I had a few people email me for a status of some of the bad things mentioned in a previous posting, and, not to sound impatient or anything, but that blog started with the death of Caramel the mouse, and guess what? She’s still dead. The blog posting also included the death of Hoppie, the ferret, and he’s also still dead. Now, I was at first offended by these inquiries until I remembered that some people heard the story of Mark burying a ferret one winter in our back yard only for the skull of the allegedly buried creature to show up next to our hot tub the next spring and Mark later admitting that he only sort of buried it. Rest assured that our mouse and ferret are all safely tucked away and won’t come back to life, like ever, because I oversaw the funerals.
That takes us to the window problem, and for that, I took some very special before and after photos. This is the before photo, which was taken after they removed the crown molding and wooden valence but before they did any real work on the project. I took the photo with a fish-eye lens, not just because I like fish but because the lens gives the window the larger, bowed look we were looking for.
This is the after photo.
Now, you might think the after photo looks the same as the before photo but it’s much, much more expensive. See, the contractor ordered us a window, after all, and, because it wasn’t actually LARGER than the existing one, we declined to have it installed. For reasons we will never understand, our not wanting an exact replacement window turned out to be our fault, and because they’d put some effort into ordering the wrong window, they charged us a handling and storage fee or some such thing, and, ergo, we only got some of our money back. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the two small replacement windows they put in our bedrooms look beautiful, but they cost us exactly one arm and one leg which makes dancing and playing basketball a bit tricky. We’ve now soured on the LARGER window idea, and because they took my wooden valence, am now left with the task of painting above the very window we’d hoped to be rid of. Be forewarned that I don’t like painting and I really don’t like painting over other peoples’ mistakes, so if you hear obscenities oozing forth from our leaky window, blame it on our ex contractor and just try to ignore me.
Our little flea issue resulted in applying two treatments of some nasty liquid yuck on most of the critters in our house, which includes two dogs, three ferrets, a cat, and a guinea pig. We passed on treating the shrews and whatever brash creature managed to bring two 2-inch round walnuts into our house. It happened like this: I went downstairs to vacuum the basement and noticed a dead mouse on our pool table, and, after holding yet another funeral, found some carpet threads next to the door to Arthur’s room. This led us to poking around Arthur’s room and flipping back bed covers and other loose items and seeing two walnuts go flying through space and onto the floor. Like most people, we left both nuts on the floor and were both amazed and peeved when both nuts were gone the next day. Since we couldn’t blame it on the dead mouse and it was obvious some creature was living with us without paying rent, we spent last weekend plugging up numerous holes in our basement with some Great Stuff expandable foam and occasional pieces of metal. We returned to the basement later to find a dozen shrews pacing back and forth front of the sealed hole with tiny signs of protest that I couldn’t read without my damn reading glasses.
In better news, my brand new tires stay mostly inflated most days, our new aquarium pump is still humming away, and I’ve banned going to any more of Holly’s lacrosse games because she made me take photos of the wrong player last time. We’ve grown to like our new grill and, because certain things shouldn’t be rushed, are weeks away from taking the old, broken grill to the dump. The woman who was stealing information from my sister’s web site was an intern and fired by the web site owner, so all that turned out just fine. But you might remember that I was going to put my mom in a box to send to an agent that rejected me? Well, the US Postal Service had the audacity to suggest that shipping my mother in a box was not a good thing to do, and that I’d not pass the “Anything hazardous, explosive, or fragile?” test. I said my mother wasn’t all that fragile and would not explode while en route (but might after wards), to which they said simply ‘No.’
I’ve also become a slave to Little Buddha, because when he chews on the metal part of his cage to get my attention each morning, well, what am I to do? I hand feed him 25 sunflower seeds and 10-15 pumpkin seeds, and there are mornings both of his cheeks are filled to overflowing to the point that he has parts of two pumpkin seeds oozing out of his mouth . . . and he still stands there looking for more.
Like I have time to spoil animals all day.
And leads us finally to a more recent posting where I mentioned Lefty, the white-footed deer mouse with a mangled back leg that Mark found one afternoon in our back yard. The injured leg and other internal injuries were apparently too much for our little friend and he went off to mouse heaven two nights ago. In the two weeks we spent with this tiny creature, it oozed its way into my heart with the mere wiggle of its tiny whiskers and the gentle way it nibbled cheese and grapes from my hands.
Never again will I underestimate the impact of a critter that weighs only a few ounces.
Now, Mark claims he buried Lefty in the backyard and that he used a shovel. Let’s just hope for the best, shall we?