A Quiet Week

It’s been a quiet week in the Luby household this past week. Despite that, I manage to stay busy. I made a bunch of rings, which was a fun way to spend a few hours.

Friday night, Saturday morning and early afternoon, I worked on a bracelet. I had a couple of problems with my wire weaving. When I wove the center of the bracelet to the base wires, I got almost the whole way to the other side — almost, I say — before I realized my wire was too short.
Sigh.
I undid it, got a new wire — ten inches longer this time — and halfway through, I broke it.
Sigh.
I cut a third wire and in almost the same place, I broke the delicate little wire — again.
Sigh.
By the fourth time, I was almost a pro. I took my time, was more careful, but still fearful that at anytime I would apply too much tension and break my wire again.
But I didn’t. I attached the top two base wires and the bottom two with no more mishaps. I finished off the ends and attached a heart and this is it.
Do you like it?

I also spent some of my time this week restringing three rosary’s for my beautiful mother. She wanted square beads in place of the round ones which were too similar to the coffee tree seeds.

Feisty, one of our three nine-month old kittens, is one of the two female kittens we had fixed last month.

        Along with the spay, they ‘tipped’ her ear. When she followed me to the mailbox the other day, I thought her ear looked infected.

Cleo, Feisty’s seven-month old cousin, was the other female we had fixed and she has a bulge on her belly close to the incision site. I have no idea what that is all about, but I guess I’ll keep an eye on it.
We took a mini road trip.
“What’s a mini road trip?” you ask.
It’s where you just drive around the roads in your area for a little while, but it let me get a bunch of pictures for you.
An old honey wagon sitting by himself.

A toilet in the yard. I know people who don’t like — hate maybe?— toilets sitting in yards, even if they have been repurposed as flower pots. Do they have the same feelings for bathtubs? I wonder.
When I saw the toilet I said to Mike, “Oh. I have to take a picture for all the toilet-in-the-yard haters.”
Mike, a good and dutiful husband, slowed so I could get the shot.

“Wanna stop at the Apple Wagon?” Mike asked. The Apple Wagon is a local flea market.
“Sure! I’ll look around. I want an anvil for my workshop.”
“You have an anvil,” Mike observed.
And he’s right, I do have an anvil. A mini one. “Yeah, but I want a full size one.”
“What do you want an anvil for?” I hear you ask.
I love the look of pounded copper. Besides, I just think it would be cool.
        We stopped and browsed but didn't buy anything.

One of these days we’ll drive past this big old building and see that it’s collapsed. I wonder what it used to be.

On the edge of Meshoppen, a small town about fifteen miles from us, is a huge farm implement company. You can see it from the main road but we’ve never driven past it before. On this day, we did.

I’d love to have a couple of these.

We had no idea how extensive this place was. The farther down the road you go, the older the equipment got. This is my current desktop photo.

How would you like to have these guys for neighbors?

An old barn.

An elf house. We were almost past it before I saw it.

Not much left of this barn.

A couple of three more barns.

I got the side mirror of the Jeep in this shot. I could probably edit it out if I wanted to. 

That cat!
That darn cat!
Yeah, you guessed it—Smudge!
He’s sucking on Mike’s finger. This is not new for Smudge, he’s been doing it for months. I’ve caught him sucking on blankets and the tail of the stuffed duck that lives on the bed, at least when I remember to put it back on the bed in the mornings, that is. But lately it’s Mike’s finger he wants to suck on and he actually gets mad if Mike makes him stop.

Even though Smudge and Cleopatra were abandoned by their mom when they were about a month old, I bottle fed both of them for a couple of more weeks, at least until they started doing more biting than sucking. Do you think this is a hangover from that?
Since Cleo, doesn’t live in the house with us, like Smudge does, I don’t know if she has the same issue. But this I know, Smudge purrs, Cleo does not.
“I swear I heard her purring,” Mike told me yesterday.
“I don’t think you did. It was probably one of the other cats purring.”
“She was the only one around!”
“You’re not going to convince me that you heard her purring until I hear her purr for myself,” I admonished.
“Animals like me,” Mike countered.
“They do,” I conceded, “but I’ve handled her way more than you and she’s never purred for me.”
We got eight inches of snow Thursday, or at least that’s what they said. I didn’t measure it myself.

I took Ginger out to see if I could capture any snow pictures for you. This is what eight inches of snow looks like when you have six-inch legs.

Smudge waited in a tire track.

When he saw us coming back, he hunkered down. 

When we were close enough, he ambushed Ginger.

Ginger ran.

Although Ginger will sometimes play with Smudge, she was not happy about this sneak attack. The next time I took her out, Smudge was still outside. Ginger kept an eye on him and since she didn’t want to be caught in a vulnerable position, she couldn’t relax enough to pee.
I haven’t talked about Molly in a long time, how about an update?
       This is Molly enjoying a patch of sunshine on the bed.

         She's getting really thin. I suspect she has hyperthyroidism because weight loss is a symptom and it’s quite common in older cats. Molly is thirteen this year and we’ve had her since she was about seven months old.
And with that, let’s call this one done.

<<<<<>>>>>