the
song is "Green Grow the Lilacs"
Thursday, August 26 I know it's been a long time since I've done this, but I've been missing the outlet so I'm starting up again. My life was in such chaos, losing the job and then planning a move, that I just couldn't write about it.
But here we are, the last week of August. I've been in the new house in MI almost 2 weeks now, and am beginning to adjust to midwestern suburban life. The most striking difference between here and NYC is the noise level - in NYC, it just never stops completely. Even in Queens, the "bedroom" borough, you can hear traffic, horns, people walking and talking, the distant squeal of the elevated subway trains, etc. It gets "quiet" there at night, but it's never really quiet.
It's so different here. The loudest things after about 8 pm are crickets and night birds. It's been raining, and I can hear the raindrops hitting the leaves on the trees. It's so peaceful.....
Penny is still adjusting to her new home. She's learned to really love the yard. I bought one of those screw-in-the-ground leash-holders, a 100' length of poly rope, and 2 spring clasps, and located the screw so that the last 6 feet of rope would reach inside the back door. This way, I can hook her to the rope inside with the door closed (to prevent an early exit) and then just open the door. At first, she'd go out and want to come right back in again. Now she enjoys spending time outdoors; she'll just park her bod on the grass and lie there and watch all the birds and insects zooming through the air. It's so nice not to have to walk her! I go out to play with her once or twice a day, and she's getting more exercise than she's ever gotten. And she gets to go for a ride in the car when the weather's dry.
Last night, I hitched her up and let her out; she got 6 feet from the door and stopped stock still in that "Something's here and I ain't moving until I find out if it's friendly or not" pose. It turned out to be Owen, a 10-month old Rottie from down the street. I came inside and got a leash, went back out and introduced myself to Owen, clipped the leash on, and was about to lead him down the street when I heard his owner calling for him. Very sweet dog, but a really stupid owner. Young, male, and hasn't taken the time to teach his dog manners or to have him neutered. Since it was raining at the time, I spared him the lecture for the moment. But he's gonna hear it the next time I see him!
The kitties are a total hoot. The Mushroom is getting very brave, and is out exploring all the time now. He's even tangled with Penny a couple of times, and left her with bleeding scratches on her nose. Good! Penny needs to learn, from the cats, what's acceptable behavior to them. She already knows not to mess with Loverboy, Tika, Mr. French, and many of the other kitties. She just needs to have the rest of them teach her what they'll tolerate and what they won't. I think The Mushroom has gotten his point across.
Buttons has been much more sociable lately, and Mr. French has turned into a cuddle-hog. Every time I stand still (or sit still, when I'm in the bathroom), he's winding around my ankles asking to be picked up and cuddled. He's really a big mushball, and will go to elaborate lengths to court me into cuddling him. (Not that it takes much convincing!)
I got the loveliest house-warming present in the mail today, but I'll talk about that tomorrow. 'Night!
Friday, August 27 I was so surprised yesterday when I checked on my mail - there was a package in my mailbox. It contained bread (in the form of bagel refrigerator magnets) and salt (in a ziploc bag) - traditional housewarming gifts - and a nice oven mitt and a couple of dishcloths. Just the right thing. There was also a toy for Penny in the package, which she thoroughly enjoys. What a nice treat!
Speaking of Penny and toys, I actually bought her a dog toy the other day! =) It's a plush, rainbow colored open ball - it has two big plush purple "buttons" which are connected by 5 plush "arms" (one each red, yellow, blue, green, and orange) in a ball shape. Penny absolutely adores it. She naps with her head on it, she carries it from room to room, and when the cats have the "11-o'clock crazies", Penny joins the frenzy by tearing around with this toy in her mouth, growling and shaking it vigorously. This occurs on a nightly basis, and I don't dare try to go to bed until it's happened and they're ready to settle down for the night.
I'm procrastinating, again. Mom and Dad are coming down tomorrow, and I have a lot of tidying-up to do before they get here. I just don't feel like doing it, at the moment! I'll do some of it later, and I'll do the rest in the morning before they get here.
I had to go out for a little while today, and I took Penny along for the ride. She really enjoys going with me. I went down to the post office to mail a check to the Waste Reduction Services department (sanitation) for $30 to cover one quarter's fee for a 64 gal. trash container. You can either use one of these trash containers, or you can buy "refuse" bags for $2.50 each. If you don't use either the container or the refuse bag, they won't pick up the trash. (I know - I carted all my trash out to the curb on Sunday night, and carted it all back to the yard when the garbage truck wouldn't pick it up.) Since you're not supposed to put "animal waste" in the refuse bags, and since I figure the cost of bags for a quarter would exceed the rental of the container, I might as well get the container. At least it has a handle and wheels, so I'll only have to make one trip to the curb. And all the recyclables (except newspaper and cardboard) go into one bin that the city supplies free, so that's taken care of.
In NY, the bottle and can deposit is only a nickel, and the only way to redeem them was to take them to Trade Fair and feed 'em into the machines one at a time. (And the plastic machine would always get "full" before I was finished - necessitating tracking someone down to open the machine and push those little plastic squiggles to the back of the collection bin. What a royal pain!) I used to save up a couple of shopping bags worth and then hang them on my fence the night before recycling pick-up. Some homeless person or retiree on a limited budget would always come along and get them, and then get the deposit return. Here, the deposit is a dime. It adds up fast, so I won't be throwing deposit cans and bottles into the recycling anymore! Many large grocery stores have bottle-return departments where there are people who count your returns and issue you a receipt to be redeemed at the cashier. But the closest grocery store (which just happens to be open 24/7) has machines - one each for plastic, cans, and glass. I saw the machines, and I grimaced. But these machines are very different from the ones in NY - you just start to feed the can or bottle into the opening and the machine takes over from there - sucking it in and crushing it. They're really fast - you can do it in about 2 seconds per container - and relatively painless. Not bad at all. I'll just have to remember to grab a bag of cans when I run up there to pick up groceries.
My next-door neighbors are very nice. Bill and Shirley. Moved into that house right after they were married, and have been living there over 30 years now. Bill's very sweet, asking me if I wanted to borrow his power screwdriver when he saw me installing miniblinds. My doorbell rang Wednesday night, and there stood Bill with 4 homegrown tomatoes in his hands. And Shirley's a little odd, but very sweet, too. She's been feeding a stray cat for 4 years now, and still doesn't know if it's male or female. I told her I'd help her figure it out, and maybe help get it fixed. (I'm betting it's a male.) She sits in her yard at a table and drinks coffee, checks through her coupons, and talks to the cat, the squirrels, the birds, my cats in the window, and Penny. She told me she has "a web" - meaning webtv - and that "it isn't hard to learn" but that Bill "doesn't want anything to do with it, of course." They're funny, and they're sweet, and I like them.
Sunday, August 29 I received an award from Safe Haven For Cats today - it's on the Awards page. I'd helped out a woman on one of my mailing lists with some info about caring for orphan kittens. From my page, she followed the link to SHFC where she found all the information she needed. (It's a very informative site.) This morning, I received an e-mail from the woman with the kittens, thanking me for helping her, asking me where she could make a donation, and telling me she'd sent an e-mail to the author of SFHC (Jeri Dopp) to the same effect. I figured I'd better clue Jeri in on why she got that e-mail; Jeri came to visit and sent me her award, which is given to sites that promote spay/neuter. I was honored to accept it.
There are so many people, largely unacknowledged, who rescue cats out of a need to do something and then find themselves needing information to care for those cats/kittens. I think that helping these folks with information or even just support is what I like best about the internet - they don't need to live in my geographical neighborhood for me to be able to share the information I've learned. As more and more people become cognizant of the importance of spay/neuter, learn how to clip claws and give medications, and provide their companions with the most informed care possible, we begin to help exponentially large numbers of cats. Each owner I can help educate is one (or more) cat that won't end up a statistic in some shelter's annual euthanasia rate. One owner/one cat at a time. The rewards are enormous.
Wow! I didn't mean to preach, there! It's been a nice, cool, quiet day so far. I took Penny along this morning when I ran out to get a paper. I figured we might as well run a couple other errands, too, as long as we were out, so we drove down to the pet supply store to get another bag of food for the kitties. With her Halti collar on, Penny went in with me and behaved very well. No pulling me over to examine everything, no jumping on counters, sitting politely in line and accepting a treat delicately. I was very proud of her. She was pretty good yesterday, too. She gets a little excited when we have company, but she's gaining more self-control all the time. It really warms the cockles of my heart to watch her becoming an adult. To watch her pop up and get ready to chase a cat, then practically hear her think "I'm not supposed to do that," and settle back down. To have her come and lie at my feet without being told, when I'm eating, and wait quietly and patiently for a taste. She's matured so much in the last 7 months! She's a great dog.
I woke up at about 2 this morning, having difficulty breathing. As I rose to consciousness, I became aware that the reason I couldn't breathe was because a cat was rubbing its face on my nose. Hard. Repeatedly. I reached out to scratch that head, and was flabbergasted to find both hands full - it was Mr. French! He's become so much more outgoing since we moved. It's almost as if he's finally realized that he's not going somewhere else, he's staying here. He follows me around asking for pets, but it's not a clingy thing - he's just happy. I'm happy, too.
Domingo is maturing, becoming less self-involved and much more affectionate. But he still does a lot of really cute kitten things. This boy has a serious love affair with food. And he's got incredible hearing - he can be on the other side of the house, and he'll still hear me pick up the jar with the catfood in it. Before I can get the jar open, he's standing at my feet waiting. And the instant I start to pour it into the bowl, he's up with all 4 feet in the bowl, crunching away. I just keep on pouring, and he gets a cat-food shower. He doesn't care - he's eating, for heaven's sake! And the rest of the hungry kitties just eat around him. It's pretty funny.
The living room looks really good, now that the piano has been cleaned and polished. That poor old piano has been moved at least 10 times in the last 16 years or so, and one of those times it was in the back of a pickup truck. The "C" key an octave below middle-C is broken, and it's pretty badly out of tune (though I've played on worse), but it's a nice little spinet with great action and lovely sound, and now it looks better than it has in years. I guess I just don't "see" these things because I see them every day. It takes new eyes to really notice things. My mom is good. She wanted to clean that piano and I didn't understand what the big deal was, but I sure can appreciate the difference now that it's done. And she took a pair of scissors and just trimmed off some loose threads on my sofa and loveseat. They look a whole lot better, too. And now I'm motivated to look at things with "new eyes", and see what I can do with some of this stuff.
Dad is a dear. He's a fuss-pot, he doesn't move real fast (he needs to take his time to think about it), and he's getting a little forgetful so you just have to be patient with him (and watch to see where he puts things down while he's fixing things so he can find them again), but he can fix just about anything. I have a '30's floor lamp that is solid brass (though someone spray-painted black over it) that had a rather old plug on it. Penny chewed it several months ago. Dad rewired it for me. It took forever. He looked it over really well. Then thought about it. Then took it apart, very slowly. (Figuring out how it was put together, all the while.) Spent 20 minutes discussing whether to use the 8 foot cord he'd brought or the 12 foot cord. (I opted for the 12-foot cord.) Ok, get the new cord threaded in the base, up the stand, and part way through the swing arm. Dad doesn't like the look of the socket, so we'd better go get a new one. Dad and I could have done that quite efficiently by ourselves, but Mom wanted to come along.
Home Depot with my dad would have been a pleasant experience. Home Depot with both Mom and Dad is a nightmare. I don't care how hard I try, I can't stay with both of them at the same time. First Dad wanders off without saying anything. If he and I were alone, I'd just follow. But he goes off in one direction and Mom continues in the direction she thinks is right. Then she stops and says "Where did your father go?" I say "Wait right here, Mom, I'll go get him." I go to get him, get back to where I left my mother, and she's nowhere in sight. Dad and I wander down the center aisle, both of us looking up and down for Mom. I say "OK, Dad, you go to the lighting section, I'll find Mom and meet you there." Finally find Mom all the way at the other end of the store, walk back with her, and then have to play hide-n-seek for my dad. It took us an hour, and we finally left with a new socket and a new finial for one of my lamps. Then we went to K-mart, where we repeated the whole performance. At the checkout, Mom decided she didn't have to wait in line with us so she went and stood down near the door, but where she could see us. Dad's ahead of me in line, with the superglue and a 12-pack of Pepsi. He says "Give me your stuff," which consisted of a clothesline, clothespins, and vacuumn cleaner bags. "No, Dad, these things are in my budget" and flash him a big grin. He finally gets to the cashier, and his total is $5.17. He pulls out a ten, and starts to look for the 17 cents. Now, I know this is going to involve digging out his plastic squeeze coin keeper and sorting through it for a dime, a nickel, and two pennies - that's three different coins and remember, Dad doesn't move fast - and the line behind us is long. I very quickly dig out the 17 cents and give it to the cashier, she gives me a funny look, then gives Dad back a five. I get to the register and she says "Do you know that man?". With a straight face, I reply "Never saw him before. Just wanted to get through the line quickly." My dad's still walking away, but I can tell from his cheeks that he's grinning really big so he must have heard. When I caught up to him he was chuckling, and when we told mom she started to laugh. The three of us walked through the door laughing like idiots.
When we got home, we finished the lamp and fixed the lights on the car (maybe - time will tell). Had a pizza. I know I whine about Mom and Dad sometimes, but I'm just venting. I love them dearly, and I love spending time with them. We tease each other, one smart remark being followed by another, and we laugh a lot. When they were getting ready to go, I said to Mom, "Do me a favor - pick up the phone, dial speed-5, and tell the studs the coast is clear and they can come back now." She cracked up and said "Five months from now, I might believe you!" And she chuckled all the way to the car. I think I'll go up and visit them for a couple of days after the holiday weekend.
Monday, August 30 Penny woke me very early this morning with that "but Mom! I've really gotta go!!" whine. So I let her out and went back to bed until I heard her barking to come in. She's really good about going into the crate at night, but once she's out in the morning she's not about to go back in and be quiet. Especially if the sun's up. So I shooed the cats out of the bedroom, and closed the door. Penny hopped back up on the bed with me and we went back to sleep.
When I awoke, the sun was shining brightly. More than enough for me to see two blue feet in my face. Apparently, Penny had gotten hold of a pen and chewed it, and it leaked onto her paws where she was holding it. Blue paws, and blue feathers running up her legs. No blue on the carpet, the comforter, or anywhere else I could discover, just on Penny. I let her out again, and the dew on the grass washed off the ink. =)
I had a lot of things to do today, so I started right in on them. I had to get my Marlboro miles counted and mailed in, had to get a check out for my COBRA benefits, and some other mail to drop off. Then I had to go to an office to enter my resume online in the Michigan Unemployment system's database. I drove all the way down there, and they were closed today since it was the first day of school. I have to go all the way back down there tomorrow. You'd think the folks at the unemployment office would have told me, wouldn't you? I love the way the government's right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.
Somekitty keeps pooping on the living room floor, right up against the baseboard under the front window. I know there were animals here before, and I presume there's still some odor in that spot. I keep dumping Simple Solution on it, and hoping it'll finally soak down through the pad to the flooring underneath. I'll tell you one thing, though, I'd rather have poop on the floor than find a puddle. Poop's a lot easier to clean up!
Tuesday, August 31 Fast away the old month passes! Just yesterday it was spring, and now autumn is upon us. It's a bittersweet time of year - the weather becomes comfortable, the days get shorter and sweeter, and a Zookeeper's thoughts turn to an approaching birthday and the need to get the "nest" in order before winter blasts in. I think autumn is my favorite time of year.
I just got an e-mail about a half-grown deaf English Setter puppy in a shelter in South Carolina. A female. I've been hoping for a male pup as a companion to Penny, and I was hoping for a young pup so I could start training from the get-go, but this pup's story reminds me of Penny. I've asked for additional information about her. I don't know whether she's the right dog for the Zoo, but I could foster her through the winter, at least. I was thinking that, in the spring, we might luck into a young pup. I certainly won't let anything happen to this little girl, though, because she doesn't meet my "specifications". I don't believe in coincidence, and someone went out of their way to tell me about this dog. We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out.
I ran around all over town again today, and finally did something for my peace of mind - I found a place and got a haircut. I think so much better when I don't feel shaggy! The only thing left to do is get my MI driver's license, and now I feel ready for the photo. =) Thursday. I'm going to take some time for myself tomorrow. I've already taken the old polish off my toes and trimmed and shaped the nails. After my shower in the morning, I'll take care of the cuticles and then polish my toenails. I think better when my toes are happy, too. I sure am going to miss the $12 pedicures I used to get right around the corner from my house in Queens. Nobody does pedicures here! My toes just never look as good when I do it myself.
I walked into the living room this afternoon and saw the sweetest thing - Loverboy was curled in the seat of the recliner with one paw over his face, and Penny was curled up in the middle of the sofa, snoring, with one paw over her muzzle. I wish I could have gotten them both in the same photo, but the furniture is just too far apart. I just love that they trust each other enough to sleep soundly knowing the other one is less than 4 feet away.
Penny ate another remote control this morning - the one for the little TV in the bedroom. She wouldn't have dared take it off the nightstand, but the cats knocked it on the floor and once there, Penny felt it was her property. **sigh** I bought another universal remote this afternoon that has a sleep-timer on it, but I don't know if I'll be able to use the menu to set the "on timer" on that TV to go off in the morning. I like to doze and listen to the morning news. I have to get this dog into obedience class.
