Life is Good

Well, well, well. Greetings and salutations by friends. I’m usually a pretty happy camper, but right now I am unusually happy. Why, you might ask? Well it is a combination of factors. One factor is that we are currently in one of my favorite times of the year. Smack dab in the middle of autumn. The leaves are peaking in color, the days are cool, the nights are crisp and the skies are a special shade of blue. Gone is the atmospheric humidity that causes the sky to be a less vibrant color of blue in the summer time.

Secondly, all of the Dee’s are gradually starting to feel like the new home is our home. I think we all needed some time to make the adjustment. I know I still don’t feel like it is 100 percent our home, but certainly higher than it was just a few weeks ago. We still have quite a bit of decorating to do, things like pictures other items that will sit on tables and other pieces of furniture. Hard to believe in a little over a month, we will be getting ready to decorate it for the holiday season!

The final, but not the smallest reason why I am in particularly good spirits is that I am free from the neck brace I had to wear for the past 4 weeks. I never complained about having to wear it, as it was a small burden to have to bear, compared to what could have been the case. I met several persons who said they had to wear theirs for many months. There is also the possibility that I could have needed surgery and worn a “crown”, the device where bolts go into your skull to keep the neck stabilized, of course there was also the possibility that I could have bought the farm, so to speak.  

I will say that the brace was not too much of a deal for me. The biggest downside was that I could not drive, so I always need to have someone drive me to things I needed to go to. I could also tell that I was not getting as restful a sleep at night that I was accustomed to. I did sleep, but I felt tired when waking up and many days could not shake the tiredness I had when I started the day. Friday was my first night without the brace and I awoke on Saturday to feel quite rested and felt pretty good the entire day.

So I don’t have a ton of stories to tell or pictures to share, as I laid pretty low the past few weeks. I can say that the colors between Houghton and Jake are not quite yet at full peak. They are getting closer and closer to it and my guess would be in another 2-4 days they will be. Here is a shot of Jacobsville Road a few miles from our house. I did swing by White City Beach to snap a picture of the lower entry light, the blue skies and shimmering surface of Lake Superior. The crazy days of summer have gone and taken the sun worshipers and swimmers with them. The beach is largely quiet now and will remain that way until the warm temps and summer break comes next year.

We have not yet had any snow fall up here, but there was a pretty good hailstorm in Calumet Thursday afternoon. Enough to sprinkle the ground in white. I also do not see any snow in our forecast, which is all fine by me. Snow in October is pretty useless, does not last and can also be followed by a less than average snowier winter. It can also be a real pain in the rear to try and get the before-winter chores done!

We did have some kind of frozen precip fall last night. Nora snapped this shot of the top of our grill, with some frozen pellets on it. So I would suspect that we had some ice pellets fall overnight. There were some lake effect rain showers that happened in the central UP yesterday, plus our overnight low temp was 33 degrees.

It was a pretty healthy apple crop down here in Jake. I cannot say how it was in other areas, but we also have quite a few still hanging in the trees. I wish that such occurrences foretold a snowy winter, but I have never observed that connection to play out. We also have our golden raspberries ripening up. They are just amazingly good. They taste like raspberry sugar cubes. There are several varieties in the patch. One ripens in late August and early September, another a few weeks later and the final one here in the early to middle part of October. They seem to be unaffected by cold temps, as the the leaves remain green and the fruit ripens even after a hard freeze. It’s a nice ritual to stop and eat a few right off the vine when traveling to and from the the shop and house. We are not the only ones that are enjoying them!

So that covers it for this one. Hope you all have a wonderful next week or two, or three as might be the case!

Good Night From the Keweenaw..
JD   

 

Luck

It’s funny, I was planning to write a few weeks ago and use the same title, but for a totally different topic. I honestly do not remember the topic, but I can say it did not have the significance that I’m now using it. As most of you probably heard, I was involved in a little mishalf on Sept 9th. While cutting the grass, I had a pretty good sized tree limb come down and whack me in the head.

It knocked me out for just a second or two and then I rejoined reality. After that it took me another second or two to figure out what had happened. Once that happened, I could feel blood running down the back of my head and back. I was actually a bit trapped underneath the tree. The first conscience thing I did was to get my phone out of my pocket and dial Tim, my friend and neighbor. Nora was actually in town and it would have taken her around thirty minutes to get home.

So I called Tim, explained what had happened, he said he would be right over. I then somehow managed to get the limb off of me and the lawn mower, I went into the shop and grabbed some paper towels to hold against the wound in the back of my head to stop the bleeding. Tim arrived in a few minutes. I pulled the paper towels off the wound and asked him if I needed to go in and have it taken care of. Upon seeing the wound, Tim’s face turned white and he immediately said, get into the f!#&@ng car. 

We got to the hospital in good time where Nora was waiting for us. I got checked in, they put staples in my scalp, there were quite a few as the dr had said the wound was 7cm long. After that, the got me in a room, got an IV setup and then it was off to radiology to get a cat scan done.

Upon getting the results back, it showed I had a small brain bleed. I have to take a blood thinner because of the mechanical valves and somehow my blood was extremely thin. So they gave me some medicine to thicken the blood and then sent me on my way to the hospital in Marquette, which was the closest hospital with a neuroscience staff.

Enroute to MQT, we got a call that said that the CT scan had also revealed I had fractured my C7 vertebrae. So the medic in the ambulance put me in a neck collar and we continued on. Once in MQT, the did another CT scan, which showed that the brain bleed had not gotten any worse, which was wonderful, as had it gotten worse, then I likely would have needed to have surgery up there. The fracture of my neck also looked pretty stable, so no surgery would be needed for that.

The next day, they repeated the CT scan to see if there was any more bleeding and there was none. So it looked pretty good that I had avoided two life threating injuries, All that was left to do was to remain in MQT for observation and also work go get my blooding thinning to the range I’m suppose to. On Friday morning I was able to head home. Somewhere in my encounters of the different medical professionals, someone said something like “it looks like the tree won the battle”, to which I replied, the tree may have one the battle, but it lost the war and showed them this picture.

On Tuesday the 19th, I went to my primary care Dr to have the stitches removed and while there, they noticed that my heart rate was high and blood pressure low. They did an EKG, which showed something was out of whack. It was not life threatening, but I would need to go back to Marquette to have things checked out. My primary care Dr had thought that based on the EKG done in her office, it was my pacemaker that was out of whack.

The folks in Marquette also believed that it was my pacemaker and something called Pacemaker Mediated Tachycardia, or PMT. I’m not going to get into the details, you all can google it if you are interested. The bottom line is that they were able to make adjustments to my pacemaker which solved the problem. So we were able to get home Wednesday evening and all has been well since then. 

So to the luck thing…I know opinions will vary, but I’m not a strong believer in luck, especially the bad kind. In fact, I think there is no such thing as bad luck. I know bad thing happen to good people and it can be hard to find the reason, however, I really don’t look for the negatives in my life. Take this latest case…basically out of nowhere, a tree limb falls on my head and causes me to be in the hospital for almost a week.

Not once did ever think: Oh poor me. Why did this happen? What did I do to deserve this? I have been grateful for all of the help I got from the healthcare professionals, the fact that it could have been much worse, but wasn’t and grateful to be married to such a wonderful woman that has helped me get through this incident and all of those in the past.

I’m also grateful to the friends and family who have come to my rescue and have helped me get the chores done before winter sets in. Here is a shot of Nora’s brother, Joel, and my neighbor/buddy Tim reattaching the ramp to our outdoor shed.

The contractor who built out new home got wind of the fact that Joel, Tim and I were going to be putting up the screens in the back porch and said that they would come down and take care of it for me. So two of their crew arrived yesterday and got all the screens in and today they returned to put the door in and also put trim and siding up.

There are many other things in this latest adventure that I am grateful for, but will save you from any further expounding on them except for one… 

The weather this month has been absolutely wonderful. Very little rain, lots of sunshine and temps in the upper 60’s to low 70’s for highs, with lows in the mid 50’s. The autumn color show is just getting underway in most of the Keweenaw. On our trip to Marquette last week, Nora and I did notice that the higher elevations between L’Anse and Marquette had quite a bit of color in them, with most other areas just some splashes. We have some those splashes right here in our own backyard.

Both Nora and I are looking forward to this winter and being able to sit by the fire and take it all in. The forecast looks to keep our beautiful weather going for at least another week to ten days, which should make for some awesome colors. I will try my best to keep you all informed on things. Until next time…

Good Night from the Keweenaw..
JD

 

A New Chapter

I think all of our lives are like a book. The main character is obviously us. Within the book are chapters, each almost always starting with a change and also ending just before the change happens. Some books might have many chapters, others few. I believe I would easily be into the double digits in my life story so far. I also believe that a new chapter would just be starting.

For you regular readers, the reason for the new chapter is probably quite obvious, but for anyone still wondering, I can say that the new chapter comes the result of the Dee Family moving into their new home. Yes, after all the writing about it in the past eight months, the building next to the shop has become our home!

We officially moved in last weekend. I finished the required cabinets early in the week and then got the closet rods/shelves put up at the middle of the week and the electrician was able to get most of the rest of his duties done. So we started moving in later on Friday and the main move was done on Saturday, with a few things finished up on Sunday.

There is still quite bit of work to be done, as you will see in the following pictures. We have not put up and pictures on the walls or other decorations in the new house. Nora wants to spend some time in the new space before she decides what goes where. I still have the upper cabinets to build, along with the cabinets that will serve as the island. Here is the look of the kitchen on move-in day and here it is after I added the temporary island.

Adjacent to the kitchin is the living room. Right now, I think this room seems to be the most “naked”, meaning in need of some artwork on the walls and a few things elsewhere. We do intend to put a cross I built for the brick above the fireplace in the Mohawk house in the same spot here, we just do not know if we want to put a mantel up or not and the mantel decision impacts where the cross would go.

Returning to the book/chapter theme, it seems like I can point to a moment or two that really stand out at the beginning of each chapter. The chapter that would be about me moving up here has me remembering the first morning, I fed the dogs and went to let them out. When I opened the door, I was met with crisp temps and the boldest smell of pine. I remember thinking how wonderful that all was and then thinking that this was how my mornings would go for the rest of my life! No more constant hum of traffic, no more sirens and the fresh air, oh that wonderful fresh air!

In this latest chapter, I would have to say that the current moment of memory happened on the Sunday we moved in. Most of the required items were brought over from the apartment and put in their place, including our bed. It was mid-afternoon and I felt like I wanted to take it easy for a bit, so I hopped up onto the bed and gazed out the windows, enjoying the beauty and feeling so fortunate to have so many blessings bestowed upon me so that I could be lying in that bed, in our new house in such a beautiful spot. I guess only time will tell if that is the memory that anchors this chapter or not, but I sure do look forward to the rest of the chapter!

One thing we did not do before we moved in was to put up fencing in the backyard to keep the dogs from roaming off. However, we did not wait too long to do that. I believe it was Tuesday that my buddy, Grace and I managed to get the backyard fenced in. It’s funny how such a simple thing can make life so much easier. Now, instead of having to hook the dogs to a leash and walk them out there, we just open a door and let them out like we have done for all the years leading up to this.

So the chapter has changed, but the book is still being written. Our weather has been a bit of a roller coaster lately. Last Sunday, most of the UP saw temps in the 30’s, with many stations getting to or even a bit below freezing. The Baraga Plains was the coldest with a 27! This weekend was a totally different story, after missing out on many of the severe heat events that impacted the rest of the Midwest, we finally joined in on all the fun. We were in the upper 80’s on Saturday, 90 on Sunday and today’s high was 88. Tomorrow is supposed to be the hottest of all the days in this event and we are supposed to get to 91 or even warmer. The a cold front and weak low will be sweeping through tomorrow night, bringing us some rain followed by much cooler temps for the rest of the week.

I have to say that even though the Keweenaw did not have too much severe heat and that I spent a good chunk of the summer in the shop, I am ready for that early autumn weather to kick in. The conditions at the beginning of this week were a nice reminder of how beautiful the month of September is up here.

So I have one last day of severe heat to deal with and then my favorite kind of weather looks to move in for at least a while. However, during this current event, I made like the saying goes, when given lemons, make lemonade! Yep that’s right, it has been several years at least, but I did find my way into Lake Superior for a full dunk this afternoon. Might even repeat the process tomorrow afternoon!

Good Night From the Keweenaw..
JD

 

Eye on the Prize

Sheesh, seems like it’s only been a week since I last wrote. I guess time flies when you’re having fun! Seriously, this summer has just flown by- faster than any I can remember. Hard to believe we are inside of 2 weeks before Labor Day. 

We have been having some delightful weather since I last wrote. Most days have been sunny and in the 70’s, with a few in the low 80’s. The humidity has behaved itself most days as well. I guess the only complaint I have regarding the weather is that I have not been able to enjoy it as much as I would like to. There have been days where 5 pm rolls around and I have not even been outside! I have been in the shop all day, working on the kitchen cabinets.

Truth be told, I usually can only work around 3-4 hours a day on them and then run out of steam. So I kind of have developed a groove to the day. Wake up by 8, have breakfast and then be a bum for around an hour, take a shower and then go down into the woodshop and put in an hour or two. Then it is back up to the apartment for lunch and then back down into the shop for a few more hours. The evenings are spent chilling with Nora and/or watching a movie with Grace. Plus there are days where I have to go to town and do not get to work on the cabinets at all. 

It’s been a battle of wits to not get stressed by the slow progress of the cabinets. If I were in 100% health, they most likely would have been done a month or more ago, but the reality is, I can only do so much at this moment. I am getting better at just walking away when my body and brain begin to tire, it just can be frustrating sometimes.

The good news is that I am very close to having all of the base cabinets along the walls done. There are already 3 of them over at the house, in place. That allowed the plumbers to hook up the kitchen sink and dishwasher. The other two I am currently working on go on either side of the range. Each has 6 drawers in them, so that is 12 drawers total. Yesterday, as I was putting the actual drawer boxes together, I figured out that there was a total of 120 parts for all of those drawers, that does not include the drawer slides, just the boxes and fronts. I have no pictures of them or the others that are at the house already, but will be sure to take some shots for the next entry.   

The rest of the house is almost ready for move-in as well. The plumbers just need to install the utility sink in the laundry room, as well as to bring in the fridge-freezer and hook the water line to it. There is electrical work to be done. Several lights still need to be installed, as well as some switches. They also need to move the standby generator from the shop to the house and hook it up. We did get the power hooked up to the house around 2 weeks ago, so gone are the days of using extension cords from the temporary power pedestal. 

We also got the main delivery of furniture around 2 weeks ago. Grace has been busy putting the smaller things together and is doing a great job! Here is a shot of her desk in her room. Here she is joined by a friend in the assembly of something for her room. I think that was actually a hammock! Her room is so large, it can have a hammock without crowding things! She deserves it though, as she has not had a real bedroom since 2019.

So, it is looking likely that we could be moving in sometime late this coming week or weekend. Besides the two cabinets I need to finish, I also need to put up some closet rods and shelving in the master closet, as well as Grace’s closets. I also need to put up some shelving in the pantry, but all of those tasks can get done in a days work, even one of my days of work!

While I have used the phrase “I did…” I would be a real jerk not to recognize all the work that Nora and Grace have been doing. In addition to assembling the pieces of furniture that came via UPS/FedEx, they also completed the monumental job of emptying out the shipping container that held all the stuff that is to make the move from the old home to the new. I am also so grateful to the neight bors that have helped me with different tasks. A week ago, two of them, along with one of Nora’s brothers moved some of the larger/heavier things that were in the shipping container into the house. 

This whole building process has really shown me just how blessed my life is. While Nora and I have had some disagreements in the process, the vast majority of things have gone without any friction at all. We are fortunate to have very similar tastes in things. I have nothing but praise for our contractors. They did an amazing job of things and rolled with any of the changes we made along the way. It’s a beautiful house, inside and out. Jake is really a special place, with very special people living in it. Grace is just an amazing daughter. Just thinking of her can bring tears of joy to my face. She is growing up so fast. We all attended a wedding last weekend and she looked so grown up dancing with others on the dance floor. I used to think that when it was time for her to go off to college, I would be just fine with it, but she is now 4 years away and I know they will absolutely fly by and I will be a puddle when she goes off to a university. Just another reason to live each and every second like it is your last. Take nothing for granted and appreciate everything, even the challenges that life throws at you.

Good Night From the Keweenaw..
JD

The Home Stretch

No pun intended, but I can finally say that we are on the home stretch regarding the new home. It started about a year ago, with drawing up the first set of plans. They were 100% freelanced by yours truly. When they were taken to the builder for a review and estimate, the weaknesses of my architectural skills came to light. The main issue being the design of the roof structures. What I thought would be something simple for a truss manufacturer to do turned out to not be true. There were also a few other things I had drawn that caused the idea to be over budget. So Nora and I started looking at designs on the internet and found one we both loved. There were a few changes made to it, but nothing too major.

Ground was officially broken in October, with the foundation completed before deer season. Then things sat for a planned waiting period for the concrete to cure and for the holidays to pass and the crew returned to start the framing soon after the first of the year. If you have been following long, you know that the framing and weathering-in of the place went smoothly and quickly. The progress in the past month or two has been slower, but it was ok with Nora and I, as I had the kitchen cabinets to do and we had lights, plumbing and furniture to pick out.

Well, I can report that the wall of base cabinets that will include the kitchen sink, dishwasher and fridge/freezer is just about done. The cabinet that will have the sink on it needs to have the doors (already made) installed and then all of those cabinets need the finish put on them. However, the finish could almost not be easier. There is a fairly new product out there called Rubio Monocoat that can stain and seal in one simple coating. It can be applied by brush, rag or even things like a squeegee if you are doing a big surface such as a floor. Just apply it, wait a few minutes and wipe any excess off. It cures 80% in 24 hours and takes about a week to fully cure. I have already tested it out on a scrap of the cherry I am using for the cabinets and it was a breeze to apply and looks awesome.

The base cabinets for the wall that has the range on it are built and most of the drawer slides have been mounted, which leaves me to have to build the drawers and then the drawer fronts and door frames and finish them. The uppers will go fairly quickly, as they will just be the cabinet boxes, face frames and doors. Nora has said that we can move into the house once all the base cabinets along the walls are done, so that could very well be next week sometime. Here is a shot of one of the cabinets completed, with just the finish needed. The scrap of wood that I tested th Rubio on is leaning against it on the bottom left.

Grace and Nora have been busy assembling some of the new furniture, things like tables, chairs, etc… Grace is actually doing most of that assembly work because she loves to do it and is also very good at it. Plus Nora has to work during the summer too, so is not around as much. Today, Nora started to empty the big shipping container that we were able to use to store a lot of things that were in the old place and will be going into the new and this Thursday the shipment of the big furniture pieces is arriving and will be installed by the furniture company. So a week from now, we should literally be within spitting distance of the finish line for moving in. There will still be quite a bit of work that will need to be done once we are moved in, but it will be so wonderful to be living in the new digs. We all feel so blessed to have been able to do this project and it really could not have gone much smoother…except for me spending all of last September in the hospital while Nora and Grace pretty much emptied the old house and filled up the shipping container.

If we do get moved into the new place sometime next week, we will not be in it too long before we have to go out of town. We are all going to the Mayo Clinic so that I can have a cardio MEMS put in on August 15th. It’s a device that measures the pressures in my pulmonary artery. They install it much like a stent and is done on an outpatient basis. It will give my cardiologist some great data to help with improving my heart failure. Since it takes less than a half hour to do, our plan is to come home the day I have it put in.

There really has not been too much more going on up here. The weather has been nearly ideal, with highs in the 70’s and some low 80’s and comfortable humidity. This past Thursday we did hit 89 degrees with a dewpoint of 75, but I barely noticed, spending the whole day in the shop!

We have also gotten enough rain to let the grass seed fill in nicely. Here is a shot of the yard behind the shop, taken a few days ago and here is a shot of the front yard of the house, taken this afternoon after I cut it for the first time. Still needs to fill in a bit and the straw needs to decompose, but seeing as though it was planted just a few weeks ago, I could not ask for more.

I think that about covers it for this one, I will try my best to write next weekend and share with you the progress on the house. Thanks for stopping by and…

Good Night From the Keweenaw..
JD