Jackie Loves the Telephone

Jackie: “Strangely, I feel an affection for this inanimate object.”

Jackie: “Meanwhile, will someone please pull Big Fatty out from under the furniture and tell him the storm has passed over?”

Tying Up Loose Ends

Last year I took in 3 cats from the local shelter.  Dennis, Carrie, and Ozzier were their names.  You can read more about them here: left-click-thingy here and here.

A little bit of follow-up is in order.  There’s been a lot that’s happened in the last year.  Jopty the gerbil had a stroke and died.  Alice the indoor cat’s leukemia took its toll, she started to fail, and she was euthanized.  Daisy the Doodle Poodle reached the end of her life, and she was euthanized.   Gladys the Guinea Pig had recurring urinary tract infections, which most probably indicated cancer, which these little rodent types can get if they live long enough, and she was euthanized.  Precious Paisley the Problem Cat was failing, and she was euthanized.  Shenobie’s (Sugar’s dog) bladder cancer was ending his life, and he was euthanized.  And the best sister-in-law in the world was diagnosed with aggressive bone marrow cancer, and in spite of remission, the cancer reared its ugly head and took over.  She went to hospice, and was gone in one week.  One.  Week.  I get a lump in my throat just rereading all this.

SIL was a hospice nurse.  Ironic, no?  One of her patient’s had several cats, and she was worried about what would happen to the cats when she was gone.  The largest one was a black cat, and for some strange reason, black cats and dogs are the last to be adopted.  So SIL took in Big Bubba, who is still living a happy life with SIL’s husband.  This makes me reconsider the old saying that cats have nine lives.  I always thought that meant that a cat can survive a life-threatening injury and recover.  I now think it means, to me in this particular circumstance, that a cat can have a new life with a new situation, like Big Bubba having one owner that died from cancer, then having another owner that died from cancer, then living with my BIL.  Hope my BIL takes good care of himself.

All of this which leads us back to Dennis, Carrie, and Ozzie.

After the initial release, I didn’t see Carrie for three weeks, and I didn’t know that Carrie had made her way down Resurrection Road to a double-wide.  The neighbor sent me a text that there was a cat under her trailer.  When I went to investigate, I was delighted to see that it was Carrie, even though she was emaciated.  I scooped her into a crate and took her back with me.  The next day she was back at the neighbor’s trailer.  While the neighbor agreed that Carrie was a nice cat, she didn’t want a cat, and was worried that Carrie might do some damage under the trailer, like pulling out some insulation, and the landlord would be mighty unhappy.  Plus somehow during the night, Carrie had managed to injure her skin, and had an opening the size of a quarter on her flank.  I opted to take her back to the shelter.  At that time, I had Alice the leukemia positive cat indoors with me, and I couldn’t wouldn’t take Carrie indoors with me.  After all, this is a 31′ RV.  Two cats inside.  I’m a little nuts, but that was even too much for me, exposing an injured cat to a leukemia positive cat, which is probably the subject for another post in greater detail.  Carrie was most probably euthanized, for I didn’t see her posted on www.petfinder.com after I relinquished her, damaged and unhealthily thin.  Time and care would heal her, but I don’t know if she was afforded that option.

Then there was Ozzie.  He was a tease to the other cats.  It started off mildly enough, but Sylvia was stalked and injured by Ozzie, RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, I knew that Ozzie’s days were numbered here at the Swamped! Plantation and Cat-Cussing Facility.  He went to be a barn cat for a vet tech.

And lastly, we have Dennis.  With Ozzie out of the way, Dennis took over the position as head stalker.  He didn’t care who he stalked.  He was the only male in the group of five, and I wonder if he were trying to overthrow the regime.  Needless to say, it didn’t work, and I took him back to the shelter.  The girls were here first, and I needed to preserve their safety.

Occasionally the local shelter can shift animals to other shelters that have room and resources for them.  Today I was looking at petfinder.com to see if Black and Yellow had been listed at the local shelter, then I looked at some of the outlying shelters.  I didn’t find Black and Yellow, but I did find Dennis.

I think Dennis is on Life #5 now.  Good luck in finding Life #6.

The Picnic Table Wars

Last week was my birthday, and Sugar surprised me with a birthday gift, a mammoth picnic table.  Really, the thing is HUGE.  You could sleep on it.

He brought it over in his pickup truck on the day before Thanksgiving, and we opened the large double front gate, and he backed right in, and we unloaded the monster.

I have wanted two things in my adult life, besides peace on earth, that being a screened porch (or is it screened-in porch?) and a *picnic table*!

Georgia the cat has been feeling challenged by Ozzie the cat, who likes to stalk her a bit, and she’s been spending much of her time outside the front gate, just hanging out by the driveway.  Once she saw the picnic table, she made a beeline for it.

Georgia: "Mine. Mine. All mine."

The next morning, she was still at work protecting her picnic table.

Georgia: "I've been protecting my picnic table all night. Let the word go out into the city, Ozzie is nothing compared to the greatness of Georgia!"

Georgia: "And if Ozzie comes around again, I'll stretch myself up really tall and big, and I'll show him my scaryface."

Georgia: "I sense with my superpowers that something foul is afoot."

Georgia: "Get BACK, you dogs, or I will. cut. you!"

Georgia kept up this vigil for twenty-four hours, and then suddenly we had a game-changer…

Sylvia: "Anybody want to say anything now? That's right. I thought not."

Alice’s New Business

Alice the Cat has decided to embark upon a new business.  She will inspect your cardboard boxes for a very small fee.

Merah Yearout

Merah Yearout

In a cleaning effort earlier this week to lighten the load here at the RV Palace and Genealogy Repository, I found Merah Yearout hiding in an overhead compartment of the RV.  No, not the true Merah, who is buried in the Lenoir City Cemetery, but the photo from Dan Yearout that I referred to in an earlier post.  I also found Merah’s Civil War file, which is printed on legal size paper.  My scanner will only scan 8 1/2 X 11 paper, so I will have to figure out a system to scan the files so that I can post them to the blog.

And I know y’all just can’t wait.

BioBags, O Yeah

I really dislike having an indoor cat.  Not because I dislike an indoor cat, but because I DISLIKE a litter box.  And I dislike how almost every evening when I’m talking on the phone to Sugar, Alice uses the litter box.  (Not sure what she’s commenting about.)  Her litter box is located in the fold-down bed compartment over the driver and passenger seats.  I took out the mattress years ago (Could that be – was it really years ago when I started living in this box?), and that’s where Gladys the guinea pig and Jopty the gerbil live in their cages.  So that makes Alice’s litter box about two feet above my head when I sit in my chair at the computer and on the telephone. 

I’ve used the plastic doggy litter bags to dispose of the contents when I scoop out her box.  Last week I ran out of plastic.  In search of a better bag, I found *COMPOSTABLE!* poop bags.  I was so excited, I could just poop share the good news with you.

Regular polyethylene-based plastic bags can take over 100 years to degrade and are not compostable.  Less than 2% of all plastic bags ever get recycled.  Plastic bags litter our streets, backwoods, and waterways.  Studies indicate that 100,000 marine animals and 2 million birds die every year from ingesting or being caught up in plastic debris.

Some manufacturers are blending additives to polyethylene to produce “degradable” bags.  Unfortunately, this process fragments the bags into pieces of plastic debris that do not meet the ASTM D6400 standard for compostable plastic.

Nature Knows The Difference.

BioBag products are made from GMO Free starch, vegetable oil and the world’s first patented polymer.  No polyethylene is used in the production process.  We are fully certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) and meet the requirements of California and Minnesota law regarding ASTM Compliance.

Hello! And Thank You for Calling Slipper Central!

In years past, right before Christmas, I would get seized with a fever to make stuff.  Christmas stockings, clothes, sweaters, hats, scarves, accessories, draperies, pillows, and table-settings, you name it, I would decide to take on projects of mammoth proportions with a deadline of Christmas morning.  Most of the time I succeeded.  It seemed to be a congenital obsession to procrastinate until the very last minute and then try to make something out of near-nothing, all the while hearing a combination of the drumbeat of doom and the trumpets of triumph.  Can she finish that last placemat in a set of four?  Can she?  Drat, broke a needle!!  Not to worry, there’s another needle to be had.  If.I.could.just.find.it.

(Insert heavy sigh)

A few years back, I had a little financial setback that caused me to seek additional employment, and I found myself working about 60 hours a week.  There wasn’t time for Christmas anxiety, at least not the kind I’d enjoyed in the past.  After a few years of working that kind of bone-crushing schedule, I reached a place where I just didn’t care about Christmas any more.  Because Christmas was not about a “holy day” of celebration, it was about mass consumerism.  I was of the opinion that the holiday needed to be taken back a notch, or three, and that we should live all year with the pleasure we afforded ourselves at Christmastime.  That theory runs parallel to my theory that we need to enjoy every day like we are on vacation, which is not altogether coincidental as to why I live in an RV. 

Two years ago before Christmas, I purchased and downloaded an amazing little knitting pattern for felted slippers.  The photos of the slippers were adorable, whimsical, comfortable, too good to be true.  They looked like a modified version of a simple ballet flat with a toe strap.  The online reviews got high marks.  I waded into deep water, and I made approximately 3.5 pairs of which ALL were disasters.  The toe shaping was wrong on this one, there were holes in the seams over there, the yarn didn’t felt on that one, and then the one where I modified the pattern, we won’t even discuss that one.  That project went back on the shelf. 

A few months back I resurrected the project.  I don’t what was wrong with the other slippers, and why there should be such bad karma hanging over them, but this time, the project grabbed hold and *took*.  I gave that pair to the girlfriend of the BabyBoy.  Which then caused consternation at her house because her mother was trying to steal her slippers.  Can you imagine, at Christmas time no less, coveting and stealing and plotting to overthrow the slipper queen.  So in an attempt to restore peace throughout my slipper kingdom, I cast on another pair, this one a peachy-pink called “water chestnut” (What’s up with that name?  What color IS a water chestnut?  I should know these things.  I studied interior design).

I made the first slipper and its accompanying strap, and felted the hound out of them (translation:  felted it a lot).  It was awesome and beautiful, and I only hoped I could make a mate to match. 

I knitted up the next slipper and strap, and, before felting, laid them out in a little before-and-after photo session, and discovered that a thief in the night had stolen the felted strap. 

I am so easily waylaid.  Now what to do?  If I knit another strap, I will find the first one, AFTER I have felted the replacement strap.  Then I’ll have an extra strap that I cannot use, and that will be a waste of perfectly good yarn.  If I do not knit another strap, I will never, ever find the first strap, even though I’m sure that Alice the cat has hidden it somewhere in the RV, perhaps up in the dashboard even though she is too large to hide in there any more.  That’s just the way things work in crazyland. 

So last night I sat musing over the cruel fate of the strap and the part I played in finishing these stinkin’ slippers.  For at least two hours, people.  That is sad.  I went to bed, and this morning when I shook out the bedcovers, what did I find?  Yup.  THE missing strap.  I have defeated the powers that control missing car keys, lost buttons, and best laid plans.  I.  Win.

Alice: "I cannot tell a lie...."

 

Alice: "Jopty did it."

A Chilling Experience

I’ve been hanging out a lot with my friend, the hot Canadian. The weather here has been pretty cold, and the past week has been nippy at night. 

Last Tuesday, on December 14, 2010, to be exact, a chilling thing happened.  I was lying on the couch, gazing at the Canadian’s face, and he.stopped.putting.out.  Just like that.  It was about 9:30 PM, and the weather forecast was a low of 18 degrees.  I waited for him to come back on, and waited some more.  Then I realized that my Canadian was not coming back, with the same certainty that when your husband says, “I’m leaving now.  Good-bye.”, he is really leaving and you’d best move forward.  I headed for the bed, buried myself under an electric blanket, and waited it out until morning.  I convinced myself that I come from hardy pioneer stock, and a little cold wouldn’t hurt me.

I woke up around 6 AM.  I knew this was the time because I heard that big truck going by, the one that always goes by at 6 AM, and I knew the time not because I got out from under the covers and looked at the clock in the kitchen in the frozen tundra that was now my RV.   When I stuck my hand out from under the covers, the cold bit my hand and made me withdraw.  I made a plan to reach out from under the covers, really fast, and grab the hair dryer hanging in the bathroom, plug it in, dive back under the covers, and wave the dryer around, both under and out of the covers.  That helped, enough so that I could get dressed and head to the Family Dollar to buy a heater. 

The Family Dollar had no heaters, so I headed to the nearest Wal-Mart, about 20 miles away.  They had heaters out the wazoo, and I bought two tower types with oscillation.  As soon as I got back to the RV, I plugged one of the heaters in, and the temperature display started to register, and I watched with horror as the temperature inside the RV showed 60, slid its way down to 50, then 40!

Later that evening, I was talking on the phone to Sugar, and he asked if I was staying warm, and was the Canadian working okay?  I told him what happened to my guy the Canadian, and Sugar told me that he had a Christmas present for me, direct from Canada, in the form of one hot Canadian, bought as a back-up for Canadian #1. 

If anyone needs to borrow a heater, just call me.

Alice Makes a Friend

When you live in an RV, you become very creative when resolving space issues.  No, I’m not talking about NASA and the space program, I’m talking about ruthrawls and the spaciness program.  Now that I’m a certified spacy planner, I am on call to solve your spacy issues.

The dashboard makes a wonderful place for a litter box, a feeding station, or for the cage of a pocket pet.  Although Gladys is probabaly too large to fit into my pocket, she is a bona-fide pocket pet.  Her cage fits perfectly on the dashboard.

Alice the cat and Gladys the Guinea Pig have been rehearsing the Nativity scene.  Alice is practicing her part for the Angel we have heard on high, and Gladys is… well, of course, Gladys is playing the part of the pig. 

We’re a few characters short of a Nativity scene here at the Swamped! Plantation and Carol-Singing Service.

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$25 Worth of Love

I’ve realized that something has been missing from my life.  After all, it’s springtime, and lately there’s been a full moon.  I’ve been wanting something that can complete my life, and make me a happy girl. 

And on Sunday morning, I found it.  I stared with disbelief at it, just sitting there at the store, waiting for me to claim it for my own.  When I realized that the price tag was a mere $25, I squealed with delight.  O the joy.  It was just waiting for me to take it home and plug it in and use it to the best of my ability.  There were two for sale, and I considered buying both of them, so that I could share the love with some other lonely middle-aged woman who knows what it is like to have this burning desire, and maybe I could profit from doubling the cost.  But I resisted, leaving the other one sitting there to be claimed by another person desperate in their search for just the right electrical device. 

I really wanted to use it when I got home.  But it had been raining and I didn’t want to short out my little electrical friend, or cause its 12amp motor to go haywire. 

I know what you’re thinking.  It’s just another electrical toy for me.  But it’s not.  This one is special.  I am in love. 

On Monday, I plugged that puppy into a 100’ cord, pushed the red button, and squeezed the bail.   My mother never told me about this pleasure.  My father would roll over in his grave in horrification that I’ve gone electric, and he wouldn’t be able to fix this sparkplugless, non-carbon-emitting toy. 

That little beauty purred like a kitten, and mowed the entire meadow without choking.  My life is complete.

Be still, my heart.

Still Life with RV

Please, no one tell the hot Canadian. He’s my inside guy.