Jonas, Our Funny Black Cat

About six months ago we started to notice Jonas aging really bad.  It got worse every month.  He got very needy and when mom and dad were gone on their trip to Arizona I had to go over there and make sure he had food and water and he sat with me for about an hour in front of the pellet stove.  He was happy.

Grammie gave Erika some money during her junior year of High School back in 2005 to get a cat from the pet store.  She brought home a long haired black kitten.  His pet store name was Nimbus but Erika changed his name to Jonas, named after the character off of Stargate SG-1.  She took the cat everywhere.  He would sit on top of her shoulders while she walked around, he was a very snuggly cat.  He played in his cat box, only when it was free from turds.  He was a hilarious little cat.

As he got older, he enjoyed going outside and killing small animals.  They were mostly mice but a few times they weren't.  One time he brought in a snake and another time he brought us a baby rabbit.  That was the first time I've ever heard a baby rabbit scream.  It was awful but he wouldn't let me close enough to take it away.  Even if I did, I wouldn't know where to take it back to so I just let him be.

He loved boxes.  He would go inside them and be crazy.  We even got him to run and slide into it.  It was hilarious.  He wasn't too fond of plastic bags but he did like paper bags.

Erika went to college and left Jonas to mom and dad while she was gone.  She got Harvey summer of 2007 and took him to college with her for a year.  He ended up at mom and dad's house when she moved to Colorado and eventually into the Army for a few years.

He was very curious when we brought home baby chickens and ducks for the first time and we had to keep them in the bathroom to stay warm before they could go outside.  When mom got Todd, summer of 2006 the dynamics changed.  Jonas didn't like Todd very much and they kept their distance most of the time.  There were a few times where we heard fighting in the hallway a few times a week.  When Harvey came it was even crazier.  Jonas and Harvey teamed up to beat up Todd.  I had to come home with my cats, Steve and Calvin and all of them ganged up on Todd to beat him up.  There was something about Todd that these cats didn't like.

Jonas was a very cuddly cat at loved sitting with people.  He got more cuddly as he got older.  He always wanted to sit with someone.

Then May 2019 rolled up.  The past few May's have not been good to us and this year we were not spared.  Jonas was getting frail and started to squeak when he meowed.  I texted mom late that morning asking her how Jonas was doing.  She replied with still fighting.  I wrote, wow, what a hardcore cat and is someone with him or is he by himself?  She said, by himself.  I was sad the rest of the day thinking about Jonas and all the times we had with him.  Dad texted me about an hour before mom did telling us that Jonas danced off into the cat sunset.

Mom texted me a little bit before 7 that evening saying that Jonas left us this afternoon, sad day.  I already knew because dad texted me.  I knew before she did.  I cried again.  Jonas was a part of our family for 15 years.  We had just lost Harvey July of 2017 due to a careless neighbor leaving antifreeze out in their yard.  It will never be the same without them.

Jonas will always be the strangest, nicest cat we've ever had.  I will miss him.

Next Adventure:  Winlock Egg Days

Moving Day

I chose to move during Memorial Day weekend because it would allow us to have a long weekend to disassemble, move, reassemble everything and have a day to rest a little.  We got most of the smallish stuff over in our cars but we needed some help transporting TV's, furniture, tables, chairs, beds, desks, the fridge and other large items.  Ben called Josh and he agreed to help with his truck.  I called Dad to see if he would help us out with his trailer just in case it rained.  I was hoping it wouldn't but you just never know.  Doug and Jenn also came over to help us move.  I talked Grandma into coming over just to get her out of the house.  I didn't expect her to do too much so I let her help out with whatever she could help us with.  I really didn't want her to lift anything heavy.

I told everyone to come over around 10ish.  That gave everyone some time to get up, get ready, eat breakfast and head on over.  We really didn't have a lot of the large furniture apart because we slept in the bed the night before.  Ben and Josh spent some time taking the bed apart.  I took the wood planks off the shelves down, we cleaned out the fridge and put the food into the extra coolers, took the couch apart, took the drawers out of our dressers, the clothes out of the closets, the stuff out of the desk to put it into boxes so we could load the desk up and other miscellaneous stuff went into boxes.

It took most of the afternoon to make the trips over but luckily the trips weren't that far apart.  It started raining and I was upset.  Of course it would rain today while we were moving furniture.  It was so nice the rest of the week and it knew to rain today because we were moving.  Stupid weather!  Often, I really wonder why I stay here with this crappy Washington weather.  I do it for family because they will not be here forever.  I am enjoying the time while they are here with us.  We were still recovering from the huge loss we all suffered last summer.

On the last trip, I was so glad we were almost done, we got all the beds, the bed frames, mattresses and futon with some random things in the back of dad's trailer.  We got as much stuff crammed into the Escape, mom's Expedition, Doug and Jenn's car and Erika's car.  We had so much stuff between the three of us.  I knew sometime when I had some extra time, Erika and I, were going to go through some of the containers in the garage and weed out some stuff we don't use anymore.  We will see when that will happen though.

We unloaded everything and I just told everyone just to find a place and we will deal with it later.  The couch, dining room table, chairs were taking up almost the entire space in the living room.  All the paper boxes were put into one of the extra bedrooms and the bed parts got taken to the appropriate bedrooms.  I told Ben we needed to get the bed put together sometime today so we could sleep in it later that night.  I brought the cat over so he could get used to the house while we found something to eat.  We all decided on pizza.

I took everyone to Farelli's for a late lunch/early dinner to thank them for helping us today and it was the closest pizza place near the house.  We were seated at the largest booth and we ordered four pizzas, a few salads and some drinks.  I told Ben and Josh I would bring them some home.  They were home assembling the bed.  I got the bill and I spent over $100 on pizza.  Holy cow!  We took it back and gave Ben and Josh some pizza.  They got the bed frame up and all we had to do was put the mattress and all the bedding on it.  I thanked everyone again and everyone went home to rest.

Erika, Ben and I spent some time arranging the furniture so we could walk through the house.  Erika got her bed together and some of her stuff put away while Ben and I got the couch together, the table and chairs situated and some of the shelves inside the extra bedrooms.  We even got the drawers inside our dressers put away.  The drawers on the side of the bed were giving us trouble but with some perseverance we finally got everything to work.

I knew it would be a marathon finding a place to live, being accepted for the house, getting everything packed up, moved, asking for help from friends and family members and finding time to do all of this but we managed to do all of this in a month.  I was exhausted every night and could not wait for it to be done.  Now, we put stuff away and go through it as we do.  It will take a few months but it will eventually get done.  I hope the next time we move it will be into our own place.

Next Adventure:  Jonas, Our Funny Black Cat

Yelm Dental Night Out with the Tacoma Rainier's

Mom asked us a few weeks ago if we wanted to go to the Tacoma Rainier's game again with Yelm Dental.  I asked her what day it was going to be.  She said this time in May right before Memorial Day weekend.  I said sure, it's easy on a Friday night and we have a long weekend anyway.  I had planned on moving most of our large stuff that weekend anyway.  She asked me how many tickets I needed and I said just me and Ben.  Mom was in charge of the other tickets if she wanted to ask Erika, Zach, Doug, Jenn, Dad and Grandma to go.  She said she would get back to me after she figured everything out.  We found out that Dr. Smith and Dr. Blackner were in fact hosting another party deck for the office and their family and friends.  That meant we got free tickets, food and dessert.

Because it was Memorial Day weekend not a lot of people from the office were going to go so mom got most of their tickets.  We made a plan for mom, dad and Grandma Karen to meet us at our house so we could all carpool up together in mom's Expedition.  I took a few hours off of work so I didn't have to be rushed.  Erika and Zach, Doug and Jenn were going to meet us up there.  I got home from work and took my time getting ready.  Mom and everyone was suppose to be here by 4:30 and they weren't here yet so I texted mom, "it's 4:30, where are you?"  I wanted to get there early so we got an actual parking spot by the stadium.  Last year we had to park in the over flow park and ride spot and had to walk to the stadium.  I didn't mind the walk but I just didn't want to park there again.

They all finally got there and we headed out towards Tacoma hoping the traffic wasn't horrible since it was Friday afternoon and all.  Once we got on the freeway I was really surprised the traffic wasn't that bad.  It didn't take us very long to get there at all and we got to park in the lot next to the stadium.  Sadly, we had to pay to park but it was way better than parking at the over flow park and ride and walking.  We waited for Erika and Doug to get there so we could walk into the stadium together.  They were right behind us so we didn't have to wait that long.  Mom handed out the tickets and we went inside but wasn't sure where to go exactly.  We were playing the Fresno Grizzlies and the game started at 7.

Mom texted Amy and she said that we were in the party deck in right field this year.  We all used the restrooms and headed to right field.  We got wrist bands upon arrival and made our way into the Yelm Dental reserved area.  We were the first group of people there so we made ourselves comfortable.  Since it was still May and anything could happen I brought some warm clothes with me just in case it got cold.  We were near the Puget Sound so it was bound to happen once the sun went down.

Everyone started to arrive and I was surprised on who actually came.  I talked to Amy for a while even though her, Josh and my mom just got back from Ecuador not too long ago.  We talked to Dr. Smith and his family and Dr. Blackner and his family.  We also chatted with Kallie for a while.  Even Lisa and her husband Tony came to visit with us.  I chatted with her for a while.  In the meantime, we dished up food which was the same as last year, burgers, hotdogs, chips, macaroni salad, drinks and popsicles for dessert.  This time we had an open bar which was a mistake that we learned later on that night.

It got chilly so I added some clothes to my outfit.  Everyone who worked at Yelm Dental got a free hat with the suite that the doctor's paid for so they handed them out. Mom didn't want hers so she gave it to me to wear.  I rocked it the rest of the game as we snacked on chips and drinks.  We even got a foul ball that we had to work at with a rake to get it off the nets that kept the fans safe.  Jenn had way too much to drink and was heckling and wooing at the most inappropriate times and mom told Doug to take her home.  He obliged because you could tell he was somewhat embarrassed of her actions.  The game was almost over anyway.

We started out pretty good against the Grizzles.  We took a 1-0 lead in the first.  Then we had a rough time in the second and third when them being up 4-1 going into the fourth inning.  It was scoreless through the top of the seventh.  We showed a little bit of life in the bottom of the seventh when we hit a solo homerun into left field.  We started chipping away at their lead.  Then at the top of the eighth they hit a two-run homerun and it made the score 6-2.  At the bottom of the 8th we got two runs back which made the score 6-4 and that's where the score remained unfortunately.  We went to another losing game, bummer.

We watched the 15-20 minute firework show after the game as we walked to the parking lot.  We thanked the doctor's for their generosity before we left.

I told Erika we would meet her at home.  We all headed back towards I-5 from the stadium.  We got back to my house around 11ish.  I thanked mom for thinking of us for the tickets and she took Grandma and dad back home.  I hope they let us do this again next year.

Next Adventure:  Moving Day

Valley Cities GeoTour and AC/DC Cover Band

I've missed the last four Valley Cities GeoTour that our friends Annette and Pete (Peach&Pete) put on.  It used to be called the Auburn Geocaching Adventure starting in 2015 but she expanded it to include Auburn, Kent, Maple Valley and Renton, hence the Valley Cities and it was its first year as a GeoTour.  They worked really hard on it and even had several entities donate so they could purchase the coins, containers and raffle items.

A few weeks prior, the WSGA President, Chris (Mc3cats) asked if I could come up with some sort of social media to attach to this GeoTour and I said sure just give me the information and I will create it.  They gave me the email addresses and passwords they wanted me to use.  I created a Facebook and an Instagram account.  He sent me the information and a few pictures of what the coins would look like.  I got them all set up and added the information and photos to the sites.  I added a few people I knew who would be interested and just let people add themselves as it grew and grew.

The Friday before, Ben and I got our stuff ready so we could spend the night at his mom's house for the weekend.  We wanted to be somewhat close since we would have to get up early.  We headed over after we were done with work.  I wanted to grab a cache before we settled in and ate dinner.  The closest one we haven't found near his mom's house was Home of SRT548 (GC6ZPP8) which was generously stocked with inactivated pathtags, coins and other goodies.

We hit the jackpot.  I took a few so I could move them into my TB hotel.  We headed to his mom's house where we ate pizza, played a couple rounds of dice and chilled before bedtime.

The next day we got up early so we could get to Auburn before 8 a.m.  I struggle getting up early on the weekends but since it was for geocaching it made it easier.  We made our way to the Les Grove Community Park Center, for the Valley Cities GeoTour Kickoff Meet and Greet (GC861Z2), where we waited for people to arrive.  We got their so early we had to wait outside with all of the other early birds.  I started taking pictures and posting them to the Facebook and Instagram accounts.  I pretty much posted stuff as the day went on when I remembered to.

Annette spent some time explaining the rules and then we all received our passports and coordinates to the caches with some hints.  This was going to be difficult because we didn't have a general map of where the caches are approximately.  We were going to have to go blindly because we didn't have a GPS since we just used our phones.  Let's do it!

Ben and I got into the Escape and he drove while I navigated from cache to cache.  We figured there would be the FTF pirates out there so we calmly started in Renton, which was the furthest north of Auburn.  We would work our way back towards Auburn.  There was so much more traffic, traffic lights and driving than the TriCities Geocoin Challenge.  I was pretty sure we weren't going to finish and would have to do the rest of it the next day.  We were going to try our hardest to finish as soon as we could.  We did get lucky and had a nice sunny day for this adventure.  Sometimes May had rainy wet weather...it just depended on the year.

We couldn't believe it but doing Renton first definitely paid off! The three first caches we went to in Renton were FTF's.  Valley Cities 2019:  Cedar River Trail (GC87AAT), Valley Cities 2019:  Other Side of Renton Riparian (GC87252) and Valley Cities 2019: Black River History (GC87KVW).  We really didn't expect to see a blank log but we were very excited when we did!  I have never gotten a FTF during a GeoTour before so it was a big deal to me.  We drove to the next bunch of them.  Some were uneventful like pill bottles hidden inside trees or placed near some rocks.  There were some great views, bird houses, wooded trails and some shady forests.  We finished Renton as quickly as we could.  It took us a little less than three hours to complete one city.

The next city we hit up was Maple Valley.  We collectively decided to work our way south as we did these and Maple Valley was technically the next city south but it was more eastward of the three other cities.  We were told that one of the caches, Valley Cities 2019: Maple Valley 1 (GC87CM8) would require a UV light to find coordinates inside a small metal culvert.  I recognized some of the locations we went to so I kinda knew my way around a bit.  About eight years ago, Bob and I did a lot of caching in this area during the winter.  We probably found up to 200 caches the few times we came out here.  I noticed that some had been archived to make room for new ones and some of those places were for this GeoTour.  One of those places was the Maple Valley Museum, Valley Cities 2019: MV Historical Society (GC87B4G), which I've been to at least two other times to find caches.  There was another one, Elk Run Farm (GC87CQF) that you had to complete the circuit, which could take you a while) that would open up the container for you to sign.  It also paired as a TB hotel.  Maple Valley took us a little while because there was an active construction zone right in the worst part of town.  It took us another three hours to shimmy our way through town.

Kent was our next stop.  At this point it was getting pretty late in the day but we wanted to get as many as we could because we had to meet up with Ben's mom at 8, up at Purdy's Public House on the hill.  We were meeting her there to meet Ed, to eat dinner and to watch a AC/DC cover band.  Our goal was to finish all of Kent and get a few in Auburn before we met up with them.  The caches in Kent were very spread out.  We had to drive a lot to get to them.  Some were down trails, Valley Cities 2019: Soos Creek Trail (GC87DFB) where we took the time to walk, one was at the Library, Valley Cities 2019:  Kent Panther Lake Library (GC84ANT) (where we lost some time due to the bathroom), another was at the disco golf park, Valley Cities 2019:  Lake Fenwick Park Disc Golf (GC87H5Z), where we've found caches in the past and one was at a pit on the hill, Valley Cities 2019: A Pit and a Valley View (GC87DFJ) which we paired with a virtual cache, Johnson Pit No. 30 (GC7B6Y9) since we were there.  One of the last caches of Kent even took us to the new Dick's location where Ben and I considered buying some cheeseburgers but we didn't have enough change on us.

We hustled into Auburn and only managed to find 4 of the 10 on our list.  We would have to find the rest the next day.  We grabbed our first one near a neighborhood by the tennis courts, Valley Cities 2019:  Lea Hill Tennis Courts (GC87TT1) and finished at Valley Cities 2019:  Jacobsen Tree Farm (GC87D4J).  The others were at small parks and the containers were unremarkable.  We did chat with a cache couple who drove up from Oregon to do this GeoTour.  They were trying to finish all of them before making the long drive back down to Oregon.  We told them good luck!

We drove back to Bonney Lake and met Trish at the restaurant.  We sat down in the dining area and Ed joined us several minutes later.  We all ordered our food and drinks.  It was fun learning who this Ed person was that Trish was spending her time with.  We talked about an array of things, paid for our food and went over to the bar side of the restaurant to listen to the cover band.  Ben talked to the drummer for a while because the drummer thought he knew Ben.  We found some spots to sit and awaited our show.  The lead singer sounded just like the lead singer of AC/DC.  It was uncanny.  The guitarist was very animated and was a hoot to watch.  Looking around this cover band drew some interesting people.  I had fun people watching.  The drunk people who thought they were dancing were the best to watch.

We stayed for a couple hours and then I started to get tired.  It was time to go because we had to get up and finish the rest of Auburn and I wasn't sure how long that would take us.  Ben and I left and went back to his mom's house, I showered and we went to bed.

The next morning we got up around 9, ate a quick breakfast and headed out to the furthest cache in Auburn so we could work our way towards Bonney Lake.  We started at Valley Cities 2019:  Riverpoint "Marvelous" Mystery (GC86PBH) which I solved the night before.  We found it quickly but on our way out there was a free bike on the side of the road so we picked it up so Ben would have a bike.  It just needed a new tube.  The second cache, Valley Cities 2019:  That &@*$#^! Spoon Cache (GC87GKJ) which we have seen pictures of and heard the stories of its existence.  We were told that we would have to be very patient here because it would take some time to do and get the hang of.  It took us two tries to figure it out.  Once we did figure it out we got the container out quickly.  We may have been here for about 10 minutes.  It was a pretty cool cache with an awesome concept.  I hope to see more of these unique caches in the future.  We also took some time to take a picture of the new crow eating French fries statue in the park.

We didn't need to hit up the library in Auburn because we ran into Sean the day before and he gave us the code because the library wasn't going to be open the next day.  So we had the code for that one.  We drove up towards Ben's grandma's house were we have found a cache in that park once before.  They archived it and made room for the new Valley Cities 2019:  Shaughnessy Park (GC87MMT).  This park has always been creepy to me.  When we got there some lady was scolding her kid out in public.  The gist I got out of it was the kid got a girl pregnant and the mom was basically telling him to man up.  The kid had to have been at least 17 or 18.  The mom was brutal, it was necessary but wrong choice in venue to get your point across.  We found the cache as quick as we could.  We wanted out of there.

Our next two stops were at two parks.  One was along the river near the local high school and the other was at a really nice manicured park where I wish I would have brought my basketball.  Both were easy finds but the one, Valley Cities 2019:  Roegner Park's River Stroll (GC86RM7) along the river took some time to walk to.  We forgot our pen so we asked a nearby muggle if we could borrow hers.  She was happy to and asked what we were doing.  We told her about geocaching and the GeoTour we were currently doing.  She said that sounded like fun and she may try it.

We walked back to the Escape and made our way to the last one, Valley Cities 2019:  Going Green (GC87D9K) to us to a neighborhood on top of the hill.  We had to find a place to park and walk down to the small tree line along the cement blocks.  It was in a small bird house.  We logged our names, took our picture and headed back to Ben's mom's house.

There, we ate lunch, filled out the rest of our passports, put them in an envelope and mailed it to the parks and recreation people who would mail us our coins in a couple of weeks.

We chilled with his mom for a bit before we packed up our stuff and started heading home.  It was a long weekend full of adventure, visiting and meeting some new people.  I know there will be more adventures ahead of us and I can't wait!

Next Adventures:  Yelm Dental Night Out with the Tacoma Rainier's