Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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First, after making twenty typos typing the title and first sentence, I am thankful for spell check. My fingers are stiff from the cold weather, and although I can spell, my fingers are less than agile. I am thankful for our wonderful neighbors who invited Daniel and me to spend Thanksgiving with them. We had planned on dining alone on Cornish game hens, with Mugsy waiting under my chair for a spill or leftovers. Instead, eight friends gathered, ate great food and had a lot of laughs and great...
I thought tennis was frustrating, but I think knitting is beginning to frustrate me more. Last week, I dug through bags within bags looking for my knitting needles. I opened the storage ottoman and unleashed a tangled mess of yarn skeins. It was a cacophony of colors and textures. I gave up all the overly ambitious patterns and dumped random knitting tools that have no function from what I can tell. The guest room bed is covered with yarn organized by color, needles, crochet hooks, and a...
Song lyrics often provide an accurate mood determinant for me. The lyric running through my head now, “Seasons change and so did I,” from the song “No Time” by the band The Guess Who. Fall is quickly turning to winter, and I am feeling (and maybe dreading) the changes, some of which could be good. But mostly, I keep asking, is it spring yet? The roads will soon be treacherous, with fog rolling in and snow, ice, and icy fog following. Driving to tennis games in Walla Walla and Costco runs wi...
I just finished the last of my three-day tennis camp sessions at Whitman College for 2024. Determined to improve my game, I stubbornly remained on the court through a barrage of hits and misses, peppered with lots of laughs, frustration, and exhaustion. At least I had no injuries until the last day of the previous camp. With no one to blame but myself, I missed a shot and whacked my lip with the racquet. I had no lost teeth, but I woke up with a black and blue lip. I started the first camp with a miserable backache due to the new mattress we...
My friends scheduled to visit a few months ago finally made it-no more COVID-19 or work delays. To say we hit the ground running is an understatement. We may have surpassed Henry VIII in gluttony and alcohol consumption over the weekend. They booked the brutal 7 a.m. flight out of Burbank (California,), so obviously, they were bleary-eyed when they boarded for Seattle. While in the Seattle airport connecting to Walla Walla, John ran into a shop, and his phone's magnetic wallet became detached....
We are family, and we have the hats to prove it. In a former column, I wrote about our blended family, which is rapidly expanding, with babies and significant others. Our family's philosophy is "the more the merrier," which makes our family reunions more fun but more than a little confusing for the newbies to figure out the family tree. It's been great to meet new babies and the new serious relationships that appear promising. We're not pressuring you, but we did spend time discussing movies...
At this year’s Pioneer Festival in Waitsburg, Lane Gwinn introduced me to Kari Isaacson. Lane mentioned that I write for “The Times,” and I added that I write what could be called an aspiring Erma Bombeck column. Kari immediately piped in with “The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank,” one of Erma Bombeck’s classic lines and the title of one of her many books. The mention of septic tanks brought back teenage memories of living on Long Island, New York, in a 1953 Levitt house. Which, of course, had a septic tank. It seemed monthly tha...
Last spring, when Daniel was working as a private chef in Europe, I defied his command and purchased a new lawn mower. I went with a battery-operated model, then gave away our smelly, hard-to-pull-start gas mower. Along with the mower, I was sucked into the “package deal,” which included a weed whacker, and an extra battery for the mower, fortuitously a stroke of luck. For some unknown reason, one of the batteries was faulty, and it died. Or so I thought. My maintenance philosophy drives Dan...
I wrote a column a few months ago about recognizing the seasons by the bugs that show up, but in retrospect, I’m not sure that is the best determinant. I’ve seen my share of bees and hoverflies this summer, but not like the swarms of past summers. It also seems that ladybugs are in short supply this year. I did need to thwart a minor invasion of squash bugs using an organic spray and marigolds planted throughout the garden. Thankfully, we haven’t had a bumper crop of summer squash, aka zucch...
I went to a garden party, and to my surprise, I saw a face that was familiar but out of context. Then it hit me, "I know you from tennis." First, I thought, "What are you doing here," but asked more politely, "How do you know this group?" It turns out that her husband is a guitarist in the host's band, and they are long-time friends. It was another connection in this cool web of the Waitsburg, Walla Walla, Dayton small-town labyrinth of friends. And, not that I would have anything bad to say,...
I have been thinking about getting an electric vehicle for quite a while, and the Ford F-150 4x4 Lightning was at the top of my list. I was unsure whether the yea-sayers and the nay-sayers were giving me the correct information to inform me in making the purchase. I liked the idea of no longer burning dinosaur juice to get back and forth to work, but the tried and true system of filling up at the pump made me hesitant to change my ways. On a recent trip to San Jose, California, I discovered...
Yes, we had visitors, just not the visitors we expected. At the last minute, a friend in the group that was going to visit last week came down with COVID-19, and their trip had to be rescheduled. The Zoom meeting to coordinate a new time also had to be delayed. Evidently, he had a Paxlovid rebound and was still not feeling great. That’s when we had a fortuitous switcheroo. Daniel got a call from friends from Los Angeles who were heading to Walla Walla with their friends from Vancouver, W...
Waitsburg's inclusion in ArtWalla's First Weekend events has inspired me to get involved in the local art scene. Despite having a bachelor's degree in art history, I do not consider myself artistic (in the traditional sense) whatsoever. So, instead, I created a series called The Art of Mixology. We had our second session in the series last Saturday night; the subject was The Golden Ratio. What I know about art is that proportion is crucial to aesthetic expression. In bartending, that proportion...
I’m so excited. My friends, former clients, visited me and Daniel in Waitsburg last week. A few weeks ago, we had an extended laugh-a-thon Zoom meeting trying to figure out their flights and other travel logistics. The arrival time hadn’t sunk in for Vicki (yes, another Vicki) because she sent a text the night before the flight saying, “OMG, what were we thinking, getting to the airport at 6 a.m.?” The good news was that the early flight meant they didn’t have to fight traffic to the airport—u...
During the last few springs and summers, I dedicated much time and energy to our garden. I was also happy to have bought into the co-op garden in Walla Walla for tomatoes, corn, and peppers, but most of the time, we ate a good amount of produce from our garden. This year, I spent more time and energy on my tennis game than the garden, and now the consequences. My initial strategy for planting was the "random, no plan" method. I planted things helter-skelter with no rhyme or reason, except for my...
CRANBROOK, BC - To most of us Waitsburgers, when we call to mind the Columbia River, we think of the two-mile-wide body of water at Wallula Junction, also known as the McNary Reservoir, or the same one-mile-wide river that bisects the Tri-cities that we cross on our way to Costco. The fact that only 12 vehicle bridges cross the river between Richland, Wash. and Astoria, Ore., where it meets the mighty Pacific, demonstrates the enormity of the challenge of crossing such a river. However, walking...
Three and Done (for now). I recently completed my third week of tennis camp. Exhausted doesn’t begin to describe how I ache. But persevere, I have, and I’m sure the makers of Advil are celebrating my stubbornness and my dependence on their miracle drug. With all that time and money spent, you’d think I’d be scouted to play at Wimbledon, but nope. I am relegated to my usual but fun, regular games. And I am grateful that I can still play, have friends to play with, and have not been sidelin...
I just completed my first tennis camp session, and I'm not as fit as I thought (or hoped) I was. The camp started at one o'clock on Thursday afternoon, and I, being overly ambitious, decided to play a two-hour singles game before camp. I began camp a little "used up," but luckily, there was a break with snacks for a little energy boost. After camp ended in the afternoon, I met a friend for a quick dinner and went on to the tennis league games that started at six. To say I slept well that night...
Camp is not just for kids. It is for us tennis aficionados as well. Otherwise known as the overly ambitious, overly confident, ready for sunburns, exhaustion, and probably a good dose of tennis humility. The Whitman College tennis team coaches run three-weekend tennis and wine camps in the spring and another three in the fall. I will be a returning camper and plan on attending all of them as I am a glutton for punishment. The Tennis and Wine Camp is for adults and offers a full day of tennis...
One of the things I truly enjoy about Waitsburg is that because of our oasis of trees and water in a normally dry environment, we are provided with a litany of bird songs at any time of day. For example, when I sit on my front porch on a weekend morning drinking my coffee, I can hear up to 20 different types of birds calling to each other. Sitting on my back porch at dusk, I hear the evening songs as the birds go to bed. And when I let the dog out one last time for the evening, I regularly hear...
No, this is not the start of a cell phone commercial, but recently, my tennis partner shouted, “It’s out,” as the ball flew over his head (meaning it will be out of bounds). I heard him but didn’t listen because it looked to me like the ball was in, and it was. Unfortunately, I still missed making the point, but it brought back memories of hearing versus listening. When I was about eight or nine years old, my mother took me to our pediatrician because she was concerned that I had a hearing...
I miss my mother. I especially miss her wicked sense of humor, her snarky remarks, and even her unsolicited wisdom, which was usually right and on point. As I matured, I learned that my mother was usually right, even if I didn’t always admit it to myself or to her. Since my mother has passed away and I don’t have any children, Mother’s Day has become “just another day” to me, except as it applies to Waitsburg gardening. I previously wrote that I didn’t understand a seemingly arbitrary g...
WAITSBURG - Waitsburg High School's band now has new uniforms thanks to the generous donation from the Ed and Gloria Lawrence Foundation. Lawrence's daughter Susan Talbott, an alumnus of Waitsburg, learned that the band needed uniforms and contacted band director Elizabeth Jaegeski. She told Jaegeski that her parents had earmarked money specifically for the Waitsburg HS band through the Blue Mountain Foundation. The band had been using uniforms from the 1990s, and the new brightly colored,...
Restraint has several meanings, but commonly, it is defined as the act of holding something back. Never one to restrain my competitiveness or need to accomplish things, I am beginning to learn that sometimes restraint may be worth consideration. When I don’t, there has been a good chance of regrets and injury. For example, when I don’t restrain my appetite, I usually feel worse for wear afterwords. If I don’t restrain my need to win the point on the tennis court, I break bones. I need to work...
It’s a strange phenomenon when I am the one planting late. I was patient after I lost everything by impatiently planting too early. Now, I may be behind the eight ball, having waited too long. After planting early-season veggies, including onions, radishes, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower, no low-fiber diets for us, I stopped my planting. I was sure it was too early to plant the rest. But after visiting some friends who had already planted sugar snaps and pretty much everything else, I am w...
