Our dining room still smells like a bar.
Every time I think I cannot possibly despise Trump more, he opens his mouth. I suppose in a perverse way, the torrent of virulently xenophobic pro-Trump, anti-Mark Kelly commercials that the Republican superpacs have unleashed upon the Arizona airwaves is an encouraging sign, because they wouldn't be spending money here if they weren't worried. OTOH, this tactic didn't work for McSally in 2018, so I'm not sure why they think it will work now.
So Phoenix is under curfew for the next week. It's worth noting that we are now to the time of year when it's routinely above 100F even after sunset, and we are having a heat wave. So forbidding people to protest in the evenings is effectively forbidding protests at all, or at least compressing them into a one-or-two hour window when you can stand outside without collapsing of heat stroke. Strangely, all those people who were howling about how wearing a mask was infringing their freedumbz are completely silent about this.
Anyway, closer to home, we did some cleaning over the weekend, and discovered the mouse nest in the back of one of the closets. It didn't look as if it had been occupied long, and it was not occupied now. We have no idea where said mouse is at the moment. We did find a dead mouse in the yard a week or so ago, looking as if the dog had chewed on it, but we don't know if it was the one which had been in the house, or a different one. We found a stash of mouse-hoarded cat food in another closet, so from now on, we're going to have to make sure that absolutely no cat food is left out over night. We cleaned up all the mouse-mess, and fretted over not knowing if it was old mess or new mess. We'll just have to keep checking everywhere.
While I was cleaning it up, I had to pull out most of the stuff in the closet, and in the process, a.... how do I describe this? One of the many inexplicable things that Mom left us were two very old Bols Liqueur bottles. One had been opened, and one is still in its original box. Both of them have....plastic ballerinas in them. I don't know, it was a 1960s thing. Anyway, Mom (or maybe Dad) got these things somewhere, and one of them was opened and drunk from, like, once, and then they were never touched again. My brother wanted them, but has never gotten around to taking them, so they've sat in our closet for decades.
ANYWAY, while I was cleaning, the opened bottle got knocked over, and shattered into a million pieces, spilling sixty-year-old, half-evaporated liqueur all over the floor. WHOO THE FUMES. I was pissed, but at least it was the open one that broke, not the intact one. So I cleaned that up too, and then...
Around midnight on Sunday night, I heard a bang out in the kitchen. I thought maybe one of the cats had jumped up on the counter and knocked something over, but I was too sleepy to go check. About an hour later, I heard something clattery fall. This time I got up to investigate, and discovered one of the china figurines on one of the living room bookshelves had fallen to the floor - luckily it hit the carpet and did not break. A couple other small breakable objects were teetering on the edge of the shelf. I set them to rights and heard what soundle like something slithering and falling behind the china hutch.
Was it the mouse? I looked around and couldn't find anything. Kathy was up too now, and we checked all around, and found a weird, amber-colored puddle in front of the china hutch in the dining room. Had one of the cats had an accident? Or...wait... what was that dripping out of the hutch?
Turned out that a can of apple cider (we keep excess sodas and whatnot in the bottom of the hutch) had exploded, and there was apple cider all over. Whimpering faintly, we cleaned up the apple cider and staggered back to bed around two AM. And then I got up around six-thirty, because I'd taken Monday off to take my car in to the shop, and I had to get it there by seven. I took Bo along with me so I could walk him the two and a half miles from the shop to our house - given how hot it's been, he hasn't gotten as many walks as he'd like. Even at 7:30 in the morning, it was really warm, but walking in 90F weather is infinitely to be preferred to walking in 109F weather.
And THEN... around 10 AM, the electricity went out. Phoenix in June is the last place in the world you want your electricity to go out. Luckily our house is pretty well insulated, so it retained the cool for the three hours until the power came back on. Unfortunately, our internet provider did not come back on line for another three or four hours.
And my brakes needed re-lining and re-rotoring or whatever it is they do to brakes (which I expected, but still ouch my wallet), so I am broker than a broke thing.
So that was our Slightly Too Exciting Weekend.
Rants Talk to me
So Phoenix is under curfew for the next week. It's worth noting that we are now to the time of year when it's routinely above 100F even after sunset, and we are having a heat wave. So forbidding people to protest in the evenings is effectively forbidding protests at all, or at least compressing them into a one-or-two hour window when you can stand outside without collapsing of heat stroke. Strangely, all those people who were howling about how wearing a mask was infringing their freedumbz are completely silent about this.
Anyway, closer to home, we did some cleaning over the weekend, and discovered the mouse nest in the back of one of the closets. It didn't look as if it had been occupied long, and it was not occupied now. We have no idea where said mouse is at the moment. We did find a dead mouse in the yard a week or so ago, looking as if the dog had chewed on it, but we don't know if it was the one which had been in the house, or a different one. We found a stash of mouse-hoarded cat food in another closet, so from now on, we're going to have to make sure that absolutely no cat food is left out over night. We cleaned up all the mouse-mess, and fretted over not knowing if it was old mess or new mess. We'll just have to keep checking everywhere.
While I was cleaning it up, I had to pull out most of the stuff in the closet, and in the process, a.... how do I describe this? One of the many inexplicable things that Mom left us were two very old Bols Liqueur bottles. One had been opened, and one is still in its original box. Both of them have....plastic ballerinas in them. I don't know, it was a 1960s thing. Anyway, Mom (or maybe Dad) got these things somewhere, and one of them was opened and drunk from, like, once, and then they were never touched again. My brother wanted them, but has never gotten around to taking them, so they've sat in our closet for decades.
ANYWAY, while I was cleaning, the opened bottle got knocked over, and shattered into a million pieces, spilling sixty-year-old, half-evaporated liqueur all over the floor. WHOO THE FUMES. I was pissed, but at least it was the open one that broke, not the intact one. So I cleaned that up too, and then...
Around midnight on Sunday night, I heard a bang out in the kitchen. I thought maybe one of the cats had jumped up on the counter and knocked something over, but I was too sleepy to go check. About an hour later, I heard something clattery fall. This time I got up to investigate, and discovered one of the china figurines on one of the living room bookshelves had fallen to the floor - luckily it hit the carpet and did not break. A couple other small breakable objects were teetering on the edge of the shelf. I set them to rights and heard what soundle like something slithering and falling behind the china hutch.
Was it the mouse? I looked around and couldn't find anything. Kathy was up too now, and we checked all around, and found a weird, amber-colored puddle in front of the china hutch in the dining room. Had one of the cats had an accident? Or...wait... what was that dripping out of the hutch?
Turned out that a can of apple cider (we keep excess sodas and whatnot in the bottom of the hutch) had exploded, and there was apple cider all over. Whimpering faintly, we cleaned up the apple cider and staggered back to bed around two AM. And then I got up around six-thirty, because I'd taken Monday off to take my car in to the shop, and I had to get it there by seven. I took Bo along with me so I could walk him the two and a half miles from the shop to our house - given how hot it's been, he hasn't gotten as many walks as he'd like. Even at 7:30 in the morning, it was really warm, but walking in 90F weather is infinitely to be preferred to walking in 109F weather.
And THEN... around 10 AM, the electricity went out. Phoenix in June is the last place in the world you want your electricity to go out. Luckily our house is pretty well insulated, so it retained the cool for the three hours until the power came back on. Unfortunately, our internet provider did not come back on line for another three or four hours.
And my brakes needed re-lining and re-rotoring or whatever it is they do to brakes (which I expected, but still ouch my wallet), so I am broker than a broke thing.
So that was our Slightly Too Exciting Weekend.
Rants Talk to me