Author: Lisa -Southern Patches

Hello everyone, my name is Lisa I am a southern girl born and raised in East Tennessee. I love discovering new places and things to do. I have a lot of favorites, shopping, traveling, knitting and photography are all at the top of my list. I am married with my fur babies my only children. This blog is actually named after my beloved basset hound Patches. She passed away a few years ago but will always have a huge part of my heart. Come with me and we will explore some wonderful places and discover some really fun things. Are you ready?

Two Months

Hello friends this is a post I never expected to make.

It’s actually been ten weeks, four days and seven hours that I said goodbye to my precious husband and he left this earthly home for heaven.

I had mentioned in a previous post that he had been sick. He was diagnosed with a fungal pneumonia. With all of the anti rejection medications he had to take, because of the transplanted kidney, his system had a hard time fighting off anything. Over the course of a month which included a four day stay in the hospital he became increasingly worse. Nothing seemed to help and his fever was non stop. But we never thought he wouldn’t get better. I could see the look in the doctors’ eyes as they discussed the pneumonia with us. They told us it could be life threatening if they didn’t get the upper hand on the infection. He was at home the night things got really bad really fast. He was airlifted to Vanderbillt Medical Center. His body and heart had just had too much. The crazy thing was that through it all the kidney was still great.

All I can say is that it was pure hell. I can’t and won’t go into all the details because they’re just too painful to share. But my husband my best friend my confidant my soul mate is gone. I am now navigating my life without him here by my side. I don’t know how to do it. It feels like half of me is missing and it is. He is. And while I rejoice for him my heart is broken. I am alone.

He is everywhere. He completely fills every thought and memory that I have. That’s both agonizing and precious at the same time. We were together forty years, thirty five of those married. We dated for five years.

My husband was just the most wonderful, kind patient person in the world. People loved him and gravitated to him. He had an infectious smile and laugh. His co workers told me that when he came in every morning he would shout out a hearty “good morning everyone”. He had just retired in February and was loving it. I had planned to retire in December, but I will put those plans on hold for a little while. The plans we make are not always God’s plans.

I wanted to share the reason for my absence. I will continue to post. I know my husband would want me to. He knew how much I loved blogging.

I don’t think you could ever be prepared for losing your spouse. Any thought you might have could never compare to the reality when it happens. And you wouldn’t want to know.

So grab your husband or wife or partner and kiss them and tell them you love them a million times. The small arguable things don’t matter. Just enjoy each other every second.

Until we meet again sweet baby I will hold you near in my heart and honor you every chance I get. I will see you in every ray of light and know that you are still with me.

High stop Cadillac Mountain in the Acadia National Forest in Maine.

Always remember

Love your day your way

Hello Monday, Goodbye July

I always say how fast the days and months are flying by, but let me tell you it seems as though July lasted an entire year.

First of all the heat was crazy hot, the humidity felt like you were walking through water, my hubby and I had to do another overnight to Nashville at Vanderbilt hospital, I had blood work and a doctor appointment, also a trip for me to the dermatologist to have some places taken off of my face that were pre skin cancer, another vet appointment for Bunnie and then Izzy going missing for three days, and the worst is that hubby has been sick for two weeks. It started out as a sinus infection and seems to have gotten worse. He is on immunosuppressants, because of the kidney transplant, and everything hits his system harder and takes twice as long for him to recover. And work, July was the busiest month of the year for us. With all of that, you would think the month would have absolutely flown by, but it didn’t. I guess with my husband being sick and not himself it has been a long month. Hopefully he will soon be on the mend.

Now, with all of that said, I have to put a spin on this long month. I have also loved this month. I loved Celebrating America on the Fourth of July, the long sunny days, the beautiful blooming flowers, the lightning bugs or fireflies you might call them, the beautiful sunrises and sunsets, time spent with family and friends that I haven’t seen in a long time, Fresh fruits and vegetables at the farm market, green luscious fields, reading, knitting and enjoying some time at home with my husband and the fur babies, air conditioning.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!

Crazy Cat Days

Hello and happy Tuesday. Wow what a heat wave we are having here in the south. Temps will be in the triple digits this week with the heat index being hotter than satan’s arm pits. We know the heat will be this way, we expect it this time of the year, we prepare by planning all indoor activities, but dang it is so miserable when it happens. And of course we all have to whine and talk about it like it’s never happened before. This too shall pass in a few months. Often we have summer weather well into October. Gulp!!!! You’ve heard of the Dog Days of Summer. Well I think we are in the Cat Days of Summer.

I’m not sure if it is the heat or the moon or because Mercury is in retrograde or what, but my kitty cats have been wild. We have three feral cats that we have had for over three years. We originally had five including mama cat and her four kittens. We took all of them in. About eight months after we took them in two of the kittens were gotten by coyotes. Because of that we now bring all of the feral cats into the garage at night. Well, let me say we lure them into the garage. Believe me when they say you can’t herd cats, you really can’t. Sometimes the cats come in easily enough. They are usually hungry and come in and get on their beds. It looks like kitty nirvana in our garage. We have numerous beds, toys and even an air conditioner for the summer time. They also have a heated kitty house for winter. But still there have been times that I have been up at all hours of the night trying everything I know to coax those babies into the garage.

Last week we could not corral them and get them in. After two sleepless nights I told my husband that we could not continue to lose sleep over the cats. It was getting ridiculous. We would give them until a certain time at night and then the garage door would go down. They are cats and yes we would worry sick about them but they are still a bit feral. We have never even been able to pet them. But does that stop us from loving them more than anything in the world? NO.

As soon as we pulled this kitty operation, Izzy disappeared. She is the smallest of all the cats and a bit on the goofy side. She is not smart enough to be scared like Allie, the mama cat, or her sister Sadie. She disappeared Friday morning or sometime late Thursday. We were sure a coyote had gotten her too. We have security cameras and we have not seen a coyote in a long time but still they are very sneaky.

I cried and blamed myself and thought there surely was something I could have done. Hubs assured me that there was not. It was not our fault. We wandered through the woods all weekend trying to find Izzy or a trace of her. Mama cat mourned her baby and was so sad I couldn’t stand it. We mourned our Izzy girl and told stories about her. Mama cat dutifully came into the garage every night but her other daughter, the vixen black cat Sadie, stayed outside near the neighbors house. I took her some food and water. Sadie is very smart and will run up a tree or something tall as soon as the first sign of danger. I don’t worry quite as much about her being out all night.

The really strange thing to all of this is that my friend Sherry’s cat, Grey, went missing at almost the same time Izzy did. We live miles apart, maybe thirty minutes or so from each other. They disappeared at almost the same time.

On Monday morning I went outside to check on Sadie and see if I could find her. I let Mama cat out of the garage. We were walking along the driveway and all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I saw a gray streak. At first I thought it was mama cat but then to my surprise I saw it was Izzy!!!! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I think I screamed and I started yelling to Sadie and mama cat that Izzy was home!!!! I ran into the house and told my husband. We were so excited and relieved.

Another funny thing is that my friend Sherry’s cat Grey also returned that same day. Maybe they were out living it up together.

Please don’t think we haven’t tried to tame these babies. We have. Once a year we capture them and take them to the vet for their annual check ups. It is not easy. We want to love on them so bad. Mama cat is a little better and will allow some loving, but not much.

I am so hoping for a break in the weather and maybe the cats will calm down a bit. Mercury will soon be out of retrograde, fall is on the way. We are a little worried that the cats are out of sync because of Bunnie, our new girl. She is a very large but sweet dog. She’s loud and boisterous and loves the kitties and just wants to be friends with them. I did a post about Bunnie and if you missed it you can read it here.

Hello my name is Lisa and yes, I am the crazy cat lady.

I hope your week is going well.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

Life Or Something Like It.

Hello friends how is your week going? I apologize but this post was for last week . I meant to post it last week and didn’t get around to it.

We made a quick overnight trip back to Nashville last week. My husband had to have a follow up on the procedure he had a couple of weeks ago, the kidney biopsy. If you missed that post and want to read about it you can read it here We left out on Wednesday and returned Thursday evening. I was coming off of a six day work week which included the Fourth Of July holiday, so it was a bit tiring. Fortunately I had a long weekend off to catch up. As I said this check up was just a follow up to make sure the biopsy site was still looking good.

For my long weekend off I would like to say I had a lot of down time and read and knitted but that was not the case. A lot had to be done around the house. After the kidney biopsy hubby had to take it easy and could not lift over ten pounds for two weeks. Because the kidney is located in his abdomen, and had just gotten a couple of good pokes, he couldn’t bend or twist a lot either. Fortunately after our visit on Thursday he can return to normal activities.

On Sunday I decided to hang some mini blinds I had bought for my bedroom. I figured I could knock that little project out in about 30 minutes. Wrong. I was not paying attention when I bought the blinds and the box read “cordless” Now, I haven’t bought mini blinds in a long time. And to be honest I went a little cheap with these because I was in a hurry to get them up. I just like having my blinds pulled at night. I guess cordless is the latest and greatest of the mini blinds. They are not a favorite of mine. I know how to measure the blinds and put the little insert boxes on each side at the top. But these were totally different. When I asked my husband to borrow his drill he decided he had better get involved. He said he would help me and we would get them put up twice as fast. Not.

We started by putting the new hardware onto the window frames. These were totally different from the other blinds I had hung previously. We actually did this, putting the three brackets up, three times before we got it right. We argued, we were hot, we were sweaty and I think the word divorce may have been tossed out. And if you have ever done a small project with your husband you know what I mean. This 30 minute project had already taken over 2 hours. I was feeling very much like Homer Simpson. I call times like this “The Homer Simpson Chronicles.” You can read my post about me often feeling like Homer here. Homer is a goofy cartoon character who makes tons of mistakes and can’t get anything right. I was Homer that day.

We finally got all of the brackets put in correctly. When I went to hang the blinds I noticed the right side of the blinds was hanging at an odd angle. The string was broken. Yes, the little string in between the blinds. I’m pretty sure it was my fault. I think I did this when I was getting them out of the box. So I did the only thing I could do, I ripped those blinds down and pulverized them. And that is all I am going to say about those blinds. But I will say I bought another pair and it was very easy hanging them because the brackets were already in place.

***I love the way the blinds look behind my lace curtains.***

Lots of work and living have been going on. Since we now have a large inside (mostly) dog and still the five kitties life is very busy. We call our home the Zoo Crew. It seems like something always needs to be cleaned up after, fed, watered or walked. My work has still been very busy with barely a break to breathe. I feel like my house and yard have been neglected but with the heat and humidity, being outside has been almost unbearable.