End of June already?!

I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted here in "No, Really."

A few weeks ago we went to the Apple store and got me an iPhone.  I must say, all the starry-eyed praise I've heard from other iPhone users - is true. It's an incredibly smart device. Listen, here's how smart this phone is: the iPhone is so smart, it does not find it necessary to make me look stupid to boost its own ego. Anyone who's been made a fool of by some smart thing knows that is an unusual thing in smartness these days. I'm glad I got it! iPhone.

Just a few days after that, the weekend before Father's day weekend, Steve and I were strolling through the Wally and I noticed he had fallen behind - he was there - and then he wasn't. I turned around to see where he was and I saw him standing before a glass counter display in the electronics department. Granted, Steve loves music as much as anyone of our generation, but it is unusual for him to fall out of formation like that, so I rolled back to see what he was looking at.

"See those little things there?" he asked, pointing at some shiny little devices about the size of a Ghirardelli chocolate you sometimes see around the checkout counter at the Walgreen's. "iPod Nano," he said, reading the placard. "When we were at the Apple store the other day, while you were waiting for your new phone, I was looking around the store and I put on a set of headphones - the old-fashioned kind that cover your ears - that was hooked up to one of these little things, and I could hear it!  It was the best sound I've heard in a long, long time. And these little things? They hold thousands of songs!"

"Wow," I said, "That's something, isn't it?" In that moment, I could not wait to get back up to the Apple store and get him one.

In the following week, I got exactly that chance between a car-service appointment and a lunch date with a friend. I stopped by the Apple store and got Steve a tidy little iPod Nano, a set of headphones that cover his ears and a dock that he can plug his Nano into and listen without headphones.

On the way home from that day's errands, Apple gift in tow, the thought popped into my head, What if I brought a puppy home? I imagined myself saying, "Look what I got!" But I didn't bring a puppy home with me because that would be a decision we'd need to make together.

When I got home that day, straight out of the blue, Steve asked, "Can I get a puppy? I'd want to go to an animal shelter, interact, and see who resonates." Seems like one of those times we had the same idea.

In the following week it was extraordinarily difficult to keep from giving Steve his gift of music early, but somehow I managed to wait until Father's Day. He was surprised and pleased.

Meanwhile, the idea of getting a dog was still in the air at our house, and then KFOR news ran a thing featuring the Edmond shelter, about how with all the dogs (and cats) they have, they desperately need families to adopt some of those doggies (and kitties). We talked amongst ourselves about it and decided to center our search a little closer to home.

One day rolled into another, and last week I pulled up some information online about various shelters closer to us than Edmond. Last Thursday we decided to go check out some shelters and interview some dogs.

We ended up at the El Reno shelter where their inventory consisted of (1) a disheveled red and white  spaniel looking guy who barked constantly, (2+) a little wiry terrier looking mom with a passel of little black pups, (3) their alleged daddy (but I wonder, because he was white, and there was not one light complected pup in the litter), (4) a pit bull (not available for adoption because he had killed a couple dozen of his neighbor's chickens), and (5) a medium sized red shepherd mix.

"This one's a pretty good little dog,"  Officer McClain said. "She followed some kids home the other day, and has stayed right on their porch for the last two days. I picked her up just today, and she came right over to me, licked my hand. Friendly. Pretty good little dog."

So we brought her home with us, and she is friendly and a good little dog. Here's a picture of her:



We brainstormed a series of names and settled on "Annie."

Called our family vet, Dr. Terry Wood's office, and they could see her on the following Monday (day before yesterday as I write).  We took her in on Monday afternoon for a checkup, shots, and to get an appointment to have her spayed.

She's about 35 pounds and change. Doc estimates her to be about 8 months of age. He could not give her any shots, though, because she's expecting. About three weeks along, he figures, so we anticipate we'll be whelping a litter of pups in about six weeks. He said as soon as those are weaned we can have her spayed.


In an interesting twist, Dr. Wood had also picked up a dog for himself at the Mustang animal shelter a few weeks earlier that he figures must be a litter mate of Annnie's. Spittin' image, he said - same coloring, same patterning, appears to be the same age and build - only Doc's dog is a male, and Doc discovered his dog had already been neutered.

I am very curious to know more of the story behind these two dogs, but as smart as Annie is, neither she nor her brother speak English, so we'll just have to guess.

Thanks for reading....

~V

Flood Warning, Canadian County

I am in Fly Creek NY with my daughter who is due to bear her first child any day now. We know with 70% certainty, thanks to modern ultrasound, that it's a girl. Her name will be Mira. Don't know what name may be on standby if Mira happens to fall into that 30% category and emerge with a stem, but should that happen, he'll only have to wear pink for about the first year or so.

While I'm out of pocket my Dear Husband Steve stayed in Oklahoma to hold the fort down in my absence, and Holy Cow, he has his work cut out for him today - I just received this post from him via Facebook: 

     

     "Raining like a heifer pissing on a flat rock here. The BX (Broadway Extension) and Turner Turnpike are CLOSED. TV telling everybody to stay put. Mike DiGacomo (street super, OKC) has his barricades and storm sewer covers floating away. The 10" tree log path has floated past the sweetbush....pans and bowls all over the trailer. Upstairs bedroom in the house tarped and running into 5 gal buckets. must empty every 5 minutes. Muffin inside and pissed off. Cookie? well, good stealth to you! No cell phone signal, but we got internet antenna. Thunder in the distance (NW of Mustang) but none locally. leak in the studio under the East wall and door threshold. bear gonow.......an intense event."

KFOR weather has an interactive radar where you can enter an address and pinpoint your actual location. It keeps looking like the rain is going to let up, but it just keeps raining, and heavily.  Reminds me of a weather joke we have in Oklahoma - "Last time it rained forty days and forty nights, they got a trace in Guymon." Yeah, Mustang is nowhere near Guymon.

Both cats have wanted to be nowhere but outside since early Spring but Muffin ran inside this morning to escape another block-headed yellow lab who came around barking at Steve. It was a different dog from the one I described in my "Not All Who Wander" blog entry last month because today's dog was uncut, as compared to the old neutered male of previous mention.  So Muffin is inside, where he does not like to be, but which he finds less distasteful than going out in the pouring rain. Cats are so funny.  Cookie can usually find a discreet place to hole up and usually stays quite dry, thank you very much, but I bet she's wet today! I hope she's okay. 

The tree log path Steve mentions - we had done some clearing and reserved a couple of tree trunks for Truth, Beauty and Goodness projects. These trunks are actually 10 to 16 inches across, and we had cut one of them into 2 to 3 inch slabs to use as stepping stones in paths where the grass hasn't taken hold yet. One set of steps was about 12 to 20 feet from the sweetbush, the next one was about 50 to 75 feet from it, and the other path about 100+ feet from the sweetbush, so any one of those would be a significant washout!

Speaking of turnpikes being closed, before I left, I promised without fail that I would keep an eye ahead on the weather when I'm traveling, and if it looked very bad, I would hold my position rather than risk harm due to a weather disaster. This situation reaffirms that determination. That interactive map on KFOR will show current weather radar for any address you plug into it, so that promises to be an extremely handy tool in addition to local forecasts along the way.

Meanwhile, here in Fly Creek, it's only overcast. Cool central NY summer day. Misty's dog, Potato, rests at my feet, while we wait for labor to begin.

Stay dry and safe, everyone!

Snow Thank you

Looks like all those years of Oklahomans praying for a white Christmas finally paid off.  We ended up with over 14 inches, according to the Official Report, but it had to be real hard to count because the dadgum wind blew so hard that we really got everything from bare spots to six foot drifts. Not us personally, but throughout the state. The official count came from the airport, which is about eight miles east of us. Out here at the True Light Carrot Patch I'd say that between the bare spots and the drifts, we probably averaged two to four inches.

I know a snow like this is common enough in the upper regions, y'all, but it is an all time record breaker for Oklahoma. Hot potatoes!

BTW, WeatherBoy (or WeatherGirl) is the name I give, individually and collectively, to our television meteorologists because they always look young, fresh-scrubbed and  Sunday-best. Children grown tall, telling the weather.

We got the porch cleaned off, and the sunny part of the sidewalk at the barn. The shady parts are too icy to clear yet. I think it's supposed to get about 35 degrees today, so maybe....

We traditionally have a Big Family Doin' at my parents on Christmas Eve. This tradition within my family started when I was a child. My mother and aunt's families liked to meet on Christmas day as so many do, and Grandmother liked to have everyone together, so the sensible solution was to have a big dinner on Christmas Eve. We'd all eat and open presents. The grown-ups would always reserve a few for Christmas morning as well, and of course there's always a few packages from Santa Clause.

When Grandmother passed on my own mother picked up the Christmas Hostess baton, because she really likes to have everyone together, too. Unfortunately, this blizzard kept people in. I did not even go outside on the 24th.

We cleared the porch and sidewalk on Christmas Day, and just before dark decided to brave the elements to see if we could find anyplace open where we might sit down to hot food that someone else cooked. We ended up over at the Flying J truckstop restaurant and had whatever we wanted from their buffet. They had one, count 'em one, waitress, who had probably been there for a very long time, but she was still friendly and got us all fixed up. We got home without incident, although there are certainly a few patches of pretty scary road out there.

Steve gave me the gift today of taking our laundry in to wash today and found our local Mustang laundry closed. There was a sign on the door saying, "Closed Christmas Day," but this is the 26th now, so I hope she's okay. She comes over from El Reno (about ten miles west of us) to open the place up every day, and they had some pretty dramatic multi-car pileups out that way, so  I suspect she may be unable to get through. I hope she's okay. Having found the Mustang laundry closed, he ventured up into Yukon to our second choice in laundromats.

Grandmother always said, "If you're going to say anything, say something nice," so I'll have to think of something nice to say about that laundromat - oh, yeah, here's one - their washers and dryers were in good working order the last time I was there. Anyway, it took him over an hour to make a twelve minute drive because it's still pretty awful out there everywhere except right out on the Interstate highways. He got stuck in the slush somewhere along the way but a Good Samaritan helped get him unstuck.

This all reminds me that another thing to appreciate from our time in Cooperstown is  experiential reality in the Importance of Clearing Snow Accumulation. I catch myself thinking they'd have this cleared by now in Otsego County, and then I remind myself that I'm certainly free to go back there if I wish. I think I'll stay put, though. Hopefully this weather event will be enough to satisfy most of those Snow Pray-ers for a good long time!

Monday, Rain, Fireflies, Junebugs and Roses

Is it still Monday?

We got some rain Saturday - mostly a Cooperstown kind of rain, gentle and straight down, as compared to the hard, sideways rain we so often get here in Oklahoma. We'd been out  somewhere and were back home, powering down for the night. I was getting reports ready and printing forms for the next day's meeting, when Steve called to me, "Hey, Vicki, you gotta come see this!"

I followed his voice to find him out on the deck under the awning.

"There, under the long trailer," he said, pointing. "Under the tarp."

It took a few seconds, but then I began to see flickering and blinking lights. They looked like tiny blinking LED lamps. I rubbed my eyes and cleaned my glasses, and the lights were still there. Fireflies had taken shelter from the rain under cover of an old-fashioned oiled-canvas tarp we had laid over the wood that was stored on Dad's long flat trailer. Sheltered under their own makeshift awning with plenty of Firefly business to conduct, there they were, blinking away. What a happy thing to see! I'm sorry I wasn't able to get a suitable picture of this to post, but hopefully you've already conjured one in your mind.

Makes me happy every time I see fireflies, and a little bit sad that there don't seem to be as many these summers as I remember having seen in my youth. I plan to study in the next season or so, how to attract, encourage, and support fireflies. I would sure rather have fireflies than June bugs!

When we moved here the first time, about fourteen or fifteen years ago, I moved a Queen Elizabeth Rose bush out here with us and planted it under the yard light. The Queen Elizabeth bears large, lush blossoms in a beautiful shade of medium-deep pink and have a wonderful fragrance. We always liked to say of that Queen Elizabeth Rose that she had petals the size of bed sheets and thorns the size of rhinoceros horns. A substantial and imposing rosebush, the Queen Elizabeth. I wanted to take her with us to Cooperstown when we moved up there, but I had no room to pack one more thing. I blessed her with love and left her behind.

On more than one return visit to Oklahoma I wanted like anything to come out here and dig up the Queen Elizabeth to take to Cooperstown with me, but that never worked out for one reason or another. One of the things I looked forward to on our return was seeing and nurturing the Queen Elizabeth Rose bush again.

I guess I must have also planted another rose bush under the light too. So in love with the Queen Elizabeth, I'm embarrassed to say I don't remember this other bush's name, but it produces smallish red and white variegated blooms. The coloring reminds me of peppermint candy. Unfortunately, the Queen Elizabeth is gone, and no trace of her to be found. I do have my eyes peeled for another one. 

This Peppermint Rose bush, though. She's about four feet tall now. She lives under the yard light, as I said, and this summer the ding-dang June bugs ate every leaf on that bush! Ate her right down to sticks!  I thought sure she was dead, and wonder if that must have been what happened to my Queen Elizabeth, only after she was gone down to dead, thorny sticks, someone pulled her out of the ground.  

I was sad to see what had happened to the Peppermint Rose, and vowed to plant roses again, somewhere away from the yard light. Then I noticed she was putting forth new growth! I love the way roses' new growth leaves are tinged in red. Soon she was completely reclothed in the red leaves of new growth, and as those leaves began to turn green, here came a couple dozen buds and she bloomed again! 

Part of my future plans for this place create a dedicated rose garden. I was surprised to hear someone say roses are "hard to grow." I have never had any difficulty keeping roses. They take some time and attention - the successful rose gardener becomes acquainted with their needs and sees to those needs - it is not that difficult. Or maybe I have a gift for roses. Maybe they like me.

Whatever.

Anyway, yes, I guess it is still Monday. Been a long, busy day. I'm going to don my jammies and settle in for the night. Thanks for reading.

Live Well and Be Happy,
Vicki in Mustang

Zone 7

Abandoned

We recently moved back to - well, are in the process of moving back to- an old family place, which has been rented out to various different people over the last seven years.

The most recent renter may be a few marbles short of a bag. He left the most incredible mess I have ever seen in my life, I kid you not.

The #@^&@*# also left his cats behind.

I know he knows he left them - we talked to him on Sunday on his cell phone. He said he'd be finished moving on Monday and told us where he would leave the key for us to pick up on Tuesday. It appears that the last thing he did before he left for the last time was to bring in a twenty five pound bag of cat food, lay it on the floor and cut it open so the kitties would be well fed until we arrived, and left the front window open about ten inches so the kitties could come and go at will.

Two of the cats were at least acquainted with people and were clearly lonely for human companionship. One would come right up to us, talking, rubbing against our legs. The other one was slightly less friendly but not unfriendly - was a little more cautious, but was talkative and almost approachable.

The third one was talkative, but would not let anyone near him/her. He/she would talk to us, but if we talked back, he/she would give us that "Oh, no you don't!" look and run away.

Given that my own cats are aging, and judging by the MESS this guy left (I am not kidding, I have NEVER seen anything like it), even though I saw evidence of things like flea treatment, litter buckets, and cat food, I could not say with any certainty that these kitties have ever had any veterinary attention, in terms of being current with shots and whatnot. In addition, there is that whole thing of the cats using the entire house as a catbox. These factors, plus more I haven't mentioned, led me to the decision to call Animal Control.

Fortunately, the woman in charge of Animal Control in Mustang has a good working relationship with the local vets and tries very hard to find homes for animals that come under her care.

She came out and easily caught the two "people cats," who are now in quarantine at the shelter as I write. They really tugged at my heartstrings, these two, but I have no doubt that they are quite adoptable and will find good homes as soon as it is feasible to release them.

We made a plan about the third kitty and set about, then, to clean the place up. We also have some serious renovation to do there, and once we got all the garbage cleaned out, we began demolition on the parts that have to be rebuilt and replaced, noise of which has further convinced the third kitty not to come near any of us.

So we took up the food for twenty four hours, then set a live trap with food and water in it and were immediately successful in capturing the third kitty, who now awaits transport to the shelter first thing in the morning.

However - now that the house is empty, we have discovered TWO MORE kitties that we hadn't seen before! They were hiding under the dumpster (crying) when we finished work today. I don't know how successful we will be at capturing them since they might associate "food" with "cage," but if they're hungry enough a cage with food in it might be attractive to the poor little things. Since we never saw these last two until we got the house empty, it makes me wonder if there are yet more kitties. These wild ones are the ones whose outcome I worry about. If they can get their shots and be neutered or spayed they could make decent barn cats. They certainly aren't interested in being people kitties right now, that's for sure.

Since all these kitties have had free run of the house for who knows how long, and have done their business in every nook and cranny, it seriously smells like urine and poo in there, even with all the furniture, carpet and trash out of the house. Steve found a super concentrated odor eliminator on the Internet, which we have ordered. It should arrive sometime next week. I'll be sure to post an entry on its efficacy.

Meanwhile, my kitties Muffin and Cookie are sequestered here at our little one bedroom extended stay apartment...where they LOVE it! Nice and cool, all they have to do is sleep all day,thank you very much, and eat once in a while, and if they feel like it, allow us to brush them - the life of Riley, as my mother would say.

Tuesday April 21, 2009

This mini suite we're in here at the residential hotel has a main living area with a television and a kitchenette, a good-sized bathroom and a bedroom. Like a teen-inesy apartment. Carpet everywhere except in the bathroom, so that is where the catbox is.

Muffin totally loves being this close to "Mom" all the time, but I am also seeing that I may be able to socialize Cookie a little more in this small space. She still spends most of her time hiding under the bed, but she is coming out a little more - every once in a while I enjoy the pleasant surprise of velvet against my ankles, and even more rarely she will join me on the bed at night or let me pull her into my lap for an ever-so-brief love-fest.

There is a lot of debate among cat owners as to whether cats should ever be let outside or not, but I do let mine out under certain conditions...one being that I can get them back in at night! So over the years we have formed the practice of taking up the food dishes in the morning and feeding in the evening so I can get everybody to come when I call. With a cat who may or may not answer when you call, feeding time can be an excellent motivator. Another plus for me with once-a-day feeding is that I can see who is eating what (yes, I watch them eat).

We started this feeding-at-night thing when we first lived on the acreage, and then more consciously when we lived in Cooperstown - if one, some or all the cats happen to go outside during the day, it's my way of making sure they all come in at night. Believe it or not, even in Cooperstown there are scary, dangerous things about at night - raccoons, skunks, dogs, foxes, and the like. In the hills around the village they also have bears, but those guys rarely enter the village. (Notice I did NOT say they "never" enter the village!)

At the acreage in Oklahoma, we have all that, plus owls, coyotes and bobcats, so while I occasionally let my creatures out to enjoy the day with me, I'm nearly anal about making sure everyone is securely inside come nightfall. To this day, wherever I am, if I awaken in the night to the sound of coyotes I sit bolt upright in a panic until I have taken a mental roll call of all my pets.

This tiny room at the residential hotel is showing itself to be a good way for Cookie and I to rebond, which will be good when it's time for the cats to go to the acreage.

The former renter is all moved out, so we're going out there today to evaluate, to triage what needs to be done, and to work in the garden. Overalls, work gloves, notebook, camera, ice chest and sack lunches; I'm just sorry the cats don't get to go yet. Big job ahead, I know that, but I so love that place.

The day awaits!

We Have Returned to OZ

Back in Oklahoma.

The house on our acreage in Mustang has been rented to several different people over the last seven years, the most recent of whom is in the process of moving out now. He'll be out by the 20th. Now, thinking too much again, I wonder if that means he'll be gone by the end of the 19th, or will it be the 20th? Just to be safe, I believe our plan is to show up on the 21st ready to get some things done. In the meantime, we are trying to keep our hands and minds busy until then.

We have taken temporary lodging in a place called Candlewood Suites, a residential hotel.

The FAA (that's Federal Aviation Administration) has a training center in Oklahoma City, so people come from all over the country (and maybe beyond?) to attend training at FAA here in Oklahoma City. Rather than haggle with uber-expensive nightly rate hotels or long-term apartment lease requirements and whatnot, a lot of those folks stay at places like this.

It's sort of like a cross between a hotel and an apartment. Our unit has a kitchenette with a little two-burner stove, microwave (unfortunately no conventional oven, so no fresh-baked bread for a while), a decent sized 'fridge, a dishwasher, garbage disposal, a little coffeemaker (YEAH!) and two televisions - one in the living room and one in the bedroom. They allow pets, thank goodness, so Muffin and Cookie are here with us.

We expect to be here from one to three months (or longer if required) while we whip the A-frame into shape.

We've been out to the property a few times to look around, see how things are, see if we might run into the soon-to-be-former resident. We haven't met him yet.

I, Mrs. Bright-Side, am happy to report that:
* The chicken house is intact and will only require some cleaning up and a little repair.
* Apparently no one ever harvested the garlic we planted the October before we moved to Cooperstown and it has naturalized! Garlic where we planted it and beyond! So with no effort on our part, we will get to harvest garlic this summer!

On the other hand, a LOT of work will be required to bring the rest of the place up to snuff.

We'll have to bring in a load of gravel to fill in the driveway. It looks like heavy vehicles have driven over it and it is deeply rutted right now.

When we left seven years ago, some agency (I'm not sure if it was City of Mustang, Canadian County, or State of Oklahoma) had come through and cleared back from the road and cleaned out the drainage ditch. I thought they were going to put the fence back in (which they may have done) but there is no fence there now.

The house is an A-Frame, covered with cedar shake shingles. Shingles are warped and loose all over the building and completely missing along the bottom. The apex of the roof has come dismantled, unmanufactured, and without even seeing inside yet, I am as sure as I am sitting here that it leaks in the rain. We'll know more once we can get inside.

After having lived in a big house full of hardwood floors the last seven years in Cooperstown, I had already decided we would pull up the carpet in there and put down actual or facsimile of hardwood flooring.

You try to screen your residents, but people with secrets to hide ... Anyway, one of the renters SOLD the 12x24 metal building we had out there as an out-building! We see that the iron gate that used to be on the front door and one of the front windows are missing as well, we suspect cashed in as scrap metal. Turns out that guy was a fugitive, a wanted man. Apparently the government figured out where he was and he skipped. His day will come.

The central heat and air unit is missing. There are sections of garage doors all over the place, too, out by the sheds and over in the woods. The little shed buildings that we'd used to keep our tools and smaller equipment and where our first chicken house was, are now full of garbage, as if some of the renters had declined to contract with the city of Mustang for garbage pickup. Appliances all the heck over the place... I do know the current/soon-to-be-former resident has had burn-pits out there - one right outside the back door, next to the house with the cedar shake shingles - that was a disaster waiting to happen! He has since moved the burn pit away from the house, but we prefer to avoid burn pits ourselves as the fire danger is way too high.

Anyway, come Tuesday morning we will be out there in our overalls, boots and heavy gloves to triage the situation and fomulate a plan of action. I'll post pictures when I have some to post.