July 2026 Island Trip – Day 5

It was another day of doing all the things. Laundry took some management. The washer/dryer is teeny (an RV model that lives in the lower barn). It takes an hour to run a wash load. For various reasons, not all of them clothing, I had four loads. And twice the washer didn’t start when I thought I had pushed its buttons in the right order 🙄 😂. Meanwhile there’s a small drip where I have a hose attached at the well’s pressure tank to feed water to the washer. Let’s just say the pump room floor is getting cleaner over time 😏. A side note: I used the last of my mom’s laundry detergent today. It was a wistful moment.

The plum tree is electrically protected! Being only the second time I’ve set this up on my own, there was more than one stroll back to the upper barn, and then trailer to read up… Our AN helped me with the setup the first year. Once finished, I used the tester and the fence will zap anything that tries to get near the trunk ⚡️.

We had a lovely sushi dinner in town with our neighbor to the east. As we concluded our meal, we asked if we could treat her for her birthday, which is next week. She was very touched and after exclaiming, “How did you know it was gonna be my birthday??” said, “Yes.” In the aftermath of losing her sister, one of her insecurities is wondering who, aside from her children, will remember her birthday 😢. I showed her my Google Calendar. I will never forget.

Before heading out to dinner both Tim and his DIL were texting me!! She wanted my recipe for cooking black cod, and he wanted to have some phone time. I sent my simple cooking directions to Tracy, and told Tim I’d ping him when we got home from dinner. He sounds really good. Not 100%, but sooooo much better. Tracy’s dinner was the first meal he’s really filled up on in a week and a half, and he expressed how good that felt. He told me about his doctor’s appt today and how impressed he was with the doc (a full time practitioner on the Island rather than someone who spends a day a week here). He’s feeling positive about establishing a relationship with this doc. He also mentioned again spending more time here than down south. This makes sense, even though ‘here’ is an Island, because his family is close, and his place down south is in a National Monument, managed by the National Park Service. To explain the challenges behind this living arrangement would take its own blog, of which there are a few!