but ... it's a truck and doesn't do well on saving gas. Besides there is going to be a lot of problem getting it registered and licensed here in Oregon, since we don't have the title. I didn't know that it would involve so much paper work and money to get a lost title. Oh well, I'll have to do some thing about that before we can sell it.

Aidan was seen by another EI specialist, she says that he is behind in a few areas, but ahead in a few others. If I'm back in Hood River next week, August 31 in fact, they both want to see him. And we will talk about what he needs. I'll then have the paper work for who ever handles that where ever we end up.

Changes.

I was chatting with some people the other night and the subject of loosing contact with old friends came up. For some people it seems they can't keep in touch if they aren't able to see the person fairly often, for others it's distance that seems to come between them and their old friends. But I think the saddest of all reasons for loosing contact with friends is because they changed when they found a new relationship (Boyfriend/girlfriend). For instance one of us had a friend we had known since high school, nearly 20 years. This friend embraced different cultures, enjoyed learning languages, talked of travel to some Spanish speaking countries in order to use her Spanish language skills, and never spoke a racist word. That is until she fell in love with a racist man. He wasn't very vocal about his racism at first, but slowly things came out. Some times what he had to say sounded okay, until you actually thought about them. So this friend slowly developed into a racist. Getting up set about things that once brought her joy, such as Cinco De Mayo celebrations, and black history month. Maybe it was a good thing when she and her racist husband moved over one thousand miles away, and communication stopped between her and her old friend, because there were no arguments or angry feelings. Just sadness.

That's was the extreme among the people I was talking to, but there were stories of people who gave up things they once enjoyed, and then stated that they had never liked them. Or people who started to watch sports when before their relationship they avoided watching them. I think the strangest part about that is that they all seem to think that they always liked or disliked what ever it was, or they always believed such and such when in fact they didn't before getting involved with their newest boyfriend/girlfriend.

Maybe we all make little changes to our attitude, our outlook on life, and our likes and dislikes in order to suit our new love. I hope that those changes aren't enough to cause friends to give up on me/ you/ us.

On the topic of relationships, what do you think of someone who encourages their lover to behave in a certain fashion but then turns their back on them because it no longer fulfills their needs? How much time should you give someone to ... become more responsible with money for instance, before you decide they aren't going to change enough for you to work it out? And how much responsibility should you take yourself if you used to encourage spending money rather than saving it, for long enough that it became habit in your lover? Are we even responsible for the changes we encouraged in our lovers?

As you can see, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've tried to look at my past relationships and see if I changed for them, or if they changed for me or both. It's not easy to see those changes from the inside. I know that I can't say what, if anything, I changed about myself in my relationships, but I can see some changes in some of my friends and family brought on by their relationships.

My new business.

I've discovered this new web based business. I think it could be a wonderful opportunity, if people will actually buy the product. It's "Stuff a Friend", which is similar to "Build a Bear" except that you don't have to go to the store. You order the friend of your choice, clothing and other cool stuff if you want, and it's shipped to your house. Where you can stuff it and make it your own. You can get pre-recorded sound boxes to put in them, or a record your own message. I think it would be fun to have a "Stuff a Friend" party. Anyway, if you want to check it out here is my Web site:

http://www.stuffafriend.biz/members/Becca%20Riley/

Job search stuff.

Well, things are getting busy around here. Howard and I have to go to job search related classes every morning from 9 to 12. No big deal, really, a bit of a waste of time for us actually, but not too terrible. We have to put in 15 Applications a week, and make copies of each of them to verify that we actually did them. They are going to love the 4 applications from Salem/Keizer Schools, they are 6 pages long. LOL I'm going to give them all 24 pages next week, just for giggles. I'm going to look at jobs here in Hood River too, there aren't many, but it won't hurt to try. I'll look and see if the School system here has a web site, maybe they will have openings similar to those in Salem. I applied at a "Postal Annex", one of those mail-store-print centers. It's only part time, but might be fun. It wouldn't use my education or my other skills, but I'd get to talk to people.

Aidan loves his Daycare. He was mad for 20 minutes because we brought him home. Oh well, I'm sure he will get over it sooner or later. I got in contact with EI (Early Intervention) about his speech issues. We will probably not hear from them until the end of August because they are sort of on Holiday right now. I'm also thinking of doing Daycare myself. I don't know though. I'd like to be with Aidan until he goes to school. But I'd also like to have a job ... Oh well, I have to get a job so it doesn't really matter.

Fourth of July fireworks.

Here are a few firework pictures. There are my first try at capturing fireworks, so they are a bit shaky.

The fourth of July in a small town.

We had a nice fourth. Even though I spent most of the day with a headache. We went down town to watch the Parade. It was nice in a very small town kind of way. Aidan collected alot of candy and a couple of stickers.


Here is a crowd shot with the girls we were there with.

There were some runners, this one had his kids with him. They came down from Odell, which is about 7 miles away.

These fighter planes flew over at 10:15 AM.

Little horses, and cute kids.

A guy on a uni-cycle. (We were at the bottom of a fairly steep hill, and were very glad he didn't fall)

An interesting old tri-cycle.

Smokey Bear.

Some old planes did slow circles around town.

And a guy balanceing a kayak paddle.

More Aidan stuff.

One of the few persistent mispronunciation that Aidan has, involves my Mom's little dog, Pepper. For some reason he can't get the p's in the middle right. He calls him "Pecker Dog". Howard finds this funny, and I have to admit that sometimes when he says it, it makes me smile. Usually with a little practice Aidan gradually gets the pronunciations right. But with Pepper's name he hasn't changed it at all from day one.

Right now he is playing in the living room, I can see him through the door. He has some blocks, a long green one and a square yellow one. The yellow one looks like it is supposed to be part of a roof or something, it's not flat like the green one, it has a smaller square top. Aidan put the green one on the yellow one and tipped it back and forth, saying "Look a see-saw." He's right it does look like a see-saw.

Speech update.

Aidan is talking more everyday. He is starting to make whole sentences, with 4 or more words. He pronounces most things pretty well. But he is still way behind other kids his age. I'm sure he will catch up sooner or later. He gets frustrated, and starts to yell when he isn't understood, or when he doesn't quite know how to say what he wants. Getting him to calm down and use his words for what he wants or to show us what he wants can be quite a chore. But we have to do it, if we want him to talk more and yell less.

He loves his Thomas the Train stuff, so some of his advancements have been made concerning them. He has a wonderful memory which helps a lot. I'm waiting to get an evaluation until we have a place of our own, it seems like most of the speech therapy is done in the home, and since we are staying in the RV until Mom can sell it, and then will live in a camping trailer when she gets it, I'm a bit hesitant to have anyone like that over. I don't know, maybe I'm just being paranoid. I don't want them to get any ideas about taking Aidan away. Not that I've ever had anyone even suggest such a thing, I just worry about it.

Moving, the photos.

Here are a few pictures of our trip home.

This is what the living room looked like during the packing process, I couldn't pack everything up, because we were still living there and needed to keep things out.


This is the stack of boxes that we took out first, they are full of the things we didn't need for existance.

The blowen out tire.

Aidan flirting with a couple of sisters at a rest stop.

Same rest stop, different girl. (I think my youngest son is going to be a ladies man. LOL)

The train at Klamath Falls. It's an old retired steam engine. Aidan thinks trains are pretty great right now. He still loves trucks and cars, and has decided that dinosaurs and dragons are cool too, but his favorite things are trains.

Our first clear view of Mount Hood. We were on I-84 leaving The Dalles.

Aidan waiting for Grandaddy at the McDonalds in Hood River. He was ready for the trip to be over. :)

I'll post some more pictures I've taken since we got here later.

Giant update.

I intended to update you all about how the move went as soon as we got here. But my Mom and Dad had a dial-up connection and I didn't want to tie up their line for long, and it kept having problems with dropping the connection. All that changed yesterday when I finally got the DSL hooked up and working.

So, we made it to Hood River on May 9th. Everyone and everything survived the trip, although I was not all together sure that it would end up that way during the trip. I tried to keep some notes in my day planner on the things that happened on our epic trip home to Oregon, so here are some of them.

May 4th

We still haven't left! One delay after another, including delays in loading the trailer. I almost worked myself into heat exhaustion trying to get everything packed, loaded, and cleaning up. In the end I left the place in a big mess. The truck was too heavy in the front so that the tongue almost touched the ground, we moved it anyway to a location were we could work on it without being in the street. The guys worked on it until 10 PM yesterday, they got it to work and then we decided to go to the Quality Inn n Merced for the night. I don't think I could have slept on the floor at Jimmy's, every part of my body hurt too much. It's a nice place to stay, but I was too stressed and tired to enjoy it much.

Today everything went along fine, they had the truck and trailer working together fine, but then the discovered a wiring problem so they spent a couple of hours tracking down the problem, and several more fixing it. By then it was 9PM so we went back to the Quality Inn for another night, tomorrow by noon we should be able to finally get out of here!

May 5th 7:23 PM

Well, some progress was made today. We WERE able to leave around noon. The truck is very slow because the trailer is very heavy, we can only go about 45 to 50 mph, but it goes! We stopped at Cody's, one of my brothers, and had a wonderful visit with Cody and the kids. Kelly, his wife, was sick and in bed when we were there. Then we stopped to get something to eat.

About 50 miles or so from Cody's the rear right tire on the truck BLEW OUT! I've never had a blow out before and it sacred me so much it took me almost a half an hour to stop shaking. Everything was fine, I guess I did a good job of keeping control of everything. So now we are waiting for Jimmy to come and help us. He is bring two tires so that we can change both of the rear tires. We have been here for about an hour, and will probably be here for a couple more.

12:30 AM

Well, it took longer than we expected, Jimmy sent his sister and brother down with the tires. Howard had to change them himself without power. But it's finally done. Aidan was wonderful while waiting, he talked and playing in his carseat without giving us much trouble. We moved the truck when it got dark, because I was worried about Howard changing the tires on the shoulder of the Highway. So we were able to let Aidan walk around some. After everything was done we decided to stay at a Motel 6 for the night, it might be the best financial decision, but Howard needs to relax.

May 6th

We wanted to go the coast route to Oregon, we thought it would be easier on the truck. But ... We got lost on highway 16, took a wrong turn, and ended up back on I-5. We got as far as Red Bluff before we decided to stop for the night. It was a beautiful drive, but turned into a big waste of time and gas.

May 7th

We made it to Kalamath Falls. We stopped and looked at a train they have at the veterans park there. When we got back to the truck we discovered that we had a flat on the trailer. We unhooked the truck and I tried to get a tire at Wal-Mart. They didn't have the one we needed and the next closet thing, which would have worked okay, cost a lot more than I had. So I called my Dad to see what we could do. He sent us $100, which I waited around to get at Wal-Mart, and arranged for us to get a tired at Les Schwab on his account. So we are going to spend the night at a Motel, because we are not parked in a place I feel comfortable sleeping in the truck, and because I want to sleep more tonight than I did last night.

May 8th

We had some more trouble with the truck, it died not long after we left Chunult (I'm not sure of the spelling). A nice man stopped and let Howard use his cell phone and we called my Dad. He talked to Howard and had him check the fuel line. It had a clog in it. We did okay but used a lot of gas. We finally discovered a leak, and then later another one. In Redmond we called my Mom and Dad again, the gas leaks had left us with no money and very little gas, so they sent another $50. We are almost there!

May 9th

We spent the night in front of a little store, in a little town whose name I forget. We ran out of gas right there, the store, which had a gas station in front of it, didn't open until 8 AM. It was cold and we were very tired of the truck but we did get some sleep. After that was taken care of, and a really nice guy helped us get it started again, I guess there was an other clog in the fuel line, and then the battery was low from all the attempts to start it. We got here with almost no gas left, and had some trouble getting up the steep hill to my Parents house, but we made it! We are so happy to be home!


So, Aidan and I have been settling in here. Howard is down in Salem, looking for a job. He plans to come up for the week-end. It's been really nice to be back home. Mom and Dad are bonding with Aidan, and he loves them. Pepper, mom's dog, enjoys having Aidan around, but he gets tired of it sometimes. So Aidan is learning to leave Pepper alone when he gives him that little growl. They are doing great.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. LOL I hope I'll be able to post more now that we have DSL here. Take Care All.

This is it.

Today we will be leaving for Oregon. We have a couple of people coming to help finish up all the moving. Yesterday we had another delay, the truck and trailer had to be wired for lights. That took almost all day to get done. At 8PM we loaded some boxes and the two dressers, by 10 we just couldn't do any more so we called it quits. The people who said they would help never showed up. This morning I'm packing up the day to day stuff I had to leave out just so we could be somewhat normal through this. Howard and Jimmy went to do a tire so we can have some extra money. The guys who are going to help with stuff today are supposed to be here at 9. I'm hoping that we can be finished by about noon. I have to take the cable box in and pay that bill, and then go to the insurance office and get the truck put on the insurance.

Well, I guess I'd better go get things done. I'm not sure when I'll be in Hood River, but I'll try to get on line in with an update as soon as I can. Take Care all.

Frustration!

I am so frustrated!!! Almost everything in ready to pack the trailer, except THE TRAILER!!! It needs new axles, the ones Howard and Jimmy got for it were 7 inches too short. Of course they waited until Saturday to get them so now they have to wait until Monday to get the metal guy to add the 7 inches to them. Which means I'll have to wait until Tuesday to even start loading the truck and it has to be done Tuesday! I don't think I can do it in one day even with leaving so much stuff behind. I might just have to let Howard stuff everything from the shed into the trailer instead of going through it all. I don't want to put any of that stuff outside until I'm ready to put it in the trailer, because I don't want it stolen. Every space available if full of boxes so there isn't any space left to put new boxes. So I can't even pack what is left to be packed. GRRRRRRR!!! I want to scream at someone, or throw things, or basically act like a frustrated child. Of course I can't do that, so instead I'm on the verge of tears off and on today. To top it off I'm having a head ache induced by hormones and cramping, which probably explains my over emotional state right now. (Sigh) I'll be okay, everything will get done, and I'll be on my way home in just a couple of days! (Imagine wild cheering here.)

P.S. I know I used a lot of exclamation marks in this post, but I'm hormonal and it made me feel less frustrated. Really it did.

Finally!!!

We finally got the house sold. We had to settle for $700 because we wanted to leave by the third. Now it's a sure thing, we will be leaving by the third of May! Hurray! Now we have a list of things to get done, none of them very hard.

1. Paint the fenders on the trailer.
2. Take the trailer in to get the license.
3. Pack up (I have a plan for this as well).
4. Have dinner with Howard's Cousin Jim and Aunt Martha.
5. Take the cable box in, pay the final bill.
6. Call the phone company to shut off the phone and give them my new address for the final bill.
7. Talk to the insurance people about the truck.
8. Look around for anything we forgot.
9. Get in the truck and leave!

We will stop by my brother Cody's house on the way out to see them. I think we will go the coast route because it will be a little bit easier for the truck to handle than the other ways. Besides Aidan can get his look at the ocean. So, depending on how long it takes us, how often we stop, and how slow we have to drive because of the trailer, we could be in Hood River in less than 2 weeks!

Not much progress

Still no news on when the move will happen. The trailer has fenders now, all we need to do is get doors on it and get it licensed. Then we can start to pack it up. We get money on the third, so maybe we can leave by Saturday the sixth.

Yesterday was a migraine day. I slept from 1:30 PM until 6:30 and still had a headache. It faded after we had dinner, but is still sitting there behind my right eye waiting. I feel like I could sleep all day today too. Of course I won't be able to do that. It's hard to describe the way I feel after a migraine. The pain is gone, but I'm still not quite back to normal. It's like a memory of the pain, or a tiredness like after a leg cramp, that feeling that if I move wrong it will come back. Anyway, today I'm in that almost back to normal phase. I hope that this afternoon it will be gone for good.

Still in California

Yesterday I was sick. It might have been a flu bug or just a reaction to the food I've been eating. (Sometimes I feel sick after eating red meat. My Doctor thinks it's the hormones and/or chemicals that animals are fed these days. They build up in my body and then I have to eat chicken or go vegetarian for a few days in order to feel normal again.) But whatever it was I'm feeling better today. The weather should be good today, and I should be able to get things together to get the permits this afternoon. Then the only thing left to do would be putting the doors on the trailer, putting a second coat of paint on the trailer and packing it up. It looks like it will be Tuesday or Wednesday before we can leave. We might have the car sold, and someone else looked at the house the other night. So maybe we will have enough cash to get home.

I had a dream that we were in Oregon, and it felt so good to be home. It didn't seem to be much of a rush or too much of a problem, but somehow I wasn't with Howard and Aidan. I was trying to catch up with them. I'm not sure what I was driving, or if I was with other people. It's been too long since I woke up, the details are fading. All in all it was a good dream though.

Sometimes it feels like we will never get out of here. But we have to leave the trailer park by the end of May regardless of anything else. So ... Keep good thoughts that we will be back in Oregon before Christopher's birthday on the 10th of May. I know that is almost 3 weeks away, but the way things are going it could take that long.

Trailer and truck update

There has been progress, although not as much as I'd like. The truck got it's carburetor re-built, it still needs a tune up and the timing set. Then I'll go get the trip permit to take it to Oregon. The trailer is almost done. It needs doors and a paint job. Oh and Howard needs to get some bolts to bolt the box down to the sheet metal part of the trailer. I will also need to get a permit for it.

I've been so sleepy the last couple of days. Before we had Aidan I used to spend days like this in bed, sleeping and maybe watching some TV or drawing. Now, of course, I have to watch Aidan, so no all day naps for me.

Email change

Those of you that I actually send e-mail to will soon notice that I've started to change my e-mail address. I won't be using the comcast address any more once we move, so I thought it would be a good idea to get some of it changed over to the new Yahoo address. I'll also be using it for comments on blogs and such. It's the same as the comcast one, it just ends with yahoo. com instead of comcast.net.

Moving update.

There has been an other short delay in the move. Howard stressed his back on Saturday and hasn't been able to move around much until today. He's almost back to normal today. So we are behind a little bit with building the "box" for the trailer. I had a migraine yesterday so I'm a bit behind on packing and cleaning. Oh well, things are still good for leaving this week-end. We will see how it goes from here. Even more good news, there is a man who is interested in this place. He says he will have $1000 tomorrow. That will allow me to pay $500 in bills and still have money left for the move. Keep your fingers crossed that he will actually come up with the money, we can use all the good luck we can get.

I think we will take the coast route to Oregon, because the hills are much easier and there is less chance for snow. The weather has been very wet the last few days, with lots of snow up in the mountains. They are saying that the snow level is going up though, so who knows. It will take longer going the coast route, but will be a nice drive and easier for the truck to handle, I hope.