I’m outlining both the new Bren book and the second Alliance Rising book, after story-conferencing with Jane on the trip. Jane is finishing up the kitchen painting and a little wall-repair where we had some electrical revisions. I’ve cleaned the pond filters and gotten the main tank pump running (it had stopped). And over all, we just sat last night and stared at Project Runway reruns on the telly. We are that tired. The pond is clear as glass…that’s working. I haven’t attacked the leeches yet. That’s on the agenda. I’ve ordered more probiotic for the cats, another automatic topoff (for evaporation) for the main tank (it broke), and I’ve got an appointment to get the car checked and am seeking one to get the new tree planted as soon as the responsible person gets there on Monday. We are both tired from travel, and trying to get life back on even keel.
The two new kitties are getting friendlier. Which is an improvement over hiding and hissing. And we are starting to try to pick up the house and clean the floors after all the kitchen construction. Which started in September. I have cooked on temporary countertop, on moving ranges, and had the fridge likewise uncertain in location. I have wiped off construction dust to be able to cook. I have coped with no cabinets, and cabinets with no doors. We have finally almost achieved kitchen. With backsplash! And we are going to try to clean up the basement and bring order down there. My one rule is, the kitchen will not be the stopping place for basement chaos! To the garage with it!
Pix will happen when we have cleanliness, no dust, and order.
It is always good to see the light at the end of a home improvement tunnel. The new and improved kitchen will undoubtedly be a joy to both of you; I’ve read a few of those MSNBC ads on the scroller for ‘how to organize/ things you must have in your kitchen’, and all I can think of is ‘what were they smoking?’ Kitchens are as idiosyncratic as the people who regularly use them, and what makes a devoted pastry chef happy will only annoy someone (like me) who has to deal with frequently feeding a large group of people. I need room for big pots, not a collection of springform pans. I even borrowed a blender from a neighbor yesterday, because I don’t have or generally need one. I wonder if they’d like some leftover jollof rice?
Whatever jolloff rice is, the operative word is rice, and that sounds good. Since you can’t ship it here (laughs) go on, feed your neighbors. 🙂 Seems like a nice exchange for use of a blender.
My kitchen is so weird to me. I’m looking forward to a needed grocery trip this week. I am also looking forward to reminding the apt. mgmt. that they haven’t fixed the electrical issue affecting my kitchen, and it appears to have grown (the problem, not the kitchen or storage space, alas), nor the half-height gate. I am not really too bothered about the gate, but the electrical issue is both a nuisance and a real potential problem that must be fixed, for me and for other residents’ safety, possibly.
Jollof rice is something I discovered in one of Nnedi Okorafor’s books, which are set in Nigeria. It’s something like Spanish rice, which is more or less rice cooked in a tomato base, but has a few different spices in it. Since last night’s game was set in Africa, I made dinner with jollof rice and Nigerian chicken. Nand’ CJ, I do not recommend you try the unadulterated recipe, because both the chicken and the rice have copious amounts of onions. That didn’t make much soap with the gamers, who guzzled both, and asked if they could take home leftovers.
Recipes may be found here: http://www.kitchenbutterfly.com/
Next recipe attempt: Nigerian Pepper Soup, although I may wait until cooler weather again. And I will need to procure the proper spices.
I’m glad you’re safe home again, and that the kitchen is nearly done.
Instead of going straight on to the basement, where Tanner and Tracker are just starting to accept their new circumstances, it might be easier on them and yourselves if you can decide that one big house rearrangement / remodel a year is enough for one year.
Those boxes and books down there don’t eat any hay, they’ve been there for a while and it doesn’t cost money or cause trouble to leave them a bit longer. Close the basement door and you won’t even have to look at it.
I know, every year older makes carrying boxes up stairs one tread higher, but now you’ve found Scott (IIRC?) – if you plan something with him in the first half of 2019 he might still have time to help out, not just with the building/ finishing work you want done, but also with carrying boxes up the cellar stairs for the (next) garage sale.
By that time, hopefully Tanner and Tracker will be comfortably ensconced upstairs, and a lot less bothered by noises in / changes to “their” basement; and maybe the diverse family emergencies will have found a new stable equilibrium, though that of course is never predictable.
I worry about that. But we have a few upstairs things yet to do before working down below so we still have some more time. From hissing and hiding, Tracker has decided he’s willing to be petted if I have food and am about to serve it. I am taking full advantage of his lapse of security. And I think he’s beginning to think it’s ok. Tanner, on the other hand, is a glutton for petting, just doesn’t feel secure being picked up. Tracker reminds me of my dear old gal I lost before I got Sei, and I really want to be friends with him, but it’s slow going.
Suppose you just left the basement door open and let them find their way up as the feel the urge to explore?
Yeah, I heartily agree. Being home is a very nice thing.
Getting the kitchen back up and fully functional is going to be a big normalizing factor. Having one’s normal routines constantly disrupted really wears at one, more than you’d think. When I hear a great sigh of relief coming from the NW, I will know you’ve achieved it.
I hope once you get things sorted that you (and life!) will give yourselves a chance to rest and recuperate, and savor the completion of this remodeling project.
Hopefully, now that you’ll be able to stay put for a while, that will advance your cause with the basement kitties. They are still grieving the loss of their human, as well as their familiar home, and working through that takes time as well. Their world suddenly changed so radically, not to mention the trip, and they are understandably frightened and wary. Poor little guys. However, given time, they will settle. If you and Jane can’t win them over, nobody can!
I sincerely hope you’ve used up your yearly quota of crises and that it will be smooth sailing from here on out.
What’s that Chinese saying? Three bad, seven good?
Few pleasures surpass the comfort of being able to rest in one’s own home after a journey!
Two of our cats (daughters of a feral) are somewhat skittish and “tetchy”. They still take exception to the presence/existence of our third cat (a calm and docile male whom we rescued about 18 months ago). Feliway helps a little, and kitty Prozac helps a lot, but the post-pill distrust lasts far too long. Recently, we tried Royal Canin’s Calm dry food. It seems to help a little more than the Feliway, and all three cats like it very well.
Somewhat related: We have been feeding a feral cat (clipped ear, and all) for about 4 years and another for about 8 months. Our contractor constructed a really good shelter and cat sleeping quarters (complete with a nicely insulated “house”) for the single cat, but the two have bonded very well and sleep and eat together. The latest arrival must have been around people, because he started asking for pets and company after only a few months. The original feral continued to want to have absolutely no contact with us, although the shelter, the warm beds, the fresh food and water and kitty litter pan during inclement weather were acceptable. About a month ago, she also asked to be petted! She is clearly an older kitty, so we’ve been feeding her a renal diet, which they both like.
Now that we can pet them both, I could treat them for fleas and ticks (trans-dermal liquid between the shoulder blades). Next will be a dose of ivormectin for parasites (IM injections can be handled pretty quickly). If all goes well, then injected tranquilizer and a trip to the vet for blood work and vaccinations (and probably dental work). Neither cat wants to come inside, even when the temperatures are sub-zero, but we’d like to keep our little “colony” as healthy as possible.
Apologies for the overly chatty post!
Nice to read this, how you’re taking very good care of these feral cats, and what helps with their adjusting.
Glad you’re settling in. 🙂
What’s the etc for Resurgence? Is that scheduled for 2019?
*ETA, that should have been. I swear, my typing gets worse every year.
I believe you meant to say, “Darn this ‘auto-correct’!”
No, no; that would be the “auto-incorrect” bug/feature. ;D Or featured bug, in which otherwise correct words, right along with incorrectly spelled words, are respelled at the whim of the bug-feature, into words that may or may not resemble the writer’s intended word at all.
I would love to be able to turn this off, at least for Safari, but very likely system-wide, and potentially within my word processor too. The Mac keeps insisting on turning auto-incorrect back on, at least in Safari, even when at one point, I thought I had found how to turn it off.
Now reminded, I am going to do a bit more digging and see if I can find out how to do so.
Note there IS a system-wide auto-incorrect feature, and Safari (the browser) I believe “borrows’ this and keeps its own settings for just inside the browser. Then the word processor, NeoOffice, has its own auto-incorrect feature for its suite, including the Writer module of the suite. So there are at least three places to pin down.
Neco-ji, although it’s likely you use a Windows PC instead of a Mac, you may have a similar situation with your browser’s auto-incorrect feature.
The thing has gotten worse instead of better lately, trying to predict and respell perfectly good words in English, French, Spanish, or SF&F words. It is exceedingly annoying and way too picky. That I’m a generally very good speller, matters to it not at all, and it gets terribly upset at any “foreign” words / phrases / sentences in the middle of (default) English text. (There’s no way in the browser to mark up which language something is, so the auto-incorrect relies on auto-detection, which is really, really dismal.) (And yes, in HTML5 and CSS3, you can markup which language a span or block of text is. You can also do this in a word processor, usually.)
Just because the auto-incorrect featured bug is not multi-lingual does not mean the writer (me) is mono-lingual. Grr.
They never seem to have this problem on any starship or space station; which is a good thing. After a few hundred years, you would think they’d have that solved, after all. Haha.
But one can most assuredly comiserate with Capt. Pyanfar and Ker Hilfy, when fussing with the ship’s computer’s auto-translation features. Heh.
Home is as close to running a spaceship most of us ever experience (on Starship Earth anyway). Still have to deal with the life support systems ;-)! I was hoping that we were getting closer to a real home AI presence (think Cyteen), however, it’s becoming clear that we are headed toward another cyclical “AI Winter”, so HAL and co, are still decades away (I mean seriously, would you put your kids in an autonomous vehicle on the interstate?)
Interstate? Sure. Twisty mountain road or confused urban street, not so much.