All Glassed Up and Ready to Go

The china cabinet has all its glass and the armoire is empty, cleaned up and ready for the trip to High Springs. Both sides benefit on this. C&C get some furniture and storage space and I free up space in the storage shed. Tomorrow everything goes on the trailer.



Penny was supposed to run off for lunch with Pam today but Pam cancelled. We use the “Pam coming over” as an inspiration to clean up the place. (Just as if company was coming.) Without some inspiration it is easy to let things go. I obviously didn’t get my Mom’s cleaning gene.


Kitty Update – We seem to have settled in on 7 cats in the back yard. Unsub is still missing. Only one of the cats, Izzy, will let me pet it. Next comes Velcro who wants to be pet but can’t quite let it happen. Velcro usually plops down just out of reach when I’m petting Izzy. The only other cat that acts interested in attention is the seal point. It will come up and smell my hand and the give it a bunch of gentle swats with nails only slightly extended. They are more playful swats than menacing (no hissing). It seems to want attention also but, like Velcro, can’t let it happen.

Meredith

To all the cats I am primarily the food person. Whenever I go outside all of the cats appear on the back patio to check if I left something for them to eat. I do play with them in the evenings with a string on a fishing pole and everyone but Marmalade participates.

The seven cats at feeding time.

Normal Day


Today started with a trip to the glass shop to get glass cut for C&C’s china cabinet. We need 5 pieces to go in the door and sides and one shelf. All that came with the cabinet was one shelf. You would think people would be more considerate when they throw out furniture. The glass shop thought they might have the glass ready today, but they didn’t make it. It should be ready tomorrow.


It seems that Penny and I are doing everything together this week. This morning we had our 6-month dental appointment. Both of us went in at 9:30. Tomorrow we have haircuts scheduled with Barbara at 9:30. Yesterday it was the fantasy football draft. It’s a good thing we like to be together.


We had a nasty thunderstorm while we were at the dentist and had to drive around some flooded streets on the way home. We stopped at a roadside stand that was selling Georgia peaches and scuppernong grapes and got a bag of each. Both were ripe and sweet. We only got a little wet buying the produce. By the time we got home the rain was light. Our neighborhood didn’t get a lot of rain. We had a light, cool summertime lunch of leftover fried chicken, grapes, and peaches.


I used most of the afternoon to put a back on the top of the china cabinet, fill in some scratches with wood filler and get the cabinet ready for its trip to C&C. Penny used the afternoon to cover a parson’s chair for Karen. The plan is for Karen to use this chair for Truman and Twit to sit in at the window and free up the good parson’s chair for use at the dinner table full-time.


This evening I entertained myself by playing with the outside cats with a piece of cotton string on a fishing rod. I had all 6 of the “kittens” playing. Whenever I go out and spend time with the outside cats Brie comes to the sunroom window and watches me. Do cats get jealous? Earlier today Brie was playing with Velcro through the sliding door glass. Both Velcro and the seal point will play with Brie. It is so cute to watch.


I once again planted some cilantro in a pot today. I've never been succesful in growing cilantro but I keep trying. This time I'm growing the plant indoors. All the other times i've done it outside and it dies within a couple of weeks. We will see how this goes.

Week in Review


I’ve had a case of blogger’s block this week. I’ll try to catch up with things with this Sunday night blog.

After Tuesday’s a-little-bit-of everything day Wednesday was centered on straightening up the shop and getting the cat feeder working again. It took longer than I expected because I found that I had to not only fix the axle but replace some other pieces that were worn out and about to break. So fixing the feeder carried over into Thursday. The feeder is now back in operation and is sturdier than before being refurbished. The cats will again have a steady food supply when we go out of town.


Friday saw me making a replacement leg for a chair that Christy and Christian (C&C) have. Only 1 front leg was broken but I had planned to make a set of matching front legs out of some of the pieces of ash lumber I had left from the crib. I also made a backup leg out of poplar just in case I messed up. As it turns out I messed up. When I was cutting a dado in one of the legs I wasn’t careful enough with it and the saw blade was able to snatch the wood out of my hand and toss it off the table. I try to be very careful about keeping my fingers well away from the blade so I wasn’t in danger of chopping a finger but the board did whack my fingers nicely leaving them quite sore. Part of the reason the blade was able to catch the wood was because my hand was far from the blade and not keeping it flat on the table. So the replacement leg that C&C are getting is the one made of poplar which I think came out nicely. I was much more careful in making that piece.

old back leg - new ash front leg (R) - new poplar front leg (L)

We also have 2 pieces of furniture that we are bringing to C&C for their new house. One piece is a china cabinet that we picked up in someone’s driveway. It is in good shape but needs a back and all the glasswork. On Friday I dug the cabinet out of the storage area of the shed and moved it to the shop. Tomorrow we are going to see if we can get the glass cut for the cabinet. We also got some plywood for the back of the cabinet. C&C plan to paint it black when they get it.


The other piece of furniture is an armoire that Penny loves but has no where to put right now. So we are going to “store” it at C&C’s for a while. Once again we will be moving furniture with the trailer. It sure comes in handy.


Saturday evening we had a family life banquet to go to. Our financial advisor is a member of an organization that supports the right to life and she sponsored a table at this banquet and invited us to go. The organization operates a home for pregnant girls. It accepts them with no questions or judgment and helps them with their decision to keep the baby or give it up for adoption.


The banquet is a fund raiser and funds are raised with a raffle, a silent auction and a regular auction. It was held at the Sandestin Hilton, which we haven’t been to in years. Where there once was only a hotel is now a huge development with many high-rise condos.


We were very happy with the meal. The plate had beef, chicken, carrots, potatoes, and asparagus – all was prepared well, delivered hot and tasted great. Dessert was a chocolate cake with (unfortunately for Penny) a strawberry on the side and a drizzle of strawberry sauce. The cake was good but Penny had to abstain.


There were 2 speakers at the banquet. The first was a young lady who told her life story. She was born 2 months premature and weighed only 2 ½ lbs. Her mother loved her but could not raise her. She was adopted and has had a very successful life. She had her adopted parents stand and thanked them for her wonderful life. She asked many thought provoking questions about how her life would or would not be if her mother had made other choices and the wonderful people who adopted her weren’t there. Did I mention she was black and her parents are white? It was interesting to hear the testimony of her life. Usually we only see a small part of those lives and are left to wonder how things turned out.


The other speaker was good ol’ Joe Scarborough. He was our congressman for 8 years. He self imposed a term limit on himself. He had a TV show “Scarborough Country “ on MSNBC and now has a morning show called “Morning Joe”.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/

He said he has to get up at 3 AM for that show (sound familiar Karen?) He is a very good speaker. He says he loves Okaloosa County and I believe him. Of course, he talked on the right to life. The basic message was that although the majority of people are pro life the media is - except for a few people on Fox – absolutely biased against it. He challenges his media friends when they confront him on this issue to name one person on any major network that is pro-life. Except for those few on Fox there are none. He believes that if 60 minutes would show a normal abortion as a story – with no commentary or opinions – that the effect on this nation would be profound. Don’t worry it will never happen.


His other basic message was that we lack true leadership in Washington on both sides of the house. Interestingly he said he would like to see politicians tell the truth (If you read my previous blog Dave Barry had the same desire).


This morning at church at Hurlburt we had an army reserve priest whose civilian duties are as 2nd in command for the diocese of Boston. That diosese is the one being rocked by the child abuse scandal. He said the church is viewed as the enemy by many up there. They have closed 60 churches in the diocese for lack of priests and support.


On another note, his previous assignment was supposed to be Hawaii. He was just about to take over as head priest at Hickam AFB there when his bishop called him and told him to go to Boston. He commented that Father Steve Voyt was the lucky man in that decision because he was taken out of his assignment in Korea and given the Hickam assignment. Strange as it is we know Father Voyt and his parents. They are friends of the McClures. We knew he went to Korea but didn’t know he got that terrible assignment to Hawaii.


Finally today was the fantasy football draft. Penny has a team and so do I. We sat side-by-side, she at the desktop, me on the laptop as we drafted our teams. It was fun this year. Penny helped me out and vice-versa. We were both barefoot sitting there, just holding toes as we selected our players.

This whole day was a good “together” day for Penny and me. For lunch we made Emeril’s buttermilk fried chicken. Penny breads the chicken and I do the frying. So with church, lunch and the draft we spent a lot of time doing stuff together. We like being together even when we are not doing stuff but today we enjoyed working together.

The Fix is On


Today saw a little bit of everything. We kayaked. I did some yard and shed work a little bit of shoulder exercise (trying to keep the old rotator cuffs strong) and I began fixing stuff.


The week before Sophie was born saw my laptop and shop vac break. The laptop was fixed on Sophie’s birthday. Today I looked at the shop vac and found that the problem was only the power switch – an easy fix. It is now working again and will be useful in cleaning up all the sawdust in the shop.


Next came the cat feeder. I found that whatever critter attacked the thing had bent the axle that the feeder wheel turns on. It was only a long skinny bolt so it wasn’t hard to bend. I’m going to replace it with a macho thick bolt. The basic feeder design is sound – it’s been working for 10 months with only periodic maintenance to fix wear and tear. So I’m going to beef up the axle and look at giving the drive train (electric drill and bicycle wheel) better wear and critter resistance.


Penny and I are also getting ready for our fantasy football league draft this weekend, boning up on this year’s rankings and planning a draft “strategy”. This basically consists of getting player rankings off the internet and making sure our computers can communicate properly for the draft and then crossing our fingers and trying to build a reasonable team on draft day.


I also finished some light reading today – Dave Barry Takes on the Beltway. He provides probably the most accurate description of our political process I’ve heard. If you want to feel more hopeless about our politicians and political process you should read this book. He did have some good ideas. One was for a government agency to insure candidates always told the truth. This would be accomplished by keeping them juiced up with sodium pentathol . Can you imagine how strange it would be for politicians to actually say what they really think about issues?

After reading the book I’m thinking of applying for a subsidy to help us feed our pride of cats in the back yard. It is more worthy of funding than a lot of projects our tax dollars go to.

Back in the Paddle Again


We did get out in the kayak today. We actually got in the water about a half-hour earlier than normal at 6:45 AM. This timing put us on the road at the same time I used to leave for work. The initial route we take is the same as if we were going to work so we actually hit the “rush-hour” traffic. All this meant was we had to wait for an opening to get on Beal St. It was just like old times except I could turn off the road after about a quarter mile and go have some fun.


The bayou itself was disappointing from a wildlife standpoint. We don’t know why. We didn’t see any dolphin, wading birds or osprey. The bayou was quiet and beautiful – just nothing moving but the fish.


We’ve been by Camp Pinchot every time we’ve paddled but today a beautiful old oak tree seemed to stand out for us. We didn’t have hazy sunlight this morning so the tree literally glowed in contrast to the background.

Just about every time we go kayaking we see a local realtor, O. J. Davis out on the water on a one-person scull. Today he was there with his wife – each rowing their own scull. If Penny had her druthers she would be sculling instead of kayaking.

Now that we are finding some time for recreation I played around a little with the camera and took the picture that follows. I’ll let you guess what it is.

Coming and Going

Tomorrow Sophie will be 3 weeks old. New life is so precious. So much hope and potential - What kind of person will she be?


We sadly experienced the other side of life today. We went to the funeral of Kathy Douglas’s husband. Both Penny and I worked closely with Kathy the last year we worked and Penny had worked with her many years during her career. Kathy is a strong woman and we thought she would take her husbands death rather stoically. We couldn’t have been more wrong. She looked shattered, weak and broken. We didn’t know her husband well so we weren’t feeling the loss for him. Seeing her in so much pain did hurt – a lot.


We are in that time of life when you get to see people at weddings, baptisms and funerals. This memorial service was attended by a number of our friends from work who we haven’t seen in about a year and a half. It was good to see them.

I personally don’t miss my work. I miss the people I worked with. I know that’s not unusual but the last office I worked in really was the best from the people standpoint. We were working on a special project and because of that the office was staffed with the best people. (I still don’t know how I got there but I’m glad I did) We put in long hours and got to know each other well. Everyone in this office knew they belonged to a special group and it was the first office I worked in where everyone was accepted without question and all opinions and ideas were not only listened to but also encouraged. It was a great place to end my career – I feel I finished on a high note.


After the service Penny didn’t feel like going home to make lunch. “I want to be waited on”, she said. We were both feeling down and lunch out was a good idea. We also have some gift cards we were given by thoughtful friends so lunch out did not cost us anything. We went to Olive Garden where Penny loves to get soup, salad and bread sticks with a cool glass of raspberry lemonade.

The rest of the day was normal – it was time to mow the lawn again, keep up with the house and finish catching up on things we didn’t do for the 2 weeks we were in Jacksonville. We are pretty much caught up and moving on to other things. Penny is getting back to crafts and I’m cleaning up the shop.


I haven’t looked at the cat feeder to see how hard it will be to fix. I’ve been feeding the cats the old fashioned way, by hand. We have 7 regular customers. We haven’t seen Unsub since we’ve been back. She’s disappeared for a couple days at a time in the past but has never been gone this long. Time will tell if she gone for good or is coming back. Meanwhile we have a 7-cat frenzy twice a day at feeding time.


We haven’t been out in the kayak now for about 2 months. Tomorrow morning is looking good for us to go. We will see how the bayou has changed in 2 months of summer.

Back Home Again


We are back home again after 2 weeks in Jacksonville helping Karen and Tim with Sophie. I think we managed to be of help and not add too much stress to the situation. I feel privileged that I was able to spend the first 2 weeks of Sophie’s life with her and to see what good and loving parents Karen and Tim are. Once again I got to see Penny in action – cooking and caring for everyone.


The drive home went smoothly. This is the first time we used the kayak covers Penny made and they worked great. We barely knew the kayaks were up there. It’s a good thing we didn’t have to use a parking garage because I would have forgotten they were there again!


The first thing we checked when we got home was the kitty situation in the back yard. Sometime during the 2 weeks raccoons (probably) assaulted the cat feeder. They tore open the food storage area and broke the feeding wheel. In the process they ate every scrap of cat food. I don’t know how long the cats were without food. Only 3 of the 8 were out there, Marmalade, Velcro and the seal point. We fed them. So I’ve got a repair job to do on the feeder.


The next item needing attention was the lawn. My neighbor did mow my lawn once while I was gone so it wasn’t as wild as it could have been. After unloading the car and putting the kayaks away I broke out the lawnmower and did the yard. I succeeded in finishing that before it got dark.


I already miss Karen and Tim and Sophie. Karen mentions in her blog that it is difficult for her emotionally right now because the baby really doesn’t give back much in the way of emotion. Add onto that the changes going on in her body and the fact that she has very little alone time – and she is doing something for the first time and everybody has different ideas and advice about the proper way to do things – one can understand how she feels.


Hang in there Karen. If you could only see the way you glow when you are talking to Sophie or see the look in your eyes you’d have less anxiety about all this. I hope the hurting continues to ease. It won’t be too long before Sophie will start providing some feedback. For now it is all one-way – and that can be draining.

Tomorrow we attack the mountain of snail mail that accumulated while we were gone and get back into our normal routine whatever that is. Our go bags are unpacked and we are no longer on baby alert. Who knows, maybe we will sleep in in the morning?

Happy Anniversary Baby…


Today is our 34th wedding anniversary and it falls on a Saturday. We abandoned Tim and Karen this morning and went out for a bacon, eggs, grits, toast and coffee breakfast at a place called Tadd’s. It’s been here for 40 years and is going strong.

We were enjoying our breakfast at the same time (7:30 ish AM) that we got married here in Jacksonville on that Saturday in 1973.


We hung around with Karen all day – helping a little, but mainly just being available. Tim had a meeting to go to in the afternoon.


This evening we again abandoned the new parents to go to a Cuban restaurant, Havana-Jax, and have an anniversary dinner courtesy of the Feagins.

http://www.havanajax.com/

The food was fabulous. I had a churrasco steak and Penny had marinated roast pork. Well, actually we each had half of each dinner. The main dish came with the usual sides of yellow rice, black beans and fried plantains. There was plenty of food and even the rice and beans were great so decisions had to be made about what not to eat so there might be room for the dessert. The rice and beans lost, although I still found myself scooping up some to eat after I made that decision. It was jus good.

Penny got her “full hiccoughs” before she finished but she still forged ahead and ordered dessert. Since she has very particular taste concerning key lime pie. She didn’t order that because she is always disappointed. I ordered cheese cake but they didn’t have any so I went to the key lime pie instead.


Of course we shared and when Penny tasted the key lime pie her face lit up. She savored the mouthful a while and said “That’s perfect!”. It’s the 1st time in over 20 years that I’ve seen her like someone’s key lime pie. It topped off the evening nicely.


We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant and returned to K&T’s. We got a couple of lotto tickets on the way back – have to try at that $20 million. Back at the house we had a cup of coffee and sat around digesting.


K&T went out with Sophie this evening to a dinner with friends at a local Italian restaurant. They’ve been gone about 2 ½ hours so far so little miss Sophie must be acting all right.

So as Penny and I venture into our 35th year of marriage we know that day number 1 was a very good day.

Grandpa Gug

I’m going through an identity crisis. I’m having trouble adjusting to being called grandpa. It doesn’t feel right. Add on the “Gug” after it and I feel more uncomfortable. Grandpa Gug was my Dad. I don’t mind being called Grandpa Gug. That’s what I anticipated and wanted to be called. I just wasn’t prepared to actually hear myself being called it.

Sophie Time


Karen and Tim have had a full, tiring, but very rewarding first week and a half. I find it quite interesting the way Sophie has affected their approach to marking time. Usually we mark time in months or years. With Sophie the time period is compressed to minutes, days and weeks. Typical statements are, “If we can just get 10 minutes more before we feed her”; “She has to be fed every 2 hours”; “She slept 4 hours”; “She’s supposed to go through a growth spurt after 1 week”; “She pooped 3 times this afternoon”. Because Sophie is changing from day to day Tim and Karen are living these first weeks to the fullest – keeping track of every minute and cherishing her as she grows.


Penny and I are doing less each day for them. Tim goes back to work next week and they need to set up their new “normal” routine. Karen will be taking a total of 8 weeks off work and will have Sophie all to herself every day.


Penny and I feel extremely fortunate sharing Sophie’s first weeks with Karen and Tim. We haven’t been around a newborn for this amount of time in ages and it brings back memories. Where did we get the energy? I think we’ve helped K&T without much tension or issues. Penny especially has kept us well fed and jumped in to hold Sophie when the parents needed a respite or just to be nice. Penny is good at this stuff and I’m proud of her.

Penny - Taking Care of Business

Soon Sophie time will get to be the normal months and years. Once again the years will begin to speed by and K&T will experience all the joys, trials and fulfillment that raising a child brings.