October 9, 2002
~ July
17, 2002 ~ June
28, 2002 ~ June 3, 2002
~ May 17,
2002 ~ April 24, 2002
March 25, 2002
~ March 8, 2002
~ Last week of February
~ Third week of February
First week of February
~ Last week of January
~ January 2002
Winter is flirting with us and with it comes our first anniversary of moving
to Kansas. Three out of three people still agree---WE LOVE IT HERE!!!! We
celebrated our first Thanksgiving Dinner at the house and christened it with the
aromas of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, bread and spiked egg nog---mine was
unleaded, of course. Our friend Bonnie, who just bought a brand spanking
new house, joined us for the festivities along with her friend Kelly. The
old folks in Kansas are dropping like flies so the auctions just come one after
another and Judi is in heaven.
I swear
that woman will bid on anything. She constantly glances across the room to
me with her, "Do we need that?" look. I have perfected the
'head-shake-no-I'm-not-bidding' signal. She would buy more crap than she
could carry home if I didn't tag along to these things. She just loves to
be getting a bargain. Hasn't quite gotten the concept of 'it's not a deal
if we can't use it.' I like watching the people and I do bid on stuff
myself. It is really fun. There's a pretty regular group that goes
to these things and the auctioneers know us now. I am currently on the
look out for antique dessert cups and a croquet set. There's this decrepit
old man in a wheelchair that goes to all the auctions. He's on oxygen and
he bids on everything. Judi and I were commenting, as he outbid us AGAIN,
that we need to find out his name so that when he dies, we can go to the auction
his kids hold and buy all the stuff that he's 'stolen' out from under us.
One day he started coughing really bad and we joked that that day could be now!
Seriously, as much as I kid her about her 'auction fetish' she really does have
a good eye and it usually lands on the good stuff.
I wasn't ready for winter yet so the past
few weeks have been a flurry of yard activity. Those lovely woods we
have? They have more leaves per tree than all the trees in Southern
California put together. I would start a mulch pile, but the entire state
of Kansas would not be big enough to hold it! I am trying to clear out some of
the saplings that are everywhere or we won't be able to walk in the woods and if
the trees don't have some breathing space, they won't grow big and healthy.
Note to self: Next year I need to set aside some time to do an hour or two of
sapling maintenance each week so they don't get out of control.
There were all the big pieces of wood in the
woodpile left from last year that still needed to be split and it needed to be
cleared out of all the rotten wood so the bugs don't start in on the fresh wood
that I put there this year. Some of the logs were cut too long to fit our
stoves so I needed a chain saw to trim those, and other pieces were just too
solid for me to split with the maul so I used the chainsaw on them and ended up
with a nice pile of sawdust to throw around the yard where I need some erosion
control when the heavy rains hit. There are also some dead trees that
needed cutting but I need help with the bigger ones so I am going to see if Al,
or his son-in-law Brian, can come and help. Once the tree is on the ground
I am fine, I just need some help getting them to fall where I want them to fall
(like NOT ON THE HOUSE!).
There were the flues on the wood stoves to
get swept so we don't get a chimney fire; and the rain gutters to be cleared of
leaves so we don't get a flood. Stuff in the garage needed to be moved
either up off the floor or down to the basement so that when snow covered cars
drive in, the snow doesn't melt and ruin it. There was the garden swing to
get covered for winter and I think I still will probably end up dis-assembling
it and putting it in the basement. I think the snow might get too heavy on
the canopy and collapse it.
After I cleared the leaves from the rain
gutters I put screens on them so that I will never, ever, EVER have to stand in
the pouring rain again and get drenched while I attempt to unclog a rain gutter
downspout at 2 am when it's 36 degrees outside. I've run the lawnmower
across the leaves in the yard to grind them up so they'll decompose faster, but
no sooner do I finish, the wind comes along and drops a whole new batch of
them. And there are still more friggin' leaves left on the trees!!!
My latest project---fieldstone. I found a limestone outcropping down in
the ravine and I have been bringing up pieces of it to make paths and borders
around the house and in the garden. The pieces weigh about 20-30 lbs each
and it's all up hill from the source to the house. I put them (one at a
time, of course) in a sling and then carry them on my back like a back pack.
I tried loading several onto the wheelbarrow, but they are so heavy the wheel
just sinks in the soft ground. Maybe I can borrow my friend Timmy's ATV
and bring up a whole mess of 'em at once.
Maverick has become an accomplished squirrel stalker. She started out
with the rush, but that just made them run away. She switched to the
sneak, which is really something to see. She moves at a snails pace across
the yard in a futile attempt to sneak up on the squirrels. Same
result. As soon as she gets too close, the squirrel bolts. Well she
finally caught one. She didn't kill it quite fast enough and it took a
couple of really good bites out of her face before she got the message that it
was not happy in her mouth. DJ was really upset because he saw her walking
around with what he THOUGHT was the stuffed squirrel toy she has and he went to
play tug of war with her and was a little shocked to see it wasn't the toy he
thought it was. Dallas licked Maverick's face every day (thank god!) and I
had to put Neosporin on the bites for almost a month before they healed.
It looked like she would be scarred for life, but it's healed and all the hair
has grown back. You can't even tell where she was bitten. She doesn't care
at all, and still goes stalking the little beasties (of which there are three
million, so don't feel too sorry for the little rodents).
Darwin has adapted to being an indoor kitty very well. She loves the
regular feeding schedule; loves to wrestle with Elmo and play tag with her mom,
Struts. She is a cuddler and likes to lay on my tummy if I am lying on the
couch reading a book. At night when I sit at the computer, she likes to
stretch out on the desk between my body and the keyboard and purr and snooze
while I type away. I started up that little Felix the Cat program and she
was just fascinated by they teeny, tiny cat on the screen. Struts still
hasn't forgotten she was a feral cat so you have a 50-50 chance of her letting
you pet her or her running away from you on any given day. She has become
more approachable since we brought the kitten in. I think she's sort of
jealous of the attention Darwin gets and the other day I was amazed when she
actually jumped up on the couch and curled up in my lap. Judi is spoiling
them all with kitty milk substitute. Who would have pictured Judi spoiling
a cat??? All three are just living it up. They romp and play and
romp and play all night. Note to self: Awaken cats frequently during the
day so that they will be tired at night and we can get some rest...
The birds never take a rest, no matter the season. The geese have
returned and one night last week a large flock flew over the house at
sunup. They were so loud that they woke us up with their honking.
That's quite a feat as our house is really sound-proofed. I thought the
birds were going to drain my wallet because they started going through the suet
cakes out front at a rate of two a day. Fortunately Maverick discovered
the creature that was decimating the food on a nightly basis had no
feathers. I let Dallas & Mav out back for their last bathroom break of
the night and Mav took off like a shot around the side of the house. By
the time I got around to the front of the house, she had the bird food thief
well treed. Just our friendly neighborhood opossum. I knew they were
in the neighborhood, I just didn't realize they had developed an addiction to
suet. I was all set to put the trap out for a catch and relocate, but I
read some really good things about them on the internet and I decided that like
the raccoons, if I modify MY behavior, the creature will not cause a
problem. The solution is to bring the suet feeder into the garage at
night. Food supply dries up and the opossum goes somewhere else.
Country life is soooooo simple...
Top
Bad
Julie. BAD JULIE!!! Look how long it's been since I added to the journal.
I am slipping. I guess I just got caught up in living rather than writing
about living. I went to a writer's retreat at the end of September.
It was held at Walloon Lake in Michigan and it was wonderful. I got to
meet some very interesting authors who ran workshops and conferences and the
attendees were quite a diverse bunch. Very energetic and committed to the
craft of writing. The food was incredible, the setting was inspiring and I
was there on my own. Awesome vacation.
Catch-up time: [Bear with me, I plan to steal from the past two months
sent emails so I can get the details of what's up in this journal] August
and September were really pretty quiet here. The big story was the
animals. We no longer have to try to outsmart the raccoons. Struts
was reproductively modified at the end of July. I figured any kittens she
may have had were weaned and could do without her for a day or two so I trapped
her in the cage that I used to use to TRY to keep the food away from the
raccoons. She wasn't thrilled with the prospect and let me know it, but
was much calmer about the whole thing than I had any right to expect. A
rabies shot, a worming pill and she was ready to be "fixed."
When I retrieved her two days later, she seemed reluctant to part from us and
now, 2 months later, she hasn't left the house; hasn't even expressed any
interest in going outside. Elmo is thrilled. His girlfriend is
finally in here. He has access to her 24/7 and all he wants to do
is.....PLAY! Shortly after Struts came home, a kitten came up
on
the deck by the food dishes, meowing and talking to Elmo. I felt bad,
but this one has had no exposure to people so it won't let me get near it---of
course it's happy to eat the food I put out. Then the next night the
kitten came back but this time Dad-cat was with it so I don't feel so bad
now. It looks well fed and has no trouble chowing down the dry food so I'm
sure it will be fine. I hope it isn't a girl.
August: Struts is still enjoying her new quarters. She's
learned that the dogs are no threat---unless you run right in front of them,
then they can't possibly resist chasing you. Her surviving
kitten thinks the house looks pretty good too. It has been hanging
out on the deck off the sunroom and making friends with Elmo & the dogs
through the screen door. Elmo just loves his Struts. They chase each
other around and around and when he tries to jump her bones she whacks him
upside the head. Typical couple. Since Struts moved in, he's had
zero interest in going outside.
I am trying to avoid my normal routine of sitting on the deck and smoking, I
figure I'll keep my hands busy with a keyboard. We are both happy DJ is
back to school as the last two weeks of summer he was really getting annoying
since all his friends are playing football this year so they are at practice
instead of playing with him. The quitting smoking goes well so far.
My quit day was Aug 13. The Wellbutrin seems to be working. I don't
really feel any different, but I also don't feel the anxiety I expected to
accompany quitting. The patch seems to be working as I don't have any
physical cravings for nicotine. All that leaves is the actual physical
ACTION of smoking. I am used to walking out on the deck in the a.m. and
lighting up. Finish a meal? Smoke. Work in the yard?
Smoke. Something on the computer going to run a while? Smoke!
All these little triggers and no gun...I was
going to do the "Quit Smoking Diary" but so far that has been so
boring that it's not worth typing.... I have noticed that the first thing to
come back is my sense of smell and I've got to tell you, Kansas stinks. It
smells damp and decaying and rotten. Hopefully I can develop some
allergies to plug up my sinus' now that I am losing the protective tar coating
in my respiratory system....
September: We are 99% sure that the little one on the
deck is Struts' kid. It came up for food with her several times
before we snagged her, and it is about the right age/size. I don't know
for sure that Poppa cat is really the father, but Poppa has long hair and so
does the young'un. Kitten has taken to spending all day and night on the
sunroom deck, It hides between the sliding glass door and the hot tub
because nothing can get at it there. It loves Maverick, butts it's head up
against the screen and tries to rub against the dog!!!!! Judi, cat-hater
that she is (kidding, sort of), bought some cans of food that were on close out
and named it Darwin (as in survival of the fittest Darwin). She is
currently trying to get it used to us so we can trap it and neuter it.
October: Fait accompli. One small, trusting,
gentled gray & white kitten of the female flavor has been added to the
household. Darwin didn't take much convincing that life on our side of the
glass had more to offer than the cold, rainy, soon-to-be-snowy outdoors.
After days of sniffing and rubbing the indoor animals through the screen door,
the first thing she tried to do when face to face with Maverick was nurse.
Maverick wasn't quite sure what to make of the kitten latching onto her teat so
she walked off and Darwin tried it on Elmo. She had her kitten-making
machinery removed last week and now all night long, all we hear is three cats
scrambling across hard wood floors and thundering along the stairs. Darwin
actually goes to the door and meows to go out, but is easily distracted from
this desire by a ball or stuffed mouse. I prefer she remain in to lessen
the pests and disease that might be transmitted, but if she starts destroying
the place trying to get out, I'll let her.
Top
We've reached a peaceful co-existence with the raccoons. I only put out
a little bit of dry food for the kitty. Just enough for her and maybe her
kitten, or boyfriend to eat in one day. Sometimes I even wait for her to
come up on the deck before I put out the food. She dances around the door
to let me know that she's there and hey---THERE'S NO FOOD IN MY DISH!
HELLO! Anyway, the raccoon family appears to be intact and satisfied with
the measly amount of cat food left for them at the end of the night. Also,
just because I've only seen one on the deck doesn't mean I'm seeing the SAME
raccoon each time I see it. But I have seen all three of them together
down at the pond almost every night fishing. Yup, they are going to eat
every darn fish in that pond. Which is probably good. It will save
the fish from a horrible death due to a severe lack of water. It's been
incredibly dry here and the level of the pond seems to drop daily. We
actually had water restrictions in effect for the first two weeks of July.
The bugs here just seem to get bigger as the summer gets hotter. I can
just imagine what they'd be like if it was wetter! June bugs the size of
Volkswagens. Moths the size of, well, Mothra. The fireflies are
starting to taper off. I wonder what comes next? Well wonder no
more! It's frogs and toads! At least it's not RAINING frogs and
toads although if it was, at least it would be raining SOMETHING. I heard
splashing on the deck last night and found a 2 inch tree frog bathing in the
dogs water bowl. This morning I discovered a hole in the ground under the
Mugo pine tree by the front walk. I decided to pour a watering can full of
water down it to see what was living there. See, I'm thinking snake.
Judi hates snakes. No really, I mean irrationally, unreasonably, panicky
HATES snakes. So I wanted to chase it out and fill in the hole. I'm
pouring the water, ready to run for my life the second I get a glimpse of forked
tongue....No snake, just your friendly, neighborhood, ordinary, garden
variety giant toad. He eats bugs, he can stay. Fast forward to
early afternoon on the deck. Birds singing in the trees, squirrels
scolding the dogs, bees buzzing. A fountain gurgles softly in the
background. And what's that climbing in the upper water reservoir? A
little green frog the size of my thumbnail!
My dad, Carl, came and spent a week with us. He enjoyed all the animals
and sitting on the deck and thinks we have a real nice place in a cute little
town (and he's right). I picked him up in a car with no air conditioning
so we hid out at T-Bone Charlie's in the Marriott and had some of their famous
Kansas Beef Filet's. Yummy! Needless to say that was the last car
trip with no A/C. I took it in later in the week and while we waited for
it we walked around the K
State campus. What a beautiful school. I hope DJ goes
there. We also took him to a farm auction and man were they selling the
farm! Everything was on the auction block. They moved very
slow. There was some stuff I wanted to bid on, but it didn't look like
they were going to get to it before midnight and we had to leave about noonish.
A fun time was had by all and I'm sure he's glad he got out of town before the
heat wave hit.
Have not seen a single raccoon for three nights in a row. I don't know
enough about them to know if they make a circuit and have moved on to someone
else's pet food, or if someone's holed-up having babies, or if perhaps annoyed
neighbors have trapped & relocated one or all...
We do however have fairies. Judi's truck broke down on the driveway just
in from the street. The driveway there runs along one of the streams that
cross our land. It was going dusk-to-dark as I paced waiting for the tow
truck to arrive. Slowly I became aware of tiny fairies flying all around
the trees. Fireflies!!!!! Way cool!!! I thought it was Pirates
of the Caribbean at Disneyland, but there were a lot more of them and they weren't
on wires. I was amazed at the number of them buzzing here and there trying
to attract each other!
Top
The war of the raccoons has begun. For those who don't
know, the house came with a cat---two cats in fact---for whom the previous
owners would put out food. A little black and white kitty we call
Stray Cat Strut, or Struts for short and a big black and white long-hair that we
call Garbo as it doesn't want anything to do with us except that we continue to
put out food. It just "Vants to be alone." Somehow they
managed to survive the months between old homeowners leaving and new homeowners
arriving. We are continuing the tradition of feeding all the animals,
wild and tame. Struts had kittens about 6 weeks ago, one of which is still
alive according to a neighbor who saw it.
Day One: Elmo just adores Struts and wants to be her friend in the
worst way. He sits at the screen door every night waiting for her to come
up on the deck for food and makes a total fool of his little cat self trying to
get her attention. One night earlier this week I was getting the coffee
ready for the next morning and Elmo let out a hiss and growl and came running
into the kitchen. Then he ran back to the screen door, growling all the
way. I walked over to the door and could hear something eating the kitty
food. Elmo never growls at Struts so I figured it was Garbo, whom we
haven't seen in a while. I called out, "Kitty, kitty, kitty,"
and out into the light walks this huge Maine Coon cat. Upon closer
inspection, the Maine Coon turned out to be a Rac Coon. As in Rocky
Raccoon. As in a four-dollars-worth-of-cat-food-a-day masked bandit.
I jumped a mile when I realized it wasn't a cat. I thought it was adorable
until the next morning when I saw just how much cat food the damn thing ate and
the mess he made of the water bowl.
Day Two: I don't want to have
to take the food in at night since that is mostly when Struts can get away from
the kid(s) to eat so I took one of the moving boxes and cut one side off and cut
a small cat sized hole in another side. I slid the cat food and water into
the big open side and pushed it up against the wall with the small hole where
Struts could get in and out. Then I hung outside waiting for her to make
sure she'd buy this whole rigmarole. She wasn't thrilled at first, but she
was hungry so she did go in and eat and drink. She left after a brief
meal and then while I was still on the deck, I heard this spitting noise out
back and one of the many cottontail rabbits went flying across the yard in
fear---yes, I feed the rabbits, OUR LAWN is what they eat. Spitting
and waddling, up comes the raccoon. I started talking to it and
it stood up and checked me out, not sure if I'm friend or foe. I started
talking louder telling it, "No, you are not getting the kitty food."
It waddled back to the deer feeder and when I shined the flashlight back there,
there was ANOTHER raccoon and the two of them started arguing. Once they
had that settled, raccoon #2 climbed up the tree where I have a corn feeder
for the squirrels and proceeded to eat corn. This is okay, that's
what the corn is there for. Raccoon #1 has worked its way around the
perimeter of the yard and is making a second attempt for the cat food on
the deck by sneaking up next to the house. I talk to it again telling it,
"No way Jose. You are not eating 2 pounds of cat food every
night." I'm sure it came up after I'd gone to bed, but at least
for last night it wasn't able to figure out how to get the food out of the box.
How long do you think it will take it to figure out how to pull the box
away from the wall...
Day Three: ...Try less than 24
hours. The next morning the box was pulled 3 feet away from the wall, the
cat feeder was empty and the water was filthy.
So
I went to the Orscheln's, which has everything the country squire could need. Hardware, garden, baby chicks
and ducks, farm supplies, waders. I bought a rabbit cage and fixed it so
that the opening is small enough so that only the kitty can get through it to
the food and water. I also bought a bunch of cheap-ass critter corn at Wal-mart
and I cut the top half off of a milk container and filled the deer feeder with
the cheap corn and the milk container with water and set it right next to the
deer feeder. HOPEFULLY they will be satisfied with the corn and water and
not even bother to come on the deck to check out the cat food. Or is that
wishful thinking???? He/she/it's been out there eating the corn for a
couple of hours now. So far, so good. Kitty seemed to like the
openness of the cage as opposed to the box I was trying to use. I think
it's because she can see and hear better. She went right in and ate so I'm
thinking she's okay. Now if I just made the opening small enough to keep
out the raccoons I'll be in business...
Day Four: All
clear. We had a terrible thunderstorm last night. Did the cage work
or did the weather keep the coons away???
Day Five: Ah,
nope! It wasn't the cage. Sometime after I went to sleep, Rocky came up to
score some kitty food. Wasn't satisfied with just the corn.
He/she/it was only able to get head and arms through the opening in the cage,
but managed to pull the dish close enough to eat some kibble. Must have
been uncomfortable because the damage was minimal. Either that or it was
full from the corn. I made the opening just a bit smaller and we'll see
how that does tonight. I already saw it heading for the deck but when
it saw me, it retreated.
After kitty has eaten her fill of
the food, I see my buddy, Rocky,
creeping across the lawn towards the deck. Tonight I am going to have a
front row seat to see Mr. Raccoon be outsmarted by the human! I go inside to the dining room and
sit in a chair...waiting...and waiting.
It took a good twenty minutes, but eventually the thief in the mask appeared on
deck! Elmo was all aquiver, but didn't make a sound. Rocky slowly
crept towards Elmo and the door, assessing just how much of a threat the
smaller housecat is. Once it is determined that Elmo is neutralized by
virtue of being behind mesh, all raccoon attention falls upon the shining metal cage and the tempting aroma of cat food wafting from the dish
inside. He walks over to the small square that grants access to the repast
he desires------and swiftly glides in the hole towards the food, not a hair on his body
touching the sides of the entrance. Huh? How's he do that?
More important, how am I going to keep this friggin' raccoon from eating his
weight in cat food every night? Options---Rehabilitation? Eradication?
Relocation?
Day Six: My friend Bonnie had an opossum problem last
year. She travels a lot and would leave her garage door cracked for her
kitties to wander in and out of the house as they pleased. There was a
small pet door on the door between the garage and the kitchen and until the
wildlife developed a taste for kitty food, it worked with no problem. She
got a humane trap and caught the opossum and relocated him to a galaxy far, far
away and didn't have any more problems. She has lent me the cage so that I
may perform the same service to my masked marvels. The problem is that I
have done a lot of reading about raccoons on the internet over the past few
days. The problem is that other than eating more than their fair share of
cat food, I find them to be absolutely adorable. The problem is that they
are quick witted, smart as heck, and gosh darn it, people like them. So my
dilemma is this: Do I adjust to having raccoons in the
neighborhood---after all they were here first---or do I play the big, bad human
and relocate them so that they are someone else's problem? I think I can
adjust. I don't have to fill the cat feeder (it's a tower) all the way to
the top. The kitty seems to eat before the raccoons come, so if I just put
a scoop or two of food out, Struts gets her meal, and then there is not much
left for the raccoons to eat. I can also put lots of cheap corn out in the
deer feeder so they fill up on that and don't have much room left for the cat
food. As long as we don't get injury to our animals from fights or
disease, I think we can all co-exist on the same acreage....
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Wow, has it been a month since I blabbed on this page? Spring has
sprung. Everyone's allergies are going full blast---except mine. Am
I lucky, or am I going to get hammered when all the flowers go nuts? We
live in tick
central, according to our vet. Dallas had the honor of being the first dog
to the vets office with ticks this season. Now we have Preventic collars
on both dogs, Frontline spot treatment for fleas and ticks and our lovely pond
harbors a heartworm menace to both dogs from the mosquitoes so they get
HeartGard. If it wasn't so damn beautiful here, we'd all be on a plane
back to California.
It's lovely to see everything greening up. My mom would be pea-green with
envy if she could see and smell our Lilacs,
you know, the ones she can't get to grow in California because it doesn't get
cold enough? There are Iris's and Lilies and Daffodils and
Bleeding
Hearts. The Woodpeckers are pecking out new nests. Some Finches
tried to make a nest in the Christmas wreath by the front door, but decided
there was too much human activity there to suit them so they gave up. I
heard my first Whip-poor-will
the other night and now I can't get him to shut the heck up! There is a Snapping
Turtle in the pond and lots of fish. DJ spends a lot of time with his
net at the pond trying to catch Bullfrogs and the Morel
mushrooms are everywhere. There are people with buckets crawling along
every stream and hillside collecting them. It's a big thing here. I
can't wait to see what they do when the berries come in!
That thunderstorm I mentioned at the beginning of March? That was
nothing. We had one last weekend that made it look like a California
mist---and I am STILL told that THIS one was nothing Guess I'm still use
to not having any weather worth talking about. I'm not sure what woke me
up at 3:24 am. Could it have been the power going off and on---and off, and on,
and off, and on and off? Could it have been the wind? Could it have been one of
the three trees that blew down? I just know that I woke up with two dogs and a
cat huddled against me and I made it to the TV to check to see if we were on
T-storm warning or Tornado warning just before it went completely black. Then,
while the power was off, I saw a bobbing light arise from the basement stairs.
The bed now held me, two dogs, one cat and a 10-year-old boy. There wasn't
room for anyone else so I guess it's good the spouse was away! The
lightning and thunder were non-stop and the rain fell in sheets. We spent
the rest of the night and most of the next day under Tornado warning. They
have been re-grading the road so all that bare, sandy soil washed right down the
sides and filled up the drainage tube they had just installed under our
driveway. Wal-Mart had to close for TWO days because the roof blew
off. Most of it landed about a mile away near Highway 24. What a
mess.
The guy we bought this house from has started building his house at the very
back end of the development. It's called Windmill Run, after the famous
Dutch mill in Wamego. It's going to be huge! It's also going to have
a great view across the valley to the river. If his home is any
indication, these really are going to be quarter of a million dollar
homes. Wonder where he's going to find anyone around here that can afford
them...
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Update on my favorite weather guy...I have to take back the tourette's
syndrome crack I made. Turns out he does have some type of neurological
disorder (Parkinson's) and he has undergone surgery to correct it. Apparently there are
electrical devices they can implant that will counter the impulses that cause
his tremors and he has opted to do this. Will keep you posted...
Had our first bona fide thunderstorm. Wind's up to 70 mph had the trees
whipping around like spaghetti. We turned off all the lights and sat on
the couch watching the show through the big picture windows. It was
awesome. The trees started out just being backlit by the strikes. As
the storm grew, the entire yard was lit up as bright as a police helicopter over
Watts. The way the wind was howling, you could not hear the thunder until
the storm was right over us. The dogs only freaked once, when there was a
strike very near to the house.
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Well it finally happened. We are officially homeowners. The title is
clear, the checks are cashed, the ink on the contract is dry and we are now the proud holders of a huge debt!
Dallas had her first run in with barbed wire. There is an old string of
fence-line in the canyon below the driveway and DJ said she was trying to show
off for Maverick by jumping between the lower & upper strands of wire and
her foot got nicked. Who does she think she is, Lassie? Well, can't
have the little darlings getting shredded so I got my tin snips and heavy gloves
and worked my way up a couple hundred feet of fence-line removing it. I
have a whole new respect for people who put in fences. This was hard work
and all I was doing was taking it down. There were places where the trees
had grown around the wire and branches that had fallen and piled up on it.
Phew! That was my work-out for the weekend. I've got to get the hot
tub running if I'm going to keep working like this!
We had another cold snap, only this one was a real cold snap. We got
about 4 inches of snow, but with the wind it mostly blew away until it was about
2 inches. Temps were in the single digits, with the wind chill to 0° and
below. DJ wanted to see his friend, Graham, who lives down the road.
It was so cold I decided to drive him. The white Jimmy is 2-wheel drive so
it's not real responsive on snow. I just try to keep it in low gear down
the drive until I get out to where the county road is clear. It would be
nice to be able to stop and look at the bottom of the drive before I pull out
onto the road, but you don't stop on snow. You sort of slide to a halt
when the vehicle decides there's not enough hill to keep sliding down (this puts
you halfway across the road). Then coming back, there's just enough of a
sharp hill on the drive next to the house that if you don't get up enough speed,
you will slide backwards down the drive. This would not be a problem if it
weren't for the fact that the drive crosses the creek at the bottom of that hill
so there is a drop off on either side. Not exactly where you want to lose
it. I was able to make it up after much fishtailing and spinning tires,
but I did go back out and chip away the snow on that hill so I could go pick him
up later on and
not have to worry about it.
Yesterday morning everything was white, but by afternoon, a warm wind had
melted all the snow. Today when DJ went off to school it was 34 degrees
and we walked out thinking it was warm! How's that for adjusting to the
climate?
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Close
encounters of the deer kind. Walked out on the deck about 10:30 p.m. and
the wind is blowing. It's making enough noise through the trees so that
the two deer in the backyard do not hear the sliding door open and close.
I got to watch them from about 5 feet above them until they finally noticed me
and slowly backed into the woods, never once looking away from me. I'll
probably hate them in the spring when they are eating plants I don't want them
to eat, but for now they are cute.
I am considering using DJ's BB gun on the woodpecker who has decided there is
so much wood on the side of our home that there MUST be bugs in that wood
somewhere. A psychotic female Cardinal has decided that her reflection in
the window is another female Cardinal and commenced hostilities which lasted for
4 FREAKING HOURS. Elmo was beside himself and couldn't understand why I wouldn't
just let the poor little birdie in....
We
actually did get about a foot of snow from the last storm of January. I
guess I should have realized it was going to be "real" weather from
the lines at the grocery store. For the past three months the
Meteorologists---they are VERY big on titles here---have been promising
snow. It was only wishful thinking on their part, but when the weather
really WAS going to turn, you could see it at the stores with people stocking up
their pantries. Have to admit that I did the same as we only have one
4-wheel drive and the boss needs that to get to work. I think I mentioned
that we only get a few TV stations out here in the boonies. Five to be
exact, three of them the major networks. None immediately local, they come
from Topeka which is about 30 miles away. We are all so busy that we don't
have all that much time to watch TV. It is nice to have prime time an hour
earlier than we are used to. The local news is hysterical. Reporting
is very local and it's refreshing to see that the top story is about the play
being put on by the local high school drama department. The newscasters
here are all very young, like in their mid-twenties. Being used to
stations with million dollar budgets and news readers with egos, it took a while
to get used to suits that are off the rack and hair done at Master Cuts. As I
mentioned, the weather guys here take themselves VERY seriously. Of course
when tornado season rolls around, I imagine I will take them very seriously
too. In California, the weather guy was comic relief due to a severe lack
of weather, here it's a revered profession and they have got all kinds of
techno-forecasting gadgets here that they would never dream of using in
California. The guy on NBC is
all business with his weather center that consists of about 30 monitors all
showing different maps and projections. The guy on ABC
is so young I want to set him in a high chair and put a bib on him. The
best guy is the morning guy on
CBS.
I think he has Tourette
Syndrome. He cannot hold still to save his life so it's a battle
between him and the cameraman to keep the map in view when he's standing in
front of it. I don't wish to make fun of him as he is very good at what he
does, but he does make me smile every morning and that's not a bad way to start
your day.
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Freezing rain started falling last
night. We've got about 1/2 inch of ice that is now being covered up by
snow with anywhere from 8" to 12" expected from this storm. I've
never seen freezing rain. It sounds like hail, but it's clear and coats
everything, kind of like a Chinese water torture. It's very noisy as it
patters on the leaves of the trees, but the snow is noisy too. I think
it's the trees and the leaves. In Victorville, there was nothing for the
snow to land on but the ground, so it was very quiet. Snow is not at all
quiet here. It's not our first snow, but it's the first storm where you
could see everyone at the grocery store stocking up on supplies because of the
ice and the amount of snow predicted. It is, however, DJ's first official
Snow Day and he is off playing with his friend down the street. What a
lucky guy! Me, I am feeding the stove and watching the weather from a
nice, toasty loft.
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We have deer that frolic by the pond early
in the morning and birds that throw themselves at the bathroom window [which is
Elmo's favorite perch]. There is a flock of wild Turkeys that wanders down
the driveway in the morning and comes back up the streambed in the
afternoon. We have lots of birds so I am setting up bird feeders. I
have two cedar seed feeders out back by the picture windows and I have been
buying the honey seed feeders that come preformed in the shape of a bell and
hanging them in the Magnolia tree out front. Picky birds. Mixed seed is
not good enough for them, they only want the black-oil sunflower seeds.
Well, this IS the sunflower state so I guess that makes sense.
Finally SNOW!!!!
3 or 4 inches of pure white, frozen water! DJ loved the snow. He was outside
from sunup to sundown sledding and building snowmen and playing catch the
snowball with the dogs. They also loved it. Judi probably was not as excited
about the snow as the rest of us. She had to drive in it and apparently there is
a hill near AIB that was rather slippery that night. I was thrilled.
I am figuring out all our birds. We have Cardinals
that are redder than I could have imagined. Blue Jays the color of the
early morning sky. Juncos
and Nuthatches
and Tufted
Titmouse's. We have two woodpeckers, the Red-bellied
and Northern
Flicker and a couple more that are common to the area, but I haven't seen
them yet. Chickadees,
Finches
and Grackles.
I haven't seen them yet, but there are also Starlings and
Purple
Martins.
The Nuthatches walk straight down the trunk of the tree looking for insects and
it is really something to see, it looks so weird. There is a dead tree
near the house that I thought we should cut down until I heard a woodpecker
pecking INSIDE the tree, so there must be a nest and that must be why the
previous owners didn't cut the tree as it has obviously been dead a while. We
also have Canada
Goose [geese, whatever]. They are wonderful to see and hear as they
fly in their formations, but they are messy! Glad they don't stop at our pond.
Our big picture windows unfortunately are a real hazard for the birds as they
are coated and reflect like mirrors so we constantly get birds flying into them
and sometimes they break their poor little necks. Since there are quite a
few cats roaming around by the barns out back I have taken to leaving the little
birdie bodies out there and the kitties take care of them so I guess you could
say they don't die in vain. Today I had one, bird that is, knock himself
silly, but nothing broken. I picked him up from the grass so he wouldn't
get snatched while he was dazed thinking that he would fly off from my hand
after a few minutes. 20 minutes later I am still holding this darn
goldfinch saying, "Okay, when are you going to fly off?" I took
him up on the deck and made a safe place in a towel I put on the deck chairs (so
the stray cat doesn't get it all muddy at night when she sleeps there) and I set
him down in it and came inside to check the computer for stunned bird
instructions! All the websites say to put the bird inside a brown paper
sack and close it to give them a safe, quiet place to regain their senses.
When you hear the bird start to hop around, you take the sack outside and open
it and let them find their own way out. Well, I just left him in the towel
on the chair and checked on him periodically. He finally flew off after a
couple of hours.
It's so quiet here---if you ignore the artillery at Fort
Riley. It's about
30 miles away, but when they fire the big guns on the range, you can definitely
hear them. Fortunately that is not very often. I thought it was an
earthquake at first, but soon realized what it was. It really is very
peaceful. Mostly we have farms around us so we hear cows and roosters and
horses. The house is so well insulated you don't hear anything
inside. The night sky is filled with the same stars we had in California,
but there are so many more of them! I'm getting braver and leaving the
deck when it's dark out. I even walked down the driveway to the road one
night with a flashlight. Of course I jumped at every twig and leaf that
moved!!!!!
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