Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrr! To celebrate the day, get your pirate name HERE. Today, you may call me Cap’n Hank Cutthroat.
I’ve been trying to address the piles of invisible junk around my house: You know, those places where stuff has been sitting around so long I don’t consciously notice it any more. In my kitchen, the problem is along the wall. Max’s food and water are there, and for some reason there is a stool there, and for some reason, I pile junk on the stool. It looks very messy. Last night I at least collected the dish towels and washed them. But for now, the stool is still there with a griddle on top of it. (The griddle was a pancake experiment.)
Also along the wall:
A cover panel I need to cut in half and attach to the cabinets under the microwave.
Folding chairs in case I need them for the firepit.
A box under the stool that Max sits in to do kitchen surveillance.
Max has been naughty recently: he jumped up on the counter to get at an empty container for lunchmeat. I was shocked to discover the container on the floor. I do not approve of Max being on the kitchen counter, and I have always thought that he never did it.
I think he might have used my kitchen stools to get up there, so I pushed them in tightly and put some stuff on them to keep him from using them. I also got out the sticker strips they sell to keep cats from scratching. They’re like giant, double-sided stickers that you can stick on the corner of the couch or on a bed or whatever. The stickiness confuses and dismays the cat, and it stops scratching whatever you stick it on. I only peeled off one side of the stickers and then laid them around the edges of the counter top.
When I got home, I saw my trap had sprung:
It had come from this area of the counter:
Max tried to act like nothing had happened, but I knew. And I think he knew I knew. And I knew he knew I knew. Bad Max.
Hurricane Irene left no damage to my house, but did leave me without electricity. Apparently, some mice came inside the house to seek shelter from the storm. And apparently, the stormy weather brought out the beast in Max.
MOUSE ONE: While going to the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning, I stepped on something damp. It was a dead mouse that Max left right outside my bedroom door.
MOUSE TWO: In the dim light of the morning, I tried to stave off my electricity withdrawal by playing Peggle on my battery-powered laptop computer. While I played, Max stalked another mouse… And got it!
MOUSE THREE: I left Max in the living room as I made some pancakes for breakfast. Fortunately, my gas stove was still working. After a little while, Max joined me… with a third mouse in his mouth.
He got cocky with this one and played with it before it was dead. It got away somewhere under my kitchen cabinets. I hope it doesn’t start smelling bad.
The storm did leave some wreckage behind. My neighbor’s mulberry tree blew down. Thankfully, nothing was damaged. The tree fell exactly the right way. Any more to the right or left, and there would have been damage to fences or maybe even to buildings. I’m so glad nothing was damaged.
From my back porch:
The base of the trunk was just snapped. That was some strong wind.
Posted in Cat, Gardening
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I had a good Half Birthday yesterday.
I started by painting. Some more. It is taking me FOREVER to paint my bedroom. I’m done with the walls and the trim. Yesterday I painted the first coat of the window seat and the door. The window seat has removable panels for storage. There was some trash in there from the previous owner. I cleaned it out. Max jumped inside to inspect things for me.
I found some new curtains for my bedroom. They were on clearance! And I had a 20% off coupon from Bed Bath and Beyond! When all was said and done, they were half price. Awesome!
My Half Birthday dinner was Vietnamese. I had a bowl of rice noodles with barbecue pork, cilantro, and bean sprouts. In honor of my half birthday, I only ate the top half of the bowl. I left the noodles.
I went to the bookstore after dinner so I could get the soundtrack to “Cowboys and Aliens”. It hasn’t been released yet, but I did have fun laughing at this label on a bookshelf:
I accomplished something yesterday! Yay! It didn’t cost me any money! Yay! Well, actually, it cost Brad From The Past money. Sorry, BFTP, but thanks for the Project.
My kitchen faucet has been leaking for months. It’s only a year old. I couldn’t find the leak. Water was coming from nowhere and leaking all over the bottom of my cabinet. I’ve just been keeping a container under the water lines to catch the drips. In June, I finally got around to buying a new faucet, but I didn’t get it installed before I went to Nebraska.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
I can’t believe how hard it was to get this new one put in. Two trips to the hardware store, and hard, sweaty work. Sheesh! Max helped by licking the sweat off me when I came out from under the sink.
Posted in Cat, Projects
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