Diane

           Oh my goodness!

          Between the thirty-four pictures I didn’t have time to show you last time and thirty-seven new ones this time, I hardly know where to start. I’m thinking if I don’t get to last week’s missed photos this week, you’ll likely never see them. Is that a bad thing? I don’t know.

          My cute little redheaded sister was coming this week. She was coming east to visit one of her sons and his family and since she was that close, she would come to see us, too.

          It’s no secret that I dislike vacuuming and dusting. I threatened, three weeks ago, in my morning love note to my peeps, to vacuum my floors. Stuff happened and for one reason or another it got put off, then postponed, then delayed, then deferred, and before you knew it, a week had passed.

          Only two weeks until Diane’s visit. If I vacuum this week, I’ll just have to vacuum again next week! I thought.

          “I’m saving up the housework,” I told my oldest and much-adored sister. She laughed.

          Cleaning the apartment that no one’s lived in for six years was a J-O-B job! I thought I was going to be able to clean it one day and our house the next. So, what do I do? I want until two days before Diane’s scheduled arrival to start cleaning.

          “You just can’t get in a hurry about that stuff,” to quote my handsome neighbor Lamar Kipp. He put off installing a handrail on the basement steps for fifteen years.

          “We’d better turn the water on a few days early in case we have to fix something,” my handsome mountain man said.

I thought that was a pretty smart idea. We got our phones out so we could talk to each other during the process. Mike turned on the water and waited by the valve for a quick shut-off while I went into the apartment and checked all the pipes for leaks.

There were none.

Cleaning day arrived. Going through the garage from our house to the apartment, we see a puddle.

“Something in the bathroom’s leaking,” Mike said.

Luckily, it was just a connection under the sink that needed tightening. We sopped up the water, put a fan on it to facilitate drying, and kept an eye on it. After a few hours, I checked and there was a very slight dampness around the connection. It wasn’t quite sealed but we were afraid too much tightening would break something.

“I don’t think it’s enough to worry about,” I said. “We can slide a pan under it for now and fix it later.” Sometimes those really small leaks will seal themselves, and that’s what we were hoping for.

I worked on the kitchenette first, wiping out all the cabinets. Mike had already taken off the top layer of grime when he put the ceiling back up and painted.

Opposite the kitchenette is the living room. The furniture was wiped down and polished.

I evicted several spiders while cleaning. Orb weavers are kind of cool spiders so I took all of those outside and set them free. The other kind of spider I came across was the cellar spider and those guys I just sucked down the vacuum cleaner hose. Does that make me a racist? I wondered as I chased yet another running spider with the hose. Spiders don’t have races they have species. I guess that makes me a specie-ist.

          Mike worked on the breezeway and got that looking pretty good.

The apartment has one bedroom which is barely wide enough for a queen bed. You have to turn sideways and shimmy down the wall to get in the bed.   

           But it’s long enough for a dresser on the other end.         

           At the end of the first day, I’d finished everything that I wanted to do except sweeping and mopping the floors.

I checked the cabinet under the bathroom sink to see how wet it was and it was still damp. I didn’t want mold to grow so the next day I put a small heater inside and shut the doors. I checked it often because I didn’t want to melt anything or start a fire.

I finished the floors and checked the bathroom sink. There was a puddle and it was dripping worse than ever. Now we had no choice but to crank on the nut a little harder.

“First, let’s take it apart and put a squirt of WD-40 on the washer,” Mike said. “It’ll let it slide and not bunch up.”

This time we got the leak to stop and we didn’t crack or break any of the pipes. But it was wet again. I opted to use the fan and not the heater.

Mike and I did a final walk-through to make sure we’d gotten everything done in the apartment that we wanted to get done.

“It’s cleaner than when we lived here,” Mike said.

“That’s because there wasn’t any junk to clean around,” I justified. Between that and my dislike of housework, that is.

I spent the rest of Tuesday doing what I could on our house. “It’ll just have to be good enough,” I told Mike.

Diane called me Wednesday mid-morning to let me know when she was leaving for our house and what time we could expect her. She wouldn’t be here until late in the afternoon. That gave me another half day to work on our house.

About the time I thought Diane would be rolling in, my phone rang. It was her.

          “Hello!” I cheerfully say. “Where are you?”

          “I’m in Tunkhannock at a charging station.” She’d told me that there was a chance she would get an electric car. Looks like she did.

“When will you be here?” I asked.

“It says it’ll be seven hours until it’s fully charged.”

          “Does it have enough charge to get here?” Mike asked. “If it has the right plug, we can plug it in here and let it charge overnight.”

          “I don’t know,” Diane said.

          After much discussion back and forth, we decided to rescue her.

          Crossing the Susquehanna.

          Freshly painted totem poles. I didn’t realize they had three of them.     

 

          Pointing out a bumper sticker on the truck ahead of us, I said, “I wonder what that says.” Thinking about it for a few minutes, I guessed, “It probably says Where in the hell is Coon Valley?”

          We found Diane with little trouble.

          Her car tells her all the charging stations in the area and if they are a slow or rapid charge. “I’m just gonna go down to Scranton and use the rapid charge,” she said. “It’ll take like ten minutes to charge.”

          We all piled in the EV and chatted away the twenty-some miles.

          “Is the road open,” I asked Mike when I saw what road we were on. It had been closed because of recent flooding.

          “I think it was only closed the one day,” Mike said.

          They were still working to clear and fix the road but at least one lane was open.

          We found the rapid charge machines at a Sheetz gas station. Diane got the car plugged in, inserted her credit card, and got the juice flowing.

          “Thirty-three minutes to full,” we read from the display screen.

          “Way better than seven hours!” Diane said.

          The time passed quickly.

          A mural across from where we were charging.

          It was getting dark by the time we left Scranton and headed back to Tunkhannock.

Because we were anticipating Diane’s arrival, we’d held off on supper. I’d called several restaurants on the way and everything would be closed or getting ready to close by the time we would get there.

          “Let’s just eat at Perkin’s. They don’t close until ten,” I said. "And it’s right down the road.”

          There weren’t many people eating at eight-thirty so between one other couple and us, we had the place to ourselves.

          Diane is her mother’s daughter, let me tell you. I watched her, the way she ate, her mannerisms, and could see our mother.      

             The next day was already planned out. Breakfast, graveyard, home to make pumpkin roll and homemade bread.

          A couple of road pictures on our way to Dushore, although I’m sure you’ve seen them before.

         We’re sitting in the restaurant chatting when I notice Diane has slowly picked up one straw after another until she’d gotten all four and was fiddling with them.

          “Are you going to weave those all together?” I asked and nodded to the straws in her hands.

          She glanced down and seemed only then to be aware of what she was doing. She laughed.

          “I wanna try basket weaving someday,” I told her. “You know that basket in the finch cage? I paid eleven dollars for that! And it was a cheap one! I bet I could go out and collect my own dried grass and make one myself.”

          “It’s a lot easier to buy one,” Mike pointed out.

          “Yes,” Diane agreed and tipped her head, “but it’s not as satisfying.”

          Walking out of the restaurant, standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross the street, Mike commented on the water trucks. “Look at them all! I bet there’s fifty water trucks!”

          That might be an exaggeration but there were a lot!

          “Can we go past the pajama factory and show Diane the factory that Mark’s parents used to own?” I asked. Mark is married to our beautiful cousin Lorraine.

          “Sure,” Mike said.

          Cresting a hill behind the factory, I exclaimed, “There’s the church and graveyard!” I guess every other time I was up this way I was too busy seeing other things to notice it peeking up in the distance.

          We get to the T at the end of the road and the old school is there. Mike normally makes a left and goes back out to the main road at this point.

          “Can we go up past the front of the school?” I asked.

          Mike took a right and much to my surprise pulled into the driveway of the old place. I’d never seen the back of it before. Mike pulled off into a grassy area and we sat there looking for a few minutes.

          “I’m going to go look in the windows,” I said, pulling on the door handle and getting out.

          Diane followed.

          “DON’T GO INSIDE!” Mike yelled from his open window.

          “I WON’T!” I yelled back.

           I took a bunch of pictures but I’m only gonna show you a few.

          The first thing we notice is the wall of doors. It looks like they all lead to the same slender room.

          “What’re all the doors for?” Diane wondered.

          “It may have been a coat room,” I’m guessing. “So more than one kid can hang their coats and there won’t be a traffic jam with just one door.”

          The second floor collapsed.

          Mike moved the car down closer to us. “Day’s a-wasting!” he calls.

          “Enjoy this day, this moment,” Diane says. She was and she wasn’t ready to go. Everywhere she looked she was filled with new wonder.

          “Look at the stairs and the lights hanging on the second floor!” she exclaimed. 

          Visiting Mom, Dad, and brother Mike was next.

          Heading up the graveyard road, I see three cats on a porch. Two on the steps, one on the railing. Little did I know I’d see (and photograph) two more cats before this trip was over.

          Diane and me. In case you can’t tell us apart (just kidding!) Diane is on the left. Which means I’m on the right! But I bet you figured that one out for yourself. 

          Coming down off the hill is where I see another cat, this one in a window. 

          We stop at the Jolly Trolley for a souvenir mug.

          We pass the old hotel as we’re leaving town and point out where the train trestle used to pass over the road.

          “Let’s show her the depot,” I suggested.

          Mike made a U-turn.

          I got out, turned, and took a picture of Diane taking a picture of the depot.

          We had several choices of roads to take home. “You wanna see the house Phyllis was born in or the metal yard art?” we asked Diane.

          “The house doesn’t mean much to me,” she answered, “I think I’d enjoy the yard art more.”

          “This is something else I’d like to try,” I told her as Mike slowly drove us past.

          “Do it,” she said.

          “You have to own a junkyard to have materials and I don’t,” I said. But I also know you can go to a junkyard and buy stuff, but I didn’t say that. Welding a metal sculpture is on my Someday list.

          Under one of the outbuildings is where I saw the last cat, sitting just as pretty as you please. 

          Mike has a painting he found in a Chicago parking lot more than seventy years ago. His mom let him take it home and he’s had it ever since. No matter which way you turn it, you see something in it.

          Diane was fascinated with it. She checked out the canvas, the way it was attached to the frame, and the frame itself.

          “See these circles?” she asked. “I thought the rest of the stuff was normal cracking but now I’m not so sure. These circles are too perfect. Too even. Too regular. It just wouldn’t crack that way. It makes me wonder if there isn’t a painting underneath.”

          She was pondering all the lines when inspiration struck Mike. “Maybe if you hold it up to the light you’ll see something.”

          And sure enough! We did! There is something underneath. We just don’t know what.

         We see things that look like flowers and branched trees. Lots of patterns. But we can’t see the whole thing at once so we have no idea what we’re looking at.

“I don’t think they’re painted on. I don’t know how you could paint such evenly thin and consistent lines with a brush. Maybe a bottle with a fine tip? Could they be something like threads?” I asked.

          “I don’t think they’re threads. I was thinking something like a pen maybe. Let’s look at it out in the sunshine.”

          We took it outside but we had the same problem as we did holding it up to a lightbulb. You need a light table.

          “But I’ll tell you one thing. The canvas is breaking down. See the holes where the sunlight is coming through?” Diane said.

          It was so exciting to discover there was something hidden in a painting Mike’s owned for so long but no idea what to do about it.

          We spent the rest of the afternoon baking and chatting. We made pumpkin rolls, homemade bread, and chili for our supper. Afterward, we played games.

          “Remember playing Double Solitaire with Mom? She never LET us win. If we won it was fair and square,” I said.

          “I never played Double Solitaire with Mom. I don’t even know how to play it,” Diane said.

          We played Double Solitaire. We played Quiddler, our beloved Aunt Marie’s favorite game. We played Rummikub. Then we went back and played Quiddler until ten-thirty. It was so much fun but it was time to quit when we started making up our own words.

          “Cert,” Diane says laying her cards down.

          “I don’t think that’s a word,” I told her.

          “You know, a cert?”

          I laughed. “That’s one word and it’s not spelled like that.”

          The next morning we played a couple of quick rounds of Quiddler before she had to leave.

          It was a good visit with my younger sister. 

          Let’s call this one done!

         

Babies!

           I’m gonna have babies!

          I’m so excited!

          Baby anythings are adorable!

          “What babies?” you ask.

          Baby birds! Zebra Finches to be more precise.

          I was working at my desk one day near the end of last week and kept hearing strange noises coming from the bird cage. It took me a while to figure out what was going on because the activity was happening in the bottom of the cage and every time I stood up Meep would fly to a perch. Eventually, I was able to see that he was trying scratch the wire out of the way to get at the paper.

          Out in the yard I went. Taking a bucket, I collected grass clippings. I found a small plastic flower pot, filled it with grass, and set it inside the cage. It didn’t take long until Meep and Meepette were darting from perch to perch on the way up to the house with grass clippings hanging from their little orange beaks.

          The way I have the house hanging is with the entrance facing away from my desk light. They need dark in order to sleep and they do take naps throughout the day. But in order to go inside they sit on the ladder and poke at the house until it turns and they can hop inside.

          The Meeps aren’t housebroken. I don’t know why they poop in their house, it seems counterintuitive, but they do. I’ve gotten in the habit of taking it out every once in a while, knocking the poop out, and sanitizing it.

          Monday, I found eggs! Two tiny little eggs!

I can’t tell you how thankful I am that I hadn’t dropped the nest when I was taking it down or knocked it down while cleaning the cage. Both of those things have happened to me. When I put it back, I bent the wire hook tighter so I didn’t accidentally knock it down again.

Meep and Meepette weren’t sitting on their eggs. A Google search says they can lay anywhere from two to seven eggs and won’t sit on them until they’ve laid all the eggs they want.

I thought since the nest was made and the eggs laid, they were done with the nesting material, so I took it out.

The sounds coming from the bottom of the cage started again. This time I knew what it was. I got up and got them another pot of clippings.

Is it normal for them to keep adding to the nest once the eggs have been laid? I wondered.

Wednesday I looked and now have three eggs!

Wednesday, when I looked, I see they found a piece of hemp string. I don’t know where it came from. The only hemp string in the cage is what the house hangs from.

Wednesday they started sitting on the eggs.

I can always tell who’s on the nest because Meep talks a whole lot more than Meepette does.

“Peg don’t they look different?” you say.

They do. Meep, the male, has the prettiest orange cheeks. I keep a mesh cover over the bottom portion of the cage to keep the scattered seeds inside and I can’t always see well enough to see who’s who.

“Do you get tired of hearing them meep?” you wanna know.

No. They nap so it’s quiet then. And when he’s on the nest, it’s quiet then too. And they go to bed for the night fairly early, like five or six o’clock. Even so, their meeps simply become white noise and I find I need to listen to hear them. One sound I do enjoy hearing is a soft little mew that comes from the nest. I assume it’s Meepette but don’t know for sure.

Meep was happy with the nest for a couple of days, then I catch him trying to pull the strings from the bottom of his mineral block hanger. I got him more grass. And some raffia. I looped the raffia around the wire a couple of times and made it too tight. Meep couldn’t pull it free. I looked up once, just in time to see him go for a swing under the perch as he held the raffia in his beak. Eventually he got the long tails into the house. I had mercy on him, got up, loosened the raffia, and watched him pull ‘em free and take ‘em home.

Birds are messy. They poop a lot and their cage needs to be cleaned every day.

“Why wouldn’t everyone want birds‽” you ask — sardonically.

I know, right! I ask myself that very same question! — I answer sincerely. I love the birds — even if they are a bit of work.

Something else I’m asking is, what am I going to do with three more birds?

I think of my beautiful neighbor gal. Maybe Steph wants a bird.

She didn’t even have to think about it. “No!”

“How about Jonecca and Aaron?” I ask of her daughter and son-in-law.

“I’ll ask when I talk to them tonight,” Steph said.

They don’t want one either.

Between the nesting question and wondering if Pet Smart buys birds back, I called.

“That’s normal nesting behavior,” Carol tells me. “They’re just trying to make it soft and comfortable for the babies.”

“What am I gonna do with the babies?” I ask.

“They should get along just fine but eventually you’ll have to separate them to prevent inbreeding. We don’t take any back.” I sorta figured they could only buy from reputable dealers with certifiable health checks.

“They’re not hatched yet,” I said.

“Oh. Well, are they sitting on them?” she wanted to know.

“Yes they are.”
          “Sometimes they won’t even sit on ‘em, and sometimes the eggs aren’t viable, and sometimes they won’t take care of ‘em once they do hatch. My advice is to take the eggs out and put ‘em in the freezer. Then you can either throw ‘em away or give ‘em back to her. If you give ‘em back it’ll keep her from laying any more eggs for a while. That’s what I do with my cockatoo.”

“So, what are you gonna do?” Mike asked when I told him.

“I’m going to let them hatch these, then maybe I’ll separate them.” I just can’t make myself kill them.

“What are you going to name them?” Miss Rosie asked when I told her. “You can’t name them Meep, Meepette, and Meep, Meep, Meep.”

“Why not? George did.”

Miss Rosie laughed. “That’s true.”

Even though George Foreman gave his five sons all the same name, and he did it so they would always have something in common, they use their nicknames. There’s George Jr., Monk, Big Wheel, Red, and Little Joey.

>>>*<<<

In crafting news, I’m pleased to announce that my pain in the patootie growth board is finished!

YAY!!

Since the gal never did get back with, I finished it the way I wanted. Hopefully she thinks the flowers are tasteful and not overdone. One of the examples she picked had flowers the whole way down the side with the name across the top. “But mix in some poppies and Lilies of the Valley,” she said. After I did that, she wanted something else. After I did that, she said, “Well maybe nothing but her name, in a blush pink.”

I went back to her original desire to have poppies, because Lorelai calls her grandfather Poppie...

... and Lillies of the Valley for her birth month.

“I don’t like it,” Mike said.

“What don’t you like?” I asked.

“The letters. I don’t like’em.”

“It’s the font she picked.”

Lou, the grandfather came by and picked it up. “That’s really nice. How much do I owe you?” he asked.

“Fifty,” I said. “I was only gonna charge you forty but I’ve got three weeks into it now.”

“Yeah, she told me youse kept changing things,” Lou said, using the Pennsylvania colloquialism for a plural you.

“Not me, her!”

“How much do I owe ya, Peg?” he sympathetically asked again.

“Fifty,” I repeated.

“How much would make you happy?”

That’s a whole new ball game! “Sixty would make me happy.”

Lou didn’t bat an eye, pulled the bills from his pocket, paid me, and thanked me.

I have one more commission to do for Lou then I’m free until Christmas. I have an order for some glass ornaments. Unless I get another commission.

>>>*<<<

             Mike and I went to the fair for its last day.

 He got his Italian sausage and I got my pierogies. Then, instead of ice cream, I tracked down an apple dumpling. It was just okay. I’m always in search of a good apple dumpling. That means a crust that is done with a little crispness to it and an apple that isn’t too hard or too mushy. That’s asking a lot, I know. 

I knew as soon as I saw the sign that this was some kind of a joke. After all, you can’t leave animals out in the sun like this box obviously was.

A peek down inside confirmed my suspicions.  

>>>*<<<

Our church is building a garage for the parsonage. The work was going to be done by the pastor and volunteers. Mike volunteered to find material prices and check into the permits.

Mike, bless his heart, found a company that would come in and erect a steel building for us, doors, windows, and garage doors included, for less than we could build one.

Mike presented it to the Pastor and he was thrilled. “I’m okay with not having to swing a hammer.”

And we all know what it’s like trying to get a work crew together. People have lives and jobs and family commitments and it can be hard to get everyone to come on the same day. Now we don’t have to fool with any of that. Plus, the maintenance on a steel building will be less than a board and batten structure.

The ground work has to be done before the builders come in. We’re lucky enough, as a church, to have a man who can knock down the trees, grade the pad, and frame it up for concrete. David J. started this week and Mike and I went out to take a few pictures for the church bulletin board.

Pastor Jay and his wife Mary have some pretty great children. Luke, pictured here in his logging gear, loves lumberjacking. He loves to run the chainsaw and cut trees down. And Luke knows lumber. He can look at a board and tell you what kind of tree it was.

While we were there, Mary told me the most interesting story about Luke. “He didn’t talk at all until he was four,” she said. “He was playing outside and when he came back in, the very first thing he ever said was, ‘I cut down a tree.’”

I was astonished, “Really‽”

Mary nodded, “Yep. Mind you, it wasn’t a very big tree, he was only four, but look at him today!”

The irony is not lost on me at all.

On one of our visits we took the dogs. My idea was to give Raini some socialization, something sorely lacking here in the seclusion of our mountain home. I had her on a leash and kept prompting her to, “Stay with me,” when she strained at the lead. Raini didn’t cower, she was interested in the smells around her, but at the same time was displaying some signs of being afraid. She did have her tail tucked.

Pastor and Mary have young twin daughters.

Elise came up and I had her hold her hand out to Raini. Raini smelled it then Holly came up behind Elise.

Suddenly, Raini growled.

I alpha rolled her. “NO! Not now, not ever!” I told her. Then I put her in the car.

I was horrified. I’d never heard Raini growl at a person before. Never. Not UPS, not the guys from the electric company, not the people in the vet’s office, not the neighbors. I’ve only ever heard her growl at Bondi and the cats.  

“Want some birch bark?” Pastor asked before we left. “It’ll make your whole house smell like birch.”

“Sure!”

Smelling birch makes me remember being a kid again. Going to the main farm with my dad where they had a soda pop machine. Sometimes Dad would give us soda money. We’d drop the nickel in, open the glass door, and pull out a six-ounce bottle. Pop the top on the built in opener, and swig it like the cowboys drank their beers in the saloons of the old black and white westerns we watched on TV.

Times were simpler then. 

>>>*<<<

I have more pictures.

—Road pictures. Flower pictures. Bug pictures. Even a critter picture or two.

I have more craft stories.

—Other things I’ve made and wanted to share the outcomes with you.

I have a favorite game I wanted to tell you about — again. I’ve told you about it before.

And I have a new web browser I was going to talk about.

But most of all, I have love in my heart for all of you.

 

Let’s call this one done!