Life Changes

12/27/07 We are ready to begin construction of our new home in Stayton, Oregon and I need to record the good, the bad, and the ugliness of our transition to retirement and relocation to Stayton, Oregon:

The Good:

My wife Lynna, for 47 years she has been my helpmate. Cooking, cleaning, raising our children & managing the household. When the kids left, she returned to school & worked first as a Faculty Secretary at Western Seminary then a year with the Washington DOC before she transferred to a job with The Attorney General of Washington State. Our good retirement situation is mostly her doing & I could never accomplish anything without her.

Close friends who encouraged and prayed with us through the years. Our Seattle Pastor Dr. Robert B. Brown, Colonel Stender & his family, The Woods, The Hunzikers, The Fishers, The Fullingtons, The Andersons, The DeFants, The Krumps, The Yonkins.

Friends from work: Brian List, Wendy Waterhouse, Cindy Soderberg, Glenda & Jason Yepes.

Jack Sherman, a dedicated realtor who sold our Olympia home above the asking price.

Our new neighbor in Stayton, John Bielenberg. An upright, hard working, general contractor. The salt of the earth.

Our new puppy, Peaches and our faithful old dog, Sunny.

Renting a home next door to our building site. (Thanks John & Candee)

The Bad:
Packing all my tools and bicycles to be mostly unavailable until construction is finished, leaving the beautiful lakefront home we built in Olympia, and losing my dog, Cher.

During the Summer of 2005, after a stay in the kennel, my sweet yellow lab Cher almost quit eating, she lost weight from her normal 57 down to 37 pounds by September. All her tests came back normal and nothing showed in her X-rays. One night she vomited up the end of a rubber bone. It had been in her stomach for months. She was very weak and still wouldn't eat much, by November she weighed only 27 pounds. Losing so much weight had damaged her kidneys & our vet said he'd never seen a dog this emaciated pull through. He told me she was sure to die within a day or two, but I could try getting her to eat. I force fed her with canned food and Nutra-Cal vitamin supplement for a few weeks. She improved and gained some weight, eventually got back up to 36 or 37 pounds. She ate well after this but could never regain any more weight. She had kidney failure but was in no pain. I fed her a good diet and gave her vitamin supplements and made sure she always had plenty of water. We spoiled her with lots of attention & bacon or hot dog snacks. She seemed vigorous for about a year, still chasing off coyotes with Sunny & remained the alpha female boss of the neighborhood dogs but she was very thin & her bark became high & shaky like an old person's voice. She couldn't tolerate cold weather & shivered easily.

We got Cher used to wearing a coat or sweatshirt & she was able to be outside again with Sunny just like the old days. Over the 06-07 holidays she weakened and lost a few pounds. She began to stay close to home & would only walk 1/2 way up the hill, then wait while Sunny & I went on to get the mail. I began helping her in & out of the car but she still enjoyed poking around the yard, going down by the lake & riding in the prow of my boat while I rowed.

I nursed her as she slowly wasted away & soon she would bring her ball for me to throw but could only totter a few feet to retrieve it. She enjoyed it still. I would slowly roll the ball a few feet for her & could only remember how she loved to catch it in mid-air, soaring higher than my head. Late in June, she lost sight in her left eye but still did her daily rounds in the yard & never became incontinent. She spent July 1-4 sleeping in the sun while I worked around the yard. I carried her with me from place to place as she wanted to stay close.

On July 3rd, I made the hard decision & called the vet. They couldn't take us til the 5th, but she was so weak I wasn't sure she would make it through the holiday. On July 5th, she was able to walk outside on her own in the morning, then lay in her bed dozing in the sun & watching me work. At Noon, I drove to the vet & carried her inside in her bed. The vet thought she was comatose but was surprised when Cher stirred and ate a treat when offered one. I sat on the floor next to Cher, then she raised her head & rested it in my lap. I pet her one more time, then she licked my hand & wagged her tail when I offered one of her favorite treats I had brought along for this moment. The vet gave her the shot & she drifted off... Goodbye sweet Cher.... I buried her near the big Fir tree in front of our Olympia home.

I'm posting pictures of Sunny and our new pup, Peaches, along with some good shots of Cher, both healthy & when she was thin. The shot near the top, of Sunny & Cher all wet, was taken in August 2006 a year after she lost all the weight. They had just returned from chasing a coyote through the swamp. It was very hot & they were covered with mud so I had to hose them down. They were quite a pair, never let the local coyotes to hang around our property. Cher grew up with our big tabby cat & for many years they slept together and hunted mice & birds in the meadow next door. I had never known a dog & cat to get along so well, they even groomed each other.

The Ugly:
The moving company underestimated the size of our move and came with a truck that was to small. When the truck was full, they just closed the doors & drove off leaving us with a room full of stuff. We got them to reroute another truck that was in the area to load the last of our goods. We finally received that load 2 weeks later.

We suffered through a cumbersome permit process & a failed attempt to make us double pay the roads, parks & sewer fees we had previously paid last year when we brought City water & sewer to the property.

The County required us to "engineer" our plans before they would start their review process. This meant paying a structural engineer to calculate the loads for all the walls and trusses then turning in the reams of calculations for review. The only change required was to reduce a triple french door to a double, which lengthened that wall by three feet, plus some of the footings had to be larger. The City Planning receptionist says our plans are approved now, but have a note that permits can't issue until "street improvements are complete". No one in authority was there to give me any details so tomorrow I will find out what the problem is.