I was raised to believe in the importance of giving back.   Donating money, absolutely.  Donating food, clothes, books, for sure!  But donating time too.  And that's the element that is most lacking.  Everybody is so very busy, genuinely busy, in their lives that it's hard to carve out time to help out especially on a regular basis.    It's a real thing and I'm not faulting anyone for their lack of time.  Or choosing to do things other than volunteering in what little free time you have available.  I truly do understand and support that.

But for those of us with the time and desire to do so, volunteering is a big part of our lives.   And the organizations where we volunteer our time, energy, talent and abilities are eternally grateful for us.  Many of these organizations simply would not exist without their volunteers. And that would be a terrible shame.

I suppose it's worth nothing that as much good as volunteers do in their community, it makes us feel just as good to help out. To make a difference in other people's lives gives such a sense of purpose!  I'm doing good just by volunteer my time.  Helping you is, essentially, also helping me!

I've been doing volunteer work of one sort of another for a very long time.  At one time I  created an English as a Second Language program for an elementary school, as a volunteer.  I've taught beginner piano, just for the pleasure of introducing children to learning music.    I've tutored, edited and encouraged all levels of all sorts of writers for a very long time now.    

At one time I was a literacy volunteer at the local library.  I worked at a food bank & assistance program and I've worked as a docent at two different museums.  I've loved each of these volunteer positions and, luckily,  they loved what I did for them as well.

But now I'm going to complain a little bit.  I would apologize in advance but I am not sorry about what I am going to say.  In the paragraph above I wrote that I worked at these positions and I'm finding that I get blowback from a lot of different sources over my use of that word.  Worked.

I've heard, 'you cannot work as a volunteer' , 'it's not work if you aren't getting paid',   'you cannot call it work if it's not a real job" and many other things like that.  Apparently the issue is the use of the word work relative to a non-paid position.

Just so you know, I  did look up the definition of the word "work" and here it is:

"activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result"

It says nothing about payment or contracts. It does not differentiate between a "real job" and a  "volunteer job".  So.  Volunteer positions are work.  It's valid.  And I assure you that while I am busy with my volunteering, whatever it may be, I am indeed working.   I take it seriously.  I am giving my all,  I am doing my best.  Sometimes I am hauling, lifting and climbing.  Sometimes I am doing research or answering questions or educating.   Volunteers are absolutely involved in mental and or physical effort to achieve a purpose or results. You betcha!  That's what we do.

In various volunteer positions, I was crunching numbers,  keeping the books straight, attending meetings, representing my organization out in the community and even appearing in TV ads.   I've spent hours on the phone, doing meet and greets, attended conferences,  and created Policies and Procedures.  I've helped to secure countless grants to keep organizations afloat, sat at the bedside of dying people and conducted endless tours.  All as a volunteer.

When I am volunteering, I am working.  Please understand that it is a labour of love but it is still work. The only difference between your work and mine is that I don't get paid for mine and I am not contractually obligated to anything.  That's it.  It's honestly the only difference. 

I'm done being denigrated for calling what I do work.  It is work.   Please do not look down on those of us whose work is volunteerism.  We are hard at our work, just like you.  And our work is important. Just like yours.

end of rant, thank you ;)

As you can see the Christmas Tree is up and decorated.  Before Thanksgiving?   Yes.  We took a look at the calendar and were shocked at the realization of how little time there is until Christmas.  So much to do and so little time in which to get it all done!  

Today, November 26th is less than a month until Christmas Day!  Yikes!  We are only 2 days away from Thanksgiving and right now just  4 days outside of December.  Holy Cats!  Then, just to make things more interesting, somehow, nearly every weekend day between now and Christmas is already spoken for.  What the what?  Not quite sure how that happened, but there it is.  Things seem ot have gotten away from us so in a desperate attempt to get control back, we put the tree up over the weekend.

There was a little trepidation with regard to the kittyboys.  As you may, or may not, recall, last year they were so excited about the tree that they literally broke it.   They loved the tree to death.  We were smart enough to only put unbreakable ornaments on it (thank goodness) because every night they undecorated the tree.  Every morning I redecorated it.  We had to pluck errant kitties out of the tree repeatedly and despite our explanation of how they are not fruit and therefore do not belong in trees, they persisted.  After Christmas once the decorations were safely repacked away, we threw out the broken tree.

To be fair it was a super cheapo tree.  We bought it on sale at Big Lots and I believe that it was the cheapest tree of it's size anywhere and it's longevity actually surpassed our expectations even without cats as part of the equation.   We bought it our first year here and as we were fully invested in the myriad renovation projects that our (at the time) new to us home required, we spared very VERY little for a tree.  The old tree was never intended for the weight of, even at that time, 6 month old kitties frolicking amoungst its branches. 

So this year, buying a new tree, had us debating.  what if the boys haven't grown out of the Christmas Tree destructo phase?  We didn't want to invest a great deal of money in a  tree that may or may not survive the season.  On the other hand, what if they behaved like perfect little kitty gentlemen and leave the tree alone?  We didn't want to be stuck Once Again with a crapppola tree for years to come.  Decisions decisions decisions.

So we checked out all of the local places that might possibly have fakeyfake Christmas  trees at a variety of sizes, shapes, colours and price tags.  We saw many!!!  And one of the first things we learned was that, much like everything else, the cost of Christmas trees -even artificial ones - has skyrocketed.  Dang.  Well it is what it is so we ended up with one that wasn't the cheapest one available but also not the most expensive. We came home and set it up and left it undecorated just to see what those little fellers were going to do.

Turns out that after sniffing it thoroughly, they have mostly left it alone.  Well Wyatt did have to be reminded a time or two that Christmas tree lights are not edible.   Brysco mostly just likes to lay underneath it. And they both love to just gaze at it at night when the lights are on.  Great!  So next up was decorating.  All those enticing little bits and bobs just dangling, practically begging a kitty to play with it.

To be on the safe side, once again, we put Only Unbreakable ornaments on the tree and no garland.  More kitty sniffing followed shortly thereafter.   To our great surprise, they have mostly left it alone.  We have seen a few paws tentatively touching, but very gently.  I have picked up exactly 4 ornaments now and replaced them which, compared to last year, is nothin'.  We did have to to get after Wyatt a few times when he insisted that the tree lights were edible and we insist even more firmly that they are not.  Once we saw a few branches bobbing rapidly but never saw which kitty was the culprit.  Still, especially compared to last year, we are impressed with their maturity and restraint.

 Things went so well with the tree that I went ahead and very bravely put up a few other house decorations and those have been completely ignored. I mean not even kitty sniffs!  Maybe they haven't noticed them yet?  Not sure what it's all about but it seems as if the decorations are safe. At least so far.  It's quite the departure from last year's and I'm not sure I fully trust it yet. But, what's life without risk eh?  The tree is up and decorated, the house is as decorated as it's going to get and we are ready for the next thing on the gotta-do list!

In case you are interested, here are some of the other decorations:

oh and one more photo, this is Brysco absolutely mesmerized by the lights on the tree.  Totally get that one.  I feel the exact same way.

​Anyway, Enjoy your Thanksgiving Day on Thursday and we'll catch up next week!  Hope your Turkey Day is fun and delicious!

I have no idea what Joy and I were looking at  in this photo but we seem to be deeply interested in whatever it was. hah!

This will be a short post, just FYI.

​Last week, we bundled up a bit and headed out hoping for a few good photos!  Sooo yup, another Photo Safari Report.   I will call this one the No Botannicals hike because truly there were not, which is unusual.  Actually as it was very breezy and chilly, we really didn't see much by way of birds either.  There was one very brave (or stupid) butterfly that was so buffeted by the wind that he couldn't get a grip on anything and was just tumbling through the air.  Poor thing.  But it was still a good time,  as always.

We headed to Lemon Bay Preserve once again, hoping that we would finally see the eagles that we kept hearing about.  The trail near the nest is of course closed so they aren't unduly disturbed but it's such a wet mucky trail anyway, that I cannot imagine too many people even trying.

I'll share what I got though it wasn't really impressive.   To our surprise, from a distance we did finally see one of the eagles who was perched near the new nest. He or she was just barely peeking over a pine branch heavy will sprills.  They are unmistakeable! 

One of my favourites was a family (or perhaps families?) of Ibis in the water of a creek. 

Saw a giant woodstork in a tree glaring at us.  How dare we??  (not sure exactly what it is that we did but we did promise to never do it again!)

I did capture a small variety of other birds as well. Honestly not too many.  Some still at Lemon Bay and a few others at the Rookery which we stopped by on the way back.

As this is Thanksgiving week and therefore kind of a strange and busy week, we will not be hiking so there will be no Photo Safari Report for a little bit. But I will be writing about other things for sure!  

Hope you enjoyed the No Botanicals Hike and please stay tuned.  Who knows what I may write about tomorrow??

Want to talk cars for a minute or two?  I only have enough knowledge about cars really to carry a conversation about them about that long, heh.

The above car is my ride.  Originally it was some unknown person's car, then it was Tim's and now it's mine.  Most of the time it gets me where I need to go and that's all I need in a vehicle.  We all know that I don't enjoy driving and therefore do it as little as possible.  Usually once a week to the grocery store, occasionally to the museum, the vet or  the library.  Once a year to my Primary Doctor's office for my annual appointment.  That office is actually off island (gasp!) and it is the One and ONLY time every 365 days that I drive over the bridge, white knuckling it the entire time.  The rest of the time, I walk.  I like to walk and since we are lucky enough to live in a place where so any things are walking distance, I take good advantage of it.

The car is about 18 years old, bless it's little combustion engine, but obviously this Ford has a lot of heart because it's still doing it's job which, again, is all that I require.  But given it's age, there is some maintenance that has to happen now and again, and that happened just a couple of weeks ago.  I was sitting at a red light and while waiting for the green, happened to notice the sticker in the upper left hand corner of the windshield that had the date of my cars last oil change.  I won't tell you how long ago it was. Suffice it to say, that it was embarrassing.  Though honestly, as little as I drive, I'm not sure how often an oil change really needs to happen.  

How can I explain how little I drive? Hmm.  Let's see.  Well the gas tank gets filled about once every three months ish.  Sooooo not often.  Anyway, so I made an appointment very locally (on island) for the oil change, prepared myself to hear the speech about doing it more often, and duly delivered the auto in question on said day at said time.   They promised to change the oil, filters if needed, check tires and whatever else happens at normal intervals.   Tra lalala  I went about my day expecting to get a call at some point that the car was ready to roll.

Oh a call came all right, but it was not good news.  Not only did the car need new brakes desperately  but also new tires.  They weren't just bad, they were devastatingly bad.  So that was a very expensive oil change. Yikes!

   Obviously I am not a good car owner.  I am very bad at car maintenance. Which is odd because in general I am a good care giver.  I took excellent care of my children and I continue to take good care of Tim.  And with the Kittyboys,  they get their exams, nail trims and vaccines  as needed.  If medication is necessary it is duly delivered.  I dole out healthy food and instigate exercise,  playtime and cuddles  in equal amounts.  I take good care of our house and my potted plants and lovingly nuture relationships that matter to me.

The car, on the other hand, is just not something I ever think about unless I need to drive somewhere.  I guess I put it in the category of this silly thing that I bought about 7 years ago for Joy's birthday.  It's a little Happy Birthday dodad that lights up!  Joy and I have been passing it back and forth for years now on each other's birthday and even though I've never changed the battery and at this moment couldn't even tell you exactly where it is (so obviously I'm not coddling it) every time we hit that "on" button, it lights up and blinks and flashes  in a generally obnoxious  happy birthday sort of way.  I suppose how I treat cars too.  Shame on me.

I don't' even wash my car.  It's lives outside and it rains often enough that it gets a good rinse on a regular basis.   I am not inside of it long enough or often enough to junk up the inside either so the interior is practically pristine.  I know  people who faithfully, loving detail their vehicles weekly.  I admire them, but I am not them. 

This bad car attitude, auto negligence perhaps, is not new to me.  I have been this way with every car I've ever owned.   From the first car I ever bought - which was a very bottom of the line Fiat I purchased in college that didn't even have a radio in it  - to my favourite big blue Jeep which I actually choose myself - to the car I currently drive (whenever I have no other choice) I am very lassez-faire.  I would say shame on me again, except that in this case I actually feel no guilt at all.  Which is very odd because in general I feel guilty about everything all of the time.  But only from July 9th 1953 forward.  Anything before that date (my literal birthday) is on somebody else.

Cars to me are a means to an end.  When I am feeling kindly disposed toward them, I at least appreciate them as a mode of transportation.  When I am not being as kind, I refer to them a necessary evil.  They are expensive to purchase, to maintain, to fuel and to insure.  I am very uncomfortable behind the wheel and honestly do not wish to put in the energy required to wash and wax and whatever else a car might need to look sharp.  I honestly just don't care about them.  I am a terrible person.

In general I think most cars these days look pretty much the same. I have to find the little emblem to know who the manufacturer is.  There is no pizazz like cars of the past.  No flair, no fun, no snazz.  I still wouldn't enjoy driving it, but at least an older car, like an old Chevy Bel Aire for example, had some style so it had visual interest.  Nowadays they are fuel efficient  and very very safe, which are both very good things I know, but dang it has made for some boring cars.

I'm sure, if you are a car person, you will tell me that cars look nothing alike now and to your educated and interested eye, it is absolute truth.  But to my jaded and ignorant eye I see only a few types of cars now.  Sedans, convertibles and SUV's.  And to me, everything in each of the categories looks remarkably similar.  And I know it's very superficial of me to make how cars look to be a big deal. I would apologize but as I said earlier, I don't care enough to bother.

How I wish I could say that I learned my lesson and that from this point forward I will pay far more attention to my vehicle and not let it fall as far behind in it's care as I obviously did this time ' round.  But that would be a lie and I don't like to lie.  

And that's kind of the end of car talk from me

Yahoo, I'm back online!   For those of you who didn't happen to see the post of explanation, I was having some terrible computer issues for about two weeks.  It was a constant struggle to get online and then stay online.  Initially I attributed it to post hurricane gnarliness (which was I'm sure at least a part of the issue) but as time went by and it not only didn't get better but started to get worse,  I had to call in the big guns.  That is, Tim.  at that point my computer had literally locked me out.  I kept getting a message saying that my password was incorrect.  It was not incorrect.  But ok, I'll play your little game and change the password, no big deal.   And then it decided that my email was incorrect.  It is not incorrect.  Annoying and baffling, both!  The few times I was able to actually get into my computer, within a very few minutes it was default to first a pink screen, then a green screen and eventually, the white screen of death.  Oh dear.  Tim did his due diligence and the diagnosis was - terminal.  Oh dear, so sad.  And worse, so expensive. Dang.  But here I am now, back with a new computer and all is, once again, well with my world.

I had a number of ideas for blogposts while I was on a forced blog vacation but I thought for my first one after a bit, I ought to do the Photo Safari Post because it was almost two weeks ago now and I'm beginning to forget!   Soo very quickly, while I still have two active braincells, here we go with the Gloomy Day Hike.

It was indeed a very gloomy day,  so grey and dank in fact, that a few times we got sprinkled but not full on rain so we kept going.  We are intrepid like that.   I had to add light to nearly every photo so just fyi, every single picture I'll post here has been edited but mostly just to lighten them a bit.

As is not unusual on such a weather weird day, mostly what we saw was birds.  Birds don't much care about the weather.  They live outside so I guess for them it's just another day.  Thank goodness for us or we'd have no photos whatsoever!

I'll do a few smallish groups so you aren't overwhelmed by long slideshows.  Here is the first group.  The most unusual is the large group of vultures which by the way, is called a Committee.  I can see why!
​

Second group.  Those roseate spoonbills are just the bees knees, especially on a grey day:

Last batch of birds:

Ready for a change of pace?  How about a few botannicals?

And then perhaps a few random things that don't really fit into any other category:

And then my favourite shot of the entire day, mostly because it's unique, something I've never captured before.................The County Sheriff's airboat in action!

I guess that about does it.   It's possible that I forgot something but, oh well.  Meanwhile, I hope, for the first time in two weeks, you enjoyed the Gloomy Day Hike Photo Safari Report!

I promise, the next post will NOT be of a hike (though there will be more of those to come - I promise that too)

Hope everyone is doing great!  hugs all 'round  from Joy and I
(Joy on the left, my hand on the right )

Happy November 1st!  It's a whole new month!  And as we edge toward what little is left of 2024, how about another Photo Safari Report?

Still working with limited options of where to hike post hurricane, Joy and I drove to Lemon Bay Preserve. We were correct in assuming that there would be wet spots that would curtail our endeavors boooo!  It prevented us from finding the eagles which had once again been reported in the area. This super mucky and wet trail heads toward that section.  Dang.  We saw no eagles.

But Luckily there were enough other dry, or at least dry enough, trails to keep us happy and occupied

Not positive what the reason was, but mostly what we saw is birds. Birds birds and more birds! Wow!  Obviously, therefor this will be the Lotsa Birds Hike.  If you are not a fan of birds, this would be the part where you exit and do something else for a few minutes because most of today's photos will involve birds.  Not all, but mostly.

It wasn't just the sheer quantity of birds that we marveled at, and we did!  It was also the wide variety of types of birds.  Awesome.  There were times when we could just stand in one spot cameras up, shooting, and every shot was of a different kind of bird. It was weirdly wonderful.

​Here's some of the birds we saw:

And then of course there were also these guys :

Hard to believe but there were even more birds than this, I either just didn't manage to get a decent shot or I was too busy admiring and forgot to snap.  It happens.

​Saw the cutest bunny while we were out though:

Unusual for me, I didn't take a lot of botanical shots.  I guess I was so mesmerized by the birds that I forgot to keep an eye out for them.  Between looking up to find birds and looking down to make sure I don't trip over anything, my time is fairly divided as it is, y'see.  Heh.  But here are the few I actually did capture along with a butterfly and a squirrel coz I had no other category to put the squirrel in.

oh and one butterfly (or moth?) wing. Just the one.  So sad  but so beautiful

That about does it for this Photo Safari Report.  Hope you enjoyed the Lotsa Birds Hike because we surely did!  Hope to have some new and different photos for you soon :)  

​Meanwhile, have a Great weekend! Do something fun!

Boo!  heh

I find it so hard to believe that some people are afraid of black cats.  Perhaps it's the association with Halloween?  I have heard grown adults tell me that black cats are demons, and they were absolutely serious when they said it.  I wonder where they get that idea? 

It's kind of silly because the whole black cat as a representation of a holiday was specifically created, though not the holiday you think.  What we call Halloween was originally Samhain, a Celtic Harvest Festival a Very, Very long time ago. Samhain was celebrated from sunset October 31st to sunset November 1st.   According to ancient Celtic legend, a Black Cat called Sith - a large black cat with a white spot on his chest, blessed households that left him a saucer of milk.  (the treats we give out today I would imagine).  Those who did not participate were offered dire curses instead of blessings (which would be the trick).

Then in the 9th century, the Western Christian Church merged their All-Saints Day with Samhain resulting in something a little closer to the Halloween that we know today.  But the black cat as a witch's familiar?  Where the black cats get their bad reputation?

Well in the 13th century, Pope Gregory the IX issued "Vox in Rama" that forever glued together the concept of Black Cats and superstition.  Vox in Rama was a papal edict condeming devil worship. All fine and good except in one particular Luciferian cult lore, one of his demons was able to appear as a black cat.  And thus, it began.  Those dang devil worshippers ruin everything.

For some reason of all of the nonsense this cult spouted, this one thing, the image of a black cat was the one thing that stuck in people's mind and suddenly any black cat was instantly dubbed as evil.  Eventually it spread to include any cat, but especially black ones.  

This imagery hung on through the witch trials in Salem, a particularly unfortunate chapter in our history but eventually, by the 1800's people began to shake off this notion and the ignorance surrounding it although sadly, it persisted for, literally, Centuries.  Geez People.

Even now in 2024, the sad truth is that black cats are usually the last to be adopted from shelters.  And I absolutely do not understand.  Brysco and Wyatt, black cats both, are the sweetest, dearest, goofiest cats we've ever had.  I promise you that the scariest thing about either of them, is how much we love them.

This is Brysco by the way in the photo walking behind the Halloween card that my Colorado friend, Jan, sent to me.  I happened to have my camera in my hand and snap!  There you go!   And I promise you there is nothing frightening about Brysco.   As Halloween cats go, he's actually more scaredy cat than scary cat, so you have nothing to fear from this guy.  But we both wish you a Happy Halloween!

Be safe and have fun!

Did you ever see signs like this as you drive through a neighborhood that is at least a little unfamiliar to you.  And then maybe did you then wonder about the view and think about how nice it would be to have a really spectacular view out your own window?  Yeah.  I think a lot of us do that.  And it doesn't even matter if it's a pond, a lake, a river or the ocean.  Water is water. Unless I suppose the water in questions is a water treatment plant. Nobody wants to see that.   

anyway, those houses, the ones with the terrific water views always come at a bigger price tag too.  Sometimes LOTS bigger. I get it.  Most of us have views of our own backyards or the back of the neighbor's house.  I have lived in places where the views were of a parking lot and an alleyway, so I kind of understand the higher cost associated with a better view.

​But sometimes that "water view" is rather broadly interpreted.  You already know that Tim and I enjoy going to model homes and open houses and around here anyway, lots of times the water view is of a "fake lake" in a development which is fine.  Even a manmade lake is pretty and attracts wildlife.  Usually, they have pretty plantings around it and that's lovely.  My objection is that in order to view that pretty lake, you sacrifice some privacy.  I see, not only the lake, but also the backyards of the neighbors on either side AND everyone across the lake. They aren't that big generally so it isn't all that far.  I suppose after awhile, you get used to being on display all the time?

Other times the "water view"  is a real natural body of water but it can only be viewed off the left side of the balcony if you peek between two other houses.  Still counts as a water view and they can and do hike the price because of it.  

I get it.  It's wonderful peaceful beautiful thing to be able to see a body of water right from your own home.  It is listed with the home as an asset right up there with newly renovated kitchen and bathrooms and 3 car garage.

Even though this house that we live in right now wasn't listed as having a water view when we bought it, we actually do have one.  Technically, I suppose, we have two.  Tim claims that if you climb up to the roof (which I am absolutely NOT going to do) there is a great view. Not of the gulf but of the bay which is behind us.  Since I have never (and will never) be on the roof to check it out I can only take Tim's word for it. He has never lied to me so I absolutely believe him just have never seen it myself. 

However!  There is one vantage point in our house where I can see the bay.  If I stand in the shower of our bathroom and look out the window (yes there is a window in our shower) at first I see our backyard:

and of course, part of the family room and the back door (and the sandbags that we aren't quite ready to get rid of yet, just in case) But more importantly, if I look over the back fence, I can see through the car port of the house behind us and there it is, a little snippet of Roberts Bay.

The dead vines on the fence by the way were honeysuckle that were beaten unto death by the storm.  It will heal and return eventually. But we are talking about water views and that is absolutely water and a few boats and a little bit of a waterfront condo but the water part is the important part or so I'm told.   

A wee bit closer?  Sure!

Technically, we have a waterview.  From the shower in our bathroom.  Oddly, probably due to my lack of height, I cannot see the water if I'm just say, standing in front of the bathroom sink.  Nope I can only see it from the shower. I suppose that normally heighted people can see it from anywhere in the bathroom.

The family room, which as you can clearly see, juts farther into the yard, and does NOT share this view.  It must be a line of sight thing. Because since it's closer to the fence, it seems as if you should have a better view of the water. But nope.  

If we took down the fence (or if it fell down or a storm removed it), I can only image that we would have a bigger water view?  Maybe?  Or perhaps it would still just be the little peekaview through the carport just without the fence.

I wonder, should the day ever come that we want to move, could we list the house as having a water view?  Not the roof one, that's a given. The bathroom window one.  I mean, does that count?

On the other hand, I'm not positive that right now with the hurricane season being so recent that mentioning water at all is a good idea.  Yeah, I think for now, we'll just keep this bathroom window peekie to ourselves.

What with hurricanes, sick cats and all the other stuff going on it's been 3 long weeks since I've done a proper Photo Safari Report! Oh My Gracious!  I wonder if I remember how to do this!

Joy and I were determined to find a place to hike yesterday.  All of the local preserves were closed but Oscar Scherer, which is a state Park was opened with limited trail access.  Limited access is better than no access so that was our destination.    We headed out knowing that the odds were very good that we wouldn't get far.  Surprisingly, even thought we did at least a half dozen U-Turns due to water in places it usually isn't, we still managed to hike more than 3 miles and quite a few hours.  Awesome!   This is, therefore the U-Turn Hike.  Makes perfect  sense.

The part of the trail that was clear was great!  And so there we would be walking and talking and shooting whatever appeals to us, as we do, and then we would come around a curve or over a rise and find this before us:

Oh well,  Nothing to be done for it but to turn around and try another offshoot of the trail.  And most of those led to other, better, surprises.

It was a surprisingly good birdie day so get ready for bird photos.  One of these Joy took, (I will identify it) the rest are mine though :

Some botannicals, a few a little different than my usual which is always nice for me at least:

One and only one dragonfly, (no butterflies )

And then there is the bicycle series.  There was a long section of trail that goes along a fence and on the other side of that fence is a bike trail.  At one point, the lighting was just perfect shining through spanish moss and vines hanging from a tree and as the bicycle flashed by I realized what a perfect shot it would have been. So I became determined to capture it.  

Joy showed such amazing patience.  It's about timing.  There is a split second pause between when I depress the shutter and when it actually takes the shot.  It's such a short amount of time, a nano second, that normally it doens't make a bit of different.  But when I'm trying to hit a moving target so to speak, it matters.

It was missed shot after missed shot after missed shot. Dang!  Finally I gave up and said, let's move on. So we did until the nest great tree and foliage/light/bicycle opportunity and then I, once again, snapsnapsnapped and missedmissedmissed.  ARGH!

Eventually it occurred to me t o change my setting to "sport" which, when you depress the shutter, takes 5 rapid fire photos.  Surely then I would almost by accident, get my photo.  Well you would think so wouldn't you.  You would be so very wrong.

But I became ever more determined to get this mythic shot that I had envisioned in my stupid head.  It was a goal. The Grail!  My mission.

Operating on the, eventually if you put enough monkeys in front of enough typewriters you will get the work of shakspeare theory, I continued trying.  When I looked at the results, well let me just say that I have never in  my life deleted so many photos from one session EVER!  Hilarious!  I am so ridiculous!

But here are a few of the shots I did NOT delete.  And not one of them is the photos that was in my mind and imagination.  So sad.

At any rate, that's it for the U-Turn Hike.  Thanks for joining Joy and I on our recent Photo Safari!  One day, maybe you'll come and hike it with us. Cameras optional.

I suppose this is an update on both of the Kittyboys.  They were very patient and mostly tolerant of all the activity involved in prepping for a hurricane such as:  being shoved into carriers (against their will), long (for them) car rides to strange places and then getting accustomed to a strange place only to be wrestled back into carriers (once again very much against their will), long (same length) car rides back home and then getting used to being home again but with no AC and a fur coat they cannot remove.   Oh dear, poor babies.  

But they seem to have muddled through, as you can see.  As the boys have gotten to their full growth (18 months old now) we see that while we used to struggle to tell them apart, it's much easier now.  And it's not just their very different personalities.  Wyatt is much bigger than Brysco.  He is taller, longer, broader across the shoulders, heavier and just feels like a more solid presence.   Brysco on the other hand, is shorter, much lighter, smaller boned and just feels more fragile in general. Don't let that fool you though, he can be a menace if he chooses too :)

Poor little baby Brysco had to have dental surgery recently.  Awwwww :(  We noticed about 3 weeks ago that he didn't have his usual appetite. He became, what we interpreted as, very fussy about his food.  Persnickety, picky, Diva-ish, particular, whatever you would like to call it.  And since cats are reknowned for such behaviour, we didn't think much of it until we realized that he was losing weight. That's a concern.

Most cats, while they certainly can and do snub meals now and again,  will not willingly starve themselves. So we made it a mission to seek out and find food that he would eat.  We tried so many flavours, brands and textures with varying degrees of success.  And then his behaviour began to change.  He slept more, which frankly is hard to measure since cats sleep a lot anyway, but he stopped engaging in play.  Uhoh.  He was always an absolute fool for a butterfly on a string but now suddenly, if presented with said butterfly, he would walk away.  Hmmmmm.

I think I would have been more worried, earlier, but he would have several off days and then one day when he was more like his old silly self. He would eat and play and wrestle with his brother and we'd think, well, whatever it was, he is over it now. Good.  And move on.  But you know how mom's are, we listen to our instincts and my instincts said that something was wrong.  So I made the vet appointment and took him (over his very vocal objections) in.  The vet determined very quickly that he had dental issues which is odd for such a young cat, especially since his brother does not have these problems. Hmmmm.

So the doctor gave us a dental rinse to give him once a day.  He showed us how it was done.  Brysco was not well pleased. Not with the vet or the tech or, considering that I just stood there and observed it happening, not with me either.  But with all good intentions, we went back home, medication in hand and the very first application went extremely poorly.  The second one fared no better.  By the third one, he had taken to hiding under the bed all day and not coming out for anything or anyone. 

 I explained what was going on to him, I begged, I demanded, I cajoled, I pleaded and eventually I cried.  He needed this medication and what the heck was wrong with me that I couldn't get him to take it.   Every time I dragged him out from under the bed to give him his medicine, he fought me, I tried to manhandle him (he is an absolute Houdini by the way when it comes to getting out of towels and blankets as purritos)  We were both absolutely traumatized.

Eventually I called the vet, told them what was going on and explained that no matter how we tried, he wasn't getting the medicine he needed and asked, did they have any other suggestions.  The doctor said stop. it's not doing either of you any good.  Leave him alone. Completely alone. Eventually he will come out from under the bed.  This kind of stress is not good for him. Give it a few days and we will see how it goes.

The vet tech called a few days later to check in.   I reported that he was eating even less but at least he came out from under the bed and stopped running away whenever I came into the room. I suppose that's progress of a sort.  We decided that I should bring him in once again. 

This time the doctor took some blood to test and he talked about what a mess Brysco's mouth was in general. No wonder he isn't eating.  He has some really bad teeth, bad gums, mouth ulcers everywhere.  The poor baby was an absolute mess, dentally.  The doctor said, it may come to doing surgery.  Awwwww :(  

When the test results came back we learned that he had something called, Feline Stomatitis.  Basically it means he has terrible teeth and wrose, he has an allergy or hyper sensitivity to the bacteria that results from such bad teeth.  Everything in his mouth was inflammed, sore, painful, ulcerated (and if untreated, would get even worse).  Sometimes it's related to other cat diseases such as feline leukemia but he tested negative (twice) for all of those.  Other times this disease is particular to certain breeds such as Himalyans, Burmese and Abyssinians.  Well Brysco was a feral kitty. Nobody knows his parents or grandparents, but it seems that there were some fancy arsed ancestors in his past.  And this is the legacy they left behind.  He was kind of born with terrible teeth.

The only thing to be done for it was to remove the bad teeth and do a super good gingivitis cleaning with injections for any infections. It's scary to consider but absolutely necessary.  I felt terrible for him but we knew it was the right thing to do.  The appointment for his surgery was made for, what ultimately turned out to be, the day before Hurricane Milton came to call.  Dang.  The vet changed to appointment to one week out.  Doesn't sound like much but when a kitty is a fragile as Brysco was becoming you begin to worry, Is he going to survive another week?

By the way throughout all of this, other than the hiding under the bed phased, he never once growled, hissed, scratched or bit us.  Even though he was in terrible pain, his nature was just a sweet and loving as ever.  What a little kitty rockstar!

We bought pate and babyfood and those squeezey cat treats that we in this house refer to as LickySticks.  The food I would have to literally hand feed to him. I would put a little on my finger, offer it to him and he would sometimes lick it off.  And on good days, he would eat all or most of the serving.  It was a slow process but encouraging when he ate well.  On bad days he might give it one test lick and then close his eyes and go back to sleep.  It broke my heart.  The LickySticks he would almost always eat and while they are intended as a treat not a meal, apparently if you eat enough of them in one sitting, it can serve as a make shift sort of a meal because he survived and made it through to his surgery day.

He sailed through surgery like a champ, came home a little loopy but every since surgery he has been eating like Joey Chestnut.  It's as if he cannot get enough food. It's not unusual for him to have 3 servings of breakfast.  And I'm happy to give it to him.  He has a way to go to fill up and out.

He is participating more in normal kitty shenanigans now though not as much as before and I have to remind myself that his surgery was just one week ago and it's going to take a bit for him to have his old energy.  But it's wonderful to see him jumping up, wrestling with his brother, checking birds out the window and asking for endless pets.  He is back to waking me up in the morning to remind me to feed the cats, snuggling with us in the night sometimes when he's a little chilly and  playing, just a little bit, like he used to.

His brother by the way, has been so sweet with him.  A little more gentle than normal, very attentive, giving up his own food for Brysco to eat and checking on him all the time. Wyatt is an awesome brother.

That's the good news.  The bad news is that usually, eventually all but his canine teeth will have to be pulled so we need to be on the lookout for his old, "dental related" behaviours and get him back to the vet ASAP if they return.  The vet said, he has never seen a cat NOT need to have all the teeth removed. However, he's also never seen a cat as young as Brysco with this issue so perhaps we can beat this.  That's the plan anyway.

So here is sweet baby Brysco starting to feel a bit like his old self.  If you think of it and you have a minute, please send positive thoughts that from here forward, he just gets better and better :)  We both thank you!

Howdy do to you.  I'm back.  Feels like I've been gone a REALLY long time but in fact it's been only about two weeks ish.  With good reason of course!

Don't know if you've heard but we had a bit of a pesky storm by name of Milton to deal with down here.  It's been a big year for storms in Florida this season.   Tropical Storm Debbie followed by Hurricane Helene who was  very cranky and then a mere two weeks later Milton hit us.  Wow.  I think (I hope) that's it for this season. I think I speak for all Floridians when I say, we are so over it. 

If you've never had the dubious pleasure of experiencing a hurricane let me enlighten you.  It's exhausting.  

The weather guys are great at keeping us updated with every bit of information and knowledge that they have and I love that.  The part that I don't love so much is that sometimes, despite all of their technology and talent and smarts,  they really can't fine tune it too much. So while we all know, sometimes for more than a week, that a storm is coming, we don't know, often until the very last minute, exactly where it's coming to.    And it matters.  It matters very much.

In the case of Milton, we knew that it was supposed to make landfall somewhere between Tampa and Ft Meyers, a distance of more than 130 miles.   If you can avoid being at ground zero for a hurricane (especially one as powerful as Milton) that is always the better choice.  And honestly, you don't have to go that far to be out of the worst of it.  But if you don't know where the doggone thing is going to end up, you don't know where or how far to go!!!

We were evacuated.  I mean, if you choose to stay, they won't throw down with you over it, but when an evacuation order is given, there is a reason, so unless you absolutely have no other option, you do as we did and you pack up  the kittens and associated caboodles and you go.  But go where?  Almost  everybody was going north which means the roads were going to be clogged, sometimes to the point of a highway looking more like a parking lot. Seriously, people have run out of gas trying to drive away from these storms and getting caught up in traffic and then there is no gas to be found anywhere.  A whole other issue.  Anyway, we opted to go south.

It was a decision to wrestle with a bit.  Being on the south side or "dirty side" of a hurricane always means risking flooding.  The wind pushes water on the backside of the storm so creeks become rivers, rivers overflow their banks and the ocean slaps the heck out of anything in it's way.  We ended up sheltering at a friend's house that was, (we fervently hoped) out of a flood zone.  Storm shutters were in place, very wisely,  but that also means not being able to see out so it's like living in a cave for the duration.

We evacuated on a Monday, the storm arrived on Wednesday into Thursday.  The shelter house lost power late Wednesday night after  flickering for hours.   The wind raged, the rain fell  and we patrolled the house with our flashlights through the night, looking for water intrusion.  We had a plan if the house flooded, no worries.  And it was a great plan too. Luckily, the water stayed out and even luckier the power was restored, at the shelter house, within 24 hours.  Yay!

Tim headed back to Venice to see if our House was still standing.  Yes that was a very real concern.  The storm made landfall at Siesta Key which is only 15 miles north of Venice.  It brought sustained winds over 120 miles an hour and a storm surge between 5 and 8 feet!  There were rumours of some neighborhoods (such as ours) being literally under water.  I was so relieved to get Tim's text once he arrived that our house was not only standing, but intact and dry.  Woohoo!  Still at that point, there was no power and no water.

Well, I can deal with no power for a time, but no water is a big nope from me. So we waited until water was restored to return on Saturday.  Despite a ton of  tree debris everywhere, it was so great so see our little house once again.  Tim moved Sandbags so we could get inside and as soon as we brought the kittyboys and all our crap inside, our first move was to open all the windows.  Next up was Tim trying to find - somewhere - some gas to start the generator while I applied myself to the odiferous task of throwing out everything in the fridge and freezer.  Gross.

After that was clean up.  Literally  picking up what Mother Nature threw down.  I've spent at least a few hours every morning since we returned hauling yard rubbish up to the lawn area beside the road for eventual collection.  At this point the pile is over 6 feet high, more than 6 feet wide and it spans the width from one side of the half circle driveway to the other. No idea how far that is....20 feet maybe?  Tim spent a lot of time cutting up things that were just too big to haul as they were.

Without power, there isn't much to do.  Tim attempted to work as much as possible from his cell phone. The generator, which is a godsend, keeps the fridge/freezer on, a few fans, a few lights and allows us to charge our phones. Yay!  But that's about it.  So cleaning is sweeping and cold water washing.  I swept a lot.  Cooking is not really possible.  Sadly, as much as we prepared (and we prepared) the house for the storm, we didn't think to get a new propane tank for the grill so that wasn't happening) So as things began to open, we caught probably one meal a day out somewhere.  Any other meals were "hurricane friendly foods" meaning food that do not require cooking or refrigeration.  Lots of crackers and granola bars.  Grocery Stores around here open very quickly, BUT most of their food has to be thrown out do to risk of contamination.  All meat, all frozen, all dairy including eggs. So it's slim pickins for a few days.

The generator needs to be fed, so every day Tim had to go out and find more gas, somewhere and that became a mission sometimes.  As I said, I worked on cleaning up the yard, sweeping the house aaaannnndddd that's about it.  I filled my days reading. I think I read 4 or perhaps it was 5 books waiting for the power to return.

Which is did late Tuesday night.  That of course did not go as planned.  The lineman repaired the lines early afternoon on Tuesday yayayayay!  Which started a fire!  boooooo!  Which they put out  YAYAYAY!  And cut down the damaged tree - necessary but sad.  And then restored the power which got everybody on our street and the street behind us back up and running EXCEPT our house and the guys behind us.  What??

Turns out that for whatever reason, those two houses ONLY had lines that went underground.  What??  And of course the linemen work on the lines...above ground, not the ones in the ground.  So someone else had to be called.  And they couldn't find "the box"  So there was much tramping around, cutting trees and shrubs, digging and the removal of part of a fence.  But eventually , after many hours and so very much work on their part, our power was restored and life gets sort of back to normal eventually.

And we are so tired.  Like everyone else.  Today I will venture out to the grocery store to replenish the larder.  I absolutely luxuriated in my hot shower this morning after many days of invigorating cold showers.  And tonight I will cook by golly!  Yesterday I caught up on the metric ton of laundry we had accumulated. Now I have a huge pile of ironing on the table patiently waiting.  And I need to vacuum desperately.

I heard somebody say, "that's the price you pay for living in Paradise"  Paradise? Really?  When I think of Paradise, I certainly don't envision life altering storms.   Perhaps that's the price we pay for living on the coast of Florida, I think that was is accurate and fair.  Regardless, I'm back.  We are safe.  The house still stands.  This house, by the way,  is a bit of a wonder to me.  She's small, old (by housing standards around here) with some really old (and other newer) windows and no storm shutters and she looks very unassuming but by gosh, she's got heart!  

So that's the story.  I need groceries and a nap. Not necessarily in that order.

Ya'll are not going to believe this, I mean I don't, why should you?  But this coming Friday, October 4th will be our 8 year blogiversary!  Wow!  Eight Years!

I say OUR anniversary because it really is a partnership.  I write it, you read it and sometimes you even comment on it!  There would be little point in me writing it if nobody was reading it. I mean, I can have all these crazy thoughts and observations, ideas and experiences without ever touching a keyboard.  Those things would still happen and it would not be a Blog. It would just be me living my life the way I always did prior to October 4th 2016 when I first dipped my toe, ever so tentatively into the blogiverse.

My readership has ebbed and flowed over those 8 years.  Some days/weeks/months are better than others, but isn't that the way of life?  Peaks and valleys, highs and lows. Good times and Bad. Amen, Amen.   And readership?  LOL  That's hilarious.  I have a lot of chutzpah referring to it so.  In the beginning I assumed that perhaps some family and a few close friends would be kind and take a little peekie at it out of politeness or kindness and that would be the end of it.   And I could at least say, "I tried" with the "and I failed" a silent addition.

But to my surprise not only did some people I know keep reading it, but people I don't know were reading it!  Wow!  That was unexpected..  And while it was an amazing compliment, it was also an added pressure. Am I writing something worth reading?  Should I change my style? Should I experiment with other topics?  Ultimately I decided that much like Sammy Davis Jr and Popeye, I gotta be me.  The first rule of writing is to be genuine and authentic.  Whether you like what I have to say, what I talk about or how I write it or not,  what I present is always 100% Sam.

Over the years, I occasionally get an email from someone I've never heard of who is an aspiring writer that offers to submit  a few articles on my site. I suppose for the experience and exposure.  The first time it happened I gave it a great deal of thought before I responded with a polite, "No thank you but I wish you good luck!"  I agonized over it. It wasn't just a flippant, nope.  It was a decision that I wrestled with for several days and nights before choosing. 

​ I felt at least a tiny bit of pressure.  I felt as if I had the obligation to allow someone else an opportunity to get their feet wet; to use my blog as a jumping off point, perhaps, for their own.   Ultimately, I realized that my blog is mine. Just me.  And since some people like it and honestly, even if people hate it so much that they avoid it like a plague, at least it's not diluted or miscontrued.  I take full responsiblity because it is my responsibility.

Sometimes I have a lot of material to write about and other times, very little.  A few of my ideas have been good ones, most of them are at least ok but it's easy to admit that a few have been seriously meh.   My apologies for the ones that didn't spark but I suppose that's life too.

I hope that over the years I have maybe occasionally entertained, informed, educated or even truly annoyed some of you. Enough that you still, occasionally, pop in to see what thoughts, events, ideas and questions have been rummaging around in my little punkin' head.

So once again, I thank each and every one of you, because without you, there's really no blog. Happy 8th Blogiversary to us!

Hugs all 'round

PS  Apparently there is another storm on our horizon.  Thus far the experts believe that it'll be just a lot of rain but even rain can knock out power/internet/so forth. Sooo if I'm not around early next week, that is, no doubt, the reason. Take heart, much like MacArthur and Schwarzenegger,  I shall return. 

I'm here, so obviously, we have power.  Yay!  As far as we are concerned, Hurricane Helene is all over except for the clean up.  Sadly, many other people weren't as lucky.

The morning of the storm was so mild that it was deceptive.  We decided to take a little early morning drive to see what was open, what was closed.  Lo and behold, our favourite donut shop was open so of course we had to stop in!  The lower right donut you may recognize was the hurricane icon that weatherpeople use on their big old maps.  We think it's clever and hilarious that our donut shop makes those for every big storm.  It's also absolutely delicious.

The day continued with rain on and off, gusty wind periodically and occasional sunshine which really threw us off, because that was not anticipated at all!  Just didn't seem to be that big of a deal. But still we took it seriously because Hurricanes are something to pay attention to with respect if not a little fear.  I tucked all my potted garden into a protected corner in the courtyard and Tim stacked all the patio furniture in front of it.  He took down the Sail Shade so that the wind wouldn't tear it away.  We put sandbags at the front and back door, just in case.  And then, there's nothing left to do to get ready.

 I never really know what to do with myself the day of a storm.  I don't really want to get anything big started like laundry or baking because if the power goes out mid-stream so to speak, I am  left with a problem. So I piddled around doing little things and feeling quite unsettled.  Eventually I had done everything I could do that didn't require power. And after that? I played with the cats, paced a lot, read a little bit.

As mild as things were at our house, we were getting reports from the other side of the island (we are on the east side, gulf is on the west side) of flooding. Pre-storm surge.  Dang.  Crazy stuff.   Eventually the rain and the wind picked up and we, safe and dry inside, just kind of enjoyed the Mother Nature show.  Even the cats spent most of their day in various windows watching.  

Throughout, we checked in with several different weather reporting sources to keep track of where the storm was exactly, how strong it was, and so forth because, I don't know, somehow it helps. I don't know why but it does.  We kept checking in with friends, family and neighbors back and forth and that texting is definitely a comfort!   The lights flickered over and again, but stayed on, thank goodness.

Eventually,  when the storm had settled a wee bit and the rain had let up a mite, a little after 10 pm we decided to try to get some sleep.  Tim was already comfy with his side of the adjustable bed adjusted just as he likes to watch a little TV.  I hadn't quite gotten that far yet when pop!  Full dark.  Dang.  We held our breathe waiting to see if it would come right back on. It did not.

First things first, I got on my phone, went to the Florida Light and Power website and reported the outtage.  Then I put on my shoes, went outside and looked down the street to see who else had no power.  Everyone on our side of the street and about 3/4 of the other side of the street was also dark. However, houses right across the street from us had all their lights on. Colour me jealous.

Meanwhile, inside, Tim managed to McGyver a way to re-adjust his bed back to flat. (think about it, power bed needs power!)  He is such an evil genius :)  Well maybe not evil, just genuis :)  And we wandered around the house, tentatively opening windows, hoping for a cool breeze now and again.  The coolest part of the house at that point was the living room as it's in the middle between the kitchen (which has windows- now open) and the family room (which also has windows - also open).  Cool air sinks, so of course we want to be low to the ground.  We made pallets on the floor and added our pillows and tried to rest.  
'
The kitties were very entertained at the idea of their humans being down on their level.  But we were absolutely Not Resting.  This old back is not happy on the floor. Eventually we got up and tried to sleep on the family room sofa.  No go.  Tim moved back to the bedroom, again, windows open, but I stayed in the family room and played games on my tablet until it's charge ran out.  I couldn't sleep and it's dark. The entertainment possibilities were limited.

At some point a few hours later, Tim came into the family room and began shutting windows. My assumption was that it had begun raining again so I jumped up to help then realized...Power was Back On!  Great Words.  Finally, once the house cooled back off, we were able to catch a couple hours sleep.

This morning is sunny, still a bit windy and more rain is expected this afternoon.  I need to start the yard clean up as there is a great deal of tree debris.  But first I took a walk.  I could hear chain saws so some big things must have come down.    I wanted to go to the beach even for just two minutes but the sidewalk in front of the access boardwalk was flooded still.  I will wait. There are reports of flooded areas here on the island this morning and the destruction of an adorable little food shop called Jetty Jacks that, obviously, was on the jetty. So sad.

Keep in mind, this storm made landfall on the Florida Panhandle which is about a 5 hour drive north of us.  We were only hit with the outter bands!!! And yet we are hearing from people who had thigh deep and chest deep water.  Homes that simply no longer exist. It's absolutely crazy.

But we are safe and dry and I'm going to go outside now and start filling up bins with tree debris.  Let's see how far I get.   Hurricane Helene has done her work here and has moved farther north to plague and harass other folks in other states. She is a busy girl with a very bad attutide.

Ya'll have a great weekend.  Hugs all 'round.

I don't usually give you guys two photo safari reports back to back, but I have to write this one up before I start forgetting the details!  Yikes!  This getting old business is wild sometimes.

OK, this outing was our first hike after my big fall (last report) and as you can see from the photo Joy took of me shooting,  taking pictures was a two handed deal for me. I quickly figured out that if I held the camera in my left hand, I could still push the button,  adjust the settings, etc with my right coz that only takes one finger!  The Pointer Finger hard at work!!

We went to another local preserve but one we rarely hike called the Lemon Bay Preserve. It's actually right here in Venice  (off island but still Venice) but for some unkown reason, we tend to go elsewhere most of the time.  We are so very glad that we chose Lemon Bay this particular hike and here is why:

Wow!  This handsome fellow was one of the very first things we saw as we headed down our first  randomly chosen!  He was trotting along ahead of us, in no particular rush, and did not dart off into the undergrowth which is what Joy and I expected.  I know that he was aware of us behind him because at one point he turned his head and saw us.  But it was just sort of an acknowledgement, "S'up" and our presence didn't seem to bother him.  Naturally we stayed back, kept a respectful distance and were quiet so I don't' think we were threatening to him in anyway.  Of course, push come to shove, I also know that if there were a fight between us, he would win hands down and he knows that too.  

At any rate, it was a stellar start to this particular Photo Safari and obviously this one will be called the Bobcat Hike in his honour.

We kind of hit the highlight of the hike right off the bat with the Bobkitty so while we saw and photographed a lot of other things, nothing nearly as cool as that first sighting.

We always try to head out fairly early in the day which means we get that gorgeous early morning light:

Also due to the early hour,  there were a remarkable number of birds.  Most of them were zooming around getting breakfast and whatever else it is that birds do to get started on their days, which means I probably am not going to get their photos.  I'm not good at moving targets, unlike Joy. But I still got quite a few birdie shots:

I always manage to get a few botanicals because why boys and girls?  That's right, because they don't' move and therefore I am able to capture them!  

Let's see a bunny, a dragonfly and a squirrel

And I think that's about it.  We didn't stay as long as we sometimes do but we made the most of every minute we were there!

Sooo thank you for reading the Bobcat Hike.  I hope you enjoyed this Photo Safari. 

Just as an aside, we are expecting some sort of storm on Thursday this week that nobody, including the experts, seems to be absolutely certain about.  Could be just a bunch of rain, could be a tropical storm, could be the dirty side of a low level hurricane that lands far north of us, could be a much bigger hurricane, could be anything in the middle there or nothing at all.  I have heard every single one of those possibilities, from the experts, who are as muddled as the rest of us, just in a more educated sort of way.  The best part about whatever it is, seems to be that it will be a quick storm, in and out. Less than a full day from top to bottom and I'm good with that.

The point being that even a low level storm can knock out power so if you dont' hear from me later this week, assume that to be the case and I promise that as soon as I can come back and report on the storm, I shall.

Meanwhile, hugs all 'round. Be safe, Be Happy!

Welcome to Part Two of the Surprise Big Finish Hike.  Thank you for be interested enough to want to know the rest of the story (as Paul Harvey used to say - hoo boy, I'm really dating myself now!)

Just as an aside I had a cute graphic and several real photos of my damaged self to share but for whatever reason, my computer flatly refuses to upload them today.  So we will soldier on using just our imaginations to picture what I write.  Sorry about that.

So when last we left the tale,  to recap, I had just made a spectacular swan dive onto the hiking trail after catching my foot in a sneaky tree root.  After I caught my breath, I seemed to be fine so I got up, did my best to dust of as much dirt as possible, checked my camera for damage (it seemed to be fine) and we finished hiking out of the preserve.

By the time we reached the car, I had to admit that my hand was a little tiny bit sore and perhaps my ribs hurt just a mite.  Understandable as I fell, literally on my side with my right arm outstretched, camera in that hand.  Felt like no big deal.  I was sure that once I showered and changed, I would just as right as rain.  I was wrong.

I told Tim about my forest shenanigans upon my return and his concern leapt immediately to two things:  Urgent Care and Ice Packs.  I agreed to the liberal application of ice packs but only after showering (I was 12 different levels of filthy) but declined the visit to Urgent Care. After all, I was only a littlest bit sore, there were no marks on me at all. Nothing was dangling at odd angles, there was no blood and I was fully conscious. Didn't seem like a big deal at all.

By the time I got out of the shower however, I began to see a bruise forming in the palm of my hand which I thought was odd until I remember that I was holding my camera in my hand.  When I matched the two things up.....dingdingding..we have a winner.    I filled a bowl with water and ice and just let my hand submerge in that until it was numb.  Let it dry off and warm up, then did it over and over again.   I figured that along with a healthy dose of Alleve  ought to fix 'er up.  And of course some ice cream because we all know that Ice Cream has great curative powers!

The bruising continued to grow and pop in new places throughout the day as did the swelling.  Hmm I wondered, Maybe I really did hurt myself worse than I thought?   After a long, largely sleepless night due to the rib pain - both front and back which means that every time I lay down I was literally poking a sore spot with a sharp stick.  As softysoft as my lovely mattress is, it felt more like a bed of rocks that night.

By morning my hand was very swollen, front and back, as well as all the fingers save the index and the thumb.  My ribs hurt so much it was uncomfortable to sit or raise my right arm and an impressive new bruise wrapped itself all the way around my right forearm.  Pretty.  So yeah, ouchie.

By mid-afternoon I said Uncle and gave in to Tim's request to go to Urgent Care. Just to make sure nothing was broken.  It wasn't very busy so we were called to the desk to check in right away.  Where we ran into the first surprise (another surprise) issue.  She asked for my photo ID and insurance cards.  No worries, I was smart enough to have brought my purse.  Tim helped me open the zippy compartment where such things are kept and...................what the what?  Where's my driver's license?  Followed quickly by, Where's my insurance cards?  I escalated quickly to full panic.  Tim fortunately being of a much calmer nature began to methodically go through first my wallet and then my entire purse.  But nope, neither one was there.

I tried to look super calm on the outside but on the inside I was totally freaking out!  Did I lose it?  If so where?  Under what circumstances?  Was it stolen?  Is someone else out there masquerading as me? Holy Crap!

The lady behind the desk looked me up and found that I was an existing patient (at an urgent care center - tells you a little something about me, eh?) and the person in front of her matched the photo in her computer so we were set on the score.  Tim handed over his insurance card (same insurance) and that little issue was resolved and we were off to a patient room.

Very quickly a succession of various absolutely lovely, efficient and professional medical people came through to ask questions and take blood pressure and so forth.  The doctor, after a quick stop did order x-rays as expected and I was whisked off for those.  Once again, it was handled beautifully by the nicest people and then we went back to the room to wait for results.  And wait. And wait.

While we waited we played a made up game where we each had to come up with the name of one band or musical solo act for each letter of the alphabet.  Tim had just come up with ZZ Top for the letter Z (I had nothin' ) when the doctor came back in to give us the amazingly good news that Nothing was broken. Wow!  That's awesome!  But that I had some world class contusions, pulled muscles and ligaments and those can take longer to heal than a broken bone.  Well that part is not quite as good but hey, no broken bones. Let's take the win and celebrate!  Woohoo!

As we were driving home the marbles in my head finally fell into the proper holes and I remembered that the last time I was absolutely positive I used both my photo ID and my insurance cards was the day of my last surgery this past June.  The hospital always says to bring those but no  personal belongings (meaning no purse!) so after the hospital returned those items to me, I must have handed them off to Tim for safe keeping.  Which means, perhaps he still has them?

He was surprised at the thought.  Surely he returned them to me.  Once we settled back in, me with various and sundry ice packs here and there as I got as comfortable as possible, Tim left the room.  Shortly thereafter he returned with....yup, My drivers license and insurance cards.  Whew!  What a relief!

So now here we are exactly one week from the original Surprise Big Finish Hike and most of the bruises are but a distant memory.  The few that remain are fading.  My hand and my ribs still hurt like crazy but I know good and well that eventually, this too shall pass.

In the meantime I'm being a lot more careful about where I put my big feet, especially in the forest.

So there you have it.  And lest you think that I was smart enough to lay off the hiking for awhile, you are so silly. Of course not.  Joy and I were back at it yesterday.  I discovered that if I hold the camera in the left hand, I could still push the button with my right index finger and pictures still happen!  Woohoo!    Got some decent pictures too. Which I'll post, probably early next week as a Photo Safari Report.  If you like those, stay tuned!

And have a Great weekend!

Howdy do to all of you!

Here we are on another busy Monday, hope your weekend was awesome.  Looks like this is going to be yet another Photo Safari Report but this one has a surprise, big Finish!  Almost like a Busby Berkley Musical Extravaganza! (if you've never heard of it, look it up. Google exists for this very reason).  Well except there was no actual music.  And that's not true either because there is always music playing in my head but since nobody but me can hear it (unless I am singing along out loud) I suppose it doesn't count. At Any Rate, this one will be the Big Surprise Finish Hike.

Joy and I, running out of ideas about where we could possibly go to hike that isn't flooded and/or closed headed to Oscar Schere State Park.  We asked the Ranger at the gate if any of the trails were flooded. He said that yes, pretty much all of them. Ratz.  BUT he said, the Green Trail is at least partly dry.  Ok!  We headed for the green trail.  We decided that we would just follow it as far as we could, then turn back and at least we would have gotten a little exercise in the sunshine.

As it turned out all of the green trail was almost completely dry except two small areas that we were able to basically walk around.  So yay to that!  Glad we took the chance.  

One huge surprise for us was an offshoot part of the Green trail that we have only ever seen closed was actually open for a change. You bet we headed down that trail ASAP.  The rangers close the trail during Eagle Nesting season as there are several active nests in the area.  It was 3 miles of new to us trail so it was exciting!

The photo at the top of the page shows an old eagle nest that was in the same area.  It's hard to express how massive these nests are.  I suppose the fact that the nest can be seen from quite some distance away is a fair indicator of it's size.  There were no eagles in sight (yet) but they'll be coming along soon.  They close the trails in October and they stay firmly closed through May. We got really lucky.

I didn't take a lot of photos on this hike Or at least not a lot of successful ones, but I had a great time walking and talking and looking at things.

Here are a few birds for you, just so you know my camera was in my hand:

I think I probably took more botanical photos than anything:

And then, of course, there was the butterfly, the leafwalker bug and the squirrel (not together!):

Maybe you could tolerate another Eagles Nest?  And a random "x marks the spot" of jet trails in the sky because, why not?

Clearly we were having a great time.  As hot and humid as it normally  is outside this time of year, it really wasn't too bad that day.  There was a nice breeze and enough shade as we walked along, that even though it was about a 3 mile saunter through the forest, we weren't as pooped as we normally would be just from the effort in heat/humidity.  If you've never experienced it, I promise you that hiking the same distance on a cooler, dryer day is a piece of cake.  In nicer weather Joy and I have hiked 7 miles and more with no issues at all other than perhaps being a might hungry afterwards.  Something about the heat and humidity just saps your strength and endurance normally.

Or maybe I shouldn't generalize.  Maybe it doesn't happen to you at all.  Maybe it's just me.  It's possible that other people, even most people, have no issues about exertion in those conditions at all.  So I will try to say, I instead of You from this point forward.

At any rate, the point is, that as we neared the end of the trail, while we could definitely tell the temps and accompanying humidity were rising rapidly, we were not in any way negatively impacted by it, for a change.  It just meant, yup, it's time to head on back before it gets unpleasant.

We weren't more than a half mile from the place where we began.  Joy and I were chatting as we walked along, side by side and I was adjusting the settings on my camera which I was holding in my right hand, adjusting with my left when suddenly I was not walking along anymore.  I was, for a very brief time, airborn.  And then, I was, by gravity, slammed back to earth. Honestly that's exactly what it felt like.

Yeah, that's kind of a big surprise finish eh?

I heard Joy saying, "Sam, Sam are you ok?"  After a moment of gasping for air, I said, "yeah I'm ok but I dropped my camera".  Other than having the wind knocked out of me for a minute there, I felt surprisingly fine.  I rolled from my side, where I landed, to my back and pushed myself to my feet.

My biggest concern somehow, was how dirty I was.  Joy handed me my camera and my glasses as I attempted, futilely, to 'dust" myself off.  Joy assisted and pointed out the tree root (nearly completely hidden on the trail) that I tripped over, and the dig in mark from where I tried to catch myself on the other foot (none of which I was aware of).  She reassured me that I fell rather gracefully (there is a shock) and asked me at least a dozen times if I was ok.  I said I was fine as many times back though I admitted that my hand was starting to hurt a little bit.  Still, there was no bruising, no swelling. I was sure I was fine. 

She drove me back to my house, we promised to talk again on Monday (today) if not before and went our separate ways.

Turns out I wasn't quite as fine as I thought.

But that'll be a story for another day.

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the Surprise Big Finish Hike. Stay tuned for Part II later this week.

What do you say, we start the week off with a Photo Safari Report?  Feels like that's a way to start a new week on the right foot!  (tha'ts me on the left and  Joy on the right by the way)

This photo safari report will be the twice as nice hike.  You will see why very shortly.

​
We began the hike at Lemon Bay Preserve.  It's a local place, very pretty and since it's no where near the Mayakka River which seems to be responsible for flooding most of our other hiking spots, we had high hopes.  And it started off really well too.  In fact, at one point Joy remarked that we didn't need to hike, we could just continue to stand in one spot and take pictures of everything flying our way!  The air was filled with all  sort of  birds!  (of course I only captured these 3 but still)

AND, because  there was a fierce storm the night before, there were loads of beautiful water drop pictures to be had:

To say nothing of this very acrobatic squirrel who was doing a high wire act for us:

Then, eventually, we walked on down the path and around a corner only to find:

Well dang.  Now what?  I mean we are fairly intrepid, sometimes even to our own disadvantage. But this isn't just muck and a little puddle or stream we can hop over. We cannot even build a frond bridge over that. And it appeared that the wet just continued so...end of the hike?  Nah, we dont' give up that easily.

Instead we moved on to the Urban Forest which is a wonderful and relatively new place to walk and wander just off island.  It's a forested area which has been created solely by volunteers right alongside the ICW (Inter Coastal Waterway) and the riding/walking trail that follows it.  The Urban Forest is literally only a few feet away from the trail and the waterway but it might just as well be miles. It's a whole other world.  In a word, it is amazing.

I'll start with the botanicals because they were legion!  These flowers are sprinkled throughout the forrest and to our surprise, at one point, there was a specifically designed Butterfly Garden that was loaded with their intended prey along with bees a plenty.  In fact, there was one of the Urban Forrest voluneers hard at work in the butterfly garden as we walked through.

And there were other birds, different from what we saw at Lemon Bay - nice bonus eh?

AND did any ask about insects?  Yeah we got those.  And a bonus snail too!

On our return, for a time, we actually crossed through the urban forrest and came out along the hiking/biking trail to see an entirely different world!  It was almost jarring. But I did take some photos:

It was an unusual hike (for us) but still a good one and I think we got some good photos to go along with a nice hike a good company.  The only question that remains is, where will we go this week?

​Hope you enjoyed the Twice as Nice Hike!  I'll post again soon :)  Hugs all 'round

Don't know if you ever heard of this place before.  We had not.   But once we did learn of it, naturally we had to check it out.  Field Trip!!!!!

My post earlier this week listed all of the superfun things we did over the long weekend. One of those things was our visit to this particular place.  It's down in Naples Florida which is roughly a 90 minute drive.  No biggie.  On a nice day with relatively minimal traffic it was an easy drive (which is silly of me to say because I wasn't the one doing the driving, but still....)

Seed to Table is a grocery store.  A grocery store worth driving a total (round trip) of 3 hours to check out?  Yes.  Yes and yes and yes!  It was the most interesting and unusual grocery store I have ever been to.  Why, you ask?  Well, let me count the ways.

First of all, it was packed.  We were lucky in our timing as we ever so slowly crept down an aisle just as someone was pulling out.  Naturally we zipped right into that spot.  Great start.  Out in front of the store is a deep covered porch type area filled to overflowing with plants and flowers - all of sale of course.  They were gorgeous and healthy and of tremendous variety, easily a step or two above the average grocery store flower section I would say.

Then we stepped through the doors into a wall of sound.  I mean...holy cats...why on earth is the music so loud? We fairly shouted at each other.  Then we responded by shrugging back at one another and I thought to myself, at least it's good music.  Meaning, music of our general era.  Music we could dance to, music we knew all the lyrics too. Cool.  Then Tim realized why it was so loud.  It was a live band playing upstairs.  Upstairs?  Yup this grocery store has two floors.

hWe knew right away, this place was gonna be a different sort of experience.  And that was highlighted as we randomly chose to turn to our right and enterred the bakery zone.  OH My Gosh. It was almost endless. Racks and tables and shelves at every turn filled to over flowing with beautiful, tempting, luscious calorie filled goodies.  And that's before we ever got to the specialty case which had cake after pie after cobbler after tart after cupcake after brownie in flavours that had us nearly drooling. And that was before we even got to the cookie section.  Holy Cats!

Eventually we came out into the produce department.  Which I would say is more like your average produce department just there was a lot MORE of it in both amount and variety than most stores.  And it was stacked with either military precision or creative artistry. Not merely loaded onto a display willynilly.  

,Produce sort of seguied into the butcher department and that nearly took Tim's breathe away.  He has always been a big time carnivore so obviously the butcher department sort of wowed him.  All of the meats appeared to be of excellent quality, again I was impressed with the wide variety of cuts and meats.  There were, for example, 7 different kinds of bacon to choose from in the display case.  It's not just "one pound of bacon please"  but what sort?  I would never be able to choose.  

Next up was cheese.  So much cheese.  Again the possibilities just boggled my mind.  There were different cheeses at every turn, every display, every refrigerated case and every rack.  I am not a cheese person, being lactose intolerant has impacted my ability to had an affection of cheese, but I was mightily tempted there.  Still, how would I or anyone ever choose??

The various grocery sections just went on and on in similar and very impressive fashion which had us goggling and open mouthed and pointing like typical tourists as we stage whispered to each other to "look, look" while we very slowly continued our wander.

And that's when we noticed, restaurants.  Here and there, tucked throughout the grocery store were tiny little restaurants.  Each with a particular focus. What are you in the mood for?  Sushi?  They had it.  Pizza ?  You betcha.  Burgers?  Or course.  Taco's?  Absolutely, Pasta?  Why not! : 

Or perhaps by this point in the shopping excursion, you are just  thirsty.  There was a place for coffee and tea, another for smoothies, beer and wine  (because who doens't need a little pickmeup & mellowmeout while shopping) and of course fountain drinks of a sort:

And if this wasn't enough, there were quirky funny things here and there and an entire political merch section if you were interested in that sort of thing.

Just when I thought we had to have run out of departments we found the store made ready to cook, eat or reheat foods.  Once again, quality and variety were impressive.  The ready made soups alone were an entire huge section!  Whoa!  There was even an indication of a new department, which is "coming soon" called the Greenhouse.  Plants, flowers and herbs maybe?  But in it's own whole literal Green house section.  Mercy!

When we finally  made our way to the door (purchases in hand - naturally we had to try a few treats from the bakery department), I noticed a calendar of Events and Entertainment by the exit.  Events?  Entertainment?  Yes, it's a regular thing at Seed to Table.  I couldn't help myself, I laughed right out loud.

On our drive back home, I found myself looking up Seed to Table and learning about the Oakes Family who own and run the joint.  They literally do own every single step of the process from planting the crops to maintaining, harvesting, packaging, processing, shipping AND obviously the store itself.  It's a hardscrabble, rags to riches, very impressive success story that makes you root for the family as you read.  Their hope is to eventually make the entirety completely employee owned.  Awesome.  How can you not love that?

We spent way more time than anyone would ordinarily expect at a grocery store.  But then, this was no ordinary grocery store was it?  I wish I had taken more photos for you but I was too busy being agog.   If you ever happen to be in Naples Florida and have a non-beach day or part of a day when you are at loose ends, I strongly recommend checking this place out.   You really cannot truly believe it until you see it. I've done a very poor job of describing how wow it was.

Anyway, as field trips go, this one was pretty good. AND the bakery treats we bought?  They were Excellent!

The above photo has nothing to do with what I'm about to say but everything to do with what I will eventually say today.  Did you follow that?  

How was your Labour Day Long Weekend Holiday?  Hope it was absolutely grand ;)  Ours certainly was and there was so much involved in it!  Our holiday had a little bit of almost everything good.    We had a fabulous Minock Day (you already know how I feel about those - the best days ever!), an amazing hike and a field trip (which I will write about another day).  We attended a surprise birthday party (which was wonderful!) and even managed to have a little bit of very mellow downtime.  Whew!  We should be exhausted!  LOLOL

Today I will write first about the hike!  So obviously this will be a photo safari report.  And since the place we hiked was flooded, yupppers, I'm going with the obvious.  This will be the Flood Waters Hike.

We have had so much rain lately. I mean even for the rainy season, it's been a lot of rain. And then you add in Tropical Storm Debby that brought something like 6 inches of rain to our area on top of it and it is not beyond comprehension to learn that most of our favourite hiking spots are largely underwater or at least majorly mucky.  Originally Joy and I were just going to walk around Venice Island taking photos (and there's nothing wrong with that!) but at the last minute, Joy learned the Myakka State Park had reopened so hurrah, that's where we headed.

As we drove in, the Ranger at the entrance reminded us to Stay In The Car due to the flooding.  It's not because they necessarily worry about us getting wet or dirty or yucky wading through flooded areas, it's because the flooding brings wildlife much closer than usual to the road through the park.  Especially dangerous wildlife such as:

Yup, gators.  And they be sneaky and quiet too soooo yes, we stayed in the car 99% of the time.  On the few occasions when we got out of the car, one of us took the photo, the other one was on lookout.  You know Joy's philosophy..."Always know where your alligators are" .  It's good advice.  Oh and did you notice the dragonfly over the snout of the first alligator?  Brave soul.

Although we knew the place was flooded, I mean in our heads, we mentally were aware, it's still kind of Whoa to see it in person.  Picnic tables and bicycle racks that you would have to wade or swim to and water right up to the edge of the road were common sights.  Whole areas were roped off, "Danger, Will Robinson!"  And still we saw one man walking out into the water. What the heck man...alligators and water snakes mean nothing to you?

On the other hand, we did see birds. Lots of birds.   A lovely variety of birds AND my very first owl!  So exciting!  Up until this particular hike, whenever someone else saw an owl and tried to point it out to me, I just couldn't see it.  Sort of like those art pieces from twenty or so years ago where if you unfocused your eyes while starring you were supposed to eventually see the hidden image.  Remember those?  I could NEVER see it.  The hidden image remained hidden for me, forever.  That's how I always was with Owls.  WAS being the operative word.  

To be fair, Joy spotted it. Stopped and backed up the car and pointed,  "Oh my gosh, "  She said, "Look at the owl!"  and she snapped away through the window.   I saw nothing and said so.  "For heavens' sakes, Sam, it's right there"  She pointed again and moved the car into another position.  "Nope, nothing' I said while squinting, peering, starring and not finding it.  Finally I told her to not worry about, she got the photo and that was fine with me.  And we started to very slowly pull away and suddenly, there it was.  The Owl in question!  Holy Cats!  Joy slammed on the brakes and I got the shot.  Wow! My first owl photo!  (oh and other birds too)

We did of course see a few other critters of one sort of another and I got a couple of botanicals as well

And I guess that about wraps it up.  The Flood Waters Hike was a little bit unusual but a whole lot great.  Hope you enjoyed it.

I'll be writing up at least one other part of the long weekend another day later this week.

​Hope you had a wonderful Labor Day Holiday!!

Wandered over to the beach again recently and came away with some interesting photos that I thought I'd share with you, if you don't mind.

As I'm sure all of you already know, there is something special about the light at the end of the day. It's called the Golden Hour for a good reason.   And in this particular series of shots, the sky was such an amazing addition to the already spectcular quality of the light that, well, I think it made for some really decent shots.

It was raining way off in the distance, we could actually see the rain out over the water on the horizon and some very impressive flashes of lightening as well.  No matter how hard I tried, I never did get any shots that showed the lightening, dang it.  So you will have to just imagine that part.  It would have been a bit of luck of course since there is no predicting exactly when or where those strikes will occur.  But hope springs eternal. I will continue to try.

Here we go:

At one point there was a very bright rainbow to our east, but I wasn't able to get a good photo of it to share .  So that's minus two for me today.  No rainbow and no lightening.  Ratz.

This isn't a very long post but sorry, it's all I got today. And it's likely to be the only post I do this week because somehow this week is turning out to be madly over scheduled, crazybusy !  But hopefully next week I can go back to at least two post s a week and even better, have something interesting to write about.

So in the meantime, please have a wonderful, fun and safe Labor Day Weekend!

​Hugs all 'round

I'm going to make a statement here that you may disagree with.  And that's ok.  We don't all have to always have the same beliefs or opinions or feelings about things.  Really.  We can be friends and disagree about some stuff.  We can even like each other and believe different things. Honest! It's true!   (or perhaps you disagree with the concept in which case, you probably don't care to be my friends, becoz we disagree about his - see how that works?)

The statement is "  Cats are Magical.

Now I dont' mean that in a Lucky Charms - Magically delicious or Magically delightful sort of way.  Nor do I believe that cats are witches "familiars" or companions. Nope, this is not a black magic, wand waving, spell casting, incantation sort of thing at all.  I mean its more about a cats inherent inscrutability, their mysterious ways,  their inexplicable actions - that sort of thing.  It must be magic for I cannot come up with any other explanation.

For example:  We have two cats.  If you read my blog you already know this.  Brysco and Wyatt, the house panthers.  We got very lucky with these two as they are so very funny and adorable. They almost always prefer to be in whatever room we are currently inhabiting, they cuddle close to us and sweetly request pets, they do not bite or scratch us, they understand and obey the word "no" and they come when called.  Well, they usually come when called.  Every once in awhile it's as if they have either disappeared or we have misplaced them somehow.

Case in point:

Recently, on a day when Tim had been hard at work in his office all day and I had just come home from the museum, I stepped through the door and.......................nothing.  Usually there is at least, AT LEAST, one kitty to welcome me home.  But nope.  No cat.  Odd.  I went in to greet Tim and asked him and he had not seen or heard them in a bit. He had not. They must be sleeping, we concluded.  And while I respect their nap,  I missed my kittyboys and wanted to see them!  All you pet lovers out there understand this, right?  So I went on a hunt.

I can tell you where they weren't:

​They were not in any of the three kittybeds in the house. They were not in the big kitty bed in the family room, not in the grey bed around the corner, nor was there a cat in the hiding place bed in our closet (for when they feel the need to be extra safe):

So I had to think where else they might be.  And once again, I learned where they were not.  They were not snoozing on either the guest bed or our bed:

I was beginning to get a little nervous.  Could they possibly have escaped the house?  Should I be looking outside and calling for them?  I calmed myself down.  That's ridiculous.  No opposable thumbs remember?  They cannot turn door knobs!  They MUST be in the house.  

I redoubled my efforts.  Think, Sam, Think! Where else do they like to catch a few Z's?  They do like snuggling on the various quilts around the house. So I checked those out.  

No kitties.  Ok , clearly I was thinking like a human and what I needed to do was think like a cat.  Where would I be if I was a cat?

Perhaps in one of the cat trees?  

Nada.  Where else can I possibly look?  Well maybe inside one of the playcubes.  They do love those and it has happened before that they were playing in a cube and fell sleep inside.  The tricky part there is black cats in a black cube are pretty much invisible.  So you have to look very closely and/or just reach in and hope to encounter something warm and soft.  I bravely checked those out.

As you can see, no kitties.  Dang!  This was beginning to feel like the Where's Waldo of kitties!

They do have a couple of unusual sleeping spots. Every once in awhile on a very hot day they make their way to the bathrooms.  Brysco prefers the sink in our bathroom

Wyatt on the other hand, can occasionally be found in the guest bath shower:  But as you can plainly see, no kitties in either location.  Ratz!

I could feel the panic creeping up again.  Wait a minute.  Remember that old adage about hiding in plain sight?  Could it be as simple as, they are right in front of me and I just am not seeing them?  I checked windows.  Kitties do love windows.

Zippity Do Dah, kitty-wise.   Ok they aren't right in front of me, so maybe I should look in less likely spots?  I checked under beds, behind chairs, under coffee tables and moved on to other things like, the top of the fridge

All locations were catless.  Where on earth could they possibly be?  This is a small house.  There are just so many possibilities.  Where are they?  

I said to Tim, " Rumor has it that we own a couple of cats but I see no evidence to support that" .  He chuckled and assured me that they must be around here somewhere and went back to work.  Dang!  I couldn't think of anywhere else to look and I was about to start at the top of my list and begin searching all over again when, suddenly, there they were. As if they had been there the entire time.  Watching me.

I rushed to cuddle them. "Where were you guys? I've been so worried about you" I gushed.  They slow blinked at me, purred mysteriously and meowed for their dinner.  As I fed them I concluded that one of three things must be true, 

Either :

1:  Cats truly are magical creatures

2:  There is a portal somewhere in this house to another parallel dimension that they are able to step in and out of at will

3:  Cats are aliens and who knows what sort of powers and alien might have

I'm not  sure which is true, but it's gotta be one of those three.   I think it's the first one.  Cats be Magical.

Hot Dogs. Frankfurters. Franks. Weiners. Sausage. Brat. Footlong. "The Legendary Tube Steak". Whatever name they go by in your house, hot  dogs are pretty basic and ain't nothin' wrong with 'em.  There are a lot of different brands of course and some manufacturers get kind of fancy and have different additions  - cheese, jalapeno's, various herbs and spices.   None of them are wrong but I'm sure you favour one sort over others if you have the choice.  

We lean toward all beef hot dogs that are big enough that the bun/doggie ratio is balanced.  Don't want too much of one thing in each bite.   Tim prefers natural casings hot dogs which we find at our local farm market and he absolutely loves them cooked on the grill.  

I don't usually make them very often, even though they are easy peasy for a meal.  I try to get as much variety as possible in the menu rotation which means that good old hot dogs just somehow don't happen very often.  And because of that,  I usually do not have proper hot dog buns on hand, which further means that I would have to make a special grocery store trip to buy them for that one  meal.  And therein lies the issue.  I just don't want to go to the market for One Item.

I don't want to grocery shop at all. I just don't care for it very much.  And quite honestly, I think it probably has more to do with the current price tags than anything else.  Sticker shock at the end of each trip is jarring.  It has gotten to the point where I have stopped looking at the total. I just zoopzoop my card and head out the door with my few measly bags. Avoidance technique.  It's working for me.

The point here isn't to whine about the high cost  of every freakin' thing in the world right now.  It 's about getting creative with something as basic as a hot dog.    Over the weekend, I thought hot dogs would be a great idea for dinner.  I never know for sure what we are doing on the weekends so a dinner that is quickquick and easypeasy sounds like a smart plan, right?

When it came time to cook the hot dogs I realized (a little belated and shame on me)  that what I thought was a bag of hot dog buns from the freezer was actually a bag of hamburger buns.  Dang.  Sometimes I move too fast and don't investigate enough. (which is why, on a number of occasions, I've returned home with raspberry jam instead of strawberry. Right brand, right size, right colour, wrong flavour)

It's not and "end of the world" level problem.  It's easy enough to cut the doggies in half long ways and use the hamburger bun, right?  But then I remembered a little video I happened to see recently and yay!  Fun!  Perfect opportunity to give it a whirl.

The idea in the video was to make the hot dog go into a circle so it fits round on the round bun.  "But how?",  you may be asking yourself.   Well, it turns out to be much like a carpenter puts a lot of tiny cuts into a straight piece of wood to curve it.  Put a lot of tiny cuts into the hot dog.  So Clever!

So here is what it looked like...tiny cuts, then bent round and secured with a toothpick that I soaked in water (so it wouldn't catch fire):

,Obviously I had a little difficult determining how far apart the cuts should be AND how deep they should be.  Experimentation  eventually led to better circles :)

Once I had them all cut and secured, I put them on the grill, just like an ordinary hot dogs and in short order (one of the best parts about hot dogs is that they cook quickly) they were ready !  Here they are hot off the grill:  Tim loves the char!

The next part, putting them on the bun of course was easy.  Tim likes his with mustard and pickle or relish.  I made the executive decision to use pickles this time so there would be something filling that middle bit of the circle:

Then I served them with deviled eggs and baked beans.  It was a perfectlyeasy summer dinner and so dang cute too.  Come on, aren't those adorable? :

I am constantly amazed at other people's creativity!  AND I learned one more new thing.  My dad always told us to learn at least one new thing every day.  This was my one new thing on Saturday!

And if you've never heard of the idea before, now you have learned one new thing too. Whether you ever try it or not, you know it now. One new thing a day!  Done!

Happy Friday to you!  This post will be relatively quick and painless, just a little something to get your weekend started.

Earlier this week, after dinner, instead of just settling in to relax 'til bedtime, I decided that I wanted to walk over to the beach.  We used to walk over around sunset multiple times a week but we kind of fell out of the habit.  Which happens every year right around this time.

Part of it, I think, is because by the end of the day we are pooped.  I mean well and truly knackered.  The idea of walking from the family room to the bedroom to sleep is almost more than I can bear to contemplate.  But also, the heat and humidity makes even the short walk to the beach, a sweaty miserable trudge rather than a lovely evening stroll.   During the summer we tend to visit the beach via car which, considering how close we are to it is honestly, a little silly.  But silly or not, the fact of the matter is, we haven't walked over in a bit.

However, on that night, when I told Tim of my intentions, he volunteered to come with me. What a nice man he is.  Indulging me in my insanities.  

We donned sunglasses, I grabbed my camera and we pointed ourselves to the west.  It's less than a mile walk through pretty neighborhoods and we actually do enjoy seeing what is interesting (to us) things along the way, "look at the  beautiful hibiscus blooming", "what a pretty colour they chose to paint their house", "Check it out, Big White Bird at 2 o'clock",  "Oh look, the pink house is for sale!". Yeah we chittychat as we walk.    Then in no time at all, we are at The Esplanade and the entrance is just ahead of us:​

Up and over and all of a sudden, there is a wonderful breeze upon us and the Gulf of Mexico before us.  It's a beautiful thing to behold.

While there were some small groups of people further down at the main entrance near the lifeguard shacks, there was only one lone fisherman by us.  That's the way I like it best.  Not to be anti-social or anything, but sometimes when I go to the beach, the only music I want to hear is the sound of the surf and the birds, y'know?

We did wander for a bit along the edge of the water and then returned back up higher where it's more level (easier walking) and I took more photos.  There was still a bit of flotsam from last weeks' storm that had washed ashore and that caught my eye along with some other things:

We didn't stay long enough to watch the sunset, but headed back home instead.    There was one last look of longing:

And then it was back up and over the little bridge and we headed home.  So glad we went.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this to you before, but my husband is a freakin' genius.  I'm serious.  If ever there is an issue, a problem, a conundrum that I take to him, he has an answer for me.  For anyone really.  He doesn't intrude into situations uninvited, but if you ask him a question, he will find an answer.  It's very cool.  And I guess I am so used to it that I don't really think about it anymore.  I suppose you could say that I take him for granted.  Shame on me!

Now I don't mean that I expect him to solve all of my problems.  I don't go whining to him about every little piddly thing. I have a perfectly good brain of my own, I am reasonably well educated and well read.  And I have always lived by the adage that if you don't use your brain it'll go bad on ya.  So I use my grey matter on a regular basis.  However, now and again, things come up that are just beyond my own capabilities, knowledge or experience.

This weekend was one of those times.  

Now I have to back up a little bit.  When we first bought this house, one of the things we did immediately was get a new HVAC system.  It was June in Florida - a hot and humid place - and we had newly arrived from Colorado - a dryer far cooler place.  Good AC was paramount.  

Originally the  HVAC  in our newly purchased home was rather old and inefficient.  It also lived in the kitchen (of all places) in a teensy tiny closet squished in next to the washer and dryer.    It was a terrible place for all of it.  So Tim had them construct the new system in the adjacent utility room instead.  Brilliant idea right off the bat.    So that's what the HVAC did.  

The brand new HVAC system was built on a plywood platform that they constructed and goes all the way up to the ceiling.  I don't think I've ever seen an HVAC system built that way before but in my head it sort of made sense.  Hot air rises, Cold air sinks.  So if the cold air in each room starts at the top of each room and sinks slowly to the floor, the entire room would feel cooler would it not?  Ok.   Maybe I'm wrong as to the why of it, but that's how I worked it out in my little head.  I've never actually asked.

And at any rate, the only part of it that figures into this story is the platform part.  That is essential.   You see, Thursday we found a little water on the utility room floor.  Not that big a deal, it's happened before and usually it is corrected by Tim replacing the filter and bleeding off a little water into a bucket, adding some vinegar, I mop up the water and then all is well with the world again.

This time it was a little odd tho because he had already replaced the filter recently. Hmmm.  Oh well.  And we went about our day until I found water on the floor again and again and again!  Grrrrr.  Each time I would sop up the water with towels, then dry the towels to be used again. For his part, Tim would look the system over, fiddle with this or that, look into things and hmmmm again.  The filter, interestingly was all bent up.  It went in nice and neat and straight as a pin but came out bent over like an old man with osteoporsis.  Not Good.

Tim's diagnosis was that the HVAC itself was somehow bending.  That's very weird and not good at all.  We spent that first night, every two hours, replacing soaked towels with dry ones, running the wet ones through the spin cycle of the washer then the dryer, then folded them and stacked them ready for their turn to keep the water at bay.

Friday, after doing just a few absolute essential things for work, Tim took the day off to really concentrate on this issue.  One of the things he discovered was that the system was leaking, not directly onto the floor but into the box platform.  Which, as I said before, is made from plywood which then bleeds it out onto the concrete floor of the utility room.  The scariest part is that the entire system rests on this box which is now compromised, that is weakened, by water.  We were terrified that the entire thing was going to kind of collapse into itself.

Now obviously, an HVAC repair guy needs to be called, but nobody in their right mind wants to pay emergency rates, I promise you.  If you've never had to do that, I'll just  say this, it's sort of like taking out a second mortgage on your home.  You really want to avoid an emergency visit.

So first order of business is to make sure the platform continues to hold up!  Tim dove in and checked it out and ultimately put together supports via lally columns and 2X8'sto prop it all up securely.  He then shop vacced/toweled out the wet inside the box.  Great!  Whew!  

Next up was rerouting the leak.  He found a way to force the leak to exit at the front of the contraption into a bucket.  Once the bucket was full, we could easily empty it outside.  Taadaa!  Great idea!  Except,   you have to constantly pay attention to how full the bucket is which means, you aren't leaving the house for very long and you are absolutely going to wake up  multiple times during the night to be certain it isn't over-flowing.  And then too, it's a HEAVY bucket. Water is phenomenally heavy.

The obvious (to Tim not me) and logical next step was to put wide circumference tubing into a hole in the side of the bucket toward the bottom with a valve so when the bucket is full, the valve can be opened and the tubing can be pointed out the back door and the water emptied super easily right back into nature where it belongs.  Awesome.

But that wasn't good enough for my man!  His last tweak was having the tubing go directly outside on it's own so that nobody has to mess with it at all.  What a relief!

The utility room is dry, the dang leak is draining outside directly and nobody has to be awake and on duty all night long ready to leap to DefCon 4 at any moment.  

Now we can just go on the schedule of the repair guy and he will get here whenever he gets here (who knows?) and fix it, as he fixes it, and the only stress with be the price tag of the repair.

I could have been a very different scenario.  If Tim wasn't such a smarty britches and figure out how to at least put a really really good bandaid on this problem I cannot even imagine what today would be like.  I might have been writing this from an ark.  Or underwater.  

Like I said, My husband is an absolute genius!  Reason number 356 why I adore him.

​

With all the furor  over the big Storm, my planned Photo Safari Report got lost in the shuffle!  Oh dear!  I try to write those up as quickly as possible so that I don't forget to include any of the little thoughts I have while hiking.  But alas, since Joy and I hiked last Thursday, nearly a full week ago now, I probably have forgotten a thing or two that I was originally planning to say.  Drat.

BUT  I will write it up as best I can anyway.  Please Bear With Me.  I'm old, I forget things sometimes.

At any rate, as I said, Last Thursday, before we knew there would be a doggone storm, Joy and I headed out to Carlton Reserve, which is one of our favourite places to hike as it has loads of trails and we always find interesting things to snap.  We arrived nice and early, as we'd hoped, with not one other soul in sight. Which should have been our first clue.

We chose our first trail and headed on down, snapping a little of this and a little of that along the way:

And then we rounded a curve and dang, nothing but muck and water as far as our eyes could see.  We couldn't even go around it because the water pooled in every direction.  I mean, this time of year it's not unusual for there to be some trails flooded, but this was a little unexpected.  Oh well.  We turned around, headed back to where we started and set out along a different trail.  Once again, capturing a few photos as we strolled along:

Sadly we didn't get very far before we found a lot of this:

Double Dang.  "Water, Water Everywhere, Not a Drop to Drink" so sayeth I while quoting the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Coleridge).  Every direction we looked, every trail we attempted was flooded.

Now what.  Sadly, we trooped back to the car and debated what to do next.  Shall we just give up?  Or try somewhere else?  Part of the issue here is that if one preserve is flooded, odds are that the others are too.  One of the things that Florida has a lot of is water. Loads of it.  Not just ocean and gulf, but lakes, rivers, ponds, streams, creeks.  You want water baby?  Florida's got it!

We decided to at least try one other local hiking spot.  It's a small preserve and we've been there roughly a zillion times, recently!  But a hike is a hike is a hike  AND it was on the way home so why not.  Joy pointed the car to Curry Creek Preserve.

We were greeted by a guard Lizard.  We assume he was the guard.  He was the strong silent type and didn't say so,  but he had that look about him y'know?

Honestly, I did not have high hopes for doing yet another Curry Creek hike, but on the other hand, I do love being outside tramping around in the forest and I love spending time with my sister soooo what the heck, why not.  Gave myself a little attitude adjustment and was rewarded with some nice birdie shots.  Not a lot, just three or four I think:  (turns out it was five, sorry)

A number of bugs, one of which I didn't even know what was (still don't):

Much drier trails, thank goodness.  It turns out you can only bleach your socks so many times before they disintegrate. Every time we hike through muck and wet, I come home with socks that are beyond disgusting, hence the bleach.

The only water we saw stayed right where it belonged, right in the Curry Creek basin.   Excellent Job

Found a few more botannicals:

And that's about it.  It was not what we planned but it was still lovely.  A bit of a stutter-step at the start though so that's what I'll call this one, The Stutter-Step Hike.

After this big storm, we definitely won't be attempting any preserves this week so you are safe from another Photo Safari Report any time soon.  Hope you enjoyed this one tho!