Randy's Contribution

This morning, at 5:20AM I was awoken to the cry's of a kitty at the back, outside door to the patio. It was Little Guy and he wanted to play. Now mind you it is in the teens outside and about 6" of snow on the ground. This door is off the master bedroom. Dutiful, I arose and stumbled to the other back porch door with 8 cats in tow. This is the door Little Guy will only come in as there is food and water and a bed for him in there. But does he want to come in, Noooooooooooo. He wants to play outside, climb the tree, be rubbed, make foot prints in the snow. I'm surprised he didn't make a snow cat. What a guy. I finally got him to come in to the back porch when he commenced to eat and drink and let me pet him. Visiting hours came to an end and he wanted to go back out so out he went. I guess he loves this weather. I gave a cursory thought to going back to bed but coffee and morning medications beckoned so I turned Fox News on and had coffee and a muffin with my cats. Well, this is my story and I'm sticking to it. Have a great day and be safe out there.

Camping Experience

While camping we had lots of cool experiences with little critters and some not so little. We had gray squirrels and a chipmunk and humming birds. The little critters came right up to us and ate unsalted peanuts from the ground near us. A doe came down and ate peanuts too. She was not afraid of us. After she ate, she laid down in the grass and cooled herself in the shade. She stayed there for some time. We had a wonderful experience during our camping stay.

I'm Getting Older and Life is Getting Better!

Randy and I have been camping for almost a week. I have come home tonight to get some things done and then I will join him again. We are both so relaxed when we are in the mountains. My answer to religion is there: in God's Country. The campground is only 1/2 hour away. It's so convenient. Kathy and John help us with the cats. We bring them up camping on weekends. We will be going to Oregon again in August to visit Jennifer and Rob at a home they rented in Bend. We are excited about this as well.

The cats are a pain and I do wish Randy would consider finding homes for most of them. But he worries that they will not be treated right. Life is so much less stressful now than when I had to work and raise kids. I did enjoy camping then as well and being with my kids but it was not like it is now. My life feels like it has just begun! We care for each other more each day and maybe if things go as planned there may be a wedding in our future but not right away. I feel younger today than I have for some time. Things would have probably been this way had Alex lived and I had retired but we never got to find out.

Young people do not have the corner on love and emotion! I hope they can be as happy as I am now when they are my age and have retired. I may be fat and wrinkled with white hair but I still have some love and spunk left in me.

Cats and Catnip

We got some catnip for our cats and placed it on the scratching board. They all hung around wanting the action.

Meet Little Guy

Little Guy is a male tabby who just showed up one night at our house. Of course he keeps coming back because he gets the royal treatment here. He has not been neutered. Randy and I both really love him. He's an outside cat most of the time but we let him in now and then.

Our Yellowstone Trip and Other News

On May 21, we went to Contessa's graduation. Marty and Cherise were great hosts. We spent the night with our trailer parked in Marty's driveway. After the graduation, we all went to The Olive Garden to eat. Contessa graduated with honors and also got a scholarship to Logan Utah State University. She will live with relatives there while going to school. We are proud of her. We also saw the Fall of Idaho Falls and lots of cute baby geese with their mothers watching close by.

The next day we went to Yellowstone Park. We camped at a KOA in West Yellowstone. We spent that day setting up and swimming and used the hot tub. It snowed a little that day. The next day it was pretty good weather. We went into the park and visited almost all of it. Randy had never been there before. We saw buffalo and cute baby buffalo and elk and a bald eagle in its next way up high. We saw all the geysers including Old Faithful. The blue pools are still my favorite. We saw the stinky mud pots as well. Yellowstone Lake was mostly frozen over. Yellowstone is so different in the cold weather. I was really mad because my digital camera broke when I had only taken a few photos. I had to send it in to get fixed. So I got the chip out and got the ones I did take put on a cd and I have them in this blog.

We spent that night again at West Yellowstone in our trailer and watched DVDS. We ate supper at a Chinese place that was not very good and highly priced.

The next day we headed out to Jackson Wyoming. It had been raining all day and on the way to the Tetons there was still lots of snow and the lakes were frozen. You could not see the tips of the Tetons for the clouds but they were majestic all the same. We spent the night at a KOA in Jackson where it rained all night. I used my Garmin to find the place but I had programmed the wrong address which I got from MapQuest so we had a hard time finding the KOA and Randy got quite upset with me and the Garmin. We camped by the Snake River. The next morning it was nice weather and we went down to the river before heading home to Utah. It was a safe trip and fun but we need to fix the toilet in the trailer as it leaks a little. Randy is so picky about everything; it all must be perfect and so he really takes good care of the trailer and keeps everything so clean.

Nice to Have a Man around the House

Randy helps me so much around the house. He washed all my windows inside and out and washed all the siding on the house. He cleaned the trailer and washed all the curtains in the living room and the shower curtains in the bathrooms. He is a good helper to me. We just might get married someday if I can figure out my finances so my kids still get everything I want them to.

Randy

Randy is doing better with his health now. I hope he keeps feeling better. The Dr. couldn't find any real problems.

He is now taking a class at the Senior Center. It is the AARP driving course. We are looking forward to using our new trailer this summer.

There's Always Something

Well, we did go on our first RV trip and Randy was sick but we kind of had a little fun. We did have to replace a tire on the trailer though because the rubber came off one of them. So Randy said we should just replace all the tires as they were all pretty bad. That makes me mad because if I had known the tires were bad I would have gotten the price down a little more on the trailer.

Randy has been a little sick with his usual IBS syndrome and his blood sugar. Today it was much better though. He has a Dr. appointment on Friday and I hope they do tests to find out why he has to suffer with these problems all the time.

I have had trouble with my stupid lan line phone from Comcast. Sometimes when people call they can't get me and it says I am not taking calls which is not true. I called Comcast and they don't know why it is happening. I am thinking of just using my cell phone and getting rid of my lan line phone altogether. I am also going to get a different internet with MSTAR using Randy's account and just get a router for the two computers.

The cats keep us busy and they are very expensive to feed and care for but they are our family. We were going to go to Bear Lake on May 8-12 but now we probably change and go to Contessa's graduation on the 21 and then on to Yellowstone Park in our trailer. Randy has never been there.

Our Moab Trip

Unfortunately, our Moab trip was not as good as we had hoped. The weather was great but Randy got sick and couldn't even eat the whole time and the tread came off one of the trailer tires and so we had to buy a new used one. Randy had turned the fridge upt too hight so everything got frozen so it's a good thing he didn't want much to eat.We did go to Dead Horse Point and to Arches though and tried to see as much as we could. I sure hope our next trip is better. I hope we have learned some things from our try-out trip to Moab. We will be going to Bear Lake next month

Here are photos of us and of our trailer and Suburban.

These are photos my new Elantra. I like it because it saves gas.

Six Months

I met Randy online six months ago yesterday. A month and one half later he moved here. So far things are good in this very unconventional way of meeting and being together.

Camping Plans

Randy and I are planning on going camping on April 21 to Arches National Monument. Our idea of camping is having hookups, water and cable and air conditioning and even a microwave; and we will have all this at the KOA park in Moab. We won't always camp this way, but we wanted to try out our hookups to see how they work.

On May 9 we are going to camp at Bear Lake. We got a deal there to one free for one paying night. I am so looking forward to this. I haven't camped for a long time.

Our Changing Life

Big Changes

Well, yesterday I traded my van for an Elantra. I am getting almost $6000 back because the van was worth more than the Elantra. The Elantra is brand new. It is metallic blue. The van was too much vehicle for me. But I sure will miss that van with all it's features and comfort. And Randy bought a used Suburban to pull the travel trailer with because we just decided old Brownie wasn't really up to it. So we certainly don't need a Suburban and a van. The Elantra will get much better mileage than the van. The suburban will get bad mileage because it has a big engine but we will only use it for camping and use the Elantra for everything else. I will soon post photos of the new vehicles. The Suburban is a 2002 and was a really good price for Randy to afford. We thought of getting something newer and in diesel because even though diesel costs more, it gets better mileage when pulling a trailer. But the amount we saved by buying the Suburban was $9000 so the difference in mileage will make up for in the savings of the purchase price.

As for Brownie, she is still here. She belongs to Randy and he is probably going to sell to Marty for the amount he has paid for it so far. Brownie has new windshield wiper blades and a brand new battery. So I guess we are really crazy these days with all the things we have been doing.

New Trailer

I bought a used 1986 travel trailer. It's really nice. The people who had it kept it up and it's just like new. It's 25 ft long. Maybe it's too big for the brown truck but according to the people we bought it from, they used it with the same type of truck. Randy is an experienced camper and he used to drive much bigger trailers and 5th wheels.

We are not going to drive it far. We will just use it for camping here in Utah. We decided with the price of gasoline that we won't be able to take a lot of road trips to various states so we will just go camping during the weekdays when the camping spots are not so crowded. Hopefully, Old Brownie will be ok with these short trips. If not, then we will have to put the trailer up for sale because I won't buy another truck and I sold Brownie to Randy and if another truck is needed to pull the trailer then he will have to get it.

Randy is handy around the house. He dusted everything in the house and cleaned all the light covers while I was on my cruise. I do appreciate it. Both of us have not been feeling too well lately so I do hope we will be up to speed again soon so we can enjoy the new trailer.

Rita's Mexican Cruise

I had a good time on the cruise. Beverly had a cold and allergies so she wasn't feeling too well. We got lots of rest which I usually don't get a on a cruise. I fell down twice. Once I tripped over the ledge to the bathroom and fell into the shower. The other time I was getting on a tender boat from the ship and the sea was swelling and it caused the tender boat to rise up and I missed it my leg went between the two ships. I got badly bruised on my right leg and knee and was so stiff and sore I had to miss Matzatlan the next day. They gave me my money back. Randy thinks I should have sued them, but I am ok. The weather wasn't all that warm and the adult pool wasn't that warm either. The hottest place was Puerta Villarta, the sand burned my feet. Mexico is really a dump except for the hotels and beaches. They have cobblestone roads and the building look really tacky. There were even dirt roads leading to nice hotels. We went on the Vision of the Seas and it is a mid-size ship that holds about 2100 people. We enjoyed the beach at Puerta Villarta and Cabo. We went to some buffets from hotels on the beaches and had open bars etc. I got to hold a real life parrot on my arm in Cabo. Walking on the beaches is almost impossible for me these days. My legs just give out in the sand. I won't be doing any cruises for awhile I think. I was a little upset that I was not invited to the party for previous cruisers on the Royal Caribbean since I had cruised with them before.

Our dinner companions were from Vancouver Canada (Ken and Barbie; really) and they were nice people and our waiters were so much fun. One of them remembered I wanted lemonade and he always filled my glass with an endless supply of lemonade. We also saw a couple of movies on the ship. All in all it was very relaxing and fun. I hated the airports though. SLC was so backed up that even though we got there an hour early, our seats were given away on the flight because we to wait so long getting through security. There were all these skiers going home. Our flight nearly left without us but then they gave us our seats back and put the standbys in other seats.

On the way back in LA, I forgot and had my cell phone in my pocket and they treated me like a criminal and then my knee also beeped and so it was a mess. To top it off, the plane was 1 and 1/2 hours late getting in so Randy had to wait a long time for us. I had called him and told him I would be late but he thought he could get a meal at the airport but he couldn't because all the eating places are past security. Since I hate airports so much, if I take a cruise in the future we will drive to the port. Airports also wear me out.
Above are our dinner companions, Barb and Ken from Vancouver and on the right
Roast Lamb, one of our Meals

This is Beverly and I with our waiters. Notice how the light makes it look like our head waiter, Ramil is wearing a crown.
This is on the beach at Puerta
Villarta on the right

Here I am with the parrot at Cabo

Beverly at Cabo near the Beach at Lunch and on the right, One of the ship's lounges




Cabo San Lucas Real People Dressed as Statues on Cabo on the right
Our Room on the Ship
Beverly and I on First Formal Night on the right

Ken and Barb