Hard Sleep Between 4:00 and 5:30 a.m.

 

               I fell asleep early.  I got up at 2:00 quite warm and

decided to take a shower.  I did not return to bed as I had

had six hours of sleep. I took my kindle into another room to

pass the time.  If I had thought about it I would have cleaned the

carpet in Richard’s office.  Of course I did not

think about it.  I returned to bed at 4:00.  Sometime between

4:00 a.m. and 5:30 I had a really hard sleep.  I know that I was

sleeping hard as I had another really bizarre dream with no

connections to anything. 

               I was driving down a road that leads to downtown Myrtle

Creek.  A deer zoomed in front of me.  I think I stopped hard to

let it pass.  And then I saw a woman slowly moseying down

the middle of the road.  She was wearing a coat and scarf – all in

loud colors.  As the deer passed the woman, I slowed down and

called out her name (turns out it was someone that I have

worked with at the library) and asked her if she would like a ride. 

Her destination turned out to be a lot closer than either one of us

had expected (downtown Myrtle Creek is NOT that big.  EVERYTHING is

within walking distance)

               I parked next door to the bank (which is not in the same

location that it was in the dream) in an area I have never seen in real life. 

It was called Moon something.  I think it was a bar or night club or

something.  I don’t even know why I parked.  I don’t even remember leaving

the car – and yet I found myself in another elaborate building – huge – like Las

Vegas huge.  NOTHING like that exists in Myrtle Creek.  Highly doubtful in all

of Douglas county.  Yet in the dream there it was. 

 Jaime took me on a tour of the facility.  She was an actress

performing in one of the rooms.  I recognized the background from photos she

had posted (not in real life but as part of the dream) .  I suddenly remembered the

woman I had dropped off at the bank – which magically connected to the

building I was in.  But

she was gone.  Well, yeah – I had been

there much longer than anticipated.  I forgot about my car.  Oh oh.

I returned to the place I had parked to find a large sign on

the back of my car (or some kind of car – much bigger than the one I was

initially driving)  and all the tires had been removed.  I was devastated.  How

in the heck was I going to explain that to Richard?  

I am leaving out so much detail. 

It was 5:45 when I returned to the front room scribbling down my

thoughts.  The notes don’t make any sense.  But

neither did the dream.

Testing Negative

               On Saturday I received my first COVID test ever.  I’m sure the person who was testing was being as gentle as possible – my poor nostrils.  I honestly was expecting that blood would come out of my nose.  It didn’t help matters when Roland (who’d been tested fair) coughed and spewed – or whatever he was doing.  He is NOT a wimp and I am so if he was having problems I figured it was bad.

       It actually was not as bad as I had allowed myself to believe.  Nor was it as easy as my friend, Carol, had indicated the previous day.  It hurt!  And when I said it allowed, I heard Jenna behind me saying, “Thanks, Mom” 

       The person doing the testing told Jenna how brave she was – really?  Hadn’t I been any less brave?  We were told to wait 15 minutes for the results.  Roland started joking that “mom and Jenna” would be negative but his would come out positive.  Not funny.  So we were all more than concerned when they had him take the test again.  Negative.  We had all been vaccinated and had tested negative.  That is reassuring.

       We were told in the beginning (was it last year? Or last century?) that the rural areas would be hit the hardest.  The cocky people of this county didn’t believe – many still don’t – even though Douglas has been proved to be the worst county in the state (don’t forget, Douglas County is also the fifth largest county in the nation) and guess which city in Douglas County currently has the most cases?  That is right, Myrtle Creek’s three thousand somewhat population has contributed to the most cases in Douglas.

       I think I have mentioned before that aside from the massive geographical size of our county, Douglas offers only one hospital located in Roseburg.  Recently they lost a patient from the emergency room.  The patient had been there for two hours or more waiting for an ICU bed to open up.  The patient died of COVID.

       Jenna had come in contact with a friend who had tested positive for COVID. Hence our little jaunt.  Thank you Public Health for your service.

Dash #17 Places

          The thing I love most about living in Myrtle Creek is the close knit community - people who care for one another and express concern more for people than things.  The first couple of years we lived here, I was able to breathe much better than I did in Utah.  I still believe that I do but I haven't done well with the extremely bogus weather we've had.  8 months of no moisture to two weeks of cold and too much moisture -my breathing is not where it should be in my opinion.

          I love living in a relaxed atmosphere as opposed to an uptight bustle.  But I have made no secret of this.  Several of my posts have explained this already.

Fog seems to linger more in Tri City

        I was asked to help set up for the ward dinner.  There was still fog lingering when I left the house in Tri-City.  The clouds have always been to south of us, but seem to be making their way north. I had my headlights on but did not need them as the sun was blaring. 

        I drove to Myrtle Creek and took these pictures of the clouds surrounding TriCity.  I drove back and forth between the grange and our house.  The clouds had all lifted by the second trip.

        We stayed for the light parade.  It was fantastic!  After the last truck had gone by, people started heading to their cars.  Fog had started to settle in. There were large patches between the grange and our house. 

        Fog didn't seem as thick when we left for church this morning.  But it is starting to settle in again - mostly to the north and west of us.  I took this picture before I came into the house.

Silly Parade

I do hope not to offend anyone in Myrtle Creek by calling their parade silly.  It's just that I am used to bands and floats (see here) and spacing and not everything clumped together.  I certainly did take a lot of pictures - but not as many as I had the first year we lived here.  We did not even attend last year.

The Friends of Myrtle Creek had marched in the Rodeo parade (see here) on the 17th and had planned on walking in today's parade, but with manning the booths and lack of availability, it felt like their were too few to accomplish our desire - so we opted out.  

I don't think the parade started on time.  Roland made certain we had ice cream as we had two years ago.

The parade stared out with six firetrucks.  I evidently took nine pictures:

most had passengers who threw candy.  Roland got a Frisbee from one thrower:

followed by a series of monster trucks.  I took a picture of the first one:

followed by five others.  I did take a picture of this rig pulling two monster cars only because Roland had made a comment about the expense of one pulling the expense of the other.

Six more monster trucks passed before I took this picture:

I stopped counting between this and the last two show off cars:

Next came Miss Douglas County:

Followed by a series of classic cars.  I may have gotten all of them.

And here's what followed the classic cars:

This last truck was pulling a trailer.  I guess these next two would be considered the floats?

Both had been issued trophies.  I wonder if the Friends of the Myrtle Creek Library would have received a trophy.  Probably.

We didn't get to see a log truck in the parade as we had the first year (see here).  But we did see more walkers than in prior years.

This last truck was  followed by five more of it's kind.

Hope you enjoyed our parade. 

Michaela's story

            There is a small group of us who meet at the local coffee shop once a month as we wait anxiously await for the pool to open for the summer so that we can get in our water aerobic workout.  This morning someone had made a comparison of rounded mountains compared to jagged mountains (I personally refer to the rounded as hills and the jagged as mountains) and how different the landscape appears from inside of a helicopter.

            Michaela had come out to clear the dishes as we were taking and casually joined in our conversation.  17 years ago she had been living in the bay area and got to be pretty good at driving around Oakland and San Francisco.  She delivered documents and had earned quite a reputation for her ability to have her deliveries made on time.  But over the years she realized that she was bothered by the amount of time it took to get from point A to point B.

            Here, in Myrtle Creek (actually all of Douglas County) they talk in minutes.  Point A to point B is 5 minutes, not 5 miles.  But in San Francisco, Salt Lake, and Portland, I would imagine, they talk in miles.  Because even though common sense tells you it should only take a certain amount of time, the time is actually not consistent from day to day or even hour to hour.

            Jenna's school was two miles south of where we lived.  Some days it would take me 20 minutes to get there.  For the most part it took longer coming home.  Same distance.  Not same time.

            Michaela decided she had had enough.  Three hours for under 30 miles.  That's not right.  One day she said she had had enough.  She and a girlfriends decided to pack their bags and head north - though they didn't really have a destination.  She said she obviously wasn't taking the "time" into consideration as they had left at 5:00 p.m. on a Friday.  Perhaps just the reinforcement she needed to "escape".

            I can't remember what town she said they were at when she got off the exit and pulled over to the first vacant lot.  It was after 2:00 in the morning and she had to close her eyes - even if it was just a few minutes.  It was longer than that.  She had fallen asleep.  When she woke up, she looked around - not fully knowing where she was but believed she was somewhere in Oregon.  She wanted to continue a little further north.

            When they had passed Seven Feathers casino in Canyonville, she made a mental note of it.  She had worked at the casinos in Tahoe so she had the experience.  They kept on driving until she saw a bridge (I'm guessing the one that leads to the 108 ramp to/from I5.  She said that was the place, and they crossed the bridge and found a place.

            She ended up not working at Seven Feathers because they felt she was overqualified (From what I understand Seven Feathers is not a great place to work for;  almost everyone that I've talked to has labeled them as "too cheap to pay much more than minimum and lay off workers left and right so that they don't have to deal with pay raises" so I believe that's why they told her she was overqualified; they didn't want to pay her what she was worth)

            She landed a job as a bartender for six months, but when she refused to serve an underage drinker who threatened her job, she got let go and so was hired by another who had been watching her and knew that she had been let go unjustly.  She said she's been working at the coffee shop ever since.

            It is gorgeous here.  Clean.  No traffic.  Awesome!