Two Trips To Scranton

          Another day, another week, and now another month has gone. We said goodbye to February this past week and we've set our sights on the hope of spring.

          In the meantime...

          Mike and I wanted to keep going on the ceiling we were putting up in the living room but we needed to have the recessed lighting. Monday morning we made a trip to Home Depot in Scranton. How about if we start this week off with some road pictures.

          Cows!  

            Lumber company.

          The interstate running across the valley. You see the tank truck? We hadn't noticed them on previous trips to Scranton, but on this day was saw a ton of them.

          "What are they hauling?" Mike wondered. Then we got close enough I could read what was written on the side of the truck. Methane Refrigerated Liquid.

          On this trip to Scranton, we discovered they have an Aldi's, a grocery store we like to shop in, and Five Guys, a fast food burger joint. "We haven't had Five Guys since we were in Florida years ago," Mike said with longing in his voice. "The next time we have to come down here let's eat there." And I said we could.

          Mike and I are working hard on the ceiling. There's a lot of activity in the house as we cut the tongue and groove knotty pine on the patio and carry it into the house. Up on the ladders we go, putting another row up, taking measurements, down the ladders and out to the patio for more wood. And noise? We're making lots of noise in the process too. There's the sound of ladders being moved, thumping as Mike seats the tongue and groove with the palm of his hand on his end, pounding as I use a hammer and block of wood on my end, and the pop of the air nailer as we secure the knotty pine to the rafters. With everything that's going on the girls are upset. Itsy more so than Ginger. Ginger just lays out in the kitchen and watches. Itsy's been a nervous wreck and can't find any place to settle. In an effort to make her feel safe, I've taken to confining her under my desk with a blanket to lay on and a child gate to keep her there. She doesn't fuss too much unless she thinks we're taking too long of a break then she whines to be let out.

          One day, as Mike and I stood discussing an issue, Ginger came in and started jumping against my leg. That's what she does when she wants me to pick her up, which isn't unusual. But up until this point she hadn't been bothering me while we were working. After a few jumps on my leg I looked down at her. "Stop," I told her. She sat back on her haunches and looked up at me. I turned my attention back to Mike and she started jumping against my leg again. "Stop it," I scolded a little sterner and this time she went and hid behind me. I looked at her and immediately felt sorry. What's going on with her, I wondered. "You want to go outside?" I asked thinking that was the problem but she didn't move. I headed for the kitchen door calling her as I went. "Ginger! Come on. Let's go outside." I glanced back and saw she was following me. I got to the door, put my hand on the knob in fact, and saw that Ginger had stopped halfway there, her ears at full attention, concern all over her little face. "What's the matter?" I asked then movement on the carpet catches my eye. A wasp. I've been finding wasps all winter long. Where ever they are, however they get inside, every couple of three days I have to toss one or two outside. And this one was close to where Ginger lays to watch us work. I reached my hand down and let him climb aboard —

          "You'll be sorry if he stings you!" you say.

          I know, right! I don't do it very often because wasps do have a bad temper, but I didn't want to take the time to get something to pick him up with. And besides that, the wasps don't seem to have much energy. They are sluggish and don't fly very far. I'm guessing they are coming from the ceiling someplace because they're either at the kitchen window, drowned in my sink if I left a dish there, or fall on the floor.

          Once the wasp was on my hand I tossed him out the door and that satisfied Ginger. I went back to the problem Mike and I were having. It seems that when we picked up the recessed lighting, we neglected to check and make sure the clips to hold them in place were there. They weren't. Of the three lights we bought, we only had enough clips to use one of them.

          "Would Ace sell the clips?" I asked of our local hardware store.

          "No. They don't sell them that way. You have to buy the whole light and Ace wouldn't have them anyway. We can't go much further until we take these back and get different lights," Mike concluded.

          Once our workday was done, Mike hit the recliner and I head to the kitchen for coffee.

          "Peg!" he yells.

          "What?" I yell back.

          "Look at this!"

          I went back to the living room and see Mike's adorned with a lapful of critters.

          "It's like they just wait for me to sit down," he says but he doesn't really seem to mind.

          We planned a second trip to Scranton to return the clip-deficient lights and get new ones.

          "Did you ever eat at Five Guys?" Mike asked the Kipps the next day on their morning walk.

          "I don't think so," Rosie answered.

          "The hamburger is fresh, never frozen, and if you get fries, just get one order. That's enough to feed two people."

          "And they have a veggie burger," I chimed in. "But it's not a burger at all. It's a bunch of sautéed veggies with a slice of cheese to hold them together."

          "Scranton has Lowe's, Aldi's, Wal Mart, Home Depot, Uno's Pizza, and Five Guys!" Mike ticked off the business' we visit most often. "We don't ever have to go back to Vestal or Sayre again and it's not that bad of a drive either."

          I laughed. "Now you know we've lived in Pennsylvania too long when a 50-mile trip 'isn't that bad of a drive.'"

          Mike and I put up as much ceiling as we could. "Let's just go to Scranton and take those lights back," I said.

          "Can we have lunch at Five Guys?" he asked.

          "Sure," I readily agreed. We got around and made a second trip to Scranton in one week. I didn't take very many pictures this trip and not much worth showing. This is the same barn, but I bet you can tell, which picture do you like better?

          On the way home we stopped at Laceyville Lumber for a long 2x4. We didn't want to drive the whole way from Scranton with it sticking out the back of the Jeep. Here's a look from inside the lumber barn as I waited for Mike and the yard guy to load our order.

          I don't mind the long car rides. We seldom turn the radio on and after being together for 22 years, Mike and I don't talk all that much.

          "Peg, that sounds sad," you say.

          I know, right! But it isn't for any other reason than we're comfortable with the quiet. I use the time to listen to my favorite preachers on my MP3 player. I'll load a bunch of daily half-hour podcasts onto my Zen, tuck it into my bra, an earbud snaking out, looping over my ear, and I'll listen to Greg Laurie, Franklin Graham, Chip Ingram or any of the others I like unless Mike's talking to me. Then I'll listen to him. Sometimes I'll have to say, "What?" because I didn't get my ear switched over in time. LOL. I've gotten very good at listening out of whichever ear I want to.   

          This past week, when I hooked my Zen up to my computer to load new sermons onto it, my 'puter wouldn't recognize it. My Zen had stalled or frozen, I don't know, but it wouldn't work. I spent the next few hours trying to fix it and Google is a great help for stuff like that. I did a reset and it didn't work. I reset it at least a dozen more times and it still wasn't working. I'm nothing if not tenacious. I read forum after forum looking for other solutions and found a hard reset, but I didn't do it. I tried a few other things people suggested first but nothing worked.

          My Zen is probably about 15 years old and the screen is so dim it has to be really dark for me to read it. Even then there are issues. I sweated on it once when it was tucked in my bra and now half the pixels don't work either. Between that and my Cadillac eyes, reading the screen is a challenge. Eventually I decided to do a hard reset. I went into the darkest room I could find and pulled up the screen. There were four options on the screen but I couldn't read any of them. I picked one and another screen pops up. I know what this one is, I thought. It was asking for confirmation to erase all the data. I said yes and no one was more surprised than I was when it formatted. I was pleased as I took it back to my computer and plugged it in. I navigated to a podcast and tried to load it. It wouldn't work. I went back to the internet. Exactly what did I do, I wondered and pulled up a manual for the Zen.

          Choose Clean Up from the menu, it says. Don't choose Reload Firmware unless you have a newer version to load, it says.

          Sigh. I think I deleted the firmware. Eventually I found the program and reloaded my Zen and now it works great again, but in the two days I was fooling with it, I found out something. I found out my Smartphone will play podcasts too! I can load my MP3 files onto my phone and don't have to carry a separate device. Now I've fixed it but I'll probably never use it again.

          The next couple of days were busy. We spent Wednesday working on the ceiling and finished the living room. Even though we figured how much lumber we would need, Mike added a few extra boards.

          "Should we keep going?" he asked.

          "Sure!" It looks so nice that I wanted to go the whole way and finish not only the dining room but the kitchen too! I didn't know where the money was going to come from but I decided that when we ran out of wood, I'd express my desire to Mike and let him worry about that.

          We took a break on Thursday. I'd invited the Kipps up for Frito Pie, homemade bread, Turtle Bars for dessert, and a few rounds of Rack-O.

          "What's Frito Pie?" Rosie asked.

          "You put Fritos in your bowl, then chili, cheese, onions, and sour cream on top if you want it."

          "It sounds good. I've never had it before but I like Fritos," Rosie said.

          We had a good afternoon with good neighbors, good food, and good conversation.  

         "The Red-winged Blackbirds have returned," Rosie commented. "That means spring is coming."

          "I saw them at my feeder yesterday too!" I exclaimed. "Their wings aren't red though."

          "Ours are," Lamar said.

          I wonder if it's a winter thing, you know like finches aren't as yellow in the winter as they are in the summer.

          "Maybe they're females," you say.

          I know, right! That's what I wondered too. I Googled it and I can't find anything in my quick search that suggests they lose their red in the winter, but this I know. They're not females. The adult female looks more like a sparrow than a Red-winged Blackbird.

          The males return ahead of the females and are often back before winter loses its grip.

          Speaking of winter...

          Oh my gosh!

          As early as Wednesday they were forecasting a winter storm for our area. We're sorta on the cusp and they didn't know if we'd get three inches or twelve!

          Friday, in the early morning hours, the rain we'd been having switched to snow.

          Mike and I continued to work on the ceiling and I'll tell you what! It was ch-ch-ch-chilly out there! I had to sweep the snow off the boards before Mike could measure and cut them. We had enough extra to finish the dining room.

          Tongue and groove knotty pine is two-sided. One side is plain and the other side has a groove down the middle. You can really put it up whichever way you want to but it's a good idea to keep it all the same. In all of the ceiling that we did, we got one board up backwards. Can you see it?

          Mike spotted as soon as we were putting up the next row. "Is it going to bother you?" I asked. "If it is, let's tear it down now and put it up right." We'd have to take two rows down but that's better than listening to Mike say, "I wish we would've fixed it," for the next 20 years.

          Look just to the left of the heating vent and you'll see two knots that look like eyes... it's the board right between them.

          I look at it and I just chuckle. "It's character!" I tell Mike and that's what I call all of our boo-boos. "And if you don't point it out to anyone they'll never see it." I laughed again. "We can tell everybody that we meant to do it that way!"

          "Wanna turn another one?" Mike asked.

          I don't think he really meant it though. "No. Let's not."

          After the snow stopped, I went out to take pictures for you.

            I took Ginger with me and I took her without a leash. I didn't think she'd go very far in this snow and I thought I'd end up carrying her. To my surprise, she went the whole way around the pond with me.

          The pond is full!

          Once on the other side she headed for the house. 

            I called Mike to let her in so I could continue my walk, but his phone went right to voicemail.

          Oh well, I thought. The walk won't hurt me none. I walked back up to the house to let her in and because I did I got a couple of pictures I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

          Our turtle. The snow blew in under the awning and coated him.

          A wasp nest, the bottom gone.

          By the time I get to the upper barn, I wonder, What can I take pictures of that they haven't seen already?

          Walking down beside the barn, I glance up in the field and see a stack sticking up out of the snow. This thing's probably 20 feet tall.

          I don't know what it is or was. It was here when we moved in. The neighbors in the hunting cabin above our place tell us that this sits on their property so the area is overgrown. There use to be a driveway up to this thing, and there's other junk up there as well, like this old truck frame, but we've let the drive become overgrown. Until we have the place surveyed, we don't fight about who owns what and if they let the previous owners store junk on their property, then I guess it's their junk now.

          "Peg, did you check out the Bittersweet?" you ask.

          Why, yes. Yes, I did. There isn't much left.

          Just because Ginger went home doesn't mean I didn't have any company on my walkabout. 

          Rascal came with me. Isn't he handsome? "Are you my protector today?" I asked him. Cats can be fierce.

          Smudge came along too.

          At the bottom of the hill I turned and snapped a picture. It won't be long now and I'll be able to hang my clothes out in the spring breezes and sunshine.

          The concrete leaf that sits in my flowerbed. I keep water in it for the critters in the summertime.

          I see there's a little water in it now.

          I like both shots.

          "How much snow did you get?" you ask.

          I don't know. The wind was so ferocious that I've got drifts a foot deep in some spots and I've got bare patches in others. I asked the neighbors.

          "A couple of inches anyway," Jon Robinson said.

          "We had four inches when I went out to shovel," Lamar Kipp told me. "And it was still snowing. I guess we got about five inches."

          I know they got seven in Scranton.

          On Saturday good news arrived in our mailbox. Good news in the form of a royalty check from the gas company. "I'll put this in our savings," Mike said.

          I was crestfallen. "Or.... we could finish the ceiling..." I suggested.

          Mike thought about it for a moment. "Or we could finish the ceiling," he agreed.

          Yay!

         

          Let's call this one done!