Checkers

Things get busy around here during the holidays. Our friends know why and I will not go into details here. But on top of our usual hub-bub, we have had an issue with our cats all getting sick at once. Very confusing to us, and life has become miserable for them. Humans understand when they are sick with a cold to ride it out; animals just want to hide from it.

Checkers

About 12 years ago we have a nasty storm around Christmas time (sound familiar?), with winds and blowing snow. More wind that snow, and bitter cold. We had decorated our house for Christmas with a large plastic light-up Santa that I had purchased with one of my first paychecks as a teenager (that is another story). We tied it up on top of our porch roof, but it could not stand up to the winds that day and blew off the roof with a tremendous crashing noise - at 5 am, of course. My husband ran outside as the sound was so loud, we thought a car had crashed into the house. The news of the 'death' of my Santa did not go well, but even worse was our front door did not shut all the way against the horrible wind when he came back in. When the door blew open, one of our cats, Scottie, ran out. We spent two weeks searching for Scottie, going door-to-door, posting fliers - the usual. We purchased a humane trap, set it in our back yard and put in his favorite food to temp him. That is how we got Checkers. (We caught Scottie the day after.)

We could have let Checkers go, since she was feral, but she seemed so calm in the trap that we brought her in and confined her to a bathroom until she could acclimate to her surroundings, and until we could get her to a vet to be sure that she did not have anything that would hurt our other cats. I would go in to visit her, and she would come up to me very shyly, full of trepidation, but willing to be pet and held. These little visits were very precious to me.

We took her to our vet and Checkers was in perfect health, about 6 months old, and, of course, ready to be spayed. She came home and took up residence in the bathroom until she was healed. Having sniffed each other through the bathroom door, there was very little excitement when she joined the rest of the group. Then she met Ike, our pure white deaf cat. It was love at first sight on her part and our little cuddle sessions were now over. She bonded to Ike and I guess she figured she only needed him and the female human was now unnecessary. I was disappointed, but she became Ike's hearing buddy, so I did not push the issue. The only times I got to hold her again were when I was able to trim her claws, or when we moved. These escapades consisted of corralling the poor cat into a small space, donning oven mitts, and wrapping her in a towel or shoving her in a carrier.

The minute she arrived here in the Poconos house, she laid down her boundaries: feed her, let her buddy up to Ike, and let her hide when we come near. We tolerated all this because she was the world's best mouser. No fooling around with the prey, like the rest of the cats; she would just whack it! We started calling her Ms. Soprano.

I believe, and our new veterinarian agrees, that one of those mice that dared come into our house brought this bug that they are all suffering from now. Checkers, being the real assassin, got it the worst. We were able to catch her to take her to the vet only because she had grown so weak. She had pneumonia.

The vet told us we would have to medicate her everyday and really subject her to some intensive care. We knew that once she got her strength back, if she did, she would fight us. It would all be torture to her. She was so sick and she had no fight left in her. I know she told me it was time to go. I know, silly, talking to a cat, but I swear when I told her what we thought about doing and that Ike would be joining her soon (he is 18), she relaxed and gave me a final gift. She let me hold, cuddle and caress her beautiful fur one last time. No more fight.

We buried her under the magnolia tree where we have the others who have passed since we moved here. We have a spot next to her for Ike when he chooses to go. I think he misses her, I know I do.

I know this is a self-indulgent posting. Thank you for reading.

First Snow

So we had our first snow for the season this week. We received 3 to 4 inches, no biggy, and it was 'fairy tale' snow - it only gathered on the trees and the grass and melted on the roads. No hard freeze that night, so we have a Camelot situation. Pretty good. Now, the bad news - our beautiful fall foliage was still on the trees, so the heavy, wet snow caused some damage and power outages. And we all complained, boy, did we complain. Nothing cheerful about getting snow on October 15. Especially with all the foliage tours and Oktoberfests planned for this weekend.

In the scheme of things, it was not as bad as the first snow last year on October 28. This was predicted, unlike that one, where a few flurries turned into approximately two feet! I noticed many people had a more resigned aura about them. It is going to happen, we will complain, and life goes on. Are we prepared? The stores rushed the snow blowers and salts out front, moving aside the Christmas decorations. (Halloween, Thanksgiving - that stuff is in the back marked down already. One town has their Halloween parade today - not like Halloween is on a Saturday this year - just get it over with!) But I think most people figured this would melt and we would be okay, depending on how many snows they have seen. Now the one that was predicted for tonight into tomorrow is another matter. This one may cause a little panic, as it is associated with a "classic Nor'easter" - batten down the hatches, matey!

On another issue, the flu (scream here). My husband got his flu shot last week - not the H1N1 - and the vaccine was administered into his arm and shot right back out! The pharmacist giving the shot had never seen that happen before - neither had my husband, of course. The two men just sat there and looked at each other for a while, after the original exclamation of "huh?" "What now?" The pharmacist examined the needle - nothing wrong - he examined the arm - nothing wrong - he harrumphed and mumbled and my husband is asking "Well?" No bone was hit, and no offense to my hubby, but his muscles are not that pumped. So, we have to go back in 1 month for another flu shot, for free, because we are not sure if any vaccine got in at all. Weird. Can hardly wait for whatever the H1N1 vaccine brings.

The Unfinished Projects of Spring

It is Autumn. Where did the Summer go? I took a long walk around the house and I noticed all the unfinished projects planned last spring. I am not frustrated; I am more amazed that the time escaped us.

The tree that fell last winter - still there. Like I expected to get up and leave (leaf?) or something. We had discussed getting a lumber company or logger to come out, thin out some of the overgrowth and pay us for the lumber. But the economy beat us up on that - if people are not buying houses, or fixing things up, they do not buy lumber and so the loggers do not look for the little purchases and clean-ups - they need to make money on the stuff people are buying. We could pay to clean it up, but that is an expense we cannot handle in the priority of things.

It is what we call a 'yay/boo.' Yay, that huge tree is not hurting anything, really. Boo, when it toppled, it must have disturbed the water table, so the pond is no longer there in our woods. Yay, we had less mosquitoes and we did not have to treat the pond for standing water. Boo, we did not see the ducks or hear the frogs as they enjoyed the pond.

Hedges grow extremely well in the wet summer we had, so we never got them trimmed as much as we would have liked. We did get a garden planted, late, but we are still picking squash and we put in a second planting of lettuce to hopefully get picked before a heavy frost. The corn gifted us with maybe 8 ears before it got sick and died. Nice corn stalks, however.

I have to believe that it will all be accomplished eventually. As my husband always says to me, "You are the only one bothered by it!"

When we start a new project, like the garage project, sometimes normal maintenance can suffer. We had a chilly day this week and when we took our warm jackets out of the closet, one of them had mildew on it. One of those rainy days caused water to seep in under the door of the closet, causing a moisture build up and attacked my husband's canvas cowboy coat. (I think it is a costume type thing - the South Philly boy in a cowboy coat and Stetson - oh, yeah, cowboy boots too. Go figure!) So washing and spraying with Lysol was the chore for that day. The excitement goes on...

Garage Organization

I have not posted lately, because we have been in the middle of one of our 'to do' tasks - clean and organize the garage. This is our first garage in a house that we own - we had a garage at a place we rented, but the place was so large that we loaned the garage to a friend who was moving from out of state. So, we have proved the old saying that you expand to the space you have, meaning the garage was very full, or at least appeared that way. Is a garage really meant to park a car inside? Really?

The expedition started with a thought out plan of where everything can go. Right! We pondered (mulled) this for a couple of weeks and made every excuse as to why we should not do it each day - it was too hot, it was too cold, too rainy, too nice to be cooped up inside, etc., etc. But finally, after going in the garage to look for something that I know we had and now could not find, we knew it had to be done now. My husband was between jobs, so we had no money and no place we had to be. No excuses....

First is sorting. That is followed by "What is this?" Followed by "What does this go to?" And then "Why do we have this?" After spending an inordinate amount of time figuring out what things were, we spend even more time getting it out of there. Really, have we only lived here four years? I knew moving in on April Fools Day would come back to bite us!

Next comes the arguing. "Why is this here?" "Do we really need this?" "Have we ever used this?" "How does this work?" "Why did we buy this?" We didn't get as angry as we could have, as we knew this would be a very trying experience for both of us. Nice thing about getting older; we have had the big arguments and we realize that we will probably get the same answers, so we just walk away, cool down and get back to work.

This all took about a week of sorting, organizing, hanging, and tossing. Then comes that proud moment when we can see the floor and there are work surfaces again. When we go to get a tool and it is where it belongs and only takes a minute to retrieve, as opposed to an hour of cursing trying to find it ("I know I put it here - Who moved it?")

So I took some pictures so we can record this great moment in history (the ones below show a little work still to be done). And, so far, we are taking great pains to put stuff where it belongs. If this works, cars will be in the garage - what a concept!

Stray Cat Syndrome

As I have said before, we have cats. By many people's estimation, far too many, but they are all loved and they are all spayed or neutered. The majority of them are also older and have started developing the usual problems of age. In a sense, we are all older in this house and everybody is incapable of kittens.
All of our cats came to us in one form or another. For a while we seemed to have kittens growing in our yard in NJ and we found homes for most and adopted some of them. We only 'paid' for one kitten and that was the first thing my future husband and I bought together. We had just moved in together and we wanted to bring home something. We had only $2 between us, but the pet stand at the Collingswood Auction had stray kittens for only $2. So we agreed on a beautiful calico kitten who that night sat under the middle of the bed and cried her lungs out all night. The cat that I already had when my husband to moved in, Vanilla, was deaf, so he didn't care. Vanilla lived to be 21 years old. The crying kitten, Ms. Kitty, stayed with us for 18 years. They remain in our hearts.


More cats came and stayed and passed on since then and we never paid to adopt another kitten until Gracie, who was a rescue and the organization insisted that making people pay shows that they will be invested in the animal and will not harm them. (Just come to our house!) But two of our boys were strays and they have a different mentality - that mentality is reflected in their feelings about food. The bowls must be full, the food bin must be visible, and if these things are missing, the boys are absolutely sure that they will once again feel like they are starving to death. These 'little' boys are very rotund and there is nothing much we can do to prevent them from eating short of locking them in a room and listening to them cry bloody murder (can you tell we tried?). We let our crew eat dry food at will, and the majority are in good shape, but these two stray boys. They do not eat ALL the time, but the food has to be there ALL the time.

This Stray Cat Syndrome applies to many things, and not only to cats. In our current economic situation, I guess you could say that this mentality applies to money - it should always be there. In my case, I always want water around - I may not drink it, but if a bottle or glass of water is not nearby, I get really thirsty. This feeling applies to cars as well - I do not go anywhere for days on end, but when we only had one car and no car was available to me waiting outside my door, it just felt wrong. I feel this way about my family as well. I may not get to see them very often, but they should always be there. And they are not there anymore and that is wrong.


Thank heaven for my husband and my cats. And our friends whom we do not get to see often enough, but we know are there. And that is comforting.

Hubby's Bad Day

We have had a lot of rain, which makes grass grow very well, of course. So well that even some landscapers are complaining that they cannot get to all their clients to get their grass mowed before the next rain. Poor Guys! But this also means that homeowners who do their own lawn have to coordinate when to mow so that it is not raining and there is enough time-off to get everything done. (On that matter, why do we worry about it so much? Where we live there are forests and open fields and nobody cares about them. I guess it is leftover from where we lived before, where you could be fined by the borough for not cutting your lawn.) Still, when a bird lands on the front lawn and disappears, it must be time to mow. And not a little chickadee-size bird either - more like a robin-size bird! But finally all the planets aligned and a day-off occurred during a sunny, dry day. So the hubby puts on what we call his 'devo suit' - a white coverall - and starts by spraying around the house the bug killer stuff we hook up to our hose. Precautions are made, windows are shut and he wears the devo suit, baseball cap and respirator. I get this vision of someone coming to visit who is new to some of this stuff and seeing him - I think it could really be frightening! So that went well, bugs killed, windows reopened, respirator removed and he progresses to the riding lawn mower. Mower starts up fine and off he goes to mow the front lawn to save the birds from disappearing again, donning his now traditional straw hat to prevent sunburn on his head and neck.

During all of this I am in the house doing that never-ending domestic enterprise - laundry. My being in the house keeps our cats calm, as all this outdoor activity can be upsetting. Remaining calm, they sleep through most of this. This is good. Laundry in the washer, I get the idea to fix a door that is sticking, so I go out to the garage to get a tool I need. My husband swears that nothing goes wrong with whatever he is doing until I am within earshot. I walk outside and hear a very unnerving 'crunch' sound that comes from under the mower. He immediately turns the machine off - wise move - and walks around it to see if he ran over something. And I innocently walk up behind and and say "That didn't sound good." Of course I scared the heck out of him and he starts his usual tirade about nothing goes wrong until I am near, etc. I start to walk away and look at the mower as he backs it up and I notice that something is really amiss. Mower is running and is very noisy, so now I am doing hand puppets to get his attention.
"What, what!"
"Something is lose under the mower!"
"What?"
"Like I know!"

He gets off the mower and starts to try to roll the mower over to look underneath.
"That is not a good idea!"
"Yeah, I know, and why are you still here?"
"Honey, just lay on the ground and look underneath."
He lays on the fresh, mown grass.
"Honey?"
"What?"
"Remove the key."
The undercarriage that holds the mower blade housing in place had dropped its tie-rod, or at least one of the tie-rods. The air is now very blue and I am not talking about the sky and the better part of valor made me move quickly back inside.

Out here in the country/woods it is not unusual to hear banging and clanging and gunshots, echoing through the mountains, the noise could be miles away, so it becomes background noise during the day. I did not hear my husband trying to bang a pretty mean bend out of the tie-rod with the sledgehammer. I did not hear him cry out in pain as he hit the bejesus out of his thumb with the sledgehammer - it also helps that the washer was in its spin cycle and making its usual racket. However, when he tried to get in the door and there was torrent of very-bad-words because I had absently mindedly locked the door, I knew something was wrong. Oops!

Many ice packs later, and a fine lunch (oh, yes, I was cooking while all this banging was occurring too), he insists he will now fix the mower. Right! Of course, the tie-rod had a nut on the end that no amount of persuasion could get that sucker loose. I am of the belief that a new day may be a an opportunity to start anew, but he is determined to get the machine running and to get this lawn mowed! Realizing that he is licked with this nut, he drives into the nearest town to the auto repair shop where he knows the owner and, looking pitiful with a banged-up thumb and grass in his beard and hair, begs him to get the nut off the rod. That worked, and he drives back in triumph, puts the rod on the mower and finishes the front lawn. Back lawn - another day.

We are not at the end of the day, just half-way through. He removes his devo suit, showers and drops the shampoo bottle on his toe! He is now convinced that staying in bed the rest of the day is sounding like a fine option. But, we muddle on and because there is that little voice inside saying 'This is not your day!' everything he touches goes wrong. Little things, like dropping anything he picks up, putting clothes on backwards - this could really get to a person. So, we nap, and he rolls over onto the now very sore thumb. We decide to go out to dinner, but he insists that I drive (I would anyway) and I am happy to say, getting away from the house was a very good idea. Nice dinner, come home watch TV, go to bed, put his pajama pants on backwards...tomorrow is another day!

We Grow Squash Well

How these postings seem to get away from me. Mind you, I have some of my best postings being written continuously - typed is another thing. However, I can honestly say I do my best writing where nobody sees it - now if my brain could only learn how to type!

In the garden department, we appear to be good at squash; I really wish that I liked squash more than I do, but I will use it. Garlic does much to make anything palatable, as does butter, but we gave that up for gall bladder season. None of our produce is real tasty, but I understand that comes from too much rain and neglect. We have the neglect aspect down very well.

We have been trying to use the all-to-often rainy, cool days to do some more work around the house inside. We finally got the inside of our sun porch painted and our next big project is to organize the garage. How does that happen - you start with everything in its place and then it seems to find a new place. Like most men, my husband has the 'horizontal disease' - if there is an empty, flat surface, whatever is in your hand at the time gets put there. I sometimes feel like such a nag, but knowing how we forget where we put things makes me more strident in advocating that things have to be put back where they belong! It is very frustrating when we know we have something and we cannot find it, so we buy another one. IF you are lucky, you find the original before you start using the new one, but that rarely happens. Why do you think there are so many open packages in the hardware stores?

So a simple project takes all day and at least two arguments - or at least they used to. Now we do more planning before we start something, usually taking an hour or two the day before to find everything we need before we start. We have been amazed at how quickly we can do a project, clean up and then do something we want to do on our days off. Brilliant this planning stuff!

On top of everything, our PC died - brain hemorrhage or something. Feels like your whole world collapses when that happens. Fortunately, we had bought an external hard drive and all of our information was backed up on that. We looked into getting the PC fixed, but with prices going down so much since we bought it, it would cost as much or more to fix than to buy new. (Some repairers charge a fee before they even tell you if it can be fixed. ) Still, I tried to muddle through fixing the thing. I pulled out all the start-up discs that I had and I am re-booteding better than Nancy Sinatra, until the system asked for the blue disc. Blue Disc! What Blue Disc? I don't have a stupid (not what I really said) Blue Disc!

In moving the PC from one house to another, heaven knows where this disc went! Organized and well packed, and probably so well packed it got thrown away - or something! Thank goodness for friends. Our dear friend met us at a half-way point between our houses, where we had a lovely lunch, and then she loaned all the discs she had to help us to try to bring our PC back from the dead. It looked like we were passing something illegal between cars in the parking lot. So we come home and I load those discs on our PC and our system is now regressed to 1998! Which means nothing that we have saved can be recognized anymore on that PC.

But now we had to wade into the murky world of buying a new PC.

Here is where you realize how much you depend on the Internet; normally, I would research on-line for the best deal and then go to the store. Oh Right, the PC is Dead! So now we are spending the better part of a week in our spare time going store-to-store to get the best deal. In the end, we were at a shopping center that had two stores that sell PC's and laptops, so I am in one store, on my cell, calling my husband who is in the other store to see who has the better price, deal, etc. (Yes, like those Sears and Home Depot commercials.) We decided on a laptop, which had more on it than our old desktop. But the salesperson was insisting it is not good, we need bigger, better, he has a degree in Computer Science, on and on. Finally, I looked at this skinny little kid and said we are not using the thing for games, it is better than the one we were using pretty darn well up until last week, and Consumer Reports recommended the one we picked for people like us (a euphemism for over-50). Then I walked away and said to my husband to handle it from that point. I figure my husband can win through intimidation, since he is a big guy. Of course the kid tried to sell us the extended warranty - which costs almost as much as the laptop! Right! No! Even the check-out person asked "is there a reason you are not buying the two year warranty?" We don't want it. "Really?" Now we feel like she is saying 'do you have to heads and are you out of your mind?'

This laptop can do so many things that I didn't know I ever wanted a system to do. But one purchase leads to another - new mouse, USB extension plug, DVD camcorder.... hope this all works out!