No Letter Blog

          I’m not going to write a letter blog this week.

          Are you done laughing?

          Not writing this week was a thought that crossed my mind as I headed for my computer.

          “Why wouldn’t you write?” you ask.

          I’ve got a book I’m reading and it’s due back to the library in ten days. In the four days I’ve had it I’ve only read 98 of 470 pages. My eyes are just too tired at the end of the day to read for very long. I thought instead of spending the day visiting with you, I’d just curl up in the easy chair with a blankie and cup o’joe and spend it immersed in the prose of Kate Clayborn. Love Lettering may not be everyone’s cup of sunshine but I’m really enjoying her style and would like to spend more than five minutes reading. Everything I read influences the way I write to some degree and I just hope some of Kate’s style leaks into me!

          “Miss Rosie, what would you say if I said I’m not doing a letter this week?” I asked on our morning chat. I thought she’d say something like, yeah, right, with a little laugh, but she didn’t.

          “Well,” she paused, “I’m not going to say I won’t be disappointed but I’d say you deserve to take a week off.”

          She’s much too nice.

          It’s really hard for me to skip a week, especially for such a frivolous and self-indulgent reason. Maybe I’ll take one of my craft days and do nothing but read.

>>>*<<<

          Some updates…

          This item came up for sale on Facebook Marketplace. I’ve never ever heard of such a thing as pants stretchers, then shortly after writing about them this comes up and I had to laugh. It’s so strange how this stuff happens sometimes. 

>>>*<<<

          Trapper John and I have been staying in touch. This week, when I was making face masks for that beautiful Minnesota sister of mine, I thought of John when I pulled a paw print fabric from my stash. I should make it for John, I thought. And I’ve learned to pay attention to the little niggles I get.

          “I made you a face mask but you don’t have to take it if you don’t like it,” I told him and sent a picture.

          “I like it!” he sends back.

          Our conversation moved on to his latest exploits in trapping. “I found otter sign on Spring Hill and that area is open for otter trapping.”

          I didn’t realize you could trap River Otter. “Can you trap otters? I thought the website said River Otter were protected.”

“Yeah, I can. I have an otter tag for the other side of the river. That's where I got the last beaver. There’s all kinds of otter sign. I can only have a total of five traps in that management area so I made sure I had out only five. Otters are great wanderers; it may take it two or more weeks for it to come back. I'm hoping that it's still in the area.”

          “Do you think I could have the skull?” I asked. I have visions of painting my skulls all fancy-schmancy like the Texans do with cattle skulls.

          “Yeah, I can do that, provided the game commission doesn't want it. They take some for research purposes.”

          The very next day I got a message from John. “I got an otter!”

“Wow! That's awesome! I'm sorry I’m not home so you could show it to me!” Mike and I were off to see our tax gal. “But we’ll be home this afternoon.”

Guess who shows up that afternoon? Trapper John!

“I had to go out for gas anyway, so I thought I’d bring it to show you.”

I was pleased. “It’s so soft,” I said as I stroked its fur. “So, can I have the skull?”

“I wish I could. The Game Commission is confiscating all the carcasses this year. There’ve only been five or six otter seasons in Pennsylvania ever.”

I got my bathroom scales and we weighed his otter. Fifteen point six pounds!

“I’m going to have it tanned unless the taxidermist tells me mounting it would be cheaper, then I’ll have it mounted.” 

>>>*<<<

We had freezing rain Tuesday morning and I went out and took pictures for you.

          I didn’t go anywhere, just walked around our little piece of heaven. It was tough walking as my boots crunched through the top layer of snow and sank two-thirds of the way up my boot, and it was a workout too, let me tell ya! I was envious of Trapper John and his snowshoes!

          After I’d gone a little way I’d have to stop and catch my breath. I took the opportunity to photograph whatever was nearby. 

          Casting my gaze about for something other than ice-covered branches to make pictures of, I spot a thorny whip. I head over and just as I got there my foot found a hole and I ended up sitting on my rear. 

         I’ll just take pictures from here then! 

My butt was getting cold so I stood and pulled my foot out of the whistle pig hole. I’m gonna go see what the Bittersweet looks like, I thought and headed that way.     

          Crossing a natural swale, I was surprised when my foot broke through the crusty top layer and found a river running underneath it. It tried to suck me down when I lifted my foot. Now would not be a good time to fall, and I could see myself sprawled out in the snow with a very wet bottom!

Stopping to catch my breath, I become aware that water is dripping from the branches. I became obsessed with trying to catch a drop just as it launched itself into space, but didn’t have any luck with that all! Most of the 400 pictures I took that morning were devoted to that. I’d get either the moment before or the moment after it takes flight but never the moment of. I switched tactics and tried continuous shooting but that didn’t work either. After shooting like fifty million shots of the precariously hanging droplet, I’d stop shooting — and then it would fall.

Sigh.

The sun came out and made the ice sparkle.

I followed the deer path to the driveway that leads to the hunters’ cabin up behind our house.

There’s a winterberry tree along the driveway.  

          I duck under the old apple tree, again following a deer path, to get back to our place and pause long enough to try and catch a falling drop. Try is the operative word here.

Deer tracks on the pond. I follow with my eyes and see an open spot. Did he fall in, I wonder? 

When I get to the other side and can see the path a little better, it does look like he fell though the ice. Don’t worry though, he probably only got his knees wet.

          My next and last stop before heading in was at the ice-covered dried heads of the Teasel. You probably appreciate my restraint when I show you only two of the more than sixty pictures I took. 

>>>*<<<

          Our old friend in Missouri, Margaret, was telling Mike about this new sandwich that Sonic has out. A cheesesteak with cheese and tater tots and jalapenos, but she didn’t get the hot peppers. “It’s so good!” she told him.

          Guess where we had to go?

          “Sonic?” you guess.

          And you’d be right. We Googled Sonic and the closest one is 54 miles north of us near Binghamton, New York.

          “We’ll be part way there when we go to the lawyer’s in Sayre,” Mike pointed out. We haven’t updated our wills since we’d gotten married and decided it was time to do it.

          We ended up making a circuitous route, stopping to pick up our completed taxes first, and it gave me a chance to make road pictures.

        Then we were there. How did we ever get along without our GPS’s!

          Mike went right past all the sunny spots and took one in the shade of the awning. “I don’t see it on the menu,” Mike said. I leaned across the center console to help him read the menu.

          “There it is!” I exclaimed.

          “Where?”

          “On the screen, there on the bottom.”

          Mike poked the button for service. “Hi! I’m Chelsey, I’ll be taking your order today. What can I get for you?”

          Mike ordered us both the same thing even though I suggested we get different sandwiches. “What if it’s bad like that pull-apart chicken?”

          “What if it’s good?” he countered.

          We sat and chatted while we waited. The Jeep started to cool off. “If you’d’ve parked in the sun it’d be warmer,” I said.

          “When we get our food, I can go over there and park.” Mike pointed to the back part of the lot where it was sunny.

          Fairly quickly a notice came up on our screen. CHELSEY IS ON HER WAY! it said in all caps like that. And in less than a minute Chelsey was there. Mike lowered the window and took our food, thanking Chelsey. She hesitated for a brief second before pleasantly wishing us, “Enjoy your meal.”

          I’m such a dumbass. We get to the other part of the lot and park when it hits me. “We didn’t give Chelsey a tip!”

          “Nope. That’s what I said.” I never heard him say that but maybe that’s why it came to my mind now.

          We slid our sandwiches from their fancy-schmancy windowed tin-foiled wrappers. “How many tater tots did you get?” I asked.

          “Four,” came Mike’s answer.

          “I only got three.” Then I see where one of ‘em had jumped ship.

          “I feel bad that we didn’t give Chelsey a tip. Wasn’t there any place on the credit card screen to add a tip?” I wanted to know.

          “I didn’t see one.”

          “Do you think, if I called, that she’d come out and get a tip?”

          “I don’t know,” Mike mumbled, his mouth full of his first bite. He chewed. “How’s yours?”

          I tore my sandwich in half. “I haven’t tried it yet.” I bit into it. “Mmmm. It’s good,” I said when I could utter somewhat coherently. “Those tater tots work really well on here.”

          We ate our sandwiches while I mulled over how to get a tip to Chelsey. It’d been so long since we’d been any where you’d tip that I never thought of it. “Maybe we could drive around and poke the button and ask Chelsey to come out,” Mike suggested and that’s just what we did.

          “I’m so sorry!” I told her. “I never thought about it.”

          “It’s okay,” she assured, but I’m sure it’s even okayer now. “Thank you!” she said cheerfully and I felt better.

          I saw this wall on the way to Sonic and puzzled over it silently. I’ve seen them pour textured concrete walls and wondered if that’s what this was. Now I asked, “Is that a man-made wall?”

          “It looks like it,” Mike agreed.

          Looking at the close-ups on my computer I can see what look like drill marks. Isn’t that interesting!

 

        A field of still-standing corn. We both see it at the same time and name it. “Deer food!”

                               >>>*<<<

          I was already in bed Tuesday night, just getting ready to doze off when Mike calls, “Peg! C’mere! Quick!”

          My heart jumps into my throat as I throw the covers off and jump outta bed. “Where?” I call as I’m heading, half-naked, for the living room. I didn’t even stop for a robe.

          “In the kitchen! Hurry!”

          Mike was standing by the door. I didn’t see anything overtly out of place. “What?”

          “What cat’s that?”

          My curiosity is piqued. “Where?”

          “Out there.” He indicates the patio.

          I pick up the flashlight as I walk past where it lives, turn it on, and shine it through the glass to the edge of the patio. I didn’t see anything. “Where?”

          ‘Right there!”

I look and he’s pointing at my feet. There, backed against the door, was Mr. Mister and a twin. Another huge tabby that looked so much like Mr. that he could’ve been looking in a mirror.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.” But suspect I’d seen his tail fleeing from the feral cat box early one morning when I’d turned on the light to let the cats go out. He was gone so fast I only had an impression of a fuzzy black tail. It must’ve been this tom. The growls and cat screams resume.

“Run him off,” I say knowing that’s exactly what Mike wants to do.

In his underwear, feet bare, Mike opens the door to this cold winter’s night. Some kind of a secret signal passes between the toms and they engage in mortal combat.

“GIT!” Mike yells in his meanest most-threating voice, stomps his feet, slaps his hands. “GO ON! GIT OUT OF HERE!”

Do they pay any attention? NO! They just keep tumbling and rolling over each other, screaming their most menacing fear-inducing cat screams. Aren’t they just the horriblest sounds you’ve ever heard!

“Hit him with something!” I cry and look around. The only thing close to me was a flyswatter. An image flashes through my mind’s eye of me trying to break up a dogfight with a thrown flyswatter.

It was the Monday after a great cross-country RV adventure, moving Momma from Pennsylvania to Arizona to live with my oldest, most-beautifulest sister.

This particular Monday found Patti and me cleaning out the RV, getting it ready for the Tuesday morning return to the rental company.

“Let’s use the Kubota,” Patti said referring to her utility vehicle. “It’ll be easier. We’ll put everything in the back and take it around to the shed.”

One of the first things we did when we went outside was to let Dakota out of her kennel. “She gets mad at me if I don’t let her out when I’m working around the yard,” Patti told me. Dakota is an Australian Cattle Dog, sometimes called a Blue Heeler. Before this Patti had had Rottweilers, or Rotties for short, and was impressed with Dakota’s intelligence and loyalty. Once someone had stolen Dakota. A few days later Dakota came trotting up the road. She had gotten away from them and found her way home.

“Will she leave the yard?” I asked.

“No, she never leaves the yard.”

We pulled the Kubota up to the door of the RV and Dakota sat on the seat as Patti and I started to pack up the things that needed to go back to the shed. The sleeping bags, coffee pot, camping dishes and things like that.

A dog, a Pit Bull, came trotting up the road and when he saw Dakota he came into the yard after her. Dakota wasn’t having any of that. No siree! No interloper was coming into her territory! And we had a full-fledged barking, snapping, snarling, biting, dogfight on our hands.

I was inside the RV when the commotion started. I heard it. And I heard Patti yell. “NO! GO ON! GET OUT OF HERE!” Then she called for Dakota. “DAKOTA!” Dakota didn’t obey. And my sister, bless her heart, my sister dives right in between the snapping, growling dogs.

Oh my gosh! I was so scared. She’s going to get torn up! And I was frozen in fear.

Patti pulls Dakota from the jaws of the Pit and tries to get her onto the Kubota seat when the Pit attacked again.

“NO!” she shouts and lands a kick to his side. “GET OUT OF HERE!”

Dakota wasn’t helping all that much. She wasn’t going to back down from this bully and she’d snarl and bark and lunge at the Pit and that would incite the Pit again. I had to do something! But what! I looked around me and there wasn’t anything there but Momma’s bath stool and a flyswatter.

(Don’t laugh.)

I picked up the flyswatter and threw it at the Pit.

(I said don’t laugh!)

I know, right! I don’t do well under pressure. The flyswatter didn’t land anywhere close to the Pit and even had it hit him he probably wouldn’t have felt it.

He lunged for Dakota again. I picked up the bath stool and threw it at him and hit him with it too. He barely blinked but it was enough of a distraction that Patti got Dakota up onto the seat of the Kubota.

“GET OUT OF HERE! GO ON!” Patti yelled at the Pit all the while psychically restraining Dakota to the seat.

The Pit wasn’t leaving. He stood there.

I’ll make him leave, I thought and jumped from the RV and picked up a fist size rock from Patti’s landscaping.

“GIT!” I yelled and threw the rock with all the force I could muster.

THUNK!  Yipp, Yipp!

I hit him! Boy, was I surprised! But he wasn’t leaving. He only retreated a few feet into the yard. Encouraged, I picked up another rock and even though I didn’t hit him, he took shelter under a cactus.

“Stupid dog! Get out of here!” and I threw more rocks at him.

“Keep him over there, Peg,” Patti yelled. “Till I get Dakota in her pen.”

The Pit got up and I felt so sorry for him, he had cactus balls hanging from him. That hurts, I know it does. But I can’t let him get at Patti and Dakota so I threw a couple of more rocks and he took shelter under another cactus.

Patti had Dakota back in her kennel so I stopped with the rocks.

“Where is he?” she asked when she came back.

“There, under the cactus,” I said pointing. “Stupid dog.”

The Pit wasn’t aggressive with Dakota gone and he even came up to Patti and kowtowed at her feet.

I wanted to help him. I wanted to pull the jumping cholla (choy-a) balls from him, but in the end, we decided to go inside until he moved on. And he did. And Patti and I finished cleaning out the RV.

I never said, in the original writing of the story, that Dakota didn’t appear to have sustained any bites, which is truly incredible.

A flyswatter between the dueling toms would probably be as effective as it was thrown in a dogfight — but I’d try! I had to do something! Before I could act, Mike picked up a snow shovel that was close to him and whacked ‘em with it. The challenging tom took off, a hundred miles an hour across the snow, his tail flying straight out behind him. Mike put the shovel down and headed for Mr. who’d stayed on the patio.

“Is he alright?” I asked.

Mike started cooing to the cat. “Are you okay?”

The last thing I saw was Mike picking Mr. up before I headed back to bed. It wasn’t ten minutes later that I heard the warning growls and hisses of the toms on the patio again. I don’t know if they got into a full-blown catfight or not. I’d gone to sleep and heard no more of this world. In the morning, I checked the patio. There weren’t any dead cats so that was good.

When it was light out, and time for me to feed the cats, I found Mr. Mister in the feral cat room. He jumped out of the box he’d been sleeping in and stood there, holding one paw up. “Meow,” he says and looks beseechingly at me.

“You got bit, didn’t you?” I ask. I felt him all over and didn’t come away with any blood, but detected a swelling in his foreleg. I’ll have to wait for it to fester and pop before I can treat it. In the meantime, we’ve locked Mr. in the cat room. With him being injured, if that other tom came around again, Mr. might not fare so well next time.

“How are Callie and Sugar?” I know you want to know.

The girls seem happy and content to be in the house with us and even with being in the cat condo. They never make a sound. I haven’t heard a single meow from either of them since we brought ‘em in. I have heard our boys sit outside the condo and growl at them from time to time, so the condo keeps them safe.

“They need a bigger bed,” Mike said after seeing them sharing one.

“The shelves aren’t wide enough for a bigger bed,” I point out.

 Mike got a wider board, ran screws in part way that hold the shelf in place on the wire sides. It’s only been a day and so far, Sugar has claimed the top bunk and Callie likes the lower.

“How’s her nose?” you ask.

Callie was getting really aggravated with me fussing with her and just let me say that her claws are sharp! Her nose is looking better so I’m leaving it alone.

I’m guessing that when the weather warms, they’ll be back out in the cat room.

In other cat news…

Smudge, on his way to his window seat, knocked the lid from my water glass. I don’t like really cold water but I do like it cool. I’ve discovered that if I draw a glass and let it sit on the counter, it gets just the right amount of cool for my liking. I keep a lid on it, a plastic one from a storage container, to keep detritus out.

Well, like I said, Smudge knocked the top off and the sound made him stop to look. Then he investigated. Then he drank. 

Yeah. I’ll be washing that glass and rethinking my whole system. Then I remembered the water bottle my friend Jody gave me. I pulled it from storage, where it’s been since our exercise classes ended, washed it, and now it holds my water — and I get to think of beautiful Jody every time I get a drink.

And these cats!

Oh my gosh!

They are so over this winter. No one wants to be out for longer than five minutes and yet they’re getting stir crazy — or maybe it’s cabin fever.

Smudge flopped himself down on the dishrag I’d left on the edge of the sink to dry overnight. After rolling around and lovin’ on it for a while, he kicked it to the floor where Spitfire took over the canoodling. 

(Oh! My! Gosh! If you’re ever checking your spelling of ‘canoodle’ don’t ever spell it with a ‘k’ and don’t ever look on Urban Dictionary!)

I guess my glass isn’t the only thing getting a washing on this day! (I wish I could wash that image from my mind!)

With all these cats you’d think we’d go through a ton of litter. But it’s not all that bad when you use the scoopables. We’ve been buying it from Tractor Supply in the 50-pound bags and this week, we needed to make a cat litter run. There have been times when we’d make the trip and they didn’t have any. These days we order online for store pickup. Mike ordered four bags and it meant a trip to the store.

          “You wanna go tomorrow and get fish sandwiches at McDonald’s for lunch?” I asked Mike. He loves those things and with it being Lent, McDonald’s has them on sale.

          “Nuh. We’re supposed to get more snow by tomorrow. Let’s just go today. We’ll go in the afternoon and I’ll get sandwiches for supper.”

          Fine by me. I took pictures and the snow had started, as you can tell in the pictures. 

          The snowflakes were fat and lazy. As we waited in the drive thru line, I tried to get a picture of one. My camera insisted on focusing on something more distant. I yelled at my camera. “Yeah, sure! And if I wanted you to focus on that, you wouldn’t!” I should’ve saved my breath. It didn’t do any good. I turned my focus to the snowflakes landing on the door outside my window. I was surprised at all the sharp spears. 

I think we ended up with three inches. Mike says five. 

>>>*<<<

In closing, I want to give a big shout-out to that beautiful Kipp gal, Jenn. She’s absolutely fabulous for helping me edit my letter blogs and deserves more than just the thanks I always give her. Last time she pointed out I used complimented when I meant complemented.

“Complemented means goes with; you have complimented which means said something flattering.”

I could hear my rosemary garlic bread tell my eggs, “You have the most beautiful sunny yellow yolks I’ve ever seen!” 

Let’s call this one done!