The View from the Outhouse
Good morning friends, from Silty Slough. Amazing what no communication from the outside world is like. Now I know how Gilligan felt on the island. I’m a day ahead on writing my post. First time ever. I hope everyone is ok. A few airplanes flew by Sunday, so I figure the Russians haven’t attacked or anything. I think the airplanes may have been at the Skwentna Pumpkin Drop. On their way they, could have practiced here at Silty Slough by dropping a KFC chicken sandwich and a root beer float to me.
The indoor toilet is awesome. I don’t think the boys like it since I don’t go outside as much. I liked it so well and decided it was such a convenience that I installed the other one on the main floor in the half bath. Now it is really nice I don’t even have to go downstairs when nature calls. If anyone is thinking about coming for a visit you may want to pack a long raincoat in case you need to use the bathroom. The walls are just studs right now. When Kari gets home we are going to start the sheetrock and tile. For now it is just me and the dogs and cats, they don’t mind. I can’t wait to get the shower tiled. No more showering over the garage drain from a shower head that I plumbed into the ceiling.
We have all kinds of food out here. Kari’s trip to Michigan was unplanned and just popped up. We had already stocked up for both of us to make it through freeze up on a previous boat trip. Now it is just me so the menu choices are what is going to spoil first. I spent an extra week in town, so when I got here I had 6 dozen eggs, lettuce, celery, 3 pounds of carrots, 6 avocados, 2 pounds of cherries, and a container of blueberries that needed to be eaten post haste. Today I have 18 boiled eggs and 25 uncooked eggs left. The boys have been helping me by having their eggs for breakfast. I have polished off the cherries and the blueberries will be gone tomorrow. The celery is gone. A lot of carrots are gone. I grilled a ribeye the other night and had a Caesar salad with it to use some of the lettuce and have been eating the fresh tomatoes from the greenhouse. I had leftover steak so I had steak and eggs for breakfast the next morning. Two nights I had a bowl of vegetable curry with nan bread. One night I had a fillet of cod sandwich with lettuce and tartar sauce. I’ve been getting along pretty good with no chance of starving in the near future. Right now I have a surplus of sour cream so I froze two containers.
I’m still jumping through hoops to get my FAA medical back after my heart surgery. The surgeon that rebuilt my heart included in his post op report that I had been previously diagnosed with cancer, asthma, and arthritis. Never had any of these. He must have cut and pasted from someone else’s report. Would be an easy fix but he has retired and closed his practice. So I guess my heart warranty is no longer valid. He also reported that I had a couple episodes of A-fib when they were taking me off the pump and getting my heart cranking again. Must be like when you rebuild an engine and it misfires a couple times the first time you start it up until everything gets straightened out. Guess what, the FAA has me wearing a heart monitor for 30 days to make sure I’m not misfiring. This is all good but the monitor reports back to my doctor via a cell phone that they gave me. Well I guess they didn’t give it to me, I’m sure it is in the price of the test. They did mention that if I lost or damaged any of the equipment it would be $2400. Sounds good but when you live past the end of the road the wicket gets to be a bit sticky. The monitor is taped to a shaved patch on my chest and reports to their cell phone via blue tooth then sends the data via AT&T. Except AT&T doesn’t work out here. So I have to create a hot spot on my cell phone and WiFi the data from their phone to mine and then to the tower via Verizon. My Carhart bibs are full of phones, chargers, and monitors. So with the cell tower inop now, the folks monitoring aren’t getting a report of my heartbeats and they can’t contact me by phone. They probably think I died and they won’t get their money or the $2400 of equipment back. I expect a chopper to land in the slough at any time to check on their equipment. If they do I hope they bring the cell tower repair man along. It’s only another 15 miles to the site. At least I’ll have them carry a few dozen armloads of wood up the stairs like I have been doing, so I can check their hearts out. I wish I could contact them ahead of time so they could bring me my KFC chicken sandwich and root beer float.
It snowed about 5 inches last night and was warmer this morning about 25 degrees. The wood stove is keeping me and the boys warm without using any propane yet. I have been keeping a tea pot on it so I can have afternoon tea and crumpets while watching for the helicopter.
I have quite a slug of data to upload when the cell gets fixed. 3 Views from the Outhouse and over a weeks worth of heartbeats. Hope it doesn’t overload the system and break it again.
Standing by in Silty Slough waiting for “Verizon LTE” to pop up on my phone. I wish you well my friends.
Thank you Lord for watching over us.
I’ll be in touch.
Blue skies!!!
This and all previous posts are at www.siltyslough.com
The View from the Outhouse 