The Unwelcome Wake Up Call
Woman in the Middle | October 30, 2017For decades now, Hubby has kindly laid his clothes, keys, wallet, etc…out each night in the front part of the house so when he gets dressed in the morning for work he doesn’t disturb me. Once in a while he would forget something, like a pair of socks, and would have to come into the bedroom to get the forgotten item. No big deal. I appreciate the courtesy he shows me the other 364 days a year.
Lately, however, when he comes quietly into the bedroom at an early hour, I feel my muscles tense up. It never has to do with something he has forgotten any more. It always seems to be related to a crisis going on in the front part of the house. Not a “house is on fire” crisis, thank goodness. But always one of those “Sorry, but we are a couple and when we spoke our vows it meant I never have to deal with this kind of crap by myself again and I need you to get up and help me deal with this” kind of issue. I am sure all you married people know what I mean.
This morning it was, yet again, an ant invasion. Yet another ant invasion….excuse me while I try to shake off the after affects of too much any spray…..After the ant invasion of Saturday, I had already decided to call an exterminator. It was just reconfirmed by the ant invasion of last evening. It has now reached crisis proportions given the extent of the ant invasion of this morning. We can not leave a bowl of cat food out in the kitchen for even a few hours without ants finding it. This makes it hard to feed the cats. I don’t have a separate cat kitchen where I prepare their food.
Even more problematic, we are going on vacation soon. We can not expect the young woman we have hired to take care of the cats for us to also fight the ants. How could she? I have a feeling by the time we got home we would just have to grab the cats and then burn the place, there would be such an ant invasion. After a week of free access to our home, I am sure the ant invasion would be so epic, it would put to rest the up-to-now biggest invasion of a few years ago when we walked into our house from a trip to Hawaii to find an ant trail over a foot wide marching across the kitchen floor.
Getting ready for this upcoming trip to D-World is taking on epic proportions of its own. That will come in another post. Meanwhile, I wait on pins and needles for the exterminator to call me back while I get other things done that all need to happen in the next two weeks. Fun times!
Random Musings – October 26, 2017
Woman in the Middle | October 27, 2017I have some weird allergy or food sensitivity problem that makes my lips swell overnight. This happened for some reason Monday night and ever since I have looked, my daughters assure me, like I got lip injections. The problem is I already have full lips, so it isn’t like my “injections” make me look better. I just look like one of those crazy people who go overboard with the plastic surgery. It is also uncomfortable. I can not imagine why anyone, however thin their lips, would want to do this to themselves on purpose.
Speaking of Monday night, Nox, or black cat and the smallest of our rather plus size heard of cats, discovered a new trick in the middle of the night. He flung himself at our closed bedroom door, snagged our door handle with his paws, and unlatched the door. FYI, this was not a quiet exercise. Hubby and I just laid there wide awake for a moment, to try and figure out (yet AGAIN) what the heck just happened, when we felt the gentle tell tale thump of a cat jumping on our bed. Just what we needed at 3:40 am! Eldest Daughter keeps her door open all night to allow for the free flow of cats. I guess that just was not good enough for Nox!
Yet again, speaking of Monday night, we have been getting our punishment for the week’s worth of cool weather we had at the beginning of October. It has been pure misery! The other weird thing that happened that night was, just after Nox jumped on our bed, the AC came on. It was set at 78 degrees, and yet it came on at 3:41 am. Our house is well insulated and sits at a diagonal to the rising and setting sun, which helps it stay cool in the summer. We usually turn down the AC one degree just at bedtime, and that keeps us and the house cool until morning. But not Monday night! With a hot Santa Ana wind blowing, it stayed hot all night.
Dax has been a bit under the weather. Poor guy seems to have a small cold. To be honest, we would have never noticed it because he is acting pretty normally and only has the occasional quiet sneeze. But his third eyelid came out and is still out after several days. I bite my nails everyday about whether to take him to the vet or not. But so far he is doing well, eating, playing, etc… If only that eyelid would go back where it belongs, then we would know we could stop worrying!
Room 8 – October 20, 2017
Woman in the Middle | October 25, 2017I did my picture taking in the older kitten room on my latest visit to Room 8. It is both a delightful room, because of all the young frisky cats, and a worrisome room, because as cats stop being adorable little kittens their adoption rate goes down. However, that being said, it isn’t a sad room, because every occupant has a safe place to live, plenty of food, and a paid and volunteer staff to cater to their every need. LOL! Every adorable kitten in this room is fixed, has its shots, and is ready for a new home, FYI.
I set my purse up on a shelf, and everyone ignored it, until I went to get my camera and start taking photos. Then the purse because the thing to explore.
“What is this???”
“Is it a bag?”
“Let me just have a peak inside…”
I am always amazed by the colors of kitty cats’ eyes. They have such a range. This guy has the most amazing amber eyes. I wish I could have gotten a better photo.
Here he is from a little father away, but you can still see those amber eyes!
This is the white kitten who has the pale cream rings on his tail. His name is Ed and I have shown you photos of him before. He was being very frisky, and if I gave him the opportunity he hopped right up on my shoulder or, if I was bending over, my back. The blurry photo is him trying to figure out how close I was, and if he could hop back up on my shoulder again!
Some of the kitties were lounging around outside, napping in the fresh air.
This gray kitten was all about the love as well. As you can see here, he is REALLY wanting back in my arms for move loving. But, while he was giving me that pleading look, his tail was flicking in the face of another kitten.
What better way to have a little fun than to grab the tail of another kitten, especially if that tail is right in your face. LOL!
“Yes, lady, what do you want?”
“Excuse me, but I am sunbathing and wish to be left alone!”
Finally, one little guy was enjoying getting to rub up against a human.
Back and forth, back and forth….
Day Tripping – Highway 79
Woman in the Middle | October 23, 2017I needed a photo for my latest local history newspaper column. Unfortunately, the place I needed to visit was, according to Google Maps, an hour and nine minutes away. But, what the heck, it was a good excuse to get out of the house and take a Sunday drive. It would have been even better if there were more road signs but more on that later….
I wrote a story on a little place called Radec. Back in the good old days, a person could petition the United States Postal Service to start a post office, usually in their home or store. If approved, the post office would be given a name. However, the name could not be the same as any other post office anywhere else in the country. This particular post office was located in an unnamed area in southwestern Riverside County (then northern San Diego County). The man who proposed the post office suggested the name “Cedar.” However, there was already a post office in Colorado by that name. So the man just flipped it and suggested “Radec” which is cedar spelled backwards. As was common, the area around the post office became known as Radec as well.
Radec was always an area of far flung ranches, never a town. So, with time, the name fell out of use. Now there is really only one thing left that bears the name, and that is the Radec cemetery. So off we went on our Sunday drive to find that little cemetery so I could take some photos.
We had to drive all the way down the 215 freeway to Temecula and get off on Temecula Parkway, which is also one portion of State Highway 79. Initially, there is lots of development in that area, which made getting gas and a bite to eat very easy. But soon the development petered out and we were on a two lane highway, driving through the back country. It may surprise people who do not live in southern California just how quickly you can find areas in our neck of the woods that are “the middle of nowhere.”
The views of the hills along the highway are very scenic.
The countryside along 79 is dotted with the occasional ranch, some of which are owned by people with lots of money. One large property had what looked like brand new white equestrian fencing all along the road and behind the fence were recently planted pepper trees, dozens of them. When the pepper trees mature they will block the ranch from the prying eyes of passing cars.
As you get futher south the rolling hills become very rocky, which makes for pretty views as well. If you keep taking 79 you will eventually be able to go to Julian, a picturesque town in the mountains of San Diego County. I told Hubby we should do that one of these days. But yesterday we were on a mission. Unfortunately, our mission kept being thwarted by a lack of road signs. The road we were looking for, Sage Road, was, I thought, a fairly major intersection with 79, given that were were out in the middle of nowhere and all that. Well, it was apparently not major enough, and we blew right passed it, never seeing the one tiny road sign. The intersection was weird, in that it was not just a “T” but had additional diagonal paved areas leading to and from the highway. I am sure they are there to give the folks coming off of Sage Road a fighting chance to get on the highway when traffic is heavier, as the cars on the highway are going very fast! But because of the extras “wings” shall we say, it was easy to miss the one and only street name sign there, and we sure missed it. We knew we had a problem when we got several more miles down the road and saw the “San Diego County Line” sign. Oops!
When one sign says “HWY 79″ and the other says “Sage Rd” you don’t get many horizontal inches of green road sign to look for. We totally missed this one as we went south and almost missed it when we turned around and came back by.
We turned around and I pulled out out my phone and manged to pull up Google maps once again. This worked well and we were able to find Sage Road, finally. However, once we turned, we couldn’t find the cemetery. The smart phone was only so helpful, as the cemetery was not showing up, and then we lost the signal. Did I mention we were out in the middle of nowhere? We turned around and regained the signal, and I called Eldest Daughter back at home to try and get some help, when, low and behold, I spotted an American flag. Photos online had shown that there was a flag pole at the cemetery so I was able to tell Eldest we were good and Hubby turned the car onto a short dirt road which took us to the cemetery. It sat a bit off the road, not right on it.
I have no idea when the first burial occurred, but there were headstones which indicated some folks were buried in this little country cemetery in the 1890s.
With our mission accomplished, we turned the car north and headed home on the lonesome highway once again.
Most Memorable Year
Woman in the Middle | October 17, 2017Watching Dancing with the Stars is my guilty pleasure right now. I tape it and enjoy it at off times during the day, when I eat lunch or need a break. This week the theme was “Most Memorable Year.” It got me thinking. What would I call my most memorable year?
As you can imagine, it is the difficult things that stick in the mind most. Our human brains seem to be wired that way. Maybe that is to make sure our ancient ancestors didn’t forget to avoid tigers, or run off a cliff, or something else life threatening. Who knows. But when I looked back, first thoughts went to those I have lost and difficult times. Of course, I have had many many good things happen as well. The good far outweighs the bad. As I dug deeper into the memory bank I came up with weddings and births and family vacations and graduations and trips with friends.
I dug a little deeper and came up with even smaller events that made me smile like board games with Brother Dear, which always seemed to bring out the funniest side of him. What can I say, the word “gallbladder” will always make me smile after a memorable game of Apples to Apples with him. Or there was that time Blackie got a plastic bag stuck around him and went racing all over the house with us chasing him. Or Hubby chasing Honey all around the back yard, her mouth and tongue hanging out in a giant doggie smile. There was holding my first book in my hands for the first time.
In the end, however, I decided that the most memorable year is this one. It is always the one I am living right now. The past is a wonderful photo album, but the present is just that – a present I get to unwrap every day. It is moments like yesterday when I got to see Eldest Daughter’s joy when she received the biggest pay check in her life after a week and a half of very hard work. It was hearing the joy in Youngest Daughter’s voice as she described the fun things she is going to do on her upcoming trip to visit friends in San Francisco. It was the email I got this morning from a long time friend, which told me the trip I proposed with her to the Carolinas was the EXACT same trip she and her boyfriend had talked about taking, because great minds think alike!
The past was wonderful. But the present will always be where I chose to be.
In 2007, we had a memorable trip to Australia. One thing that I will never forget is the girls watching Big Brother Australia every night in our room. They have never watched the American version, before or since, which we still laugh about. Maybe it was those Australian accents that made it so enjoyable…..
Just Renew Online!
Woman in the Middle | October 16, 2017Four years have passed in a heartbeat and it is time to renew my driver’s license. The good news is I do not have to go in to the office, take any tests or, god forbid, get my photo taken. Yay!
The letter the DMV sent me with all that good news also informed me I could renew online. Well, I thought, why not? Save a stamp and get it in the DMV’s system that much quicker. Online it will be! Oh, that at almost 56 I can still be so naive.
Even though they gave me a special number I needed to use to renew online, I soon discovered that was not nearly enough. I had to create an online account. Well, still easier than mailing it in, so on I went. In addition to giving them my name, rank, and serial number, I also had to pick five, yes five, security questions from a long list of questions they provided. You know, everything from the name of the city you were born in to the first name of your favorite school teacher. I stopped at three. That was not good enough. I had to do all five. Keep in mind I had to pick five questions I could actually answer (who knows the first name of their favorite teacher?). More importantly, I had to pick five questions I could remember the answers to! Will I remember the color of my first car when push comes to shove? Will I remember that I put down the city I was born in, as opposed to the city my parents lived in when I was born?
I got all that filled in, finally, hit the send button and…nothing. When I tried to send it with just three security questions, it erased my password. I refilled in the password, picked two more secority questions, and hit send again. Still nothing. I had filled in the date that was on my license incorrectly. This time I lost my password and all the answers to the five security questions. Come on, how hard can this be? I corrected the date, filled in the password again, and answered all the security questions again. Hit the send button…and it still wouldn’t go through.
At that point I gave up. I filled out a check and the stub on the paperwork they sent me, put it in the envelope provided and called it good. I should have done that in the first place!
Random Musings – October 12, 2017
Woman in the Middle | October 12, 2017Dax the cat was obviously a house cat before his sojourns at animal control and Room 8. He DEFINITELY knows the sound of a lid opening on a can of cat food! Even my two – two year olds haven’t figured that out, yet. But if I open a can of cat food, Dax is right there, wanting his share!
Without going into details, lets just say I had a meeting recently that was difficult. Afterwards, the car made a beeline for the grocery store so I could buy a chocolate cake, or “stress cake” as my family called it. I ate my cake, they let me watch what ever I wanted on TV, and I felt better. Occasionally, there are things in life that only chocolate cake can deal with.
We had a night and day of wind earlier this week. It was that day that the big fire in Orange County started. The wind was a hard one, but not outside the ordinary for our hard winds. A day later I happened to see our newish neighbor in his drive way and he mentioned, “Wow, that was quite a wind.” I tired to explain that it was just an ordinary hard wind and was great because it only lasted a day. He was not convinced, I could tell. Well, he will learn. He will learn.
I am back at yet another administrative hearing. There are five altogether. This is number three. It is a big time commitment, but fascinating none the less. At this point, it is interesting to see how the witness stories change with each hearing. Not in a good way, I might add. At one hearing a witness had no idea what was going on at the front of the school, because he was at the back. At another hearing he was the one who authorized the opening of a gate…at the front of the school. Still another witness, at yet another hearing, said SHE was the one who authorized the opening of the gate. Where was everybody? Who really authorized the opening of the gate? And, why don’t you all get your stories straight?
Hope you all have a very good Friday!
Spam
Woman in the Middle | October 12, 2017If I don’t happen to comment on you comment, I apologize. But I have been hit by spam. More like SPAM. One of my least favorite things about blogging. I got on yesterday and had 66 spam comments. I deleted them all. But then I got on this morning and had 98. Sigh.
Introducing…Dax!
Woman in the Middle | October 9, 2017We exchanged one Star Trek name for another in naming the new cat. Tribble seemed the right name at first, because of the cute trills he makes. Very little meowing for this cat! But, by the end of the second day I realized there was more to him and he needed a name that wasn’t just cute. A big boy name, you might say. In Star Trek:Deep Space Nine there was a major character who was a Tril named Dax. Get it? My cat trills….so we named him Dax. Nice, short, easy, but more of a big boy name.
Dax was a little off his food the first few days but now is back up to speed. However, given that I am not fluent in cat trills, I am still trying to figure out how much he needs. I do not free feed, as we seem, without trying, to fatten up every cat we own. So they get fed twice to three times a day.
Dax was a little put off the first couple of times he was offered wet food from the fridge, but he seems to have gotten over that. He has been a good boy using the litter box. The only thing we have to work on is the scratching. He lived in a cattery for a year and a half. There was no carpet or upholsterer furniture there. (There were plenty of carpet covered cat trees and blankets, however.) So scratching carpet and the top of the couch while being petted is a favorite activity. But that is slowing going away as well, and he stops right away if we tell him to.
Dax was obviously someone’s house cat as he loves to sleep with a person. That person right now is Eldest Daughter. The funny thing is his favorite day time spot is in the garage, behind some plywood propped against a car (that is a future project of Hubby’s.) Cold hard concrete. It makes me feel so guilty. But that is where he wants to be. He isn’t really hiding as he will come out immediately if we go out to the garage and let him know we are there.
Dax has had his first vet appointment and he passed with flying colors. I had them do a complete blood panel, because he is a senior cat, and it was completely normal. Yay!
Dax was always completely chill when it came to Nox and Lumos. It was the boys who had to get over the idea of a new cat coming into the house. But the hissing has now stopped and everyone is getting along much better. I wouldn’t say the boys and Dax are best buddies as of yet, but they can even be on the same couch now without any problems.
Overall, it has been a pretty pain free introduction of a new member into the family. That is entirely because of Dax, really, and I do appreciate that! By the way, isn’t he a pretty boy?
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