Nice Kitty!

Jackson and Claw continue to have thier stormy relationship, I think she'll bite him with her last dying breath. We took Jackson and Becky to the mall today after school to buy Jackson a suit for the Homecoming Dance, the latest Big Deal. Becky came along because her dress is black and red and Jackson needs to be appropriately co-ordinated. We went to JC Penny's since they were having a pretend sale, then to Sears who was competing with thier pretend sale and then off to Ellen Beerman's where they were having a real sale. We got Jackson the same suit we'd seen in JC Penny's for almost half of thier "half price". Then we ate at the food court and back home. I've been all over today since we went to AC Moore's and the other knitting store - that's enough of that for awhile since I can't cram anymore yarn in that dresser and have started piling it underneath. Copper had a big yucky spot on his butt that he managed to infect so I've spent the past few days scrubbing it down with peroxide and putting bacitracin on it. Unlike Charger the Licker Copper leaves things alone and it seems to be healing. The tempeture dropped today and it felt like fall for the first time. Maybe we'll get the winter stuff out of the attic this weekend but David is dragging his feet about that as we all know how he feels about S-N-O-W

David is back.

And he had a good time too, he managed to see pretty much everyone on LI during the week and spend time with his parents. He said the flight back was good, but the jaunt from Pittsburgh to Morgantown airport left a bit to be desired. The plane is very small (20 passenger) and David said they don't bother to pull the curtain so you can see what the captain and his trusty sidekick are doing. He found it a bit disconcerting because they appeared to be randomly tapping on the equipment as they flew and he wasn't sure if it wasnt working or they simply didn't know what it did. He also had an incident in LaGuardia when he put his carryon through the metal detector and while going through his bag later discovered the pocket knife his dad had given him right before he left. David was afraid if he went to the next airport with it there might be a problem so he brought his bag back to the metal detector crew and caused a bit of an uproar. Not because a rather large pocketknife was in his bag and he might be a terrorist, but because someone at the checkpoint was in deep doodoo for letting slide by. David just handed over the pocketknife and told them to keep it since everyone was hysterically denying being at the checkpoint anyhow (apparently David had checked himself through the way things were looking) and got on the plane home. It rained all day yesterday and this morning feels a bit cooler which I'm looking foward to.

Don't Mind If I Do

I guess you're never too old to be a bad cat. This would also be why I've learned not to leave glasses of water around, not that Mr. Lee does this when you're not looking. She doesn't give a rat's ass if you see her or not, she's too old to yell at and knows it. My leg is better this morning, I spent most of the weekend alternating heat and ice and it's bearable. David will be back tomorrow afternoon - after all that with the trial they settled out of court the day before they were scheduled to start so he never had to go testify. Oh well, he got a free trip home and has been busy visiting everyone. Ray came down for the weekend so they're having dinner at Fellingham's every night and driving around. I'm making Jackson take a Becky Break, her familly has got to be tired of seeing him by now. He also wants to buy a suit as he'll be taking Becky to the Homecoming Dance next month. He has gotten strange, I offered to let him play hookey on Friday AND HE REFUSED. I should probably go look for his pod. I'm off to church today and then Jackson and I are cleaning his room this afternoon, mainly the floor which needs to be mopped badly. I'm also messing with the pool, David winterized it but we never got around to covering it so it's Ger-reen again. The problem with the pool is we are indeed being a bit cheap, there's no point in covering it because we're replacing the liner in the spring and plan on buying a cover then. But on the other side I dont' want  a return of the Black Lagoon so maybe we'll just buy a cheap tarp and a few gallons of Clorox.

I'm In The Mood For Mud......

I took a picture of the road yesterday to give an idea of where my patients are. Today it didn't look like that because it rained, which in turned slicked up the iron-rich clay and turned everything a nice shade of muddy orange. (are you wondering where I'm going with this?). This morning I was making good time and went out to my 1st patient who lives as you can see, fairly deep in the country. I got done early and off to my next job 30 miles away when my car started bobbling. My stomach dropped when I looked in my mirror to see my tire getting that ruffled look and I pulled over right away- it was as flat as a pancake and the Fix-a-Flat did not. I pulled out my cell phone - no service. My patient's house was 8 miles back, a tiny town 15 miles in the other direction and no other houses. I heard barking  and saw up on the steep hill was a dilapidated trailer with a dog tied to it so I started up the hill only to go sliding back down. I didn't see a car so I figured no one was there but as I started to walk down the road a woman came out and yelled down if I needed help. I hollered back up about my flat and asked if  I could borrow her phone. She not only said I could borrow the phone, but said I could borrow her son!! who came straight down and changed my flat for me!When I went up to use the phone the dog was so excited to see me he jumped all over - did I mention anything about the mud?? I called the office and got the afternoon off but said I would do the other job in Pa as it was on my way home. I wish I'd taken a look at myself before I said THAT because I was splattered from one end to the other and my shoes were caked. I gave the son $30 for changing my tire, he didn't want anything but if he hadn't been there I would've been looking at a 3 hour walk. At least. At the next patient I took my shoes off outside and washed up as best I could, my day continued on it's cosmic path because thier dog stole my shoe. Sigh. The only happy thing about that was it cracked up my little pedie guy who sometimes doesn't have too much to laugh about. His Grandpa found my shoe, so I dropped off the labs, dropped off my flat tire, made an appointment for tomorrow and went home to put my leg up as I strained a muscle in my shin flailing around in the mud. My mother in law said I should buy some mace, which made me laugh - given the way my life runs if I ran into some loony I'd probably accidently mace myself and endup spending the rest of my life chained up in the root cellar eating moldly turnips and wearing his dead mother's housedresses. So, how was YOUR day?

Happy Belated Fall!

The leaves have already started turning, it's hard to tell in these pictures but there are more and more colors appearing daily. David had a good flight and is hanging out on LI for the week, the trial has been moved to Thursday due to the Not Til Proven Guilty party dragging thier feet and delaying stuff. Things here are a  bit hairy with David not here, I'm doing a huge amount of zipping around trying to stay ahead. Today was my day "off", haha. I spend most of my free time doing three things - homework,paperwork and housework. Jackson's probably going to meet his maker this week as he's no help at all - his excuse for not doing the dishes the other night was he had to look for the cat. I pointed out that I found it hard to believe that from 5;45pm until 9:30pm he had been searching for the cat determined to bring her white fuzzy self in no matter what. So he found himself doing the dishes at 9:35pm. No one is behaving actually, the cats pester me to go out in the morning so I'm fighting them as I'm trying to pack the car. I have a patient near here so I ran home the other day to let the dogs out. I put them out and then ran upstairs to do a few things myself and came back - they were standing on the porch waiting for me to come out so they could do thier business, sigh. Saying they're as dumb as sticks would be insulting to sticks. The uniontown office wanted to know if I could work Wednesday, my day off. Hmm. Let me think about that. No.

The Other Boy

I took this picture of Adam off of Reiko's website, I'm always so glad to see pictures of him! He's seriously talking about re-upping for at least two more years so we'll have to see. I'm glad he seems to have found his niche in life, but I just wish he'd found it a little closer. He's also been very serious about a girl and I think they'll end up married at some point. He's out at sea again and will be celebrating his 22nd birthday this year, I can' t believe he's an adult now. I finished Liz's sweater and Copper did his modelling duties, something a little off the shoulder for him. Yesterday we played hookey from chruch and headed out to Clarksburg. David wanted to drop a pulley off at some guy's house and we ended up sitting in the truck for an hour as he yakked away. Becky was with us as it was a shopping trip, we did Emily Drive first where AC Moore's is - I got a ton of yarn and then we went to the mall in Bridgeport. David leaves for LI tomorrow, his flight is scheduled to leave at 6:25 am so we'll be out the door at 5 I guess. I've been trying to figure out the logistics of the week - I think I'll drop Jackson off early, run back to the house to let the dogs out for one last potty break and then shoot off to work. Then after work, I have to run to Saberton to pick Jackson up (Becky's parents said he could ride the bus home with Becky for the week so he doesn't have to hang around the school), dump him off at home and then bolt to Fairmont for class. I've already spoken to the teacher and she said it was ok for me to be late this week. David will be back next Monday afternoon. My biggest concern is the dogs since I'll be out of the house all day and they're pretty old. But it's really only 3 days I have to concerned about so I guess I'll just have to invest in some rugcleaner and do a lot of finger crossing!

Creature Of The Mid-Afternoon

Vincent would like to be a Creature Of The Night, but around here he's forced to be a Creature Of The Morning To Midafternoon and the whole thing is tough tacos otherwise. There's just too much running around here at night besides cats.Vincent gets a kick out of lurking about the woods and spends the whole day outside.  My job has been picking up and I'm averaging about 80 to 150 miles of travel time a day. I'm loaned out to Uniontown every Friday which is still causing a bit of a ruckus due to last Friday's miscommunication which led to me putting over 250 miles on my car IN ONE DAY. Talk about the scenic tour! David leaves for LI on Monday for the week, I'm dropping him off at the airport at 6am - it should be an interesting week of more driving since I have to ferry Jackson back and forth plus school two nights a week for me. And the dogs of course. We'll muddle through as we usually do. Jackson continues to do fine at home and in school, he's decided he likes Becky's parents better than us so he's been hanging around there a lot. That's ok, the cat likes ME better than Becky's parents! I paid off my ticket so I'm a free citizen, I was told I couldn't put that on my expense account. Apparently criminal behavior is not covered so I guess I won't be prostituting on my lunch break anymore, haha.

It's Almost Autumn!!

The Wicker Squirrel is already for fall - he does like to be dressed in the correct fashion. As I drive along I can already see some of the trees starting to turn colors, just an isolated tree here and there for now. I've been pretty busy, I feel like I spend all my days off either catching up with paperwork or doing homework, the two sometimes feel like one and the same. I've also been getting some more cancer pedies so that means more time spent on the computer and phone trying to find out if you can have a banana without the skin on a neutropenic diet or not and other questions no one seems to know the answer to. Not to mention the other home care things I need to do and know - we get patients all over the map physically and geographically so even when I'm not at work physically, I'm preparing for it constantly. Jackson is getting more involved with school and is doing really well - his weight is up to 165 lbs and he has been occasionally (gasp!!)  spotted wearing other  colors than Festive Funeral Black. He owns two blue and one green t-shirt and one multi-colored AND has been seen wearing BLUE jeans. The last two pictures are of an enourmous cement bible that I spotted tucked behind a tractor dealership. I'm not partial to bibles but I do like oversized stuff so I sort of want this for my very own. I guess I'd better get moving, my day "off" is quickly moving along.

End Of Summer

It's getting to that time of year - only 8 more days and it will officially be fall. I can see some of the trees are already turning color and I know the mountains will be amazing in just a couple of weeks. The cats are enjoying outdoors, they stay out all day with the exception of Mr. Lee who has had her outside privleges revoked permenently. Today it went into the 90's but hopefully that will be shortlived. David is almost done winterizing the pool which continues to leak, I'm sort of curious how low we can go. David ended up getting to busy for church and missed a great sermon which was done by an atheist, he was  very interesting. He often leads the pittsburgh church and made some very interesting points. I'm going to attempt to make coffee next week since I was unable to attend Clean Up Day (David went though), hopefully I won't kill the congregation with my lack of coffee making skills. Jackson is feeling better but that cough hangs on, he's been taking NyQuil because it seems to worse at night. Adam is fine, I don't think they're coming home in October and he's talking marriage so we'll see what happens. I've got to go study, fitting this class in is a bit rough with everything else going on, but at least things are going a bit smoother for us the past couple of weeks.

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

Sigh. I am a criminal again. I got caught speeding - 75mph in a 45 mph zone in Sissy Baby Pennsylvania of course, home of the Sunday Driver. I was guilty and did admit it, so I got reduced to some disobeying the speed limit nonsense which means I have to pay $105, but no points on my license. I've been pretty good about it, once you cross the border to Pa the speed limit drops into 40's instead of the 70's like in HeMan West Virginia and sometimes it's hard to remember to drive like you're mentally impaired.  I was working both ends today - my boss had scheduled me for one end without realizing Uniontown had me going to the opposite end and I drove over 200 miles today for 5 visits. Which all led up to me zipping through Perryopolis Pa with a song in my heart and a pig on my tail. The whole thing sucked in a most major way I have to admit, but I'm over it. The pictures today are of Cheat Lake which I took on my way back from no man's land. That lake is in WV so you can swim as fast as you want. I'm hoping to not do too much this weekend, I am a bit peeved that I didn't get to go to Clarksburg this week(AC Moores, The Nest for All Your Knitting Needs) so I'm debating if I would want to get in the car again for another hike. Probably not. Not to mention I already have more yarn than I could possibly use unless I get reincarnated many, many times. Gas is down to 2.89, isn't that funny I think that's cheap?

On Patrol

I've been pretty busy these past few days. I did make it into the class - David called them on Tuesday morning and they said if I brought my registration and payment they would let me in. Registration was supposed to have been closed 5 days prior to the class but past experience has taught me nothing speaks louder than money in hand. Of course I was running late from work, couldn't find the building, etc and managed to register 30 seconds before the first class started. It's a medical coding class and will be 3 hours twice a week after work. During the class they announced they sort of forgot to tell everyone that we would need $300 worth of additional books which went over as well as expected. There are quite a few single parents so I couldn't blame them for being upset - I was a little myself but there's nothing I can do about it. And then to add to the mix Jackson has been home sick for the past two days. Tuesday he woke up with a scratchy throat and little cough - I hate that because it's hard to judge if they'll get better or worse so we did what we usually do, send him and told him to go to the nurse if he got worse. So he was home by ten and has been home ever since. I think we can send him in tomorrow at least to get his make up work. We got the final check from the sale of the Pa house, thank goodness that's over and done with. The day of the closing they called to announce they couldn't find the keys to the house so they might not be able to close so David yelled back How The Hell Were You Showing The House Then and that sort of cured that little problem.

Dave, A Man Outstanding In His Field....

I think we're going to have to up David's life insurance. He started mowing the 2nd field behind the barn today, the picture of the coke can is actually what he threw down to mark where the yellow jacket nest is. Sigh. So he started on the other side with the infamous Gravelly and once again felt the familar bouncing on the back of his legs. A paper-wasp nest was caught under the mower and was being dragged across the field, it's a good thing David is quick like a bunny, isn't it? They aren't stinging us though as you can see from the pictures, they were too busy being upset about it being Moving Day and no one telling them. I told David enough!! for today. I had to work for half a day today, but my 3rd patient wasn't home so the day went a little quicker than anticipated. Jackson is over Becky's of course and I'm not doing too much. The weather is just beautiful, I hope it stays like this at least for a little while. And the last picture? We found that wheelchair, a pair of crutches and some BONES in the woods, whoooooooo

Strangers In The Night

I know! I know! But who can resist a frog on your porch? And last night he brought a friend! So now we have two frog visitors. Charger has not made any attempt to give them a bite, so perhaps he's redeemed his toad-snacking ways. Vincent is almost glue free from last week's adventure and David is de-poofed from his adventures so things are a little better.The weather has gotten most excellent  - still summer-y warm, but with a bit of fall chill in the air, I love this time of year. The sky around here is nothing short of amazing ,I have no idea why though. It's beyond blue and bigger than life - I've deleted a million pictures because everyday it's another spectacular view. David and I went to the church picnic, I got to be Miss Popular - not because I'm that interesting, but because I was packing a Triple Chocolate Bundt Cake from Sam's club - you could be a drooling troll and be popular if you have one of those. I also packed extra plates which turned out to be a good thing because no one else had packed any at all. I've got to work tomorrow which stinks, I've got a couple of patients that have to be seen on Monday so I volunteered and to see one more -then they called yesterday to see if I wanted to open a case 45 miles away! I told them I was already doing 3 patients and she said well, since you're working that day anyhow..... the one thing I really despise about my job is no matter how much you do they always want more.

My Dream House

Wouldn't  you love to live here? Talk about location,location,location - it's attached to the Chocolate Factory (out in Perryopolis,Pa) - a place I don't dare go into. Speaking of houses, yesterday was the closing of the Pa house - I haven't said too much about it because we've been through this too many times since March - 5 times to be exact. David's been on the phone constantly for the past two weeks, we were supposed to close a couple of weeks ago, but then the buyers didn't have the title search done and oops, did they forget to get a mortgage commitment....people just amaze me. I'm still peeved, I was going to register to start a college course but when they filed for an extension I threw it all in the trash - if they'd backed out we would've really been up the creek financially and now it's too late to sign up. I've been doing a ton of driving lately, I've been working both ends. I would enjoy it a great deal more if the gas wasn't so expensive, it cost me $34 to fill up my little CRV yesterday much to my shock. It's now up to 3.19 as of yesterday - someone pulled in behind me in a big SUV, I was glad I wasn't them! I went to Jiffy Lube the other day to get my oil changed and my transmission oil done and the manager came out to ask why my tires were at 60. I said 60? He said very sternly they should be 29. I said 29? He said Yes, 29, why are they at 60? I said 60? 60 what?? He said 60 pounds. I said 60 pounds of what? Apparently my tires are only supposed to have 29 pounds of air even though you can inflate them way past that.  So I now have 29.Jackson's been doing well, he likes the school he's in and is making new friends along with the old ones he had from South Middle. David's starting to close up the pool and is getting ready to dig for the new water main. The weather is supposed to be nice this weekend so maybe we can get some yardsaling in!