Another Trip North

You can sure tell we're not in the Central Valley. The sky is as blue as my shirt.

You don't pour, you shovel. The mask was so I didn't breathe in Portland cement.

My helpers. Actually Maureen is more than a helper in this enterprise, she is a partner in thought and work.

We went north again mostly to do some more work on the pizza oven. We visited with family and enjoyed our time together. After a few days of rain and drizzle we poured the insulating hearth of vermiculite cement. What a strange mixture that was. 5 parts vermiculite to 1 part Portland cement mixed to the consistency of oatmeal. You don't pour, you shovel. Fortunately only four wheelbarrows worth compared to the 30 bags of redimix. Takes about 3 weeks to cure then on to the bricks for the hearth floor and the tunnel or dome of the oven itself. That will be fun.

The strangest event, or it really should be called a blessing was the journey my eye glasses didn't take. We were in the parking lot of a grocery store in Napa with dogs and food, ready for the last half hour of the trip and I realized I didn't have my glasses. We thought through all the possibilities and figured they fell out of the door pocket at one of the three stops along the way. I don't have spare glasses in the correct prescription and I've worn glasses for many years. I anticipated a weekend of headaches and little reading. When the rain extended out stay, I just figured the glasses were a loss and I'd have to go through the process of getting new ones.

We traveled home and stopped at the first two places, gas and food stops across the street from each other. No glasses. We continued south and the last stop was at a rest stop off of the northbound lanes of the highway. We had to travel to an offramp pass the rest stop and I commented that though I was going to turn around and return I wasn't holding out much hope of finding the glasses.

We pulled into the rest stop and we got the dogs out and they got into a tizzy with some other dogs and that put everyone on edge even more. I located a person that looked like a supervisor and asked if there was a lost and found. She said there was and we could go look. She put her hand into the box and pulled out my glasses case and glasses. I thought I was going to cry. Joy over some glass, plastic and metal.

Then I realized the joy is what one gets in trusting that God is still calling the shots.