oh good lord. things are very crazy around here now.
first – amy, jim, and kevin all left yesterday about noon; amy and jim to chicago to visit aunt sandy, and kevin off to wisconsin for another civil war shoot. yeah, that’s pretty much all he does all summer.
yesterday morning was a flurry of many leaving-type things, including me making kevin some low-sugar oatmeal cookies AT SEVEN IN THE MORNING. i’ve been getting up really early and i felt that HE HAD TO HAVE COOKIES FOR HIS TRIP.
he was very happy about that; so happy that when i talked about the other things i wanted to do yesterday morning he said something like, “but the cookies are top priority, right?”
yes they were. by eight, mollie and i went for a run.
finally everybody left, and i spent the afternoon finishing planting my flower garden down by the water. planting is a LOT OF WORK; digging the holes is more work than you’d think, and then the planting is also a lot of work. kinda tiring, but worth the effort.
pictures on that later.
anyway, last night i went out, and my brother david was at the house; he swam in the lake even though it’s basically just like swimming in bathwater, except a lot dirtier. when i came home, randy and i visited les paul in the hot tub room, where he is staying til he feels better.
i don’t remember much about winnie and honey getting declawed, except that it didn’t seem to bother them so much. mom says they had little bandages on their feet, and i remember putting lots of pillows all over the floor so they wouldn’t be in pain but they didn’t care about that at all. les, on the other hand, had no bandages and was clearly in a lot of pain and i felt AWFUL about it, and i wish i’d opted for the laser surgery which was a couple hundred dollars more. but he’s doing better every day, but i have to give him pain medicine every 12 hours.
randy helped me give Les his medicine, and then randy said he thought i should close the windows to the hot tub room, cause what if the raccoons got in? he said the cat food smell was really strong, and of course the baby raccoons are very focused on getting into the house, so i decided to close all the windows. i put another fan in there and hoped les would be ok.
i slept amy and jim’s house because i’m taking care of noodle and numie and the two kitties and the two tanks of fish, in addition to mollie and les paul and winnie, who i’m sure is feeling very neglected right this very minute wherever he might be sleeping.
amy’s dogs slept in the bed with me and it was all fine but i woke up at six and figured i should take them for a walk before it got too hot. first i had to go check on the kitties…
i got home and looked out at the screened porch and NOBODY HAD CLOSED THE GLASS DOOR. david had come in from swimming and just closed the screen and i was so concerned about the hot tub room that i didn’t look out there. THE SCREEN WAS OPEN, OF COURSE.
there was a little food on the floor, but things seemed to be ok. however, when we first left amy and jim’s house, mollie went a little crazy, barking and running towards the screened porch.
i figured there was still a baby raccoon in there. i looked around, and sure enough, there was a little guy cowering in the corner under a table. i moved the table out and he ran right outside. whew. crisis averted.
the dogs and i walked, which seems like a dream now, and then i came back and we napped for an hour, and then i went back home to give les him medicine. i went out on the screened porch, and i realized that i’d missed a lot – the clock had fallen, some of the hanging grape lights were askew, and sadly, a pretty bowl that amy and jim gave me was broken on the floor.
uh oh…was there one more raccoon in the room? i looked under the chairs, no raccoon. i must have forgotten that all that stuff was on the floor, but you’d think i’d have remember the pretty broken bowl. but mollie wasn’t going crazy, so i figured we were raccoon-free.
mom came over and helped me give les his medicine, and then we watered and watered and watered amy and jim’s many many flowers, and then we took a lovely boat ride.
we came back and walked into the screened porch and mollie starting going crazy, sniffing around the tall cabinet in the corner. i noticed that a small bowl had fallen, and was pretty sure it hadn’t fallen before…
there must be a raccoon behind the cabinet. i’d looked in the basket on top of the tall cabinet, but not behind it. i put mollie inside and moved it, and there was another little raccoon, cowering in the corner.
oh no.
mom found kevin’s welding gloves and i put them on and moved the cabinet, and tried to coax the raccoon out with the broom. he just hissed and snarled and snapped at the broom.
oh boy.
what to do? i could pick him up with the welding gloves, but i didn’t want to. i bet mom would have done it if i’d asked her, but i didn’t want to.
oh brother.
“let’s open the door to the deck and see if he comes out,” i said.
so we tried that and waited for him, but he just cowered some more in the corner.
oh boy.
i guess if we’d waited an hour he would have left, but i didn’t want to spend an hour waiting for him to get up the nerve to escape.
“let’s ask chris what to do,” i said. mom went over to our neighbor’s house and chris came right back with her, wearing his own heavy-duty gloves. he closed himself in the porch and picked up the snarling, snapping little guy and carried him right outside.
whew.
i could have done that, if i’d been more brave. i was wearing the huge welding gloves, but i just couldn’t do it.
no more raccoons on the screened porch now.
hopefully.
at least i had been right about thinking nothing was amiss when i first saw the porch early this morning – coming back a few hours later and finding the bowl broken and the clock on the floor and grapes askew made me think i was really really forgetful, even though of course when i first went in there it was ridiculously early.
now i’m sitting on amy and jim’s porch with their dogs, but numie insists on lying in the sun but of course he’s panting because he’s so hot.
everybody gets back tomorrow, thank god.
ok then,
mrs. saturday afternoon excitement hughes.