Oh No! Not Another Clock!

          "Way to keep us in suspense," Jenn Kipp commented on last week's blog.

          Yeah. Last week I left you hanging. But I had to because the story hadn't yet reached its conclusion. And I'm afraid it'll all be a bit anticlimactic now.

          But here goes.

          Saturday evening, I'm working on my computer and something falls into the plant beside my desk. I thought a mouse might have fallen off a truss since the ceilings aren't up yet.

          "Why would you think that, Peg?" you wonder.

          Well, I'm so glad you asked.

          When we were having the insulation sprayed on, the workmen found all kinds of Kentucky Coffee tree seeds up there on the topside of the shop lights and hidden away in other corners, stashed where the mice had carried them, I'm sure. And that's how I know they go up there.

          So something landed in the plant beside my desk. Gingerly I peek around, a bat comes swooping out, heads for the kitchen door, banks around to the right, and went into the living room.

          "Mike! We've got a bat in here!"

          I didn't have a clue what to do. How do you catch a bat? A fishing net would have been handy right about then but I don't have one of those. The bat flew around for a bit, getting the dogs and cats all excited, then he must have gone back up in the rafters somewhere.

          In bed that night, a couple of hours later, he starts flying back and forth between the closet and the bedroom. I tried to toss a blanket over him but he evaded my every attempt. A couple of times he landed on the wall but I didn't have anything to climb on to get to him.

          "Shoot him!" Mike yells.

          Right. I can see my walls and roof full of holes now.

          After a while he was gone again; back up into the rafters I assume. And Mike slept with one eye open.

          Sunday I spent a little time online to see if there were any helpful hints. Close off all the doors to the adjoining rooms, it said. Use a broom to guide it to an open window or door, it said. Well, closing doors to adjoining rooms would be an issue since we don't have any of the interior doors installed yet, but I had a broom!

          Mike talked to our friend Margaret in Missouri and was telling her about the bat.           "All the bats we ever tested in the lab had rabies," Margaret told Mike and he was a little freaked out when he told me.

          "Well that makes sense to me," I replied. "She worked in the health department. The bats they sent her to test were suspected of having rabies in the first place." I got back up online and searched for info on bats and rabies. Less than 1/2 of 1 percent of bats have rabies, it said. You're more likely to find it in other animals like foxes and raccoons, it said. That made Mike feel a little better.

          That night, around a quarter to seven, he again comes swooping through the house. I ducked my way to the living room, avoiding his swoops, opened our double front doors, grabbed my broom, and tried to keep him at that end of the house. In all the confusion of cats chasing, dogs barking and running back and forth, a maniac wild woman swinging a broom — but not at the bat! Just trying to keep him corralled — Mike yelling, "Shoot him! Shoot him!" — we lost track of the bat.

          "Where did he go?" I asked Mike.

          "I don't know. I don't see him anymore."

          "Did he go out?"

          "I didn't see him go out."

          We waited a few seconds before I closed the doors, shutting out the cold night air.

          A few hours later, lying in bed, I fully expected him to appear.

          He didn't.

          Monday morning the Kipps stop for a morning visit on their way home from their walk.

          "We have a bat in the house," we told them. I don't remember if it was Mike or me who brought it up.

          "It's usually the young bats that get in your house," Lamar told us, "they're out exploring. We had a bat in our house; in fact we had over 600 of them living in our attic."

          "Really!" I exclaimed. "What'd you do?"

          "Called the exterminator. He got up there with a burlap sack and captured as many as he could."

          "What did he do with them?" I asked.

          "Took them out to the landfill. There is so much food for them out there that they'll never come back."

          Monday night is my exercise class so I was gone before he would have come out for the night. "Did you see the bat tonight?" I asked Mike when I got home. "Did he come out?"

          "Nope," was Mike's one word reply. He was watching TV.

          So we don't know if he got out when I had the doors open or if he got out the way he came in, or (gasp!) he died. I know he was inside here for at least two days. "How long can they go without food and water?" I asked Mike.

          Mike didn't know and I didn't really expect him to know, it was more like I was wondering out loud.

          "There's a whole bowl of water sitting on the floor," Mike pointed out.

          Yeah. There is. I didn't think about the dogs water bowl.

          Anyway, he's gone.

          Speaking of dogs...

          Our little Yorkies, Itsy and Ginger, make a mess for me to pick up every time they eat. And Ginger is way more guilty of this than Itsy is. Ginger will get a mouthful of dog food and walk away from the food dish. She'll drop them all except for one piece that she'll eat. Then she'll sniff the pieces on the floor. Sometimes she'll pick up one or two more and eat them, sometimes she won't, and the extra pieces lay there while she goes back for another mouthful.

          Sometimes she doesn't go far from the food dish

 and other times she does. Either way I always have dog food to pick up and toss back in the bowl.

          Some friends of ours in Missouri have a Yorkie and Sissy does the same thing. I don't know if this is strictly a Yorkie thing or if other dogs do it too.

          I have some road pictures from a week ago that I didn't have room for last time.

          Are they worth showing? I don't know.

          We decided to switch our routine up a little. Since we didn't need to go to Lowe's we decided to go to Tunkhannock and do our shopping at the WalMart over there. And these are pictures from that trip.   

          This week we finished our awning off the kitchen, at least as much as we're going to do this year.

          Smudge lay sleeping on his blanket and Mike and I worked around him.

 Even the sound of the circular saw cutting the angle on the ends of the joists didn't bother Smudge and the sawdust drifted down onto his beautiful coat like snow.     

   

          Once he woke from his nap, and shook himself, he supervised as Mike slid the purlins onto the joists.

          We used reclaimed steel roofing sheets to keep the expense down and I don't care what anyone says, I love it.

          "Doesn't it block your view of the sunrises?" you ask.

          Yes. Yes it does. But I can still see enough to know that if I want to see more, I can walk out under the awning and take my pictures. It's more important to have the shelter over the door and a place protected from the elements for our little girls.

          And Smudge is living outside my kitchen door now too.

          Speaking of Smudge...

          He got his very first fan letter! It made me laugh and Smudge was so proud of it that he asked me to share it with all of you.

Dearest Smudge,

          I'm one of your biggest fans, you know. I've kept every picture of you I've seen on your Mama's blogs and have them cycle through my slide show every day. You make me laugh.

          However, I understand why your Mama doesn't want you in the house. She's put up with you hanging over her monitor, peeking from wrapping paper sacks and lampshades

          However, knocking the puppies' bowls off the counter is a little much. You wouldn't like it if they did that to your food, you know. You are not ever, ever supposed to get up on kitchen cabinets (unless no one's there to see you, of course. That's the law of the feline, after all.)

          I'm so sorry to hear you've been banished from the heat and light. Do you think you've been punished enough? Do you pinkie-swear not to knock food bowls off of a table or cabinet?

          Tell your mama hello for me. Tell her my cousin who lived in Des Moines is now living with me. We're still arranging things, getting rid of stuff. My cousin (Donna) was a little apprehensive about my sending you a fan letter. She said she would watch any and all packages that arrive from Pennsylvania in the next few weeks, in case you got a free trip to the Ozarks. You see, I don't have any more black and white cats. Just a tabby. And no dogs. She has 2 dachsies. She's afraid you'll chase her puppies around the house, knocking things off of any surface.

          I know that your Papa loves you too much to send you away from home. I just hope you've learned your lesson and will behave from now on. hahahhahahah. Uh. Sorry. Okay, just do your best. I'm counting on you.

          Hugs and kitty kisses from Annie in the Ozarks.

          This past week I had an interesting conversation with my mother and I want to tell you about it.

          "Peggy, I've lost the telephone handset that usually sits here on my bedside table," Momma told me.

          "You did! How did you do that?" I asked.

          "Somehow I've knocked it off the back of the table and it slid down between the table and the wall."

          "Oh, so technically it's not lost, you just can't get to it."

          "That's right. But I don't understand how the stand came away from the wall. It's supposed to be right up against the wall so I don't lose stuff behind it and now it's away from the wall." Momma was befuddled. 

          "It's those little gremlins," I told her. "They don't want us talking!"

          Momma laughed at my little joke, but agreed. "It must be."

          "But if your handset is down behind the stand, what are you talking to me on?" I was a might confused myself.

          "We've got more than one and Patti brought me another one," Momma said.

          I have such a great sister in Patti. She's takes such good care of our mother and all of us 'kids' owe her a debt of gratitude.

          But I'm sidetracked.

          "Guess what I lost?" I asked Momma, and went on before she could reply. "You'll never believe it."

          "What?"

          "The cat food dish. I can't find it anywhere!"

          "Well, now," a puzzle always perks my mother up, "tell me how you came to lose it."

          "I don't know how, but I know it's gone."

          The first bay of my counter is devoted to cat and dog food storage and it's where I feed the cats. If I left the food on the floor, the dogs would eat it, so I keep it on a stool in the first bay. Every night, after supper, I'll set the cat food dish off the stool, pull the stool out, sit on it, and cut up the dog treats. The sausage treats they like are too hard for me to break apart with my fingers, the stool makes an excellent cutting board, and is a good height to give both the cats and dogs their evening treats from. After the treats are gobbled down, I put the stool back inside the bay, fill the cat food dish — if it needs it, and don't think about it again until the next night.

          Well the sausage treats ran out so I didn't need the stool — hadn't been using the stool for several days until one day Macchiato was sitting on the end of it, looking up at me, and he says, "Meow." Just like that.

          "Do you need some food, buddy," I asked and was totally convicted of neglect. I hadn't been paying attention to the food level in his bowl since I wasn't using the stool. I reached for the bowl and that's the first I'd realized it was missing. Poor cat! How long has the bowl been gone? I didn't know. And where was it? I didn't know that either. I looked around inside the cabinet thinking I hadn't put it back from the last time I'd used the stool, but it wasn't there. I checked a few other places but failing to find it, I got a bowl out of the plastics drawer and filled it with cat food for him.

          "Did you look in the cabinet?" Momma asked.

          "Yep."

          "How about under it? Did you look there?"

          "I did!" I exclaimed. "I stuck my hand in and felt all around, but it's not there either." I was totally surprised by her question because I don't know how she knew that someone, somewhere, sometime, for some reason, had cut a hole in the bottom of the cabinet and the stool straddled it.

          "Is it in the cat food bag?" she asked.

          Another good question. "Nope. I checked there too." I'd just changed cat food bags, pouring the last of the old bag on top of the new bag, so it was a possibility. But I sifted through the top few inches and determined I hadn't buried it.

          "I even checked in the trash can sitting beside the cat food bag, thinking I'd set it on the edge, and maybe knocked it in, but it's not there either," I told her.

          "And the cats or dogs couldn't have carried it off someplace?"

          "No. It's a heavy, red ceramic dish." All out of ideas, Momma was quiet for a moment. "I just know that when I find it I'm going to laugh at myself," I told her.

          I hadn't said anything to Mike about losing the cat food dish, but after I talked to Momma, I asked him, "Mike, do you know where the cat food dish is?"

          "How would I know that?"

          "I don't know! But I can't find it! I thought there might be an off chance that you moved it or something!"

          "Did you put it out for Smudge?" he asked.

          "No. I gave him another dish."

          "Did you take it out to the cat room?"

          "No. Why would I do that?"

          "I don't know," he said, but he came up with a reason. "Maybe you took something out to the cat room in it," he surmised.

          "I wouldn't do that," I was incredulous. Nonetheless, the seed was planted and I checked the cat room. It wasn't there. Every place I looked, I looked at least three or four times!

          And I quit looking.

          Thursday we made a shopping trip to Sayre. Our first stop was Grace Buffet for a Chinese lunch then we shopped all our usual stores, Lowe's, Aldi's, and Wal-Mart. Here's a few road pictures for you.

          We don't understand the reason for the steel frame around this building then they just let the building fall down anyway.

          Weird looking clouds, almost like a zipper, don't you think?

          Back at home, I'm putting groceries away and guess what I found!

          "The cat food dish?" you guess.

          And you would be right.

          There it is! Sitting on the canned food shelf! Maybe when I opened the new bag is when I'd set the food dish on the shelf, and when I was looking for it, I was looking for a red dish.

          Anyway, mystery solved.

          Michael put up a new shelf for me. This time I decided to display a set of dishes from Momma's old church, St. Basils in Dushore.

          I spent my free time this past week, working on stained glass, Christmas themed suncatchers, or I guess they can be tree ornaments. I love working with glass.

          My friend Joanie, good friend that she is, saw a clock on Facebook Rummage Sale and called it to my attention.

          "Nooooo, Peg! Not another clock!" you say.

          I know, right!

          I held out for two full days before I broke down and showed it to Mike.

          "Where's it at?" Mike asked.

          "It says Wyalusing."

          "Can you get more info on it?"

          "I can try." Facebook Rummage Sale is a closed group, which means you have to ask to join. I sent a request and waited.

          "She answer you yet?" Mike asked from the recliner where he was watching TV.

          "Not yet."

          Twenty minutes later....

          "She answer you yet?" came the question from the recliner.     

          "No!" I shouted back.

          Fifteen minutes later.....

          "She answer you yet?"

          Mike can be like a dog worrying a bone and I was getting frustrated with him. "MICHAEL! You have to be patient and just wait! She may be at work and can't answer."        After many more shouts of, "She answer you yet?" from the living room, and a few hours, I was accepted in the group, news which I promptly relayed to Mike.

          Now his song changed to, "D'ya find the clock yet?" And it was the dog worrying the bone all over again.

          "Why don't you come and look? Then I can get up and make my popcorn." I have a hellacious air-popped popcorn habit. Mike left the TV and scrolled through Facebook until he found it. We talked to the gal and Saturday found us going out through Terrytown on the way to look at a clock that we didn't really need. Here are the pictures from that ride.

         

          An old wagon almost swallowed up by the weeds.

          Look at the bittersweet behind this old wrecker!

          The lady told us an awful story about being shot eleven years ago, the bullet shattered her pelvis, and now, all these years later, she needs an operation to replace her pelvis. We bought the clock, dust and all, and brought it home. Mike is in charge of cleaning it up. He doesn't think I take enough care when I clean wood products.

          "That's what they make Murphy's Oil Soap for!" I say, but he would just as soon use Pledge and a soft cloth, so he does it.

          Thanks Joanie.

          Saturday night we decided to do something we haven't done in a very, very long time.

          "What's that?" you say.

          We decided to go out for a prime rib dinner. We called for 4:30 reservations. We eat early so I can exercise at 6:30 and even though I don't have a class on Saturday night, I often times workout at home, so we stick to a regular eating schedule.

          Not sure how long it would take us to get there, we left a little bit too early, but that was okay by me. It let me get a few road pictures before it got too dark.

          I love the hubcap flowers!

          When we arrived at the restaurant we were the only ones there and no one else had come in by the time we left. The waitress said it would get busy by 5:30.

          The prime rib was so big I brought more than half of mine home and Mike brought about half of his home too.

          Five-thirty Sunday morning I was awakened with an emergency need to run to the bathroom. Two more times before church I was sent flying to the bathroom with roiling insides and decided I'd better stay home from church, least I embarrass myself. I'm guessing, since they serve prime rib on Friday night too, that my piece was a leftover from the night before and maybe sat out too long. My prime rib wasn't so prime after all and the cats got the rest of it.

          Let's call this one done!