1. This afternoon, just before 2:00, I drove up to Radio Brewing and at almost exactly the same time, our longtime friends, Debbie and Steve, arrived, too. This month they have been driving across the USA. They started by driving from Eugene to Charlottesville, VA and then made their way north to Rochester, NY and headed back west. Much like what Debbie and I did in September, they didn't west in a straight line, but headed north through Michigan and traveled across the UP, and, like us, eventually drove across North Dakota and into Montana.
They were visiting their adult children and grandchildren back east. They visited friends along the way and had spent the last two nights in Missoula before stopping in Kellogg on their way to Spokane to visit another adult child and her family.
The three of us launched right into easy conversation and waited for Debbie to arrive from Wallace where she was participating in the monthly book club Christy spearheads.
Our conversation kicked from high gear into overdrive when Debbie arrived.
We talked about travel, family news, books, music and musicianship (Steve is a member of an acoustic trio, Cross Currents), and a bunch of other stuff.
As we were sitting there this afternoon, my mind occasionally wandered back to when I first met Steve and Debbie at the Rainy Day Cafe in Eugene, not long after Debbie and I started doing stuff together. Debbie performed on stage that night and Steve and Debbie were avid followers, not only of Debbie as a solo performer, but of her band, Babes with Axes.
Over the years, we had fun get togethers with Steve and Debbie -- movies, dinners, concerts -- and both of us were participants in two of their daughters' weddings. I helped serve communion at the rail in one wedding and Debbie sang at the other.
We'll see each other again before too long -- either when Debbie and I make a trip to Eugene or when Steve and Debbie return to Spokane to see their daughter and her family.
I can hardly wait. It's a blast spending time together!
2. I haven't been going out much in Kellogg over the last 18-19 months and today I enjoyed being at Radio Brewing again.
I'm on a private eccentric imaginary mission within myself when it comes to beer.
When I first started drinking craft beer back in about 1997, IPAs hadn't yet become as wildly popular as they did later on. Back then, I enjoyed all kinds of beers: brown ale, porters, ambers, lagers, stouts, ESBs, winter ales, etc, along with IPAs.
I especially liked porters -- but porters, it seemed to me, as time chugged along, were offered less and less on tap lists.
Soooo, my private eccentric imaginary pretend mission is to SAVE THE PORTER!
At Radio today, it made me very happy that TWO porters were available on tap: a traditional porter and a peanut butter and chocolate porter.
I loved drinking the traditional porter today.
I imagined (ha!) that I was helping SAVE THE PORTER by ordering it and look forward to ordering more of them.
The very best moment, though, involving the porter was when I told Steve, Debbie, and Debbie that today was an important day for me and asked them to join me in a toast.
We raised our glasses and I announced that were he alive, today would have been Raymond Harold "Pert" Woolum's 91st birthday.
Dad died before I got together with Debbie -- in fact, both of our fathers died before we got together.
So, I was the only one raising a glass who knew Dad, but I loved honoring him with Debbie and our good friends and I thought about him all day today.
3. I'm happy to report that for about three days now, Copper has not secluded himself in the basement. Yes, sometimes he hides for a while under the bed on the main floor, but he and Luna have been spending a lot of time in the Vizio room and I'm experimenting with letting Copper spend more time in the bedroom where he has a history of making messes on the bed. So far, this month, he hasn't done that.
Especially when he's in the bedroom, I'm spending more and more time petting Copper. He purrs. My hope is, not really knowing how cats' minds work, that as I give him more petting attention, he'll feel more secure. We do all we can to keep Gibbs away from the Vizio room and bedroom because he loves to bark at the cats. He doesn't get aggressive. He just barks. His barking unnerves them, especially Copper.
I don't have to reach out to pet Luna. Any time I sit in the Vizio room, she attaches her self to either my lap or my chest and, in bed, she often sleeps very close to me, sometimes under the covers, sometimes near the pillows.
Copper has only climbed into my lap once over the last 9 months, but he does sometimes inch closer to me at night.
Slowly, I hope surely, maybe Copper will become more relaxed, less nervous and afraid.
I hope simply keeping him on the main floor and petting him more often is helping.
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