Dear Readers,
I was experimenting with different themes for my blog and I committed the cardinal sin of computing - I pushed the wrong button. Now the format of my entire blog has changed and it is a mess. Everything has moved around and it is barely readable. I haven't figured out how to contact Weebly and see if I can return to my old format. I hope I don't have to redo all 116 postings. I hope I can fix this soon. Yours in frustration, Leslie 7/31/2016: I'm doing some repair work to make the most recent posts more readable. Hope this helps.
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Squirrels are soooooo adorable! I love watching them skip-hopping across the street, their fluffy tails bobbing with each bounce. I love when they stroll across my front window sill and peer into my living room eyeball to eyeball with my cat. I was happy to watch them devour the seeds in the sunflowers that grew up between my tomato plants. But yesterday they went too far and did something that was very un-cute. While I was innocently strolling through my garden talking to my plants in an encouraging way, I spotted a few apples on the ground next to my miniature Granny Smith tree. I noticed that one of them had a bite mark that looked suspiciously like it had been attacked by rodent incisors. Squirrels!
I had no idea that the internet is overflowing with anti-squirrel rhetoric as well as helpful hints on how to keep them from turning your garden into a squirrel feeding ground: 1. Scare them. A dog or cat in the yard scares squirrels and keeps them from hanging out in your yard. I should have this one covered except for the fact that Kitty doesn’t like to go outside and is afraid of her own shadow, let alone a bouncing squirrel, and Mario is more interested in napping than chasing squirrels. 2. Repel them. There are recipes online with ingredients like capsaicin (the compound that gives hot peppers their heat), peppermint oil, and vinegar, but evidently the most effective ingredient is pee, especially the pee of predators. The biggest problem is that once you spray them you can’t eat the veggies that have been sprayed. There is NO WAY I am going to be spraying anything, especially urine, in my garden. 3. Block them. Use a cover like hardware cloth, plastic bird netting, or chicken wire to protect plants. I don’t need to construct little walls around my garden with barbed wired on top. I already use bird netting to keep neighborhood cats from turning my raised beds into kitty litter boxes, I just need to add more netting. I expanded the bird netting so that my little apple tree and pumpkins are protected. I will get more netting to block the squirrels from my tomatoes. Hopefully, problem solved. Time will tell. Be forewarned squirrels, I am watching you and I’ve got your number. I confess. Sometimes when I look in the mirror I put my hands on the sides of my face and give myself a temporary facelift. I used to fantasize that I would get one of those facelifts advertised on TV. I remember watching with a twinge of jealously as a slew of middle aged women were instantly transformed by their “Liftestyle Lift.” It appears I waited too long. Evidently the company ended up in a series of law suits and went bankrupt in 2015. Not that I would actually put myself under the knife just to knock a couple of years off of my appearance, but my 50th high school reunion is coming up in a couple of months. I feel self-conscious about how I will look in comparison with my school mates. I realize even thinking about plastic surgery is an exercise in futility and says a lot about an unhealthy self-obsession on my part, but my brain just goes there anyway.
Like the women in the “Lifestyle Lift” commercials I was able to knock years off of my appearance and I didn’t even need to have the procedure done! I simply chose an overhead angle for the photo. I took another photo a few minutes earlier that looks way WORSE than I think I actually look because it was taken in the bright sun, with the wind blowing, from a low angle which emphasized my double chin.
It's too bad I can’t just have everyone at the reunion view me from the same angle as the “good” selfie. The only way I could possibly manage that would be to sit low in a corner so that other people wouldn’t see me from different angles, which would severely limit my ability to mingle and actually enjoy the reunion. Darn. Of course my rational self knows that everyone going to the reunion is not 18 anymore, and the most important thing is what we are like on the inside. I’ve always had fun at previous reunions and I’m looking forward to this one too. I can work out my facelift fantasies in other ways. I’m going to update my house by having some painting done and the floors refinished, and I have some drawings started that I’m going to use to give my blog a “facelift.” When I was a young whipper-snapper I had a strong desire to acquire things. Now I realize that I need to decide what to do with everything I’ve accumulated. I have way too much stuff. It’s time to clear things out. I know from sorting through my Dad’s apartment after he passed away, that someday someone is going to need to make a decision about what to do with all of my stuff. I don’t want to put that burden on a friend or family member. My sister did an incredible job of letting go of things when she moved. I want to follow in her footsteps. As a result of getting my floors refinished I will need to temporarily move everything out of my house and into my garage. This is a good opportunity to see what I really value and want to keep and what I need to pass on to someone else. The hardest part of deciding what to get rid of is that there are some things that I think are “valuable” because they represent memories of the people in my life that are no longer here. Unfortunately they may not seem valuable to anyone else. My nieces and nephew may not want some of the stuff that I consider “priceless,” particularly if they don’t have any idea of what it is or where it came from. These are some of the things I see as treasures even though other people may not think of them that way. I hope SOMEONE will want them: 1. THE COCONUT: It looks like a throw away but it is from WWII. Like many of his fellow soldiers, my Dad put a mailing sticker on a coconut and sent it home from Hawaii. He actually sent several of them to various family members but the one he sent to my Mom was the only one that wasn’t cracked open. At one time it had a sticker of a Hula dancer plastered on the side, but that is long gone. This coconut was passed from my parents to each of my 2 sisters and finally to me. It now resides on a bookshelf in a corner of my house. I hope it can find a new home and continue to inspire the imaginations of other generations. 3. GRANDPA’S HOMEMADE CRIBBAGE BOARD: My Dad's father was not a great craftsman but he decided to start woodcarving in his 70’s. I have a few of his carvings and this funky cribbage board which he evidently made without a square or a ruler because there is absolutely nothing straight in this cribbage board. Grandpa carved each little peg and made a storage space for them on one of the short ends. Cribbage was big in my family. Grandma and Grandpa played cards all the time and taught my Dad how to play cribbage when he was just a kid. My parents started a cribbage club at the local senior center. Unfortunately I don’t know anyone who plays cribbage but I hope someone will treasure this and maybe even learn how to play the game. 4. 1950’s CHRISTMAS TREE BALLS: I SO remember hanging these on our tree. They look a lot like the glass balls in today’s stores, but they have stripes and hand painted decorations. My favorite has a pink flower painted on the side. My Mom told us that my sisters and I broke a lot of them when we were toddlers. We had a hard time carrying them all the way to the tree clutched in our little hands. A few of them survived and made it past our childhoods. I still put them on my tree along with hand crocheted snowflakes made by my grandma and other handmade decorations made by my Mom and Dad. 5. MOM’S "LOUIS THE XV" CHAIR: My Mom bought this chair and a matching sofa when she was just out of high school and working as a nanny in the home of a wealthy family. Their neighbors got new furniture and my Mom watched the old furniture being taken away and bought them used. It was made in the 1920's by Karpen, a furniture company in Chicago, and it has a solid walnut frame. Her father reupholstered the seats and her parents had them in their home. After my parents married they inherited the set and my Dad reupholstered them in a patterned tapestry. My older sister took them when she got married and reupholstered them in 1970’s gold velvet. My twin sister got them next and had them in her home. Finally I got the chair, which sat in my garage for a while until I was able to have it reupholstered it in a swirly modern print. This chair has seen many reincarnations and has been in the homes of my family for three generations. I know it’s not a style modern families can relate to but I hope one of my nieces or nephew fall in love with it so that it can serve our family a while longer. I have decided to put together a binder with pictures and stories about some of the wonderful stuff I have collected over the years. I hope that it will help preserve the memories of these family “heirlooms” and assure that they will find a good home after I am gone.
I am not God. It has taken me a while to accept this concept. I find it difficult to give up the illusion that if I just do the “right” thing I can control the future. Like the junior high students I used to teach, I sometimes think I know everything about the world, but the reality is that I need to rely on entities that have a great deal more knowledge and understanding than I could ever possess. Therefore, when it comes to floors I must put my faith in a thoughtfully selected flooring contractor. I have been wanting to rip out my old wall to wall carpet for quite a while (see my previous post from 10/7/2015 “IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN.”) I mean this literally. If I could have, I would have grabbed a utility knife and a crowbar and attacked it with a vengeance. Like my body, it had deteriorated into a bunch of lumpy waves as it lost it’s shape over the years. Perhaps there was a subconscious desire there to change something in my house that I couldn’t change in my body. Anyway, my dream floors are wood. My hope is that they will make keeping the volumes of cat hair that emanate from my kitties easier to whisk away, and it will look beautiful to boot. The process of determining exactly how to acquire wood floors has been an exercise in letting go. I had no idea how many choices there were. My brain kept leaping from one possibility to another. Bamboo? Green and trendy, but maybe too trendy. Natural maple? Beautiful, but expensive and shows every scuff. Prefinished and engineered? Less troublesome to install but do I really want to clean out all those little groves? After perusing a number of flooring stores and contractors I had gravitated towards traditional, three-and-one-quarter-inch, engineered, natural, unfinished, red, oak – whew! But WAIT! The installation process was looming before me. It involved ripping out not only the carpet, but the old wood floors underneath it too. Not to mention I would have to hustle my kitties to a friend’s house where we would reside for a minimum of four weeks while all the ripping and refinishing took place. ACK! I felt like I was standing on the edge of a gigantic cliff, unable to take the leap of actually deciding to do something that would be incredibly disruptive for me and my cats. Luckily I had selected a very patient and flexible contractor who had a good reputation and an appreciation for old houses. I decided that I couldn’t make a decision until I saw exactly what was under those ugly old carpets, so yesterday they came and ripped them out. I knew some of it was old fir flooring but the house has been remodeled so many times I figured the old stuff would be a mish-mash of wood not worth saving. Lo and behold there actually were cool floors under the carpet! They aren’t hardwood and they aren’t perfect but they are old growth fir, and after 84 years they were not in bad shape! Some people would pay big bucks to make a floor look officially “distressed” the way these floors look. I was smiling and my contractor was smiling. We talked about the history in these floors and the craftsmanship that went into them. Repairs will be needed but they can be done while my cats and I are still in the house. We will only need to vacate the premises during the actual refinishing. During this whole process I have been practicing breathing and letting go of my preconceived ideas. I thought about my Dad and how he would appreciate that I am able to use what he taught me about patience, problem solving, and wood grain. I have been learning to trust that I can make good informed decisions by doing my homework and having faith in the universe. Yes, there is a God! What exactly IS carnapping, you ask? Online dictionaries define it as some despicable or illegal activity wherein a person takes a car belonging to another without the latter's consent, or forces another person into undesired trips or activities by means of being the provider of transportation.
Today I introduced my six-year-old “almost granddaughter” (the granddaughter of a friend) to the art of carnapping. I was babysitting and we were both feeling the wear and tear of a hard morning on the playground. She suggested a nap, I suggested we do it in the car. The idea was new and exciting for her. She actually does nap in the car but it is always in her carseat in the back of a moving vehicle. She had never had the experience of lounging in the front seat.
We gathered up our blankies and headed out to my car. It was a perfect day. The sun was pouring through the car windows in a most delightful way. It was toasty warm inside the car, maybe a bit too warm. After setting the seats on full recline, we rolled down all the windows and let the crisp ocean breeze blow through the car achieving a perfect interior napping temperature of 75 degrees. I closed my eyes. We lounged, but we did not actually sleep. We THOUGHT we would sleep but we kept getting drawn into discussions on world issues and napping techniques, such as whether ones head should be resting on the seatback or hanging upside down over the front of the seat. She introduced me to an interesting new idea for napping that involved pulling the blankie over her head. It increased the privacy factor but was a little hard to breathe. Despite not exactly sleeping, it was way more restful than chasing a six-year-old around the play structures. The advantage of being in the car is that it is a fairly small space and I could close my eyes without worrying about what trouble she might get into. I was very grateful that she was willing to try something that I think is fun. It was in that rare realm of an activity that both a six-year-old and a “Little Old Lady with cats” could appreciate. Later I drove her home using the scenic route by the ocean. I could hear her singing quietly to herself in the back seat as I gazed at the sparkling water and wispy clouds floating in a perfectly blue sky. We were at peace. By the time we got to her house she was asleep in her car seat, finally able to totally embrace her own version of carnapping. |
Leslie Masona woman in search of her post-retirement future Guess what! By subscribing, you get notices about the latest Little Old Lady with Cats posts sent to your mailbox!
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(from an entry posted on 5/1/2015) “I definitely fit some of the characteristics of a little old lady with cats: Retired - check, Single - check, Like to knit - check, Have cats - check. . .I do not want to get stuck in my Little Old Lady persona, however. In fact, this blog is a risk taking experiment in exploring and redefining what I want my retired life to look like.” Categories
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