This is Lou.
Lou and his partner, Mickey, bought Charlie Cheshire’s house. It was bought with no official inspections but the guys did a walk through. The floors sagged. That was obvious.
Lou brought a couple of guys up from Philly with him to start working on the house.
“Is it what you expected?” Mike asked.
“Worse,” Lou answered.
I went in to see how the reno was going.
Oh! My! Goodness!
The house was built on a dirt foundation and all the floor joists have rotted away. That explains the saggy floors! It also explains the upper kitchen cabinets. I thought they were put up crooked.
They tore up a floor in one of the bedrooms and found this! Instead of fixing the problem someone put a bandaid on it. They put in blocks and built a new floor on top. How crazy is that?!
“I think I’d tear it down and put in a doublewide,” I told Lou.
“That would cost a lot more,” Lou said. “Mickey has a construction business and he can do a lot of the work.”
I’m sure the partners will sit down and discuss the best course of action when they know exactly what they have to work with.
Me? I still think it’s a tear-down.
While Mike and Lou talked about boy stuff, I wandered toward the creek.
The first thing I see is a satyr butterfly. There are 2,400 species of satyr butterflies and 15 live in the United States, including one particularly rare species, Saint Francis's Satyr. It’s critically endangered and exists only in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Interestingly, its habitat is maintained by beaver activity and even military training exercises, which help preserve the open wetlands it depends on.
Satyrs have an unusual diet for butterflies. They feed on decaying fruit, tree sap, and even animal flesh. In fact, they tend to prefer fermenting or rotting organic matter over nectar, which sets them apart from more traditional butterflies.
The next thing I spot is a Star of Bethlehem flour — err, flower! See what happens when I let my fingers spell stuff!
This wildflower belongs to the asparagus family. It’s poisonous to humans and animals so just admire this one and don’t try to eat it. Here’s a fun fact. Legend has it that the Star of Bethlehem flower was named after the biblical star, and it has even been depicted in art by Leonardo da Vinci!
There wasn’t any way to get to the creek because of the steep bank, so I just stood and looked at it for a few minutes as it bubbled and rushed over rocks.
“Did you see the deer you chased out?” Lou asked when I got back to where the guys were chatting.
“No, but I heard it!”
Speaking of deer...
We had barely left our road when a doe and her fawn step out into the road. Mike slowed, then stopped. They froze, just looking at us.
Mike eased the car forward and the doe thought it better to turn around and go back the way she’d come.
We were almost to the top of Welles Mountain when there were two more!
The smaller one has a couple of bare patches on his side.
“What could cause that?” you ask.
It could be he’s shedding his winter coat or maybe he’s got a sensitivity to lice or ticks. It could even be mange. But I don’t see where it’s a symptom of Chronic Wasting Disease.
Down in the field we see a doe with her fawn. They just stood there until Mike slowed so I could get a picture, then they took off. The fawn couldn’t stay up with his mother so after a few yards he dropped.
“Where were you going?” you wanna know.
We were going to a town called Milton. Mike called the Leer truck cap outlet company there and the guy told him to come in, he was sure they had the light Mike needed for Big Red’s topper.
Can you say, “Road pictures!”?
I saw two eagles but only got a decent shot of one of them.
It looks like they’re making holes down the center of the highway.
“I wonder if they’re putting sensors in?” Mike wondered.
“Like for self-driving cars?” I asked.
Copilot says, “If the holes are deep and uniform, they might be testing soil stability or repairing structural issues beneath the asphalt.”
We were stopped at a stop sign and I noticed there were a lot of air holes in this concrete curb.
“Doesn’t that weaken the concrete?” I asked Mike.
“It’ll make it crack and flake off easier,” he told me.
A hawk.
We get down to Milton and didn’t have any trouble finding the outlet place. Mike went in while I waited.
And he came out empty-handed.
“What happened?” I asked.
“They don’t have anything that’ll work.” Mike buckled his seatbelt. “That was a wasted trip.”
“No, it wasn’t. I got to see an eagle.” I didn’t know that I’d seen two. I thought the other one was a hawk until I saw it on the computer. It was one of those just-barely-saw-it-in-time-to-take-a-hasty-photo kind of picture.
We had stopped at a Rutter’s convenience store to use the facilities. As I went to wash my hands, I paused, eyeing the sink setup like it was some futuristic contraption. Soap, water, and air — all perfectly placed above the basin.
Of course, I didn’t have my camera or phone on me. So, I exited the restroom, waited for Mike, and borrowed his phone.
“Taking a picture of the sink?” he asked, half amused, half knowing.
“Yep!”
“It makes more sense to have the soap over the sink,” Mike said. “Rather than have soap all over the counter.”
And how many times have I stood at a traditional sink, dripping water across the counter or the floor just to grab a paper towel? This setup was smarter, cleaner.
Maybe you’ve seen this kind of setup before. Maybe it’s common in modern places. Maybe I’m just becoming a backwoods, sheltered, old woman. Or maybe — just maybe — the world has quietly streamlined the simplest things while I wasn’t looking.
Speaking of Mike’s truck...
Big Red needed new mirrors. Mike ordered them and Raini and I helped put them on.
Raini is the first dog I’ve ever owned that I didn’t have to worry about running off. The Yorkies weren’t trained to stay with me and even though Raini wasn’t trained that way either, it is her nature to stay close to me.
The mirrors are electric and controlled by a switch on Mike’s door. He had to take the door panel off to get to the wiring harness, but it wasn’t that hard to do once we found the nuts holding it on.
The first mirror took us about a half hour to put on, but the second one only took about half that time.
Image that. Things get easier the more you do them.
The mirror on the passenger side works fine but the one on the driver’s side still doesn’t work right. It’ll only move two of the four ways it’s supposed to move. It’ll go up, but not down. It’ll move left, but not right.
It’ll take someone smarter than us to figure out what’s wrong.
We had to make another trip out, this time for a few groceries. I wanted to go to the Aldi store in Wysox because the one in Tunkhannock didn’t have any braunschweiger. I wrap the dogs nightly vitamin in it and they gobble it down. Turns out they didn’t have it either. Mike took the back roads to Wysox and I got a couple of road pictures.
And if that wasn’t enough running around for one week, I had a dental appointment in Tunkhannock and we had to go out again!
“Wanna stop and see Linda?” Mike asked. Linda, you may remember, is one of our church peeps. She’s doing a stint in the rehab center for physical therapy to regain her strength after having been sick.
“Sure.”
That same cute little redheaded gal that was there last time was there this time, too. Gerri, at the front desk, let us in.
“Is my Miss Linda still here?” I asked.
“Yes, but I think she’s in the dining room having lunch right now,” she said.
I didn’t see Linda as we went past the dining room so we went on down to her room. Imagine our surprise when we walked in and the room was stripped bare of everything except the furniture. “It looks like she went home,” I said.
“Let’s stop out at the desk and ask,” Mike suggested.
At the nurses’ station, the gal told us Linda had changed rooms. “But she’s up in the dining room having lunch right now.”
“I didn’t see her,” I said. “Maybe she went back to her room?”
“No, she’s still up there.”
She sounded so sure that I thought I must be wrong. We went back to the dining and Mike spotted her. “She’s right there,” he said.
Even pointing her out, I still couldn’t see her.
“Right on the end,” Mike said.
I was looking at the back of a head and didn’t recognize it as being Linda’s. I walked around to where I could see her face and it was Linda! She was so happy to see us. Our church is doing a great job of visiting her.
“Elden and Annette were here this morning,” Linda told us.
We only visited for a very few minutes, mindful that Linda’s lunch was getting cold.
Leaving the rehab center, I spot a tractor covered in weeds and vines.
“You could stop and let me get a few pictures of it,” I said.
Mike is a good husband and promptly pulled over to the side of the lightly-used side road we were on.
A squirrel was in the grass by the tractor. He took off for the closest tree.
A rototiller sits in the stand of trees behind the tractor. It looks like it’s in the process of becoming yard art, too!
I took a few pictures and went back to the car.
I’ve been seeing quite a few of these flowering trees. I used an app on my phone to ID it and it says they’re Japanese Lilac.
Speaking of trees...
I was at the kitchen sink and looked out the window. “It’s snowing!” I called to Mike in the other room.
“I saw that,” he called back.
Of course, it’s not snow — but wouldn’t that be something? Snow in 80-degree weather would be downright magical. It’s just the fluff from one of the trees down by the driveway, caught in the wind and sent tumbling over the house in the fleeting illusion of snow.
I saw a hawk being mobbed by a smaller bird.
My irises are blooming.
I got the bulbs from Miss Helen when we lived in Missouri and I think of her when I see them. I worked for Miss Helen for... gosh! I don’t know how long! I did whatever she needed me to do. Swept floors, cleaned out closets, dusted, washed baseboards, put up storm windows, did laundry, and one summer we cleaned out the flower beds. That’s when she gave me the iris bulbs. Miss Helen has been walking on the other side for a few years now.
Speaking of friends and Missouri and walking on the other side...
We lost our dear old friend, Margaret, this past week. We’ve known Margaret for 25 years. She often said she wanted to live to see her one hundredth birthday. But it wasn’t in God’s plan. Sadly. I really thought she was going to make it. Margaret was almost exactly six months short of her goal. She was born on December 7, 1925 and died June 2, 2025.
I took this photo of Mike, Margaret, and Margaret’s daughter Sharon, about twelve years ago. Mike looks like a giant in the photo. Margaret wasn’t a very tall woman but I think Mike was standing on something. A curb, maybe? I could tell you better what it was if I remembered where I took the picture. But, I don’t have a clue.
It was a run-around kind of week! Because going out three times wasn’t enough, we had to go out yet again! Aye-yi-yi! That’s a lot of running for a homebody like me! This time it was a visit to see the tax lady. We had a form we needed to fill out and it looked like Greek to us! Thank goodness for people who are friends with numbers!
The golf course was having some kind of event and the driveway was adorned with a huge American Flag. We don’t golf and we weren’t invited.
The courthouse was adorned also, adorned with... what? Picketers? Protesters? I don’t know. We weren’t invited and we didn’t stop.
We followed this guy across the bridge and wondered if he’d make it. Luckily, he only passed a couple of cars and no semis or oversized loads of gas well rigging.
I sold a few boxes of romance novels. I’d posted them at a dime apiece but people want me to pick through them. One lady originally was interested in novels set in England.
“It’s not worth my time to go through them,” I told her. I’ve got four boxes of books and you can sort through them if you want, or take all four boxes for five dollars.”
“I’ll take them all,” she said.
She was coming to Wyalusing for dental appointment on the same day I was going to my dental appointment in Tunkhannock and almost at the same time.
“I’ll set them out on the porch for you,” I told her.
Raini goes with me everywhere. She went with me when I packed up the books, she went with me when I was carrying them outside. Then she wasn’t with me. She was out in the yard barking her fool head off! I went to see what she was carrying on about and there was big ol’ Mr. Snapper.
At least she’s staying away from it, I thought and finished my job.
“Okay, Raini, come on!” I called.
She was reluctant to leave the turtle but after calling her two or three more times, she came.
Speaking of Raini...
I was going through some old pictures and found one of Raini right after we’d brought her home. Look how little and cute she was!
Now, speaking of dogs barking at critters...
I took the girls outside for the last pee call of the night before I closed off the pet door. We have a lot less trouble with middle-of-the-night barkathons since we’ve been locking the pet door at night.
I was standing at the edge of the patio waiting for the girls when Bondi started barking at something in the grass. She’d stretch her neck out as far as she could to smell it without getting any closer than she had to, then jump back and start barking again. I thought for sure she had a toad.
I pulled my phone from my bra pocket, turned on the flashlight, and went to look.
I laughed.
Bondi approached very cautiously, stretching her neck out to get a whiff, and backed off again. I kept the light on it and waited until she got brave enough to see what it was. Then she flipped her nose and tail into the air and trotted off, full of attitude — “Humph. I knew it was a leaf the whole time!”
I have one more critter story for this week.
The camera in the cat room lets us know when the critters come in to eat. Despite the fact that I had trapped Hatch in there for almost a month, it hasn’t stopped him from coming in. Having the cat room blocked off for almost a month hasn’t stopped the racoons from checking the door regularly and coming in when they found it was open again.
One night we had two racoons in there at the same time. They scrapped a little but the one that had possession of the food bowl kept possession of the food bowl while the other one danced around.
We were watching TV at the time, but I was keeping an eye on the coons.
Raccoon two tried a frontal approach, reaching in to grab a bite of food, only to be met with a hiss and slap from raccoon one. He’d wait a few minutes and try again. It wasn’t happening. Racoon one was staying.
Raccoon two tried to be patient but his mind must’ve been working as he scavenged around, looking for stray bits of food. Then he came up with a plan. He stepped in front of raccoon one, positioning himself before the food bowl, then started backing up — slowly, deliberately. His rear met raccoon one’s face. A gentle nudge at first. Then, he lifted one little leg and placed it into the bowl, pushing his rump further into raccoon one’s space. Another step back. Another leg into the bowl. Raccoon one, wedged between stubborn determination and dwindling space, had no choice but to retreat.
Step by step, raccoon two claimed the territory. Front paws followed the rear. He edged himself backward, inching raccoon one out of the way until his foot met the opposite side of the bowl. He lifted a leg over, placed it on the floor, then followed with the other, never releasing the pressure.
And just like that, raccoon two had full possession of the food bowl.
Raccoon one lingered briefly, then made a single lap around the bowl before giving up entirely and wandering off.
It tickled me to no end and still does as I see it played out in my mind’s eye.
I made two new-to-me recipes this week for our movie night at church. I made a taco crescent ring. Looking at a bunch of recipes online, you can pretty much make it with whatever ingredients you want. I thought the one with refried beans, black beans, and corn looked stick-to-your ribs good. I laid out two cans of crescent rolls in a circle on my mom’s old pizza pan, spread about a half a can of refried beans around the ring, browned the hamburger, added the taco seasoning, dumped in a can of corn — man! That looked like a lot of corn! Opened and drained the black beans and dumped in just half the can. Stirring everything together all I could see was corn! I spent the next 15 minutes picking corn out!
“I’ve had enough fun,” Me said to Myself, and this was the last spoonful I picked out. I was dumping them back into the half can of black beans and thought I’d use them in a different recipe. Maybe make some rice and sausage to eat them with.
I layered the taco meat on top of the refried beans, added a layer of cheddar cheese, pulled the points of the crescent rolls over the top and tucked them under the center. It said to brush with egg white or butter. Well, that’s a no-brainer! I melted butter, brushed on, then sprinkled with Everything Bagel season mix.
As soon as it was done baking, Mike loaded it into the car and we were off to movie night. I never got a picture of it done, all beautifully brown and bubbly, the aroma of garlic wafting off — not that you could see that.
I didn’t care for it. Maybe if I’d’ve stuck to plain old taco meat I’d’ve liked it better. I don’t know if my peeps liked it or not. I didn’t ask, didn’t want to hear my opinion echoed back to me, but I only brought four pieces home, and I gave those to the Kipps.
“We liked it,” Miss Rosie said.
The Kipps also liked the banana pudding cake I made for the very first time. It’s just a box of yellow cake mix, mixed with eggs, oil, milk, and bananas, baked, then banana pudding, sliced bananas, whipped cream, and crushed vanilla wafers on top. That one was a hit with everyone, including me!
“You can’t tell the Kipps I ate one piece,” Shawn said. I was packing up to leave movie night and mentioned the last few pieces were going to the Kipps. “Because I had three!”
Nothing says yummy like going back for thirds, don’cha think?
I made it for movie night again tonight (Sunday). I’m going to make a chicken and stuffing casserole recipe I got from my beautiful daughter-in-law, Kandyce, to go with it. That’s something Mike doesn’t care much for it so making it for movie night means I get to have some.
With that, let’s call this one done!
Done!
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