Hey! Welcome to today's Blogpost! Tim and I did something really different over the weekend, and it was so awesome! It was a Minock Day first of all, which is always one of the very best days. We met up with our friends in a town none of us had ever visited, Safety Harbor. Strange name, yes I know. I looked up the name (of course I did) and it turns out that back in the 1800's when piracy was a serious problem on the high seas and even in the Florida Gulf, once ships managed to arrive in this particular harbor, they were "safe" from pirates - Safety Harbor! Interesting! I also learned that evidence of stone age have been found there! Whoa! But while Spanish Explorers such as Hernando de Soto, visted the area, it was first homesteaded in 1823 by a French gentleman by name of Odette Phillippe. It was Monsieur Phillippe who introduced grapefruit to Florida! Nowadays it is an absolutely charming small seaside town that we all fell in love with immediately. We went there specifically to visit the Art and Music Center and a place called Whimzeyland. How could anyone resist checking out a place called Whimzeyland? The Art and Music Center was incredible. It was decorated from floor to ceiling (no exaggeration) with unique art installations. There was so much going on in every direction that it was almost sensory overload. It took forever to walk through because with each step there was more and more AND MORE to look at, marvel over, wonder about and sometimes chuckle a bit. I was particularly taken with the ceilings. Here are a few: Every single room, including the bathrooms by the way, had us wide-eyed, craning our necks and twisting in contortions to get photographs. It was Wild and Wonderful. The gift shop alone could have kept us entertained for hours. The walls were as fascinating as the ceilings of course. Here is a very small sampling (you might catch an unintentional selfie in one of these photos) When we could finally tear ourselves away from the Art and Music Center, we walked over the Whimzeyland. It turns out that Whimzeyland is actually the homes of the people who created the Art and Music Center. The public is welcome to walk their property and admire how terribly clever and artistic they are. Most of the art is upcycled objects which impresses me to no end. It was easy to know when we had arrived. I suspect that even without the "Whimzey" sign, everyone would know which houses they are. There was a little bit of everything as we walked along: A mosaic tiled sidewalk and pathway: Chandeliers galore: (one just to get a taste): Statuary: Some things were relatively simple: Others were a wee bit more complicated: Wow! That was really something else!
Once our creativity itch was scratched and our sense of wonder satiated, we wandered off to find food! We found ourselves, arbitrarily, at a place called The Whistlestop which was, appropriately enough, right beside a traintrack and had a terrific meal. We ate outside in a covered area and enjoyed the gorgeous day. Afterwards we walked through the cutest dang little town to the waterfront, where, as it turns out, there was an art and seafood festival going on! Well of course we had to check that out as well. And by then, we had managed to spend the entire day out and about, discovering this new to us town and enjoying each other's company so it was time to head in our respective directions (them north and us south) What A Great Adventure! And while I may not need to ever visit Whimzeyland again (probably) I think Tim and I will return to Safety Harbor some day, probably soon.
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Bonus Post this week! Woohoo! And this time is actually IS a Photo Safari Report! I am calling this one the Twenty-one Bird Hike because (and you've probably already guessed this) I actually counted and I took photographs of 21 different kinds of birds! Wow! We actually saw a lot more but these are just the ones I got pictures of! Holy Cats! That's a lot of birds! It was only 40 degrees when we set out...brisk! So we were well bundled but as the morning rolling along, we began peeling those layers off. It's like a truly ridiculous strip tease :) When we arrived there weren't many other folks around but by the time we left, it was downright crowded. This is peak tourist season right now so it does make sense. And honestly I love to see so many people out taking proper advantage of our beautiful parks and preserves. BUT it's not my favourite kind of hiking. Oh well, it's not my own private preserve after all (dang it!) We chose our first trail arbitrarily and it turned out to be a GREAT decision because ....the Eagles Are Back! Woohoo! First Eagle photo of 2024: It was kind of one bird after another from there. Sometimes we just stood in one spot, snapping away at various birds surrounding us. Very Cool. I won't inundate you with 21 actual bird photos. That would just be too much. And honestly, just because I took a photo doesn't mean it was a good one. I always sort them through carefully and only share the ones that I'm not too embarrassed by. Here's a cross section of Birdie photos. I'll do it in two sets of seven: Although they are beautiful creatures, enough with the birds already! Yeah I can hear you thinking. How about we move along to botanicals? We aren't deep enough into spring yet to get a lot of flowers, but I'll show you what we did find: We did get a wee bit frustrated at times because the trails kept being blocked off. All for very good reason, mind you, but still, we did a lot of backtracking! Let's see, we also saw a very cute turtle: Bubble blowing fish - Really! And then there was the coolest thing we saw the entire hike: a baby 'gator lounging in the sun on Mama's snout! I'm not making that up. The pictures aren't perfect but I think you can make it out: There you have it, a bonus post this week, the Twenty-One Bird Hike!
Hope you have a fabulous weekend! Have fun and be safe :) The things I find myself doing for these two. Geez! Here is a most recent example. Our dehumidifier is clearly on it's last legs. It has worked mighty hard for us for nearly 8 years and it's obvious that it's on life support. So rather than wait until it gasps it's last, Tim went ahead and ordered a new one. It arrived and in the process of unpacking it, we were left with a good sized empty box. My plan was to do what I always do with empty boxes, which is to recycle it! The rules of recycling in our town require that not only do cardboxes need to be broken down but also cut to a certain size. It's no big deal and I've gotten pretty good at it. With that in mind, I walked toward the box, intending to pick it up and put it, temporarily, in the utility room to deal with later but before I reached the box, there was a cat in it. They do that. Like most cats, anything they can fit in they will get in. Things that they quite honestly cannot fit in, they will still at least attempt to get in. It's who they are, it's what they do. No big deal, I can move the box later, I thought to myself and life went on for the rest of the day with the box occasionally occupied by one or the other cat (sometimes both) and once in awhile one of their toys would turn up in the box as well. They were having fun, so why not. A few days later, while cleaning I decided that the room looked too junked up with all of the various and sundry toys and now this giant box in the middle of things so again, I went to pick up the box. The instant my hand touched the box, suddenly a cat appeared in the bottom of it. I took the cat out. The cat jumped back in. Clearly this is going to be an issue. I tried to discuss the situation with them calmly. I sat on the floor and told them how the box was junky looking and took up too much space. They sat and starred at me intently as I talked. when I stopped talking, one of them jumped back in the box. This time with toy mousie. sigh. Clearly they loved the box and as much as I wanted a room that didn't look like the town dump, I also want to be a good pet parent and keep our pets happy. The box made them happy. Dang. So I decided that if the box was going to stay for awhile, it should at least look better. I gathered a box cutter, packing tape, some coloured markers and got to work. Now, before you judge the quality of my work, please keep in mind that I have No artistic abilities whatsoever! NONE! When those were handed out, I must have been out of the room. What used to be just a cardboard box is now the Kittyboy Hideout, complete with two doors, several windows and a skylight. I was unsure if I had "ruined" the box for them or not. You never know. What I think of as an improvement they could perceive as a total disaster. But I kept on with fingers crossed. Finally it was done enough. As a finishing touch, I put an old towel inside so it would be nice and soft for them and then I sat back and waited to see what Brysco and Wyatt would think of it. I think maybe despite my questionable efforts that maybe it'll be okay? Turns out they love it even more than they did before! They nap in it, play in it and sometimes fight in it (and then you can see the entire box rattling around - earthquake!) The peek their heads out the window, zoom in and out through the two doors and occasionally through a window when they are racing. I find toys in the hideout, sometimes things that are specifically NOT toys (my chapstick and a crumpled up napkin come to mind) and definitely the cats. Sometimes I kind of "knock" on the side of the box...Anybody home? And they might peek out to see who is at their door! Or I'll lay on the floor, reach inside and give pets to whichever kitty it is. Occasionally we just see a paw come up through the skylight or an ear or a tail. Every once in a long while, especially on a chilly day, both boys snuggy up together in there. So cute! My long range plan is to do more "artwork" and I use the term loosely. Maybe some trees and shrubs around the sides of their house. If I was a better artist, I could draw birds or lizards or spiders or something on the "roof" but I am reluctant to attempt it as marker is not erasable dang it all. I had the intention to make one of the doors a drawbridge of sorts and even figured out how to do it with elastic. Problem is, I don't actually have any elastic so until I go to a store that sells it, that particular door appears to be a broken drawbridge. Oh well. If I get inspired and acquire more boxes, maybe I can add on more rooms? A second story? The possibilities abound! It still takes up far too much space in a room already cluttered up with various kitty toys but they love it and what the heck, why not. Our home is not a magazine cover home anyway. Now it's even more so. My eventually conclusion was, So Be It! Long live the Kittyboy Hideout! They concur. So they've taken over the room, the giant cardboard box AND my small laundry basket. I guess we know who is in charge in this house. Life is short. Enjoy it to the max. We do!
Late last week, Joy and I took a walk. Just a simple little meander around town, a stroll, a perambulation, a saunter maybe. Well we didn't cover the entire town. Just a very small part of it. And we still managed to knock out 4+ miles. Awesome. Joy snapped the above photo of us reflected in one of those big mirrors they put in places that are difficult to drive out of and well, we just looked to tall and skinny in the photo that I HAD to use it! Sometime fun house mirrors work For you, not against you :) Just sayin' What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the wander that we did last week. We brought our cameras...just in case. I mean, one never ever truly knows, but we had no expectations. If we had returned with zero photos, it would have been just fine. This wasn't really a photo safari after all, it was just a walk. With cameras. Totally different thing. And yet! We saw lots of photo worthy stuff! Loads of birds of course. This is a very birdie sort of place after all. Some water related: And other birds that were more land oriented: Also snapped a few boat photos. This is an island - a body of land surrounded by water - there are bound to be boats here! It just logically follows. And sometimes, they even make for pretty photos: There were a few other things: And that's it! We didn't take hundreds of photos (thought we did probably take dozens) and we weren't gone for hours and we didn't come home with wet, dirty shoes filthy clothes and the smell of the forest upon us. It was just a little stroll around the perimeter of the north end of town, some laughs, good conversation and a few photos.
Hope you had an Awesome Weekend! Ours involved lots of rain, way more TV than usual and donuts! And non of those things is bad. It was Valentine's Day just a few days ago! Hope yours was wonderful! Ours was just about perfect, It involved flowers, baked goods, M&M's and Jersey Mike's subs for dinner! Woohoo to Sam having a night off from cooking dinner :)
Don't get me wrong please. I do love to cook and I especially enjoy cooking for the people I love. But everyone once in awhile it's a treat to Not have to cook. Or think up the idea of what to cook. Or wash up after the meal. Getting take out means, sitting relaxed in our own home in front of the TV with my shoes off, snuggled into the sofa (probably under the sofa blanket) Munching away in my own sweet time with Tim on one side of me and kitties on the other. Afterwards, we just throw away the bag and wrapper. Doesn't get much easier than that! Eating in a restaurant, especially a really nice restaurant is a treat for sure. But I have to be in the right frame of mind for it. Not the actual meal necessarily but the surroundings. In a nice restaurant, I have to be prepared to dress up a bit, maybe make the effort to look nicer than I normally do by the end of the day. Usually by dinnertime I look like the wreck of the Hesperus. By days' end I am tired. Too tired sometimes to appreciate a good meal. I just want a cookie and a nap. (I'm kind of like I giant 4 year old). In a restaurant I need to use my manners: No elbows on the table, sit up straight, try really hard to not drop your fork on the floor a half dozen times please and be a part of pleasant conversation. When I'm really tired sometimes the effort of participating in conversation, putting two related words together in a coherent way is a little beyond my ability. And then there is the whole hearing thing. There is so much ambient noise in a restaurant, even the really nice ones. Sound bounces around off walls and ceilings, there is the murmur of multi conversations going on all around us, footsteps, forks and knives on plates, the "ting" of glassware against other glassware, the background music..... All of that competes with the conversation I'm trying to follow at my own table. My hearing aids are really good ones, high quality stuff, but the effort involved in trying to make sense of the auditory information coming at me sometimes is exhausting. And at the end of the day I don't have a lot of oomph left. I know, I know, I sound like NO FUN AT ALL! How on earth does Tim put up with me? That I don't know. He is a good man. I have asked him that before, actually. Literally asked him. "How can you stand me? What is wrong with you?" He always laughs. I guess that's why he is my Valentine every single year forever and ever. Well, it's one of the reasons. Another reason is that he never gives me a hard time about my inexplicable love of M&M's. I always get some for Valentine's Day, my Birthday, Christmas and sometimes, for no reason at all except that he knows I adore them. He never points out to me that my desire to lose a couple of pounds is in direct conflict with my desire to eat my weight in Chocolate. He also understands, completely understands, that one absolutely MUST have treats while watching movies either at the theatre or at home. Snackies are Essential to movie watching. He is endlessly patient with me as he waits for me to get my act together so that we can leave the house. He stands by the door, key in hand, as I go to the bathroom one more time, change my shoes, put on sunscreen, check on the cats, find my camera/purse/empty egg containers/etc, decide which pair of sunglasses to wear, fix my hair AGAIN, grab my phone and decide at the last second that I don't like the shirt I'm wearing and need to put on a different one. He doesn't say a word and he doesn't get mad and life goes on. He supports my interests, even if it's not high on his hit parade. He takes me to art galleries and stands there waiting for me to be ready to the next room as I moon over my favourites. Same goes for hiking, photography and even me writing this Blog. He was the one who set up the site for me. I didn't even ask him. He just did it. And why? Because it was important to me. He doesn't complain. No matter what horrible, science experiment of a meal I put in front of him, he eats it (or at least attempts to). When I ask a question of any sort the answer is always yes. Can you fix my computer? Do you want to get together with these people? Do you want to go for a hike with me? Do you want to come grocery shopping? Would you drive me, basically anywhere? Can I get a new pair of sneakers? The answer to every one of those was yes. Yes with no hesitation, yes with no conditions, yes with no reservations, yes with no complaint. Just yes. He is so very thoughtful. If I'm sitting on the sofa and I look as if I might be chilly, he will bring me a blanket without me saying a word. If he goes out to the kitchen to refill his waterglass, he fills mine too, if we are planning to eat out he asks where I would like to eat first. It seems as if he is always thinking of me. By way of example, I never asked for a camera. He just thought I would like one and bought one for me, thus kickstarting a new passion. I rarely leave the house without my camera now. And in fact, the camera bag, the clip on glasses case for the camera bag, the monopod for the camera, the wonderful softysoft camera strap, all of those very wonderful and thoughtful things came from him - without me saying a word. He is interested in what I think and respects my opinion. If it turns out that we feel differently about a topic, it only creates a terrific conversation as we exchange thoughts, idea, opinions and beliefs, it doesn't become an argument. We talk about anything and everything. Best of all, he makes me laugh. I look to Tim as an example of how to be a perfect life partner. I'm not sure I"ll ever be as good at it as he is, but as long as I keep trying, I can't go wrong. Hope you and your Valentine had a Perfect Day! This was Joy and I out in the wild last Friday. We were just ahead of a controlled burn. Seriously! As we were leaving, we drove past the fire trucks and saw the actual burning going on. Kind of exciting. We had no photos of the fire or the equipment or the firefighters, sorry. You will have to settle for some other stuff instead. Joy came up with the name for this Photo Safari - The Doubleback Hike. That is because we did a whole lot of doubling back on the trails due to puddles. Not itty bitty no big deal fun to splash in puddles. Nope that would have been fine. These were ankle deep (at least) muddy, murky, goopy, I-don't-know-what's-in-there puddles that we couldn't jump across, walk around (without going too far off trail) or build a frond bridge over and we just weren't in the mood for slogging through muck that day. Sooooo instead we did a lot of doubling back. Here are some of the puddles: Poet e.e.cummings famously wrote "...the world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful..." and that is an adorable mental image but mucky wet feet for hours doens't thrill us at all. The day started out cool and warmed up a bit as we went along. But it was the sky that really struck me. It was at least a zillion different shades of cloudy and light through our hike. The colours kept changing which meant our photos kept changing too. We kept wondering if it was going to rain. It caught my eye and therefore my camera: But it was a great day for birds. A GREAT day for birds. Hope you like birdie pictures because here come a lot of them. There were times when all we had to do was stand in one spot snapping away because they were everywhere around us. The only birds we saw that were NOT in the above set were bluebirds. We saw so many bluebirds. More than we have EVER seen! It was crazy! AND, the most exciting part (to us anyway) is that for the very first time, we saw a bluebird nest! Holy Cats! I will show you othe nest photos first just because that's the part I am most jazzed about. The photos in this next set were kindly sent to me my Joy because my photos didn't turn out which really ticked me off. Can't blame anyone but myself. Operator error! Thanks Jo! How Cool Is That??? Her pictures are just so dang good. Hang on to your poptarts because the next set is Just Bluebirds and now we are back to my photos. If it's too tedious looking at a bunch of photos of the same kind of birds, feel free to skip ahead. I dont' mind. I probably wont' even notice Enough with the birds already! I agree. How about if I move on to flowers. Things are starting to bloom a little bit here and there so there were a few more flowers than lately. I'll just post a few: Lastly, my favourite category, the Randos. I haven't posted much in the way of random, uncategorizable pictures lately. I think I will make up for that here. It's a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Photograhic Flotsam: There you have it, the Doubleback Hike! Those bluebird nests really were amazing! Thanks for the photos once again Joy!
I will find another topic to write about later this week, I promise! In the meantime, have fun and be safe! Can you stand another story about these two scamps? As you can see they have now taken possession of one of my laundry baskets. Never know what a new day will bring :) Life is not dull with these two around! But today I speak of one of my new weekly tasks. Now that Tim and I are kitty owners, once a week, I retrieve missing kitty toys. It's not as if I have it marked on my calendar (kitty toy retrieval day) or anything. But roughly once a week, I will either come into the room and find both cats laying down looking under things leading me to believe that there is something Under There and I'm praying that it's nothing alive. Or Brysco and Wyatt come to me with their sweetie faces on and they keep gently patting me with their paws until I pay attention. Once they have my full attention they lead me to wherever their lost toy is which is clearly requesting I return the toy to them. They are very smart are they not? So at some point, every week, if you were standing outside looking in our windows (and why are you doing that by the way!!) you might see the following tableau: In this photo, Brysco is only sitting up because I am standing up. Normally at this point there are two kitties and me, lying belly down on the floor peering under things with a flashlight and I have something to pull the toys out with. In this particular case we are looking under the display cabinet and I'm using a telescoping back scratcher. If it were something bigger like the sofa, I would be using my monopod, which also telescopes. Very handy tools! The display cabinet is very large and heavy but not deep so the back scratcher work great! It is not unusual to find a half dozen (or more!) toys under this display case. But other favourite places to find lost kitty toys is under the console cabinet, beds, sofas and Tim's desk. When they give me the sad sweetiepie my-toy-is-lost face those are my first go to's. But I have found things under the vanity in the bathroom, trapped behind the kitchen garbage can, and once even in the pantry which is odd because we keep that door closed and latched so I'm not sure how that one happened. We have found toys in closets, cabinets, laundry baskets and our shoes. Is nothing sacred? Nope. Not with cats. It is not unusual to see them walking around with a toy in their mouths. It could be a toy mousie, or soft puff ball or, lately, one of their favourites are these plastic toy springs. They are wild for them! And that is what I found under the display cabinet that day. The boys and I are peering under both sides of the cabinet into the darkness. I cast the flashlight beam to the left and to the right and eventually, aha! There it is, back right corner. Now I have to juggle the flashlight AND the backscratcher AND two excited kitties. They know that I've nearly gotten their beloved toy and they are beside themselves! And since they are literally right beside me, they want to "help". Read that as "get in the way". So while I am attempting to fish out the spring, I am also trying to avoid impaling either of them with the back scratcher. Geez guys! Give me a minute. I'm sort of working blind, dark cabinet, dark shadowy under cabinet, two black cats whose fur is in my way once again. Usually it's just a tail but occasionally a paw and I'm peering underneath in a narrow about two inch high space and trying to manipulate everything AND see what I'm doing at the same time. Absolutely ideal conditions for toy retrieval. (not) Occasionally Wyatt mews encouragingly. I translate that as "Awesome job Mom, you've almost got it now!" Looks easy enough, right. I mean it's Right There! Despite all of my "help", eventually I coax the toy back out and return it to it's rightful owners and the boys frolic and frisk and play with it while I return to whatever I was doing before. But I can guarantee you that by the end of the day that spring will have disappeared once again.
Recently under the console cabinet I found six springs and a mousie. I threw them into the room for the boys to play with. They just about lost their furry little minds with joy. Less than two hours later, they were wanting me to play with them so I went to get some of their favourites - the springs- to throw for them. I toss them into various corners of the room and they chase after them happily, batting them around and having a ball. Wyatt prefers that I throw the springs to him, high n the air so he can jump up into the air after it. Not sure why, but he just loves it. And the crazier the jump required, the better he likes it. Earlier today he leapt off a table to get a toy that I tossed and he landed on one of their play tubes. He emerged triumphantly with the toy in his mouth as I rushed over asking....."are you ok?" Yeah, he was fine and proud as he could be. But on this day, I couldn't find a single toy spring. I turned to them and said, "Guy! Where are they? I just found six of them for you!' They shrugged their shoulders and basically said, " We don't know!" Anyway, on toy retrieval day, I do that same thing, over and again, flashlight, kittyhelpers and either the monopod or the backscratcher, looking under things until it's all been returned to them and they are just so happyhappy once more. I honestly don't mind doing it. It makes them happy, costs me nothing and honestly, it's a bit of exercise hauling my big old butt off the floor over and over again. I'm sure I'm not the only kitty owner who does this though the only people I've ever heard mention it are related to me. Tell me, do you do this too? Those kittyboys :) It's a grey, rainy, gloomy, chilly Monday morning today. Bah! So I'm going to cheer myself up by writing about my most recent hike with Joy! That's right, my friends, it's another Photo Safari Report. And I'm going to call this one the Bridge Hike. You will find out about the why of that very shortly. First of all, we decided to go to Deer Prairie Preserve because we hadn't been there in quite some time. It was closed for, well it seemed like forever! Then too, there were the wild hog incidents that seem to crop up in that particular preserve with more frequency than we are strictly comfortable with. But what the heck, what's life without risk eh? Deer Prairie is open again? All righty...that's where we are headed. Now one of the things about Deer Prairie Preserve is that right away, as soon as you park, you have to decide which way you are going to go, to the left or to the right. We generally go to the right because that trail is Always accessible. The trail to the left is on the other side of the water. The Myakka River flows through it and in some places it widens to appear to be more of a pond or a lake. And in this particular case it creates a stunningly beautiful, peaceful, reflective large pond: And then, out of nowhere, it narrows and drops creating, for all intents and purposes, a waterfall. Very cool: It's all very dramatic and cool looking, I promise! And until this visit the only way to get across that pond/waterfall/river thingie was to wait until the dry season and the water is a wee bit lower and then carefully walk across the top of the falls. Yeah, not the smartest thing we've ever done, but it's what we did. Hey, it's their fault for putting what was obviously an awesome trail head right onthe other side of the water, right? Who could possibly resist that allure? Not us for sure! This is where we walked across. See the marrow little stip of concrete here? Yeah, it goes all along the lip of the "falls". It's mostly under the water right now. The entire time we've been hiking this preserve, that's how it was. So imagine our surprise when we arrived and saw this instead: Holy Cats! How awesome is that? What a gorgeous bridge! Here are some other shots of it: Well of course we had to take that trail! How could we not? Off we went. Saw a lot of very cool trees. Ready for some tree shots? Some insect related things: A few flowers, not many this time 'round. That ought to be changing soon as we are heading toward spring: Got a nice variety of birds. My absolute favourite is the bird on the lily pad! I had never seen that before! There actually was one more bird, a hawk. There he sat, so regally at the tippy top of a tree looking down. Just very steadily, continually looking down. Never once took his eyes off whatever it was he was checking out. So naturally we had to check it out too. Here's the hawk: And here is what he was looking at: He was obviously the supervisor on this job! LOLOL I did take another photo that I particularly liked. It's another reflection shot but when I turn it sideways, it kind of looks like Day and Night represented. See what you think: So there you have it. The Bridge Hike! It was awesome!
Thanks for coming along :) See ya'll soon! All hail the carpet cleaner! Behold it's majesty! Be in awe of it's level of coolness. I know that I certainly am!!!
I've never owned one of these before despite the fact that we've lived in a number of places that actually had wall to wall carpet in at least some of the rooms. I guess I thought that it was not an essential piece of household equipment. I had a perfectly good vacuum cleaner - which IS essential if you have any sort of floors - and used a modicum of common sense regarding where it was wise to eat or not eat, removing ones shoes before coming into the house on muddy, snowy, rainy days and dictating firmly where messy projects were allowed to be done. Should there accidentally be some not-vacuum-up-able dirt on the carpet, I would use a spot cleaner. And then once in a Very Great While, we would rent a carpet cleaner from a local hardware store and go through that rigamarole. It all seemed to be enough. Sufficient to the cause so to speak. I suppose we are rather clean people in general because it's not as if anyone coming into our house ever cringed at the idea of walking on our carpets even barefoot and there was no disgusting mystery odor wafting through the indoor air. So I guess I just didn't give it much thought. When we first married, we lived in a teensy two bed/1 bath apartment that had linoleum floors in the miniscule bath and kitchen. Every other room had wall to wall crayon red carpeting. I did not choose it obviously. We vacuumed and spot cleaned and, I think maybe once a year, did the rental carpet cleaner thing......maybe. The first house Tim and I bought together on the other hand had beautiful wide board wood floors in most rooms and, once again linoleum kitchen and bath. We put an area rug in the living room but it wasn't very big and it was mostly covered with furniture. You had to literally move all of the furniture to properly clean the rugs and, I'm embarrassed to say, it didn't happen very often. We all took turns vacuuming and the degree of cleanliness depending largely on the person wielding the vacuum. Tim was more inclined to move furniture than me. When we moved to Colorado, for the first year we lived in a rental that had tile kitchen, bath, entryway and very pale beige wall to wall carpeting everywhere else. Because this was someone else's house, we were very mindful of taking good care of it. We lived in terror of getting those carpets dirty and tried our best to levitate across rooms rather than walk across them in an effort to keep them pristine at all times. We cleaned voraciously and frequently. There were rules! No eating anywhere but the kitchen table (tile being so much more forgiving than carpeting). Tim rented a carpet cleaner multiple times during that year after he found me in hysterical sobs the day the cat puked on the carpet as I scrubbed and scrubbed attempting (and finally succeeding) in getting the stain out. We still didn't get our deposit back when we left. Oh well. When we moved into our own house in Colorado, the floors were a mix of tile, wood and wall to wall carpet. The wood and the tile was soooo easy to take care of and that carpet was the bane of my existence. I hated it. But at least it was ours and the rules were relaxed a bit more. From time to time Tim rented a carpet cleaner and overall, the place looked good. When we moved to Florida I was so happy to have tile floors everywhere. If you spill on tile, you wipe it up and you are done. You don't have to be reminded every day by the ghost of a stain or have stiff or sticky carpeting. There is no lingering stink or deeply ingrained bacteria growing from errant cookie crumbs or coffee splash. The bonus is the lovely year 'round cool tiles underfoot when you live in a place notorious for warm weather. But, we discovered quickly, with only hard surfaces, sounds bounces around which makes hearing and understanding what you are hearing a challenge. There is a funny echoey sound with any noise at all. If you drop a book, they can hear it next door, if you drop a pot lid it's a cacophony! So we got some area rugs and sprinkled them around, here and there. There is one in the living room and two in the family room. It had helped tremendously with the sound bounce issue and, as a bonus, there is a nice visual division between the various spaces of such a big open area. And it's kind of a cozy look too which is just nice :) I vacuum every week, sometimes twice if needed. The floors get washed every week and any spills are cleaned up immediately. If there happens to be some unvacuumable dirt on the area rug, again, I just spot cleaned and went on about my day. We had been discussing renting a carpet cleaner once again recently and I left Tim to the details since generally he is the one who does that job. Those machines are HEAVY! And instead, to my surprise, the carpet cleaner at the top of the page showed up at our door. How Exciting! Tim decided that, considering the cost of the rental, within just a few uses the purchase would have balanced out. After that, any uses are basically free. I was excited to check it out. I read the instruction manual (unusual for me) before using it then, feeling marginally confident in my understanding, I got to work. It was actually fairly easy, lighter weight than the rental ones, and did a Great Job. The water in the extraction bin was DISGUSTING! I always believed myself to be a clean person. Perhaps I was just in denial because that was gross. Tim helped me and all three rugs are now practically pristine. The kitties watched the entire process with great fascination. I don't know yet if I will just automatically clean the carpets on some sort of regular schedule or will I wait until the spirit and the level of dirt compels me. But at least when carpet cleaning does happen again around here, we don't have to drive to the hardware store, pay to rent, drag the dang thing out to the car, load it up, schlepp it into the house and then once used, do it in reverse. Nope, now I just go to the closet, use it, clean it, return it. Nice. Why did we wait so long??? Have a GREAT weekend! |
AuthorYup, this is me. Some people said, "Sam, you should write a Blog". "Well, there's a thought", I thought to myself. And so here it is. Archives
February 2025
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