We used to have a neighbor who was somewhat less than “whole”. She had a real passion for animals…well, for collecting animals; not so much for taking care of them. Fast forward a few years and she has moved away, and, in fact, her house was torn down. The animals remain and we have grown somewhat attached to some of them. Just so you get a picture of what I mean, we have had as many as 13 cats on our side porch…none of which was ours.
There are fewer now and we have captured the ones that are tame and had them fixed. I guess we should have taken them all to the pound but there are a few that are good cats and nice to pet when we are out in the yard. They stay outside and keep the varmints at bay. There are a number of cats that are feral, and as it is now spring, pregnant. We do not need a dozen more cats around here so we plan to trap the feral ones and take them to the pound. I have a few box traps so this seemed like an easy task. I baited two traps with canned cat food and walked away.
I checked the traps periodically through the day and only succeeded in catching one of the tame/fixed cats…three times. I can’t tell if he is smart or dumb. Dumb to keep getting caught or smart because he filled his belly with good food, knowing that we would just release him. Anyhow, I set them again and forgot about it until morning. I checked the trap Sunday and sure enough, I caught another cat…a real wild one!
(hint: that’s not really a cat)
I took this one out to the woods and let him go. He didn’t stick around for pleasantries which suited me just fine!
Winter is not my friend. I generally do not like a single thing about it. This week, we are supposed to get colder than average temperatures with the lowest on Tuesday…single digit stuff. We have a little tradition in our house that started by accident…whenever it’s cold outside, we sing (repeatedly) that Christmas-ish song, Baby it’s cold outside. The kids sing it. We sing it. It’s usually loud and bad and we rarely get past the first verse. And it’s bad. We love it though!
Anyhow, my blogging and real-life friend Granny Sue put up a great poem she wrote about the cold…check it out. My poems on cold would be a study in four letter words so I will spare you that.
So, instead, I thought I would post a few pics I have taken as I stand with Isaac at the bus stop…in the cold…and dark.
I do like one thing about winter and cold I guess. I like turning the heat up, piling on a big stack of blankets (which in my case, means one blanket on especially cold days), drinking hot tea non-stop and laughing at the wind with my sweetie. I know we need the cold to reset Mother Nature and all so I guess I will make the most of the crisp cool mornings at sunrise when I get to see the beauty around me and take a few special minutes to talk to Isaac in the dark. His guard is down in the dark (or maybe it’s the onset of hypothermia?) and we get to talk about a little bit of everything.
Bring on the Arctic blast…I am ready and so is my hot tea!
Friends, these are dark times. No really…it is still dark at my house. No power for 5-7 days or so is what I heard somewhere. It is really strange as usually we can see lights somewhere around us since we live on top of a hill. This time, there are no lights anywhere. Everyone is without power.
In the summer, that isn’t too big a deal. It’s hot but the generator will run a few fans and lights so we are fine. In the winter, however, the cold gets to be a pretty big drag. Remember a few weeks ago I got a kerosene heater at the junk sale? Well I am pleased to report that it works great! Our house was still 57 degrees last night but that’s warmer than it was when we started! We had ventilation and 2 carbon monoxide detectors so we were being safe. All of our appliances are electric so it was an all around uncomfortable evening. Luckily, since we had snow, we took everything from the ice box and put it out in the snow banks.
Kerosene heater – what a pretty glow!
It was weird to look out of the area where there are normally hundreds of lights. Last night, there were only a few that coincided with the roar of the generators stationed nearby. Even with those running, it was so much more quiet than normal. Kind of weird.
I guess the other weird thing is that Emily and I decided to replace one shower head last night in the dark…I guess we finally had nothing else to do but a little light house work. Our house was so odd to listen to without the normal buzz of electrical things as well. I could hear the kids talking and the cats walking across the floors. I heard a few creaks and groans too…she was cold too I suppose.
I guess that, even as much as some aspects of this outtage suck, there are some neat things that happen around home that I normally wouldn’t take the time to notice. Maybe dark times are good every now and then…
Hurricane Sandy brought snow to our neck of the woods. Sometime over night it started snowing and really blowing and this morning, there was a bunch of that white garbage on the ground and hanging in the trees, many of which still had leaves. Add wet, heavy snow to trees with leaves and you have a winter power-outtage mess!
I shoveled the driveway this morning. We have a bad driveway. Of course, in WV, most driveways are bad. Anyhow, ours is on a hill and has a slight curve at the bottom. It connects to a single lane road with an 8 or so foot drop to the houses below us. So, I slid down the driveway in spite of its being shoveled and onto the single lane road. As I tried to navigate to the main road, I slid sideways across said road and had my tires at the edge of the drop-off. Ugh. I shoveled a bunch of the road and was able to slide sideways (no exaggeration) down onto the main road. So my driveway is a hill and my access to the main road is a hill. I nearly bit it on both roads…
Since I couldn’t get back home, I decided to go on to the office…which had no power. Ugh. It’s still snowing and blowing and we still have no power at the house. Obviously the power came back at the office (where this website resides on a server in my office) so I guess it could be worse…except my poor family is stranded at home without power. Poor them.
Well, it sort of sucks here but everyone is ok and we are nowhere near as bad off as many other folks so I count my blessings. Stay thirsty safe my friends…
My job isn’t as stressful as some folks but there is a good deal of pressure involved with writing computer software. That’s what I do for a living and I mostly like it. Writing software is like working a gigantic logic problem like you get in those puzzle books on the magazine rack…except it is all day long, every day. It takes a good bit of concentration and the ability to block out everything else. Of course, deadlines are always too near and bugs happen in software. Just think of how often you get to install windows updates! Behind the scenes somewhere, there was a programmer retracing logic and trying to find the hole in (probably) someone else’s thought processes when they were coding it…and they were under a deadline…and they were fueled by Mountain Dew!
Don’t get me wrong, most days I really enjoy that but it is hard work. I have to tell you though, I really enjoy my therapy:
Driving out my country road is so beautiful and although there are plenty of bumps on that old dirt road, it still seems to smooth things out for me. I know I am fortunate to be able to get away and for that, I am truly thankful!
Well, just like the last time, I noticed that there were a bunch more pretty flowers…and some other scenes that just really struck me about how pretty WV (and more specifically my little part of WV) really is. I hope you enjoy them even half as much as I did!
(click on each pic to enlarge…I think they are even prettier that way!)
Here are some more nature pics I took recently. I was driving up to the property by myself the other morning and for some reason, I took a few minutes to slow down and notice what a pretty trip it is once I get off of the main road. I stopped every hundred feet or so (it seemed) and took pics of some of the beautiful sights and scenes around me. I hope you enjoy even half as much as I did!
(click on each pic to enlarge…I think they are even prettier that way!)
These are all growing in the ditch lines on the old dirt road on the way up to the property. There are so many more things growing up there…I wish I could spend more time exploring…I can only imagine what grows wild. I just never noticed how much blooms this late in the summer…I always think of spring as the time of flowers…boy was I wrong!
I know this stuff is a nuisance to most people. In fact, when I was in college, I worked as a lifeguard at the Cook Forest State Park swimming pool (which I believe is gone now, sadly…my Mom worked there eons before I did). There was a ton of fun to be had as a lifeguard and the forest itself was beautiful. If you ever need a place to visit in PA, consider Cook Forest.
Anyhow, the superintendent at the park hated bull thistle. The pool opened on Memorial Day each year and in PA (at least then), it could still be quite cool. They also filled the pool from a deep well which ran about 50 degrees…it took awhile to be swimmable even if the air was warmer. So, when we had really cool days, the chief would come by and send some of us out to rid the park of all bull thistle. I hated that job and at that time, I vowed to never view thistle as an enemy again (at least not until I have power equipment to deal with it). You see, we cut it by hand then and it was not an amusing pastime.
All of these pictures were taken at our place and the thistle are pretty rampant. All sorts of insects love them though and I have no strong urge to deal with the thistle so, for now, they will remain an insect paradise and a great source of late summer color!
As with most of the country, it has been hot as blazes here in West-by-God-Virginia. Since the heat may continue on until Christmas, we decided to continue to plow onward with the work on the cabin, although at a slowed pace.
Day 1 of siding on the surface of the sun
On Independence day as well as this past Sunday, we worked on hanging siding on the third side of the “deluxe shed”. In a new record, we made it out to the place at 8:30 am. You see, we usually mess around and do other things…like eat at Panera…we do that way too often.
Siding complete on side 3!
We usually have to stop by one of the home improvement places and get supplies…of course, it’s the weekend so we usually sleep in too. Anyhow, with the temps, we decided to break tradition on all accounts and start early before it got hot. We did start early, but we did not beat the heat.
We took this at 9am…well, maybe not…but not long after
So, we took tons of water and wore sunscreen and hats and all of that stuff. Across the span of the two days, we were able to hang the siding on the third side of the “luxury deer stand”. It is coming along nicely.
There are other builders in our neighborhood also. We tried to get to know the neighbors but they are not terribly friendly.
The waspers!
The bottom of the cabin is exposed still and some bald-faced hornets have decided to take up residence and build a bigger-than-i’d-like paper nest. I found out that this style of hornet is really a yellow jacket variant which is in the wasper genus. For anyone not familiar, wasper is Southern for wasp. Many folks actually say it sort of like “washper”. Anyhow, the Wasper family have moved in and are not at all friendly. We’ll have to deal with that later. I will collect their home and display it as a trophy in the deluxe shed come fall…
Last Friday, we headed to PA to help celebrate my aunt and uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary. We have always been very close to them so it was a really great time…once we got there.
We left about 3 hours later than I had planned. It’s a 6-7 hour drive so that makes a big difference. Anyhow, about an hour into the trip, my mom called and asked if we were alright. I thought she was nuts but she told me that they were watching the Weather Channel (as all good worried parents tend to do) and that there was a terrible storm in WV. I told her we would be fine and all that. Not ten minutes later the sky became black like I haven’t seen in a long time and it became scary windy. We slowed down to a crawl and kept going. There was no use stopping…WV is pretty un-populated and any place that did have shelter was already without electricity…almost instantly.
This doesn’t begin to do it justice…
So we drove through it from Flatwoods, WV to Waynesburg, PA…around 110 miles. It was only really bad for about 50 miles but it was really really bad in that stretch. North of Pittsburgh, it cleared out and we could see stars.
Anyhow, fast forward to our return trip on Sunday. We had been warned to get gas before we got to Charleston so we figured we would get it in PA and then try again about 70 miles outside out Charleston. It turns out that the electric was out from about 100 miles outside of Charleston so there was little gas to be had. We saw some folks who were obviously travelling, just sitting at gas stations presumably waiting for electric to come on so they could fill up and continue their trip.
A few limbs down at our place
Luckily, we had plenty of gas because when we got to Charleston, there were lines at the few stations that had both electricity and gas. People were fighting apparently which is not surprising considering some folks were waiting 2 hours for gas in 95-100 degree humid temps. When we arrived home, we found no electricity and some large branches down. Our neighbor had a larger tree come down which brought down a pole and lines. They had the lines propped up with a 2×4 to allow them to get in and out of the house. Lots of people were without water as well as power which made this deal pretty serious for a lot of people.
Not our house but local…note the crushed roof on that SUVCheck out the size of the tree that mashed the SUV
All-in-all, we are pretty lucky. We still do not have power and may not until Sunday or Monday. Still, we have no damage and are able to stay at Emily’s parents’ house who do have power. I definitely feel bad for folks across the state, though, who have no such escape. Fifty-three of the fifty-five counties in the state have damage and are under a state of emergency (I think that’s what they call it…whatever the technical term is). West Virginians are great folks though and will weather this literal storm just fine…a little more aware of how much we depend on the electric and water.
EDIT: I wrote this a day or so ago before we got power back. Thursday at 4 pm our power was returned so are mostly back to normal aside from cleaning up debris
