Hello friends, Do you know what absolutely bogs me down, stops me in my tracks and causes me to second guess every little thing I do? Decisions. Maybe you’re like that maybe you’re not.
During the course of my work day I have to make hundreds if not thousands of decisions. No I am not a doctor and no one’s life is hanging in the balance but yet decisions must be made. Little things that you don’t even think about. That’s a decision. It can be exhausting: Deep in your brain thousands of decisions are being made.
Some decisions will require more thought than others. Some will make you stop in your tracks and consult with someone else. God? Your spouse? A co-worker? I always turn my decisions over to God unless I forget and arrogantly think I can handle them on my own.
Did I make the right decision? Did I make a mistake? Did I give the decision enough thought? Should I hold onto the decision and nurture it and pet it and name it George? Will someone’s life be affected by my decision? Not life threatening but you know what I mean. Will this decision lead to, GOD FORBID, another decision!!!!
You see where I coming from here, right? Case in point. My husband and I are trying to plan a beach vacation for maybe a week. What month?, Which days?, who will stay with the fur babies? the fur baby decision is a biggie. We either have to have someone come and stay at the house for most or all of the time. Molly has gotten so old and feeble we have to have someone here at our house just to get her in out of the heat in the middle of the day. And she stays in all the time now. We can’t take a chance on her being outside especially at night because of the C word. Coyotes, shhhhhhh. And now we have all the new kitties. What days can we both be off together?should we drive or fly? How many days?
WHEW!!!!! I am tired just thinking about it. Is it worth a few days on a sandy beach watching the ocean waves crash gently against the shore and if your lucky gently lapping against your toes? HECK YES!!!!! So I plug on.
I was never a parent, except to my fur babies. So I think when you are parenting you deal with about a million issues and decisions a day. That is what I have observed from my loved ones who are parents. So maybe I didn’t go through all of that and now decisions seem to overwhelm me. Yes I think that is it. Or maybe as I have gotten older I just don’t give a frack about what I do or what happens most of the time. Yes I think that is it. Or maybe it isn’t really important at all these decisions I think I “must” make. Yes I think that is it. Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t decide. And on that. I don’t have to because it doesn’t really matter.
Well hello September how did you get here so fast? It seems like only yesterday it was Memorial Day and the summer season was just getting underway. If you work in tourism there are two important dates. Memorial Day is the kick off to summer and Labor Day is sort of the last big hurrah. I am so ready for slower days and fewer crowds.
There is a change in the air. You can feel it. It’s not just that the temps are a little cooler, although it was what I would call chilly this morning, there is actually a shift in the air and the slant of the sun is different. Shadows look different. I love it!!! I love the fall season. The days are getting a little shorter and the sun rises a little later. I love it all!!!!
Doesn’t the sun look a little different?
Corn fields are everywhere and being cut daily.
I think there are several reasons I like fall and winter.
I am a big girl and I don’t feel comfortable showing so much skin. Especially when my skin never seems to tan and it remains stark white no matter what I do.
I hate to sweat. If I am working out I fully intend to sweat, I even welcome it but not just from walking into the Walmart or around the yard. I love cold weather because I don’t seem to sweat quite as much.
I love winter clothes. This sort of goes back to number 1. but I do feel more comfortable covering up. And I love sweaters and boots they are my favorite things to wear.
I love all the holidays in the winter. Thanksgiving and Christmas and even Halloween. Great times to get together with friends and family.
I love fall decorations.
I sleep better when it is cold and I can snuggle under the covers. And it’s more comfortable having your fur babies sleep with you when it’s not 90 degrees.
So there are just a few reasons I love the fall and winter.
On Wednesday afternoon we had to take two of the kitty babies to the vet. They both had some serious eye gunk going on. I was not sure if it was pink eye but I suspected that it might be because two of them had it. We found out that the little orange cat is a male, we named him Milo and the light gray cat is female we named her Izzy. We are still not sure about the other two. Milo and Izzy are doing much better after getting meds. I told our vet that retirement would never be in our future because of vet bills and fur baby medicine and food and kitty litter. Oh well, working keeps you young right?
I took Thursday off. I had to work some over the Labor Day weekend and I knew it would be my only chance to have a day off. I did have a zoom meeting that morning but the rest of the day was so much fun. I met my sister in Madisonville and we went to nearby Tellico Plains to have lunch at Iron Works. It is a restaurant on the river and part of the building at one time was an old Iron Works factory. Check out the site here The weather was beautiful and the food was fabulous. I had the breaded rainbow trout and okra. I had been wanting okra for some time and theirs was amazing.
Who could resist this beautiful spot to hang out after dinner?
After we left the restaurant we went to a small used book store in town. I have been on the look for the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I love this little book store and they have such a variety of used books. They are neatly arranged by category and author. I didn’t see any of the Little House books so I asked the lady at the counter. She said they sold out almost as soon as they came in. Just my luck and you know the funny thing is I had all of them when I was a kid. I have no idea what happened to them probably sold at a yard sale or something. We did find one book by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane who was Laura’s daughter. I snapped it up.
I can’t wait to read this book.
I was off today and I finished the blue striped socks I had been working on. And guess what? I had just enough yarn and didn’t have to add another ball. YAY!!!!! But man I was sweating it. I tried knitting faster and of course that didn’t help a stitch is a stitch no matter how fast you knit.
So how is your September going so far? Any fall projects planned?
Hello friends happy Sunday, it has been a very full week. We are still on kitten patrol over here. Feeding and caring for the kitten babies takes a lot of time. I always do the morning feedings and most of the evenings too if Mark is working. It is so much fun to go out in the mornings and see all the little kittens running and jumping they remind me of little popcorn kernels popping around everywhere. I was talking to my nephew on the phone a couple of days ago and he said so ” I hear you have become the crazy cat lady”. I said ” well I don’t know about that. Just because I now have six cats and am sitting here knitting a sock, Oh wait!!!! maybe I am!!!”
I get up early anyway and this helps out a lot because Molly, my big old girl, is still having the liver issues and she has to have a pill one to two hours before she can eat. So I get up, give Molly her pill, let Scruffy out to pee, feed Scruffy and Kitty Kitty and then feed the outside babies and mama kitty. Yep that’s eight. I usually do all of this even before I have my coffee. I just can’t bear to think of them hungry. I then get my coffee, breakfast, and get ready for work. By that time an hour or so has passed and I can feed Molly.
Orange kitty has won my heart he is such a playful goof ball. And what an eater. He is twice as big as the others.
This little guy seems to be the runt of the litter. He is very small but still very playful.
Molly is getting around a lot better. On Wednesday I was starting out the front door with my purse and keys. Molly comes to the door like she needed to go back out. I let her out to pee. She made the rounds of the front yard and just as I thought she was heading back in she veered to the side of the house and trotted off into the woods. This wouldn’t normally bother me except I was close to being late for work as it was. I ran back in the house and got the leash. I didn’t dare leave her out because she can’t handle the heat of the day. Back outside and no Molly!! I yelled for her, of course she’s almost completely deaf so that was a waste, and nothing. I went to the back of the house and no Molly!!! for an old lady who can barely walk because of stiff arthritic legs she had gotten away pretty quick. The temps were already high and the humidity felt like walking through water. My hair was frizzled beyond belief and I had sweat running everywhere. My makeup was history. I knew she would be back as soon as she had made her rounds through the woods and sure enough about fifteen minutes later she came wandering back. By this time I had already messaged my co workers and let them know I was running late.
Look at Molly feeling quite proud of herself after she made her mommy late for work. She know she’s still in charge.
Work was a full week of being busy. Our visitation has slowed but we are still fairly busy. This upcoming weekend will be Labor Day weekend and after that we will see shorter work hours and much fewer people. I am always ready for this breather.
I have been knitting on the blue stripped socks. I did almost an entire sock yesterday and today. I am almost out of yarn and trying to finish this sock without having to start another ball. I do have an extra ball but I hate to start one in the middle of a sock because it seems like you can never get the stitches quite tight enough. I remember telling another knitting friend that I finished an entire sock once in one day. She said yes you can do that but you will get nothing else done. This is so true. I get consumed with the stitches and nothing else gets done. It’s o.k. it’s sort of mindless therapy.
Will I make it without having to start another ball of yarn? I don’t think so. I still have several inches to go.
I also started another granny square afghan. I saw a picture of one I really liked on Instagram and I had almost all the same colors of yarn. I am using the same color sequence. Lord knows I do not want or need another afghan I may give this one to one of my nephews. But I just love making them. I realized I have become that aunt that knits and crochets things and gives them to her family whether they want them or not. HA!!!
I am loving this afghan. I throw all of it into a big green canvas bag so I can easily carry it with me when I go from room to room.
When I was growing up my grandmother made afghans for us all the time. Through the years they seemed to disappear one by one until we had very few of them left. My parents house had an old basement and part of it was a root cellar where my mama kept things she had canned. When my parents died and my sisters and I were cleaning everything out of the house we went down into the basement and found one of the afghans stuffed into the corner of the dirt cellar. Vines had grown through the afghan and it was covered in dirt and mud. My sisters refused to try and salvage it but I cut the vines away and it was actually in pretty good shape. All the stitches were still in tact. I took it home and cut the vines out piece by piece and washed it several times. It looked just like it had when she gave it to us. I still have it and treasure it because it was made by her.
This is the afghan my grandmother made. I think it looks pretty good to have been rescued from a root cellar.
I am glad to have the diversion of my fur babies. It keeps my mind off of the bastardly Covid virus. Not completely, because it has been hitting closer to home lately with lots of people I know and love getting sick and even having to be hospitalized.
I hope your weekend is going well and you will take a minute to say a prayer for the people in the path of hurricane Ida, The people who lost their lives in the airport attack in Kabul, The fires in the western states and all the people suffering from Covid. These things have been weighing heavy on my mind and heart this week.
About a month ago I noticed a strange colored kitty cat in the back yard near the woods. She had some really unusual markings. I tried taking a picture of her from the back deck but it was pretty blurry. We thought she might be part bob cat or even a baby bobcat. As we were able to get a little closer we decided that she was not a bobcat but a dark colored calico.
Every time we tried to go near this kitty she would run into the woods. We started putting food down at the edge of the woods and then creep outside and peep around the corner to see if she was eating it. I did get a couple of pictures of her while she was eating and to be honest she looked pretty scary. I will even admit that when I showed the pictures to my sisters they tossed around the name demon cat, wild cat, etc etc. Of course my mama bear protectiveness took over and it just made me love her even more.
I will admit she does look a little scary here. It’s amazing what a few weeks of food and kitty loving will do.
After several weeks of putting food out and getting closer and closer to our little multi colored baby, she started coming closer to us. You might as well go ahead and call my husband the crazy cat “man” he loves this kitty and worries himself to death about her being in the woods at night. I reminded him that she had been in the woods for a while before we got to her but that doesn’t seem to appease him.
She is making herself at home. If I had been smart when I looked at this picture I would have noticed what was peeking out from her belly. But I didn’t. I can be clueless like that sometimes.
I love this annoyed look. It’s like she’s saying get your butt out here and feed me!!!!
Isn’t she pretty? She is very vocal and feisty.
So in the last four weeks or so we have broken some of the unfriendly barriers of the wild kitty. I don’t really think she is a ferrel cat because she will let us get close to her. The only problem is she will quite literally scratch the living daylights out of you if you are not careful. She also does this little hissing thing every time we walk near her even when we are feeding her. But she is getting better.
I started working with her every day giving her Kitty treats and trying to pet her while I was wearing a large padded glove. After a week of this and her snuggling next to my gloved hand I tried petting her bare handed. She let me. But she was still a little skittish. She would also disappear for most of the day and only return for food. I told Mark if I didn’t know better I would think she was returning to kittens. But by this time we had been seeing her for about five weeks and hadn’t seen any signs of kittens.
Whoops. Spoke too soon. Friday afternoon Mark went out to the garage and there were three rather large kittens scurrying under his truck. Obviously they had followed their mama back to our house.
This little guy is the bravest so far and ventures out from under the car more than the others.
Just hanging out with mom.
is this not the most adorable face you have ever seen???
And as you can see there’s not three there’s four!!!!!
So far we have only caught a glimpse of them. They have taken up residence under one of the cars on the driveway that we don’t drive a lot. Now we are terrified to drive it until we can get all of the kitties away from it. This could take awhile. I know we will have to give most of them away. I would like to keep mama cat. We named her Allie Cat when she first came so we have really bonded with her. We may keep one of the babies. The next step is to get them tame enough to get them to the vet and checked out. Mama Allie is becoming quite friendly so I think the kitties will follow her lead before too long. You know I want them all and have already started naming them.
I can’t tell you how much fun we have had with these babies. Mark and I are constantly in conversation about all the babies. How much did they eat, what have they been doing. It’s become quite a zoo around here. Of course the inside babies are still a handful. Molly is having to eat several times a day just small amounts because of her tummy. She is doing much better and she has even gained a little weight. Molly does not mind the kitties at all. She usually just steers clear of all of them. Scruffy does not like the kitties and when he goes outside he chases mama cat every chance he gets. I really have to work with him on this. Of course Kitty Kitty stays in the house all the time and is oblivious to what is going on outside except for what Scruffy tells her. And he is keeping her updated.
Scruffy is giving Kitty Kitty the lowdown on what is going on outside.
So that is what is going on in my life. What is going on with you?
Southern Patches 