Photos on Dreary Gray Oregon Sunday

Homemade weatherization for the under eaves window box entrances.  It's getting cold sometimes.  I had to rig something!

Calamity likes to sleep in the carrier above the exclusion room.  She sure would like a home of her own, but would need a patient home, no dogs and at least one other cat, preferably a friend from here.

Miss Daisy, the ultimate cush cat, likes to sleep on pillows.  She loves her comfort!  Starry is one of her best friends.

Electra is showing her age, and sleeping more and more.  She took a tumble ten days ago off the cat run, six feet to ground.  I only caught the tumble from peripheal vision, seeing her land awkwardly on her side.  She acted strange for five days after that, holding her tail funny and walking with a curvature to her back that worried me to death.  She seemed swollen and to breath funny, but soon was back to normal.  She's an old cat and a fall, any fall, can prove fatal to the elderly.

The Albany business cats still hang out together as a family when they sleep.  They love the diaper changing station beds.  I found that at a thrift store several years ago, and am looking for another.  Here, eight of the nine Albany business cats nap.  Top:  Alexi and Stiletto, on the left while Sassy sleeps on the top right.  Next level down:  Cougie, Raindrop, Tilly and Rogue.  But behind Rogue and you can only see the top of her head, is Haley.  The only business cat not in the pile is Misty.  Family matters, to cats.

Sam, looking stately.  I can't believe Sam is at least 8 years old now.

Teddy, formerly of the Corvallis homeless camp, likes to clown.

Teddy, atop the exclusion room, turns to watch Echo, one of the Quirky sisters, and Shady, of the BS colony.

Tugs, the torti, with Slurpy the other torti.

I took mushroom photos yesterday.  I wanted to see if any of the yard shrooms were edible.  I never did ID these, growing on the old Cottonwood stump.

But I was able to ID these, growing everywhere in the backyard and they are poisonous.  They cause severe gastro intestinal distress.

I have not yet solved the water heater problem, but it's no big deal since there is plenty of hot water for a quick shower.  I've never been one to take long showers, being the extreme penny pincher I am.  I'm afraid I'll go nuts with the hot water if I get a water heater that allows a leisurely shower with plenty of hot water.  But would that not be nice, to come in, after being out in the rain and cold, and warm up with a nice hot shower of decent length?   Ah yes, but spendy!

Fixing the water issues from the down spout underground drainage line damage has been a big fat fail.  The corrugated pipe leaks like crazy and water pools badly by the house from its leakage.  However, it's just as bad in the underground damaged pipe, I just don't have to see the pooling, because it's going under the house and washing out the foundation wall.  So this is a slight improvement for the house at least and I keep at it. I'd buy PVC pipe to contain the water but I can't afford 52 feet of PVC and the connectors that would be required since my  car is very short and I can't carry long lengths of pipe.

The problem is not limited to that side.  On the north side of the house, the gutter water dumps down the downspouts into underground crap plastic pipe to a shared, by the old man neighbor, underground drain pipe to the street.  He hasn't cleaned his gutters in decades nor does he maintain anything, so that pipe is badly clogged and unfortunately, runs under my driveway.  His constantly clogged down spouts, result in massive water drainage into his lawn, which is likely the cause of my own driveway settling and sinking in places.  You got to manage the water or there's a price to pay.  Not a thing I can do about most of this.  I don't blame him for letting it all go to hell.   He eats out every meal and spends all his time at restaurants chatting with his old man friends.  He comes home and puts his big screen TV on the highest volume then dozes off with a few beers.  I'll hear him get up in the night and yell, drunkenly sounds like, at his cats, if they want in or out too much.  They basically eat at my place.  I keep them flea treated so they don't pass fleas to my cats through the cat yard fence.  The old man is mid 80's.  He can do what he wants now.  And he does. As he should.  Nobody should tell an old person how to live their life.  That's nuts!

My one brother is off on a vacation with his family.  Kids are all grown, but they got two of them along.  Must be hard to raise kids then off they go.  I don't know, maybe they're relieved to finally have an empty nest.  I don't know my nieces and nephew really.  I wasn't around them when they were growing up.  

I fixed my old computer.  I'm on it now.  How do you like that?  I undertook the task as a learning experience never dreaming I could actually do it.  There were polluted corrupt programs and a media player on it, that, after the process of elimination from safe mode, and their removal, allowed me back my old computer.  So now I use both.  I feel absurdly rich!  I store music on one and photos on the other, so as not to overload either.  Plus I have some games on this one I like to play.  Yes, I like video games too.  I like almost everything.

I slowed down on reading.  Finding decent books was the issue.  But I'm back to it.  I love reading.  The most recent finish was The Dive from Clausen's Pier, by Ann Packard.  It was a slow start book, that I put down over and over, but in the end, I loved it.  It was about life is all, growing up, and a young woman who began to outgrow a group of high school and college friends, including a best friend and a fiancee who makes a dive from Clausen's Pier into shallow water, breaking his neck.  In the weeks before that fateful day, the woman focus of the story, (have forgotten names now) was having trouble in her relationship with her boyfriend since high school.  After he broke his neck, sending him into a coma and stealing his ability to walk once he came out of it, she didn't know what to do.  Guilt made her stay with him at his bedside.  His family and her friends guilt tripped her also until one day she just loaded her car and took off for a new life in New  York City. 

 There she fell in love with a mysterious man who lived frugally, talked little about himself, drank too much and turned out to be 40 years old.  He had issues too, which he would not discuss.  Later on, after she went back to Madison to visit her best friend, with whom she's fallen out with, over the months since the accident, he revealed to her that his brother had died young after a long battle with leukemia.  His brother's name was Mike, like her Mike, now in a wheelchair.  

She never returned to New York, after she left to try to patch things up with her childhood best friend, whose sister had been beaten up and whose mother had attempted suicide and been committed.  She stayed in Madison, in the end, and began helping with Mike's care, and re-establishing old friendships and routines.  The book was about the unexpected twists and turns of life, some harsh, some beautiful, the sadness that can haunt everyone, from life's twists, no matter where they live or what their upbringing.  A person can count on only a few sureties   Family and friends, a sense of community and place, these are rocks in the upheaving landscape of life.

Life is tough here lately only in that I am bored silly and very alone.  The cat wrangling has ground to an extremely slow pace.  Price of gas and scarcity of clinic space is the reason.  And soon, very soon now, I won't be able to do any cat wrangling at all, when Poppa Inc. closes down, first of next summer.  I am contemplating what I can do now with my life.  I must find something.