A new home and dry weather here in Tillamook accounts for a very busy time for Bill and I.
Soon after Emily’s Birthday celebration was over we headed east again for a week in The Dalles. We drove over to help our friends Tedd and Rymmel Lovell with their big yard sale, but had plenty of time to visit with Doreen’s sisters as well. When we arrived at the Lovell’s, Tedd’s folks had just been moved in to the house the week before. His dad (91) is failing and his mom had broken her arm, so living alone was no longer an option for them. We had some excitement with Tedd’s dad having another heart attach at the hospital, but also enjoyed some real nice visits with his mother. Sold lots and lots of stuff at the yard sale, but I got first choice at things and came home with some pots and pans for the kitchen, mixing bowls, towels and lots of other goodies for our still almost empty home.
We arrived home to find that the Brills were taking advantage of the nice weather (and Doug’s weekend off work) to get going on their roofing project. Wednesday, July 27, I joined Gretchen and the children to start removing the old roofing from the house. Gretchen’s friend Heather showed up with four strong boys to help out, and help they did. We almost got the entire roof cleaned off and hauled 4 loads to the dump, leaving the last load in the truck for the next day.
Thursday we took a little break and all went up the Wilson River to enjoy a day in the water and the sun.
Friday it was back to work again. Doug was off work so he and Gretchen finished cleaning the old shingles off the roof and started construction of the large porch cover pop-out in the front. Bill and I drove into Portland to the nearest Home Depot to pick up supplies and electrical goodies that we needed for work on our new home as well. Saturday and Sunday were long busy days as the new roof started to make its appearance. Jeff, Heather’s husband and a professional roofer, did a beautiful job of attaching the new shingles. Doug worked on his porch cover framing with lots of help from Jeffery (Heather’s son and one of Emily’s friends). With Jeffery’s and Bill’s help we got it up and attached nicely to the main roof structure. The back half was all roofed and tar paper covered the front by Sunday evening when we all gave up.
Tuesday Gretchen brought the two children over to our house to help dig my trench for moving the water faucet out of the carport area and into the back yard. We ran into a big problem when we discovered that the old galvanized pipe (that we had hoped to simply cap off) was dripping. We then dug lots along the sidewalk and the workshop area looking for the pipe at its entrance to the car port. We eventually gave up and called a plumber. A very nice plumber showed up on his lunch break to check things out. Thinking that he had found the pipe under the house, he cut it and capped it for us – but it turned out to be just another stray unused pipe under this old house! He discovered a second pipe in a similar location and returned yesterday on his lunch break to cap that one off. All is well now, at least with the house water. We are still trenching for the new lines to the yard though.
Wednesday was the big fishing day. Doug has taken extra shifts at work to help pay for the roof and Wednesday was the only day he has off this week. The weatherman gave a good report for calm seas offshore so Doug decided that today would be the day for the family to go tuna fishing and I went along as well. It took three hours to get out to the fishing grounds (about 40 miles off shore) and then we hit the jackpot. In just over an hour we had two ice chests almost full with 14 fish onboard! Most of the time when we got a hit of one fish there were others hitting the other rods. Several of the fish got off, thankfully, but we usually ended up landing two at the same time from the four rods that we had out in the water – and once we got three on board at the same time! With 14 fish in the ice chest, Doug started to think about the work of cleaning and processing them upon our return, so we headed for home – another 2 hour ride.
There were lots of birds and fairly flat seas on the return and I even saw two dolphins that surfaced near the boat, but they went down and did not come up for the others to get a look at them. When we got home Emily got the inside and outside of the boat cleaned of all the fish blood and salt. Doug got to cleaning the fish and Gretchen into packaging the meat for the freezer. I cleaned out the “new” old freezer that Gretchen and I had picked up for $50 at the local ReStore on Tuesday. We got it moved into position (after moving their older small freezer out of the way) and plugged it in. We left it to cool down overnight, keeping the smaller freezer working as well. About half of the fish was frozen and the rest Gretchen and I packed into jars to process in the pressure canner. We ended up canning almost 100 half-pints of tuna, half with jalapeno peppers and half with garlic. I left Gretchen with the first canner loads still having a half hour to go and the second loads in the refrigerator to wait for processing in the morning.
While we were canning, Heather and Jeff showed up to work on the roof. They got going and only took a short break for dinner. When Bill and I left at 8:30pm Jeff was still shooting nails into shingles, so we do not know how far they got – but much progress was being made as Jeff is a very fast roofer.
New shingles go on the back side of the roof and the porch roof construction works its way off the front.
Everyone landed fish and then it was a long ride home again.
