They’re Baaaack . . .

When the mouse laughs at the cat, there's a hole nearby.
― Nigerian Proverb

If one mouse is a spark...then ten thousand are a conflagration.
― Carmen Agra Deedy

A mouse never entrusts his life to only one hole.
— Plautus

I wasn’t going to post about this today because I already talked about it on my other blog, although the focus there was on why I didn’t get much writing done last week.

Anyway . . . remember back to the beginning of May when I shared the problem we were having with mice in the house? Between the traps and the cat, 13 mice were sent to meet their maker. There was a 14th mouse, but he figured out how to eat the peanut butter from the trap without setting it off. We stopped baiting the trap and after a few days we didn’t see any mouse signs. Problem solved.

Or so we thought.

Now, a little backstory is required. I have never seen any signs of a mouse in my office. This despite the fact I used to keep a secret stash of snacks in my bottom desk drawer and chocolate on my desk.

In an effort to be healthier, I stopped stashing snacks, although I did keep the Kinder eggs (foil-wrapped chocolate eggs with a plastic bulb inside containing a toy) for the granddaughter and I to share when she came to visit on Sundays in that drawer.

In August I picked up a few eggs and left them on my desk because they were a little soft from the heat, but we never got around to eating them.

Last week, when I was cleaning my office, I discovered the Lindt chocolate bar I’d been given for Christmas, that I’d only eaten half of and left in the small bookcase I keep my tea things on, had been chewed on. There were also mouse droppings on the bookcase. Can we say Ewwwww?

This called for a more thorough cleaning of the office, which is when I discovered that one of the Kinder eggs on my desk had been broken into:

There was an open baggy of dark chocolate on the desk that hadn’t been touched, nor had my Werther’s caramels that I keep in a jar. The bottle of Planters Peanuts in my stash drawer, however, had the crap chewed out of the lid. It was still sealed, but it still went into the trash.

So I thoroughly cleaned my office and when I moved things around to vacuum in all the corners I discovered the remains of a Kinder egg in a corner by the bookcase under my window. And by remains, I mean the half-chewed plastic bulb, the toy/prize, and a few flecks of foil from the wrapper.

Once I was done cleaning I scattered little bundles of cloves done up in cheesecloth around the room (I had an aunt who swore by cloves to keep rodents away) and figured that was that.

But late Saturday night, the hubby reached for the Cadbury chocolate that he keeps in a caddy beside his recliner in the living room, and what do you know? It had been nibbled on. He’s kept chocolate there for months, and there’s never been any sign of a mouse. I guess the word is out in the mouse kingdom that we no longer have a cat.

So he rebaited the trap we had in the dining room, and it wasn’t long before there was a snap. He caught a second one shortly after, and a third one sometime during the night. We really need to figure out where they’re getting in.

And I think it’s time to start kitten shopping.

Midlenting Monday

midlenting ~ custom of giving gifts to parents on mid-Lent Sunday

So . . . I was wrong about not having the opportunity to wear the winter jacket I talked about in my last post. I got to wear it when I went out for coffee Sunday morning. And why was that? Because after a week of spring-like weather I woke up to snow yesterday. SNOW!

I was not a happy camper.

However, this is Canada and the weather is nothing if not unpredictable, especially this time of year. Years ago it was pretty common to have snow right through the March Break and I can remember one year we had a record breaking storm on April second.

But take heart! I was down at the waterfront recently and as you can see by the picture I took, the ice and snow are receding. Those aren’t hunks of rock on the breakwater, that’s just really dirty ice/snow accumulation that’s melting away. At least now they have a thin coat of white on top to pretty things up.

Last week I did something I haven’t done in ages – I went to a poetry gathering. Members of the Cobourg Poetry Workshop, both old and new, got together to honour Eric Winter, Cobourg’s Poet Emeritus and the man who started the workshop many years ago. We started out taking turns reading poems written by Eric, then some members shared poems they’d written about Eric.

I had a great time and I realized how much I’d missed these once a month gatherings. This could be in part because the two more, shall we say, contentious members who tried to turn the group into something it’s not are no longer part of the group.

Anyway, it was enough to make me think about signing up again. Maybe even attend the poetry reading this month. Maybe write a poem or two of my own.

Maybe you’ll even find me upstairs at the Cat and the Fiddle for the next meeting.

Mockado Monday

mockado ~ inferior quality woollen fabric

So ... the blame for the return to the summer-like weather rests totally on the hubby’s shoulders. He declared summer over last weekend and closed up the pool. So naturally, in typical Canadian fashion, the days started getting warmer and soon the nights were getting warmer too.

The weekend was downright hot, and this week is supposed to be even hotter. The weather is nicer now than it was in June and July. Go figure.

The coyotes have moved on again. How do I know this? The abundance of squirrels at my bird feeder. It’s a big feeder, but the squirrels and starlings can empty it in less than a day. Which is why I’ve taken to leaving seeds out in a dish on the table on our deck, along with the peanuts for the jays. It gives the little birds a fighting chance.

Unfortunately, it looks like my sparrows and chickadees have been frightened off, but I have a pair of cardinals that visit at dusk and dawn. And one afternoon I was sitting on the desk reading and a little chipmunk climbed up on the table to check out the dish. I love chipmunks. So after that I started leaving peanuts on the deck for him when I put peanuts out for the jays.

In other news ... I have my desk.

It’s not exactly the desk I wanted, but it’s the desk I needed. Sometimes our dreams just aren’t practical and we have to let them go.

One of the reasons I want to move across the hall is for the view. My current office has a northern exposure and the other room has a southern one. I’ve often said I’m solar powered and the view from the southern exposure is more energizing than a northern one.

The dream desk is big. Too big for the room I want it for really. And there’s only one place I could put it where my back wouldn’t be to the window and at that I’d only have a partial view.

We drove up to Ajax on Wednesday night to pick up this desk and my first thought was that it wasn’t deep enough for my lap top. But the hubby was positive he could fix that, and he’s actually already done so. He took the very top off, which had some water damage to the finish, and cannibalized it to add to the depth. Now he just needs to fit a new top on it.

I don’t have as many little cubby holes as the dream desk had, but I have more drawers, which is even better. Not as many as it looks like in the picture, there’s actually only two down each side, but the ones on the bottom are deep enough to hold file folders and I’m hoping to talk my ever so handy hubby into making removable trays for the two upper ones.

It needs new drawer pulls, which means I get to go to Primitive Designs and indulge in some fancy ceramic ones. And the amazing part? It’s exactly the same height as the window sill. And the bookcase I have against the desk in my current office will fit exactly in front of the new one.

Now the search is on for a chair to go with it. ;-)

Mundane Monday

mundane ~ lacking interest or excitement; dull

The weather’s turned cool enough that last night I actually slept without the fan on in the bedroom, and I even had a light blanket on the bed. Be still my heart! It’s supposed to warm up slightly as the week goes on, but not to the extremes we’ve been having lately. We are officially entering my favourite time of year. :-)

On the renovation front .... the sink and the faucets for the tub were delivered early last week. The sink is larger than we expected, and heavy (what can you expect from a glass sink) but it’s beautiful. And still in its box so I can’t take a picture.

Not much else to report. Most of what the hubby’s been doing is scraping down walls in there in preparation for new drywall, and wiring for the tub, which you really can’t see. Yesterday the son-in-law helped him carry in the tub and put it in place, and he discovered that the outlet he’d wired in for the tub to plug into had to be moved. Knock on wood that the plumber can come in sometime this week to hook up the tub.

Oh! One thing I could mention. Before moving the tub in, the hubby filled it with enough water to cover the jets so he could test it for leaks and to make sure the jets worked before bringing it inside. Everything worked fine but I was not impressed with the amount of gunk floating around in the tub. He tried to shrug it off by saying the tub had been sitting for a while - yes, it has. In his father’s basement, and then in our driveway covered tightly by a tarp to keep the motor for the jets from getting damp. So where did all this gunk come from? From inside the jets, of course. You can bet I’ll be researching what kind of cleaning solutions I can use on it before I ever set foot in it. Gross!

I have to tell you. I live in a small town - maybe not quite so small as it used to be because subdivisions are springing up all over the place to accommodate all the Torontonians moving down this way, who are all about big houses with teeny yards. But really, a lot of the time there’s not much that goes on here.

To be perfectly honest, I’m kind of boring. So sometimes it’s hard to come up with something to talk about on Monday mornings. I don’t do a whole lot other than reading, writing, and babysitting. And nothing much ever happens in our quiet neighbourhood.

I’ve woken up the last few nights to the sound of coyotes catching their dinner. I kind of figured they were back because the squirrels have been making themselves scarce. Haven’t seen much in the way of blue jays lately either, but I think that’s just a coincidence. My neighbourhood gets blue jays, the daughter’s (a couple of blocks north) gets cardinals. Kind of weird how that works out.

Haven’t seen the frog from my pond lately - I hope he just moved on and wasn’t killed. Although the only creatures I think would eat him would be the raccoons, but they’re messy eaters and I haven’t noticed any little froggy parts scattered about. They have left me a half-eaten, very small, watermelon and various apples stolen from my neighbour’s tree, although the apples could just as easily been left by squirrels.

My two sisters came for an overnight visit, but you probably don’t really care about that. Although they’re more well travelled than I am (one just got back from Italy, one’s getting ready for a cruise) sometimes they can be as boring as me. At one point we were sitting on the deck enjoying the breeze, not saying much, just kind of yawning at each other and trying to keep from being the first one to nod off. LOL

Saturday was our last really hot day and I spent it doing laundry - sheets and towels. Yes, I spent the whole day doing that, with a short break between loads to babysit so the daughter and her hubby could go to the wedding of a friend in the afternoon.

When we painted the upstairs bathroom we got rid of the old, falling apart laundry hamper - and did I mention it was really ugly? It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but now we have no place to put towels waiting to be washed. Guess I’ll have to keep my eye out for a new one.

Last night the hubby and I did something we haven’t done in a while - we watched a really bad movie for me to review this week. How bad was it? You’ll have to come back Wednesday to find out. ;-)

And there you have it. Even a boring life can fill up a blog post.

Mediagenic Monday

mediagenic ~ able to present a good image in the media

Well, last week was certainly a week. I tell you what.

The hubby took the week off for the bathroom renovation, even going so far as scheduling the plumber to come in to do his thing. So the first day he started to take out dry wall in preparation for removing the old tub and discovered this:

Fortunately it was not the extremely toxic black mould that forces people to abandon their homes, but it did set the work back a bit. And while the strapping did need to be reinforced, it didn’t have to be replaced. Mostly what was accomplished last week was removing stuff: tub, toilet, sink, medicine cabinet (which was trickier than you’d think because the light fixture was attached to it) - and ripping out dry wall.

So last week was all about removing stuff from the bathroom and re-enforcing the floor and walls. Right now it’s pretty much just a nice empty room. A little on the small side perhaps, but there’s not much we can do about that without tearing out some walls completely.

We have the tiles for the walls stacked up in the music room, the faucet for the sink and the toilet stashed in the work room, the new (to us) tub is in a trailer in the driveway, and the sink and the faucet for the tub will hopefully (knock on wood) be here this week. I have a fistful of paint samples to pick a new colour for the walls - paint and flooring are still on the “to buy” list.

I guess that’s just the nature of renovations, they take three times as much time as expected, and cost twice as much money.

Last night I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark during an Indiana Jones marathon (the Star Trek marathon having ended). It was maybe not quite as thrilling as the first time I ever saw it, but it was still pretty awesome.

And this was before the days of CGI (computer generated images) so the special effects really were special. That was a real person holding onto the whip being dragged under a truck. All those snakes slithering around in the Well of Souls were real. And I remember reading something about the lengths they had to go to, figuring out the timing to get that truck Marion was supposed to be in to tip over.

If that movie was made today I think some of the magic would be lost because computers would have been used for so much of it. A shame really. Just because we have the technology doesn’t mean we should use it. Which brings me to the other big happening last week, I finally broke down and bought myself a tablet:

It’s a Samsung Galaxy Tab E - whatever that means. So far I have figured out how to put a password on the screen, and take it off again because when the screen goes dark after 10 seconds of inactivity it got real old real fast, having to turn it back on and put the stupid password in. Then I figured out how to make the screen stay on longer. I can check my email, even send one if I’m feeling adventurous. And I can play solitaire on it.

I freely admit to being somewhat intimidated by this little piece of technology. I seriously have to sit down and have a look at the manual - I’m sure there are all kinds of handy dandy things I could be doing with it, if I only knew how.

I remember a time when computers were my thing. I knew all kinds of useful stuff about the technology. But then I let it get ahead of me and now I’m practically a luddite. However, unlike in those early years, today’s technology is so simple even children can use it - maybe I just need to find a child to help me. ;-)

And once I’ve mastered the tablet, can a cell phone be far behind?

Moslings Monday

moslings ~ thin strips taken off when dressing skins

Hot enough for you out there? It’s so hot here I caught a couple of hobbits trying to throw a ring into my back yard. ;-)

Seriously though, it’s been insanely hot for the last few weeks, and really dry (in spite of the high humidity). There’s a fire ban in effect, which means no outdoor fires, and the water in Lake Ontario is down 11 inches from last year. If anyone in this area has a green lawn, you can be sure it’s been spray painted.

However, we have been adding water to our pond on a regular basis to keep this guy happy:

I had big plans for last week. I was going to get the transcripts done by Monday and then spend the rest of the week catching up on things I’ve let go this last month, including my writing. But if you know me at all, you should know that things seldom work out the way I would like them to.

I was pretty much on target with the transcripts, despite the break for the aquarium last Saturday, but then ... somehow we ended up hosting a lunch time barbeque for some of the hubby’s family on Monday. And everyone had so much fun they came back to have Chinese take-out for dinner.

So ... during my breaks from transcribing on Sunday I gave the house a thorough cleaning - at least the areas most likely to be seen by family. The dining room carpet was literally grey with cat hair, it had been that long since I’d taken the time to vacuum. I must say, it was pretty impressive, the amount I got accomplished in so short a time - both transcribing and cleaning. :-D

And while it would have been nice to just relax between lunch and dinner on Monday, I used the time to get all but the last two minutes of my last transcript done. And when I returned to my office after everyone was gone again to finish it, I discovered someone had shut off my work computer. I can only assume it was one of the visiting kids who thought they were turning it on (I had the monitor turned off but left the programs running in anticipation of returning to them later). *sigh*

However, all’s well that ends well. I didn’t lose too much of my work, although I was up rather late finishing up. We had a nice visit with family and the transcripts are finished. This batch at least, I’ll be getting another batch in September so you can expect the whining to start up again then.

As well as the whole house cleaning thing, one of the other things I let slide over the past few weeks was exercise. I stopped going to the gym, and then last week I didn’t even ride the bike - by doing so I had two extra hours in the morning for transcribing. One of my legs starting hurting ‘cause I’d been blowing off my exercise routine, now it’s hurting because I’ve started back up again. So this week I’ll be getting back into the saddle, so to speak.

And, because last week the daughter was on vacation and didn’t need me for babysitting, naturally I came down with a cold. It started out as a bit of a sore throat, accompanied by sniffles last weekend but I figured it was just because of where the fan in my office was positioned, pretty much blowing right in my face. But by Wednesday, it was a full blown cold.

So Wednesday I was miserable, and Thursday I was feeling all muzzy-headed from the cold medication and spent the day reading. Which means, I really didn’t get the things I’d planned on doing ... done.

But I read a good book, and I got to relax without feeling guilty. I might have wished for the weather to be a little cooler, but we can’t have everything and at least I was able to sit at the end of the house where the air conditioner was. :-D

Hopefully this week I’ll be able to get a start on that whole getting organized thing.

Microcephalic Monday

microcephalic ~ having a very small head

So . . . I was sitting in my recliner yesterday morning and just as I glanced towards the dining room where the cats were gathered at the deck door watching the ducks in the pool, I caught a flash of orange moving across our deck. WTF?

So I went over to have a closer look and saw a fox trot back to the pond to have a drink, and then under the fence into the next door neighbor's yard. He was too quick, and too far away, for a picture, but it was kind of nice to see him. We thought the foxes were gone from the neighborhood but apparently not.

Daphne had been sticking pretty close to her nest most of last week and I could see she'd been starting to line it with down. But the weather for most of the week wasn't that great and I figured if she had eggs she was sticking with them. However, Friday she was gone and the nest is still empty. Now that I've seen the fox, I'm kind of thinking she's abandoned it for good. Smart move, Daphne. There were too many people at the front of the house anyway.

Last week was a busy one for me, I spent a lot of time out of town, which means there wasn't a whole lot of writing/editing done, especially for the last half of the week. This week will be only slightly better because I have appointments on three days, but none of them will take me out of town.

The highlight of last week was a trip I took to Casino Rama. One of our local travel agencies has a bus that goes up once a month and it's something I've always wanted to try. I finally talked a friend into going with me and we had a blast. I even came home with more money than I started out with! Okay, so it was only about $18.00 more, but still . . .

It was a real bargain too. For the cost of $8.00 the bus takes you up and back, and you get a free lunch which was worth twice that. You get the entire day to play in the casino and then you're home in time for supper.

I can easily see where people can get addicted to it. There's nothing quite like the thrill of watching your winnings pile up. I wouldn't mind trying it again. They have day trips to the casino in Niagara in the summer, so at least when I run out of money I'll have something else to do for the day. LOL

Did I mention the bus arrived in Orillia (where Casino Rama is) in the midst of a snow storm? Not quite a blizzard, but bad enough that the road conditions closed down a major highway to the west of the casino due to an accident. Snow. *shakes head sadly*

My orchid doesn't seem to care about the temperature outside, just so long as I keep watering it. And make a concentrated effort not to over water it. But it has a third bud open now:

It was hard to get a good picture of it because the blooms were facing in different directions, but look how many buds I've still got! Any guesses as to how many might open? I'm thinking at least two more for sure . . . I don't think I've ever had more than two or three flowers on a bloom stalk before. I'm very excited!

While it was kind of rainy and miserable early last week, there was snow here on Friday as well. Where'd our spring go?? I refuse to dig out my winter coat again. It's supposed to start warming up a bit this week, not enough to have any doors or windows open, but some. In the meantime, I'll just wear a sweater under my coat. :-D