The Case of the Missing Branches

          The saga of the storm continues. Sunday, during the NFL playoffs, I went into the laundry room (on the bottom floor of our house) to throw a load of laundry in. When I reached into the pile of dirty clothes in the laundry chute, the clothes were wet. We didn’t get that wet when we were cleaning the yard up although it had been raining.

          I climbed up onto the counter and stuck my head up into the laundry chute, which is under the master bathroom sink. I felt the drain pipe. Was it wet or was it just cold because it’s close to an outer wall? I wiped it with a to-be-laundered t-shirt. It was wet.

          Upstairs, the NY Giants vs. San Francisco 49ers game went into overtime. I waited until the game ended, before I told “the boys” that the sink was leaking. They disappeared immediately, even though dinner was ready, and came back to tell me that the water wasn’t from the sink. They thought it was from the roof, leaking down through the outside wall. We ate dinner, and then they confirmed their “diagnosis” by peering up into the attic.

         The next day, Monday, John called our insurance company. He explained that we’d had over 30 branches land on our roof in the snow/ice storm, and now the roof was leaking. They contacted one of their roofing contractors from Seattle (the ones nearer to us were all booked up after the storm). I was relieved. I didn’t want John or Johnny to get up on our shake roof because it is (to borrow a friend’s gross, but extremely accurate phrase) “slippery as snot” up there.

          When I got home, at 4:45, there were two phone messages from the contractor trying to set up an appointment. John called him. They would meet at our house at 1:00 the next day.

          At home after work on Tuesday, Johnny told me this bizarre story. He was at work when his cell phone rang at 12:30.  It was John, “Did you get up on the roof before you left for work, and take the branches down?”

Johnny guffawed, “No!”

“Well, there aren’t any branches on our roof!”

Johnny was as baffled as his father.

John saw our neighbor across the street clearing debris from his yard. He asked him, “Did you see anybody up on our roof?”

Tom told him that he had seen a man up on our roof the day before clearing branches off. There was no company name on his truck. It made no sense. They scratched their heads, and decided that maybe the mysterious branch clearer had gone to the wrong address.

Second phone call to Johnny: “What’s the password to your mother’s computer?”

“Why?”

“The roof guy is coming, and I need proof that there were branches on the roof.  I need to show him the pictures your mother took for her blog.”

Branches on the front part of our roof.

Branches on the roof on the back of our house.

When Nordic Services showed up, more phone calls were made. Apparently, when our insurance company contacted them, one of their guys was in our area. Before we even set up an appointment, he went to our house and cleared the roof. He didn’t tell anybody.

Case of the disappearing branches solved. It wasn’t a wrong address, clean up fairies, or industrious menehunes. It was an eager, efficient contractor.

That night a windstorm blew through. There are branches up on the roof again, but not as many as before. So, when they come to fix the roof, John’s story will be more believable.

Laura Keolanui Stark will confirm that there really were branches on the roof! She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

After the Storm

           The best part of this five-day storm was that the predicted high winds were only 25 mph, not 45-50 mph last night and today, Saturday. The ice did more than enough damage. We didn’t need a windstorm to totally finish us off.

           The roads are still slushy and several of our usual routes remain closed because of downed trees and power lines. 140,000 households are still without power, but the sun came out for a little while today. So did people. They came out of their homes to survey the damage, clean up, and do the things they couldn’t while the weather held us hostage. We were almost like the Who’s in Dr. Suess’s Whoville, except we didn’t join hands and sing like they did in “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” at least not anywhere that I'm aware of. 

           I took more pictures of the damage as we ran errands. Driving through Tacoma, to us it didn’t seem to have as much damage as Puyallup, but we were in the urban part, so there weren’t as many trees to begin with, and the trees bore the brunt of the storm. 

          Although in Tacoma, a warehouse with a flat roof collapsed. The workers inside were smart. When they heard the building groan, they got out. Nobody was hurt. The News Tribune reported that both of the Tacoma Narrows Bridges were closed for six hours because sheets of ice were falling from the girders and suspension cables.

Tacoma Narrows Bridges. Photo from The News Tribune.

          Back in Puyallup, at the WSU Research and Extension Center, one of the biggest trees was split apart even though it is an evergreen. 

WSU Research and Extension Center, Puyallup, WA. 3-story building in backgroud.

            Overall, the hardwood trees did not do as well as the evergreens. A row of cherry (or apple?) trees that lined one of the streets on my way to Zumba was shattered. Spring is going to look very different around here.

43rd Ave. SE, South Hill, WA (road in front of the YMCA)

           John and I tackled the branches strewn all over our yard. He cranked up the chain saw. 

          I sorted through the debris. Pulling branches out of the pile was like playing an oversized, twisted game of pickup sticks. 

          I dragged limbs to the curb if they were less than six feet long, or to John to cut if they were longer. 

Limbs to be cut up.

"5, 6, pick up sticks"

          I don’t know if the garbage collectors or the city will pick them up, but other people had yard waste stacked up at the curb. It’s worth a try.

           For three hours John cut debris up and I hauled it. Our yard waste bin is full. Our curbside pile grew taller and taller to become the biggest one on our street so far. We’re probably only a fourth of the way through, we still have the roof and backyard to go, but it was a good start.

"Well John (Jones), you sure do know how to show a girl a good time!"--from Indiana Jones.

Laura Keolanui Stark is un-hunkering down. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com when her internet service comes back.

Ice Days

          Snow day #3, Thursday, January 19, 2012 was actually an ice day. John and I flew out of bed at 3:30 in the morning on Thursday after hearing what sounded like an elephant stampede on the roof over our bedroom. The dogs met us in the hall without even barking. Chicken Little was right! The sky was falling!

We thought it was heavy snow falling off of over laden branches on the Douglas Firs (more than 100 years old) surrounding our house. It was only a few minutes before the “running” sound changed to thunderous thuds.

When we opened the front door to see what was going on, we could see branches snapping, and then falling to the ground. The sound was scary—a loud gunshot crack, followed by whooshing air, ending with a thud, or a bowling alley sound, if the branch was rolling down our roof. We didn’t get much sleep.

We got up, thankful that our power was on and turned the TV on to watch the news. I couldn’t wait for sunrise, so that we could see what was up on our roof, and assess what damage had been done. At 7:30 it was still dark. Had the sun taken a snow day? Was the sun’s power out?

When light did finally eke through the clouds, we could see lots of branches on our roof.  Freezing rain had made sheets of ice that covered the blankets of snow and pushed fir branches to their breaking points. Most of the branches on the roof had landed over our bedroom and Sarah’s bedroom too.

Roof above Sarah's bedroom.

The most disturbing thing was the pile of 10 to 12-foot long or longer branches where Johnny usually parks his car alongside our garage. Each branch probably weighs about 75 pounds. Around here, those branches are called “widow makers.” They would’ve done some serious damage to his car if it had been there.

Johnny's parking space.

His Honda Accord, that survived five hard winters in Pullman, Washington, wasn’t in its usual spot here because Johnny was with his girlfriend house sitting her house. Her mother and stepfather are out of town. Johnny and Sarah had planned to spend one night there. It had turned into two nights and three days without power.

Near-miss of John's truck.

The branches from the Douglas Firs had also missed John’s truck, but just barely.  His F-150 is always parked in front of Johnny’s car, right next to a cedar tree whose trunk is so big it would take three adults holding hands to hug it. John tried to move his truck onto the street, but his back tires just spun on the ice and dug a hole beside the driveway. With branches cracking over him, and our bags of sand buried under the pile of branches in Johnny’s parking space, he decided to wait, and hope his truck wouldn’t get taken out.

Old growth Douglas Fir trees around our house.

Throughout the day we listened to all those branches breaking. It sounded like popcorn popping. A few hours later, when there was a lull, John shoveled the dirt the truck had dug out in front of his tires for traction. At last, he managed to move his truck, with much slipping and sliding, less than ten feet away onto the street. Our two other cars were safe in the garage.

I got on Facebook and found out just how lucky we were to have power. People were using their I-phones to post that they didn’t have power. Our house was in a little pocket of heat and lights. Our neighborhood has underground utilities, but the main streets leading to it don’t. Facebook friends reported that those roads were closed because of fallen trees and power lines. Backyard neighbor Carol posted a picture of her beautiful maple trees that didn’t make it. Then we lost our internet service.

Right lane of 39th Avenue closed.

The kids' bus stop up by the Manorwood Clubhouse/Pool.

What the Manorwood Clubhouse/Pool area looked like in Fall 2010.

Johnny and Sarah K. came back to our house arriving in style. Since his parking space was no longer available, Johnny parked out front. I was looking out the window when he drove up the hill, a little past our house. He started turning left and I thought he was going into our neighbor’s driveway, but he was pulling up on his emergency brake so the back end of his car slid up the hill and he drifted exactly parallel and 6” from the curb. I guess that’s an added skill he learned at snowy WSU.

View from the top of our hill. John & Johnny's vehicles parked on the street.

He and John helped the neighbor across the street push her little SUV into her driveway. Earlier, her husband had parked it out on the street. Later, they went somewhere and when they came home, she told John and Johnny that he warned her to park on the street. But, she said she was doing what she wanted—parking in the driveway.

Downed tree by mailboxes.l

Widow maker hanging off our roof.

Johnny and Sarah said that it had only gotten down to 60 degrees in her house because they had a gas fireplace, but it was awfully dark, so they came back to our house.    We all slept in the basement while the branches rained down outside. Even in the basement, I startled awake with the booms, and counted six direct hits on our house. In the morning, Johnny, who was sleeping on the concrete floor, said that one of the branches hit so hard that he could feel it shake the cement foundation of our house.

The source of all the "bumps in the night," above our bedroom.

Today, day #4, was the day that Puyallup started thawing under our usual gray, rainy skies. When we woke up we could still hear things hitting our roof—mostly giant blobs of snow from trees. The view from the porch wasn’t good. One of the gorgeous maples on the edge of our front yard had split. The red Saturn that our neighbor’s wife insisted on parking in her driveway was covered with branches. There were even more branches on our driveway. John started cleaning up, dragging branches to the side of the driveway, and then shoveling the snow off, so we could get my car out of the garage. 

Our neighbor's SUV parked in their driveway.

I turned on the news which said that 275,000 households didn’t have power. The state patrol had dealt with four times as many car accidents. Tractor trailers were jack-knifed on several highways. Highway 18 between Auburn and Federal Way was closed because of downed trees. Most school districts were still closed. A man in Issaquah died when he got hit by a falling limb as he was taking an ATV out of his shed. SeaTac airport was closed for a few hours. Amtrak stopped service between Seattle and Portland. Someone at the LA Times called Seattlites snow wimps. I’m SURE Los Angeles would handle all this snow and ice better than we did because they’re known for all the snow and ice they get. They’re also real outdoorsy down there in LA.

Beautiful maples in front of our house in November.

Broken maples after the ice storm.

The weather forecast wasn’t good. There’s a flood warning because storm drains are clogged with debris and snow, so the rain and melting snow isn’t draining causing urban flooding. Everyone is asked to clear storm drains in front of their houses. Tonight the winds will pick up, so the trees and power lines that haven’t already fallen will be tested again. The high winds will last for a day. After that, they’re seeing the same pattern that kicked off the snow earlier this week. I wonder why I’m just not feeling the same snow anticipation I was five days ago.

Laura Keolanui Stark had to go roaming in search of internet to post this. Our internet is still down. She can be reached eventually at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

Snow Days!

My kids aren’t snow day school age anymore, and I’m most definitely not, but I still get a smile on my face when I hear those two magical words, “snow day.” I was supposed to work today, assessing elementary school students’ reading levels, but it snowed. Our phone rang at 6 am and the recorded message announced that Puyallup’s schools would be on a 2-hour delay.

Not long after that, the phone rang again and the leader of our DIBELs team, Sunny, explained that there was no sense in us reporting for work because the first and second graders had such a shortened day, there wouldn’t be much time for us to test them. I hung up, and whispered an excited, “YES!” not wanting to wake the dog up.

         There was 3” of snow on the ground. I pictured a day spent as a lady of leisure. Visions of hot cocoa, painting fingernails, reading a book, and quilting danced in my head. Of course that’s not what happened.

          While I made breakfast, I started clearing out the remains of Christmas cookies, candy, and crackers. That led to cleaning out the refrigerator after breakfast, which then led to cleaning a couple of shelves in the pantry.

         Then I sat down at my desk to pay a few bills. Our mailbox is across the street from our house, closer than a stone’s throw. It seemed a lot longer in the snow. After I slipped four times, almost landing on the bills as well as my butt before I got even halfway to the end of our driveway, I decided I better go back into the house and put my boots on.

         It was still slick out there, but I made it to the mailbox without falling. Skipping the snow shovel, I kicked the snow off the sidewalk and our front steps with my boots.

         More snow was predicted, so I started thinking of comfort food, and decided that macaroni and cheese would be perfect for dinner. Once I got it made, it would be fairly easy to re-heat on the woodstove if we lost power. I’d need more milk. That meant I’d have to make a run to Wal-Mart for “supplies”—more cheese, Milk bones for the dogs, and canned cat food. 

         Back at home, before I even entered the house, I looked at the mess in the garage and started hauling stuff out to throw into the recycling bin before it got buried in snow. I checked how many logs we had stored in case of a power outage. If we lost electricity, the woodstove would be our only source of heat. We were low, but John said we’d be alright for a few days if the power went out. It was sunny outside and it had warmed up enough to melt the snow on the streets, but the news kept warning that Snow-mageddon was coming.

         As I put the groceries away, Sarah K. came in. One of us got the idea that we should put Pippin out in his first snow to watch his reaction. He was cautious and curious. He got low to stalk it, smelled it, and stepped carefully.

Pippin's first snow experience.

         After the snowy Pippin entertainment, it was time to make myself a cup of cocoa and head to my sewing area for some quilting. That’s when the phone rang. It was Sarah in Pullman. She needed me to give her money so she could pay for some upcoming piano adjudications. I got back in the car and headed for her bank.

         At home again, it was time to start making the mac and cheese. While I was stirring the cheddar cheese into the white sauce, the Puyallup school district called to say that “due to a severe weather warning issued by the National Weather Center, school is cancelled tomorrow.”

After we’d eaten and the dishes were done, I did have my mug of cocoa.  I didn’t get around to sitting at my sewing machine, but that was partly because I’m sure I’ll get to it tomorrow.

Snow Day 2: Overnight we got more snow, totaling about 6-7 inches. 

Mr. Honolulu says, 6-1/4 inches.

            Sarah called at a quarter of eight from WSU to say they got about 18” of the white stuff in Pullman. She was ticked because classes were still on in Pullman, and she was missing one of each of her pairs of gloves. I told her to put a sock on her other hand, and make sure she wears her snow boots. She complained that they cancelled classes at UW in Seattle. Isn’t it ironic that Huskies can’t handle snow? Cougars can.

Then I passed on a story that Johnny told me last night. In 2008, for the first time in WSU’s history, they actually did cancel classes. The snow was as high as car hoods. The following year when the snows started, students complained about having to go to class. President Floyd, who lives just down the street from Sarah’s apartment, responded that he’d been walking around the snowy campus checking conditions, and overheard some students saying they were going to walk to Dissmore’s (a grocery store at the bottom of a steep hill) to buy beer. He said that if students could walk to get beer, they could walk to class. Sarah laughed a little, and then said that she had to put her regular shoes in a bag, and get going.

A "cleared" walkway at WSU, picture courtesy of Jerica Britcher.

I’ve spent the day taking pictures of the snow and watching cars and people try to get up the hill in front of our house. The dogs have been barking at sledders and kids on inner tubes playing on our street. My Dad called from Hawaii to check up on us. After lunch, I have an appointment with my sewing machine unless I get the snowshoes out.

You know this gnome has his snow boots on.

Laura Keolanui Stark is piecing a Christmas quilt. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

End of the World?

          Happy New Year! So far 2012 hasn’t had the usual fresh start, clean slate, new year feeling. On the one hand it’s HAPPY New Year, but on the other hand is it Happy FINAL Year? With all the speculation that the world will end in 2012, there is a Y2K on steroids feel to the start of this year.

          According to some scholars of the Mayan calendar, the world will end on December 21, 2012. The History Channel has aired many special series on doomsday that include analysis of 2012 theories, such as Decoding the Past (2005–2007), 2012, End of Days (2006), Last Days on Earth (2006), Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2007), and Nostradamus 2012 (2008). The Discovery Channel also aired 2012 Apocalypse in 2009, suggesting that massive solar storms, magnetic pole reversal, earthquakes, supervolcanoes, and other drastic natural events may occur in 2012. Author Graham Hancock, in his book Fingerprints of the Gods, interpreted Coe's remarks in Breaking the Maya Code as evidence for the prophecy of a global cataclysm. Others are analyzing the Book of Revelations in the Bible for clues. One of my friends told me that he heard that the last day will be on my birthday. Woo Hoo!

          It’s not unusual to start a new year with prophecies about what the coming year will bring. It’s also not unusual for the prophecies to be negative or punitive. There’s something in human nature that loves an impending disaster, but these end of the world predictions have taken new year predictions to the ultimate level. The problem (or blessing) with the predictions is that most of them never come true. However, we tend to focus on the few that do come true, or twist them into seeming like they came true.

I’m just happy when the weather is accurately predicted. I remember watching a weather forecaster banter with a sportscaster a few years ago. The sportscaster was giving the weatherman a hard time about getting his forecast totally wrong. The weatherman defended himself by saying he got it right half the time. The sportscaster countered by saying he could do get it right 50% of the time by flipping a coin. The weatherman turned red and went to commercial break.

        So, if we can’t predict current events like the weather within the next three days with all our knowledge, instruments, and satellites out in space, how in the heck could the Mayans, an ancient culture, know what was going to happen in 2012? Do we apply Mayan wisdom to anything else in our daily lives? Do we even know if we’ve interpreted the Mayan calendar correctly? Other than eating food from other cultures, and importing/exporting clothing and out of season produce, we don’t even use that much from other cultures currently on the globe. Suddenly, when it comes to the end of the world, we’re going with the Mayans?

Bizarro Comic by Dan Piraro.

        When everyone was scurrying around preparing for the potential Y2K disaster (computers not programmed to change from 1999 to 2000), my husband John predicted accurately that nothing would happen. He summed it up with a New Yorker’s street smarts, “Do you really think our whole society’s going to crash because of a computer glitch? There’s BIG money at stake. Don’t worry, they’ll figure out how to fix it.”

 We survived Y2K, 1970s recessions, and a childhood filled with monthly drills crouched under school desks in case the Soviet Union hit us with nuclear bombs. 

As for the end of the world, I predict that most of us will be sitting around on January 1, 2013 feeling stupid. Some will be saying that the calculations were slightly off—2013 will be the final year because 13 is unlucky.

In the meantime, my resolution for 2012 and future years is to continue trying to live a life with no regrets, and embrace those who I love because even though I don’t think the entire world is going to end, you never know when an individual’s world will end. Sometimes life is too short, and it is always unpredictable.

Laura Keolanui Stark is making sure she eats dessert first every once in awhile. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.            

Jerica's Quilt

One quilt often inspires another. That was the case with a quilt that I made for Sarah when she moved into her first apartment. After she chose a pattern from my quilting library, we hit the quilt shops in search of brown, gold, and cream fabrics with musical undertones. The quilt turned out beautifully and Sarah hung it proudly in her apartment.

          That’s where Jerica saw it. Sarah and Jerica have been friends since they were in elementary school. They were roommates their freshman year at WSU.

           Sarah told me that Jerica loved that quilt, and admired it whenever she visited. Eventually, Jerica asked me if I’d make the same quilt for her, out of different colors, if her mom bought the fabric. It would be a gift from her parents for her 21^st birthday. Of course, I said yes.

          In the spring, my favorite neightborhood fabric/quilting store, Pacific Fabrics went out of business. Jerica, her mom, Sarah, and I took advantage of the big closing sale. We grabbed a shopping cart and filled it with eighteen bolts of purple, brown, and cream fabrics. Jerica and her mom hadn’t ever shopped for fabric before, but Sarah and I showed them the ropes and they caught on quickly.

          Spring turned into summer. I had planned to work on the quilt over the summer, and just barely made that deadline, by cutting all the blocks out as August ended. That’s also when I panicked and remembered to make an appointment for time on a long arm quilting machine.

The first time available was on October 4. That would work. Jerica’s birthday is in December. It would also light a fire under me to get moving.

Sarah and Jerica left for college. I wish I could say that I got right back to work on the quilt, but I didn’t. The blocks sat neatly stacked on my sewing counter, while other things took priority.

In mid-September, I started slicing the curves into the blocks, then stitched along the curves to create new blocks.  I sprinkled the smaller accent squares onto those blocks. Karla Alexander author of Color Shuffle, explained her process simply and accurately. I slapped the blocks up onto my design wall as I finished them. I sent Jerica and Sarah pictures of the quilt in progress.

Once I got all the blocks up on my design wall, I was glad I hadn’t waited until the absolute last minute. Over the next week, I’d arrange and rearrange the blocks almost every time I walked past them on the way to my car, trying to get it balanced, and trying to make sure that the same fabrics weren’t right next to each other. Sometimes it felt like one of those square puzzles that you slide numbers around in trying to get them in order. At last, my Rubik’s cube of a quilt top was arranged to my liking.

Let the piecing begin! I joined the blocks into rows, and then joined the rows into a quilt top.

          Next step, I started doodling possible quilting patterns to quilt on it. I had quilted Sarah’s quilt with swirls. That went well with the music theme, but I wanted something different for Jerica’s quilt. I went to sleep with no plan. I woke up with a few very tentative possibilities.

At Trains, Fabrics, Etc. I helped the quilt shop owner load the quilt top, batting, and backing onto the long arm quilting machine. I picked out a variegated thread of browns and cream. I looked over the diagonal rows of curves. Should I echo the curves? That seemed too obvious. Should I quilt angular, geometric lines to contrast against the curves? No, I liked the curves. I wanted them to stand out.

I grasped the handles of the quilting machine, and relaxed, confident that something would come to me. As always, it did: vines with curling fronds climbing up the diagonal rows. They would be flowing and curvy, and simple enough to be forgiving. But best of all, this design would match the mood of the quilt.

As I quilted, other quilters who came into the shop came by to see what I was working on, and offered their compliments. It’s not a traditional quilt, definitely more contemporary. Brown and purple are also not usually paired together, but in this quilt, they play well together.

Two layers of fabric with batting sandwiched in between, held together with thread. It really was a quilt now. It looked fantastic.

I had to keep reminding myself that it was Jerica’s quilt, not mine. I continued reminding myself of that as I stitched the sleeve and binding on. The label reminded me again.

On Saturday, we celebrated Jerica’s birthday early (she was a Christmas baby) at Stanley & Seafort’s restaurant overlooking Tacoma. When she pulled her quilt out of a matching pillowcase, her face lit up with a big smile. Happy birthday Jerica!

Laura Keolanui Stark is glad that so many of her quilts have found happy homes. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

Another Cat Story

          In July, we had to put Velvet our beautiful black cat down. We found her when she was a kitten abandoned under our house, and she lived with us for thirteen years. (See the blog titled “The Story of a Cat” posted on July 6, 2011.) She was notorious for trying to escape from the house anytime someone opened a door, especially in her younger years.

Velvet

 On Halloween night, as I stirred a pot full of pumpkin sausage soup, I thought out loud wistfully, “Well, at least this Halloween, we won’t have to worry about Velvet getting out whenever we open the door for a trick-or-treater.”

Ten minutes later, Sarah K. and I thought we heard costumed candy collectors coming up onto our porch. She went to answer the door since I was cooking. I heard her gasp, and then she came back in with a strange look on her face.

           I was puzzled, “Were there trick-or-treaters?”

           “No,” she said and hesitated a little, “There was a black cat sitting on the porch, right next to the pumpkin. She looked at me and then took off. She was skinny, like Velvet when she was young.”

           We looked at each other with goose bumps. I welled up a little, “It was Velvet. She must have come back to tell us she was OK in cat heaven.” It was spooky that she came back on Halloween.

           A couple of weekends later, John and I went to Ellensburg because daughter Sarah was in a piano competition. It was a stressful weekend. On their way from Pullman to Ellensburg in Sarah’s car, she, her boyfriend and another friend got a flat tire. She called to tell us they were stuck somewhere outside of Othello at 10:00 at night, in below freezing temperatures. There was no lug wrench in her trunk to get the tire off to change it.

          AAA to the rescue. They changed the tire and Andy drove them 100 miles into Ellensburg on the little doughnut spare tire. While they were driving, we got online and made elaborate plans on where to get her tire fixed based on which tire places would be open on Sunday in Ellensburg--none, and how close the nearest Costco was-- 40 miles away.

The next day we drove 120 miles to Ellensburg. While they played their pieces in Central Washington University’s music building, we opened Sarah’s trunk to look at the tire.  It was totally blown out, shredded. I was thankful Andy had gotten them off the road safely.

Long story short: Sarah played well.  Andy and the other friend who’d driven over with Sarah placed in the competition. We ended up having to get two hotel rooms to stay overnight. On an icy Monday morning at 8:00, we had our noses pressed up against Les Schwab’s doors. I was impressed with how fast they could put four new tires (4-wheel drive) on her car. It was like a pit stop in a race. We barely made it back to the hotel, a block away, when they called to say the car was ready.

After breakfast, Sarah and Andy got on I-90 headed east back to Pullman. We headed west toward Puyallup. On the west side of Snoqualmie Pass, we saw the signs for Snoqualmie Falls which we usually whiz past. We hadn’t been there in over ten years. It would be nice to exhale and relax a little, so we took the off ramp.

Snoqualmie Falls

The falls were magnificent! We wandered into Snoqualmie Lodge, where lots of scenes for the creepy TV series Twin Peaks were shot. We ate burgers at Twede’s Café (formerly known as the Mar-T Café), also a Twin Peaks hangout. Of course we finished off our meal with a piece of their famous cherry pie, but skipped on the “damn fine cup o’ coffee.” The pie lived up to its reputation. We stopped at the outlet mall, and then continued home.

Johnny and Sarah K. weren’t home when we pulled in. I wheeled my overnight bag into the house. A sign taped on the downstairs bathroom door warned, “DO NOT OPEN DOOR!” John asked, “What do you think that’s about?”

I clomped up the stairs, “Either the toilet over-flowed and now we’ll have to clean that up, or there’s an animal in there.”

Walking down the hallway John said, “Hey, maybe it’s one of those German Shepherd puppies Sarah was talking about the other day.”

 “No, if it was a puppy, it would’ve let us know it was in there right away.”

We unpacked while we did not open the bathroom door, and waited for Johnny and Sarah to get back from wherever they were. Sarah got back first, and told us the story.

She and Johnny met some friends, Adam and Samantha, for dinner the night we were gone. Afterwards, the plan was to meet back at our house. Their friends beat them here, and when Johnny and Sarah pulled into the driveway, Samantha was standing on our front steps, petting a black cat. “Is this your cat Johnny?”

The cat that wasn’t ours was the reason for the bathroom door sign. They had looked on nearby mailboxes--no missing cat fliers. They checked the animal shelter website—nothing. They had even taken him to the vet to see if he had a microchip--nope. He wasn’t neutered either.

They assured me that he was a REALLY nice cat. Then they backed off and relied on the oldest sales technique ever: a good “product” will sell itself.

John opened the bathroom door and went in to meet the mysterious cat. I was reluctant. Neither of us wanted another cat. We want to travel. Pets tie you down.

A few hours later, I finally went in to look at the stray. He came right up to me to say hello. He was so thin, you could see his ribs and spine. He wasn’t a fluff ball kitten, more like a lanky adolescent. He was sleek and black except for a little white patch on his chest. But his most striking feature was two orange eyes.

Our new cat, Pippin.

He saunters around our house like he’s been here forever. He’s not cowed by T-Bone, our 90-lb. Lab-Shepherd mix, at all. On their first encounter, when T-Bone got a little too close, the new cat calmly, but firmly raised his right paw up like it was a stop sign. T-Bone stopped, wagged his tail and backed up. He is fluent in "Cat."

The new guy and Suzie, the dachshund, are great buddies. She tolerates him swatting at her tail, and biting it on occasion. Those two have also been known to nap together.

Pippin and Suzie

The only one who hasn’t been won over is Java, the Manx. That’s not surprising. She has never gotten along with the other pets, including Velvet. When he gets within six feet of her we know because we hear her hiss. He doesn’t understand why she won’t play with him, and he won’t take no for an answer.

Pippin and Java in a stand-off.

Mr. Big Personality follows us around, soaks up affection, and attacks, but never has his claws out. He thinks nothing of jumping up on the 1-1/2” wide rail by our stairs and walking it like a tightrope. He has climbed to the tip top of my china hutch, and clawed his way up the bricks of our fireplace. He sleeps stretched out full length on his back. I don’t know how he survived sleeping like that outside, but I do know how he ate. He’s a good hunter. This morning I found a ball of fun fur yarn on my chair. He “killed” it down in my sewing area, and brought it upstairs to share.

Pippin and his "mouse"

One night, we still don’t know how, he got out. We worried the entire night, and looked for him repeatedly. It poured through the night and into the next morning. Finally, we cracked the garage door open. Fifteen minutes later, on my way to the laundry room, I heard rustling on the workbench in the garage. There he was, bedraggled and sopping wet. That was at least the third time that he found our house with his feline GPS.

When I called Sarah S. to tell her the story after we got home from Ellensburg, I told her I didn’t want another cat. She told me to give it up, we had another cat. He chose us. We don’t know why. That is how he became our cat. We named him Pippin.

Laura Keolanui Stark is trying to train another cat not to jump up on kitchen counters, but when she spritzes him with water, he doesn’t jump down, he just looks like his feelings are hurt. Laura can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.