Washington - Days 2 - 4 - in the Castle Rock campground

Longview North/Mt. St. Helens KOA, Castle Rock
Thursday, 2 through Saturday, 4 June 2022

For these 3 days we had mostly forms of rain.  A heavy mist early Thursday, followed by a combo of hot sun and spitting rain; sprinkles on our first walk Friday, followed by full rain off and on for the day; rain on Saturday morning, followed by rain off and on the rest of the day.  Welcome to Western Washington.  Though June is usually one of the best months of the year to be here - so maybe this will just be a transition from May's springtime to June's summer.

Even though I was only 1 space away from the office, I couldn't pick up the campground's internet signal and my own hot spot had a really lousy connection.  I had to wait nearly an hour just to get connected to my email program.  I had to wait nearly an hour to upload photos of The Sisters in Oregon.  I don't even know how long it took to upload my videos at Crater Lake.

I finally started to multi-task: at the same time making reservations for campgrounds in the next week, working on 4 blog posts at once because of having to wait for photos to upload, trying to find campgrounds in Florida at Christmas - like that.  I had a fleeting thought that maybe I was making it be slower because of telling it to do several things at once, but then realized I was doing it because it was excruciatingly slow even when I was doing only one thing at once.  This way I was saved from complete frustration because of being able to avert my eyes when it showed progress uploading a photo, only to backtrack to the beginning of the process part way through.  And then it developed this weird quirk where I'd be waiting for something - say, the blog - and suddenly all the icons pinned to the task bar disappeared and the cursor and everything was frozen and all I could do was wait until it sorted itself out.  That stopped the multi-tasking, which increased my frustration level, but luckily it didn't do that all the time.

In between I took Dext out for walks and tried to give him extra attention.  When the vet was working on Gracie, she was lying in the middle of the floor and neither Dext nor Lily were paying much attention.  But it's obvious Gracie's gone.  I spent a lot of time during this period trying to get used to her not being with us any more.  I've developed so many habits to accommodate her quirks and now feel like it would be disloyal to change them.  Maybe over time, but certainly not right away.

On Friday, my nice campsite with a semi-view down the mountains got blocked in.  On the view side, recently-arrived campers parked an enormous yellow Penske rental truck that completely blocked my view.  On the uphill side, a young couple with 2 little kids moved in with a soft-sided pop-up camper.  That meant there was no impediment at all to my hearing the screams and shrieks the younger child was making most of the time.  I started wondering what shape his throat and vocal chords were in.  He shrieked when he was having fun and screamed when he was upset - and he was one or the other far more than 50% of the time.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out why his parents put up with it - I know mine sure wouldn't.  Only once - when the kid was doing a normal scream but I could hear he was stoking himself up to a full-on screaming temper tantrum - and just before he got started, I heard the father say calmly, "Leslie, stop it."  And he did.  So if that's all it takes to stop the screams, then why oh why do they put up with them.

On the night of June 1st, I'd intended to do a sort of celebration of life for my mom and my dad and my sister.  I'd bought some fake California champagne (because I couldn't find any of the real thing from France) and some cooked shrimp with cocktail sauce.  But of course that was the night Gracie died and I wasn't quite ready to celebrate anything afterwards.  But a day or two later, I did do it, adding my sweet puppy dog to the list. 

All 4 of them died within about a week of each other (though thank goodness not in the same year) - from my Momma on May 27th to Gracie on June 1st to my sister Louise on June 3rd to my Daddy on June 4th.  I've told David he absolutely has to die in November or sometime completely different or I'll be afraid to leave my bed for that week each year.  I've been so lucky to have a wonderful family, and I've learned so much from each of them.  Funny thing about families - we carry them with us forever, and it's just the luck of the draw if it's good people that you get to carry with you.  I've always believed myself to be lucky.