Tom and Patti Saunders
Dog's Breath Acres 2008 Annual Report
2008 Annual Report
January: On our trip to Italy last fall I popped something in my shoulder while hoisting a suitcase. Had the surgery in December. A quarter century of goalkeeping had caught up with another part of my rapidly deteriorating body, a rotator cuff was just about worn through, and the lifting finally stretched it too far. Spent the beginning of the new year with my right arm in a sling and admiring my newest scar. It doesn't seem to have affected my golf swing, unfortunately.
February: Just a little report on our trip to the Democratic caucus last Saturday: When we went four years ago there were 10 people at our precinct table, with maybe 100 in the room altogether, which they said was by far their best turnout ever. Well this time there were 32 for our precinct and maybe 400 altogether, a lot of angry voters. There were Clinton and Obama people at out precinct, plus a few undecided. The first count gave four of our seven delegates (to the next caucus, the county convention, then there's the state caucus, and finally the national convention) to Obama , two for Clinton, and one for undecided. We had a few minutes to try to convince the holdouts to come over to our side. The mathematics are complicated, but by the time it was all over, our side had gotten just barely enough votes to gain the extra delegate, five to two. If just one of us had switched, it would have been four to three. The way I figure it, if the county, then the state, and finally the national conventions are all decided by one vote, it must have been my particular vote. When Obama wins the presidency, I won't ask for much, maybe a minor ambassadorship or something, in a sunny country.
March: Patti and I headed down south for a spring flower and birding trip to California.
April: We finally succumbed to the lack of dog at Dog's Breath Acres and headed over to the local animal shelter. There were a lot of large black dogs there, but one in particular caught our fancy, a 3 1/2 year old female black lab. On the way home we decided on a name: Lydia (no particular reason). She's a terribly sweet pouch, and took to the grandchildren immediately, and also took off immediately; she likes to explore the neighborhood. A spring project was fixing the fence around the yard, it gives her about an acre to run loose without our worrying that she'll get out in the road. Phoebe, per usual, disappeared into the depths of the kitchen island behind the garbage for a week or two, but now they are great friends, although Phoebe probably thinks Lydia's idea of play is a bit too rough. Strangely coincidentally, when we emailed Carol and Ken about picking Lydia up at the pound, they sent back that they had just picked up a labrador too! Boswell's just a puppy, and didn't come pre-trained like Lydia.
Summer: Patti worked on a quite successful Health Care Forum in Everett for the League of Women Voters. And she started working on her garden. Scott and Joelene and Andrew flew in from Connecticut for a visit and a round of job interviews. Patti and "The Garden Girls" have been molding giant leaves in concrete, they're quite something. Patti's also been studying "Drawing with the Left Side of Your Brain"; here's an early work.
Sienna (age four) to Tom: "I can count all the way to one!" Tom, chuckling: "That's really great!" Sienna: "Six, five, four, three, two, one!" And Kiara wrote her very first complete sentence; we had to take a picture. Our grandchildren are so above average.
September: On very nearly the spur of the moment (a good weather forecast got us going), Patti and I packed up and headed over the mountains for a camping trip to Glacier National Park.
October: I saw my second (and last) new bird of the year, a Parasitic Jaeger, on a day trip across the sound with Patti and Lydia. The other was a Le Conte's Thrasher in California, as noted in our trip report. The local slugs were also studied.
November 4, 2008, 8:00 PM (11:00 EST): I guess for me this will be one of those "Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed" moments that you remember forever exactly where you were. On election night Patti was off doing volunteer work for the League of Women Voters, driving around picking up ballots for the county, so I had the evening to myself. I had been watching the returns, and was pretty sure what the results would be, but it was still quite a moment when the TV said that Obama was the one. Patti and a few of her friends were also watching elsewhere; they spontaneously broke out into "Happy Days Are Here Again".
Two days after the election Michael Eric Werden arrived into the new world, Joelene and Scott's second kid and our fourth grandchild. They're planning on moving out here next summer, Scott doing cardiology down in Tacoma, and Joelene ObGyning nearby. It'll be fun and nice having the whole crew settled in the Northwest.
Thanksgiving down at Neskowin with Kate and Carol and Ger and Ken. At a stop on the drive down I bashed my head on the hatchback. Patti predicted, "There's gonna be blood." Lydia got to meet Boswell and they hit it off immediately, even skipped the usual formalities of mutual butt sniffing. We took a couple of morning walks on the beach, a great playground for the romping beasts. By the way, every time we visit, somebody seems to get injured. Ma broke a leg a number of years ago, Kate broke her ankle at a Folsom gathering in Randolph, and another ankle in the driveway last Thanksgiving, and I stabbed myself this year, while cutting up a pear. Oh, Kate and Ger were visiting a few years ago when my clogged heart sent me to the ICU. It just wouldn't be a Saunders get together without a visit to the emergency room.