After all this time, I still can

This cold was a bad one, and unfortunately it seems to have settled in my sinuses. Joy of joys. I do seem to be on the downhill side of it. But Saturday was a lost day.

We are making steady progress on the siding, doing a bit of it at a time. Tim put in the two last attic ventilation windows. We ordered the siding for the other half of the house. 

I made tomato sauce on Sunday.  I dehydrated the skins. I also dehydrated summer squash and zucchini. Something new, and the more I read about it, I think I will be experimenting with that quite a bit more. The oven makes that easy. I can do large batches. I also want to try drying tomatoes to store in olive oil.

I made pickles this afternoon. Something I haven't done in years. I forgot the satisfaction of hearing jars pinging.

Just another day.

 Stupid feral cat killed a chick. I am pretty upset by this. I let my guard down after a week. She ripped down the screening. 

So. I feel pretty dumb.

We are siding the house. 

I managed to catch a cold.  In the middle of all this heat. Speaking of heat, it is affecting a lot of people in a lot of places.

As always, gratuitous kitten pictures:

Tiger is the mother, who gets the big snip next week.

He reminds me of someone.

Interesting

 Last week, when we went to the auction, Tim said in a shocked voice, "He has a cell phone!" An Amish man paced back and forth at the entrance of the auction house talking on a cell phone.

Now admittedly, there is a great deal that I don't quite understand about the Amish. I know the bishop in our area seems to be very conservative and strict. Houses are white clap board. No hanging plants on the porch. No bicycles. 

However, in other areas, the Amish have tin sided houses and they use different colors. Some of them can be quite modern looking, actually. 

Up near the building supply store we use, you see that a lot. We always wondered whether it was because so many of their men work at the store. They use phones and computers in the business, electric lights too. They zip around on fork lifts. They have an easy relationship with technology. I guess it makes sense that they use the products they sell to build their homes.

Just down the road from the massive building supply store, another business has gone in, a huge hunting and fishing store. Tim wanted to have a look. 

It has a huge selection of permanent hunting blinds out front. An indoor archery range. A huge display of the most amazing taxidermy work I have ever seen. I asked about that right away. We want to have Bob the buffalo freshened up, but we want it done by a professional. Turns out the fellow who does the work lives in our corner of the world. 

While I was getting that information from the young Amish man, Tim walked up with a trail camera, one of the ones that sends pictures to your cell phone. Without missing a beat, the fellow said enthusiastically 'That is the one I use. I am happy with it." 

Honestly, I do not ask questions about matters that are not my business, but I found that amazing that they would use a trail cam at all, let alone have a cell phone to view the pictures on.

There were several barefoot and happy children playimg quietly inside the store while their fathers worked. It explained the long row of kick scooters in front of the store. Two of them were hot pink. 

But as usual, they had an outhouse...a portapotty stood outside.

This is what you call a kitten caboodle. Well...3/5s of one, any way.

Anyone looking for a kitten?

Cats

 A couple weeks ago, I stopped at Happ's as I was passing by and saw this. They had boxes and boxes of this catfood. It was outdated and selling at the unbelievable price of $1 for a box of 12 pouches. I cautiously bought 4 boxes for the ferals. I was not sure they would like it.

And lo, they liked it so much that they began to come to the house and ask to be fed.

All three of them have had kittens. Sigh is neutered, but she had two. Tiger has two. She is going to be neutered next week. Possum has just had 5 kittens. I have been able to handle all of them and she allows it. I make a point of being therea couple times a day. Sigh has two kittens. Although she is distinctly Siamese in appearance, neither of her kittens share those traits. Tiger is just as her name says. However, both her kittens are blue eyed with the Siamese characteristics. Possum, the latest mother looks Siamese. She has two tigers, one 'cow cat' and two Siamese looking ones.

Back to the cat food. $1 a box, and yes, it is outdated, but they gobbled it down. 

 The next day Tim sent me down to buy 20 more boxes. Today, we were in the area, so we stopped in again and bought 30 more boxes. 

So, for the foreseeable future, we will be saving big bucks on catfood. We will need those big bucks because  also for the foreseeable future we will be neutering cats. 4 out of 13...I am hopeful that we can get these cats socialized and begin finding homes for them.

Fingers crossed.

One of Possum's. 

Dandy. I call it that because he puts me in mind of those 19th century photographs of young men with greased hair and severe center parts. Dandy is Sigh's. The one on the right is one of Tiger's.

And this is Tiger's second kitten.

I am glad that we are here now. We can make sure that they are well fed. That $1 catfood is $15 a box on Amazon.

Who wants a cat?

Late edit: I'm sorry that cat food picture ended up in the wrong place. I can't move it.

The $3 Wardrobe

 

Divested of 3400 (give or take) 'Merry Mushrooms', carefully designed to match with your appliances, whether they be harvest gold, avocado, or coppertone brown, scrubbed down, with two coats of polyurethane, this is what my $3 wardrobe looks like. Nothing fancy, but perfectly functional. 

PS: please ignore clutter. Not everything has found its rightful place in the basement.

Tim helped me carry it from the garage to the basement. Once it was set in place, he did voluntarily admit that it was a good buy.

Rain

 It has been so incredibly dry here. It generally works out that when the county fair sets up, the skies open and it rains for days. The county fair was the week before last. It did not rain. 

I have been watering the garden, but even at that, it looked dryer than it should.

We were supposed to get rain last Tuesday, but disappointingly, we got some light rain in the morning, not even measurable. When it stopped, the sun blazed down just as hot as ever.

It stayed hot and humid all week. Not fun.

We moved some furniture. We brought order to the basement. Tim bought half the siding for the house. Frost white if you are interested. We are doing board and batten steel siding. That was delivered Friday. We will install the windows in the attic for ventilation and begin installing the siding. It will be nice to start 'dressing' the outside of the house. We have been looking at green zip board and insulation for some time now.

We went to the auction. The white chairs we wanted for the kitchen were in worse shape than we thought, once we got a closer look at them. We were able to get two nice oak chairs for $15, which will be fine. I need to find a nice sturdy material to cover the seats. 

I bought something else too. They had a wardrobe that no one wanted. It was covered in Sears Merry Mushrooms, circa 1976, painstakingly cut out of contact paper. I recognized them right away, having used the self same technique to dress up my cheap kitchen

cupboards 50 years ago.

Anyways, the wardrobe was not anything I had considered getting but nobody was bidding. When the price dropped to $3, I bid and no one bid against me. Tim was aghast. I flashed our number to the auctioneer as he hissed, "What are we doing with that???" I handed the number back to him and said, "it can go in the basement against the stairwell and it will be where we hang our winter coats in the warm seasons."

He left to go get us cold water to drink. I noticed that he accidently took the bidder paddle with him.

So I have been working on that, de-mushrooming it, and taking it apart. Tim helped me put it back together today. A shoddy repair had made the whole thing wonky. Once that was corrected, everything fit back together smoothly. I will give it a quick coat of poly when I am done cleaning I will take a picture once it is in place. Like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, this wardrobe is not such a bad little wardrobe after all. 

I finished reading 'The Hours Count' which led me down quite a rabbit hole as I read about Julius and Ethel Rosenburg. I started and finished 'Little Fires Everywhere'. It feels nice to read a book again.

This morning, I woke up to the wonderful sound of rain drumming on the roof and rumbling thunder. It has rained off and on all day. I got a letter written. In between rain showers, I picked peas and beans. I lost a game of scrabble to my sister. She is on quite a streak. 

Strange

 A few weeks ago, Mia, the young woman buying our rehab messaged me. The bank official wanted to speak with us, a 3 way call with us, Mia, and her on the line. I messaged back, asking why. Mia didn't know. She just needed to speak with us.

Mia has been working hard to get the house ready for the appraisal. We didn't want to do anything to jeopardize her loan. I said okay, and Tim and I would both be present for the conversation.

First, she rescheduled the call at the last minute because she was at the DMV. When she did call, she introduced herself, and said Mia was on the line as well. 

She was very giggly which struck me as odd. Very unprofessional. She also didn't seem to have a clear reason for calling. I was in the middle of painting trim. Tim and I looked at each other. 

I said, 'I am not really clear on what you need from us. We have never had the bank calling us before. Any questions would normally be answered by the lawyer."

She said, "Oh you have done this before then."

"Many times."

That giggle. "Well, I wanted you to know that I can handle the closing for you."

I said, "No. Our lawyer will handle this. Mia has signed paperwork to allow him to handle her side of it as well, since he's worked for her family in the past."

The woman said, "What is his phone number?"

"Just a second," I said, looking around for something to wipe my hands on. "I am not at home where the papers are..." and I gave her his name and his address.

Much to my surprise, she said, "Mia has given me the paperwork."

I was starting to be a little irritated. "If you have the paperwork, you will see his name. His address. His phone number."

She said, "here it is...I just looked it up."

"Is there anything else you need from us?"

She said, "Do you have any questions for me? I want you to know that I am here for you as well as Mia."

"We have no questions." 

And that was that. A very odd call. 

Immediately afterwards, Mia forwarded something that the bank officer wanted her to address with us. She wanted us to increase the asking price by $6000, agreeing to give Mia the extra money back. This would be to cover all the closing costs.

I was pretty shocked. We would never agree to that. I explained to Mia how it was done. The bank talks to the lawyer who gives her a full breakdown of the balance on the mortgage, the prorated taxes, the filing fees, the deed search, lawyer's fees. He takes care of properly dispersing the funds, and gives us a check for the asking price. To do it her way meant that the government would tax us on the full purchase price plus the $6000 we were expected to give back to her.

Yesterday, I got a call from the lawyer's office, and his clerk was pretty upset. The loan person got hold of them and was quite shockingly rude. She informed them that this deal needed to close by the end of the month. She claimed that we were demanding it. She also said she tried to talk to us about paying the closing costs and we had absolutely refused. 

I was shocked. It wasn't true. Not at all. Mia isn't speaking to us at this point. We had no idea what was going to happen.

Today, we signed the paperwork agreeing to an extension of the closing. The clerk was still pretty upset. "She has been sitting on this paperwork since mid-April and then gives us a two week notice?!!"

I said, "I am more upset that she flat out lied. We did not discuss paying the closing costs at all. Mia talked to us about increasing the asking price to cover the closing costs. I explained how it is properly handled and that those fees would be rolled right into the mortgage. We never demanded that it be done by the end of the month."

The clerk said, "I told her that under no circumstances is she to contact the sellers again. If she has questions, she calls us, not you. I told her the deadline is extended by one month and that both parties have agreed. I think she now realizes that she is not running the show."

Tim and I walked out of there feeling much better.

In other news,  I stepped into a hole and twisted the hell out of my new knee. 

Freddie is such a funny cat. He jumps on the porch rail and knocks on the door when he wants in, which is the funniest thing.

Chicks are so cute. They are quite playful.

So that is it. That's life on the funny farm.

Maybe...

 I read something today which resonated. The essay posited that people are exhausted at the chaos of the world around us, overwhelmed with stories of natural disasters, wars, children starving, a government that seems hellbent on inflicting as much cruelty to us  and damage to the principals our nation was founded on just as quickly as it can. Our sensibilities are under attack by an unending barrage of actual wtf events over and over again on a nearly daily basis.

I read along, and I saw nothing to disagree with.

But the writer felt that when a human being feels powerless, it is a natural response to turn to ourselves to control the things that we can: our homes, divesting ourselves of the things that are weighing us down, decluttering, creating a home that comforts us an makes us feel that, there, at least, we have control, that we can find safety in our space. 

I guess that I have never seen myself as Suzy Homemaker, or as they phrase it nowadays 'trad wife'. Yet here I am, cleaning like a crazy woman, taking great pleasure in my little neat as a pin house. 

What am I?

Scared, maybe? 

Trump’s gutting of PBS opens the door for PragerU’s propaganda https://share.google/QwcWyUfmKGk8tmVtQ

Read up on Dennis Prager's thoughts on incest.

I cleaned the top of my refrigerator today. I polished the stainless steel. Probably a coincidence, though.

The Just So Story

 Somebody mentioned it a while back, but something I love about the new house is how very easy it is to keep on top of, cleaning-wise. I know that it will make me sound like a 'Stepford Wife', but this pleases me a lot. 

I can sweep the floors in 10 minutes. I can haul out the vacuum and get all the carpets done in about the same amount of time. I plug it in one outlet by the pantry and can quickly do the whole house from that one outlet.

The dishwasher is a huge time saver. Supper cleanup is a simple matter of washing a couple pans.

After my shower, I give the tub and tile a quick spritz, wipe it down with a microfiber cloth. I wipe down the sink and counter when I am done with my teeth, and then wipe down the toilet before I leave.

Other than a dust a couple times a week, that's all I need to do. Every thing is just so.

I have time for the garden. I have time for a walk. I am reading a book. A leisurely phone conversation. If I want to walk over snd visit with my sister, I can.

It is what I expected retirement to be like

I think Tim is adapting to the slower pace too. This morning, he said "let's take a run to Corry. We can see what Happ's has. I would like to stop and check the upcoming sale at the auction house. We haven't done that for a while.

A quick look and both of us said 'those chairs!' at about the same time. The chairs will match just so perfectly with our little kitchen  table. 

'Himself' is very pleased we are going to an auction tomorrow.

We did not dare to drive the truck to pick up furniture today. The forecast called for a rainy day, but found that the bow front cabinet would fit in the Subaru just  so. That came home. It also fit perfectly right where I thought it should be.

This really is a wonderful change of pace for us, and I am enjoying it very much.

Oh...and PS, tomorrow I am getting two more chicks. Don't worry. I have done the chicken math very carefully. 

Cheep Cheap

 I have mentioned that we are close to a busy road. 

Last night, probably because it was hot, the noise bothered Tim more than usual. He was up and down quite a bit in the night.

We already know that we want to plant raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries in that area this fall, but I got the idea to plant a sound barrier too. Arbor vitae was one suggestion. I suggested that since we were headed to Tractor Supply in the morning, we should check out the Garden area. The last time I was there, their shrubs were 75% off.

I got the stuff I needed for my chicks, which wasn't much really. Only two of the 9 egg clutch hatched. I don't mind starting small. I never had chickens before. That being said, if anyone could explain why I was so very tempted to buy two more chicks when I stopped to look at them at the store. I have two, I want three. But if I took two, they could comfort each other on the trip home. And four is only one more than three and this is probably exactly how people wind up with twenty of them, isn't it?

Anyways, we headed out to the garden center. Annuals were $1 a pot, and yes, they had 3 ft tall potted arbor vitae which were still 75% off. A lot of them were looking pretty bad, but we managed to find 5 of them in very good shape. 

I don't think there is anything more satisfying than watching a register ring up $224. worth of stuff and then discounting it down to just under $65. 

Well...that and the fact that I was strong and resisted the temptation to buy 2 more chicks.

 I can't even discuss the political situation. I just can't.

But I will link you to a blog post from Kay over at Musings. The ending is chilling.

Not sure why the link does not work but let's try it this way: 

https://travelerswife.blogspot.com/2025/08/surprising-byakkotai-memorials.html

Different

 This morning, I had two birthday cards to mail out to my granddaughters. The envelopes cautioned that they might require extra postage, so I decided to take them to the little post office. The area is so sparsely populated that the post mistress is only there from 8 - 12. The locking post boxes are on the front porch. 

So I scooted over with my cards. We put up our mail box at the end of the driveway, and wanted to find out how we went about setting up delivery. I also needed a book of stamps.

She greeted me cheerfully, and calculated the extra postage required as we talked about setting up mail delivery. I finished up with '...and can I get a book of stamps while I'm at it,' as I pulled out my debit card.

She cheerfully said, 'I can't take a card. No internet. I am supposed to be getting a new modem tomorrow.'

I was mortified, because I didn't even have 59 cents on me for the extra postage she had already affixed to the two cards that she'd tossed with the outgoing mail. 'Gees,' I said, looking at the clock. 'Let me run home...' I still had ten minutes before she closed up shop.

She waved her hand as she reached in her pocket. 'Don't worry about. Drop it off the next time you are passing by.'

It is different here.

Moving

Just an explanation: We have not moved the computer to the new house so I'm posting and commenting from my phone which is a much slower process for me, so posting might be a bit spotty until that move happens. Of course, before we do that, we've got to build the computer desk. And figure out how to manage wi-fi. We're thinking that we'll buy the $100 phone card for one of our phones which will permit us to use it as a hotspot, but we've never done that before. It's all new. 

Freddie and Houdi seem to be settling in okay. After a few scares, Houdi seems perfectly content to be an indoor cat, and I'm perfectly content with his decision. Freddie, though? We had a few go arounds. We don't want him out at night. He's smart enough to know that what 'no!' means, I'll give him that. He quit yowling at night, but as soon as he hears us up and about, he heads straight for the door and sits there politely until he is let out. He generally spends the day outside but at night he returns to the porch where he sits quietly waiting to be let back in. 

We have not seen the bear since his first visit last week. However, it is worth noting that we haven't seen the deer either, which makes me wonder if the bear is somewhere close by. That is interesting to us and something we are keeping a close eye on. 

We had to buy a trash can this week, and for the first time in a long, long time, we had to think about raccoon- and bear-proof ones. While no can is 100% effective with bears (due to their size) a galvanized metal one with a tight fitting lid will prevent the enticing aroma of your trash from encouraging the bear to investigate. However if they do investigate, prying the lid off will make enough racket that  you will know they are out there and can shoo them away. We've got motion detector lights set up to let us know as well. 

Of course, I'm composting again, so who knows how that experiment will turn out. My rotating composter is not bear proof. Life's for learning, I guess. We might have to build an enclosure for both the composter (and the garbage too, if it comes to that.)

Life has become much quieter despite all the things that we are doing. The biggest shock to me is how much money one doesn't spend when the are not pouring it into a renovation or a new house. We've still got to get the house sided. We've still got some things to do, of course, and I don't see that changing any time soon. 

I think however, Tim is learning to take pleasure in spending time working on his own house. He built an addition to his tool shed for his stuff, and carefully outfitted it with shelves and storage, and he was so pleased with how it turned out inside that he needed me to come and look. He's got plans for his garage, too. 

I will admit a shameful thing. Things had been getting quite rough between the two of us. I just felt as if we were moving in two different spheres. He had his ideas. I had mine. I wanted to stop. When I retired from my job, my plan was to go to visit my granddaughters every month or so. I wanted time to go kayaking with William, volunteer for Head Start, things like that. 

Tim did not want to stop, and he just kept pushing and pushing. He began talking about buying another house when Mia's mortgage comes through. This made me mad and I dug in my heels. He began to push back.

I began to be very resentful. I did not want to go to work every day. I got tired of hearing him say, "I need you to do 'x' and 'y' " with the implication that I was simply going to do it, day after day. If I didn't do it, I felt very guilty because I wasn't doing my share, even though I had literally begged for him not to buy this last house. I felt as if I had traded one boss for another, and this boss followed me home at night.

Now the renovation has been taken over, that workload is gone, and while we may be working on our house, it is our house and there is a pleasure in doing for yourself. I have time to do the things that are important to me. Tim is a lot less demanding. He has stopped talking about the next house. In return, I'm not nearly as bristly with him. The dynamics of our relationship has changed.

Today, I met him at the old house to bring a load of stuff back to the new house. He gave me a bouquet of flowers.

Surprised, I said, "What are those for?"

He said, "Because I wanted to." 

Things that make me go hmmmmm...

 This morning, we were driving back to the old house for another round of things. We also needed to go to a couple stores. 

I was driving, following a red SUV which began to slow down and then suddenly whipped off the road. The driver side door flung open and a man leaped out. He took off at a dead run.

My flabbers were ghasted when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw two men running for all they were worth down the road.

I said, "Where did that second guy come from? Was he the passenger?"

"No," Tim said. "He was walking down the side of the road."

We had a brief discussion. Should I turn around and head back? "At least if something happens, we could get the plate number from the vehicle..." 

It is hard to know what to do in a situation like that.

But we did turn around. The SUV was just pulling away. The 'walker' evidently was a pretty good runner too, because we saw him cautiously coming out of the woods some distance down the road.

I was headed to the intersection to turn around and head back in the direction we had originally been going, but Tim said, 'Slow down,' and leaned out the window. "Do you need a ride?"

I was a bit horrified. It seems to me that when someone stops driving to chase a person down the road, well, there just might be a reason.

 But the man smiled broadly, his teeth white in his deeply tanned face. "Nah, I am just going to Garland. I haven't got far to walk. Thanks a lot, though."

I am awfully curious, but I guess we will never know.

Tim got the letters for our mail box which we put up yesterday. I picked up some picture hangers and did this: 

 Silly, I know, but another thing in the place it belongs and it makes me happy. I got a frame for Jim's photograph and hung that too.

We might have different views, but I guess we are birds of a feather.

Speaking of different views, a MAGA faithful opined that she could not wait til we take over Canada. She is sick of breathing in the smoke from their wild fires.

I wonder what she is smoking, bless her heart. 

At Home

Slowly but surely, the new house is beginning to feel like home. Things are starting to find the places where they will belong: baking dishes here. Pots and pans there. Appliances. Clothes. Bathroom supplies, kitchen supplies. Food even. As things are put away, the house begins to look uncluttered. 

After living in a big house that I could never quite keep up with, this house is wonderfully simple. Two bedrooms, one bath, the pantry, and a combined livingroom/kitchen.  I can sweep the kitchen, bathroom and pantry in ten minutes. I can plug the vacuum into the receptacle in the hall and vacuum the whole house in about the same amount of time. This morning, getting the house in order took about an hour. I watered and weeded the gardens. I fed cats. I put diatomaceous earth around the foundation of the house (ants), and dragged building scraps to the burn pile. 

 I had cucumbers from my garden in dill and sour cream for lunch. Now I am sitting in a quiet house listening to crickets outside and wondering if it is going to rain. The clock strikes the hour: 1PM.

There is still plenty to do. Furniture moved in. We don't have our dressers for example. No pictures on the wall.

It will happen, and I am remarkably unbothered by it.

I am marveling at my own contentment. I realize that this quietness is what I have been missing.

Home free.

 Today, I had a job to do up at Levi and Mattie's house. They are appealing their property assessment and this requires photos. He asked me if I would do it. Of course, I said yes. 

Something about the Amish is that it is a very serious violation to capture their images even accidently. Probably the saddest thing I ever heard was Mattie's story about her father. As he was dying of covid back in the early days of the pandemic, he was in isolation. His family called him on the phone but he longed to see their faces. He said, "I know it is wrong, but I wish I had a picture of my family."

There are things I don't understand about their way of life, but they are good people and I respect them. I don't need to understand. It is their life.

So I was taking pictures of the buildings from all sides, being mindful of where the kids were at. At one point, Rudy came running into the shot. I lowered my phone quickly. Levi sternly admonished Rudy in German.

I assured Levi that I was being mindful. He said, "I know you are, but they don't need to make the job more difficult!" 

As we worked our way across the property, photographing the sawmill, the workshop, the barns, the poultry sheds, and the two houses (theirs and the home they built for grandma). As we walked by grandma's house, there was a bit of a ruckus. Grandma found a snake in her beans. Levi got a stick and took care of that. 

I waited and I saw the thing that made me sickish the first time I saw it last summer: a sparrow trap. The birds fly into it, triggering a lever which drops them into a wire cage where they are left to die. 8 sparrows fluttered desperate to escape.

Levi and grandma walked over when he was done. They were afraid they had offended me. Thing was, they hadn't. I have killed snakes too close to the house. We have set mousetraps when we needed to. Tim shoots woodchucks in the yard because there are just too many. I have euthenized pets. And really, a woman who eats venison has to acknowledge the circle of life.

But those birds were suffering in the sun.

I said slowly, 'No. I am not offended by the snake. But, Levi, today, I am going to charge you for my work.' 

I have never done that before. He looked surprised, but quickly assured me that was fine. I said, 'My price is those birds,' and I gestured to the cage.

Two more shocked people you never saw in your life. Levi said, 'What would you do with them?' 

I said, 'I will take them to the new house and set them free.'

Grandma said, 'Don't you have sparrows there, then?' in a truly curious way.

I laughed and admitted that we did. I admitted that I couldn't bear to see things suffer. 

I am sure they think I am very peculiar, but when I returned with the photographs a couple hours later, the cage had been moved to the shade. I picked it up and put it in the back of the car and covered it with a blanket to settle the frantic things.

I drove the half hour home and when I got there I set the trap on the garden and opened the door. I watered the garden, and one by one, they left the cage, flying into the trees. The last one hesitated and then flew into the tomato bed, fluttering up and down in the spray in a joyous little dance.

A Tale of Two Kitties

 Houdi made himself comfortable pretty quickly at the new place. It was my fondest hope that he would make up his mind to be an indoor cat.  

At the old house, he did wind up being an indoor/outdoor cat. He was persistent. After he escaped a few times, I accepted he knew where he lived, and that the two ferals that hung around our house did not seem to be aggressive, and that he did not seem to roam. 

At this house, it is different. At least two ferals here can be aggressive. (Tiger actually shot across the field after the bear last night.) And...the coyotes are predators. The road is not a quiet city street. It is a highway, a truck route with a 55 mph speed limit.

The first night, he was here, he slept happily at the foot of the bed as usual. Also (as usual), he went to the door about 4 am and meowed to go out.

We argued about this for some time, but he kept up his yowling. I put him the basement  but the stairwell actually amplified his yowling. 

 Nobody was getting any sleep. I finally gave up and let him out. He did not come back and I spent the day calling him and looking for him to no avail. That evening, I heard a familiar yowling. I went to the door and called him. He shot past me into the house. 

I am not sure what happened, but he suddenly seems very content to be an indoor cat. When the door is opens, he runs the other way.

That is a relief.

So that's the tale of one kitty. I promised you a tale of two kitties.

Remember Freddie? He belonged to an elderly neighbor down the street. He started life as a feral, but she brought him in and he lived a comfortable life for a couple years. But the neighbor's declining health required a cross country haul to Arizona. She could only bring two cats and made the decision to keep the two cats she had all their lives. 

The street cat named Freddie went to a lady across the street. When she was evicted from her apartment, she left Freddie behind.

It is only a guess, but I believe left to his own devices, Freddie tried to return to the only home he knew. I believe the new owner was mean to him. He fled and showed up at our house, sleeping on the second floor balcony for the winter. 

When I noticed him, he got fed. He hissed and spit when I tried to get close enough to see the name on his collar. I am sure it was a miserable winter, but gradually, I was able to pet him and see the name tag and using Facebook, finally got his whole sad story.

I couldn't bring myself to leave him behind again. He and Houdi got along at the old house.  

Today, I matter of factly picked him up, popped him in a cat carrier and brought him home. He was very anxious during the car ride. I took him him into the basement and opened the carrier. He stuck his head out. I assured him that he was home. 

He is down there somewhere. He has all the necessities of life there while he makes up his mind. The basement door is open, so that he can come upstairs when he is ready.

A Night In The Woods

Quite a few years back, Tim was at a yard sale and saw the leaded glass window above. He has always loved it, but we really had nowhere to put it. A few weeks back, I caught sight of it and thought 'you know what????',brought it to the new house and realized that, widthwise, it was the perfect fit for right inside the front door. We finally got around to installing it and framing the window in.

Once the schefflera grows back, it will disguise the heighth difference a little, but Tim is pleased with it. 

When we were done with that, we headed back into town. Our newest  tenant Jaimee met us at the old house and got the livingroom set from the library, a dresser, a desk and chair, two area rugs, an end table and a couple lamps. We hauled two truckloads of furniture down to her apartment, and up the stairs. 

I did not want to ride the truck back and forth because I needed to get some steps in.

On the walk back home, I heard someone holler 'hey, old lady!' It was my bearded buddy Jim. He is another tenant. I think an awful lot of him, but things got heated during the first reign of tRUMP. He blocked me for a while, but you know what? We all have to be led by our own consciences, and if we feel compelled to speak, we should do it.

Things have eased between us in the intervening years, and I was glad to see him. I leaned against the passenger side window and we had a friendly chinwag just like the old days. 

Jim moved from the country after a bad fall made him realize that he could no longer handle the work required to live in the woods. He was very apprehensive about life in town but the apartment looks out over the Conewango creek. He realized that he was seeing more wildlife from his apartment than he saw in the woods, geese ducks, eagles, deer, and a front row seat too.  

He invested in a good camera, and began doing wildlife photography from his back porch. He spends hours there. He told people, 'I forget I am even living in town.'

He had a present for me: 

Perfect, isn't it? I will call it 'Different Views'. It will hang in a place of honor.

We hauled my cedar chest back. We have blankets to be stored away for winter. We also brought this back: 

Poor picture, but a ticking clock has always made a place feel like home to me.

The clock was striking 8 when, as usual, the deer came from the woods to feed. In very short order, they 'flagged' and bounded away en masse. 

Tim said 'Something scared them. I will bet there is a bear nearby.' Right on cue, a black bear ambled across the little footbridge and lazily made his way across the yard. It was too dark to get a picture. 

We are sitting in the dark watching fireflies. A great horned owl calls from deep in the woods.

Housewarming Gift

 

My daughter came home with a housewarming gift.

I laugh every time I look at it.

It is even more hilarious when you stop to consider that quite a few of our 'neighbors' are related to us.

Today was a graduation party for my great-nephew. I got to hold my newest great niece, just two months old. She cooed and smiled and fell asleep in my arms. My sister said, "You've still got it."

I wonder if we ever truly 'lose' it?

Houdi comes home

 

Houdi has been at the old house. Things emptying out. 'Mom' was gone for nearly 2 weeks. My oldest daughter was tending to him, every day, but I am sure he was pretty confused.

Today was the day.

He was scooped up and put in his carrier, which I am sure conjured up bad memories involving visits to the vet. He yowled forlornly from the old house to the new.

I started him off in the basement so that he knew the location of his litter box. He immediately hid. You might remember that he hid for weeks when I first got him. 

I didn't know how this would go, but after several hours of hiding, he began to 'talk' to me from the basement...he meows, I talk to him, he meows back. He came from his hiding place and so I simply picked him up and brought him upstairs. 

I set him on our bed. I figured that would be a place familiar to him. He was very content, and from there he explored the rooms one by one. 

I think he recognizes that he is home.

Here I Am!

 Thanks for the check ins, everyone. 

It was a busy time. 

My daughter, my son and his wife and children came home. There were two gatherings at the new house. We are not 100% moved in yet, but we had a place for everyone to sit and a place for everyone to sleep, and that was enough. 

The first gathering was held at my sister's across the road, a bon fire. The girls got a ride on Libby, and were tickled pink to feed the gentle old horse treats when the ride was over. We sat around the fire and visited, and it was a quiet, fun evening. 

The next day, the gathering was at our house and that was nice too. Our new house has memories already.

Monday, William and I rode back with them. It was a full van and a fun trip. On Tuesday, we went to Knoebel's, which was fun. The thrillseekers did the rollercoasters and those sudden drop rides. I, myself, rode the merry go round and the planes with the three year old. It was enough.

We spent all day there. It gave my knee a good test and it held up beautifully. 

Wednesday was the great birthday trial run. The girl's birthdays are very close, so the celebrations are combined. The theme this year is 'tie dye'. The kids are going to tie dye shirts. The homemade cake even had a tie dye theme which was very impressive. Three children with three adults to supervise and assist if necessary. We were using the dip method. My son and daughter-in-law decided that was way too messy. Even worse, dye stained hands were being wiped on the clothes they were wearing. The idea of staying on top of 15 kids would be way too crazy. The activity was fine tuned. The color selection was minimized and spray bottles will be used. The cake required no tweaks at all, being impressive to look at and tasting perfect too. William and his uncle fired up the smoker and made bbq'ed ribs and potato salad.

Thursday,  we were all ocean bound to a dog beach. This did not happen. Tucker, aka the Golden Land Shark (personally, I call him the Incredible Gulp) gobbled down a washcloth, requiring someone to sit up with him all night. That puppy will be a fine dog if they can get him past the puppy stage. 

We spent the day hiking at a local park. Tucker got a chance to paddle around in the water, but it was freshwater. That evening was spent in an authentic Mexican restaurant. I had Poblanos Guadalajara and they were excellent. 

Friday was the day that my kids headed off to a child free wedding in Virginia. The wedding was being held at old inn, very grand. 

The kids and I had fun. We did a craft. We did puppets. We made dad's favorite cookies. We kept the dog from gobbling down socks,wash cloths and barbie shoes, which was a never ending chore, but one we were ultimately successful at. I did not dare to walk two girls and one large exuberant puppy, so poor Tucker had extra energy that could not be run off in the back yard, as large as that is.

Everyone returned Saturday. William was packed up and ready to head out to Michigan with his other grandparents. I think he is spending the week in Manistee.

The youngest was sick Sunday, and boy, grandma dodged a bullet on that. Only her mama would do. It was a quiet day at home and no one minded at all. I made pepperoni rolls for supper, a childhood favorite. The oldest granddaughter was intrigued to discover she was a 4th generation pepperoni roll fan.

Monday was spent at an amazing playground. 

Grandpa Tim rolled in Monday night.

My last full day was Tuesday. We went to an animal park.

All good things must come to an end. Wednesday about lunch time, grandpa and i headed out.

I came home to an amazing sight:

I have peas to pick, plenty of cucumbers. Two zucchini with signs of many more to come. Tons of tomatoes, all green. When those come on, I will have a time keeping up with them. 

It was a longer drive than usual with grandma dealing with a low key version of whatever my youngest grand daughter had. Tim wanted to stop to look at a gun. I used that time to hit up a thrift store.

I saw this pillow and immediately realized that it was a perfect match. 'Self,' I said, 'if are two of these, it was meant to be.' 

It was meant to be. 

This morning I was teary at the sight of an orange spider waiting to scare me on the bathroom window sill. The oldest girl left me a treasure hunt. 

It lead me to the treasure...a heart with all their names. It made me teary.

Good memories.

Moving right along.

 Swept, vacuumed and hand washed the livingroom, and then we put down the newly cleaned carpet. Note that the IKEA poang chair is not permanent. There are two other patio chairs we will use while company is here, but we should be able to provide seats for everyone. 

We got the guest bed moved down today. 

We are not moving the dressers right now. We can do that later when life resumes its normal pace. I got all the bedding washed and popped back on the bed. 

We also moved the Hoosier into the pantry. It will be used to store the appliances I don't want to leave on the counter. 

It was another hard day for both of us, but we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

For Northsider Dave, who I have been disappointing for some time now. 

I need to set my tomato cages, but that, my friend, is a 4 foot by 8 foot raised bed of tomatoes, and it looks like it is going to be a bumper year for them. 

Cucumbers have mucho blossoms. Peppers looking good, all except for one that looks like, for whatever reason, the bugs love him to the point that they're ignoring the rest of the peppers, and I'm kind of okay with that, really. There is a double row of onions between the peppers and the cucumbers, and I'm trying to train the cucumbers to go up the trellis instead of across the bed to the onions and peppers.

The last two beds contain peas, onions, beans (which don't impress me much), and in the bed closest to the (still) unsided house, there are three different kinds of squash. I forgot to take a picture of the smaller raised bed which I always plant pumpkins in. They probably grow a foot a day. 

Tomorrow, we will move our bed down to the new house. Between the camper and the house, we have enough room to accommodate everyone. I hope that it is an enjoyable weekend for everyone. Monday, I will be heading back with 3 grandchildren for a week away. I will babysit while everyone travels to an adults only wedding, and I'm looking forward to that. Having all of them, all at once, is not a common occurrence. This means I'll be pretty quiet for the next week. 

Enjoy your break! 😀

Steve Reed: the podcast I listened to was Crime Junkie on Pandora. Infamous: University of Idaho Murders. There are other podcasts on Spotify and on Iheart radio that looked to be interesting, but I tend to stick with what I have on my phone. Something interesting though is that Bryan Kohberger is an incel. I did not know that, and it provides a possible motive. 

Damage

I got tomatoes. They're all green, but it really does look like I'm going to have a bumper crop. I also have blossoms on my peas, so that made me feel better. Little pumpkins growing. It will never fail to boggle my mind just how quickly pumpkin vines grow. Squashes. Onions. Lettuce. So the garden is doing what I hoped it would do. 

Today, I stained my kitchen shelves. Tim put up the wrought iron brackets. They look just as good as I hoped they would. 

I painted more trim. I poly'ed more trim. Tim installed trim around the doors. That job is one board away from being done. We hauled building supplies and drop cloths and tools out of the livingroom. Amazing how much more spacious it seems. 

I'm washing the bedding in preparation for the beds to be hauled up. The rain they were calling for is going to hold off until 4PM, so we'll haul up our rugs and one of the beds and the Hoosier cabinet. And a rocking chair. (Probably look like the Beverly Hillbillies driving down the road.)

The rugs are ready for pick up tomorrow morning as well, which is perfect timing. We'll be able to put them down in empty rooms, instead of moving furniture out of the way and then moving furniture back. 

We're getting stuff done. 

What I'm not doing, however, is getting pictures. Sorry about that. I meant to. 

While I was working today, I listened to a podcast about Brian Kohberger. Can you imagine what his parents feel like? For two and a half years, he denied the crime to them. The decision to take a plea deal must have blind sided them. He has two sisters. At least one of them had questions about his possible involvement when he came home from college after the murders. Both of them wound up losing their jobs in the aftermath of all of this. 

I have been thinking about that all afternoon. Here was a very comfortable family living a very comfortable life. Two parents that loved their kids. 

Four students were killed that night, but five families were ripped apart. 

A Moving Story.

 Yesterday was  a busy day. 

It was an early start at the court house of course. A funny story is that as we all filed in, we were required to put our cell phones into a large basket. I supposed right away that they didn't want any phone calls coming in to disrupt the proceedings. But I ask you to imagine a hundred cell phones in a bushel basket! That's kind of what it was like. 

What struck me the most? The fact that the officials running the show were required to do the same, but their phones went into a basket up front. 

And...wouldn't you know? The person instructing us and giving the oath was interrupted by a ringing cell phone. The funniest part? The sound was not coming from the back of the court room where we rank amateurs were required to drop off our phones. The phone belonged to one of the officials! The bailiff carried the basket out of the courtroom. 

As we all stood up to leave, we were held up by people trying to find their cellphones in that big old basket in the back. I have a pretty nondescript case, and I was regretting that big time. I finally found mine, but I had a horrifying thought that perhaps someone had taken it accidently instead of their own. 

I walked home, changed clothes, and then headed to the new house. 

We are putting the final touches on things, and it really is quite exciting now. For instance, yesterday, I cleared all the supplies out of the bedrooms and then swept the floor several times trying to remove all the plaster dust. I hand washed the floor and applied a light finish to it. We got the curtains hung. 

We're waiting for the rugs to come back from the cleaner. Once they are on the floor, then we'll move two beds in, and bring the hoosier cabinet up for the pantry. We can wash the bedding and make up the beds fresh and ready for guests. Of course, we have to time this all around 3 days of predicted rain this week. 

We will bring up the enamel topped table from the storage at the old house on the property.  We have so much stuff that has been put away for years now, as we planned our plans and dreamed our dreams. It will be nice to see it again. 

The sofa and a couple rocking chairs are already there at the new house, so that part is done. But that's all the furniture we're moving up before the visit. We will mindfully select what's coming and what's not coming over the course of the summer. 

It just feels strange that we are finally at this point. We've been working on this house since 2023. So much has changed since then that it feels even longer. We've still got work to do before winter comes, to include siding it, but actually living in the house we are siding is going to make that much more convenient.

I will get some pictures. We're going flat out right now. I was so tired that I was in bed by 9:30 last night. 

Ticking Boxes

 I got the camper cleaned and put back together, the fridge stocked. One box ticked for my kids coming home at the end of the week. 

While I was finishing that, Tim was putting the final touches on the bathroom. Another box ticked. 

The attic fold down steps are installed. We had to ask for help on that one. My nephew dropped what he was doing and headed down. He's a huge guy, so he simply picked up the steps and fit them in place. Tim was in the attic putting in the screws to hold the thing in place. We had called Bill once we saw that this was not a two man job. Once he got there, it turned out that it was a two person job after all...he and Tim installed it and I kept myself out of their way. There is another box ticked. 

I have jury duty tomorrow. 

Tuesday, we'll be back at it. We are waiting to begin moving minimal furniture down there until we get the cleaned rugs back, and I'm not sure exactly when that will happen. 

Not a lot to say today, but it is raining, and we are supposed to have thunderstorms. To that end, I have the window open to hear it blowing in. Nothing yet, but the rain makes a pleasant shushing noise as my mind races on ahead, doing meal planning for the visit. 

Late Edit: I showed up for Jury Duty this morning at 8:30 as instructed, along with about a hundred other folks. There were two trials scheduled for that courtroom this morning, which struck me as a positive thing. We filed through, one by one, and took our seats in the courtroom for the jury selection process. At 9:15, the judge came in. It was announced that the defendant in the first case was a no show. A warrant was issued for his arrest. The second case had been settled out of court at the last minute. We were free to go. Yep. Another box ticked!

Born and Bread

This is a post that I first put up some time back, repeated again in 2024, and now, for those who have never seen it, I present to you Tim's family reunion/bread baking. 

 The broccoli salad is done and in the fridge. 

I cleaned the kitchen, and washed dishes. 

Soon I will go out and try my hand at two loaves of dough to go with us tomorrow. 

This is an old post, very old, from 2005 or 6, but I love it still. 

Shall We Bake Bread Together

Some of you may remember reading about Tim's Uncle Herman.

This is Uncle Herman's cane. He wants to make sure that you all understand that this is not sassafras, but hickory. So if you are inclined to make your own cane, he guesses you'd want to tie a knot in a hickory sapling. Then you patiently wait three years, and then go out there and cut it down. Varnish it up and put a rubber tip on it, and there you go. You got yourself a dandy walking stick. It is also good for emphasizing a point when you are talking.

Anyways, this is a brick oven that Uncle Herman and Uncle Harold made years upon years upon years ago. Uncle Harold passed on, oh, probably, 8 years ago now (Edit: remember this was originally put up about 2005 or so, which means that uncle Harold has been gone nearly 30 years now). Well, Tim and I got up early, and were on the road at 7 AM, because we had to pick up Uncle Herman at 9, sharp. We were driving him out to Uncle Harold's. Tim and he had the mighty responsibility of getting the brick oven fired up. Well. Uncle Herman had the responsibility, Tim being a mere peon in the operation.The fire is started. Once the oven heats up to 425 or 450 or so, once the bricks are good and hot, you reach in there and drag out all the fire.
Then you begin to fill it with all the different kinds of bread.

It will hold about 22 loaves.Keep on keeping on, Mike and Dave. There's about 40 loaves of bread there, two firings worth.Uncle Herman has to keep an eye on the young wet-behind-the ears-whipper snappers. A very close eye.
While we wait for the bread to bake, people socialize. Here are two of the matriarchs of this mighty gathering. Anna is on the left. She is Herman's wife. Aunt Mary Jane is the widow of Uncle Harold. She's in a nursing home now, but was able to come back home to her farm to spend the day with her family.This is the view behind the bread oven.
Now, while Uncle Herman might well be the undisputed master of the brick oven, everyone knows that Aunt Anna is the undisputed judge of when the bread is done. That's her in the foreground cutting into a 'test' loaf. The hand on her back is pretending to be supportive, but he's actually sticking real close to be the taste tester. The greedy critter just wants the first bite. Don't you think the woman carefully documenting this day should be the taste tester? Excuse me while I put down my camera and go straighten this deluded character out.

Okay.

I'm back.

Man.

Driven mad by the prolonged exposure to the smell of baking bread, the old guy fought hard.

I did not want it said that I, an outsider, was responsible for bloodshed at the

Oglesby-Winkler family reunion.

So I cried.

He shared.

DO NOT JUDGE ME!

It may have been 'pity bread' but it was warm from the oven!

Little toes wiggle in delight.

Finally, Anna gives the official, unchallengeable word. 'The bread is ready to come out of the oven.' The crowds roared.

Well.

They began to salivate in earnest, anyways.

Tim and Gene get right to work. The crowds press in from all sides. Can you blame them? Imagine a table of fresh hot bread, with butter, and honey butter, herb butter, and honey from Aletha's hives, and jams, not just the Welch's, but Uncle Chuck's homemade strawberry jam, and Ellen's elderberry jam, so many others, homemade.

Ooooooh.

And we broke bread together.

And, lo, it was good.

Very, very good.

Here endeth the old post. 

Uncle Herman is gone now. If memory serves me, Aunt Anna is the only one remaining from that generation. All her sisters and brothers are gone now. Uncle Herman died probably 10 years ago now.  Aunt Anna is still plugging along and she is surrounded by kids, by grands, by great grands, even great-great grands, and they love her and take very good care of her. 

Tim is the bread baker now. He runs the oven by himself. But people gather and we still break bread together and we still sit in the shade of the trees eating bread fresh from the oven and remembering those who taught us the art of it all: bread and family and tradition.