Honoring the holidays

I have so much to get done, and using a precious hour to carve a pumpkin seems like an poor way to spend time, but I knew that if I went outside tomorrow and saw that uncarved pumpkin sitting there (the one that was given to me as a gift when I was snagging barn kittens) I would feel like I was letting every tiny bit of fun slip away. So after running into town for an order of wings and watching all the kids in their costumes on the street in Spencer, I came home and carved my pumpkin.

I take no credit for the design, as I totally stole it off a coworker's Facebook page. :)

Then I was about to toss the guts outside to go to the compost and recalled another Facebook post from another friends mentioning that she roasted the pumpkin seeds from her pumpkin yesterday. Mom used to roast the seeds for us when we were kids. So I went online for instructions, and now I'm drinking tea and munching away on seeds as I answer some work mail...and blog.

I'm quite content. Happy Halloween!

Communing with the homestead.

Today began here with Gillian's passing.

I hope people realize when I write about my angst here, it is no more than the usual human struggle for existence. I realize there are days when we are all miserable, so please suffer me to whine, without worrying.

I find it hard, sometimes, to think back to what the house was like when two of us lived here. It seems like I've done a lot of work on the inside of the house, and yet still there seems to be so much to do. The upstairs has languished for so long. Then I ventured back up (after sleeping downstairs for two years) and took over the guest room. Well, that didn't work out. The guest room is as silent as a tomb and I feel remote from the rest of the house. So I finally moved back into the bedroom. The thing that made it tolerable was pushing the bed right up against the window, like I used to do as a teenager (which is hard to do as a couple, because someone ends up crawling over the other person).

At night the moonlight streams in, and now and then the cats will watch out the window with great intent, and I'll sit up and watch the skunks and deer wandering out around the front yard. No bear yet, though. :) I actually love my bedroom now, and some semblance of "bedtime" has now come back into my life.

When I start boarding cats in the two upstairs bedroom, responsible cat owners would want to see the rooms, which means they will need to tromp through my upstairs as well. This means it's time to prettify the upstairs. So the pile of summer clothes got stored; the tv/dvd was moved from the dresser to the stand behind the bedroom door. Etcetera.

I moved the daybed into the bedroom as well, and the cats now like to hang out there, instead of all sleeping on me. It's quite comfy in here now.

"Doing something" about the house kept me from dealing with the baggage about Gillian. I actually really glad that I got to know her end. It's the best I (or sadly, she) could have hoped for. Every time she has disappeared for a bit, I always wondered if I would see her again, of if that was it. Poof...gone, always to wonder. If the cats were ultimately gone from the compost facility that would end one more source of stress between me and my ex, since he has been left to feed her during the week. So of course, the loss of Gillian is also tied up in the loss of my marriage, and working on the house makes it only so obvious I'm working on it alone. And then I end up reminding myself that it all really is so much better this way.

A mental "blah, blah, blah."

The longer I live here, the more certain I become that there are things I will never ever use. So on to Craigslist they go. Yet sometimes I let the oddest things linger on. The old cat tree is still up against the window in the hallway upstairs, even though a brand new cat tree sits right next to it. I just need to pull the old one out, and bump bump bump it down the stairs. Fifteen minutes max.

Oh well.

At any rate, it was a melancholy day. It almost became a terror-stricken day when Tyler ZOOMED out the front door, straight into Molly. Molly chased him, and Tyler ZOOMED off the porch around the house into the darkness -- smack into the half finished cat enclosure, where I was able to scoop him up before he darted away into the night.

Then once Tyler was safely in--both our hearts pounding--I went out calling for Bear, and immediately heard an animal scream up on the hill. Fox? Cat? I grabbed my coat, shoes, and flashlight, but Bear immediately showed up. I locked out the night with relish, once everyone was safely in.

My phone has been ringing off the hook with political auto-dialers to the point where I want to unplug the damned thing. I thought I was on the do-not-call list, but perhaps I need to do that again. It feels like there is some monster in my kitchen, ringing and ringing and ringing.

The only blessing has been this wonderful weather. I need to force myself to step outside during the day when I am working, or darkness and chill will creep in by 6:00 pm when I'm done, and I'll feel like the last of the warmth of the year has been stolen from me.

Welcome to the garden of mediocre carpentry

Sometimes, especially when I've had sort of a lousy week, I get kind of numb, take a good hard look around myself and think "Whoa...how did I let that happen?" I'm more likely to kick out a lot of work when I'm sort of down and out. I'm not quite sure why. Probably because my mind is numb too, and the body just says "pick this up; paint that; fix this"...sort of on autopilot.

I have people coming over to see kittens, and I've been cleaning out the upstairs of the house as well, so the porch has become a catch-all. I was walking up my path on Friday and suddenly saw it all with a critical eye. My ex and I had set up our garbage cans in a wooden crate by the door. Who wants their garbage right next to the door? Especially that nasty orange recycling bin. Little bits of this and that were stuffed down inside the slats of the crate.

When my ex moved the front steps to the side of the porch, we never got around to building a rail. He tied the old one onto the side of the steps so our parents would have something to hold onto. And there it stayed. He put artificial turf on the new steps so Sadie, our lame senior dog, wouldn't slip. The carpet looked quite nice at the time. However, Sadie has long since passed on, and the carpet has grown threadbare and holds pine needles, mulch, etc. Molly is quite nimble even on bare steps.

I stopped and stared at this old mess and said to myself "My God, does this not just SCREAM 'cat lady'?" Single old woman in a run-down house. Today I went after all the outside projects I've been putting off. The shutter on the front of the house is too stiff to knock back together, but at least I pulled off the slats that were sagging until I can bring it down and put it all back together again. I got rid of the garbage cans and the old crate, bought four bags of mulch, ripped off the old railing (what were we thinking when we did that?) and put up just a simple rail out of two by fours. I pulled the carpet off, swept the dirt off the boards, and stained the whole thing.

Then of course the heavens opened up and now I need to stain it all again. But at least it doesn't look like hell.

Then I tackled the cat enclosure that has been lying half finished in the grass.

I've been putting it off because I discovered I needed to build a base to make it high enough to clear the window I want it to butt up against. I'm not much of a carpenter, and having to measure and use the circular saw just doesn't thrill me. In my numb mood, the base became "no big deal." I ran out of daylight however, and the screwgun ran out of juice, so I'll have to finish it later. All it needs is some well placed screws, a roof, and shelves, and my indoor kitties can enjoy the sun...er...snow.

I'll post photos of it once I have some daylight.

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Moving indoors with the Sunday paper

It is officially too cold to sit on the porch in the morning with my Sunday paper. A heavy blanket of frost lies over everything. It is supposed to warm up to 70 today, and I'll open up the windows to the cat facility so the felines can enjoy fresh air for these last warm days of the year. Then it's back to winter, electric heat, and dust. Yick.

But yesterday it was beautiful. I have discovered soybeans in the pod. One of the girls ordered them at an Asian restaurant when we were out. I stopped at a tiny farm stand last weekend and there was a quart of soybeans for two bucks. So I took them home and have enjoyed them all week. Basically you just scrub them with salt, throw them in boiling water for 4 minutes, rinse them quickly with cool water (not long, because they are best warm) and then sprinkle the pods with salt. Sit, open them up, and enjoy the beans inside, and the salt on your fingers. For those on a no-salt diet, go on ahead without the salt. Actually, I was eating them in the car after I bought them, raw. But the pods are a bit hard to open without the quick boil.

The first round of kittens who have not been adopted yet are growing rapidly. I got an inquiry on Allie, and it was hard to get her to sit still for a good shot.

I have finally had to admit that my current income will not support the farm and cats. Gretchen is coming over today to help me rip out the carpet in one of (or maybe both? we'll see how it goes) the small bedrooms in my house. These rooms are never used. Until this spring, I never even used them for cats. I'm going to put down vinyl, finish painting the walls, paper the ceilings, and board pet cats. The rooms are entirely separated from my living space (and my cats) by a hallways, and they are nice sunny rooms. Each is 12x14. I'll need to put up ledges on the windows and make them otherwise cat-friendly. Each cat would get an entire room so she would not need to be cages while boarded.

This also means joining a pet boarding association, getting insurance, etc. etc. etc. The nice thing about pet sitting is that--unlike wildlife control--there are affordable software programs to manage them. As long as you input everything, the bookwork takes care of itself.

Each room also has a closet, so I can keep different kinds of cat litter, towels, etc. all close at hand. Funds raised from the cat boarding would go to the cat rescue.

I hope to get just a few regulars--people like myself who travel. Booking would be somewhat limited by the fact that I won't be able to board cats while I'm traveling myself.

So that is today's plan of action. I did manage to get the lawn mowed yesterday, hopefully for the last time. The frost destroyed all the flowers in the flower pots, so I may as well rip those out and put the pots in the barn. And maybe Gretchen and I can stop by Iron Kettle Farm today and I can pick up corn stalks for my window boxes on the cat facility.

If you are thinking "Maybe you wouldn't be so broke if you didn't buy roses for your porch," we'll, you'd be right. But the roses were on sale in Owego for three bucks and I couldn't resist.