Critter updates. Guest room. Crafty projects. Gardening.
Gypsi has been working out lately. That is the only explanation for her new burst of athleticism.
She was out in the backyard last week and wanted to come back in about 15 seconds after she went out there. She is bad about that - we're trying to work on her about her housetraining again. Since the couple of days after she got back from the kennel, she hasn't had another accident indoors. Still, when it rains, she will go outside and quickly "fake pee" to appease us, then fly back indoors to find a quiet (dry) corner to pee. So, she came to the window to peek in and see if we were paying attention. She saw us looking back but not moving to let her in, and then she jumped up on the window. She leapt up and all four paws were on the little ledge there. We both gaped at her as she stared in at us, HARD, and jumped back down.
Well played, Gypsi, well played. I walked to the back door to let her in. We've had to work on a new command, yelling "RUUUUG!" as soon as she gallops in the house. I make her sit on the rug in front of her food dish, and lie down on the floor. Her paws are like sponges - I can't figure out how she holds so much mud & water there. Her coat is short but so dense, I have to squeeze water off her back, wipe mud off her belly. Usually when I am leaned over to wipe off the dog, Wasabi will get on the table and leap onto my back. So, while I am wrestling a wriggling wet dog, I have a clumsy kitten digging in between my shoulders. Hilarious, but precarious.
I got a note from Mick earlier and he said, "Guess which puppy can jump up and into the elevated gardens?" No photo proof but I don't doubt it. Looks like it isn't just squirrels we need to protect the gardens from! He also told me she is crawling on her belly through the yard - there is standing water EVERYWHERE, it is a complete mess out there. I suspect we'll need to drag out the hose - just toweling her off at the door isn't cutting it. We'll take her to a self-service dog wash later this weekend after the rains let up a little, but for now I'm just trying to keep the mud in the house to a minimum.
Both critters are scheduled to be fixed this week. Wasabi has started spending half the night tearing through the house, and woe be on me if I forget to zip up my purse. He digs out a little round lip-gloss to swat around the house, and he strews the remaining contents across the living room floor. He can get up to the third shelf on the bookcase in the office now, and I have to leave the glass closed on ALL the shelves on the lawyer's bookcase. He is aggressively sweet overnight - he body-slams my throat while he is purring. He has become more vocal since we returned from Virginia, too, he talks all the time now.
About a week ago, Mom gave me a bag of old slides - there are a bunch from a trip she took to Mexico in 1980, a few family pictures. I'm planning to make curtains out of them. I think I can use them in the dining room on the side door as it doesn't get direct light for very long during the day. You drill holes in the corners and connect them with chain mail links. I'm excited about this project - I'll need to either buy or borrow a dremel drill press first as the spacing of the drilled holes is important.
If I'm feeling reeeeeeally froggy, I might make them to replace the little 70's curtains in the basement. I'll see how this goes first...
I dreamed of projected slides the other night. It was pictures of my parents in Europe in 1970, old family photos I'd never seen before. The colors were saturated with deep reds and blues, shimmering yellows, and I awoke with a bittersweet feeling. I'm nostalgic for something I've never seen in real life! In the dream, I was also moving out into an apartment. Mick helped me move, and promised as soon as he sold the house he'd join me. There were two refrigerators and they both needed defrosting. The slides were projected on this endlessly tall back wall of my apartment - looming above me, impossibly high.
I have some dyeing to do soon. I bought a couple of tops from Old Navy - I love that style on me but I own the colors I already want. I bought a couple of white tops to dye myself into other vibrant colors. Also, I have a couple of twin-sized German comforters but I only have one duvet cover and it is threadbare. I found a pretty simple design and Mick & I were talking about dyeing the different panels to make one to suit us. It'll take a lot of fabric but since it is not any one huge length I could recycle some other older sheets. Mom & I hit thrift stores to buy 100% cotton sheets for my cousin to make sleep pants. They are already so soft and broken in, and flat sheets always outlast fitted sheets so they are plentiful in thrift stores.
And lemme tell you, my Mom is FUN to take to places like that. She is not afraid to HAGGLE - she brought up a sheet, poking at it and saying, "This is priced $9, but there is a stain on the edge and there, see right there? Another stain! I don't think this is worth $9. This other one with a stain is only $2 - how about I pay that instead?" And they always agree with her!
Our boarder will be here in the next week so Mick & I have been working to getting the guest room ready. We had to breakdown the antique bed in there and stash it in a closet upstairs. We're going to put a rug over the ruined flooring in the hallway for now - there isn't time to fix it before he arrives. Mick reorganized the closets up there so he has space for his stuff. It went far more quickly than if I'd done it - every object he touches isn't steeped in nostalgia like it would be for me. Mick repaired the toilet in the basement so we have two working bathrooms again. We'd had the parts to fix it for a while, but I tried to repair it by myself one day and hit a wall quickly. Like, step 2. And step 1 was just to drain the upper tank, and it was ALREADY drained. He pulled the entire tank off the back of the toilet to replace the working parts - the space is tight back there and difficult to maneuver. I'm thrilled to have a bath and a half again. All that is left to do (before we tackle the ruined hardwood floors in that alcove, of course) is to sweep & mop up there, to make up the bed for when Jason arrives.
We plan to go to the Louisville Zoo later this summer to buy a couple of scoops of Zoo Poopy Doo - composted manure of zoo animal. My tomatoes are going to thrive under giraffe scat! We have such plans for our little property, both immediate and long-term. We're putting in raised gardens and building covers for the existing ones. We're going to start using the water gathered by the basement dehumidifier, and utilize graywater from the washing machine to water the garden. We plan to raise chickens and later, meat rabbits. We're taking out part of the lawn to use for gardens and another part, to put in a rain garden to avoid mowing.