The miracle of the Christmas season

was made more wonderful in our lives by my father being welcomed into the arms of our Lord and Savior two days before the celebration of anniversary of his birth.

For the record,

I haven't forgotten about this thing. I just don't think my life is really all that interesting right now. Of course, I suppose it could be a lot more interesting to someone who has no idea what is going on (perhaps interesting being closely related to curious). Anyway, my time most of the summer/fall has included (not any any particular or proper order) several surgeries for my dad, on-going care of surgery sites between a couple of them, various doctor/surgeon/follow-up/etc appointments for/with my dad, a whirlwind trip to empty his house and finish getting it in proper selling condition, signing my name to all sorts of stuff that isn't my stuff, in general hanging out with him and taking him fun places as well, lots of back and forth stuff to sell his house (thank goodness!), spending three plus days watching my dad hang out in a hospital bed with pneumonia (and signing more stuff), and who remembers what all else at this point. Well, watching him decline into the abyss of Alzheimer's, part of the time slowly and part of the time more quickly would be one of the what-elses, but that seemed kind obvious. Right now he is not recovering very well from the pneumonia, which isn't too surprising, considering what how long it took both (healthy and much younger) Hubband and DTY to recover when they each had it. Dad is neither terribly young, and has other complicating issues in addition to not really being able to tell us if he is in pain, hungry, tired, etc.
Of course, that is just one part of my life. There is still the rest of it, which some days might be more interesting than other day, but somehow the days just seem to run short a lot of the time. Well, except for the time that I take to knit or read to keep myself sane. I have gotten a fair amount of knitting done this year. Is anyone interested in hearing about/seeing knitting stuff? Well, this time of year there might be stuff about snow too, I suppose.
I can say that I will try to get here more often to let you know what is happening her at Casa Coffee Yarn, but I will also say I am not going to make any promises. I never know what each day is going to bring in terms of what dad is up for/to or not, though lately it really isn't very much at all, I can tell you that I/we will be pretty busy in the next couple of weeks, with several snow storms coming our direction, DTY arriving at her big sister's today (no clue yet when we get her, but I think it will be Friday at the latest), and one of my brothers coming next Sunday for a few days to see dad. Of course there is some other stuff smushed into the next week as well.

Last night

I opened the preheating oven the oven to put the first part of dinner in, and saw something I have seen in an oven once before, about twenty years ago. Guess what? This is not really something you want to see happening to your oven element. I decided to go ahead and chance cooking dinner in there and see what happened.

Dinner cooked, and apparently the problem moved along too, which I have to admit to not really expecting. The last time I had an oven element look like that, it flamed up and made a puddle of melted metal in the bottom of the oven. This time it kept sparking its way along the element, around the curves and turns. Yes, I know I should have turned it off and I probably spiked our electrical usage for the month (or more), but I really wanted to eat dinner. I did check on it a couple of times to make sure it wasn't doing anything drastic (and Chan, I promise the fire extinguisher was right there).
Sometimes when I checked it, the element just had a red hot spot, and sometimes it was white hot and sparking like a sparkler.

Which is pretty much what it looks like all cooled off and ready to have a new element installed. We are hoping that Home Depot sells them so that life can be back to baking as normal around here before Tuesday.

On Monday,

I was talking to DTE on the phone while sitting on the deck dead-heading geraniums. Suddenly there was a little mouse headed my direction and as soon as it saw me, it turned and ran a different way. For some reason it seemed to decide that was the way it should go so it came back toward me, freaked out and dashed off again in a different direction. That direction was going to lead to the open screen door and I didn't want to have to live with the results of it getting inside.
I quickly took the opportunity to grab my camera while getting the door shut. Of course my moving around just upset the mouse even further, so it ran over to the edge of the deck and took advantage of the lattice work down the side. About that time Sadie discovered the fresh mouse trail, so she and her nose went into high gear snuffling out its path. She did an excellent job of tracking where it had been and taking the newer scent path whenever an old and new one crossed.
It didn't take her too long to figure out just where the mouse had gone; I think she would have really liked to figure out a way to get off the deck and join it on side of the deck.
Around that time, Someone wandered by, or out from under the deck, I didn't really catch which.
It didn't take her very long to do her best to get up close and personal with the mouse. Suddenly hanging out eight feet up in the air on some lattice work wasn't so appealing and it got out of there. I think it went back up onto the deck and scurried off the other edge, but I don't know for certain. I do know that it was no longer anywhere around by the time Oribel climbed down and dashed around to a spot where she could jump up to the deck to see where it had gone after it ran away from her.
(Do you know how tricky it is to lean over a deck railing eleven feet up from the ground while kneeling on a bench, talking on the phone, and taking pictures?)

Yesterday afternoon

I made sure this was empty when I was sweeping off the deck, not that one would know that from this picture. Right after I got soggy, I emptied it again, for science and all (or something).

 

Of course, one wouldn't know this was clean too.

I can't believe

the Brooklyn City Council actually thought this was a good idea, or that it was an effective strategy. (Transcript version of the news brief heard on NPR's Morning Edition yesterday.)

Good morning. I'm Linda Wertheimer.

Forget bedbugs. Brooklyn has a larger pest: opossums. The New York Post reports that three years ago, the city tried to curb its rat problem by setting opossums free in local parks. The idea: opossums would eat rats, and when that food supply was gone, die off. Today, the nocturnal critters with twitchy pink noses are still around. They rejected rats. They eat garbage and climb fruit trees. And the rats are OK, too.

(FYI: It is very rare for opossums to carry rabies due to a low body temperature.)

Ping!

Some days that is a most wonderful sound.

14 pints of Peach Jam
9 pints of Lots 'O Pepper Jam
9 half pints of Lots 'O Pepper Jam

Some people are really lucky.

DTY got to meet the author of one of our favorite geek comics over the Fourth of July Weekend. Well, actually, not just meet him, but have dinner with him and take care of his pet snake for a day or two. (She is spending her summer doing a math research REU out East.)
In other Fourth of July news, Hubband and DTE went fishing/camping, and I stayed home and bought a dishwasher.

Well now,

that was interesting. Not as nice as it used to be, or as cool as it could be, but better than it was.

We have a shed in our yard.

A nice, basic shed for stuff. You know, stuff like lawnmowers, lawn and garden tools, pots and potting soil, stuff like that. Well, after a couple years of "First shed opening in the spring," we decided we needed to do something about the fact that we were not the only ones using it for storage purposes. Of course we don't get into it much during the winter, mostly due to the door getting frozen shut and snow to tromp through, but the other users seem to pretty much concentrate on winter storage/use. There is just something about the knee-deep pine cones that we were cleaning out every spring that made us decide to cut off the external squirrel access. So, DTY attached a good covering of chicken wire to the underside of all the eves (it seemed like the most likely spot of entry, considering the amount of visible space between the walls and roof), and that seemed to solve the problem for several years. We have found a few small piles of pine cones the last year or two, but we think there is an access point from the second story, but haven't pursued it very closely. (Something about a small pile that is only ankle-deep vs the knee-deep, three foot wide, all around the edges tends to put perspective on the situation.)
Now (as you can see above) we also happen to own a cat (as much as a cat, especially this one, can be "owned"); this cat happens to really like the out-of-doors, be very curious, and think that climbing is one of her very best skills/life goals (I think it has something to do with being able to see more stuff the higher up one is).
Well, while Hubband and I were away on our trip (yes, I know I am very behind on trip reports, but having fun vacating was a higher priority for me than reports on the vacation; I will get back to the reports) and the D's were taking care of the home/animal front, we received an email from home with a link to this picture. (Sorry it is so big, but that is how I can get it). It came with the message of "We don't know how she got there so don't ask."

 

 

Well, Hubband and I have figured out how she got there since we got home; of course the fact that she has gotten there again helps a lot. She hides out in the shed when you have the door open so of course you don't realize she is in there when it comes time to close up for the day. Apparently once the door is closed and she is done investigating/hiding/napping she climbs up the shed wall to the roof line and out into the chicken wire designed to keep squirrels from getting into the shed; apparently it keeps cats from getting all the way out as well.

 

 

It also turns out, being the weird creature she is, she likes being in the chicken wire hammock and is rather content to stay there.

 

 

We finally had to just pull her out, which couldn't have been all bad, since she was purring the whole time, just like she had been during the videos of her trying to pet me (or maybe get me to join her?)
Obviously we will need to reattach the chicken wire before winter-storage season starts.